Merry Chrimbo! Politically Correct, Non-Binary, Gender Neutral, GMO-Free,
Appropriately Festive Non-Denominal Winter Solstice
Greetings To You and Your Family.
But our single and best present of all was finding our cat
who escaped out the kitchen door last night during a raging storm.
Poor Frank was wandering around in squall for a good hour while
we freaked out. Running up and down the road calling out for him,
Mag was sobbing so hard she could even call out for him.
Luckily he stayed near the house and I found him in the back wilderness.
I spotted him in the brush and called him and he he just trotted
right up to me. Once inside he was showered with love and treats.
That was the best xmos prezzy ever! Complete ongoing disaster averted!
Those beautiful crazy Christmas days of yule and yore...
This has nothing to do with Christmas but might have something to do with why we are all still here and have not been burnt to a crisp a 100 times over in a nuclear Armageddon.
Back in the 1980s — no typo this time — President Reagan managed to annoy every breathing standing, liberal or self-styled progressive in North America. and in much of the rest of the world. His rhetoric spawned an international peace and disarmament movement, which, to Ronald Reagan's credit, was ultimately successful in getting the USA and the Soviet Union to back down and sign major arms control agreements.
Contrary to Trump who may have inflicted permanent damage on the USA by insulting, annoying and disrespecting allies, Reagan for the most stuck to rhetoric and stuck to the NATO two-track strategy which was agreed to by NATO members. One track = negotiate. The other track = increase NATO member budgets by 3% in real terms per annum. Reagan, in contrast to Trump, was a team player.
Sure, under the banner of the Cold War, peasants in place like Nicaragua died and suffered thanks to Americans but they are "just Indios" and the numbers were small. The poor and working poor in the USA suffered because of program cuts. None of this is perfect. To this day, 9% of Americans still do not have health insurance coverage. But that is not the fault of Reagan Republicans is it now?
At the time there was a broad discussion on nuclear strategy which in the intervening decades has disappeared from the pages of elite media.
With the benefit of time, I would say that Reagan did the USA and the rest of the world a big solid. Now to be fully forthcoming, I believe Reagan's Vice President — George Bush, Senior, deserves a lot of the credit.
I would have much rather seen Bush Senior get re-elected than Bill Clinton. Clinton was a great president if you believe that procrastination and "doing nothing" actually works in the foreign policy and international relations sphere.
The '84 stood out because A) Reagan never looked that young to me, and B) he was President then. We all know, selling product from the White House is too gaudy for a President.
From 1948. Few knew or suspected just how extraordinarily deadly tobacco would turn out.
Though it is kinda fun to see the future president of the USA 'pushing' the world's most deadly popular recreational drug. It is also amusing to contemplate how tobacco would turn out to be the 'gateway drug' par excellence.
This December has been the coldest we've seen for a while.
