A Government Of Smart-Assed Punks

      The current collection of ne'er-do-wells, failsons, solipsistic opportunists, toadies, religious extremists and other vile nutjobs and crooks -- see the list from Blazing Saddles -- running things in Washington D.C. and throughout the Federal government includes a great many men and women of a familiar type, one that comes tagging along no matter what party is in power: arrogant punks, secure in their access to authority and/or knowledge of how to manipulate the law.  They sneer and wink their way through Congressional hears and press conferences, not just lacking in humility but contemptuous of it.

     Yesterday, the Department of Justice announced they have issued an indictment against six Cubans allegedly involved in shooting down two unarmed U. S. private airplanes in 1996.  The planes were operated by Brothers To The Rescue, an effort to help people fleeing Cuba by sea.  There are genuine questions of fact -- Cuba says the planes were in their airspace, the U.S. says they were over international waters.*  There are genuine issues of the Cuban government being repressive and generally awful, of the need to help people who got to sea in inadequate vessels; there's a lot of go work out in court, and plenty of room to argue over what court it should be, or if diplomacy is a better way to sort things out; or even if thirty years is too long to wait.

     But one of the Cubans is Raúl Castro.  He was in charge of their defense department at the time, and later served at President and leader of the Cuban Communist party, positions from which he has since stepped down.  He's 94 now.  Age is no shield from criminal prosecution (though you do have to wonder what the courts could do to him that Time has not already done or is about to do).  He's charged in the U.S.; we don't have an extradition agreement with Cuba, naturally enough, and there the matter sits.

     Or does it?  Acting U. S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the press conference announcing the indictment yesterday, said this to reporters: "There was a warrant issued for his arrest. So we expect that he will show up here, by his own will or by another way."  Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

     Cuba's government is far from admirable.  Raul Castro is no teddy bear.  The incident in question was tragic at best.  But the acting AG is hinting and shrugging his way through the kidnapping of a former foreign head of state, in his own country.  That's fine for the movies, but in the real world?  It's not.  Oh, we've probably all got lists of leaders and former leaders we'd like to see nabbed and hauled before a court (if not worse), but that's not how it works.  It's how wars start, and there are plenty enough of them simmering already.  Regular, ordinary Cubans are already suffering and the kind of military intervention it would take will only make things worse for them.

     But to the smart-assed punks of the world, the "little people" don't matter.  They're up there parading on the world stage, all suits and uniforms, legal writs and jet planes, bombs falling clean, high above the dust and blood and tears.  People getting killed are just a handy prop to them, to be pulled out and put to use decades after the fact.
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* All things being equal, I'm a lot more inclined to trust the accuracy of U.S. radar than Cuba's; but unless you were staring at those screens at the time, it's a matter of opinion.

Reefer Alliance

     Sometimes, the Fates serve something up that's so on the nose, you know the fix is in.  Case (literally) in point, United States v. Hemani, now before the U. S. Supreme Court.

     Uncle Sam says Ali Danial Hemani is a pot-swilling terrorist supporter, who shouldn't be allowed to own guns on account of being an habitual drug user, since, as question 21.f. on the BATFE Form 4473 quaintly asks and warns, "Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside."  It's right there in plain text:* even pot use is a downcheck, and the buyer will not, in fact, be purchasing a firearm that day if the answer "Yes."

     On the other side, the defense says he's an almost stereotypical Texas gun owner, a pillar of his community, active in religious organizations and youth sports, who just happens to enjoy a little herb from time to time.

     I have no idea if either of these description is anywhere close to reality.  I never met him and I haven't been following the case.  What I do know is that we've got the Feds on one side, and on the other, everyone from the NRA to NORML, from the ACLU to Gun Owners of America is weighing in or even filing Friend of the Court Briefs.

     It's one to watch, and in the meantime, always ask, "Who brought these brownies?" before digging in.
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* Of course, the current version of the same form still gives you three choices for the answer to question 14, Sex: Male, Female or Non-Binary.  Presumably anyone who ticks the third box vanishes from Federal sight immediately, since the Federal government only recognize the first two options now, and the sale is denied on account of there not being anyone buying.  And they were just right there...!

So, Um--

     I picked the wrong Friday to skip posting.  The stuff I had in mind is largely moot, because as of middle-on-the-night thirty, we are at war, or as close as make no difference, especially if you live in Iran.  Or, in fact. Israel, or on or near a U. S. military base in the Middle East.  The Iranians haven't targeted embassies yet.  We didn't warn 'em to get non-combatants out of target zones -- or warn our own service spouses and families, for that matter. 

     But that's not the first teensy oversight.  Congress didn't get a chance to weigh in, either, and there are no indications they're planning to.  This is hinky, considering that the declaring of wars would be a power the United States Constitution (perhaps you have heard of it?) reserved exclusively to the actual legislators of the actual legislative branch.  Cynics will point out the Presidents have sounded the bugle and sent the troops marching off multiple times in the last century; from the Korean War onward, Presents have acted and Congress has scrambled to catch up, usually slapping a hasty authorization onto a fait accompli or some other Italian speed job.

     Nevertheless, 'tain't according to Hoyle or, in this case, all but one of the delegates to the Constutional Convention:
     "Pierce Butler of South Carolina was the only delegate to the Philadelphia Convention who suggested giving the executive the power to take offensive military action. He suggested that even if the President should be able to do so, he, in practice, would have the character not to do so without mass support. Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, summed up the majority viewpoint saying he 'never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.' George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and other contemporaries voiced similar sentiments."
     That's how Wikipedia puts it, as of this writing.  If you want to argue with the guys who were there, knock yourself out -- but you're wrong.

     Then there's one other finicky detail--  The Iranian government are bad guys.  They executed a large number of protesters recently, as in thousands, almost certainly tens of thousands, most of who had done no more than ditch work or school to go wave signs and shout, and they're a known source of material support for Mideastern (and other) terror organizations.  They're not nice guys; the West helped make them that way, but they have stayed that way and give no sign of backing down.  However, they hadn't started a fight with the United States.*

     Jus ad bellum is the notion that nation-states cannot (well, should not) just start up wars for the hell of it.  It's why heads of state or legislative bodies issue justifications that are sometimes absolute smack, like Vladimir Putin's assertion that Ukraine ought to be part of Russia because, well, it always was, and therefore it is perfectly okay to send in the Russian military to kill 'em until they go along with his notion.  Defensive war is held to be inherently justified: when Ukraine fights back, they're acting by the rules, and in defense, a country can even war partisan war, using informal troops without clear lines of command.  But the aggressor has got to show cause, and a country's got to be behaving very badly indeed before it's okay under international laws and treaties to try to knock sense into them.

     There is an entire messy body of international agreement covering this stuff, one that boils down to "Nation-states don't get to start wars unless they can establish a broad consensus the state being warred against is extraordinarily bad, but nation-states can always defend themselves against wars someone else started against them."  We...didn't manage to fulfill either one of those conditions.

     Do I think the United States government is a better government than the government of Iran?  I sure do.  They kill far fewer of the people who protest against them.  On a per-capita basis, it's a stunning difference.  Do I think Iran's government is a threat to peace in the Middle East?  Unquestionably.  --But that doesn't justify an undeclared war, set in motion by the Executive Branch of the U.S. government without formal declaration (by Congress, whose responsibility it is) or even the merest fig leaf of justification.

     Putin's war on Ukraine is still worse than Trump's war on Iran but make no mistake, they're different intensities of the same bloody color.

     Time will tell how this will play out and in the meantime, your "peace President," the guy I was told would keep this nation out of foreign wars, has launched yet another military intervention into another country, and it's not a quick bombing run or an overnight "Mission: Impossible" leader kidnapping.

     And in the meantime, how about that economy?  How about those Epstein files?  How about cratering Presidential approval ratings?  ...Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain!  The Big Giant Head is talking, and what it's saying is, "War!  War!  War!"
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*In fact, we were in diplomatic talks, albeit "indirect" ones, which is perhaps the most grade school method of diplomacy, "Millicent won't let you sit with her at lunch until you stop chewing on pencils," one side says to an intermediary, and the other side replies to the go-between, "Well, Millicent chews on her braids and and it's gross, and besides, she farts all the time and you can tell her I said that," and then a spokesthing announces to the press that they had a productive discussion, while waving a toothmarked pencil to clear away a faint, lingering stench. 

Rewriting History

     It starts small.  It starts with something that doesn't matter to most people.

     The Trump administration removed all mentions of transgender anything from the Stonewall National Monument, which is pretty weird since drag queens were among the most enthusiastic rioters after police raided the Mafia-run gay bar.  --But it's also weird because unless you're a member of the LGBTQ+ community or a student of political uprisings, the Stonewall Riots are a single line in a high school history book, if that.  And the National Monument consists of short sections of a few city streets and a park smaller than most suburban driveways; you'd have to read the plaques to notice that the alphabet-soup designation had been replaced by "LGB."  Then a few months later, they removed all overt mentions of bisexual people (presumably so Suburban Mom and Dad, unlikely to visit Stonewall to begin with, won't have to explain "bisexual" to Junior and Sis). Most recently, they took down the rainbow flag that had flown over the park in one form or another since 2017.

     This is a National Monument that matters a lot to LGBTQ+ people and a little to history buffs interested in how the powerless push back against the powerful -- and hardly at all to anyone else.  Maybe twelve percent of the population at the outside.  Why even mess with it?

     How about a smaller group, with a more broadly-known history?  Per the U. S. Census, a bit less than two percent of the U.S. population are Native Americans.  People with a little Native ancestry but no meaningful cultural connection,* like me, might bulk that up by another two to five percent.  But just about all of us learned about Custer's Last Stand.

     The Trump administration is busy revamping historical displays at Little Big Horn, polishing the General's tarnished reputation and sweeping mention of broken treaties and Federal government bad faith onto the ash-pile.

     Or take some even more general history, the General in question also having been our first President: at the President's House Site in Philadelphia, there was signage describing the nine enslaved people of George Washington's household at that location, with additional information about Colonial and early American slavery.  There was.  It's been taken down.  It's a matter of historical fact that George Washington owned slaves, most via his marriage to Martha Custis, and what details we have are mixed.  He appears to have freed one small group by leaving them for a year and a day in a location where such "abandonment" amounted to manumission -- but he owned other people, fellow Americans, until the day he died.  You won't get any of that nuance in Philadelphia now, only silence.  They've been unpersoned.

     This is dictator stuff.  Most of the West was shocked by Winston Smith's job in 1984 -- but Stalin had been retconning Soviet and Russian history for decades when Orwell wrote the book.

     History can be ugly.  Messy.  Imprecise.  It is by turns tragic, amusing and embarrassing.  We tell children simple, uplifting stories about their forebears, and hope it will inspire them to do better -- but as we grow, we learn more and more of the real story, and the more complex lessons it teaches.  Sanitizing and simplifying U.S. history, sweeping awkwardness under the rug, pretending "those people" were never there, or only on the sidelines, is morally impoverishing.  You're not obliged to like all our history, or think every bit of it was a good idea -- but you damned well ought to know what happened, by whom, to whom.  We can, at least, know why people were there, what blew up at Haymarket and who was killed or injured, even if we can never know for certain who threw the bomb.  History, as accurate as we can get it, matters far more than vibes.
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* I've checked.  Apparently, liking butter beans and cornbread doesn't count.  Harsh but fair.

Compare And Contrast

      An unpublished comment accused me, "I remember when you were all giddy about the righteous shooting of Ashli Babbit."

     "Giddy," was I?  Well, you can see for yourself; this was the core of the main piece:

     Here's the situation: you and your extended family have gathered in one room of your large house for some all-hands-on-deck thing you do regularly but not frequently -- working out income tax returns, watching The Wizard Of Oz, whatever.  Your family isn't especially popular, and even internally, it has split into two groups that rarely see eye-to-eye.  But you're all there, doing the thing.

     Other people gather in a big group outside on the lawn and start yelling.  Some of them break into the house.  Some adult family members gather the kids and old folks, and get them to a place of safety.  The mob reaches the (now barricaded) French doors that lead to the room you'd all been in.  Some have signs.  Some are shouting.  Others just mill around.  You shout, "Stop!"  You draw your sidearm and point it at the threat.  One of the members of the mob batters out the glass in the door.  Another of them starts to climb through the breach.  You shoot.

     Are you a murderer? 

     What if a similar thing happened at your workplace and a security guard shot a member of the mob that had broken in while they were coming through a just-breach[ed] internal barrier -- is he or she a murderer?

     I addressed it at least two other times, here and here.

     Tl;dr on January 6 is that the mob initiated force; they broke into the closed Capitol building by force, attacked police, broke through doors, damaged public property and smashed out windows, including the internal window Ms. Babbitt launched herself through, toward the muzzles of guns in the hands of Federal officers defending Congress, resulting in her death.  You can find video of the incident.

     In Minneapolis a few days ago, Alex Pretti was recording Federal officers on his phone and more-or-less directing traffic as those officers were doing some kind of immigration enforcement along public streets and sidewalks.  A woman was (apparently) protesting and an officer shoved her to the ground.  Pretti helped her up, standing between her and the officer, and was pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by at least a half-dozen federal agents.  The agents get him face-down and it appears that one removes a gun or gun-shaped object from his waistband and moves away.  An unknown number of the other agents shoot Pretti in the back, at least ten rounds striking him, resulting in his death.  You can find multiple videos of this incident.  Pretti did not initiate force.

     Ashli Babbit and Alex Pretti were both shot by Federal officers.  But Babbitt was an attacker; Pretti was a defender.  Babbitt initiated force.  Pretti did not.

     All deaths are tragic; all avoidable shootings are tragic.  But don't lose sight of who is going after whom.

     And don't call me giddy. 

Nobody "Has It Coming" Like That

     People are sharing shocking videos on social media -- protesters yelling at DHS enforcers, getting pepper balls or spray at close range, shoving and being shoved, ICE agents falling on slick pavement, a protester taking a "beanbag" round from a couple of feet away and being badly injured.

     And the comments run to a mix of, "Aint it awful," and, "Serves 'em right."

     Yes, it is awful -- and no, it's not right.  This kind of rough confrontation is an American tradition dating back to before the Revolutionary War and it doesn't come without risk, but that's not the same as justice, which often (but not always) comes later.

     Nobody's "Got it coming" in that way.  That's what prosecutors and grand juries and defense lawyers and courts are for.  That's what probation, fines and prisons are for.

     Okay, when Wile E. Coyote's scheme to catch the Roadrunner goes wrong and traps him instead, he's got it coming; and so, too, perhaps, when a real person sets a murderous trap and then falls prey to it themselves.  But otherwise?  Stop cheering when people get hurt or killed.  Even when it's people you don't like.  That's utterly immoral.

"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.

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?

There Is Still No Antimemetics Division

     I read and enjoyed There Is No Antimemetics Division in both text forms, and it turns out there's a short film, as well.

     It's well done, and if you enjoy this sort of thing, here you go.

House-To-House Incivility

     I saw the film "Civil War" last night and...wow. Reviewers got it wrong; they focused on the lack of clarity in who's rebelling and over what (we barely know the first and never learn the second*).  Genuine soldiers on both sides come off okay; the danger is always from combatants with no flag.

     On one level, the basic plot is "A Star Is Born" with street combat; on another, the divided future, with real war burning, people far behind the lines ignoring it, power cuts and water shortages nearer the lines, with quiet atrocities and fighters hardened to them feels only too real and only too likely.  This is the future some of our fellow citizens think they want, bloody, divided and lawless, where "what kind of American are you?" is a life or death question and it's fatal to be too foreign in the wrong place at the wrong time.

     Arguably, the ending is a little too easy -- but it's miles and years from the ending of the larger (and, I hope, fictional) story it is told within, a story whose beginnings we never learn but can see all around us, a story written in blood and fire and loss.  This deadly chaos is the enemy, even more than the politicians and fools who long for it.  If it comes, it will leave damage for generations afterward.† I'm no longer sure we will prevent it but we had damned well better try.
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* There are vague hints that suggest water issues in the states mentioned as seceding -- California, Texas and Florida -- and the film shows water shortages in New York city; but water appears plentiful elsewhere and prolific water use sets the tone for a visit to a town largely untouched by war.  While Washington, DC is said to be a place where journalists are shot on sight and the movie's President is apparently a bad guy, we only hear him uttering broad and harmless platitudes in speeches while refusing to hold talks with advancing secessionist forces.  Who started the fighting, over what, and who made it worse rather than negotiating an end is simply beside the point of the story.
 
 † Most American lack recent experience of war, or even recent experience of the scars warfare leaves behind.  Most of the real Civil War's battlegrounds are softly eroded and grown over, a century and a half later.  Look at Ukraine, look at Gaza; look and ask yourself what it's going to take to fix just the physical damage, if and when.

What Day Is It?

      It's Star Trek day, among other things, the day the first episode of the series aired on NBC, the first step in a long cultural arc that took science fiction from being that crazy stuff your parents razzed you for watching and your English teacher despaired of you reading* to a cherished institution featuring Star Wars day every May and Star Trek day as summer comes to an end.

     Fun stuff, but it's a reminder that every day is History Day.†  I was reminded of that more forcefully while listening to a radio news piece from Kyiv this morning, covering the Russian drone strikes in that city.  The reporter had been awakened in the night by the sound of incoming Sahed drones and recorded parts of her story with the engines of the weapons throbbing in the background.  It's an eerie sound, and reminds me of Edward R. Murrow of CBS, broadcasting live from a London rooftop during the Blitz.‡  Or, much later in that war, the guttural buzz and sudden halt of an incoming V-1.

     We're in the run-up to World War III, or at least to a wider European War.  This time, America First holds the White House and Congress; Zelenskyy is no Churchill, nor is Putin Hitler: history does not repeat.  But it does rhyme, and the present verses carry a familiar rhythm.

     I hope I'm wrong, but there's a chill in my bones that freezes optimism.
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*Not quite a decade later, my high school offered a class on "Science Fiction."  But the English department was pretty desperate, in that huge Sports, Shop and (slightly) Math-heavy high school.  My Dad, on the other hand, never stopped regarding it as silly stuff, unworthy of adult interest.  He preferred Westerns.
 
† Is there a History Day?  Well, yes and no.  It's not just one day.
 
‡ At first, BBC didn't want him up there, and refused use of the roof of their main studio location, Broadcast House, fearing Germans might use the sound to fine-tune their bombing.  Eventually, someone realized the value of broadcasting live coverage of the attacks, and British resolve in the face of them, to the then-neutral United States.

Filtering History

     It's best to let historians do their own fighting; they'll do so at the drop of a hat, and discuss the hat's provenance, origins and cultural connections on the way down.  We're best off when we have a lot of them and they're all under some sort of "publish or perish" pressure: they'll fight their way to accuracy, by the jealous pointing of the mistakes of their predecessors and peers if nothing else.

     You know what's not a good idea?  Rewriting history to suit an agenda.  From the Soviets airbrushing purged Party members out of photographs and twisting history books around to suit their own ends to Parson Weems' well-intentioned fable about a young George Washington ruining a cherry tree (but not his untrammeled honesty) or the White House and the Press concealing President Roosevelt's inability to walk unaided, distorting history is harmful.  If you don't have a clear idea where you've been, you're not going to understand where you're going.  Meddling with the presentation of history is literally Orwellian: it's Winston Smith's job in 1984.

     So when the President of the United States tells the Smithsonian Institution -- he is not their boss, by the way -- they're to start combing through their museums and culling any commentary and exhibits that don't jibe with his notion of a positive portrayal of American history, historians are right to object.  The venerable Organization of American Historians is looking out for the rest of us.

Cease Fi-- Incoming!

     In the wake of the U.S. bombing of several nuclear-work sites in Iran, there was supposed to be a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.  The President of the U.S. said so.

     Their militaries don't appear to have gotten the message.  I don't know if their governments have.  Each is accusing the other of going back on the agreement.

     I'm not chortling at Mr. Trump's disappointment (he was chiding the Israelis on social media not long ago).  I'm certainly not cheering on the conflict; it is messy, with missiles, bombs and drones striking civilians along with their (presumed) military targets, in a region already filled with tragedy.

     Who ever calmed a hornet's nest by shaking it?

Playing Their Game

     Outrage -- reaction.  Shock -- reaction.  Blow past limits -- reaction.

     That's the game.  Every day, a new bad thing -- or three, or four.  Even ostensible errors work for them.  And anyone invested in norms, in stability, in lawful, orderly liberty is left off-balance, struggling to keep up.

     I could write about one of the most recent, a harebrained scheme to essentially flash-migrate the Social Security Administration's vast codebase (and the database it manipulates) off ancient, crusty COBOL and the machines it runs on over to something newer, sleeker and supposedly better, but I don't know if I can share just how big a nightmare it is, especially since DOGE code kiddies have already demonstrated hat they don''t even begin to understand COBOL and all the tricks and cruft it takes to make it work.  Informed speculation claims they're going to use AI to get it done -- you know, the same AI that still can't get the right number of fingers on pictures of people.

     But it's only one shock among many, and that is the point: shock and awe.  Blitzkrieg.  Storm in, tear stuff up high, wide and mighty, leave it screwed up until people don't think it it will ever work again, then patch together some cheapjack mess that kind of runs and claim to have saved the day -- though we're nowhere near the "slap up a crappy replacement and play for applause" stage yet, and there's always the risk the trick won't actually work.

     And through it all, attention, attention, attention.  The newsies say the President's name hundreds of times a day, all the nations of the world watch to see where his (and his staff's) whim will fall next, a planned tariff there, a proposed annexation elsewhere....  It'll make your head spin, and it's supposed to.  It's supposed to keep you so off guard you don't notice rights and freedoms ebbing away -- people are grabbed off the street by masked law enforcement, held without recourse to counsel, jailed without trial.  Law firms are being made to bend the knee to the Executive Branch, officials dismissed without following Congressionally-required procedures, and everywhere, the heavy hand of authoritarianism is descending.

     This isn't the America I learned about in Civics class.  And it's not like we weren't warned.

Loosely Translated

     "Boys throw rocks at frogs in fun, but the frogs die for real."
     --Bion of Borystenthes

Saturday Dinner, Sunday Brunch

      Saturday, we watched another episode of Rogue Heroes* and enjoyed a pork roast.  A four-pound Boston Butt, in fact, which I floured, browned and simmered for more than four hours over Tom Yum Chicken Bone Broth, adding chunks of peeled Granny Smith apple early and then potatoes, parsnips, carrots, celery, white onion and Portobello mushrooms.  It was falling-apart tender -- and I have leftovers for two more meals.  The broth is an excellent match for pork with apple.  The TV series is an excellent match for anyone who enjoys well-told WW II history with a touch of informed imagination.

     This morning, another experiment: I have had a packet of microwaveable "Organic Super Grains, Smoky Southwest: sorghum, quinoa, amaranth, and pearl millet" on the shelf for some time.  With a buildup like that, it was going to either be amazing or inedible, and I am very pleased to say it is amazing.  I diced and browned a half-sized can of Spam with some chopped-up orange grape tomatoes (enjoy them while you can: "Bahama Bombs" are a Canadian import), put just a dash or McCormick's curry powder† and a little smoked paprika on it, and stirred in the just-microwaved grains.  When it was time, I pushed it all to the sides and scrambled a couple of eggs, mixing it all together and adding some cilantro (be sure you like it first!) and parsley.  This is as good a breakfast bowl as anyone could wish for, flavorful but not hot.

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* This BBC series, SAS: Rogue Heroes in the home market, tells the story of the formation and early years of the Special Air Service, which requires very little dramatic invention: the men involved were brilliant and a bit off-center, the kinds of men who flourish in wartime and ferment when idle.  Remarkably well-acted and well-cast, after we watched the first episode, I turned to Tamara and remarked, "They made a TV series for you!" The early SAS, along with the Long Range Desert Group, was one of the inspirations behind the TV series Rat Patrol -- but the reality is more incredible than any sanitized (and highly Americanized) 1960s TV program.
 
† I will point out,  as I have in the past, that "curry powder" is not, strictly speaking, an Indian condiment; it's a British or Anglo-Indian mixture of Indian-type spices, and varies widely from one brand to another.  It's good stuff, especially for those of us who don't have ready access to (or knowledge of) the full array of Indian spices, but get to know how hot/sweet/piquant your local varieties are, and understand it for what it is.  McCormick's works well with U. S. Southwestern flavors, so I was confident in using a little of it here.  One thing you will not find in most kinds of curry powder is salt -- which makes it ideal for anything that's already salty.

"Robin Hoodie" Was Never Going To Be A Folk Hero

     It wasn't in the cards.  The UHC CEO assassin wasn't going to be a folk hero or even a comic-book (graphic novel!) vigilante.  Sane people, good people, don't shoot another person in the back unless that person presents an imminent threat to human life.

     Americans kill one another quite often, and on little provocation.  We're doing so less these days -- but we're still doing it.  And if it seems even a little justified -- how many stats have I seen about insurance claim denial rates in the last few days, with United Health Care heading the list -- a lot of us will chime in, or at least nod, or maybe just shrug.

     The fact remains that you've got to be seriously off-axis to commit that kind of murder; in fact, being some kind of nut (not to get too technical) appears to improve the odds of success, as I have written about before when discussing political assassination attempts.

     Did the killer's actions hold up a distorting mirror to the feelings of many Americans about the health-insurance industry?  Undeniably.  Just don't confuse the myth/legend/story with the facts.

     Murder is wrong.

     Running your business in such a way that a plurality (at least) of the people who hear about your murder express positive or neutral feelings about the crime is wrong, too.  It doesn't justify the murder -- but it ought to be food for thought.

One Down, 87 To Go

     It depends on how you count them, but there were almost 90 autocratic governments on Earth yesterday, and today there's one less: Assad isn't running Syria any more.  (Present whereabouts unknown; a plane carrying him may have gone down, and no one is looking very hard.  Update: The Russians say he's been granted asylum in Moscow.  He was their boy in the Middle East for a long time, so it's not unlikely. )

     What comes next?  It's hard to say.  What newscasts are calling "Syrian rebels" is a a polyglot bunch, and the largest bloc, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has palled around with both the "Islamic State" and al-Qaida in the past.  They haven't run with either since 2016; guessing if that was a matter of wanting less crazy or more is an exercise for pundits and intel professionals.  Junior partner is the Syrian National Army, a collection of at least twenty-eight groups;* some sources say at least twenty-one of them have received U. S. assistance in the past, against IS and related threats, but we've been known to hand out goodies to almost anyone who'd smile and promise to fight Communists, Islamic extremists and the like.†  Some of SNA's roots go back to the "Free Syrian Army," and Turkey has been one of their main sources of support, despite the occasional armed squabble.

     You can tie yourself up in knots trying to sort all this out, and by the time you have, the situation will have changed.  None of them liked Assad, or the way he was running the country, and it appears that became a strong enough motivation that they were able to work together.

     It's an open question if they'll be able to continue working together, but we can at least hope.  If you're expecting the Syrian James Madison will come running down from the hinterlands, waving a draft Constitution well-suited to the people of that nation, don't hold your breath.  They might -- and it would be good news if they can -- manage to cobble something together that will hold long enough to make serious inroads against the starvation and misery that part of the world has become famous for.

     It says something about our species that the very cradle of human civilization has become a nightmare of failed states and warlordism, with refugees as the prime regional export.  It says something about us, and it's nothing pleasant.
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* At this point, the better-informed might be wondering, "What of the Kurds?"  They're wondering that, too.  They appear to have very little presence in the SNA.  Kurds are about ten percent of Syrian population and are likely to get what they usually get: short shrift.  The French, the British, the various Allied and UN powers, the local potentates and so on all overlooked them when they drew lines on maps, and it's one more smoldering problem in a place that has an oversupply of tragedies.
 
† And that's nothing new -- go read some early 19th-Century Letters of Marque issued by Congress for examples. A proxy war is a cheap war for everyone except the proxies.

The Eleventh Day Of The Eleventh Month

     It's Veteran's Day -- and I do thank you for your service.  It was Armistice Day to begin with, the end of a war that left a scar twisting across the face of Europe.  Some of the WW I battlefield is still uninhabitable.

     Someone who was my age when the guns fell silent at the eleventh hour in 1918 would have had clear memories of the U. S. Civil war.  That includes some of the soldiers and sailors.  One officer is known to have served during both wars -- and the ones in between.  And the scars from the Civil War remain, too, not as dead or as deadly as France's Red Zones but they're still there, etched across the land, scrawled across history, written on gravestones and in family histories.  War extracts a terrible price and it falls most heavily on the young and strong.  Even in peacetime, most military service consists of long hours of hard work for low pay.

     Those people in uniform are us.  Just like you, your neighbors, the people you work with and the kids you went to school with.  They're a mixed bag -- smart, dumb, short, tall, liberals, conservatives and people who just don't care about politics.  They grew up poor, middle-class and wealthy.  They're every color and all the same color -- green or Navy blue or whatever.  What they have in common is they stepped up.  They are doing -- or they have done -- the job, often far from home, frequently in terrible weather, and, at times, with the understanding there are other people not too far away who intend to kill them.

     I try not to be too glib with, "Thank you for your service."  That service is not something you can nod at acknowledging one day a year and call it good enough.

In The Interest Of Fairness

     Since I did write a single piece on former President Trump's recent trial and conviction, I'd better give the trial and conviction of Hunter Biden (not a former or current President and has never held elected office) the same.

     He lied on a BATFE 4473 form and got caught; it went to trial, the prosecution presented the facts and he was held guilty.  Simple as that.  The surprising thing that he was found out and prosecuted; skylined by having a President for a father and addicted to a particularly stigmatizing drug, his odds of skating by were worse than most.  In a country where 38 of 50 states have legalized a Federally illegal drug (marijuana), 24 of them for recreational use, there must be stacks and stacks of 4473s with entries constituting a felony, just ticking away -- something it would be reasonable for a jury to expect a man with a law degree like, oh, Hunter Biden, to understand.  It's not as if BATFE made it a trick question:
     "21. f. Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?
Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside."

     While the Feds periodically update the form (it now includes a tickbox for "Non-Binary" in the answers for question 14, which makes sense given that they want ethnicity, race, height, weight, hair and eye color, too, all so they can pick you out of a crowd) they've wanted to know if you were breaking Federal drug laws for as long as I've been filling out those forms, and they ask because Uncle Sam has decided drug users shouldn't be owning guns.  You don't even have to be an addict to get the downcheck.

     So the bottom line is, if you're smoking the Devil's cabbage (et illegal cetera), don't go buying guns.  It's a Federal crime to lie on the 4473 form and it's a Federal crime to possess the firearm.  If they can do it to Hunter Biden -- and they most certainly did -- they can do it to you, too, and you're probably not an attorney nor especially rich, and it's a cinch your Dad isn't President.*  Sure, maybe they'll overlook you (it usually takes an arrest for something else first), but I wouldn't count on it.
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* Even if he was, he'd probably do the same thing Joe Biden has done, and refuse to pardon you.  Call it a strong moral stance or call it a cynical ploy, the result is the same.