If I’m going to procrastinate I might as well, do it writing. Not going out much is tough on my writing muscles. Maybe I should entrap the muse Calliope and force her to give me inspiration. That’s a Sandman reference but it’s deeper as Gaiman was referencing me. Madoc is the character that holds Calliope and Madoc is the name Horvendile took while he was young, and as everyone who follows me online knows, I’m Horvendile. I’ve been told you see the name “Horvendile” on the show but if so, I missed it. 20 years ago, I wrote Terry Pratchett about James Branch Cabell, the creator off Madoc/Horvendile, to ask him about Cabell’s influence on him. Maybe I should write Gaiman. I will look for an email address. Terry wrote me back! That might be the only fan letter I ever wrote on my own behalf. I did write an actress asking for a picture for a friend of mine. Does leaving a poem onstage for the Roches count as a fan letter? Their mother Jude, who was a poet, wrote me back.
There’s no Met game today so I really need to get out of the house after therapy. I can walk to Aldi, there are things I’ve been needing for a while. I should make a list. I know that bacon and ham are two of them. I wish they had the 50 link bags of breakfast sausage. I need those for omelets and grits ala Horvendile. Oh, I need frozen meatballs. I ran out of those last night. I had a meatball parm hero for dinner.
Oh, great it’s now 2:36 PM and therapy is at 3:00. I am the champ procrastinator. To speed things up I’ll used write the already prepared frozen entry. That just need to be popped in the microwave.
I promised you Venn diagrams and you are going to get Venn diagrams, minus the diagrams except on the cover. I don’t have time to prepare the graphics.
Getting things done is difficult in congress these days those though this session has been quite productive. One of the reasons it’s difficult is the same reason people don’t realize that it’s been productive. The reason is set theory illustrated with Venn diagrams. If people’s opinions on issues were totally independent of each other and 60% of the people were for policy A and 60% were for policy B, then only 36% of the people would be for both A and B (60%*60%). Both policy A and policy B would win in separate votes. If the majority is wise that means two good policies. But if the two policies are bundled in Bill AB it will fail and we will get neither policy. In reality support for the policies are correlated but still not 100% so the number of people who support both good bills could be as high as 49% and still fail. That does happen in real life, look at all the bills that couldn’t be passed because of Manchin, Sinema, or both. The reason we were able to get the excellent environmental bill misleadingly called the Inflation Reduction Act is because all the parts of the much better Build Back Better Bill were cut out to get the support of the two hold outs. Many people look at the entire process as a loss even though what passed was extremely good. People too often would rather lose trying to get 100% of what they want, then settle for 30%. It becomes about winning and losing, not the best results for the country.
The intractability of the GOP, even the moderates, makes things more difficult. For them it is just winning and losing. I was going to say complete intractability but that’s not fair. We got the infrastructure bill passed with a modicum of Republican support. It is still possible. Was it the best possible infrastructure bill? Theoretically no, as again, Build Back Better was as the name says, better. But it might be the best bill than could actually pass which makes it for practical purposes better. I’m quite impressed at how well congress did this year in not letting the perfect get in the way of the good.
For a long time, it looked like the Democrats were working against the clock, that they would lose control of both houses of congress this year. The tide is turning, they are now favored to control the Senate and have a reasonable chance to control the House. If they could increase their margin in the Senate Manchin and Sinema would no longer have veto power. They could get more accomplished. Hell, maybe they could get rid of the filibuster and then really get things done on important issues like voting rights. If they only keep control of the Senate at least Biden will be able to keep making judicial appointments. I suspect that come January if the GOP controls the Senate Biden would not be able to appoint anyone to the supreme court. McDonnell will extend the precedent he set under Obama and not allow any Biden nominations to even come up for a vote.
My therapist is already late so I’ll call this a day and post this as soon as I can.
Wise Madness 