December 28

Rainy, very rainy, this morning and warm for the season--or what used to be the season. But any puddles left tomorrow morning will be ice. The high today should hit the lower 50s and fall to the teens overnight. The next week is supposed to be in the 20s for the most part. We haven't any errands scheduled so, barring the unforeseen, we won't be going out in it. I do have to go out and get the car running to make sure the batteries are still alive. If we didn't have doctors' appointment we could easily do without a car.

Bill Astore has linked to a spoof video of an Italian woman claiming a British man's house in Bath where Romans had a commanding presence about 2000 years ago. Since she is Italian, a descendent of ancient Romans, she figures she can evict the guy and claim the property. As Astore notes it is, and probably was intended to be, a good analogy for the Jewish presence in what used to be Palestine. About the time the Romans occupied Bath they were expelling Jews from Judea.

This is one reason why I don't expect 2026 to be better and fear it might be worse than 2025.

Found this by way of LAST WEEK IN COLLAPSE and even though it specifically deals with Canada and how dis/misinformation affected how Canadians responded to government information about drought and wildfires many of the observations apply on this side of the border as well. How people respond to information depends on several factors but especially how people in their social circle receive the information, how it accords with their own perceptions, and how reliable the "experts" are viewed. But I had another thought as I read this: neither the experts nor a government can really force people to respond in any given way. Some people die in every hurricane because they don't believe it will hit, or that it will be as severe as predicted, or believe that because they survived previous storms they will survive the next one. The economists and the government can say what they like about how good the economy but if people don't see it in their lives the experts and government lackeys can piss into the wind.

The GUARDIAN posted this article (also found via LAST WEEK IN COLLAPSE) concerning the Trump administration defunding of a long term research program studying soil fungi. The article details the long term possible benefits from the research it doesn't say anything about why the program has been defunded. I can make a guess. The fossil fuel industry produces the fertilizers applied in very large quantities to crops AND those fertilizers have to be applied every year. That creates a cycle of profits they want to keep. Also, agribusiness runs on large scale and it is far easier to apply a chemical than to learn how to farm without the chemicals. Individual and independent farmers also have been lured away from sustainable techniques because applying the chemicals seemed easier and produced, they thought, more reliable results. What people don't value they see no reason to study or understand.

And what makes anyone think "reality" will in any way affect what Trump does or wants. CNBC posted this article on Trump's proposal to build new battleships and declares that it will run into a major problem: reality.

December 27

 Cloudy and cool this morning. The weather people say we should have rain later. Right now we are watching Premier League soccer (or football  if you are from or are on that side of the Atlantic). We have stayed away from the so-called news pretty much. We did see that the FBI has pulled another god-awful humongous number of "Epstein documents" from somewhere or other. So the Bureau has another reason to continue dragging their heels on the release. Nobody is very happy--not Democrats, not the administration, not MAGA, not the Epstein victims.

I will be glad to see the end of this year but, thinking about it, I have been glad to see the end of each year since COVID hit. Perhaps even before. I don't really expect 2026 to be better and just hope it won't be worse. If Mom and I manage to get through the year without serious medical problems I think it would be a winning year. Mom's fall, surgery and extended hospitalization made it an exhausting time for both of us. Things seem to be settling down now.

First item on my reading list today was this by Charles Hugh Smith. It reflects some of what I have been thinking for sometime. The institutions (government at all levels, corporations, and others) can no longer be relied upon to serve ordinary citizens' needs and the only help people will get will be their own resourcefulness and their communities.

Everyone by now has seen some of the ridiculous redactions in the Epstein documents the FBI has released. The only reason to release a hundred page document completely blacked out is to give those demanding the release and the politicians who passed the law by large enough margins to force Trump to sign it a BIG MIDDLE FINGER. But that may be circling around to bite them in their collective ass as people have found ways to un-redact some of the docs and are posting the results as Rachel Biticofer tells us here. Mainstream media has picked up on the story but are cautioning readers that the reversed redactions may be manipulated or faked.

CROOKS&LIARS asks a good question in the subtitle of this piece: "Is there anything left they haven't F*&*&ed up." It looks like nursing homes are in the crosshairs as the administration rescinds the rule the Biden administration put out that requires a REGISTERED NURSE at nursing homes 24/7 because of course--Biden. The article details many ways the Trump action will hurt the resident and the already overworked employees of nursing homes. 

December 24

 Good morning and Happy Christmas Eve. I have decided to make this a lazy day--as little housework as possible and no news. We found that one of the channels we can access has a Harry Potter marathon so that is what is on the noise box. I managed to get a couple of hexagons crocheted and some research on my family tree. I have untangled a couple of questions I had and found several more. Pretty soon I will have to fix supper which will amount to putting a couple of things in the microwave. I will leave the real cooking for tomorrow.

Stray thought: it is interesting that Trump wants new battle ships in a new class named after himself. Problems abound. First, he promises that these will be the largest war ships on the seas and most expensive at several billion dollars each. But the plans unveiled show they wouldn't even be as big as. the WWII battleships. Second, the battleships were made obsolete by the introduction of the aircraft carrier during WWII. What a humongous waste of money to simply stroke a little man with a monstrous ego. CROOKS&LIARS has a bit on the proposal.

I was amused that the new chief editor at CBS, Bari Weiss, scrapped the 60 MINUTES story about the treatment of prisoners Trump's government sent to CECOT prison in El Salvador claiming that needed some tweaking because "critical voices" were absent. Those voices were administration appointees who didn't respond for requests for comment. What I found amusing is that the Canadian affiliate linked to CBS ran the piece as scheduled and it is now all over the internet. She tried to censor 60 MINUTES and failed. There is a lot I might not like about the internet but this isn't something I will complain about. I detest censorship on every level.

David Kaiser has a good appraisal of the past year and Trump generally. I have often thought Trump was more interested in PLAYING a President than BEING a president. He isn't a successful in that role than pretending to be a successful businessman.

December 22

 Good morning on a cloudy day with three days to Christmas. Since I started this the sun has decided to come out a may be burning off the clouds. 

We don't have any special plans. Once upon a time only about 15 years ago we would have spend Christmas Eve with either my sister or brother and their families and Christmas Day with which ever we didn't visit the day before. But Sister found the preps too exhausting to continue the big celebration. And non of her kids wanted to take over. Also Brother's celebration was overseen by his wife. Sister-in-law died a few years ago. Everybody on that side of the family has scattered to other places (except for his daughter who died a couple of years ago).

For Mom and me holidays have lost much of their meaning though they are still on the calendar and some people get holidays on them. When I was a child Easter, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas were eagerly awaited. And garnered a good bit of news stories in the run up. But now Thanksgiving has been almost subsumed by Christmas the season of which now seems to start on Labor Day. We stopped giving out candy several years ago because children stopped trick-or-treating here and we didn't need to keep the chocolate (which is what we gave out because we would treat ourselves with the leftover candy) on hand. I think civic and commercial groups have organized safer options.

Holidays seem to have lost their attraction and I don't think it is entirely that we have become grumpy old ladies. We have but other factors have come in: commercialization (we hate being sold to), changes in family circumstances, and the difficulty of traveling to gatherings. We don't have the room to host ourselves.

On to reading:

Unfortunately, this article on the REAL purposes of the ICE raids to closely follows my dark and suspicious mind. I have thought that Trump is setting up an internal army which will do what he wants even if the real military balks. We keep getting closer to a police state.

Just saw an interesting headline that isn't really surprising: "1 in 10 Americans want a larger defense budget; 8 in 10 Senators passed one." It isn't surprising because I can't remember a defense appropriation that hasn't added substantial amounts to the funds granted. Also, remember who is funding political campaigns.  Politicians like to tout how many "small dollar donors" they have. It is a nice track on how their campaigns might do at the polls. However the real money is in the corporate and wealthy donors who give to the PACs and whose giving is unlimited thanks to the Supreme Court.

Stray thought: I wonder how many of our "warriors" who are getting the "bonus" payments (of $1776 to celebrate the country's birthday) sporting Trump's signature will be grateful if it reduces their housing stipend since that is where Trump grabbed the money from--not from the tariffs as he claimed.

Stray thought: do you all remember the various "stolen glory" scandals of the past two and a half decades? Various politicians were challenged for embellishing their military records or even for claiming military service when they had not served. Some of the charges were true but others were even not proven or not true at all. We have another case of stolen glory on an incredibly grander scale: Trump's slapping his name on every surface he can like the Kennedy Center. And his desecration of the White House to put up the Trump Ballroom. I could go on buy don't have to. I wonder why he doesn't pull a page out of Kim Jong Un's playbook and order every American to adopt Trump as their surname. Kim simply ordered all women whose given name was the same as his daughter's to change them.

Robert Reich has a great piece this morning on aging. It had us laughing.

December 19

 Good morning. Well actually "good early afternoon."  Looking outside it is hard to believer we are almost at Christmas. Very little snow is left of what fell several days ago. It just doesn't feel like the end of December or nearly so. Talking to my brother a couple of days ago I told him that I brought out my snow boots but had only used the once when I shoveled a path from the patio door to the gate and around the trash tote so I could get it out to the street for pickup. That was the first time in three years. I also used the sidewalk deicer. I haven't had to restock that item for the last two years. If things continue I won't use all of it for another year.

It has been a morning for a number of small jobs: sifting the cat box and shaking out the rugs so I could sweep up the litter in the area. Finally, folded up clothes I had washed last weekend. I kept forgetting to take them out of the dryer. Out of sight, out of mind. Got the dishes washed. We don't have a dishwasher because we don't use enough dishes and such to use one effectively.

I noticed a yesterday, I think, that the Trump administration has decided to erase the National Center for Atmospheric Research on the grounds that it is a major source of "Climate alarmism" or "climate anxiety." I guess they are following the wisdom of Lazarus Long (character created by Robert Heinlein): In a government of the people, by the people and for the people--don't tell the people. Bill McKibben compares it to closing the fire station so no one will suffer from "fire alarmism." 

Ramona Grigg at CONSTANT COMMONER has a longish piece about growing older. She says a lot that strikes a chord or two. I am a decade and a couple of years younger but the feelings that sometimes my body just doesn't want to do what I want it to do are the same. I am not on any chemo, thankfully, but my sleep habits have changed. Sometime I snuggle down to sleep having spent the hour before yawning repeatedly and find I can't fall asleep. Or I wake up after four hours having to pee and can't go back to sleep. And then spend the next four hours napping before the cats insist on being fed. I can't vacuum the carpet in the living room and dining area without stopping three times to rest and am listless for the rest of the day. Some days I wonder where my "get up and go" went. 

December 18

Cloudy and rainy today but fairly warm. Should reach the low 50s. We also have some wind rattling the trees. I spent the morning doing a couple of lessons on Duolingo and working on my Ancestry family tree and finding what all their programing will do. Just playing around I found an aunt's obituary on Facebook. That was a surprise.

The news is pretty much what it has been for days. Whether it is healthcare, or the latest school shooting, the shooting in Australia, Trump's push against Venezuela, the Ukraine/Russia mess, the Gaza catastrophe. The talking heads keep talking but the treadmill keeps on running. 

Stray though as some talking head mentions the attempt to get support for a "one time" payment to individuals so they can buy their own health insurance. I said in an earlier post that they are asking people who don't have the money for health insurance without the subsidies to somehow find the money for a "health savings account." But this morning I my thoughts went into a slightly different but parallel line. Once upon a time not so very long ago my dad had a pension and health insurance through the Teamsters which paid out until he died. My stepfather and brother worked in the steel mills and had pension and health insurance through union negotiated plans. Those paid out for stepdad died. My brother is now, and has been for a bit more than a decade, receiving his pension. However, the health care plan has become somewhat unreliable as the company got out of providing direct care through a company run clinic. The union now runs both the pension and health plan but it decided to go with an insurance company which has such a bad reputation for slow, shorted, and contested payments that many medical hospitals and doctors' groups won't accept it. But that is only part of my musings. I am also remembering a process that gained steam in the 1980s where many companies stopped agreeing to provide pensions themselves and pushed employees into IRAs. They argued that such plans would increase because in addition to contributions from the employee and the company the funds would be invested and earn interest. However, many of those funds took severe hits during various downturns and didn't fully recover what was lost. The companies got out from under growing costs as employees got older. However, the costs continued to grow and someone else, usually the employees themselves, had to cover them.

Another stray thought: several commentators have noted that one of the probable consequences of the expected explosion of insurance costs as ACA subsidies go away a lot of people will have to cancel their plans which will force the insurance companies to raise their premiums which will put pressure on their remaining customers. That is a cycle which can't go on very long before the companies have to get out of the market or go bust. See what has happened with homeowners insurance in the wake of all too frequent disasters. Corbin Trent at AMERICA'S UNDOING says much the same thing.

CROOKS&LIARS posted a very telling cartoon on where we are now. I have wondered how long before our government starts to demand all of us carry internal passports and check in with the local police where ever we go. I read about things like that--in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Yet another stray thought: the Trump administration has done a very good job of convincing some of us that their "information" and especially with health information. For most of my life vaccines have proven effective. I am on the cusp. I was born six years before the first polio vaccines were released. I didn't get my first polio shot until I went to boot camp at age 19. Actually, I think that was when I got all of the then available vaccines and I didn't have a choice. But my brother visited yesterday and he said he thought his primary doctor was rather disgusted with him. When the doctor asked if he had received a flu shot, the RSV vaccine, and the latest COVID jab Brother told him "No." Whereupon Brother was reminded that "at your age" getting any of those bugs might mean hospitalization and even death. As the man left Brother reminded him that at his age (a couple of years younger than me) any number of things might kill him. I haven't had those shots either. But I look at it from a different standpoint. I don't often go out of the house and don't encounter crowds so the likelihood of being infected is low. I might get unlucky but who knows. As a couple of elderly characters say, in a novel I like, say when a younger person asks how they are reply "At my age one is either well or dead." So far, I am well. If things were different (I had to go out or a family member I saw came down with something, or there was a particularly virulent variant) I might make a different decision.

December 9. 11, 12

 Started sunny this morning but the clouds are moving in. The weather people predict rain for later. But tomorrow will likely produce snow. It looks like we are going to have a slushy time ahead. I shoveled the short path from the back door to the gate so I could get the trash out tomorrow for pickup. And I scattered some deicer on the ice which formed under the snow. The area is pretty well clear right now. But the next ten days look to be a mess with alternating snow, ice, rain. Thankfully we don't have to go out.

11**********************************************

I'm a bit late getting started on my reading today. It's already past noon on a cloudy day that is a bit too warm to snow--yet. Most of the snow we had on the ground has melted though the piles from the plowing still persist. I got sucked into the Ancestry site and in consolidating my notes on a separate document on my computer. I have filled in a number of holes in the tree by checking other sources as well. However I am ready to check out what might be interesting that has come in by way of my e-mail.

I have seen a number of cites which try to tell us what "lessons" we should learn from the Ukraine/Russia situation. Most of those authors come from the side which say Ukraine has already lost. It is a bit too early to say who has won and who has lost. For now Europe is trying to support Ukraine and Russia is still pecking away at the eastern territory of Ukraine. Trump's efforts are text book examples of futility. He is like the donkey who starves to death because he is between two equally distant piles of hay. He can't get any where with either side because Putin wants Ukrainian capitulation and Ukraine won't give up its territory. But none of the speculators on what will happen after the conflict ends don't recognize the possibility that Russia might "win" but collapse again from the cost of the war. This armed forces have been shown to be far less formidable than originally thought. He has tapped all of the "expendable" and easily conscripted populations in Russia and tried to bring in mercenaries from North Korea and Africa. His manufacturing base isn't able to keep up with demand and he has had to call on China, N. Korea, Iran and other allies to help out. All that doesn't mean Russia can't win but rather that winning might be way too expensive especially since, even if he gets everything he wants, it won't help Russia's economy all that much.

Well, Trump has proposed a $12Billion bailout for American farmers. I heard that story right after I heard that economists estimate the loses they suffered with the tariff SNAFU amounts to between $36 and $48 Billion so it won't cover more than a third of THIS YEAR'S losses. No one has even thought about nest year.

Another story that is percolating through the news--bound up in the "affordability" debate--is another Trump suggestion: health savings accounts. Trump and his acolytes suggest the sort of plan would ease the problem which is looming as the expiration of the ACA subsidies grows closer. So people are supposed to find the money for the savings account while losing the subsidy and that somehow they will be able to cover costs for health care out of those savings. I wonder what they are smoking. I have heard of many people who couldn't afford their medicine or medical treatments without the ACA so thinking they can afford all that while siphoning off money for savings accounts is an exercise in, to put it gently, wishful thinking.

12*********************************************

I got tired yesterday before hitting the publish button. I spent a good bit of time looking at genealogical records and a bit more in Spanish lessons. That was before reading the e-mail feed and commenting on odd things. Let's see what I find today.

Well, first up is this piece by Bill Astore. I have thought for some time Trump should have labeled his "movement" MAWA (Make America White Again) instead of MAGA. That would be more reflective of his administration's efforts to erase any part of American history that isn't White, Male, and Northern European. Like Astore I am an All-American Mutt--Scots, French, English, Welsh, Dutch, Irish, and a dollop of Native American. So far in my newly started genealogical study of our family I have traced some ancestors back to Ireland and England. Haven't found the others--yet. I find Trump's vicious chauvinism more than irritating and the signs of a very little soul.

Stray thought: the Trump incompetents have failed to get a grand jury to indict Letitia James for THE THIRD TIME. I have often heard in this Age of Trump that the Justice Department can successfully indict a ham sandwich but that assumes they have competent legally appointed prosecutors, have well investigated facts, and reasonable legal arguments. It says something abysmally pathetic about the whole situation.

December 8

Sunny but very cold this morning. I haven't seen much on the e-mail and blog feed so far. But I spent more time this morning getting back to Spanish lessons on Duolingo and time on Ancestry. My youngest brother started his efforts a while ago and then Mom wondered what happened to her father who left when she was very young. So far I have got our family traced out to six generations. It will be more difficult from there but we'll see what I can find. For a bit later I have three new books of cross-stitch patterns and a Herrschner catalog to look through. But for now I am clearing my e-mail.

Stray thought: we used to say that you know you're getting old when the music you loved when young is now Muzak you hear in the background while shopping. This morning I was amused reading a bit which talked about seeing the candy colored Macs from 20+ years ago and how "aging millennials" are reflecting on their past which included said computers. I had one of those myself but they don't appear in my reflections. I am an aging Boomer and my memory goes much farther back. I reflect on using paper and pencil, using the library card catalog, and browsing the physical bookstore.

Pawel Moscicki has a longish post about the "Class Warfare (On the Top)". Our class war isn't so much a matter of the privileged against those lower on the economic pyramid  but of the factions of the upper-upper fighting over which cabal controls the distribution of the spoils. The ripples of that struggle of course affects those lower down. However, what Moscicki says reminds me of a segment on this one of the news/commentary shows which went through examples of how the Trump relations and allies "repo-babies" are feasting at the government trough. It tells you where some of the money they "saved" by taking that DOGE chainsaw to the government agencies.

I noted yesterday that the end of an era sneak up on you in small things but this article by Richard Haas shows that such a change might feel like a sharp slap across your face.

 

December 7

 Snowy good morning to all. We got another couple of inches overnight and earlier this morning. The forecasters predict a slight warm up (very slight) in the middle of the week. Hopefully some of this mess will melt. I am taking things easy today. Friday was especially exhausting. I struggled with two different sites trying to order some particular embroidery threads and couldn't make either work. After a good deal of yelling and swearing I decided to simply go to the local Michaels, whose on-line site had been particularly frustrating, and purchase the threads there. To do that I had to clear the car of about 8 inches of packed snow. It took me four trips out to do that and left me a bit light headed. I also had to take out my winter boots for the first time in three years. Yesterday I woke up feeling very foggy but, thankfully, that has pretty well passed. This not-so-little old lady should NOT be clearing snow. Oh well I have enough thread to begin work on my last table cloth--a cross-stitch piece.

I didn't really read much yesterday but today I found this by Bill Astore which sums up the entire Trump administration and Trump himself especially. He says what I thought but more gracefully. Given Trump's stamping his name on what used to be the United States Institute For Peace, after essentially eliminating it in all but name. I wonder if anything at all in this country will be stamped with his name.

Corbin Trent at AMERICA'S UNDOING posted a longish article "The System Has No Reverse." I agree with most of it especially when he writes that Trump is only half right when he says Trump's charge that "affordability" is a Democrat hoax. Neither party has or, I would say, ever had a real plan to manage the economy for working people. They do a bang-up job for the ultra wealthy but not for the lower two-thirds of the economic pyramid. But the hoax it that they CAN do anything about it except muck it up. If they change one aspect they may set up a wanted change only to find that secondary, tertiary, and other down stream aspects unfavorably.

Stray thought: sometimes you can see that an era has changed in a small detail. This morning I realized 1) it is December 7 and 2) no news shows covered any commemorative observances of Pearl Harbor. Last summer several of the reporters wondered how many more years the "HONOR FLIGHTS" taking veterans to commemorations of D-Day. I speculated that they wouldn't continue much longer as the Veterans are mostly in their late 90s.

December 4

 Good morning. It is still cold with flurries every now and then but not amounting to much more snow. I put several hexagons into the shawl before I switched to finishing the edge on the little blanket of pin loom squares and started weaving in the ends. There a lot of them. Nowadays I get them taken care of as I am working the piece. Then I decided it was time to vacuum the traffic areas of the downstairs. I don't bother with the upstairs as neither of us go up there much since mom's accident and surgery. I just published the post covering the last couple of days because I shut down the computer before I got back to post it.

Gail Tverberg at OUR FINITE WORLD has a new article posted today. I always look forward to her writing because she looks at today's problems as interlocking phenomena influencing each other to exacerbate their effects. Several economists have written over the last couple of years about our society's dependence on rising levels of debt, on increasing supplies of energy (and fossil fuels particularly), and increasing production of materials we depend on (rare earths etc.) Tverberg shows how those factors have been declining and that all the promises that been given to various people (and not just those who receive social security or other government promised benefits but those who expect private pensions, etc.) which are based on rising levels of debt, increasing supplies of energy and materiel. 

December 1, 2

 Welcome to December. Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. We are hibernating. We got quite a bit of snow but most of it has been removed. The pavement is still warm enough that the lowest levels are slushy. It looks like we are going to get several days of cold temps and sporadic snow. Welcome to meteorological Winter although I put up my wreath for the season a week ago. Well, since I pretty much ignored the news over the weekend I guess it is time for a jump into what's going on.

Evidently South Asia is feeling the fury of a monsoon cyclone with heavy rain from Sri Lanka to Thailand. They have had unbelievable flooding and land slides. Last I heard the death toll from the region surpassed 1000. In BBC interviews some residents of Ache province Indonesia compared the devastation to the massive tsunami that hit about a decade ago.

Stray thought: we really need to get back to using words in a way that doesn't stretch their meanings beyond recognition. The "terrorism/terrorist" merely means anyone you consider an enemy. Political opponents become minions of satan that need to be obliterated. Drug traffickers suddenly are narco-terrorists and our government feels free to murder them on the high seas. The latest obscenity Hegseth may have perpetrated when he allegedly gave an order to "kill them all" when survivors were seen at the wreckage of one of the boats our government blew up. One of the pundits wrote that the action was "a war crime at best" since the survivors were not a threat any longer (if they ever were.) Note our military hasn't been involved in an unambiguous war since WWII. Here are some depressing comments on where we seem to be going with our current government.

02***********************************************

Sunny so far today. I got a short path shoveled to get me from the patio door to the trash tote. I might get the path to the gate done. I had to find one of my winter caps and my gloves before I even try that. It is really cold and isn't likely together out of the 20s. I just put together a scalloped potato casserole and got it in the oven. My version adds frozen peas and sliced smoked sausage to the original recipe. I had to do some searching because so many that I found seem to think scalloped means au gratin. I like one dish meals though next time I will use the larger casserole dish. I also like to fix enough to freeze for future quick means. It is just too much of a pain to try to adjust the portions for two--especially when Mom's appetite is rather variable.

First up on my reading list was this piece from CROOKS&LIARS. I have a couple of thoughts on it. First, who can possibly be surprised. Trump is an equal opportunity "looter." I wonder where he is putting the money a rational president would have sent to Michigan. Second, another reason not to be surprised is Trump really doesn't like the lower economic orders of what ever race or ethnicity. They trend likely to put any money in his pocket. Third, I am getting really tired of the undertone of schadenfreude with the whole "people are in the FO phase of FAFO" meme. Just because some people didn't see what those who didn't vote for Trump doesn't mean they deserve the cruelty of this administration. That falls on all of us. Fourth, these stories simply solidifies my thought that we should become as independent of government programs. The old saying "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away" reflects a broader truth: whatever is given can be taken away by the giver at any time.

Stray thought: there has been a lot of verbiage spent on 1) whether the strikes on alleged drug-running boats is actually legal (as in justified by actual national or international law), and 2) whether the facts justify charges of war crimes or murder all ignores a fact which might bite good many people in their posteriors: there is no statute of limitations on the most serious possibilities. And we still have elections and the results may not be favorable to those in power now supporting blatant thuggery.

Another stray thought: the shooting of the National Guard troops a few days ago has ignored something that is important though it doesn't absolve the shooter: he was trained by and worked with the CIA as part of a "death squad" in Afghanistan. He work for our government and nobody is looking at how much culpability attaches to that government which waged that pseudo war for two decades. I say "pseudo" because there was no declaration of war to authorize the military action. Well, not everyone is ignoring the background. Corbin Trent at AMERICA'S UNDOING covers it in detail.