Drought in Chile

The pic shows the Laguna de Aculeo this winter (south hemisphere). Normally, Chile has a regular climate and the rains arrive in time. Not this year. 

American blues

Postcard from the 1950s. Today, a  Californian remembers: 

"When I was a kid in California, a blue-collar worker could buy a BRAND NEW 4-BEDROOM HOUSE, 2-CAR GARAGE, 5 MILES FROM THE BEACH, for 4 times his annual salary. My California housing track was full of 4 or 5-child families, and the mom’s didn’t have to work." 

Julia Salazar's Fluid Identities

Julia is running for Brooklyn's State Senate candidate. She is an energetic agitator in extreme left circles, sometimes selling herself as a Sefaradi Jewess from Colombia, a Latina immigrant, sometimes Zionist and others anti-Israel. Jewish she is NOT. A journalist made an enquire who really was this 27 years old politician, and it appears that she was born in Miami to upper class Colombian father (Catholic, of course) and an Italo-American mother. She was engaged in many left wing movements under different names and identities. Lately she accuses the Israeli spokesman of touching her - "a very uncomfortable moment till I liberated myself". Politics is a most serious business, elected officials manage the public budget, direct the police department, decide about salaries and taxes, influence foreign policy, etc. How can anyone put his life in the hands of this lying self-promoter?

PS: She won the elections and represents Brooklyn. OK, lying may be too strong, rather that she is a bit confused. Thoughts: American Jews succeeded in making so vague and vaporous the Jewish identity, that anyone laughing at a Jewish joke may believe he/she is Jewish. She is "socialist" but does that word have for her a concrete meaning? Apart from being against Trump. 

Peru returns to natural sanitation

The Third World and not only it continues to dream of returning to a pristine Edenic Nature, and escape from their impotence to catch up with modernity. Having rejected hard engineering, the try to build their drainage system by investing in soft "natural infrastructure"– natural areas such as forests or grasslands that can purify water, absorb floodwaters, and like a sponge soak up excess precipitation in the rainy season and release it months later during dry months. Peru is seriously rejecting "engineered infrastructure", and investing millions in premodern green technologies. Wasted money and wasted hopes.  

Another Miracle: Antisemitism is a Civil Rights Issue !

The Senate confirmed Kenneth L. Marcus as assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education. The vote was 50-46, with not one Democrat supporting him !  I have never seen such clear cut division in American politics, and the issue is... Jews.  Now we can clearly see that there are sharp ideological differences between the parties. And that the Democrats are the party of the  African Americans and the alienated intelligentsia. Marcus disagrees with the procedures and the substance of the Democratic Party's advanced program of transformation of American education.  First thing first, and he already has declared that Jews are an ethnic group - not less than American Africans - and they are protected by the Civil Rights legislation. I love President Trump. 

Connecticut GOP Goes Gay With Six Sodomite Republicans Running For Political Office

 Source. 

The title is from the source, a Christian site. In fact, Connecticut Republicans are smartly pre-empting the Democratic Party's arguments. Aristophanes in his comedies notes in passing the fact that the speakers in the Ecclesia (Assembly) are mostly homosexuals. He makes no issue nor fun of it. He does make fun of his rivals, putting then on scene dressed as women. I have nothing against homosexuals as politicians or any other honorable trade, just keep them apart from children. 

Casting our bread on the water

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and 50 other diplomats walked to New York's East River Saturday evening to cast away their sins in a traditional Rosh Hashana ceremony, known as tashlich, led by Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN Danny Danon.

Guterres wished a "year of peace and prosperity" to the Jewish people and the State of Israel and expressed hope that the "UN will be able to increase the trust it enjoys in the upcoming year."