Whatever happened to global warming? Here in Berkeley Springs, on Sunday, Feb. 8, the temperature was predicted as follows:
(Feb 8): Sunny, high 23* F, low 1*F. That's really rather chilly.
We could freeze to death staying out there for very long. But actually in the sun, it doesn't feel so cold. Of course with the temperature well below freezing, now even in the sun, the snow is not melting any more.
The weather has been cold as well in Honduras, A former Peace Corps volunteer friend now retired to Honduras tells me:
I hope you are well and enjoying as best you can this cold winter. I am in San Pedro Sula and it has been cold here as well. It goes to the 50's here at night and we are not accustomed to that kind of weather.
In most of Honduras, except perhaps at higher elevations, there is no need for heat in homes and buildings, certainly not at sea level, where my friend now lives, rather, the demand is usually for air conditioning and electric fans.
I told him:
During Trump's presidency, you are fortunate to be living in Honduras.
I am sorry to say, that my son, adopted from Colombia, with whom I am living now in West Virginia, voted for Trump and now seems to be having second thoughts. Three more years! I'll be 88 in March and hope to live to see the day when Trump is gone from office. His advisers in the Republican Party are bad enough, but the guy also has a serious case of "senile dementia" and also engages in flurries of hyperactivity betwen daytime snoozes.
Though he has been sleeping a lot, when he happnes to be awake, Donald Trump displays behavior that might be characterized as senior hyperactivity syndrome: Mount Rushmore, the Nobel Peace Prize, Greenland, the Trump-Kennedy Center, the Triumphal Arch. And all that is only in the first year of this term.
=======================================
An apartment building fire has displaced residents of my old neighborhood in Washington, DC.
Now a bull in a china shop?
Opinion
Opinion - Beware of the biggest threat to US national Security: Trump
The writer likens Donald Trump to a bull in china shop. "Trump is rampaging destructively through the security infrastructure that has protected America and our allies since the end of World War II."
How did we get to the point where now our president is a major threat to our own national security and to our country's economic wellbeing?
We actually got to this point because too many Americans voted for Donald Trump, including neighbors here in West Virginia and even someone in my own family. Yet just in the last year since they voted, Trump seems to be failing mentally, even faster than ever before. But, of course, in his own mind, Donald Trump is completely clear headed and making all the right decisions How can we survive the next 3 years? How bad will it get?
Though he has been sleeping a lot, when he happnes to be awake, Donald Trump displays behavior that might be characterized as senior hyperacitivy syndrome: Mount Rushmore, the Nobel Peace Prize, Greenland, the Trump-Kennedy Center, the Triumphal Arch. And all that is only in the first year of this term.
On the TV show The Apprentice (2004-2015), Donald Trump seemed to really relish telling contestants, "You're fired!" That show gave Trump his first public platform. Now he seems to enjoy firing government employees and displaying his power in real life to actually harm lots of people, while suffering no consequences himself. After all, as the most powerful person in the world, he wants to use it.
The focus should be on deporting criminal aliens, border czar Tom Homan, who has served
under both Democraric and Rpublican presidents, has said
I agree. Trump should stop firing government employees who are still needed, including members of my own family who are federal employees doing key jobs. And he should not be deporting non-citizens and naturalized Americans born elsewhere, since they too are key members of our society, often doing vital jobs and raising families here. (Trump's own wife, the mother of his youngest son, came here only on a visitor's visa.) We need to keep more people right here in our country, especially those doing essential jobs and helping support older folks like me. The birthrate in this country is just not keeping up and immigrants can help fill that gap. The case for admitting more immigrants has been made before on these pages. We should not be deporting folks as we really need to keep the lights on right here.
=================================
The US has been holding its own now at the Olympics.
Al Jazeera
Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least 20 Palestinians since dawn
Israel, with continued US economic and moral support, is still committing war crimes, wantonly killing many civilians including children. We are complicit in all that.
Even in traditionalist Asian countries, female politicians seem to be faring better than here in our own country. Yet I still hope to live to see a woman in the US presidency. Hillary and Kamala have come close. It's now past time for a woman to actually occupy our highest office. Many would do a so much better job than Donald Trump is doing right now.
But who will finally break our glass ceiling? So many other nations have had female presidents, even Honduras, where I lived for several years, and other countires where I've had election monitoring and human rights missions: Northern Ireland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Romania, Malaysia, and Thailand.
The first woman to actively pursue the US presidency was Victoria Woodhull—a stockbroker, newspaper publisher, and champion of social reform--she ran for the highest office in 1872, some 50 years before women throughout the United States had even achieved the right to vote. Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith was a candidate for the Republican Party nomination in 1964, becoming the first woman to seek the presidential nomination of a major party. So now it's high time not only for having a woman run for US president, but also for having her win and start occupying that highest office. Don't you think many women would do a better job than Trump is doing right now? One of my readers has suggested Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, now age 36, Might she bcome our first female president?
I've decided to include the following in its entireity, so will post this before it gets any longer. Edward McCarthy <ecmccar@gmail.com>: Feb 09 05:16PM -0500
Some may know, if perhaps not cared, that I have been mostly silent
recently. There is much besides Gaza to be disturbed about, and much good
in our complicated World I'd prefer to consider. My thought here is to
give an update, to be followed at decent intervals by essays, preferably
shorter, on the nature of the Issraeli-Palestinian conflict, US-Israeli
relations, and other subjects that might occur.
After I finished my piece, I noted a New York Times article which said that
the Israeli Knesset has passed a law which allows Israelis to buy land in
"Judea and Samaria," the Biblical names for the West Bank, thus as the
Times headline says, giving Israel greater control over the occupied
territory and moving matters further in the direction of annexation to
Israel itself. Critics denounced the action as in violation of the Oslo
Accords reached in the early 1990's, as well as international law.
Adhering to the latter in this era of unapologetic Machtpolitik is of
course much out of fashion. My disquisition follows.
ISRAELIS & PALESTINIANS: Where are they?
No longer on the front pages, that’s for sure. A recent Washington Post
article reported an Israeli air strike which killed 32 Gaza Palestinians.
The article was on page 15. Page 1 featured concerns about Trump’s outsize
Arch.
There’s nothing new about this. So long as Palestinians are not making
trouble at a level of violence or disruption great enough to grab
attention, Israel has been content to maintain its day to day iron control
over Palestinians dwelling in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and avoid
making headlines not to its liking. Israelis expect to have periodically
to “mow the grass” of Palestinian resistance, but In the classic phrase,
the World, regarding the matter as intractable, leaves the very efficient
Israelis to “manage the conflict.”
True, it’s a bit different this time. There is in Gaza a ceasefire of
sorts, one punctuated by alleged Palestinian violations which provoke, as
always, a disproportionate Israeli response. The Rafah Crossing, a key
connection between Egypt and the half of Gaza Israel controls, has reopened
on a limited basis. Some in need of medical care have been able to leave
Gaza, and humanitarian aid has started trickling in. It is all however
transparently inadequate.
Palestinian provocations are no doubt often violent, but there is also
the grotesque spectacle of Israel engaging in air strikes and other lethal
forms of punishment in retaliation for failure to turn over the bodies of
deceased hostages. The Dead, in the Israeli Palestinian context, are of
more concern than the living who perish under the bombs. The obsession
prevails on both sides. The difference is that the Israelis have the
weaponry to chastise their enemies for their failures, and the Palestinians
do not.
There is more. Having banned the UN Relief and Works Administration
(UNRWA), the principal agency which traditionally provided sustenance and
education for Palestinians, the Israelis have also barred Doctors Without
Borders and other humanitarian groups which have contradicted Israel’s
version of events. Foreign journalists continue to be kept out,
compounding the difficulty of finding out who, if anyone, is telling the
truth. The extremists crucial to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition make
few bones about their desire to annex the West Bank, attainment of which
end is furthered by unrestrained attacks on Palestinians by militant
settlers and sometimes the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) themselves.
Then there is Mr. Trump’s Board of Peace, the improbabilities of which
abound. There are good reasons to think that the Board is yet another
Trumpian vanity project, with the aim of a Nobel Peace Prize in mind. The
presence on the Board of Vladimir Putin and other international outlaws and
authoritarians, and the dearth of leaders of the World’s democracies,
furthers the impression of an absurd and unworkable exercise, motivated by
Our Dear Leader’s narcissism and perennial self-seeking.
The last Israeli hostages, dead and alive, having been recovered, Phase Two
of the Gaza ceasefire has been declared to begin shortly. There are
several obstacles. Forming a body of Palestinian technocrats to administer
Gaza on an interim basis is the least of these. Creating an international
peacekeeping force with the mission of disarming and displacing Hamas
presents far greater challenges. Understandably, the Israelis are
skeptical. They remain in occupation of about half of the Gaza Strip,
Hamas retaining power in the rest. The Israelis are known to believe that
destruction of Hamas is both necessary and achievable, with the caveat that
they are the only ones with the power and will to do it. They may be wrong
on all points. About all we can say with assurance is that in the event of
a renewed Israeli assault on Gaza, there will be great loss of Palestinian
lives, many innocents among them. Unless of course you share the view of
many sympathetic to Israel that there are in fact no innocents in Gaza or,
for that matter, among Palestinians generally
For all of its likely faults, the Board of Peace may have its uses,
especially if it keeps the Israeli Government from its enduring desire to
annihilate Hamas and solidify its hold over the Palestinians in both Gaza
and the West Bank. For many years, the Israeli ideal has been for as many
Palestinians as possible to emigrate, but in the short run firm control
will do.
This is not to say that Trump or the Board intends to stand in the way of
Israel and its desires. Rather, it is that implementation of Mr. Trump’s
plans may require constriction of Israeli ambitions. More basic to the
likelihood of failure is an all-too-familiar factor, i.e., the absence of
any Palestinian participation beyond the technocrats being recruited to
administer Gaza–while also being regarded by many Palestinians as
traitors. Unsurprisingly, there has been little recent mention of a
2-State solution or creation of a real Palestinian State. Mr. Trump has no
interest, and Mr. Netanyahu and his band of neo-fascist brothers are
entirely opposed. Control, not compromise, is their watchword.
Out on the margins, in the offices of a couple of right wing Washington
think tanks, there have emerged proposals for an end to US military aid to
Israel, a goal much sought after by Israel’s critics, both in the US and
elsewhere. The proposals would also however bind the militaries and
defense industries of the US and Israel even closer than they are now, and
perpetuate the relationship far into the future. There is more to be said,
and found out, about this, but in a future essay on the state of the
Israeli-American relationship.
