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.