Going in and out of my post I am finding that certain things posted here have disappeared. Do I consider myself punished for posting this? The idea is ridiculous.

To summarize, the impact of the grandfather's death on the granddaughter was such that she overdosed and died. And in a separate incident, Clay, who we know little about, except that his family didn't like him, also died. And apparently the location of his body is also a mystery. BTW, if there's no body, how do you know he's dead? But I get it, human suffering abounds. (I generally take it as evidence that there is no god.) And that's what inspires me the say the following:

Yesterday, the supine Republican majority in the US House of Representatives (the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman is calling them "sadistic zombies" ) passed a bill that will, if approved by the Senate and signed into law by Hair Gropenfuhrer, cause untold human suffering. Trump's bill threatens to strip healthcare from millions of poor Americans, give another big tax break to the rich, add trillions of dollars to the national debt, and possibly cause a global financial meltdown.

The economic peril we face is very real, and we know who has gotten the warning lights flashing. The uncertainty and chaos Trump has caused in the markets with his on-again, off-again tariffs is causing a slowdown in economic growth. Meanwhile, the national debt, which is currently 36 trillion dollars, will hit 40 trillion if the Senate were to sign on to Trump's greed and gross negligence.

The interest on our current debt is over trillion dollars annually, which is is more than we spend on defense ($880 billion) our biggest single discretionary expenditure. The tax break for the rich Trump is proposing would add another $4 trillion to the national debt, and this risky behavior is making investors nervous. Because of the chaos and uncertainty caused by Trump's recent actions, the government is now being forced to offer higher rates of return on T-bills (United States Treasury Bonds) in order to continue borrowing money.

If interest payments outstrip growth of the economy, economists say, then the debt spirals upward as investors demand even higher interest payments to offset their increased risk. It's a vicious cycle, and it spells disaster. Even the perception of a shaky financial structure can make lenders and creditors nervous, demanding more interest for loaning us money.

If the looming meltdown occurs, three things could happen, none of them good. One, we tighten our belts and go through an extended period of severe austerity. Two, we print money, spurring inflation, devaluing the dollar, and wiping out people's savings. Or three, we default on our debt, tell holders of US Treasury Bonds to pound sand. Any one of these options is very bad, and more than one could occur simultaneously. Stagflation, stalled job growth coupled with high inflation, is also a possibility. Or we could kick off a global depression, throwing millions of people into abject poverty. It would make the 2008 financial crisis look like a walk in the park. That's what the economists are forecasting, if this "big, beautiful bill," as His Felonious Malignancy affectionately refers to it, ever becomes law.

But what the hell, the richest man on Earth has already snatched food aid out of the mouths of millions of starving children. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

"One or a dozen deaths? it's a tragedy. A million deaths? That's a statistic."

I'm quoting an old college chum, one of the guys with whom I climbed a bunch of mountains back in the late 70s and early 80s.

On one of our climbing trips, we were on our way to Mount Saint Helens (this is before the volcano blew its top), when we came as close to death as you can come and yet walk away unscathed.

We were in my little ½-ton pickup. Craig, the guy I quoted, was driving. Brian, another climbing buddy, was in the passenger seat. I was in the middle, with my feet on the hump. We were all excited to be on the road, heading to another adventure. We almost didn't make it to the trailhead.

The two-lane road we were on cut a slot through through the forests of south/central Washington. The trees that zipped by on either side of us formed an impenetrable palisade; no visibility beyond a few yards into the thicket of evergreens.

There are good reasons why you're supposed to stop at stop signs. Especially ones at blind intersections, where you can't see around the corner, can't see what's coming. Stopping at the appointed place makes it much less likely that you do what we did. It was a Y intersection, and there was one stop sign. We were supposed to stop. But we didn't. We were happily bouncing along on a country road, chatting, telling jokes, and singing songs. And then in a flash we were on a different road, and there was a big, 4-wheel-drive pickup truck barreling towards us in our lane. The driver of that pickup couldn't swerve back into his lane, because he was in the process of passing an even bigger truck, one hauling freshly-cut, 50-foot logs to a mill somewhere behind us.

If we had blown past that stop sign a second or two later, we would have plowed into either the logging truck or the pickup truck, or both. As it was, there was just enough time for the drivers of those two vehicles to react. The logging truck edged a little to his right; the pickup edged a little to his left, and we three happy idiots shot between them, like Moses parting the sea.

Whoever suggested that a camel can't pass through the eye of a needle didn't see us that day.

Some weeks before, another group of climbers had invited me to join them on a bid to scale the same mountain. But I didn't like the look of the weather forecast, so I begged off. I warned my friends about the weather, but they liked their chances, and the group went up. Climbing up the southeast side, they couldn't see what was coming at them from the northwest. They were almost to the top when they were suddenly hit with gale-force winds and whiteout conditions. Even though all were equipped with crampons and ice axes, several climbers were blown over in their tracks. One guy was not able to self arrest. He slid over 1500 feet down a steep ice field, hitting some rocks on the way down. Luckily, his encounter with the rocks did not kill him. But it did put him in a wheelchair for months, and left him with lifelong injuries.

In mountaineering, one ignores a weather forecast at their own peril. The same is true for driving and stop signs. Lady luck might see you through unscathed, but then again, maybe not. (In 2023, highway fatalities in the USA numbered almost 41,000.)

However, in economics, luck is less of a factor. There are no days when, just by chance, two plus two does not equal four.

How sad! Hope all is well.