March 26, 27

 Partly cloudy but warmer--up near 60 today. And a bit of rain.

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So far cloudy. We had a real downpour yesterday evening--with thunder and lightning as well. It has dried up a bit overnight. The temperature at the fence reads about 50F.

William Hartung posted a depressing piece on Tomdispatch.com yesterday.  The Pentagon budget is already almost $900billion, and the House and Senate keep pushing the bill further into the fiscal stratosphere. Hartung covers most of the problems: expensive weapons "systems" which underperform, and a military which has an underperforming record since the last great victory (WWII) over 75 years ago. I would add another: we use the military instead of diplomacy. The threat of military action always underlies any "negotiation" which treats the "partners" in the negotiations as though they were errant children. Daddy is there with the paddle so you better do what you are told.

I heard an amusing bit of Morning Joe just now which summed up a problem with the religious right, the Evangelist Mujahideen. They have an "idolatry" problem. I can agree. They don't have a golden calf. The hair is no longer gold. The tan is not any more convincing than it was back in 2016. Their idol is pure fools gold.

Another segment on Morning Joe amused me but for a different reason: the fact that our political leaders have no historical knowledge. They showed a part of an interview where the Republican politician insisted that the New York investigation should actually be conducted by the Department of Justice even though the case concerns the possible violation of STATE laws. The summation is beautiful: Republicans say no one could  indict The Former Guy when he was President and no one should indict him as a former President and no one should indict him because he is running again to be President. That's a Catch 22 squared.  So why do I say that the politicians don't have any good knowledge of American history? Because the State-Federal divide existed from the beginning. The tension between the two has only grown as the country grew both in territory and population, and has been exacerbated by technology. Almost nothing occurs without crossing state lines and therefore has a national component. If Company A dumps toxic wastes into a nearby stream it will eventually have an impact in another state down stream. So which jurisdiction prevails. Right now people are "States' Rights" supporters until they aren't and it depends on how much they want to control the lives of people who don't live in their state.