Democracy isn’t letting people vote then invalidating the ones you don’t like, but here we are — Texas v. Pennsylvania and its accompanying amicus briefs. Republicans are the party of states rights — unless the state does something they don’t like. But, I suppose, disqualifying the votes of people who don’t vote the way you want is the logical extension of the “real American” mantra touted by Palin. And the tea party’s “no taxation without representation” … uhh, we all voted. You have representation. “Well, they don’t represent me” logic. Having lived through many years of minority rule, I get their point. Philosophically George W Bush didn’t represent me. Trump sure as hell doesn’t represent me. But — however much we may philosophically differ, they did represent me. Because that’s how American government works.
Could we use modern technology to have direct representation? Sure. Direct representation would eliminate gerrymandering and the oversized influence of low-population-density states. It would be rather inequitable — who has the time to read through every piece of proposed legislation, get online and vote their opinion, etc. But it could happen. Even then, though … 60% of the people vote for X, that’s what we get. And the 40% who voted not-X suck it up.
I want to plant some food plots around our property this upcoming year. Chufa looks like a cool, unique plant to add. Something we can eat too — and it can attract both deer and turkeys. https://gamekeepersclub.com/p-245-turkey-gold-chufa.aspx (25 lbs)
There are two heirloom dent corns I’d like to grow — https://www.southernexposure.com/products/hickory-cane-dent-corn/ and https://www.victoryseeds.com/corn_pencil-cob.html. A few patches of hull-less oats would be cool, and maybe some alfalfa.
My local school district is moving to remote learning for what’s left of December and a few weeks in January. Not unexpected, and a part of the reason we chose a different learning option for Anya this year. The Superintendent’s message highlights the two big problems I expected with in-person learning. Firstly, 28 positive cases resulted in 467 quarantined individuals. That’s about 16 people in quarantine for every infected individual. The district had about 3,000 students before some percentage opted to use virtual learning this year. Add some 300 staff — they’ve had about 15% of the school out in quarantine in the past three weeks. And that’s before any increase in infections from Thanksgiving. Secondly, people who send their kids to school with COVID-like symptoms (I believe they have a special nurse’s office in each school for those kids to hang out in all day so people who have to swing by the nurse’s office to get medication or a scrape patched up aren’t exposed to a room full of sick kids) and even while awaiting test results.
Liberatarianism is great in theory … but, in practice, the entire point of the belief system is that you’re free to make whatever choice you decide to make. Even if you want to ignore the bears.
The past few days was the first big snow storm out chickens have seen. They didn’t like walking in the snow so much. Anya made a snow maze for the chickens. The funny thing I’ve noticed about chickens — and remember, these are birds that can fly (well, for short distances) — is that they get stymied by two foot walls. The whole flock will be standing on the other side of our courtyard wall, chattering and cocking their heads at the wall trying to figure it out. Well, 18″ of snow works the same way — one chicken “cheated” at the maze and just flew into a different section, but they generally hit a head end and meandered around until someone accidentally worked their way back into the main part of the maze.
And she added a prize at the end of the maze
I read in Forbes that one in 800 people in South Dakota has died from COVID — which made me wonder where other states fall on that spectrum. Mostly better — the Dakotas are eight and nine on the list. It looks like 1 in 518 people in New Jersey have died, 1 in 559 New Yorkers.
It was warm over the weekend, rained Monday — and, as the temperature dropped, it changed over to ice and snow. The tree branches are all covered in a bit of ice with a lot of snow sticking to the ice. With saplings drooping over and tree boughs pulled down, we have a winter wonderland.
