Wednesday, February 26, 2025

2/26/2026

 Wednesday, February 26, 2025

D+111

1935 RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) is first demonstrated in Daventry, England

1973 Triple Crown horse Secretariat was bought for a record $5.7m

2023 One of the most violent incidents of revenge by mobs of Israeli settlers, who burned 200 buildings in Palestinian villages and killed at least one person after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis in the northern West Bank

2025 First death from measles in the US occurred in Texas in a decade, and the first child to die in 22 years amid an outbreak affecting 124 people 


An attempt to capture JPG's sunrise photo

In bed at 9:05, awake and up at 4:52.    

Prednisone, day 311, 5 mg., day 22, Kevzara, day 8/14.  2.5 mg. prednisone at 5 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.  Other meds at 10:15 a.m. 

Browsing Facebook this morning, I see JPG's regular sunrise photo taken with her trusty iPhone.  Sarah Smarsh, a crush bunny for years, announced that she is leaving social media for a year to concentrate on writing a book she has committed to writing.  Her post referred to her writing as "an act of resistance against political and corporate forces that seek to siphon our lifeblood for their profit."  She attached an article on the significance of the U. S Postal Service to rural Americans and adds"As with public schools and every other struggling component of our government system, the main issue behind its struggles is intentional underfunding and onerous burdens devised by those who profit from privatization."  In another post, Heather Cox Richardson quotes Pete Buttigieg: "A defining policy battle is about to come to a head in this country. The Republican budget will force everyone—especially Congress and the White House—to make plain whether they are prepared to harm the rest of us in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest.”  He was referring to the upcoming Budget Bill and the basic differences between Democrats and Republicans over (1) how to raise money to support government programs and (2) what to spend the money on.  Richardson notes that "Since the 1990s, when the government ran surpluses under Democratic president Bill Clinton, tax cuts under Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, along with unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have produced massive budget deficits that, in turn, have added trillions to the national debt."  Richardson went on to explain, as she does so well, what exactly is going on in Congress over the Budget Bill, and how the Republicans proposed to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy by cuts to (1) Medicare and Medicaid, and (2) food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  It is hard for me to believe what is going on in America now, but it shouldn't be.  For years, we have been unwilling to tax ourselves at sufficiently high rates to pay the nation's bills with only a sustainable level of annual deficits and national debt. Joe Scarborough in one of his morning rants accurately points out that from the founding of the American Republic until 2001, over those 220 years, the United States accumulated $5 trillion in debt.  In the last 20+ years, we have accumulated up to $36 trillion.  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells us that if the Republicans pass what they are proposing to pass, the debt is going to increase another $23 trillion over the next decade.  Scarborough says, accurately, "We are in meltdown mode."  He points out that we spend more money on interest on our national debt than we do on the defense budget, which is the highest war budget in the world.  THIS IS MADNESS.  What kind of world are we leaving our children, grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren?  If Congress and Trump follow through on this budget, America will be less great, less secure, less wealthy, and less healthy - all the "MAGAs" upside down.  More rural hospitals will shut down.  More elderly people will be tossed out of nursing homes while Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Trump will be wealthier and probably living on their massive yachts in offshore Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or perhaps in penthouses in Dubai or Abu Dhabi.

Russian asset or Russian agent?  I've asked this question before about Donald Trump.  In Thomas Friedman's column today, we find this: 

The drama going on between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine raises one of the most disturbing questions I’ve ever had to ask about my own country: Are we being led by a dupe for Vladimir Putin — by someone ready to swallow whole the Russian president’s warped view of who started the war in Ukraine and how it must end? Or are we being led by a Mafia godfather, looking to carve up territory with Russia the way the heads of crime families operate? “I’ll take Greenland, and you can take Crimea. I’ll take Panama, and you can have the oil in the Arctic. And we’ll split the rare earths of Ukraine. It’s only fair.”

Either way, my fellow Americans and our friends abroad, for the next four years at least, the America you knew is over. The bedrock values, allies and truths America could always be counted upon to defend are now all in doubt — or for sale. Trump is not just thinking out of the box. He is thinking without a box, without any fidelity to truth or norms that animated America in the past.

. . .

[There's] a benign interpretation of Trump — that he is just besotted with Putin, Russia’s Christian nationalist, anti-woke crusader, and not applying the common sense that he promised. But then there is also another explanation: Trump does not see American power as the cavalry coming to rescue the weak seeking freedom from those out to quash them; he sees America as coming to shake down the weak. He’s running a protection racket. 

Black Bart Musk appeared at DJT's first cabinet meeting.  A real shitshow.  One lie after another.

 

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