Bully Pulpit

 On the one hand, you've got the drunken pit-bull of a Secretary of War killing helpless survivors of the destruction of a boat suspected of carrying drugs. On the other hand, you've got a presidential pardon for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández who is currently serving a forty-five year sentence for (check your own notes with me) drug trafficking. 

Both hands have blood on them. 

And it is certain that one hand has no idea what the other is doing. 

Because this is how America is being run these days. 

As we rattle our sabers and prepare for a renewed war on drugs, we are showing a determination to resist consistency. Hernández conspired with drug cartels during his tenure as they moved more than four hundred tons of cocaine through Honduras toward the United States. The leaders of the cartels that didn't offer bribes to him were extradited to the United States. 

If this business model seems familiar, it could be that we have all become immune to this kind of malfeasance given the current version, Trump 2.0. 

Meanwhile, the focus of one of the world's biggest militaries is bearing down on one of the world's smallest. This seems to be the kind of bully aggression that fits in well with an administration that regularly sends combat ready troops into the streets of its own cities to kidnap its people and terrorize the locals. 

We seem to have passed right by the notion that this was all a smokescreen for the Epstein Files and progressed into straight up nihilism, a scorched earth policy with an emphasis on the scorch rather than the earth. 

At this rate, I wonder who will be left to enjoy the sumptuous amenities offered at the new Epstein Ballroom. 

Madness

 Last year the city of Stockton, California had fifty-four homicides. Currently the total for 2025 stands at thirty-four. Civically, this feels like a victory. 

This isn't your standard "superheroes save the day" kind of victory. This is a pyrrhic victory, named for King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who won a battle against the Romans, but the cost of that victory came at such a cost that it was tantamount to a defeat. 

In Stockton, the four people killed at a children's birthday party this past Saturday evening would be counted among that cost. Eleven more were wounded. The dead were aged eight, nine, fourteen and twenty-one. The celebration of young life turned into a gaping hole of mourning. 

As is my custom, I find myself wondering once again about guns. As of this writing, there is no suspect and there is no motive. Just four dead kids. And another city full of people wondering why. 

Why won't there be a ninth birthday party?

Why won't there be a tenth?

A fifteenth? 

The indiscriminate certainty of a bullet entering a tiny body is something we are forced, once again, to confront. How compressed and black a form of evil could pull the trigger on a room full of children? What sort of derangement would make it possible for such a tragedy? 

Every time I write one of these posts, I feel like I am leaving my mark at one of those little shrines left at the site of the latest murder. Here is my candle. Here are my thoughts. Here are my prayers. 

Then I go home and wait for the next one. 

I'm running out of candles. 

Learning To Fly

 For a moment, I would like to pause and mention that with all the other things going on in the world, I only dreamed about one thing while I was on Thanksgivng break: school. 

More to the point, I dreamed about my job school and how it affects those around me. There were plenty of mornings that I woke up with great relief, realizing that I had not missed an important class or meeting. I was not late for any of my ancillary duties and the elementary education train in my dreams kept running. 

But what was I doing at work when I could have been in the tropics? Or chasing rainbows? Or standing in line for the newest ride at Disneyland? 

I believe it's because I have seriously damaged my imagination. All these years of waking up and rushing to school to make sure the day begins with unlocked doors and PE equipment ready for the children to grab on their way in, under the watchful eye of yours truly, has created a rut that keeps me from taking flying lessons in my dreams. 

I understand that I have only myself to blame. I am frequently encouraged by my principal to take a day off. Or two. At the same time, it is her voice along with many other staff and parents who ask me "What would we do without you?'

Well, here's the sneaky little truth waiting just over the hill: My retirement. A few years back I made an agreement with my principal that I would stick around until she retired. That day is coming soon. Not in weeks or even months, but soon. Soon on a scale that sits at the end of three decades of service for both of us. I have only now begun to imagine what mornings might be like when I didn't have to get up and be responsible for the boys and girls and their restrooms. There is no real exit strategy beyond the exit. 

Someday I won't be getting up and going to school like I have for the past twenty-nine years. And I hope that in a year or so after that, I can start dreaming about those flying lessons. 

Pre-Occupied

 I hope that you enjoyed your Thanksgiving. I hope that you had a chance to catch up with family and friends and focus on the things that really matter. 

I hope you missed this: "…Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will bepursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — "

This was how the convicted felon currently occupying what is left of the White House chose to greet the nation on its day of thanks. It came just a day after the shooting of two National Guard members who had been deployed to Washington D.C. to make it safe on the order of (checks notes) the author of the above screed. The same guy who only declared that "We haven't had a murder in six months" referring to his campaign to bring safety to our nation's capitol by imposing martial law. Besides the most recent death of the National Guard member, there have been sixty-two homicides in Washington D.C. since May 25 of this year.

Again, math has always been a challenge for the former game show host and leader of one of the world's most notorious gangs.

Meanwhile, the aggro response to each ugly development under his watch continues to be played off as anyone else's fault, resulting by far more draconian measures in an attempt to try and close the doors to a barn that has already burned down.

The murderer of twenty year old Sarah Beckstrom is a refugee from Afghanistan who had once worked with the CIA in his home country came to America to avoid retribution from the Taliban. His application for asylum was filed in 2024 and was granted in April of this year. Just about the time The twice-impeached "president" of this country started sending National Guard troops to (checks notes) Washington D.C.

In case you were still enjoying your tryptophan haze and missed all of that.

Welcome to month eleven of the occupation.

Splitsville

 On the topic of Marjorie Taylor Greene: So what?

For me, this lives in a realm of those who chose to laud Liz Cheney for finally standing up for the country which she took an oath to defend and preserve. A screeching horde of MAGAts with malicious intent, fueled by a a cowardly tangerine's rhetoric, attempted to sieze control of the United States Congress. They even threatened to hang the sitting Vice President. The fact that Liz hit her breaking point with the First Trumpreich at that moment is nothing more than a civil servant coming to grips with the responsibilities of the job for which she was elected. 

Marge's moment of clarity, notable because it came during a government shutdown about health care, was directly connected to her realization that her own adult children were being affected by the potential loss of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Suddenly, after years of being the darling of the red baseball cap herd, she was on the outside looking in. When her former gang's boss turned on her in his nasty, antisocial media way, she figured it was time to pack her things and go. In his usual rambling and vindictive stlyle, the convicted felon made a very public breakup with the woman he now refers to as "Wacky Marjorie" because according to him all she can do is "COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!" He could not possibly, without any awareness of irony, understand just how ridiculous that assertion is.

Meanwhile, the government has reopened, and Marge is preparing for her not too hasty exit. First she'll need to make sure her pension is vested before she sets out on a brand new adventure. Opening a gym somewhere, maybe? Working tirelessly to keep the Affordable Care Act intact? Or perhaps simply bidding her time until the eventual collapse of all that is Trumpian and she can jump back into a vortex called The Republican Party which will see her as "a breath of fresh air."

Let me see if I can sum my feelings for that in a word: Ew.

Ignore Alien Orders

Let's see if I am getting this right: There is a kerfuffle going on about members of the "intelligence community" and the military following unlawful orders. Killing someone without due process or cause would seem to be part of that batch, at least from where I am sitting. That just happens to be with easy access to the Costitution of the United States as well as the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  Always thinking ahead, our nation's leaders chose to put these documents where people like you and me can access them, just in case there was any questions about how the Law should be meted out. 

Some Schoolhouse Rock for you all: The Three Branches of Government. Not perhaps as memorable or tuneful as "I'm Just A Bill," this little ditty reminds us that those three branches are there to keep an eye on one another with a little system we call "checks and balances." It would be easy to forget that in a nation that is currently dominated by a bunch of MAGAts controlling the highest offices in our land that there is a judicial system that extends out beyond the so-called Supreme Court. To that end, I point you toward U.S. District Judge James Boasberg who ruled that the current administration identify the officials involved in authorizing an unprecedented deportation operation in March that sent the men to a prison known for abusive treatment.

Up pops the name of Kristi "Puppy Terminator" Noem, who chose to defy the court's order to stop sending one hundred Venezualans to El Salvador's CECOT, euphemistically labeled a "terrorist confinement center." Anyone who ignores the judge's orders is breaking the law, which puts a whole lot of folks in line for being good at following orders, except these were not legal. 

There are plenty of other examples of this kind of chicanery, a great deal of it having to do with Krist's passion for generating photo-ops that would make John Bunell blush. There is no current law of the books for egregious showboating by a government official, but I offer the ICE Queen up as America's Most Wanted, right along with the rest of the Clown Car the convicted Felon refers to as his cabinet. 

That is what retired astronaut and former US Naval officer Mark Kelly was talking about. Alas, there is no Schoolhouse Rock ditty that covers this foolishness. 

Anticipatory

 In the wiggly world of blog posting, this comes to you from the distant past. Before the parade. Before the football. Before the pushing away from the table with the promise of never eating another bite.

Until dessert. 

Now it's Friday, and I suppose I could say that the sales have commenced but that feels more than a little disingenuous since the economy will continue to chug along aided and abetted by "Pre-Black Friday Sales" and the illusory promise of a two thousand dollar check coming to us from Dear Leader. This is primarily a payoff, a kind of bribe to get us all to take him at his word that trillions of dollars are flowing into our coffers. Go out and spend, spend, spend. 

If you were able to finance your Thanksgiving dinner, that is. 

Now it's the big turnaround into a mild return to "normal," in which we will all get up and go about our days in anticipation of yet another break from the monotony of our non-holiday existence. After all these years, I still have not become fully accustomed to the three weeks of vacation offered to me as a public school teacher. It is not without a touch of irony that I face this time with the mild notion of trying not to stimulate the economy, but all that empty time begs to be filled up with commerce. 

"You've got a few empty days, why not buy stuff?" whispers the supply-side demon on my shoulder. "Why not take the family out to dinner?"

I cast you out, foul demon! With the possible exception of keeping my eye out for a deal on a new electric toothbrush. I mean, ours still works and all, but it has a new disconcerting beep after the second brushing on one charge. 

From vantage point still two days away from the mother of all sales since the last one, I tell myself that I can control this urge. Just like I can stay away from that last slice of pie.