August 21

It is very early here on this Saturday. I have been awake--sort of--for a couple of hours already. Our cats simply did not want to settle down so I am now waiting for my kettle to come to temperature and I can get my coffee made. The weather people promised us rain today but I'll wait and see. Those promises are more often broken than kept. The weather is so much more unpredictable nowadays.

Well, the War on Terror has suffered a major blow if not a total defeat. It was always a stupid idea in the first place. Terror is a technique, a tactic, just as saturation bombing or machine guns. It is not territory you can occupy (for however long), or bodies you can kill or maim, or "hearts and minds" you can try to "persuade". Now the blame game and spin games are going at full speed. Oh we didn't really lose because there hasn't been an attack on the "homeland" in the last 20 years. (No, we grew our own terrorists which no Republican it seems wants to call terrorists.) Or The Former Guy was right but Biden botched the whole thing converting a glorious "negotiated" peace agreement into an ignominious and chaotic retreat. (Pure crap.) Or hand wringing over the plight of Afghan women. This piece in Gods and Radicals pretty much describes what self serving non-sense that is.

My feeling that our society is spiraling into insanity keeps intensifying. It isn't just the schizophrenic responses to the pull out in Afghanistan. It is also the responses to COVID. Remember the couple last year who decided to take hydroxychloroquine formulated for aquarium use? Both landed in the hospital and one died. Well, here is another COV-idiot. This time a guy took veterinary ivermectin which is a cattle  dewormer. Or this unbelievable bit of insanity. I can, sort of, understand an ordinary Joe, but for an EMS director to offer ivermectin to his firefighters is totally bonkers.

August 24

Well, it is warm and heading to hot. I did get out on the patio early and did some deadheading and checking on the moisture in the containers. They are all doing very well though we haven't had any rain and I haven't watered for the last four days. The weather people keep promising rain but it all goes north or south or falls apart. I think I will go out early again tomorrow and water things a bit unless we do get some rain.

I saw that the Pfizer vaccine has full approval. But given the response the Former Guy got at his rally I doubt any of his hard core supporters will follow his advice and get the vaccine. The FDA and other medical groups are still considering boosters for all the currently used vaccines. Nothing definite has been announced as of this moment.

I have been trying to ignore the clusterf*&k in Kabul. All of the critics of the pull out annoy me. I don't know if Biden's people had a plan but the old saying that battle plans never survive the first contact with the enemy goes for any kind of plan with a tweaking: no plan survives first contact with reality. Robert Reich's post today says what I have been feeling: too much news on some items (Afghanistan, Cuomo, the Olympics) and not enough on what is of urgent importance here and now.