Treading water

The chances of Progressive states allowing conservative, rural areas to form new states is about zero. The chance of them being allowed to detach themselves and join adjacent states is only slightly higher.

The reason is that a new state creates two more Senators. It seems probable that the two Senators from the state that is dominated by Progressives are already "blue". The two Senators from the splinter state would be "red" and that would tip the balance of the U.S. Senate.

The reason that is important is that the Federal Judiciary has been one of the pivot points, i.e. high leverage institutions, in the lefts' march toward full-on Communism. Twenty years of conservative dominance in the Senate would be required to tip it back toward a strictly Constitutional basis. In turn, that would gut the wall at the Progressive's back that prevents their creeping encroachment on Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms from unraveling. 

General notes

I got very little done yesterday. It was a treading-water kind of day.

I bought a bag of rolled oats. A fifty pound bag costs $34 dollars from HERE. They write the date the bag was put on the shelf. Mine was 7/15. They were manufactured by La Crosse Milling Company of Cochrane, Wisconsin which I erroneously reported was in Indiana.

I pulled out my vacuum sealer. The tubing was kaput and the oil reservoir on the vacuum pump was right at the "needs oil" mark. Sigh! I sent an order off to Amazon for replacement pieces-parts and a quart of vacuum oil. I am 90% sure Automatic Transmission Fluid would have worked but I am not in that big of a hurry. Incidentally, the problem with using regular motor oil like 0W-20 is that motor oil will often cause rubber seals to swell while ATF will not. A light-weight motor oil is fine for electric motors that don't run under water but are not the best choice for motors that are "sealed" or share a housing with a device that might rely on rubber seals.

I got another 30 yards of fence cleared of vines and vegetation.

I went for a 40 minute walk with Mrs ERJ.

I reloaded five rounds of the .223 with 69 grain Tipped Sierra Gameking bullets to shoot over a chronograph. I rarely mention the number of rounds I reload, primarily because everybody has a passionately held opinion regarding the optimum amount of ammo to have and that number ranges from 0 to infinity.

There is a very high chance that most of Eaton County will enter November without having had a "killing frost". There have been some superficial frosts but no prolonged, below 32F air temperature frosts, yet. 

WNBA 

The Women's National Basketball Association continues to impress with their "Look at me" behaviors. They are making a show of leaving the court and are not there during the National Anthem, presumably to demonstrate their political purity and to protest how they have been discriminated against.

The WNBA is financially subsidized by the NBA. That means that the NBA is subsidizing their behaviors. By association, it makes the brands that advertise heavily during NBA events (a major source of revenue) complicit. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Michelob, Google, T-Mobile, Duracell, Red Lobster, BlueChew might want to lean on the NBA to sever their support of the WNBA. One rotten piece of meat or fish in the grocery section is enough to taint the perception of quality in a very large store. The behaviors of the spoiled children in the WNBA are tainting basketball.

Bonus meme