highs and lows

My morning glory bush cutting surprised me with another flower this morning.

As it turned out I didn’t have to go visit baby boy Harrison on Sunday. Audra and her aunt were out doing some shopping and they stopped by on their way home. He’s really not as big as his birth picture made him seem, just a normal sized 8 pound newborn (that's dad in the background).

Yard work continues. So far I’ve cut back the lantana, the ginger, the shrimp plant, most the cosmos, the Mexican bird of paradise, the yellow bells, pruned five of the roses, some of the wild petunias, the philippine violets; hauling it over to the burn pile one garden cart full at a time. Still to go are the rest of the cosmos, five more roses, the confederate roses, the morning glory bush, and the banana trees and that's just in my yard. Ten petal anemones are starting to bloom (I took a picture but it's not in focus), the struggling little azalea I dug up and potted is putting out new growth. 

I had planned to wait until the end of February to take the plants back outside but I may go ahead and take the rest of the ones in the house out this weekend.

We had a little excitement yesterday. When we got up Tuesday there was a white sedan parked in the driveway of the shop yard blocking access. I just figured it belonged to one of Robin’s friends that come stay with her now and then though they usually pull all the way in. Didn’t think anything more about it until Mikey showed up after work to work on one of his cars and he couldn’t get in. Turned out not one of Robin’s friends and one of the rear windows had been busted out. So we figured stolen car dumped here during the previous night. He called the sheriff who showed up, checked with various databases and yep, stolen car reported earlier in the day in Houston. 

I got texts from two neighbors wanting to know what was up with all the police (three cars of sheriffs eventually showed up), some of the neighborhood kids came to see asking me if I was going to jail. No, sweetie, I’m not going to jail.

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Minnie this morning…is it safe?

No puppy, it is not safe. The destruction of our government and of what this country used to be is ongoing, a massive tidal wave of destruction and cold hearted cruelty not only to the undocumented residents but of our black and brown and female citizens who no matter how capable, talented, educated, deserving, or highly qualified, they no longer deserve their jobs or recognition for their work and accomplishments simply because they aren't white men. 

Much of what Trump and Musk and their republican enablers are doing is illegal but since they own both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court and the Department of Defense and are purging the Department of Justice and the FBI so only loyalists to Trump remain, the only recourse to stop them is the courts and that takes time. By the time the lawsuits make their way through the system it will be too late, the damage will already be done; agencies dismantled, departments shut down, employees let go, projects ended. 

Elon Musk and his hackers, unelected private citizens of an unofficial and not congressionally recognized ‘department’, have been given unfettered access to the Federal payment system, one of whom, I read, has been made an admin who can make whatever changes or deletions he wants. Even if it is 'read only' like they claim that does not stop them from downloading or copying any file they want. Musk seems to think that he and he alone has the authority to authorize payments regardless of what Congress appropriated the funds for. There was a huge protest going on last night and continued today in front of the Treasury building and the mainstream news isn’t covering it. 

Musk and his aides are illegally closing buildings and preventing access by employees. They have downloaded god only knows what documents they do not have clearance for. They have effectively shut down USAID stranding workers and cutting them off from secure communications in dangerous locales. They have access to our social security numbers and our private Medicare and Medicaid records. Trump's aides are drafting an executive order to shut down the Department of Education. When Democrats called to subpoena Musk today to question him about his actions, Republicans blocked it.

Trump has fired all the prosecutors that worked with Jack Smith and on the J6 cases and those involving Trump, they are asking for a list of all FBI agents who worked on those cases to be identified, they have sent letters to every CIA personnel encouraging them to resign; the same offer sent to every civil service employee offering 8 months pay if they do, however none of that money has been authorized and we all know Trump is notorious for not paying his debts and Musk made the same promises to employees of Twitter/X that were not kept. Word is our spy network is going to be shifted to focus on the West. 

Trump intends to send “dangerous” (ie anyone who opposes Trump) American citizens to detention camps in Guantanamo Bay away from the eyes of those who are concerned about their civil rights as stated in the Constitution and maybe even prisons in El Salvador. His new manifest destiny, ignoring established international law recognizing fixed borders, means Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama, and now Gaza are at risk of invasion. 

Our Constitution is just a quaint piece of paper now since the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court no longer uphold it and no law enforcement agency is stepping up to enforce it. There is no longer the Rule of Law in this country, the law only applies to those who oppose him now. Whatever the result of all this is and we hopefully get Congress back in the midterms, it will be almost impossible to reconstruct the government for the people by the people and it has only been two weeks. Things are going to get much much worse.

I know this is very doom and gloom but that’s kind of where we’re at right now.