Happy Friday everyone. I hope everybody is doing well. Post any photos, meme's, or music you like.

Happy New Year to all. It's been a so-so start to the new year. On the plus side I've woken up every morning so far, which is a good thing. On the negative side, I'm waking up to the same old shit. Oh well. I'll count my blessings that I'm still waking up. I made my first blood donation of the year on Wednesday. We also had the first rain of the year on Wednesday.

On Tuesday I made my first visit of the year to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Animal wise it was a slow day. Not much activity. At least the Tiger cubs were out. They were active and they'er cute to boot.

Since the beginning of the Israeli Gaza conflict retaliation against US forces in the region have been increasing. It's no secret that Israel has wanted the US to attack Iran for decades. In fact, Israel celebrated when we attacked Iraq.

The holidays came to an abrupt end this week. The baby lawyer came to town to see if he could put the oldster lawyer, that would be me, into a stupor, by dragging out a 90 minute hearing to a 4 hour trial, dazzling the court with cool spiral notebooks, fully indexed, containing exhibits that were useless.

This oldster stayed awake because it was great fun to lodge 100 objections. (One did not get sustained, but I am okay with a good/not perfect record) If I hadn't shut him down, the trial would had taken a week.

I have better things to do with my time.

This one is entirely too skimpy -- I may add stories later today if I find them. Let's start with this Newsweek article: "Joe Biden Campaign Volunteers Are Quitting in 'Droves'".

Remember when 2024 election was all about democracy. Guess that doesn't include Democratic primaries

British Home Children and Barnardo's Boys - A personal Tale

Immigration is always in the news, it seems. Always. Once upon a time, immigration into the USA and Canada was mostly by white people. These people did not always come willingly, and were often not treated well once here. In the USA, check out the 'No Irish Need Apply' statements from the 1800's, for one example. For an example of harsh working conditions, how's about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory? These white immigrants often came from the same impoverished, abusive and horrible situations modern immigrants nowadays leave in their home countries to try for a better place here. And often, the places they found here weren't that much better than those they had left, at least at first.

British Home Children working in the fields. From the BBC story discussed below.