that was an exercise in magical thinking

Well, fuck, so much for hope that this year will somehow be better. Trump ordered an unprovoked attack on Venezuela in the wee hours this morning bombing Caracas, Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira targeting military installations, capturing and kidnapping President Maduro and his wife who have been “extracted” from their country and indicted in New York for narco-terrorism, conspiracy, and possession of machine guns among other charges. Possession of machine guns? In his own country? Make no mistake, this is not and never has been about drugs. It has always been about Venezuela’s oil reserves and Trump’s desire to start a war of his own despite his boasting of how many wars he has ended and his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize. This man, who ran on being the ‘peace’ president, has bombed seven countries and he hasn’t even been in office for a full year yet, needing to show his buddies Putin and Netanyahu that he is a strongman too. It’s not as if we need Venezuela’s oil, we’re not running out, power grids around the nation are not failing for lack of oil. This is simply greed and his bottomless need to be the biggest baddest bully, it’s about control and bringing other countries to heel, like China who gets a lot of oil from Venezuela. The Cult is already championing Trump’s removal of a repressive dictator, that the Venezuelan people are dancing in the street, as if Trump is liberating the country. The claim falls flat considering Trump supports and admires every other repressive dictator in the world for their complete control and power. Wait until the Venezuelans figure out that they will have no say in who will govern their country, that their lives will not improve, that Trump will appoint someone who will rape their country of its resources and funnel the money back to the US. Venezuela did not get their country back or their freedom, they have become a colony of the US.

And so much for the hope that the military will not carry out illegal orders and make no mistake, this was an illegal act. There is no proof that drugs are being smuggled in from Venezuela, in fact drug deaths are declining in this country, Venezuela has not attacked us, our nation is not under pressure from lack of oil, and Congress did not meet and hold a vote to endorse this military aggression against another country, doubtless they were even informed in advance. Will the Republican Congress finally act now to rein in Trump’s egregious illegal power grabs? Absolutely not. 

Unfortunately, this is not the first time this country has engaged in regime change in Latin America and other parts of the world and the results have always been dismal. It never leads to improvement for the people, not when we set up a puppet government or when we actively govern because freedom is never the motivation. It’s always greed for a country’s resources.

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And because all that isn’t bad enough my kitchen sink is almost completely stopped up. This is a chronic and recurrent problem. Whoever built this house did a crappy job of plumbing from the kitchen sink to the septic system. When we first bought this place and it stopped up almost immediately, the plumber replaced the 45˚ turn under the house with the curved sweep it should have been which has helped but there is some other issue somewhere between the sink and the septic tank. We have to have it completely reamed out every few years, using a powerful unclogging agent in between times but eventually that stops working and we have to call the plumber again. The only real solution is to have the piping completely replaced. Anyway, the plumber is supposed to come today.

I finished the grid page in my art journal. Now trying to decide what to do next, another page or may start a new painting.

But before that I’m going to pick up pecans one more time here and across the street to sell and there are still so many up in the trees. It’s so warm out there, currently 70˚ and in the 80s the next few days, another week of spring/summer when we should be having highs in the 50s and 60s.