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.
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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.
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