It's too important to wait until next Moody Monday. Here is a followup to yesterday's post. This 6-minute clip is today's PBS NewsHour segment on yesterday's Supreme Court decision.

I'm paraphrasing here, but the PBS host seemed strangely interested in trying to promote the idea, "No, it's not that dire," but the historian was emphatic that "Yes, it's a done deal. The president is now above the law." I'm very glad the historian pointed out what I did yesterday that so-called checks and balances are now gone. It's not something that will be tested in the future. It's done. It's now.

Get ready for what comes next (YouTube, 29 minutes, John Oliver on HBO). In fact, the worst case scenario was already discussed during the Supreme Court hearing (thank you, justice Sotomayor), and of course they decided in favor of it.

Today's theme song arrives here thanks to news from Texas, where a judge ruled that a school district can restrict the length of hair of its male students. This ruling contradicts the recent CROWN Act in Texas that banned race-based hair discrimination. Minnesota passed a Crown Act recently too. A Texas judge has now ruled against a key feature of their law in that state.

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again before we're finally through these troubles, but please find a way to move somewhere safe. Heed the signs. Until then, enjoy this song in the spirit of longhair solidarity.

And the sign said, "Long-haired freaky people need not apply".
So I tucked my hair up under my hat, and I went in to ask him why.
He said, "You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do."
So I took off my hat, I said, "Imagine that. Huh! Me, workin' for you!"

Whoa! Sign, sign, everywhere a sign!
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind!
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

And the sign said anybody caught trespassin' would be shot on sight,
So I jumped on the fence, and I yelled at the house, "Hey! What gives you the right?"
"To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep Mother Nature in?"
"If God was here, he'd tell you to your face, Man, you're some kinda sinner."
...
And the sign said, "Everybody welcome. Come in, kneel down, and pray."
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, I didn't have a penny to pay.
So I got me a pen and a paper, and I made up my own little sign.
I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me. I'm alive and doin' fine."

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I know that a lot of luck has kept me here in this world for so long. Today is nearly done. I kept my belly full all day, my skin warm, and my cat purring in my lap, so I know that today was a good day for me. I wish the same for everyone else in my troubled part of the world and places like it elsewhere. I don't yet have any good ideas for how to make it happen, though.

Stay safe out there.

I think today marks 2,023 consecutive days of gunfire here in north Minneapolis, according to someone who keeps track.

It has been a rough weekend here in Minneapolis. A few days earlier, this story made the news about the blood spatter still on the sidewalks near Aldi (the grocery store I used before it closed earlier this year), across the street from the hardware store where I walked to buy the paint for my house. People can't afford rent, so evictions are up in the Twin Cities. I mentioned earlier overhearing some guys talk about all of their work shifts being 10-hour shifts now. It seems we're in a race to the bottom of just how much suffering we can all tolerate.

The one good news item I saw from here recently is that someone who was beaten by Minneapolis police officers (who lied about the situation) has created a non-profit trying to encourage so-called "good cops" to step up. They need the encouragement, because they won't get it from their own police union or fellow officers. As I've been saying for a long time now, there was a time in history when everybody knew that the institution of policing across the USA was corrupt to its core. Locally, Minneapolis police are so corrupt that business owners are pressured to hire officers off duty, in spite of cops already earning more money than most of us. It's like that old trope from tv shows about gangsters, "That's a nice business you have there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it." In that vein, I saw recently that DEA agents at airports are searching passengers and taking their money without making arrests. Just because they can, apparently.

I'm looking forward to the new game Cities Skylines 2 being released tomorrow, but even it "simulates a homelessness crisis, getting laid off, and Gen Z going broke". More people are getting desperate, and it's happening for reasons that I've detailed many times over the years. The violence in the USA is so commonplace now, however, that people don't seem to realize any more that this behavior should be considered abnormal. Last night, I was sitting in front of the tv in my recliner chair, under some warm blankets. I opened up Google News on my smart phone, and I switched to the "Headlines / U.S." news tab. It was just story after story after story of gun homicides throughout the USA during the past few hours.

It's almost like everyone knows, deep down, that the status quo is ending. This cannot continue.

The beginning is near.

For more than a decade now, I've been warning about this particular predictor of societal collapse: the cannibalization of infrastructure. It happens when people find more value in the material of a thing than in the function of that thing, especially functions that benefit the community as a whole. Besides the examples I provided in the link above, the problem continues with people stealing catalytic converters.

Today, I saw this Ring video on a NextDoor post. It's located north of downtown Minneapolis, and the camera owner said he didn't learn until the next day that police said someone stole the copper from water/sewer pipes that night. You can see people hauling something big that looks like "hose" in the background of that video. It's not just here in the Twin Cities. Throughout the USA, people are even stealing electric cables right from the utility poles.

Cannibalization of infrastructure is a warning sign of societal collapse. I keep ringing that same warning bell, but nothing changes. I warned in the 2020 USA election that this was our last chance to elect a president who could change our course, but somebody insisted that we elect Mr. Nothing-Will-Fundamentally-Change instead.

Nothing has fundamentally changed. The collapse continues. The beginning is near.

The sworn testimony given to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday last week by former U.S. military staff was historic.

Read the short summary and also summarized objections...

We just had 3 credible professionals give sworn testimony (on penalty of perjury, although that's seldom enforced) which collectively claims that UFO presence in USA airspace is practically commonplace; that these UFOs can disable (not the same as merely evade) our electronic detection systems; that USA has UFOs, alien technology, and alien beings in our possession; that our Defense department cooperates with corporations to illegally siphon money from the government to fund their own private research; and that US citizens have been harmed, perhaps even killed, to keep these secrets hidden.

Beware, though, of two particular criticisms about what happened.

1. "No real details were provided."
   That's right. They were not spoken in public that day in front of cameras. Keep in mind, though, that David Grusch passed the details of his claims to an Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. That Inspector General then passed the summary to Congress, indicating that these claims were both "urgent" and "credible". (That document link provided by PBS.) This congressional committee wanted a SCIF to hear the details that same day, but they were denied access to one for this hearing. This critique applies only to a portion of the import of this event.
2. "Without solid evidence of UFOs and aliens, this testimony was pointless."
   Wrong. So wrong that it borders on distraction. The importance of this testimony was not just about UFOs. It was about a decades-long history of illegal activity and criminal suppression of information by a faction within the U.S. Government. The most dangerous claim offered that day was that we have a government-within-government that operates with no oversight. Remember: "urgent" and "credible".

I strongly recommend watching the video of the event. You can get the link from this govt webpage, but I'm embedding the YouTube video below, starting at the 18-minute mark to avoid the preceding empty broadcast. Don't skip bits. Watch the full 2 hours.

It's riveting testimony almost the whole way through. There was very little political grandstanding. My mind wandered twice but only briefly. It's worth your time to view it. The Pentagon is, of course, attempting to discredit the event. In response, Representative Tim Burchett (a Republican who never met a conspiracy theory he disliked (I know, I'm making strange bedfellows here)) said the following:

"Unnamed sources at the Pentagon called our hearing on #UFO and #UAP insulting. You know what’s insulting to me? The fact they have never passed an audit and have “lost” over a billion of your hard earned dollars."
- Twitter, @TimBurchett, 2023 Jul 30 Sun 8:50am

Any criticism that fails to mention the claims of unaccountable government is just a distraction from recurring failures to account for the military's budget and assets. Finally, at long last, we might begin to rein in the U.S. military-industrial complex. Oh, and we might learn the truth about Roswell and Area 51 after 76 years. Sure, I guess. (free archive copy) Yeah, there's that, I suppose.

I still want to write a think piece about capitalism. That word, capitalism, was never used by Adam Smith. It seems it was defined by Karl Marx (yes, that one) in Das Kapital, which I really need to read before launching into a proper investigation of the concept. Apparently he detailed its uses and pitfalls.

These days, though, the pitfalls abound. The idea is very much on my mind. Here for Moody Monday is just a short collection of the things that we are doing to ourselves (they don't passively happen to us) in the USA because of unregulated capitalism and profit-at-all-costs psychology.

• Why Americans Are Obsessed With Big Cars (hint: "heavy trucks" avoid regulation, even though bigger vehicles are more dangerous)
• Corporate Profits Surge to an All-Time High of $2 Trillion
• Most theft is wage theft. (and necessary citations 1 and 2, plus a related GQ article)
• ‘Pay or Die’ Review: A Scathing Doc About the Cruelty of Insulin Costs
• Munger: A little inequality is good for the economy
• 39% of Americans say they’ve skipped meals to make housing payments: report
• Assisted-living homes are rejecting Medicaid and evicting seniors
• Why are working people being blamed for inflation?
• Inflation and Price Gouging
• What if We Actually Taxed the Rich?
• Man 'eaten alive' by bed bugs in Atlanta jail - family (disturbing death image available here)
• Homeowners Associations (John Oliver explaining another abdication of government's role)
• Prisons for Profit: An Industry of Exploitation (yet another abdication, and with another good John Oliver video)

By far the best thinking material, though, is this 95-minute YouTube video on Chokepoint Capitalism. I already knew some of the bad stuff that was happening, but this discussion opened my eyes to a lot more. That video explains that we need to have alternatives ready to offer. The Real-World Economics Review is a good place to learn what actual economists think on this topic.

We can imagine better. We deserve better. Failure would be unbearable.

There's so much trouble in the USA recently that it's impossible to pick a single topic for Moody Monday.

• Minneapolis homeless people freezing in winter? Yes, of course, after all of the camp evictions. What did you expect from our cold winters? It's -20C/-5F outside (wind chill -29C/-20F) as I type this blog post.
  
  
• Police murdering citizens? Yes, more of that. I never watched the Tyre Nichols video, because I learned all I ever needed to know from George Floyd's murder here in Minneapolis. The key point (ignoring the sheer brutality of the roving gang mentality and the follow up lies) is that the officers knew they were behaving badly while they were doing it. "Police reform" went nowhere.
  
  
• Police corruption? Yes, more of that. A sheriff was caught destroying evidence of misconduct for at least a decade. To be fair, corruption is also a problem in the UK.
  
  
• Climate change? We learned that oil giant Exxon knew about the global disaster of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, even back in the 1970s.
  
  
• Political corruption? Ohio Republicans redefined gas as "green energy". I'm sure they'll get rich bringing the worst climate outcomes to all of us. (Liberal efforts to paint a "good" future are growing ever more convoluted as realism sets in.) Arizona Republicans exempt themselves from the state's open-records laws. You know what that means.
  
  
• USA civil war? How about a tactical SUV for the Mad Max murderscape that is the USA?
  
  
• More mass shootings? This is the USA, of course we have more mass shootings.
  
  
• A billionaire corrupting Twitter? Yes, more of that, with Musk targeting an activist who helped identify US Capitol rioters. That activist is now on Mastodon.
  
  
• Capitalism on display? Tech layoffs are numerous and swift, making my own job hunt even harder. COVID vaccines are set to skyrocket in price. Because that's what capitalism dictates. (There's no other choice, or so we're frequently told.)
  
  
• SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19? In the USA, workers are still calling in sick at record high rates, rural America saw death rates climb 90% recently in a spike of otherwise "low" avoidable tragedies, but USA denialism grows more dangerous. Infection changes the gut microbiome, which is bad for a lot of reasons. The virus spreads directly cell-to-cell, avoiding drugs and immune system. Infection is permanent, which is true even while PCR tests are negative, a possibility that I've warned about for 3 years already. Some people knew all along how dangerous this virus is, while some people just now learning that it damages the immune system, but the rich elite at Davos are protecting themselves with technology that should be everywhere for society's protection. Mainstream news is finally (FINALLY!) providing accurate warnings.
  
  

And that's mostly just the news of the week. Go home, 2023. You need a "time out". And I still need an income... or win a lottery. (I'd have to play first.)

I'm not in the best mood today. Let's blame it partially on the monkeypox vaccine 2nd dose and feeling "not my best" again, like last time. I'm checking out of civilization for the rest of today, I think. Sit under an electric blanket and read and eat and otherwise just be a bum.

• On my trip to Aldi's grocery today, the hot sauce section of the shelf was empty. *sigh* First time I've ever seen that, I think. But they had eggs this time.
• Someone famous has commented on the skyrocketing price of lettuce. Raw food is expensive now, and prepared food is outrageously expensive.
• Home Depot's co-founder is on my naughty list again after blaming socialism for making people not want to work. At wages that won't pay rent and barely buys food, while corporate profits soar, maybe has something to do with it? Bring on the socialism, please.
• The IRS audited poor taxpayers in 2022 while ignoring rich ones. *grrrrr*
• USA police set a new record in 2022 for killing our own citizens, since records began in 2013.
• Minneapolis police seized 31 guns after what started as a traffic stop. In 2022, they removed about 1,100 guns from city streets. That's some useful progress, I guess.
• My Jordan neighborhood ranks only 7th in areas of Minneapolis measured by violent crimes per capita. For once, I also have data that says other areas are worse than Minneapolis. Search this blog for "The worst contiguous", and see the chart that places a Minneapolis area (not even mine) as 3rd of the worst so far analyzed.

So... bad mood. It's bad here, but there are worse places to be. I want to see a comparison of wealth inequality now in 2023 with that of other periods of world history when the peasants killed their economic overlords in desperation and outrage. It was bad before, and I'm sure it's worse now.

I'm tired of human civilization. The status quo is awful. I want to start over with new rules.

I learned this year that 911 calls in the USA are erased from a smartphone's call history. It helps callers avoid additional domestic abuse. So instead, I checked social media for the last month. I called 911 several times to report nearby (within 2 blocks) gunfire. This total is a new record for such a short time frame. The time of day doesn't really matter.

• October 01 Saturday 6am
• September 27 Tuesday 10:30am
• September 21 Wednesday 9:40pm
• September 20 Tuesday 7:40pm
• September 07 Wednesday 11:30pm

And that list is nothing compared to all of the gunfire that I didn't call in. Some of it (particularly last night) even within my usual 2-block radius for deciding to report it. There were 4 separate incidents last night from around 8:00-9:30pm, all nearby. I drank some whiskey early and pretended to ignore it. I didn't hear the automated gunfire last night from that problem area I mentioned before, where I buy my groceries. Someone was shot.

It doesn't matter what day you look at the Minneapolis ShotSpotter map or what time frame to measure. I live in what is always the densest collection of markers. I came to the realization last night that most of the anxiety I feel about this problem is NOT so much about my personal safety. It's more the generalized displeasure that I know the system is terribly sick but I don't know how to create change, so I expect it will continue. I figure it's the same powerlessness that contributes to some of the violence itself, but I have the financial resources to not feel the same desperation.

Yet. I still need to find a job. I've noticed grocery shelves not fully stocked. I particularly noticed this week that pet store shelves are missing lots of food bag inventory, and what was there seemed unusually expensive. I'm well stocked in durable calories for myself, but I obviously need to increase the duration that I can feed my cat without restocking. Since... you know... I expect the covid brain problem to increase, the "sudden death" era of blood clots and opportunistic infections to increase, the resulting supply chain problems to increase thanks to disappearing workforce, and the primary supply problems to increase thanks to climate change.

But government here and elsewhere seems intent to teach us "You do you", regardless of the consequences. Government has given up actually helping, choosing instead just to advertise itself as helping even while doing harm. So rules don't matter to a lot of people here now. Most people (especially the "prepper" crowd) in the USA expect cities to devolve into Max Max anarchy. I expect that phase will be brief here in my area, if at all. There's simply too much of a community ethic here in Minneapolis and Minnesota. What I expect instead is guillotines. The corrupt cracks in the foundation are showing.

Today's "Moody Monday" post puts me at risk of a US$10,000 fine in Texas, maybe even prison.  I think incarceration applies only to abortion providers, not information providers, but I'm not certain.  Either way, it's a good reason to never set foot there.  (Reminder: Get out.)  Indeed, Facebook and Instagram are already censoring abortion information online.  Google says it will delete location history for abortion centers, but that may still not help people who search the topic.  You could search on computers at your local library, but safety depends on if your library follows recommended practice.  Eventually a VPN may be necessary to protect yourself and to access region-restricted websites.


People are sharing their experiences in abortion care, both receiving and providing it.  They offer a lot to consider.  From the woman with a detached placenta to the doctors delaying life-saving care like this woman who miscarried but couldn't get medical help, also the 10-year-old rape victim whose young body is required by her current Ohio state law to carry to term the fetus of that criminal, and even the coroner stories of botched abortions before legalization in Canada.

• Abortion.cafe is a website with useful links for anyone seeking an abortion.
• Tech Workers Coalition also has a good list of resources.
• TheNib.com provides an educational comic that explains (with citations at the end) the abortion pills misoprostol and mifepristone.
• If/When/How includes a legal helpline.
• SkepChick has some thoughts for how supportive third parties can help.
• U.S. Department Of Defense will still continue abortion care at their bases, even in states that prohibit it.
• As for the mood here in Minnesota, we seem to be setting up as a safe harbor, both allowing abortions and preventing cooperation in prosecution from regressive territories.  We're expecting an influx of visitors from other states, and one North Dakota clinic is already seeking funds to move across the state border to join us.  But avoid the anti-abortion "pregnancy crisis" centers.
• If pills aren't for you, then there is the possibility of IUDs or getting snipped to prevent pregnancy.

I advocate letting people control their own bodies as they wish, however complex those decisions are for them.  One justification sometimes presented is the idea (more complicated than just a single variable) that allowing abortions nationwide with the Roe v. Wade court decision led to fewer "unwanted children" in high poverty populations, leading to a reduction in crime many years later.  Personally, I don't really need that justification for legalization.  I'm firmly in the camp that believes, as the meme says about baby Molly, that an embryo is simply not a person.  Similarly, I can't believe a fetus is a person until it's at least developed enough biologically to no longer remain a parasite, then we can start discussing the difficult definitions.  Plenty of mainstream religious traditions share this idea and allow abortion.  Even without abortion, some 40% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage naturally, which certainly doesn't make these women slaughterers for failing to deliver, as the new laws insist.  The idea is insanity and can actually prevent babies from being born to families who need IVF to conceive.  It's also already endangering non-abortion medical care by its sheer stupidity.

Let's end this post, however, by noting the central hypocrisy (both Betty Bowers and George Carlin elaborate well on this topic) that got us here.

Welcome to Amurrika.  The line forms here for your pelvic exam.