In no particular order…
Just when you thought politics in the US could not get uglier, while the Dems. and Republicans are in their perpetual, entirely undignified/despicable fight for political power, 42 million people stopped receiving SNAP benefits. That is FOOD-STAMPS, people! 1.2 million people in the military among those. Imagine the indignity to families with a head of household serving in the military, getting in line at food-banks!
Take a big “gulp” at these statistics:
– 49% of U.S. Congressmen are millionaires
– 67% of members of the U.S. Senate are millionaires
– 100% of them traveled home to their respective states to enjoy a family weekend. The past weekend.
Your humble [genuinely livid / embarrassed / not-comprehending] scribe, Manning, expects that none of them had to go to food-bank for milk, bread, eggs, cereal…. Just say’n.
Continuing with that subject, I cannot wait to get on the red-eye flight tonight from Los Angeles to New York, knowing that air traffic controllers have not been paid for over a month. Fewer and fewer, daily, can afford to show up to man their already insufficiently staffed air traffic control towers. And, more and more of those who step-up for the rest of us working those high-stress jobs, are working second jobs to pay ordinary bills. Do the math and pray.
Pakistan remains the most dangerous place on earth, I opine. And now, there is the whole Afghanistan/Taliban mess. Starting with Alexander the Great (~330 BCE), right through the Mongol Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States, to name a few would-be conquerors, they all failed to occupy Afghanistan. Even more so the recent Taliban-Afghanistan. Do not say “there must be something in the water!” It is a bunch of things. Hit me up with an email on a white-paper on that.
Now, it may be Pakistan’s turn to try. Although both predominantly Sunni, they have deep disagreements about “how” Sunni they are. They have competing visions of Islamic governance. Add every known-to-man jihadist groups—can you spell faux-proxy warfare based on primitive ideological alignment—and you get fertilizer for bloodshed.
256 million Pakistanis, already really annoyed with India, with nukes. What could go wrong?
Colossal naiveté on a global scale displayed last week. The US shakes hands with China and expects China to behave as it were in an American laundry detergent TV commercial.
Worse yet, speaking of smiles, handshakes, agreements… Even more disturbing to your faithful correspondent, Manning, THE ENTIRE GLOBE HAS DEVELOPED RARE EARTH MINERALS DRIVEN AMNESIA! I suppose faster and bigger-capacity chips in our electronics are far more relevant than any recollection of the likely over 36 million people who died of the China virus (ahem COVID).
Ahhhh. The remarkable perversion of it… There is indeed “war being raged against Christians” in the world. While not a singular coordinated “war,” it manifests through targeted killings, forced displacements, church attacks, arbitrary arrests, and legal restrictions—primarily driven by Islamist extremism, authoritarian regimes, religious nationalism, and conflict zones. Is it not amazing, given that Christians are the world’s largest religious group (over 2.3 billion).
Hanging our collective heads in shame, U.S. mainstream news outlets give that minimal coverage. The major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) devoted 15 times more coverage to all manner of culture-war issues (think drag shows and the like) and insipid social media manifestation of the cancer of the intellect, than addressed global Christian persecution.
Then there is the near absence of positive media coverage on Antisemitism. That is—I am not open to an argument on this—the second oldest pathology in human history, second only to misogyny.
Random thought… Is it possible for Manning or Schooler to get handcuffed by the British thought-police when stepping off a plane at Heathrow, for something spoken or written?
When elected—remarkable is it not?—Mamdani will make a significant improvement in the plight of many homeless people in New York! Awesome, no? All those free buses, with heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer! Well, for a short while anyway. Good thing until the busses will become no longer … You get it.
I have a much better (bigger?) idea on that. Toss out of the country—absolutely without ceremony—all the diplomats at the U.N.! All those intellectually and morally bankrupt, hopelessly verbose windbags, living large on the U.S. checkbook need to go. Then, use that amazing U.N. building to house homeless people! When the building becomes inhabitable, with ceremony befitting the destruction of a monument to human indignity, erase it to make room for a fine park. In short time, that will become “multi-purpose” to be sure.
That is all for now…
Hope you all have a productive, peaceful and fun week.