On Sunday, March disappears

 The onset of Daylight Relocating Time this Sunday, March 8, will make the month effectively vanish. The sunrise moves back to January. The afternoon becomes April. Day length doesn't change, but our emotional relationship to it will. I'm not complaining, just observing. Plenty of other people will be complaining bitterly, as they do every year.

When the clocks shifted in April or May, day length was already more then twelve hours. You might notice the shift in light, but it wasn't as dramatic. Moving the clocks was a shortcut way to align the daylight with the kinds of schedules we had forced ourselves into by adopting the industrial way of life. Again, not complaining. Industrialization has a lot of problems that have only been corrected agonizingly slowly because they benefit the owner class, but modern life has a lot of advantages for ordinary citizens as well. As it relates to measured time, we try to live our lives in the spaces left to us by the virtuous culture of work work work, and longer evening light seems to suit that.

When the Bush (43) administration moved the start from April to March in 2007, the dislocation was obvious. Living in a northern state, working in a tourist business, I had to deal with the sudden shift to a long afternoon when our business hours had not changed. Customers who would have gotten the hint from the onset of twilight suddenly felt like they were in late afternoon instead of early evening. They hung around inconveniently as we tried to do all of the things that had to wait until after closing when they formerly had not been under foot. Run along now! Go find a happy hour somewhere.

We no longer operate that branch, so that part is less of a factor. It's been almost two decades now. I've come to like it, while still studying its weird effects. Like everything else that humans do, it has its good points and bad points. The erasure of March is merely interesting. Nature still uses March as it always has.

The weather this year seems to favor the illusion of April. It's warmer than average for the first ten days or so. Maybe longer, but you can't really trust a long range forecast. Too many butterflies can flap their wings before a storm projected for two weeks away actually materializes. The same goes for a warm spell with sunny skies. Here in New Hampshire -- and northern New England in general -- we know that we will be punished for any premature taste of spring weather. We just don't know how soon and how much. Frigid blast? Devastating dump of heavy snow? 

You're not through with winter until winter is through with you.

Like a child burning ants...

 The regime in charge of the United States right now is playing with the world like a child focusing sunlight with a magnifying glass to watch ants die. They're that detached and feel that invulnerable to retaliation.

The metaphor breaks down immediately, because the regime's targets can retaliate to some degree. However, the retaliation falls far short of reaching the actual perpetrators of the atrocities. They're limited to the places where military force meets military force. At this time, that only means Iran, but the conflict is spreading to engulf the whole Middle East. The counterattack has only taken the lives of loyal American service members ordered into this stupid adventure by selfish, immature men who expect to remain far from any chance of harm.

The magnifying glass also falls on Cuba, where the sadistic children in the US executive branch have cut off oil to the island nation. Because Cuba relies heavily on oil for electricity generation, the embargo threatens not just creature comforts but medical facilities and food preservation as well. The failure of their power grid will cause deaths among vulnerable populations. And the racist goons in Washington will nod and say that they're improving our species by making the harsh decision that no one else has been able to. They're killing the weak.

Side note: If Cuba had invested in wind and solar, their oil supply couldn't be used against them as effectively. However, their ability to invest in these things was probably hampered by a number of factors, including the malevolence directed at them by the US since Fidel Castro took power in 1959. They were the commie stronghold just 90 miles from Key West. Roughly equivalent to placing US military bases in Germany, snuggled up against the Iron Curtain, only with kick-ass rum, and palm trees. Weirdly, we've had our notorious base at Guantanamo Bay since 1898. That's eighteen ninety-eight. We had "liberated" them from Spain, and got a permanent lease agreement for the attractive waterfront in 1903.

The unauthorized strike in Iran not only blows up a lot of their modern, civilized infrastructure, it destabilizes the country as a whole, while surviving power players figure out who will run the next government. At the same time, it has gotten the other regional hotheads throwing missiles at each other to assuage their frustration because none of them have the ability to throw them at us. Anyone remember how the Saudis finally did blow up a major US landmark in 2001? Groups of patient covert operators hijacked passenger airliners to use as guided missiles. Where there's ill will, there's a way. Maybe it can't be the same way next time, but the juvenile brutality of our current government sets us up for retribution from rightfully aggrieved other nations.

Canada has so far been able to rebuff the regime's attempts to strongarm it by making trade agreements and courting alliances with the countries still run by adults. Those nations are organizing for life without the United States as a reliable partner. We are now considered a risk, becoming a threat.

The juvenile clods in charge of the government right now equate fear with respect. They are two different things. When you respect someone, you seek their approval. When you fear someone, you acknowledge their ability to harm you, but that's not respect. It's a strategic assessment.

The United States has acted in cruel and greedy ways for centuries. We have a lot of room for improvement. From January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021, and again on January 20, 2025, we stopped trying to improve and turned sharply toward the cruelty and greed. Maybe the country deserves to collapse and be re-formed by forces as yet undetermined. It will be a loss, because the language of our Declaration of Independence and constitution certainly held great promise if we ever really lived up to it. Through the tumultuous 20th Century, we dragged painfully toward that goal. It never needed to be painful, but greed and cruelty insisted on it. Now they're digging in to oppose a greater humanity.

New Hampshire Legislature proposes shortening state motto

 The majority party in the New Hampshire legislature has proposed a more concise motto for the state than the well known, "Live Free or Die."

Free Staters who have been working on making the state into their libertarian utopia since the early 2000s, have had to acknowledge that terminating government services actually harms people. However, because they exalt complete freedom as the highest good, they consider the hardship and death that their obsession will cause is just a necessary price to pay for enjoying the purest liberty. They therefore proposed that the motto should be, "Die Free."

The rest of the majority party, in keeping with the national party's long-standing obsession with funneling resources to the already wealthy, will simply do anything for a tax break. Also, as control freaks who give lip service to freedom while doing their utmost to limit who qualifies to have it, they happily play along with ending vaccine mandates, canceling vaccine clinics during the school day, diverting public school funds to private and charter schools, increasing restrictions on women's reproductive health, discriminating against LGBTQ people in ways that can lead to increased violence and suicide, allowing domestic abusers to keep their firearms, and open carry of firearms everywhere. They are raising funds for the 2026 midterm elections so that they can replace the current Congressional delegation with Republicans who will vote against environmental regulations, and institute laws nationwide to make workplaces more dangerous, power plants and vehicles more polluting, health care more expensive, and food less safe. They propose shortening the motto to just, "Die."

"Let's get real," said one legislator, who declined to be identified. "We have at least two generations in the workforce who will never be able to afford to retire. They might as well go out in a gunfight with their neighbor over an unleashed dog as try to afford assisted living or a nursing home."

Meanwhile, We the People have governing to do

 As callous as it sounds, the street murders of two US citizens exercising their constitutional rights is not the biggest threat facing the country right now. The regime has made a direct assault on free and fair elections by raiding the Fulton County, Georgia, election center and seizing ballots stored under seal from the 2020 election. The contamination of evidence means that any "revelations" by the regime are automatically suspect, but don't expect that to stop them.

The current occupant of the Oval Office has already said that he wished that he had seized ballots and voting machines in 2020 to prevent Joe Biden from taking office. Biden was confirmed as the winner of the 2020 presidential election numerous times, as the MAGA regime filed suit after suit, and lost all of them.

While much of the current brouhaha is driven by the thin-skinned and senile dictator's thirst for revenge against imagined wrongs, the forces that have slunk in under cover of his bombast have had their sights on limiting voting rights for decades. Each segment has their favorite targets: the religious right tends to want to keep women from voting. The white supremacists want to keep Black and brown people from voting. The corporatists want to keep the poors from voting.

We on the so-called left would prefer if the supporters of each and all of these enemies of liberty would stop voting that way, but I'd like to think that most of us recognize that blocking anyone's right to vote is a dangerous weapon, lest it be snatched away and used against us.

Unfortunately, we can't try to tell the oppressors that they will be no worse off, and perhaps better, by letting everyone participate. The super rich love being super rich. Falling back to merely filthy rich from obscenely rich would definitely impact their lifestyle. Insecure men who need women to be automatically subservient will have to face more and more women who have no need for them.

Elections aren't going away: authoritarian regimes need them to provide the illusion of legitimacy. Election subversion, on the other hand, is a key element in assuring that the designated winner has a comfortable margin. Deftly done, it can even give the opposition party a shred of hope that some day the system might go their way.

Close electoral margins in actual count give the regime the sense that opinion might really favor them, at least by a slim majority. That's why a big turnout is essential to lay down a number that is harder to deny and falsify. If they have to take away ballots by the truckload, it's harder to conceal than just lugging out a couple of file boxes late at night.

While we can fantasize about firefights at polling places, as MAGA supporters literally battle 2A progressives, such fireworks are highly unlikely. We've seen how voter suppression actually works: polling places scattered over hundreds of square miles; long lines; no food or water; maybe some goons in tactical gear slouching around. And ICE, if still cosplaying in full military kit and snatching people might grab as many brown voters as they can, holding them until election day is over. No need to stick their catch in camps or deport them. Just keep them from voting. Sure, there will be lawsuits, but it will be too late to change the outcome of the election.

White people should be fine as long as they (we) don't smart off or kick any taillights. But that puts a lot of responsibility on us to represent for our less privileged brothers and sisters who might be getting more shit as they try to make their way to the polls.

Maybe we reach a point where the supporters of the regime wear clothing or accessories that mark them clearly. A lot of them already do, but it's not a mandatory uniform item. If they adopt the attitude that "if you're not with us you're against us," and extend that to heavy peer pressure to wear the mark of their beast, anyone planning to vote against them will have to choke down that wardrobe choice to mask our intent.

Violence is always a possibility when dealing with people who glorify their ability to dish it out and take it. Maybe they can, maybe they can't, but it's central to their identity. Like any bully, they definitely enjoy beating up on someone they perceive as weaker. So maybe some self-dramatizing popgun patriot starts something somewhere, but it's unlikely. Don't want to risk messing up their costume.

A lot of polling places won't notice anything unusual at all. In my little town, people don't tend to put on their fight face for national elections. We save that for town meeting and school district hearings. Even then, it's been quite a few years since our last fist fight. And we don't have any brown people to exclude, even if someone was so inclined. That's one reason that so many people just chuckle about anyone who shows visible signs of getting upset at the problems we see on the news. It's still mostly theoretical to the people around here, so they treat it like a sport that may or may not interest them. That's a problem, but good luck figuring out how to instill a sense of urgency in a population so isolated for generations.

Oh well. Alex Pretti is burned

 Human sacrifices have to be perfect. Renee Good only served to a point, because she had qualities that repel the right. Alex Pretti was looking good until video surfaced of him being a hothead and stirring shit with the federal forces invading Minneapolis. He's no innocent victim, regardless of how completely wrongfully he was executed.

Stories are always more complicated than the first impression conveys. We have yet to coordinate the new information about Pretti. I will say that going around packing heat indicates a personality prepared for deadly confrontation. There is no other reason to carry a tool only designed to cause injury and death. If you're carrying a gun and you're not willing to use it, you shouldn't carry a gun. If you are willing to use it, you are automatically dangerous to be around. The safety of anyone within range depends entirely on your judgment. And your accuracy, but even if you miss what you intended to hit you could send stray rounds into bystanders. So Pretti's armament is a hint to his self image.

His alleged destruction of property (taillights) is being described on outlets like Fox News and the New York Post as "violent." Property damage is not violence in anything approaching the way that assault is violent, but it does indicate a hotheadedness that could lead the perpetrator to lash out. There are also reports of Pretti spitting at federal agents. From what we've heard, I'm sure a lot of people would like to spit at the federal agents swarming that area right now. However, the resistance is engaged in a delicate public relations exercise. Rising to the bait to engage mano a mano only feeds the regime's story that insurrectionists are siding with the "immigrant invasion" and spoiling for a fight.

Shooting a guy because he spat on you is right up there with shooting your puppy because he was unruly. Cricket's killer has made it clear that she considers Pretti's killing to be within policy.

Over time, a more complete picture of Alex Pretti will emerge, but his value as a martyr is gone. He was built up too high for any tumble to be less than catastrophic. It's all going to devolve into "yes, but." Either side discussing him will take the talking points of the other side and say, "yes, but..."

Alex Pretti did not deserve his fate. Maybe the full story will clarify what was going on in the videos of his alleged provocative and confrontational behavior. Unfortunately, there's no rehabbing a perfect image once the human frailty bursts out in a way that undermines the image of a fun-loving, caring, nurturing person who only wanted to help people. He was probably all of those things. But it appears now that he was also feisty and willing to provoke agents who have already shown their eagerness to secure dominance by killing people in the street.

The nearest Republican to me couldn't wait to tell me about the video, and how those liberals on The View had to walk back their gushing tributes to Pretti. And he's not even a rad MAGA supporter, just well saturated with decades of contempt for liberals and their bullshit. 

Alex gaveth, and Alex done tooketh away.

Sorry, can't help you until just the right person is killed

 The street execution of Alex Pretti has galvanized resistance to the regime's overreach from both the right and the left. This surge has added to the criticism from right and left against the regime from its first swings of the wrecking ball in Jan. 20, 2025, and merged them into calls for actual removal of at least some of the malicious, incompetent toadies placed at the head of every cabinet department.

Is it a general human thing or just an American thing that an untenable situation can persist and grow, causing harm and death until it reaches a tipping point that triggers a wave of repudiation? It takes a certain level of infection to activate a society's immune system. Just the right people have to die.

It's hard to care about people you don't know. It's even hard to care about people you do know, when acknowledging them puts you in danger. How well do you know them?

Human sacrifices pile up, each one perhaps bringing a few more recruits to whatever cause is in play. The crisis we face now is no game. And it clearly goes way beyond brown people. Some of you may recall that some of us were saying that, back while there was still time to vote against the thunderous asshole now devastating the United States from its highest office. Ah well, water under the bridge...with the corpses of the fallen floating on it.

Comfortable people won't surrender comfort. People in precarious circumstances don't want to drop into a worse predicament. People in power do their best to keep the masses divided, distracted, and weak. But eventually, the right person is killed to break the tenuous stability of the oppressor.

In the current crisis, it has taken something like the death of Alex Pretti to alert masses of complacent white men that their oppressor isn't just DEI policies and quota hires, or women with the audacity to want to live as fully free and equal citizens. Sure, from their point of view it is all of those things, but now it's also a government trying to limit the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. Surprise! It wasn't the Democrats after all.

Don't be fooled that the complaints from the right indicate any softening of their traditional prejudices. Much of the objection to the regime from the right focused on how the regime hadn't been as odious as they promised to be. Hard right candidates are being primaried from even farther right. The problem will remain long after the visible pustule in the White House has been lanced and drained. In the meantime, however, the enemy of my enemy is temporarily convenient. A classic case of "right answer for the wrong reason," but the right answer nonetheless. We just have to be mindful that the next candidate the right puts forward will be trying to advance a lot of the same agenda without the conspicuous, proud offensiveness of the current reality TV cast.

Trump and World War III

 Among the unhelpful, panic-mongering posts going around social media about how the regime will cancel the midterm elections, I caught one this morning about how Kristallnacht backfired on the Nazi regime because its public violence caught the citizens off guard. They didn't suddenly grow sympathetic to their Jewish fellow citizens. They just objected to the open brutality and widespread property damage. That is rather reminiscent of the right wing and "moderates" in this country, true. However, the post goes on to say that Hitler forced the "volk" to get back in line to support the regime when he launched World War II. Then it warns us that the current occupant of the Oval Office would not hesitate to start World War III to achieve the same kind of forced unity.

The dictator might fantasize that he could do something that Hitlerish, but several things conspire against him, or anyone similarly motivated.

As bad as the world is right now, it remains inoculated against true world war by the existence of doomsday weapons. It takes more than one country to play World War. In the 1930s, military hardware had advanced beyond what made World War I such a shocking slaughter and generational trauma, but you still had to go out in person to deliver your devastation. You had to drive there, march there, sail there, fly there. Germany eventually did develop early missile technology, but it remained pretty random right through the end of the conflict. At the start of the war, you just rolled out and faced whatever opposing forces rolled from their side to meet you.

The first world war was the result of unfortunate treaties and an outmoded sense of what warfare actually involved. Once it had started, it was hard to stop. Territory and resources were in play that would set the stage for the rest of the century.

The second world war was a result of the bungling of the aftermath of the first. But it might have happened anyway, because macho posturing was in vogue, and evolving weapon technology made global conquest look doable.

If the current dictator wanted to start a world war, it would be a nuclear war. I want to believe that our military would mutiny at that point rather than roll the dice on a limited nuclear exchange. Anyone who agreed to try that would have to be suicidal. It remains a possibility because of the number of miserable bastards who would commit murder-suicide. Look at the number of family annihilations in which a depressed individual, usually a man, takes out his domestic partner and their offspring before ending his own life. On a global political scale, look at the the kind of people who commit suicide attacks. Through history, they're not exclusively brown people from desert countries. All it would take is the perfect concentration of suicidal zealots who are willing to destroy humanity if they can't boss it around on their terms. Gather them, induct them into the military, and promote and assign them to get your cadre of murder-suicide soldiers at the controls of the nuclear arsenal. Fire one missile and see what happens. It makes a good movie plot, but is much harder to put together in the real world.

If you think that an attack by conventional forces, on Greenland, for instance, would do the trick, I call your attention to World War V -- the Vietnam War -- which was so divisive and unpopular that it set the stage for much of the strife that divides the nation today. By the 1990s we were ready to "give war a chance," as the gleeful militarists said at the time, but then the years of inconclusive bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq reminded us of why it wasn't so great after all.

The only people with any enthusiasm for war at this point are the chickenhawks who never put themselves in harm's way. This regime has a pretty high concentration of them, but the people who would have to execute the orders have been trained in more than just TV tough guy bullshit. The TV tough guy currently cosplaying as Secretary of Defense does have military experience, but not a service academy education. His on-again-off-again military career is not the same as the lifelong commitment of a truly senior military officer. He's well marinaded, but not seasoned.

And what if the dictator did start World War III? You and I can't do anything about that. The minority party in Congress can't do anything about that. Any move by military leaders to do anything about it would risk court martial and possibly execution. They might do it, because unswerving obedience isn't a good look when the survival of the human species is on the line. Keep hoping. Getting worried about it, even getting terrified about it, does you absolutely no good. Your "bug-out bag" and escape plans couldn't get you far enough to avoid the fallout -- literally -- of the conflagration. Think of Nevil Shute's On the Beach. So forget about it and focus on the boring, undramatic machinery of a functioning democracy. Continue opposing the regime through the non-routine actions of nonviolent resistance, and through community cohesiveness in the event that the goons come to your town and start throwing their weight around.