The View from the Hermitage, Days 155 and 156

The problem with waiting until mid-to-late afternoon to write something is that mid-to-late afternoon all too soon becomes time to make dinner, and then all bets are off. We want to replace our heat pump (it's 16 years old and feeling its age), and the reps from one company came at 3:00 yesterday. When they found out that the husband is a physicist, each exchange of information took several times as long thanks to the extra physics bantering. By the time they left, it was time to start dinner, and I made the executive decision to punt on yesterday and double up today.

Yesterday afternoon was excitement all around. We had the heat pump guys here, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill killed in-person classes after four outbreaks after the first week of classes. I can;'t say that I blame them. Fall sports will go on, however, as long as the Atlantic Coast Conference hasn't stopped them. This of course makes me wonder whether the local university will cancel its planned in-person classes and go totally virtual, and whether they would do it now or next week, given the August 28 deadline they set for making any changes to their current plan. Why they think the students here will be any different from those elsewhere puzzles me. Older son says that it's an image thing. They can't look as if they don't trust the students; after all, the students here have a sense of honor they will uphold. Yeah, right.

HWSNBN evidently said yesterday that unless the election is rigged, he will win a second term come November. He will need four more years to work on the changes he wants and, quite probably, the four years after that. Forget that the US Constitution limits presidents to two terms. HWSNBN says that his first term doesn't count because he was under investigation virtually the whole four years. He obviously thinks he's got eight more years of life in his obese, fast-food-fueled body, which seems unlikely to me, or is that wishful thinking. The baby autocrat-in-waiting wants to grow up to be a full-blown dictator. 

And HWSNBN announced that he will give his acceptance speech next week from the White House. He claims he's gotten assurances that it will not be viewed as a violation of the Hatch Act that prohibits all employees of the executive branch save the president and vice president from engaging in political activity. In other words, the staff members who shoot the video or otherwise assist him will not be held liable. I do not know what authority actually said it would be okay. And they've put in a permit to follow his live speech with fireworks over the Washington Monument. Gag me with a spoon.

The Democratic National Convention kicked off last night in its virtual form. The evening session lasted two hours rather than the four it used to. Some of the addresses were prerecorded, something HWSNBN says will not be the case with the Republican National Convention next week. I did not stay up to see any of the coverage. It did not start until 10:00, and I normally head to bed at 9:00. Jill Biden is speaking tonight. Tempting though it may be, her address likely will not be until the second hour or and of the night, and I'm not staying up until midnight. I can watch it online tomorrow if I decide I really need to see it. The same thinking holds for Biden's acceptance speech on Thursday. I can watch it on Friday.

Looking toward November, most of the polls I've seen still have Biden ahead of HWSNBN, though a couple say that lead is lessening. And I hate to say it, but if anyone could find a way to basically blow a big lead, it would he Joe Biden. He's not clueless, but he can act like it at times. And of course, if Biden wins, even decisively, I expect that HWSNBN will contest the results. I read one article that said not to think of the results in terms of election night, but to do so in terms of election week. I just hope that there is no reason a decision can go before the Supreme Court, because that would likely not end well. After all, Kamala Harris made Brett Kavanaugh cry, and if he's forgotten that, HWSNBN will remind him of it.