Terror At Thirty-Five Thousand Feet

 So here's an interesting situation: With a war going on that costs a ballpark figure of one billion dollars a day and the Department of Homeland Security currently shut down due to (checks notes) the former director having sex with her deputy on the plane she needed to (checks notes again) have sex with her deputy, over three hundred TSA agents have quit. 

This means that lines at the airport have gotten longer to get through security to take flights to places that can still be considered "safe" for Americans to travel. It also means that the potential for someone's underwear or shoes or oversize bottle of shampoo slipping through the safety net we put in place the last time that things blew up here in our country. 

But you can rest easy, America, because the only president to be impeached twice is on the case. When asked if US citizens should worry about attacks from Iran on our soil, he replied, "I guess." 

Meanwhile, the term "sleeper cells" returned to our lexicon. Local police are now wondering just what sort of help they might receive when foreign agents suddenly spring to action like hydra's teeth to commit terrorist plots in and around your neighborhood. 

Sorry. 

Was that scary? 

It was meant to be. One of the ballyhooed reasons for us to go and stir up the hornets' nest that is Iran is because they are the number one sponsor of state terrorism in the world. They're kind of like the Dark Side of the Moon of terrorism. To paraphrase the nuns whose job it was to watch over Julie Andrews in Sound of Music, how do we deal with a problem like Iran? 

I'm not guessing that blowing up their leaders and killing a school full of little girls was in everyone's playbook. All of this must be written down somewhere in Project 2026. In crayon. Right after, "buy a nice plane or ICE Barbie to get her Mile High Club merit badge."

Gang Agley

 Hector was in the tenth grade. He has a one year old baby, living with his girlfriend and her mother. 

A while back, Hector was our challenge. In elementary school, we negotiated and reminded and encouraged and at times spoke harshly to him. We reminded Hector that he was someone's big brother and his younger siblings were watching him for clues about how to manage his deportment. At that time, keeping him in class was the challenge. Hector had a tendency to simply walk out of the classroom when the mood struck him. School work did not captivate him. As is the case for many of our young scholars, Hector's skills had not risen along with his progress through the grades. 

Rather than slowing down and accepting the help that was available to him, Hector pressed on and made his frustration everyone else's. 

At the outset, I mentioned that Hector was in tenth grade. He is no longer enrolled. Not in public education. Another system has him now. 

Hector will be serving three years for crimes he committed. His baby boy won't see him until he is just about ready to start Kindergarten. 

If he is allowed any contact with him at all. 

Part of me pines for the days when tearing up a bulletin board or eloping from class after recess was the biggest challenge in Hector's life. Is there something we all might have done differently to break the cycle before it repeated? 

Part of me sighs and takes stock of all the successes that I have witnessed before and since Hector. 

Hector's little sister is finishing up fifth grade this spring. Many of the challenges Hector has encountered are there for her as well. Add to those she has an older brother who is locked up for the next three years. We will do our best to set her on a course that will bring her more opportunities, more chances to succeed. 

We can provide all the support we can, and then we watch as they head off on the path they choose. 

The future is out there. 

And it can be terrifying. 

Worst

 “I guess the worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don’t want that to happen.”

This is how the orange felon responded when the press asked him for what he believed would be the worst-case scenario in Iran would be. 

Over the weekend, Iran selected fifty-six-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei to be its new supreme leader. If that name looks a little familiar, it's probably because he is the son of that "previous person." 

Oops. 

What do you suppose the chances are that the son of the man the United States murdered will come to this conflict with open eyes and a clear head? Heck, if he had a spare Nobel Peace Prize sitting around, he might even offer it up as a token of his newfound respect and admiration for the guy who invaded his country. 

And we might see oil being sold for less than one hundred dollars a barrel in the next week. 

"We will be greeted as liberators," insisted the late "Dick" Cheney while introducing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This proved to be a slight miscalculation. One that kept us there for nearly nine years, "liberating" a country that seemed less than interested in our "liberation." 

This is the portion of today's entry in which we point out that not a single arrest has been made as a result of the Trumpstein Files being released. Not here in the United States, anyway. Meanwhile, bodies have begun to return to these shores after having paid the ultimate price for the pedo-in-chief's fear of being "found out." 

I'll just go ahead and add that to the worst-case scenario. 

What's That Spell?

 It was a Sunday morning on the campus of the University of Colorado. Across the street from the football stadium, services were beginning at the Lutheran church. Inside the football stadium, a full day of rock and roll was on tap. May 1, 1977 the headliner was Fleetwood Mac, with support acts that included Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and Boulder's own Firefall. John Sebastian, former leader of the Lovin' Spoonful was slated to open the show with his autoharp and his theme from Welcome Back Kotter. Mister Sebastian who was already the object of much angst simply because he stood on a stage that would eventually be full of rock legends Fleetwood Mac antagonized the crowd still further by referring to the crowd as a group as being from Denver, some thirty miles down the turnpike. 

But before all of that excess unfolded, the promoters ran a special guest out on the stage: Country Joe McDonald. Joe was there ostensibly as a link to the days of Woodstock, and he proceeded to unleash a very loud and enthusiastic version of The Fish Cheer into the Sunday morning air. "Give me an F," he shouted, "Give me a U!" And suddenly we knew we weren't spelling out FISH. When we finished with the fourth letter he asked, "What's that spell?" Into that bright Colorado sky sixty thousand of us yelled the answer. Joe asked us again, "What's that spell?" Obligated as we were, the crowd screamed back in response. Once more for good measure, "What's that spell?" I know that every member of that Lutheran Church heard exactly what that spelled as Joe unleashed the rest of the song. 

Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men
Uncle Sam needs your help again
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books, pick up a gun
Gonna have a whole lot of fun

Suddenly we were connected up to the thousands who filled Max Yasgur's fields back in August of 1969. Vietnam was over, but the cold war raged on, and the neo-hippies in the crowd felt the vibe. 

Come on fathers don't hesitate
Send them off before it's too late
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box

I have been to a lot of rock shows since that Sunday morning, but this was something special. Country Joe went to that big stadium in the sky this past weekend. His musical contributions may have been slim, but they were powerful, and he stomped on the Terra. I will think of him every time I pass a Lutheran Church. 

Amen. 

More Of The Same

 I know: We're supposed to believe that all this mess is a distraction from the Epstein Files.

"All this" being the seemingly endless stream of Wrong that is the governance of the United States. 

The suggestion that the "president" of the United States is attempting to cover up the fact that he is a pedophile is almost certainly becoming a non-starter. Not that the victims of all of the convicted felon's previous crimes don't deserve air, but the list of crimes has done nothing but grow since he took over for his father the slumlord back in 1971. Ten years after that, he bought a fourteen-story building on prime real estate facing New York City’s Central Park. His plan was to tear down the building and replace it with luxury condos. But first he needed to get the small band of rent-stabilized tenants out of there. They reported that he cut off heat and hot water, and even proposed sheltering homeless people in the building. That didn't happen, but the rat infestation was real. 

Eight years later, he took out a full-page ad in Newsday calling for the so-called Central Park Five to be executed for their alleged crimes. Never mind that the teenagers were convicted via coerced confessions but eventually exonerated after spending years in prison. Nor the fact that New York did not at the time have a death penalty, but these black and latino boys needed to die for the crimes they didn't commit. 

Fast forward to this past week when his (checks notes) third wife wanted the world to know that the man who had an affair with a porn star just after the star of the documentary Melania had given birth to their son, "He would like to have a country where all of the people can walk down the street and not be harassed or murdered, or women raped." As for the harassment and rape, let's take a peek at fifty years of harassment and rape brought to you by none other than the husband of (checks notes) the same guy who would like to have a country where all of the people can walk down the street and not be harasses or murdered. Or raped. Like the former game-show host's first wife who testified in divorce proceedings that her soon-to-be ex-husband raped her. 

Now he's graduated to blowing up school children. He's moved right on past the harassment and rape and moved straight on to murder. 

Distracted? 

Nope. 

Just more of the same. 

Too Many Puppies

 The easy chop was "Ding dong, the witch is dead."

Except she's not. Kristi the puppy killer wasn't fired. She was transferred. This was not the fate Renee Good or Alex Pretti experienced. Kristi "With an I" was sentenced to a new post as Special Envoy to The Shield of the Americas. Her focus will be on implementing the Donroe Doctrine, a wholly imaginary policy from the enfeebled mind of the Orange Felon who felt the need to shuffle the once and future ICE Barbie off to a cushy job out of the public eye where her cosplay could be limited to whatever it is that envoys wear. Whatever happened to "you're fired?" 

Cricket was executed for the crime of being "untrainable."

Meanwhile, the dysfunctional Department of Homeland Security will most certainly have their hands full with what will most certainly be an influx of possible terrorist activity exacerbated by the intentional stirring of the hornets' nest we call the middle east. The current response from what's left of the White House when asked if we should worry about an attack on American soil: "I guess." 

Because two words has never been sufficient to fully explore the depth of his stupidity, the former game show host continued: "But I think they're worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. we think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die."

And as nonchalant as that response might have been, Pete "The Pistol" Hegseth got his knickers in a twist when the initial U.S. casualties from Operation Epstein Fury were announced: “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step.”

Stupid news. 

Stupid protesters. 

Stupid puppies. 

Ding dong. 

How The Mighty Have Fallen

 Britney Spears was arrested for DUI in California. 

At first glance, this story might seem like a real puff piece. A bit of click bait to start the morning, but I am here to tell you that I believe it is part of a larger conspiracy. 

Having found no real way to circumvent the public's fervent and voracious interest in the contents of the Trumpstein Files, this administration has set about kidnapping its own citizens off the streets. They have shot innocent bystanders in the process of their ethnic cleansing agenda. They have abducted the president of another country via a military operation and declared that he stand trial as the oil reserves of that country become ours because of the tried and true Art of War strategy, "Invaders keepers, losers weepers." They have gone to war with a Middle Eastern country for the purpose of destroying their nuclear capabilities that were supposedly destroyed the last time we were blowing things up with very expensive bombs. Oh, and we managed to kill the president of that country too without the flourish of flying him to New York in chains to stand trial for some sort of drug-related charge shortly after another South American president was pardoned by the same bright orange idjit that didn't want us looking at the Trumpstein Files because the adjudicated rapist has so very much left to hide. 

And let's not forget the destruction of one third of The People's House in order to construct Barbie's Dream Ballroom, complete with hot and cold running irony that no one there will notice. 

But let's get back to Britney. Having recently sold her music catalogue, estimated to be worth between two hundred million dollars, Ms. Spears was out doing what any forty-four year old with money to burn does after ending a thirteen year-long conservatorship that had kept her constrained from doing things like (checks notes) selling her music catalog and shaving her head. Then she did something really awful. 

She deleted her Instagram account. 

How can we possibly keep track of all Britney's scandalous life choices? 

Wait for it. 

She's probably in the Trumpstein Files.