Sunny today with the temps a bit higher and projected to go higher by the end of next week. Not much going on except for the usual round of needlework and reading. And watching the demolition of the U.S. as we have known it. My dad, long dead now, often said when he heard any "liberal" criticism of the country said "Our country; love it or leave it. The wrecking crew in D.C. say "hell no--whether you love it or not we're kicking it down. Don't like it? Tough shit!" According to some of the news coverage a number of Republican House members are getting push back and loud criticism at "town hall" meetings in their districts.

Stay thought: only two people, a commentator and the writer he quoted, have noticed that the focus now is on the immediate effects of the administration's actions (job losses, immediate cancelation of contracts, etc.) but the real damage is in the secondary, tertiary and quaternary effects (and even further down line). Those will last decades. Because of the medical research that is never undertaken and so never produces needed treatments. The young and highly trained people who have had their careers cut off before they began and decide to go to other countries. Once upon a time we benefited from a similar "brain drain" which brought highly trained and motivated people from abroad to our shores. Now the pump is going to go the other way.

Heather Cox Richardson published a good piece today which I think is right on point. As the lyrics of BIG YELLOW TAXI says it 

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

I have often said, while listening to people criticizing Social Security or labor unions or some other government function, they either have forgotten what it was like before those functions or organizations came into being or never knew what it was like to begin with. And our education system has failed us miserably by not teaching our history as it was not as some fantasize it was.

Stray thought: though people seem to think that Trump's pivot toward Russia and against Ukraine is sudden there were signs during his first term that he was tilting that way. The speed was definitely surprising but, perhaps shouldn't have been. He has had several years to prepare. Someone said that a failed coup is simply a dress rehearsal for a successful later. Trump's first term and the miserable mess of the riot at the capitol was preparation on both the foreign affairs and the domestic actions. And yet so many thought he didn't really mean what he said or that someone would stop him. Well, he did mean it and no one has been able to stop him.