A Bob's Life: Monday Musings

Monday, August 31, 2026

Monday Musings - August 31, 2026

1. When today is over, the year will be two-thirds complete! Four months remain and only 17 Mondays. Today is both the last day and last Monday of August.

2. It was a quiet weekend given the rain and storms. We did not do a lot to write about. We did manage. a few around the house projects.

3. How about them O's! They swept the A's. The O's are 5-1 during their last 6 games and are 1 game out of the Wild Card. They are also 1 game below .500! There is actually hope that they might make and appearance in the post-season.

4. Lake Ontario has been known by that name for over 400 years. I don't think an Executive Order from a narcissistic president is going to change that. It is too bad our president is focused on such small things when there are world changing events happening that he should be addressing. Oh yea, and what about those Epstein files?

5. “So, let me get this straight,” national security reporter David Rothkopf wrote. “[T]he US illegally attacks a country, kidnaps its president, threatens its government with massive military force, gets them to hand over to US control a huge portion of their national assets, hails the billions it has already brought in and promises billions more[,] but we don’t know where the money’s going, how it is going to benefit the US, if it is going to benefit the US, who’s privately going to benefit, what side deals have been struck with the corrupt leaders of their country or ours, & we are supposed to celebrate this act of aggression and theft that violates international law and that could well turn out to be a massive mafia-style shakedown scheme to benefit the anti-democratic forces in Venezuela and the US, the president’s friends and supporters, possibly the president and his family?” (Letters from an American)

6. Today in History. On August 31, 1980, representatives of the communist government of Poland agree to the demands of striking shipyard workers in the city of Gdansk. Former electrician Lech Walesa led the striking workers, who went on to form Solidarity, the first independent labor union to develop in a Soviet bloc nation.

In July 1980, facing economic crisis, Poland’s government raised the price of food and other goods, while curbing the growth of wages. The price hikes made it difficult for many Poles to afford basic necessities, and a wave of strikes swept the country. Amid mounting tensions, a popular forklift operator named Anna Walentynowicz was fired from the Lenin Shipyard in the northern Polish city of Gdansk. In mid-August, some 17,000 of the shipyard’s workers began a sit-down strike to campaign for her reinstatement, as well as for a modest increase in wages. They were led by the former shipyard electrician Lech Walesa, who had himself been fired for union activism four years earlier.