Too Much Circus, Too Many Clowns

     It is difficult to keep up with the various actions of the Executive Branch's collection of malevolent, semi-competent goons, thugs, ideologues, accelerationists and ambitious nitwits.

     In the last 48 hours or so, they yanked all federal funding to addiction-treatment programs and then abruptly restored it, after a day in which people across the country scrambled frantically to come up with some way to go on.  The grants covered a wide range of programs, and anyone inclined to do so can probably come up with a few that are kinda squishy; but the common goal of all of them is to get people off drugs, and steer them into productive lives -- instead of importuning passers-by for money, engaging in various kinds of theft and dying lurid deaths at public expense.  It's cheaper to get 'em straight, and tends to improve neighborhoods.

     This is just one corner of the churning, ill-considered mess we've got for a federal government.  Congress is still staggering around, largely ineffective, and the courts are overloaded and divided along partisan lines.

     Anyone who tells you things are going great is telling lies.