You fascists are bound to lose.

 It's Saturday again and it's been another week. The second impeachment of ex-President Donald Trump dominated both the news and the News. Really, apart from Mississippi State Bill 2765, that's pretty much all I wrote about Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

 And it all ended this afternoon like a fart in a hurricane with a vote of 57-43 to acquit. Off the top of my head - and I'm too lazy to look - I don't know if the two-thirds rule that could be affected by getting rid of the filibuster applies here, but it does seem kind of dumb that Trump got away despite the most bipartisan vote to convict in history.

 We'll look more at it tomorrow after it's had a day to marinate both in the public and in my own head. No one's really surprised that Trump was acquitted, not really. The number of GOP who voted to convict is a bit of a surprise and it's something to ponder just what all this suggests for the future of the Republican Party. But, as I said, that's a discussion for a later time. If I remember, of course.

 I do believe Seasonal Affective Disorder has sat on my head. The last couple of days has been a struggle to do much more than go back to sleep. It's a weird feeling. Not depressed or gloomy so much, maybe a bit melancholic and wistful. Part of it or, perhaps, most of it is due to the weather. It's cold and grey, and will probably get down in the twenties tonight. Perfect weather for staying and contemplating your navel.

 Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It probably comes as no surprise that I've never had much use for that particular holiday. I've had two different romantic partners tell me I am a man without romance in his soul, and who am I to argue. If my partner put it on a pedestal, I'd do a dinner or at least a card, but if she didn't I barely noticed. I've always wondered, though, if people who weren't making money off it actually liked the holiday like they do Halloween or even St. Patrick's Day.

 But I've spoken a number of times about my current bewilderment about my romantic history, or lack thereof, so enough of that. Frankly, it's drifted out of my mind and I have no desire to stoke that flame. I finished the second book in Wallace Henry's Shock series, Blood Shock. Apparently, there's more to it, and if there's a problem with it at all is I don't really think it needs to be a series. As I said, the rhythm is weird to me and I believe it's because it strikes me as a bit unnecessarily padded to stretch it out.

 In any event, the next book isn't available so to hell with that. If I still remember when it comes out, I'll worry about it then as there have been enough twists to make me wonder what happens next. I'm not sure where to go next. I have The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin on deck and I need to make sure I'm in the right frame of mind. Her books are heavy and ask a lot of the reader. The difference between that and, say, Blood Shock is the difference between a steak dinner and a bag of popcorn. Both are enjoyable, but only one takes a while and sticks with you after you're done with it.

 Okay, that's word count. This is pretty insubstantial and I'm not going to pretend it isn't. I'm not very positive about the whole writing thing right now, to the point where I don't want to think about it much less write about it. So that's that. If something comes up, yadda yadda, otherwise I'm saving it for tomorrow's News.

Friday, February 7, 2020

 I don't know who or why, but some read the tar out of this blog yesterday. I got 164 hits, which not only destroys that all previous records of hit-per-day but also more hits than I usually get in a month. I surely do appreciate it, whoever you are and why ever you did. Tell your friends and relations. Most of the time it's more interesting than yesterday's half-baked gibberish, too. Well, sometimes.

Thursday, February 6, 2020

 I'm not going to lie, beloved. I've had a long day and I am beat. So, we'll keep this short and maybe look at the horror that is America 2020 tomorrow.

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

 Well, what we all knew would happen happened. I mean, no one's really all that shocked, right? Going into it, any other outcome would've been an uphill climb even without the stumbling blocks that kept getting tossed in the path.

Monday, February 3, 2020

 In a bit of a funk today. I would say it's the same funk I've been in since the beginning of the year, but apparently I was in a good mood yesterday. I have no idea why yesterday was special, because today was just as if not more pleasant, but there you go. Scrambled brain chemistry doesn't have to make sense.

Saturday, February 1, 2020

 Sometimes I think part of my sleeping problems, or the current iteration thereof, is that one of the reasons I rarely get more than two or three hours a time, is I'm remembering my dreams again. Read somewhere that heavy marijuana use is inability to remember dreams. I am here to report that, yes, all that fits in.

Friday, January 31, 2020

 The last day of the month of the new year and the new decade. To quote someone sharper than me, if this represents the free trial for 2020 or, indeed, the '20s, I'm not sure I want to sink anymore money into it. But here we are.

Thursday, January 30, 2020

 Man, the Sleep took a-hold of me this morning and instead of trying to fight it off, I let it run wild. I didn't have anything I had to do today besides go to the gym, and I don't really like doing that any way. I need to go, don't get me wrong, and I recognize that, but you will never get me to enjoy it.

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

 For whatever reason, yesterday took a lot out of me. And just because I haven't really gotten much feedback off it, I'm linking to my love letter to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy again. You can't stop me.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

 The first month of the new year, of the new decade. Far out, man.

Monday, January 27, 2020

 We're going to keep this short and to the point. I rattled on longer than I meant to last night, and I think it took more out of me than I'd planned. It's an exhausting life, I tell you what.

Saturday, January 25, 2020

 You know, it almost never fails but I get more hits when I eschew the News and concentrate on the Gibberish. I mean, it's not giant or even notable numbers, but it's the only time I hit double digits. I wonder what it says.

Thursday, January 23, 2020

 Momma bought her a Jamey Johnson CD, The Dollar, from Amazon, so she gets the MP3's along with the physical CD. I have Amazon Prime Music Unlimited so she's playing her new album as well as discovering the 300-plus Gigs worth of music I have on there. That should keep her occupied for a few days.

 She's also in a really good mood with lots of energy. See, Momma's 70, has had torn ACL in both knees, had one kneecap replaced and is overweight. In the last couple of days she's been going to the gym at ICC, and after a long, long time of trying to find one that's right for her - particularly here in Northeast Mississippi - she's hit pay dirt with this one. She says she's got so much energy she's worried what's going to happen, because that's how her mind works.

 I tell her enjoy it because I feel like someone sucked the life right out of me. I don't know if it's the front that's moved - it's rained like pouring piss out of a boot all day - or because I've been out of lithium since Monday. It's been refilled, so hopefully that'll whack me out of this mood. Granted, this is just another fluctuation in the sour frame of mind I've been in since the first of the year. Might just be the Brand New Year Blues, I don't know.

 Part of it is frustration with this. I've been pounding away at this gibberish for six months plus, now, and it's still pretty much the same gibberish it was when I started. I am still enjoying myself but one thing that's bugged me for years is a lack of purpose, a lack of direction for my existence, and frankly, I'm not finding one here. Fun is fun, sure, but maybe I've spent too much time having fun. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine with leaving no footprint on the sands of time, and a hard look around makes me glad I'm not leaving anything behind when I leave.

 Ah, well. Dark thoughts and foul moods. My cynicism is getting the best of me and I'm finding myself with less patience with the rest of the world. Twitter gives too many people with too little to say too much of a platform, and our only recourse is to be that much more vapid and unoriginal. It's all performative and glamour without actual substance, it feels like. Which is, of course, arrogant as hell of me. Where do I get off passing judgement on everyone else's plasticity when I've got nothing going on inside.

 Anyhow. The third day of Impeachment is in swing, and it seems the GOP strategy is to not pay any attention through the actual trial while expressing outrage that anyone would dare question that Prince of Men, Donald Trump. The Democrats are providing a good case and there's still something like six Republican Senators on the bubble, but when the rubber hits the road, they're doing what they're told.

 Again, the GOP spent the past 30 years getting the base in the mood to attach themselves to a charismatic authoritarian who'd threaten "enemies", be they foreign countries or the U.S. press or even just people who didn't vote for him. What they didn't expect, though, is Trump's ascendancy, someone who'd take that spot with none of the subtlety or skill that American politics requires. Reagan, Nixon, either Bushes would've gotten away with something similar if all they cared about was pleasing The Base. That's all Trump cares about, though, because The Base feeds his ego and they would be perfectly happy if the last thing all of his "enemies" saw the barrel of a gun.

 I don't know. I'm just in a mood. Here's another link to the Willie Nash petition and another example of how half-ass Mississippi runs its prisons. Again, though, the average Mississippian is fine with this, because the cruelty is the point. We're a very Puritan/Hobbsian nation and especially state sometimes. I am about a third of the way through Pillars of Eternity II and spent most of my waking moments today reading Jorge Luis Borges short stories while listening to Johann Sebastian Bach while it rained all day.

 Let's be honest, if nothing else, that's not a bad way to spend the day.

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

 Today would have been Sam Cooke's 89th birthday. My advice to you? Go listen to his 1963 album Night Beat. You'll feel better about whatever it is.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

 Still out of it and disinclined to get back into it. This is the fifth or maybe sixth day in a row for this sort of mood. In the same state, I'm not really into doing this, either, but we do have our pride.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

 I've been staring at an empty screen long enough to just say "the hell with it" and start putting down whatever comes out. This is becoming a habit, this sort of lead-in paragraph, whenever I don't have anything specific to write about. However, since no one is paying me, I don't see a problem.

Thursday, January 16, 2020

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Wednesday, January 15, 2020

 This is starting to get irritating. Just as I put last night's Gibberish to bed, a new wrinkle dropped in the whole "get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden" deal that's got Trump's nuts in a sling. It looked pretty heavy, so I figured I'd better give it a night. One, to let it work itself out and, two, to get where I can wrap my head around it and study on just what it means.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

 Man, this weather is foul. The drenching we got this weekend really didn't go away so much as give us a slight respite yesterday. We've seen three to four inches all over the state and we're supposed to get two more days of rain before another slight break allows us to mop up before more rain this weekend.

Friday, January 3, 2020

 Well. We all know what happened last night. I'm really not in the mood to be flip or clever right now, so let's just pull together what we know and try to get something solid to wrap our heads around. Maybe at the end we'll relax and cut loose a bit. Maybe.

 Last night around 6 p.m. U.S. Central time, the United States military at the behest of President Donald Trump launched an airstrike at the Baghdad airport killing Qassem Soleimani. General Soleimani was head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force, the country's military arm specializing in unconventional warfare and military intelligence. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander in the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), part of an umbrella organization covering various paramilitary forces sponsored by Tehran for actions in Iraq. As of right now, I can't find much information on the damage done the airport or how many, if any, civilian casualties were the result of the strike. Ten people were killed overall, reported the IRGC, including at least five other members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Updates as they come.

 It should be noted the Quds are a separate entity from the Iranian Army and were formed by Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1979 Islamic uprising in Iran. They still have close ties to the religious faction of the Iranian government, including the current leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, and has been designated a "terrorist organization" by the U.S. However, Soleimani also played an important roll in the regions beating back of ISIS, which included involvement from the U.S.

 Under Soleimani, the Quds have been accused of a number of terrorist actions against the United States military and other parties in the Middle East. Vice-President Mike Pence tweeted out a number of charges against the Quds, including involvement with the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. that lead to military bungles in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, he's either lying or doesn't know what he's talking about, because the commission he cites found just the opposite.

 What is true is that U.S.-Iranian relations have gotten extremely hostile since Trump pulled out of the landmark nuclear agreement with Tehran last year, mainly due to Trump's overall pique with President Obama. In recent weeks, it's gotten worse, including the death of an American contractor on Dec. 27, due to rocket attack in Iraq. The U.S. blamed the attack on a PMF militia, Kataib Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, and retaliated with airstrikes against sites in Iraq and Syria two days later, killing at least 25 fighters.

 More tellingly, a protest kicked up at the heavily fortified U.S embassy in Baghdad Dec. 31, where demonstrators, either sympathizers with the PMF or members. For whatever reason they were protesting, there was an attempt to vandalize the embassy which was mostly unsuccessful. After the airstrike, the Department of Defense released a statement blaming Soleimani for not only the death of the American contractor and attacks on American soldiers in the region, but also claimed he was behind the embassy protests.

 Apparently changing course on his opinion of U.S. military intelligence agencies, Trump order the strike, an "opening of opportunity", to deter future terrorist actions against the United States. He did so without any consultation with Congress, particularly the "Gang of Eight", a colloquial term for the members of Congress who're supposed to be consulted on any military or intelligence actions made by the U.S. government. Trump briefed his head toady, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, but kept Democrats in the dark, severely pissing off Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

 The general consensus in the U.S., both among political leaders and the press, is that Soleimani was a right bastard and being blown apart in an airstrike was too good for him. Most of America's allies, such as France, the United Kingdom and NATO, are urging "restraint and deescalation on all sides". Even Russia, whose relationship with the U.S. in general and the Trump Administration in particular is "murky" to say the least, agree that everyone should calm down and take a step back. Israel has said the U.S. has a right to avenge itself against anyone who attacks it.

 Turkey accused the U.S. of amplifying tensions in the region, while groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, agree the U.S. acted with hostility for no good reason. Interestingly, Iran's long-time enemy Iraq condemned the attacks, calling it a flagrant violation of agreements that kept U.S. troops in Iraq and accused the U.S. of trying to inflame a war. Syria called it "cowardly aggression", and many worry the attack will give Iran's complaints against the U.S. "renewed legitimacy".

 For its part, Iran is "in mourning" and "vowing revenge" for the attack. Ayatollah Khamenei called Soleimani a "martyr", promising the exact "harsh revenge" while announcing three days of national mourning. Iran's president Hassan Rouhani also called for revenge, saying "there would be consequences" for America's actions, and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called the killing an "act of state terrorism," which is a unique turnaround for the U.S.

 Esmaail Quanni has been appointed the new head of the IRGC and the country's press has reported plenty of national mourning among citizens and mobilization of military units. Soleimani was fairly popular in Iran, and experts have said the actions were basically a "gift to Daesh and all the terrorists in the region" and will lead to increased tension and violence in the region "exactly contrary to what the Americans claim."

 Here in the United States, things have played out pretty much like anyone would expect. The Republican party is all in with Trump's actions while the Democrats are questioning the timing of the attacks. Despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming "the world is a much safer place" with Soleimani's death, the U.S. is recommending that all civilians in Iraq get out as soon as possible. Some are accusing Trump of "wagging the dog" and trying to deflect attention from his recent impeachment in the House and as-yet-to-be-determined trial in the Senate.

 For his part, Trump spent this afternoon in a Florida megachurch holding one of his usual rallies among the faithful, bragging about the strike as well as disparaging the Left's so-called lack of religious faith, particularly former South Bend mayor and nominee hopeful Pete Buttigieg. There have been questions in recent days about just how strong Trump's support among the Evangelical community is, and this rally hopes to shore that up some.

 Here in the ditches, the MAGA faithful are enjoying a huge, throbbing war boner while Democrats, liberals and leftist worry about the start of a possible Third World War. General consensus is while there will probably be retaliation against U.S. military forces or even citizens in the Middle East, there will most likely won't be a full on war as Iran really doesn't have the stroke to pull something like that off and the Middle East as a whole is still way to fractured to come together on anything. While Trump claims the strike was to "stop a war," the Pentagon is nevertheless deploying 3,500 more troops to Iraq on top of the 700 sent there after the New Years' Eve embassy protest.

 So. Them's the facts as we know them right now. What do I think? Well, I don't trust the U.S. government as far as I can throw it and that goes triple with Trump in charge. I still question just how involved Iran was in those protests the other day and I never have cared for presidents unilaterally deciding someone needs to be blown up because "America, fuck yeah". Will there be a world war? Probably not. Is he wagging the dog? Probably so. Will a whole lot of people in the Middle East in particular and Iran or Iraq in general suffer with their lives for the actions of their "leaders". Undoubtedly. There will be blood, if nothing else.

 The American Press is already looking like it's going to fall in line behind Trump, like they did with Bush Junior and Iraq, proving they've learned absolutely nothing during the last 20 years nor that they have any idea that his followers (and conservatives in general) still consider them as bad as any terrorist. This is coming right on the heels of the Pentagon flat out admitting they haven't had a clue what they've been doing in Afghanistan for the past decade.

 Actually, this is feeling a whole lot like those post-9/11 days and the lead up to the bloody mess that was Iraq, but amplified thanks to Twitter and instant access to news and opinions. Those weren't pleasant times and no one, but no one was ever called to task for their failures in policy. The hands were never washed clean of blood.

 Time will tell either way, whether more death or destruction will follow or if Trump and the Republicans will use it to dodge not only impeachment but any other criticism of Trump's administration. Despite the quantum nature of modern political media, it's still way too soon to tell and all we can do is hope.

 All I'm going to say is I'm glad West Point reneged on my cousin's oldest boy's football scholarship because he had asthma and I hope his dad is able to talk his younger brother out of joining the military to possibly die for no damn good reason. Otherwise, I got nothing. Peace, friends and neighbors.