“Klara, are you going to school today?”

“No! I staying home with mamma.”

“OK then.”

Hey, remember the recent post on union tactics? Well, it seems to have worked. The Chancellor is finally agreeing to negotiate, and we are expecting our raises before Christmas.

A former Fox News reporter tells the harrowing and detailed story of how once, many years ago, nothing whatsoever happened between her and Trump and she didn’t mind in the least. 

Cue the outrage. 

I taught Klara several magical phrases that have made my life much easier:

• “It’s not ours”
• “It’s their turn”
• “It’s attached”
• “Mama’s coffee is very hot”

“It’s not ours” is extremely helpful because whenever she grabs something at a store, all I have to do is say “it’s not ours” and she puts it back. Often, she doesn’t even grab things and just points to them and asks, “Ours?” 

“It’s attached” is also great because she’s extremely interested in how things work and always tries to take everything apart. So I had to explain why some things can’t be taken apart. Before I did that, she wanted me to unscrew every bolt and nail in every piece of equipment at the playground.

Right now I’m teaching her the phrase “I can’t stop when I’m driving unless I arrive at a specially designated area.” 

There is an enormous, tiresome and tedious dishonesty in talking about “handouts to corporations” in an ahistorical way and extracting them out of the context of liquid capital.

Cutting corporate tax rates is an attempt to attract and retain liquid capital for a nation-state. Before capital became fully liquid, the nation-state had other ways of making itself attractive to it. After it liquefied, nobody has come up with any alternative than reducing tax rates. Seeing the reduction in corporate tax rates as an evil conspiracy of the rich and the dishonest politicians is childish. It makes for nice slogans and cute memes but it’s divorced from reality. And you can’t change the reality if you refuse to see it. 

An enormous change in the capacity of capital to transcend national borders and make the nation-state redundant occurred starting in the 1970s. It’s an undeniable fact of objective reality that has to be dealt with. I’d love to hear what the progressive forced want to do about it. I’d love to work on a solution together. I’m sure it exists but we need to start looking for it already. 

On top of everything else, I got rejected for my grant. But it’s actually a good thing because, to be honest, I haven’t read a single thing pertaining to the project since I applied. Which tells us I’m not very interested in it. 

I liked it when I was applying but then I found my new favorite author, and now I’m obsessed. It’s like when I met N. After the first date, I knew it was him or nobody. And it’s been like that ever since. 

Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated after exposing the Panama papers. This kind of stuff has been going on since 1989 but now that it’s possible to squeeze the assassination in the same sentence with “Trump”, maybe somebody is going to notice. 

Is it against the rules to heat up mango lassi? I asked for it to be warmed up at the buffet but the workers reacted like I would if somebody asked me to serve chilled borscht. They conducted a consult and arrived at the conclusion that it can’t be done. Does warming it spoil it in some way? 

Here in Illinois, the entire campaign against Rauner consists of pointing out that somebody who contributed his campaign also contributed to Roy Moore’s. Once again, it’s an effort to substitute policy with outrage. Why not speak instead of the damage Rauner did to the state and the alternative ways our candidates will handle things? 
Literally, all I’m seeing right now in terms of efforts to unseat Rauner is cheap Facebook outrage about completely inane things. The fellow devastated the state’s economy but that message isn’t getting out. Instead, we hear how he once stood next to somebody who stood next to somebody who was the subject of an outraged tweet, and can you believe it, that evildoer. It’s so ridiculous.

Klara’s first Spanish word is “terremoto” (earthquake.) She pronounces it perfectly. 

We are reading this bizarre book about a family that goes on a picnic and never manages to eat anything or have fun because the only adult there is completely useless. The family has a dog called Terremoto. Klara decided that it doesn’t make sense for a dog to be called that and persuaded me that Terremoto is one of the girls in the story. Why she chose this particular girl and why she decided Terremoto can’t be a boy is a mystery. I’d so love for her to be able to explain but she isn’t even 22 months old yet. 

I find it absolutely fascinating how she figures out these things.