December 22

 Good morning. Only three more days til Christmas. The weather forecast predicts above "normal" temperatures which should get rid of the snow we have now. We are supposed to have a couple of days of rain but nothing more. I put that word in quotes because the weather over the last couple of decades has been anything but normal. We aren't planning anything special.

I finished another embroidery piece--the second of a pair of pillow cases. I completed the other a month or so ago. That will probably be the last completion for the year. Next year will be devoted to finishing some projects that are a bit too far along to finish quickly. The whole purpose of doing hand work is to slow down. I wouldn't have said that a couple of decades ago when I was still in the rat race they call life in this country--doing everything as fast as possible and getting on with the next thing or trying to juggle four and five things at the same time.

Well, the clowns in congress finally got a continuing resolution to keep the government in operation for another quarter. The new shitshow same as the old shitshow. And the same as all the other quarterly or semiannual shitshows for I forget how long. It is getting a bit boring and very irritating. It isn't even a full budget. They (past and present members of the House especially) haven't been able to get an agreement on a real budget for the last four administrations--if not longer. This time we had the added spectacle of Elon Musk's self-serving interference which had a lot of commentators (inside and outside government) wondering who is the real President-in-waiting. Trump came in with his own two-cents only after Musk created his twitter storm and raised his ruckus.

Bill Astore has an acerbic post this morning on the mess in the Middle East. He takes exception to the New York Times editorial opining on finding a "nuanced" position on the "Hamas-Israel" war because he can't really see such a position. Frankly, I can't either. The response to the October 8th Hamas attack on Israel has been to destroy the Palestinians under the guise of destroying Hamas. In the back of my mind was something I had read about the aims of the ultra-conservative Jewish groups aims to create a Greater Israel that approximates the territories of the Jewish kingdom under Solomon and other kings. It totally incorporates the West Bank, Gaza, parts of Lebanon, Jordon, and Syria. As Astore points out the actions Israel has undertaken amounts to a one state "solution" which leaves the Palestinians without any state at all.

Another aspect of the shitshow in Washington is that to keep up our government's support for Israel they keep increasing the aid to Israel and cut things like support for research and treatment of childhood cancer. Death in one hand and death in the other and death all around.