Good morning, good friends!

Hope this OT finds you in fine fettle.

I should have know going to a funeral last Saturday would set the tone and tenor for the week ahead, and it sure did.

The widow wore a pair of cowboy boots I had bought her to wear at her wedding to my friend and office computer technician. She is leaving Texas after 18 yrs to be with her family in both Nevada and Utah.

She takes Texas boots and great memories with her.

The contrast could not be greater. This evening listening to the steady croak of frogs. The first calf of the season should arrive this week. Canadian geese have been flying in pairs looking for nesting spots. Periodic Osprey calls pierce the air. Daffodils and first wave of fruit trees in bloom.

The economic changes caused by US actions are just starting to show. My heart is heavy with sadness on the loss of life, destruction of communities throughout Western Asia and anticipated changes throughout the world.

We Can Hope!

Some writers, for instance David Sirota at the Lever, are seeing a bit of good news in all the crap coming from United State’s current politics - like the Democratic Party's Moment of Reckoning. Some of the new candidates are ‘radical’ compared to the usual Democrat stock-in-trade, and more of these ‘radical’ candidates are appearing. And that is a good thing.

Sirota begins his article with:

A decade after Bernie Sanders almost tore the presidential nomination out of the decrepit hands of the Democratic establishment, the party’s old guard, ancient political formulas, and outdated corporate politics seem to finally be facing a moment of comeuppance. The long-overdue reckoning appears to be happening not just in a few predictably liberal locales, but across varied swaths of the country that seem ready to embrace populist politics.

Or, "If this is Tuesday, this must be Nato."
It looks like Trump is succeeding in destroying Nato, knowingly or foolishly. His demands for them to come to his aid in opening up the Hormuz have gone unheeded. Talk about scattering like rats.