I read up on the last several men the federal government rushed to put to death this past month.

Sister Helen is 100% right. None of the defendants would have come anywhere near a death penalty had they had money and privilege.

1/

I separated when my son was little. He was three years old and suddenly I was a single dad with a life to build for him.

That first Christmas, I made big productions of doing Christmasy things together.

The first was the tree lighting in Rockefeller Center.

1/

It was past his bedtime, so I taped it. The next night, we baked cookies and watched it together.

A few nights later, it was more cookies and Rudolph.

Another night, we went to get hot chocolate and look at Christmas lights.

We called them Christmas Fun Nights.

2/

The next year, we watched the lighting of the tree again. And then we did all of those other things too.

They were excuses to just do something together in the Christmas spirit.

Christmas Fun Nights were now a tradition.

3/

We had done them 10 years in a row before this year.

I cherish them. But that's me. I am a malomar: hard outer shell, marshmallow center. I'm sentimental as shit.

You don't always know how much your kids share in your sentiments though. And my son is 13 now. *Things change*

4/

Since COVID hit, to make it as easy on my son as possible, he just splits time between his homes. Spends a few days in one and then spends a few days in the other.

It's flexible. We just sort it out week to week. Easy.

5/

I have a little story that I have now drafted and deleted multiple times because I can't seem to do it justice.

So, I am going to strip it down to the barest of details and just let it fly unedited.

Bear with me. It will be worth the ride, I hope.

1/

If you follow me, you have probably seen my endless posts about trying to find a PlayStation 5 (PS5).

Originally, I was looking for one for my son. I found one for him two weeks ago.

Since then, I have been looking for one for someone else.

An old friend.

2/

Jen and I have known each other 30 years.

We shared a mutual close friend in our 20s. We weren't close but hung out when we all met up at bars.

I've seen her once in 15 yrs. Bumped into her at Starbucks.

Were it not for Facebook, we would have entirely lost touch long ago.

3/

We're Facebook friends. That's what we are.

And as a result, I had that gauzy sense of her life you get from seeing only the passing glimpses that cross your timeline.

I knew the broad strokes.

4/

Like me, she's a single parent to a son she adores.

Went into the travel industry.

Never seemed to be in a relationship. Not married.

Was close with her father until he passed away suddenly a few years ago.

5/

1. I am in the process of recovering four years of destroyed Twitter posts from my recent hack. Most related to an organization of rogue CIA agents doing election hacking, drug running, and dark weapons trading in a group led by AG Bill Barr. Other have call this the Enterprise.

2. The Enterprise is run Bill Barr himself and organized 800 ex-CIA agents and 300 ex-Soviet KGB Generals into a junta of 1,100 Frank Guistra partners in a sort of law firm of international crime. Iran Contra drug running was the first major operation in 1980. by the Enterprise.

3. Chip Tatum, a CIA pilot, flew Bill Barr, then a CIA attorney for George Bush, to Central America for Iran Contra banking and money laundering operations talks about this extensively in him book about his close friend, Robert Mueller, entitled, "The Mule".

4. A fundamental premise of my work over the last four years is to focus on this core Iran Contra, "Enterprise" group, to follow election hacking, dark weapons trade, drug running, and money laundering. Here are some video notes capture on the web from shows I did in 2016.

5. You can see in these 2016 show notes how my focus was on a USAID funded Serbian election flipping, subversive group called OTPOR. This group received subversion funds for election flipping through KKR, a joint venture of David Petraeus and Henry Kissinger.

IMPORTANT MASK INFORMATION

From Anna de Buisseret

The Government has FAILED to conduct a Risk Assessment of the risks to the individual members of the public for the harms caused to them by mask wearing- or wearing a face covering.

Dems are correct in not calling witnesses, which is obvious when you think this through. First, the case has been made. Any GOPr or delusional Trump fan who doesnt accept that - or care - never will. The country knows/sees what happened. 2nd, if dems called witnesses.../1

...it will add next to nothing. Statements are being admitted into the record from some witnesses. Third, & most important, the GQP is a monstrosity that only cares about power. Once the witness door opens, they'll turn the trial into a farce, calling anyone and everyone.../2

...to muddy up the case. Since their entire case is whataboutism, they will try to call Obama, Hillary Clinton, Holder, Waters, and on and on. If the presiding officer holds the testimony irrelevant before allowing it, there will be weeks of rage about cover-ups, etc. The.../3

...actual case - already strongly proven by the House Managers, even using the criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt - will get buried as the days and weeks pass with hundreds of irrelevant witnesses are fought over. Finally, bringing those witnesses.../4

...could interfere with a possibly more important proceeding if it happens: The criminal prosecution of Trump by District of Columbia for inciting a riot, which is a crime in DC. As in the Oliver North case, the public Congressional testimony of North led a court to throw.../5

The U.S. national security and intelligence apparatus has said for years that climate change is the single greatest threat to the nation and world. While systems intrusion and hacking by foreign actors could potentially have replicated some of what happened in Texas, it didn't.

Climate change and failure to plan did that, along with incompetence, ineptitude, and sheer greed.

Not only was what happened in Texas the failure of governance and malfeasance, it was a complete failure of imagination, vision, and insight.

While some folks want to call it a "black swan event," the fact is what happened in Texas was not. Not only was it anticipated, it was predicted. The people in charge were told what the problems were, how to fix them and why. They were told what to expect if they didn't.

Not only was it a cyclical occurrence (the third time in just over 30 years), both the periodicity and severity are increasing and intensifying. Therefore, the choices for inaction paved the way for the occurrence. It was inevitable.

In this regard, conservative ideology, philosophy and fiscal beliefs are their own worse enemy. That's because conservatism's most natural response is at best to do nothing, at worst to resist. Therefore, the disaster was a multi-layered, time induced, mountain of self-sabotage.