The world is a mess right now.  More than usual, I mean.  China appears to have demographic and economic imbalances that would seem to lead to a catastrophic correction at some point.  Russia has social and economic problems that just can’t be sustainable.  America is doing it’s very best to destroy itself and its allies as rapidly and spectacularly as possible.  And then there’s the EU – a random collection of 27 nations united in one economy which is based on, really, nothing whatsoever.

Germany is the gorilla in the EU room, with a population that dwarfs the other 26 countries, and an economy that actually produces things.  Try to imagine the EU without Germany.  Why would earn the money to pay for everything?  Greece?  Italy?  Spain?  Portugal?  Estonia?  Romania?  Many countries in the EU are essentially insolvent, and are completely dependent on the support of the EU, meaning the support of Germany, to continue to pay the bills.  Which means those countries, and the rest of us, might take an interest in the upcoming election in Germany.

Angela Merkel’s 16-year reign of mush is coming to an end.  After this week’s election, it appears very likely that Germany will be ruled by a coalition of the Socialist Party, the Left Party (a direct descendant of the Marxist Leninist ruling party of the former East Germany), and the Greens.  According to Andreas Hellmann of National Review,

As I asked back in June in The Storyline that must not Surface – Multi-Media Edition:

…when does the footage from behind the scenes become the story?

Pop died in 1976, but he was on the 2013 super bowl. You may remember seeing him. Dodge Trucks made a commercial about him. They played a recording of the late Paul Harvey delivering a section of an old speech of his. It was called “So God Made A Farmer”. Mr. Harvey may not have had Pop in mind when he gave that speech but, make no mistake, he was talking about Pop.

Do you remember that old man near the beginning of the Dodge commercial wearing the cowboy hat?  Pop wore a hat just like that. The image of him in that hat is seared in my little six-year-old mind. I loved that hat and I loved the man who wore it.  Pop had been a real cowboy and ranch foreman in west Texas and New Mexico during his early adult years. There are pictures of him as a young man in a cowboy hat and riding chaps, wearing a pistol on his hip. No words are adequate to describe the effect of those pictures on the imagination of a little boy who came to realize that his grandfather had lived a life of adventure.

Pop used to tell me stories of how, on Saturday nights, all the cowboys would ride into town and the goal was to ride the most ornery “buckin’ horse” you could find. More than one mishap and much hilarity ensued. Pop was always ready with a laugh, often at his own expense, as he told stories about those days.

I’ve been trying to visit Chernobyl for about six years. In the summer of 2015, while working in Saudi Arabia I arranged a quick four-day visit to Kyiv. When looking for things to do I came across a Chernobyl tour. It sounded fascinating, and I booked a tour. Unfortunately, I messed up my dates and thought it was on the second day after my arrival, and it was on the first. Due to the paperwork and permits with the Ukrainian government, I missed my chance. Fast forward to spring 2020. I again booked a trip to Kyiv and this time a two-day tour. And, Covid shut down all travel two weeks before my trip.

Finally, with an airline credit expiring, and travel relatively easy, I rebooked for September. This time I made it.

I order to visit Chernobyl you have to book a tour, and they submit your passport and information to the government who arrange your pass into the Exclusion Zone, the 30 km radius area around Chernobyl that was evacuated after the 1986 disaster. A second inner 10 km zone includes the most contaminated area. My two-day visit started out in Kyiv where I met my tour guide Serghyj and the other four members of the tour, two Dutch, an Aussie, and an Austrian.

Who knew that the reason children should be forced to get the COVID vaccine is because of “bug-nut crazy right wingers, who are a bunch of idiots.”  That is what I was told when I replied to a Tweet about pending vaccine approval for 5-11 year olds.  After I fully agreed with said Tweet stating that parents should be allowed to choose whether their children get the COVID vaccine, I was called a dumbass that had to do mental gymnastics to come to my conclusion.  At first, I tried to politely point out that we shouldn’t force children, who are at significantly lower risk of getting COVID, much less a serious case of it, to get vaccinated to protect adults who choose not to. I was quickly told, yes they do, then insulted (see above).  Finally,  the “bug-nut crazy right winger” argument was made (no mental gymnastics there!) to justify the mandate. Yep, children should be forced to get COVID vaccines because crazy right wingers won’t.

For what it’s worth, the person I was arguing with cited an article supporting her claim that children are efficient spreaders, and I read both the article in Forbes and the paper the article reported on.  Unfortunately for my debate opponent (and even more unfortunate for me, because Twitter is not a forum conducive to a full analysis of the report) the report does not make her case.

A few years ago I was doing an annual physical on ‘Marie,’ a very pleasant 80-year-old woman who was born and raised in Montreal.  Her father had died of colon cancer in his early 60s, but she hadn’t had a colonoscopy for several years.  They had always been fine, and she was getting older, and she just hadn’t done one for a while.  I suggested we recheck, she said she was too old and not in the mood, so we compromised with a Cologuard (a home stool sample that is moderately good at picking up colon cancer).  It came back positive.

I immediately referred her to GI, who said they could see her in three weeks.  I said that wasn’t good enough, explained the situation, and they scoped her the following Monday.  They found colon cancer, I called a surgeon, and had the cancer removed (along with eight inches of her colon) later that week.  Total time from stool sample results to cancer surgery:  Eight days.  Pretty good, but still, one of the 12 lymph nodes they biopsied was positive for cancer.  Crap.  Metastatic cancer in an 80-year-old woman.  What can you do?

Well, in this day and age, you can do a lot.  So she undergoes four rounds of chemo.  Modern chemo has come a long way, and she didn’t feel sick at all.  Although she got tired of driving back and forth to the infusion center 20 minutes away.  It resulted in clean scans and apparent resolution of her cancer.  That was three years ago.  She turns 84 next month.  She feels great, and all subsequent testing has shown no evidence of recurrence.  All cancer patients are not so fortunate.  But sometimes modern medicine really can work miracles.  Yahoo!  Except.

I’m a lifelong insomniac. Over the years, I’ve tried most everything: coffee abstinence, naps, no naps, Dramamine, going to bed early, going to bed late, melatonin, sleep aids with an antihistamine, exercise, and the ingestion of cannabis. mainly through vaping, though I’ve tried gummy bears, and smoking as well.

Everything but sleeping pills.  I’m leery of them and many doctors, including my doc at the Veteran’s Hospital, are so down on them that they won’t prescribe them because of adverse side effects like confusion, dependence, and memory problems.

Unhappily, my insomnia has grown worse as I’ve aged.  These last few years, I’ve been getting, on my bad nights, only an hour or two of sleep.  On my good nights, I get four or so hours. That lack of sleep has started to interfere with my quality of life.

Powerline reports:  Terrible news out this morning of the death of Angelo Codevilla, at age 78, reportedly the victim of a drunk driver.

If you haven’t read his stuff, you should.  I learn something every time I read him.  This is a great loss, to all of us.  Rest in peace, my friend…

I posted what follows on my own blog site. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea as it relates primarily to the growing cultural and theological fault lines within American evangelicalism. I’m pretty sure the fracturing that is currently taking place there is not confined to evangelicalism per se, so maybe this will have some interest to a few outside the evangelical sphere.

Dr. Russell Moore gave a talk at a Plough Magazine event. The transcript is posted here. I take exception to Dr. Moore’s remarks. In part because he puts his thumb on the scales in support of progressivism. But, more importantly, he does so in a way that lacks forthrightness and transparency. I’ve seen his kind of movie before, and I find it both oily and uncompelling.