The latest government shutdown. It’s like clockwork anymore.

It’s all about leverage, a tool, a way to make a statement, a protest. Hostage taking. Yes, we are apparently trillions of dollars in debt, but needs don’t suddenly disappear. Balancing this budget would take a Herculean amount of compromise and open-mindedness, never mind belt tightening. Is it mostly futility anymore?

How do we balance a budget that has rubber stamping and borrowing built in, and now a recalcitrance unmatched in the history of the country?

Who would be minding the store? Who could possibly keep an eye on it all, and shielded from those who can’t keep themselves from helping themselves? Right now, it’s a bunch of kids in a candy store, with a gutless bully instigating at every turn.

I came out to the kitchen a bit before 5 this morning, and saw that the Moon was casting its light through the window that looks out on the back yard. It was quite bright, and I had to get a picture of it. Of course, the pic won’t do it justice, but it still looks kind of cool. The snow pack adds to the ambience.

I found and find it amazing that the brightness is reflected light that has traveled 240,000 miles to bathe our countertops with enough light to mix a batch of pancakes.

An army of redactors can help them sleep better. It took an extra month or so, but more Epstein files have been made public, and we’ll see what’s still left in the way of breadcrumbs. We already know the Trump administration will call it all a big nothing burger, as well as pinning blame and pointing to all the Democrats who flew on Epstein’s plane or sailed on his boat or spent time on his island.

Trump will emerge unscathed, as usual, and we’ll move on to the next crisis—election interference, more payback, ill-advised policy decisions, etc.

Daily writing prompt

What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?

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The default answer is jumping out of an airplane, but that’s too easy. In terms of relevance to the present day, I’d have to say committing to a position on what we see happening in this country right now, and then acting accordingly– whether it’s adding my voice and physical presence to the demonstrations, being ready to defend my neighbors, regularly submitting editorials to the local paper, contacting our Congress members. Just being more vocal and actively involved.

One might think there have already been enough precipitating occurrences and insane verbiage to prompt a response of some sort from just about everybody. Maybe what I’m most scared to do is admit that we’re where we’re at, that we’ve sunk so far, so fast.

I’d been wondering where Tulsi Gabbard had gone—hadn’t heard from or about her for a while. Turns out she’s sniffing for dirt in the Georgia election case, still part of the grand Epstein cover-up, most likely looking for something that won’t exist but will cause consternation among the talking heads at Fox News and elsewhere and give Republicans in Congress something else to crow about and use as their own diversion.

We should stop asking how low they can go. They’re nowhere near the bottom.

I recently heard a commentator suggest that Donald Trump could change the tone of immigration policy by basically muzzling Stephen Miller, because Miller appears to be the one calling the shots when it comes to these heavy-handed ICE raids and the growing unrest as a result of them.

Miller, it appears, has been an L7 weenie most of his life, and now, on the biggest of stages, he gets to finally confirm this for all to see. What we’re seeing in the Trump administration, when it comes to immigration policy, besides laziness and cowardice, isn’t restraint or fairness or anything approaching a reasonable treatment of the issue. Instead we get this deprived soul who calls murdered protesters domestic terrorists, conjures a goon squad, runs rough shod over peoples’ lives and livelihoods, dispensing “justice”, deporting people who have visas or are in the process of doing the right things to gain citizenship, who have families and are holding jobs and trying to free themselves from deplorable conditions in their home countries.

Sure, some who have been caught are illegals and criminals, but not all of them, and there seems to be little effort expended toward discerning the difference. The larger policy is one of zero tolerance and mistrust, a skewed understanding of “what is fair,” and an overarching suspicion and fear of people who aren’t white.

I wonder what happened in Miller’s early years that turned him into such a pariah.

And what are we to think of an administration whose platform’s appeal, in part, appears to reside in picking on people, kicking them when they’re down?