"Ripped From The Headlines"

     Recent ICE shootings (or is it CBP?  There are a lot of armed TLAs under DHS and they're not making it easy to keep track) are all over the news, and statements and counter-statements fly back and forth, accompanied by at least three authentic videos of events in Minneapolis.

     I'm not going to rehash it.  You can get all of that you can stand elsewhere, free for nothing and often worth the price.

     Nope.  I'm going to give you another incident, one in which Americans, trouble-makers and sincerely concerned citizens alike, taunted and challenged armed agents of the government, and things went horribly wrong.

     Draw your own lessons from it -- about who we are, and what we have become; about governments and the use of force; about law, order and morality.

This Cold

     Colds don't get easier as you get older.  This one keeps sneaking up on me.  Yesterday, I felt a lot better in the morning, got some things done -- and despite good cough syrup, kept coughing more and more, and running out of air when I did.

     I ended up back in bed before noon and slept most of the day; Tam woke me for dinner and I helped a little with the trash (it gets picked up Friday morning) before going back to bed and sleeping heavily.

     This morning, I feel closer to normal -- and from where I've been, an ordinary day would be a big step up.

     Update:  Yeah, didn't happen.  Managed to take care of one scheduled commitment and then had to go lay down while I coughed up -- you don't want to know.

Lots Of Heat, Little Light

     There's a war of words between the federal government on one hand and Minnesota state and Minneapolis local officials on the other hand over the shooting of a middle-aged white woman by a masked, middle-aged white man.  He is an ICE (or other DHS) agent.  She was apparently some kind of volunteer monitor.  Everyone's description of the events and individuals is highly politicized, and you can go look at the video from multiple angles before making up your own mind.  (I will note that pictures claiming to show the agent's face are AI fakes.)

     It's screwed-up all around, a literal example of why it is dangerous to get crossways with law enforcement.  Nevertheless, in such conflicts, it is not unreasonable to expect the officers to behave in an adult and responsible manner.  I get complaints when I point this out, but multiple LEOs with radios and guns and qualified immunity against one or two non-LEO individuals is not an even contest.  Shouting conflicting commands means compliance is impossible -- and makes tragedy all but inevitable.

     "She shouldn't have been there," yeah, maybe not; but there she was, on a public street.  Should we all have to get urban-combat training before we leave the driveway?  Intentional or accidental, you can find yourself in the middle of a law enforcement action before you know what's going on -- even if you thought you knew what was going on.

     Government agents shouldn't be killing random people.  Not even inconvenient or annoying random people.

     This is the stuff of bad Cold War fiction set in the repressive dictatorships of the Warsaw Pact.  We shouldn't have Feds LARPing it on American streets.

On The...Mend?

     I feel better until I start to cough, at which point my temperature spikes, I get dizzy and I start to black out.

     Haven't managed to yet and I'm hoping that will continue, but....sheesh.

Meanwhile, I Have Been Dragged Through A Knothole

      Or maybe it just feels that way.  I've had bad cold symptoms since the weekend, which seemed to be a former cold returning.  Maybe it's a new one, quick on the heels of the previous minor affliction.

     I was taking cold medicine, getting lots of tea and broth (and some coffee because, look, I'm not giving it up), sleeping plenty, eating balanced meals and Tuesday, I felt good enough to go into work.  Through it all, I could not stop coughing for long.

     After managing an hour with a prospective contractor for a tricky and highly specialized task, I had to go find desk work for a spell.  Finally broke to get some genuine cough syrup, but since I was still on a 12-hour slow-release nostrum, it had to wait and meanwhile, I was coughing worse than ever.

     Yesterday still feels like it was a week long.  This morning, I started to cough and discovered I had coughed myself sore, the muscles of my back and diaphragm aching in unpleasant and unfamiliar ways.  I have got about enough energy to cuddle a kitten, if the little cat was very sleepy.  Our two adult tomcats are too much for me -- or they would be, if they weren't well-behaved and more obedient than cats usually are.*

     So I went back to bed this morning.  I'm up for a little while now -- more cough syrup, a refill on tea, who knows, maybe even more acetaminophen if it's time -- and then back to bed.
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* In the morning and evening, the cats must be separated when fed, since they're on different diets.  Mr. Holden is reluctant to comply unless we flatter him: "Gentlemen! Sort yourselves out -- Holden, stay; Huck, come along," and Holden charges through the doorway along with Huck, "You know the rule! Tigers in the front of the house, floof lions to the back!"  He preens at bit at being called a "floof lion," and trots off to the back of the house.  With the hallway door shut, he stands up to the door and dances back and forth, anticipating food.  If they made fancy lions, far more fluffy and deluxe than the standard issue, he would certainly be one.

Let's Total It Up

     A failed coup, followed by a return to power a few years later?  Check.

     Make-believe economics?  Check.

     A number of scapegoat minorities singled out, demonized, and the most vulnerable being rounded up by masked, unaccountable Federal police force and imprisoned under substandard conditions before being deported or (rarely) released?  Check.

     Lots of saber-rattling about territorial expansion, accompanied by military action against far weaker forces?  Check.

     Intimidating the Press into compliance?  Check.

     Administration spokesmen push a "might is right" approach to foreign relations?  Check.

     These are not normal times.  This is not normal politics.  Mr. Trump's Republicans are not the party of Lincoln, Reagan -- or even Nixon.

     The Trump administration are bad guys, and they're making over the United States of America in their image.

     You can call 'em any manner of names out of history, and some of the tags are a pretty good fit, but the label doesn't matter.  What matters is their behavior, and they're spinning up genocide at home and military adventurism overseas.

     It may be possible to stop them in the midterm elections.  It may be possible to get the U.S. back on a sane and normal path.

     I sure hope we can -- because we're being led by bloodthirsty fools, and their only other limitation is their staggering incompetence and lack of empathy.  They've got the skills to make a terrible, tragic mess, and no more.

"Somehow, Head Cold Returned"

     If you were one of the people who muttered when the evil Emperor got back onstage at a plot-convenient time,* you'll know exactly how I feel at the return of my cold.  Same progression as last time: one-sided throat irritation, growing sinus congestion/overproduction, coughing, sneezing, fatigue and muscle aches.  Maybe it's the flu.  Maybe it's not.  It isn't COVID-19; I checked, though mostly just so I could tick that box.

     This is Day Three, or maybe Day Two-and-half, and it can damn well get wrapped up by by tomorrow morning.  I'm going back to bed.
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* At a certain point, some time before Jar-Jar Fetchit shucked and jived into the cast, I had decided that trying to make the storylines of any part of Star Wars add up was a fool's errand and the best approach was to sit back, enjoy the blinking lights, and let the sword fights and faster-than-light videocalls just play out; either you're happy with a universe where few controls are labelled and hyperspace navigation is like pulling into a parking space at the 7-11, or you're not.  Hey, look, it's Hero's Journey!

I Tried

     I really tried to ignore it all day.  But will someone please explain to the bulging brains of the Executive Branch that real life does not work like chess or king of the hill?  You don't win just by grabbing the other side's top dude -- and if you just pull a quick forcible exfiltration, the next in line isn't obliged to dance to your tune.

     They may yet turn up the heat if they don't get what they want, but don't be surprised if "running Venezuela" proves to be a lot more difficult than it has been made to sound. 

Squandering

     I'm watching the Trump administration press conference about their special military operation, and the lies and distortions have come thick and fast.  So has the power-worship, military might praised for its own sake.

     Someone will do a full fact-check on it.  I'm just going to note that the United States has positioned itself as an unpredictable bully, a rogue state that has promised to act however it will, without regard to international law -- over a bog-standard South American autocrat.  If he'd been a right-winger doing much the same as he can be proven to have done, he'd still be doing it, and counted as a U.S. ally.

     We now live in a changed world, and not for the better aside from the removal of cheap dictator, to be replaced by an as-yet unknown government, of an unknown nature other than they're liable to comply with whatever our current government decides are our interests.

     These men are villains.  That they took out another villain, smaller in scope and more overtly villainous, does not excuse their own crimes, the stain they have put on our national honor, and the credence they have given to similar acts committed by other governments elsewhere on the globe.  And they are promising to do more of the same.

     They have turned Ronald Reagan's shining city on a hill into a pyre for civilization.

No, Look Over Here

     Every day, a new distraction.  Unless you live under a rock, by now you know about Mr. Trump's special military operation:  U.S. forces bombarded and invaded the capital of Venezuela early this morning, taking Nicolás Maduro and his wife into custody,  They're facing criminal charges in a U. S. court over narcoterrorism and unlawful possession of firearms.

     It's a hard effort to find anyone who thinks the South American autocrat is a good guy -- but neither are many of the world's leaders.  It's still not generally the done thing to go roust them, like a county sheriff cleaning out a meth lab.  The last one I remember was Panama's Manuel Noriega, under somewhat different circumstances -- and even that was pretty questionable.

      Whatever: a new day, a new sideshow, a few more corpses on Donald Trump's mountain of dead and, oh, boy, the headlines and airtime!

     Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, after all, and surely any mere domestic issues must pale to irrelevance next to these events of vast moment: arresting tinpot dictators and encouraging chaos among impoverished brown people in the Third World.

     I've been wrong -- it's as much a firehose of blood as it is a firehose of bullshit.  How long are we going to pretend it's normal?

A New Five Minutes Hate

     Smoke, mirrors and an unceasing firehose of crap.  The news cycle was threatening to slow down, and what was coming out wasn't looking too good for the incumbent administration.

     But there's always something out on the fringes, where a constant churn of ragebait swirls, both fueled by and fueling the preoccupations of the moment; a big-noise politician comments, Left or Right attacks, Right or Left defends, and whatever fire there might or might not have been is lost in the smoke and shouting.  The current fogbank is around daycare centers, primarily Somali-run or -serving in Minnesota, and the deeper you dig, the less there seems to be.

     Daycare centers tend to be marginal at best; they go in and out of business, parents get government help with the costs, some centers get grants, and there's a certain level of graft, fraud, mismanagement and pure bad luck: it's not a frictionless machine.  One or two bad actors can make the entire enterprise look shady, and that appears to be how the mess started: allegations of fraud, followed by President Trump and Governor Walz -- yes, that Tim Walz -- throwing shade at one another.  Amateur "investigative journalism" followed, and the problem with that--

     The problem with roll-your-own investigative journalism is not that the people doing it don't have a Press card or NewsGuild-CWA membership.  The problem is the same one that dogs investigation in general, and that gave rise to the Scientific Method, modern criminal investigation processes, and laws against entrapment: you can't work towards an assumed result.  You've got to follow the data, wherever it leads.  Suspicion and rumor may launch the investigation, but it cannot be the guide.  Instead, the effort has to be designed around a neutral approach.  You find what is actually there, not what you expected to see.  In reporting, that's the approach the pros are paid to take* and the best amateurs do the same.  And it's not what I'm seeing in the early "citizen journalist" videos out of Minnesota.

     People want to do what they see on TV: the news crew shows up, cameras rolling, and surprises the malefactor(s) in mid-malefaction.  But that's only the dramatic peak of a long, slow arc, weeks or months of gathering facts, assembling a timeline or sequence of wrong-doing based on fact, and running it past experts, peers, bosses and lawyers to ensure it makes logical sense and sticks to known and proven facts.

     Nevertheless, the White House yanked funding to all daycare programs in that entire state, and followed it up by freezing such funds nationwide, from Alaska to Florida, until each and every program can prove, by so far unspecified criteria, that they are on the up and up.  (And never mind that they already had to.)

     That's the smoke all over the news cycle.  At the heart of it, there may be -- there almost certainly is -- a very small fire.  But it's probably already been put out, and the details, if they ever emerge, will be trivial.

     Welcome to 2026.  Same crap, different number.
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* Or disgraced if they don't.  Oh, hey, is that Dan Rather and an anachronistic font over there?

It's A New Year's Miracle!

     Okay, it's a "miracle" in the Adam Smith sense, anyway.

     I was looking around for blackeyed peas starting last week, and coming up short.  In my one trip to the vast Multi-Mart, I...well, I forgot.  Tam strove to bring some home from the grocery last weekend and they had no version of blackeyed peas.

     This morning, I needed to go gas up my car and on the way home, I stopped at the other foodie grocer to check.  Nope.  "They ran us right out," one of the clerks told me.  Tam had offered to make another swing by our closer grocery store today in case they'd restocked, but I cautioned her we shouldn't get our hopes too high.

     Surprise!  They had set out the remaining stock.  And so, thanks to the relentless pursuit of sales, we've got one of the great miracles of modern civilization: the stuff we wanted to buy, when we wanted to buy it.