This is the week when TACOman thought he had the Nobel
Peace Prize all sewn up, with his strike on three Iranian nuclear development
sites on Saturday, and claims that Iran’s ability to build weapons was “completely
obliterated”. He flapped off to the NATO summit in The Hague with his willie out ready
to wave it all over our allies just to show them how it’s done, because now
there can be peace.
The fact that early analysis of the damage indicates
possibly not so much (caveat: that’s all it is: early analysis) has him and his
toadies spitting nails and demanding more strikes on reporters asking about
this. If you question the effectiveness of the bomb run, you’re anti-American,
anti-US military and anti-Santa.
If he didn’t want that prize so desperately, and if his big
birthday parade the Saturday before hadn’t been such a bust, we wouldn’t be
seeing these unhinged tirades. According to SecDef Whiskey Pete, this was the most complicated, most extensive and most successful military operation in history.
Move over, D-Day landings.
So, of course today’s earworm has to be “Give Peace a
Chance”. John and Yoko, 1969.
We had a lemon tree in our backyard when I was growing up.
We used to harvest the fruit, juice them and freeze it in ice cube trays to
have it available any time. I was an adult before I ever paid for a lemon and
have been aghast ever since at their price.
So, last year I bought three dwarf citrus trees: a Meyer and
a Ponderosa lemon, as well as a lime.
The first stumbling block to my hopes of home-grown juice
was chipmunks. Turns out they love rampaging
through the branches, which knocks off both the flowers and any budding
fruits. I wrote off any benefit from the orchard last year, but there’s always
Spring, right?
Ah, well—we had several days of sub-freezing weather last
February, and even though I had the pots insulated with bubble wrap, I lost all
three. (I know it’s a stretch being in Northern Virginia, but what with global
warming, we’ve had very mild winters the past few years, so it was worth a
shot. Also—my gardenia bush survived fine. It was in a larger pot, though. Besides: there's a guy in London whose banana tree is producing fruit.)
So last month I bought three more dwarf trees. This time, I’ve
armored them against chipmunks, involving a very interesting (and scratchy)
session with chicken wire. Fort Citrus looks odd, but so far it seems to be
working.
Now I just have to keep them watered through the climate-change-is-a-hoax
hotter-than-usual summer.
We’re currently under a heat dome in the environs of The
District They Call Columbia, with a triple-digit heat index, so it’s too hot
and humid to even think.
If it’s the same family
I met before, they’ve lost one of the goslings since our last encounter.
Mom and dad kept a close eye on me as I walked past, trying not to look
suspicious.
Well, okay—here’s something I haven’t really thought about
since the Cuban Missile Crisis: I’m grateful that I woke up today—alive—in an
apparently peaceful (and decidedly unbombed) neighborhood. Despite TACOman sending
American bombers to destroy three sites in Iran (a sovereign nation, with which
our vice president insists we are not at war; which would make these attacks a
war crime).
Mullahs and the IRGC not being known for measured
responses.
(Is it a coincidence that the Kleptocrat’s long-desired
military display in the street (it was very short) of DC was a damp squib while
millions of Americans flooded cities and towns across the country with
protestors proclaiming “No Kings”? And that he left the G7 meeting early
because Macron pissed him off and he didn’t want to stick around to see the welcome
being given to Volodymir Zelenskyy? And his cockamamie budget bill is in
swampland? So his ego is at low ebb and he wants to show that he is too
the biggest frog in this pond?)
And if you’re reading this, I’m grateful that you, too, are
alive. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Despite RWNJs assuring us that climate change is a hoax,
the National Weather Service assures us that we’re in for an exceptionally hot
summer. Deep joy.
For the past two days here in the environs of the District
They Call Columbia, we’ve had temperatures hovering around 90F, with humidity
at about the same percentage. It was already 75F and ghastly humidity when I
went out for my morning walks.
And they’re predicting a heat wave for the weekend.
Meaning: high 90s and “you need gills to absorb oxygen” to distinguish from the
past few days.
When I walked out of the house yesterday morning, it was
75F, but the humidity must have been about 90%. All the windows were fogged
over because of the condensation on the exterior, and my glasses fogged up the
instant I stepped over the threshold.
Big, big gratitude today for the millions of people in the
US (and around the world) who peacefully marched in the No Kings protests on
Saturday. There were gatherings in around 2000 communities across the nation, in
numbers even the completely Klepto-cowed media could not ignore.
In Minnesota, following the assassination of one Democratic
lawmaker and her husband, and the attempted assassination of another, protest
leaders called off the planned march, but people still showed up at the state
capitol in their thousands.
Estimates for the flagship march in Philadelphia put the
number of marchers at 80,000.
My hometown of Pasadena put on a parade of 20,000.
LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, 60 cities in
Texas, Boston, NYC, West Palm Beach—all across the country, in Red and Blue
states and cities—people flooded the streets to declare their repugnance for
this administration and its enablers. Even on the streets of Washington, D.C.,
which pointedly had not scheduled a protest (because of Kleptocrat threats),
120,000 people showed up—without incident.
(Although the evening before, Capitol Police arrested about
60 veterans who’d parked themselves on the Supreme Court steps to protest cuts
to Veterans Administration services while hundreds of millions are being spent
on invading US cities and a pointless parade. This action provided visuals that
encapsulate the ethos of the regime: two cops handcuffing an 87-year-old vet
who uses a walker for ambulation.)
Except for the trigger-happy LA cops firing "less-than-lethal" rounds at a non-NK demonstration and a
couple of incidents involving people driving their cars into crowds of
protesters, the events of the day were peaceful, belying the Kleptocrat’s
rationale for nationalizing the militia to put down “insurrection” and “rebellion”
last week. It was delicious.
Meanwhile, his long-term wet-dream of a big military parade
that would put Macron’s Bastille Day effort in the shade and show his besties
Kim and Putin that he’s just as strong as them (and, NGL, one of the drivers
for “No Kings”), turned out to be…quite the damp squib. Putatively the
celebration of the US Army’s 250th anniversary, TACOman was ecstatic
that the day was also his 79th birthday, and what tinpot dictator
doesn’t love a lot of military hardware and big, manly men in uniforms marching
past—all for him?
The weather forecast had predicted the possibility of
thunderstorms, which would have probably ended with cancellation—rain okay, but
lightning is problematic for crowds. I confess I was praying for thunder,
lightning, tornados, frogs, locusts and possibly even a very localized
earthquake, but what we got was even better.
So much better.
Because it turns out that the big parade was pathetic in
every possible way. The systems set up to manage access and egress were amateur,
resulting in a huge bottleneck at one security point while another was utterly
empty. Fortunately, tho, not all that many people showed up. Maybe 20,000? A
far cry from the 250,000 confidently predicted. Those who actually showed up
were markedly listless; I suppose it could be the delta between what they’d
been led to expect and what they got. Turns out that Americans don’t get all
that revved up by military hardware and marching soldiers in cammies who don’t
appear to have mastered the basics of drill.
(Look—this is not representative on the US Army; we all
know they deliver the goods. But honestly—they’re going to be living this
fiasco down for generations, and it’s, sadly, a self-inflicted wound.)
If you think I’m exaggerating, watch this video; you can
hear the tank creaking because the onlookers are silent. No cheers, no oohs. If
the videographer had panned to the audience, you’d probably see them playing
Candy Crush on their phones.
It was so bad that even TACO and his inner circle were
dazed. I mean—look at these faces:
The contrast between the joy, energy and purpose of the No
Kings rallies everywhere and this limp, ideas-above-its-station, amateur-hour
narcissistic exercise is just stunning. And I’m grateful for it all.
