My eye is doing okay, now I just have to put three drops of prednisone in every day and I have to admit it is really nice to be able to finally see; they will work on the other in the new year. Also, the cortisone shot along with the curcumin is lasting this time around, so I'm doing small amounts of Chrismas things and cleaning just a lot slower then normal. Mike still cannot do very much, no way can he put up lights or bring down boxes, so we're going to scale down the Christmas decorations quite a bit.
We have been lucky so far, no electricity outages or water cut offs due to the high winds and no fires here at SADM, although several homes were lost in Tijuana. More high winds are predicted for next week but zeta is saying they won't be as harsh. we did have a bad hot H20 leak under the house which sort of drained the propane tank to boot, but we do have the best plumber in Rosarito whose guys fixed everything in a snap. I forgot to mention the shark vacuum cleaner stopped working - only after usin it like six times.they say things happen in threes.....
Totsie had her stitches out and Rubio had his rabies shot - I'll try to get their pics over here. Meanwhile however, the crazy news is that prior to Mike's surgery we had two litters of kittens in the back - one from here and one from next door. The plan was to feed and trap them, take them in to be spade & shots then release them. Unfortunately, Mike could not and still cannot lift the traps up to put in the cars. So, now we have at least six additional young adult cats who are still feral but conditioned to being fed. Eventually we are going to have to trap them and take them in to Dr. Silva's but I can't just release them, even though they are feral they like their kitty food. And they eat like horses (they probably have worms). Late at night I've been cooking up ground beef for them and of course, they are drinking organic milk. We opened it up so they could come out of the rain and winds, but only downstairs. Cat house? Yikes !
Baja California is back to being in the "semi-red zone" as far as the CORONA virus and the situation is grim. Local reports here; so far I'm undecided if I will return to the drug war, conditions are dangerous, uncertain, unstable and dicey, I'd say more than back in 2007.
UPDATE: You might have known Mario & Peg. I remember years and years ago I was staining some maple chairs in the garage and Peg jaunted by and said, "I love antiques!" She was a great gal. At the time, we were fighting the over the limit view blocking decks. She told me that several years prior to our experience, she also was fighting view blocking construction. The builder told her to "...shut up and stop whining." "That is how they are here", she told me. Peg is now in Anaheim living with her daughter.
Mario we just found out this morning, died from COVID last Thursday. This was a total shock. He would always let Paris run in his yard and always had a treat for her. He will be missed a lot. If only he would have worn a mask and gloves and practiced protocols.
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So what's up with the "coup" ? I read this a couple of days ago, it will blow your mind:
~ From the Salon via MSN News:
Recently Pardoned Michael Flynn Calls On Trump To "Suspend the Constitution" and Re-Do The Election
By, Roger Sollenberger - 2 days ago
"One week after receiving a historically broad pardon from President Donald Trump, former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday endorsed demands for his former boss to "temporarily suspend the Constitution" and declare martial law, warning that "a shooting war is imminent" without a re-do of the federal election.
Flynn's Twitter account shared a press release from a Tea Party-affiliated organization called the We the People Convention (WTPC), calling for the outgoing president to invoke martial law "to allow the U.S. Military to oversee a new free and fair federal election" if state legislatures, courts and congress do not overturn his defeat.
#WeThePeople @SidneyPowell1 @LLinWood @DanScavino @LouDobbs @MariaBartiromo @marklevinshow @lofly727
Freedom never kneels except for God 🙏🇺🇸https://t.co/Vrn3UeyDoF
— General Flynn (@GenFlynn) December 1, 2020
The press release promotes the group's recent full-page ad in the conservative-leaning Washington Times, and it compares the context surrounding Abraham Lincoln's executive actions during the Civil War to "the literal civil war that is dividing our nation today."
"Today, the current threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much more serious than anything Lincoln or our nation has faced in its history — including the civil war," the statement says, citing violence from "antifa" and Black Lives Matter.
The group warns that "a shooting war is imminent" if Trump does not stop "socialists" from "stealing" the election: "Failure to do so could result in massive violence and destruction on a level not seen since the Civil War."
The statement concludes, "We will also have no other choice but to take matters into our own hands, and defend our rights on our own, if you do not act within your powers to defend us."
Earlier that day, Trump's Attorney General William Barr acknowledged that federal investigators had not found evidence of fraud which could change the outcome of the election. Federal and state courts have so far ruled against the Trump campaign and GOP allies in every lawsuit alleging voter fraud that the attorneys have not withdrawn themselves — though the president's legal team still holds out hope for appeals.
The same day that Flynn shared the statement, Sidney Powell, the red-pilled chief attorney for his former defense team, promoted calls for Trump to "set up military tribunals" to investigate the election.
Powell recently led a short life as a member of Trump's "elite strike-force" legal team challenging the election results before she was sidelined after repeatedly pushing fringe conspiracy theories in a televised press conference and media interviews.
In August, Powell met with the president and other advisers at the White House, where she advised him not to pardon her client, who had been seeking to overturn his 2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI about backchannel contacts with the Russian government ahead of Trump's inauguration.
Last week, Trump issued Flynn a "full and unconditional pardon," which extended beyond Flynn's plea to "any and all possible offenses" that might arise in connection to his case, as well as "any and all" possible future offenses related to the Mueller investigation "in any manner" — including grand jury proceedings.
In addition to the Russia-related charges, Flynn faced possible criminal liability for failing to register as a foreign agent for his work on behalf of the Turkish government during the 2016 election — when he was the Trump campaign's top national security adviser.
The pardon, which heads off possible future charges, appears to be one of the broadest in U.S. history, perhaps surpassing even former President Gerald Ford's preemptive pardon of former President Richard Nixon.
However, recent reports indicate that Trump discussed a pardon with Rudy Giuliani, the current top attorney of his campaign's dwindling legal team and the former face of identity theft protection company LifeLock, which could be even more broad."
Roger Sollenberger
Roger Sollenberger is a staff writer at Salon. Follow him on Twitter @SollenbergerRC.
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Since that initial report, more information:
~ From Informed Comment with video on the link:
Communists Were Jailed For Less: Trumpies Call for Overthrow Of US Constitution
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Caitlin Dickson at Yahoo News reports that Trump supporters and Tea Partiers have begun calling for a suspension of the US constitution to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.
The only way to parse “suspension” of the constitution is its temporary overthrow. Moreover, they are calling for the use of force (“martial law”) toward that aim. They are also using diction such as the threat of civil war. Since nobody but them is talking about civil war, I take it they are envisioning firing off the AR-15s they have stockpiled.
Should they go to jail?
Other people did, for much less. Jessie DeLauder explains that in 1952 seven Seattle citizens were abruptly arrested by the FBI and charged not only with being members of the Communist Party but of therefore seeking to overthrow the constitution of the United States. They were charged under the 1940 Smith Act, passed in the shadow of WW II, which threatened with condign punishment those who
- “knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association.”
Among the seven, DeLauder says, “Karley Larsen had, for seventeen consecutive years, held the position of the first vice-president of the International Woodworkers Union of Western Washington.” She was arrested at a union meeting in Oregon. Paul Bowen, an African-American veteran, trade unionist and civil rights activist, was arrested just outside Seattle.
As the seven went blue in the face asserting to the judge, they did not in fact advocate the violent overthrow of the US constitution, just because they belonged to the Communist Party.
They were nevertheless convicted, fined and sentenced to five years in jail for thought crimes. One committed suicide. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the convictions.
Given this success, The FBI went on an arrest spree, bringing cases all over the country. Only in 1957 did the Supreme Court finally return to its senses and rule that you can’t be imprisoned for your thoughts, only for your actions.
The Smith Act is still on the books, and I don’t think anyone who believes in human rights would ever want to see it deployed again. It should be repealed. Who knows, our present Supreme Court may be as conservative as the one who upheld the conviction of prisoners of conscience.
But, I’m just saying that there is a double standard in the United States. The far right literally gets away with murder, and no one is talking about locking up the Trump crazies for demanding the overthrow of the US constitution. If they called themselves socialists or if they weren’t white, though, they might well have started being investigated by now."
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The Georgia Runoffs:
Here is the best lowdown:
~ From Truthout :
Trump Is Headed To Georgia To "Help" With the Runoffs. The GOP Is Terrified
"I f you can, carve out some time on Saturday to watch the doings in Georgia. A whole barnload of Trump chickens are winging their way home. If they roost just right, Mitch McConnell could lose majority control of the Senate in January, and he and his brigade of calculating Republican lickspittles will only have themselves to blame.
It is, of course, a long shot. Incumbent GOP Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are locked in a dual runoff in Georgia against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. The vote is slated for January 5. Thanks to a monumental grassroots effort by progressive activists like Stacey Abrams, Georgia’s presidential vote flipped to the Democrats for the first time since Bill Clinton pulled it off in 1992. Now all of that energy is focused on these runoffs, and the state has become a fulcrum point at a moment freighted with COVID, climate crisis and economic calamity.
Democrats have not fared well in Georgia runoffs over the years. Adding to the challenge, they must win both contests in order to flip control of the Senate. The stakes are enormous; with a friendly House and Senate, Joe Biden could embark upon a truly ambitious slate of policies and clean the Augean stables of the Trumpian filth that has piled up over the last four years. It would be a catastrophic rebuke to Trump, McConnell and the entire GOP to lose these seats, and more importantly, to lose control of the ruinous agenda McConnell has pursued with venomous efficiency for almost 15 years.
In an irony so luxurious I want to roll in it like a dog, Republicans are becoming increasingly terrified that they will lose those seats, and all because of Donald Trump. The soon-to-be ex-president has handled his loss to Biden about as well as a spoiled child who got nothing but broccoli for Christmas — the tree is on fire, the bulbs are all smashed and the screaming just will not stop.
At the core of Trump’s ceaseless tirade is the repeatedly debunked claim that the entire election was rigged against him by a network of conspirators that includes (no really) Bill Barr’s FBI and Justice Department, the Republican governor of Georgia, the nation of Germany and the ghost of Hugo Chavez. He and his people have been so adamant and persistent in promoting this bag of nonsense that swaths of his devoted supporters have come to embrace these theories, if you’ll pardon the sacrilege, as the gospel truth.
But wait: It gets better. A goodly portion of that devoted base, after taking to heart Trump’s claims of a rigged vote, have decided Perdue and Loeffler have been less than devoted to the cause of flipping the election away from Biden, and may actually be complicit in Trump’s defeat. Since they already believe the vote in Georgia is clearly rigged anyway (see: Dem flip back in November), members of Trump’s base are actively calling for a conservative voter boycott of the January 5 runoff.
“Driven by Trump’s insistence that Georgia’s elections are indelibly rife with fraud, conspiratorial MAGA figures are calling for a boycott of the two Senate runoff races, slated for Jan. 5, that will determine which party controls the upper chamber,” reports Politico. “Their reason: The two GOP candidates, Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, are not only insufficiently pro-Trump, they may be complicit in Georgia’s electoral fraud.”
Over the last several days, Trump has done zero favors for his fellow Republicans in the matter of Georgia. He denounced Georgia’s uber-Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for being “hapless” after Kemp followed the law to the letter and certified Biden’s victory in that state. Trump labeled Georgia’s uber-Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger an “enemy of the people,” and now Raffensperger has bodyguards.
… and now, Trump is slated to visit Georgia on Saturday so he can “help” his fellow Republicans in these runoffs. What will he say when he meets with Kemp and Raffensperger? When confronted by one of his beloved adulation mobs containing supporters who want to boycott the vote in January, will Trump be able to restrain himself? Or will he, overtly or otherwise, bless their endeavors to avoid saying anything that disrupts his ersatz narrative of total victory?
There’s a real possibility that Trump the arsonist could once again go for the kerosene and the matches, if only to hear the cheers as the flames burn his party to the ground. Any network coverage of his visit there this weekend is appointment television.
“The Trump wing of the Republican Party was always at risk of detaching from the party establishment,” notes The Washington Post. “Trump is such a singular figure in U.S. politics, few if any can emulate him. He’s just willing to say things that get certain voters riled up that other politicians won’t. That’s the crux of the problem Georgia Republicans face.”
It’s not just the Georgia Republicans, either. Trump’s defeat has broken the GOP in half, with one side represented by Trump, his base, and all the shabby Republicans too afraid to cross them. On the other side are McConnell and his cohort of establishment Republicans who watch now with growing dread as the beast they created, coddled and fed now threatens to lay waste to all their works.
This civil war is also playing out in the conservative media. One of Trump’s most visited targets of late has been Fox News, a network that hauled a Pacific Ocean of water for Trump over the years. Fox inspired Trump’s undying wrath when it put Arizona in Biden’s corner on election night. The network since has, very slowly, come to acknowledge Biden’s eventual presidency.
The Trump believers have taken his cue and shunned Fox News by massive numbers, flocking instead to far-right fringe networks like One America News and Newsmax TV, where Trump’s version of election reality is promoted with inspired vigor. After all, there’s money to be made off of people who will believe anything.
Fear of the ultimate consequences from this deliberately inflicted mayhem was given voice by yet another Georgia official. Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager for the state of Georgia, begged Trump and his people to stop tearing up the landscape before someone truly and irrevocably gets hurt. “This has to stop,” Sterling said on Tuesday. “Someone is going to get hurt. Someone is going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. And it’s not right. It’s not right.”
There is no way to say how this will all play out, and betting odds still favor the GOP to win at least one of those Georgia runoffs. Trump will make that easier or harder on Saturday. I will say this much, however: If Trump’s poor-loser shenanigans lead to a double-barreled GOP defeat in Georgia, all forms of hell are going to break loose within that party.
In the interim, the next time you see a “Dems in Disarray” news report because progressive House members have a legitimate beef with Biden’s cabinet appointments, do what I do: Look to the mayhem on the right side of the aisle, smile and shake your head. “Disarray,” clearly, is also in the eye of the beholder."
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Stay Safe Y'all. I'll be back later this evening with more fact checks.
Shields and Brooks on the damage done by Trump’s claims of election fraud