The song, Wooden Ships, was written in 1968 by David Crosby and Stephen Stills of Crosby Stills and Nash fame, and Paul Kantner of the band Jefferson Airplane. My personal favorite of the two songs that were recorded was the Airplane version from 1969 on the album Volunteers.

The song was about a group of nuclear war survivors adrift on a wooden ship after both sides of the conflict were annihilated. After survivors of both sides meet one another, one ask of the other, "Can you tell me, please, who won?"

Three days after a cease fire agreement in what is being called The 12-Day War between Israel and Iran, I am asking that same question.

“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”

Oh, no, I never watched that show back in the day. But I saw enough of it on my mom's and grandmother's TVs to know what it was about. Kind of.

Enough to know melodrama when I see it.

Imagine, if you will, the man with the largest ego and the man with the deepest pockets, joining together to save mankind from itself. And then breaking up. And then joining together again, maybe. All with the ebb and flow of a back alley cat fight. Slugging it out to do what's best. For you.

What a duo.

What a tag team.

Did I forget to mention that they are the two largest trolls in the world? Trolling from different angles, with the goal the same. The Big Bucks.

How do you think they got to where they are in the first place?

Does it feel like time is moving faster? Things happen so quickly that hardly a second goes by and we're off to a new development, a new revelation, a new outrage. There's hardly time to catch our breath and there's a new squirrel to chase up a tree. We're inundated with problem after problem and very few solutions.

There's an old theory in the science of physics that states the faster one goes the more time slows down. For instance, if one could travel in space at the speed of light time would decelerate. One could leave earth and travel many light years away and upon return will have aged very little while everyone that one knew back on earth would have been long dead.

The revelations are coming so fast they're leaving us behind. Is that it?

Or are we just getting old and running out of time?

Politics in the 2020s are transitory. Not much seems permanent, other than taxes.

Congress

Have you ever noticed lately how worthless congress is? They're a bunch of ineffective do-nothings no matter which side is in power. They've abrogated much of their duties to the executive branch and they're the main reason that the office of the presidency is within a hair's breadth of being a king. Their primary duty is to make laws, do they even do that anymore?

Today, presidential executive orders make much of the new law. Congress drags their feet to codify laws, so with every change of an administration the previous executive orders are nullified by the new president. It's a miracle when a meaningful law is voted on and passed by congress. If the House happens to pass a bill it then goes to the graveyard of legislation, the Senate, where the filibuster, more times than not, guarantees that the bill dies in the 60 vote cradle.

There is no flow when laws change so often, which keeps the electorate in a constant state of change and uncertainty. The true believers love it because it appears they are winning, that is until the other side gains power again. The lack of consistency that would be attained by codifying laws ebbs and flows with the change of administrations, and the electorate gets bounced back and forth like that little square "ball" in that ancient Pong video game.

Attribution: Wikimedia Commons

Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joseph Biden, Donald Trump.

These are the presidents I've lived through.

I don't remember anything about Eisenhower, I was too busy being a kid.

The same with JFK, except for the Cuban missile crisis and having to duck under our desks, and when he was assassinated. Oh boy, do I remember that.

Lyndon Johnson. I came of age in the 60s, especially politically, I remember that SOB very well.

Richard Nixon, the crook. Although recently there's been rumors he may have been a victim of the so called Deep State.

Gerald Ford, an attempt to heal the nation after Nixon, IMHO, it didn't succeed.

Jimmy Carter. His heart was in the right place, but he was eaten up by the system.

Ronald "Raygun" Reagan. The start of the celebrity presidents. I remember rough times at the start of his term, who knows who ran the country during his later years as president.

From there on I want to highlight a self conceived pattern. More below.

Do you have a hate list yet? It seems so many do. One can see it all over the comment sections on various boards and forums across the world wide web. Listen in to talk on the street, the hate, fear and panic are everywhere.

Left vs right, male vs female, race vs race, East vs West, straight vs LGBTQX, pro vax vs anti vax, anti abortion vs pro abortion, on and on it goes. Minds are being compartmentalized into tribal prison cells with the intent of dividing us, and keeping us divided. The divide and conquer tactics keep us easy to control with bugaboos about enemies that may very well, in reality, be our allies. All the while detracting us from the real source of our divisions, the man behind the curtain, the hidden hand, the powers that be, however you want to couch it.

That is the media and those that feed it at work.

Democracy in the West is withering on the vine. European political parties are jailing their opponents and banning opposition parties from elections. How soon will that happen here in the US?

Democrats put up candidates that no one voted for. Republicans fight to restrict voting rights. Does that even matter when we essentially have a uni-party anyway?

Both sides champion restricting free speech.

Government corruption is rampant and ubiquitous.

The law is used as a weapon. Does anyone really think that the Republicans wont use the same lawfare tactics to stall the function of government against the Democrats when they regain power? If so, then what good is democracy?

If democracy is on life support, what comes after?

Definition

Short selling is a trading strategy in which a trader aims to profit from a decline in a security's price by borrowing shares and selling them, hoping the stock price will then fall, enabling them to purchase the shares back for less money.

Source

In the simple form shorting the stock market is tantamount to betting against it.

I'm going to try to be as unbiased as possible in this opinion piece.

We're in the Texas Hill Country for a weekend vacation. We have no wifi so for internet connection we're using one phone for a wifi Hotspot. So to avoid running out the alloted data I'm writing this from my cell phone, with all of the constraints that entails.

I haven't had time to come up with a substantial idea for open thread, thus the title, My Mind is on Vacation.

Can you believe this shit? What a show.

The West has lost its Enlightened minds. Most of Europe is turning away from free speech, freedom of the press, and individual rights and is goose stepping towards totalitarianism. Their blood lust is palpable, their leaders insane, as they turn their backs on opposition parties and free elections, all in the name of holy democracy.

The US is headed in the same direction, albeit a bit slower in pace. I had thought that we had seen peak craziness in the last administration, but we've only got one foot on the step of the crazy train and still haven't boarded yet. The divisions so carefully crafted have become yet wider and deeper. We the People, compartmentalized and fenced into smaller and smaller factions, grow further apart with each division, are much easier controlled that way.

Free speech and freedom of the press are under assault and the Constitution is hanging on by a thread, one tragic event away from obsolescence. The balance of powers are being tested in a power struggle that is rushing headlong towards a constitutional crisis.