Excessive sanctions tend to turn into trade wars.
Trade wars tend to turn into currency wars, and those get dangerous.

On the afternoon of September 21 a couple million humans shall storm Area 51, there to meet the alien. Or so they say. Initially, I thought I would be there now: mass public strangeness, that can be among the best, of the Stories. But eventually I realized that, like most everything in my life, it’s just not going to happen. But then decided—hey, that didn’t mean I couldn’t write about it. I mean, why not not go, but say I did? Inaugurate a new form of journalism: This Didn’t Happen; But It Might Have. So that’s, what this is. From time to time, until the day itself, September 21, I will inscribe here serial chapters of “I Am Alien,” the true-life non-fiction account of the quest for the alien. This, here, is the first.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. The car was electric; now, so were we. That we were electric meant we could approach silently, with stealth; this was right and meet, as we were steaming across these badlands to greet the alien. And it is best not to come up on the alien in great noise. The same is true of the United States military, bristling with weapons, growling and in grump, determined to prevent the people from reaching the alien. But we would not be stopped. For we were not the people: we were press. And it is well known, throughout the many galaxies, that the press may go, where the people may not. We knew the alien understood this. Whether the military would grasp it: we would see.

Over and over again, the media, Joe Biden, and the rest of the corporate Democrats tell us how people love their private health insurance. What people actually love is their doctor.

I know it's difficult to pull away from the Epstein murder suicide (which Russia caused by the way if you believe MsNBC), but I saw a story in the NY Times today that blames Russia for the rise of right wing nationalism everywhere, even in Sweden.

(a reprise from another time)

We lived in an apple orchard for a time, in a funky old house used for the ranch hands, i.e., me and mr. wd.  Dozens and dozens of apple trees surrounded the house, and in the spring upon every breeze rode the soft sweet perfume of their blossoms, a gentle, clean scent tinged with the tiniest bit of cinnamon that sometimes caused you to pause and close your eyes and breathe in; to sniff their fragrance into your quivering nose, perhaps hoping to commit it to memory; to listen to the ecstatic buzzing of the bees so hungrily diving into their centers to suck their sweet nectar and getting pollen on their little feet, which they’d spread to other blossoms on other trees and cause there to be apples…