Sunday Potpourri

We had a wonderful day here on the farm yesterday enjoying the first snowfall of the year. We had expected it to start overnight Friday, but it really didn't begin until late in the morning Saturday. Weekend snow--in manageable amounts--is the best snow of all. If you aren't planning on going anywhere to begin with, you don't have to worry about driving in it, and all things considered, it is likely to not be an issue anymore on Monday morning. And so, I just enjoyed watching it all day, except of course when I laid down to nap through a chunk of it.

The Kitten had a stroke of genius and suggested we have one of her specialties for dinner, a concoction that essentially mixes instant rice, fresh mushrooms, cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soup, and chicken thighs into a large pan. One dish, easy-peasy. I consider this approach to chicken to be among the best "comfort food" approaches known to man, although the carbs bound up in the rice is definitely a drawback. Sacrifices must be made however.

Hero status was attained Friday when the Kitten asked me to join her at a local antiques purveyor to look at a table for our combination library/dining room. We've had a small round table in it for a few years, but special occasion dinners around it are invariably crowded affairs. She showed me photos the table on Thursday night and I basically said, "you have the style and taste of this partnership, if you think it is right, get it." But she wanted me to be in on the deal, so I met her Friday afternoon. It was instantly apparent that the table was perfect for the space, and I told her so. She asked, "should we get it?" and I said yes. So she looked at the guy running the place and said, "we'll take it"--and I said "Merry Christmas" and paid for it. She was ecstatic, as was I. My present buying for her year in and year out is lame, so getting something she was really excited about caused me a great deal of happiness.

It is a working Sunday (save of course, for the fooling around I do like writing blog posts), and I'm in the ManCave banging away on a lot of important stuff. Unlike many people, my December and January are always jam-packed, and the pace quickens considerably. There are a stack of as-yet unwritten Christmas cards staring me in the face, but I hope to have them on the way by the end of the week.

I see in the news this morning that Secretary Tillerson is saying that the US Embassy in Israel will not move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. Shocking, huh? Although I am a big fan of the President's full throated endorsement of the move, we've seen this kind of bait and switch from him before--where he attempts to leverage the goodness of a policy move without actually making the policy move. We'll have to wait and see whether this promise goes into the file with "the Wall" and DACA. There are important reasons that the actual Embassy could take a while to move, but the Embassy maintains consular offices in Jerusalem into which the Ambassador and several staff could move easily if this were really a priority.

Interesting kerfuffle in the news yesterday, in which Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel posted a Tweet reported to show crowd scenes at President Trump's rally on Friday night, making the point that they were a good bit less than the President had been crowing about. Weigel's Tweet however, used photos from earlier in the evening, when the crowd had not yet fully entered the venue. Trump called him on it, Weigel then deleted the Tweet and apologized. This of course, was not enough for the President who then called for Weigel's firing.

Weigel and Trump fighting is a lot like the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980's. It's too bad both can't lose. Weigel is a reliable lefty whose true leanings were outed in the "Journolist" pro-Obama throne-sniffing story of 2010,  And of course, Trump is the pathological liar we elected President. It is clear to me that much of the press has it out for the President, and they are ready to move more quickly than usual with stories or opinions if they make the President look bad. When they make mistakes, it not only makes the press look bad, but it feeds into the President's "fake news" narrative that nourishes the habits of his followers like the oxycontin on their nightstands.

It boggles my mind that the press isn't more careful--the Weigel story coming quickly on the heels of the Brian Ross fiasco of earlier in the week--but what REALLY boggles my mind is the notion that the Press is held to a standard of truth-telling perfection (which as a standard, I am fine with), but that the President of the United States and his band of taxpayer compensated sycophants--can lie with impunity night in and night out. In other words, our elected President--who we all know is a serial liar--gets a pass. But the press? They must be perfect. This is insanity. Both must be held to the highest standards, but high standards and consistency in their application isn't a big strength of Republicans these days.

On a lighter note, here is "Good King Wenceslas"