Cactus and the Administration

Hola!  How are you doing in this time of everything going off the rails, all at once, for no good reason, other than the cranky orange baby trying to distract us from the number of times he appears in the Epstein files?  My feeling of existential dread has returned with a vengeance.  It's feeling like 1965 all over again when Barry McGuire was singing this song.

First there are a few photos.  Jim took this last night.  It wasn't a great sunset, but it's what there was.  I think sunsets used to be better, must be global climate change.

Our Mexican fence post cactus is blooming and making fruit.  We did not see this last year.  I don't know if we just were not looking, or if it was a fallow year for it.  Notice the hummingbird.  That's the one sitting on the nest.  We spent a week making hummer juice and putting out a feeder, but she will not partake.  Our windows have a UV coating, which is very mirror like, and I guess her reflection scares her.  I tried putting on the electric meter, but she didn't like that, either.  So, no chow for her. The feeder is one of those small ones that you stick on a window.

The fence post cactus is about 15 feet tall.  It amuses me that the blossoms are so small and non-descript.

The cactus is in the process of loosing two more arms, which is bad.

47 and Netanyahu have decided that something must be done about Iran.  The US will have two carrier groups in the area.  February is when Iran, Russia and China hold their yearly joint military operations in the Strait of Hormuz.  One fifth of the global oil supply goes through the strait.  See that pointy land mass almost in the middle of the map?  That's the Strait.  There's not a lot of room to maneuver in there.  

After the recent Iranian crackdowns on the protests, when thousands of people were killed, 47 told the citizens that help is on the way.  I guess help consists of the US bombing Tehran.  The Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group is currently in the Arabian sea, the Ford carrier battle group is on the way.  So, stand by to be amazed.  We'll have Iran, Russia and China and the US within spitting distance of each other.

This is from Axios via Meidas Touch on Facebook.  It gives you a pretty good idea of how much equipment and time may be involved.

Here is badness from the home front.  "A few weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation—the powerhouse organization behind Project 2025—released a 250-year roadmap to “save America.” Written by authors with close ties to the Trump administration, the document is a how-to guide for subjugating girls and young women: a detailed plan to push them out of college, funnel them into early marriage and motherhood, and then trap them there."  They want us out of the work place and back in the kitchen, with no ability to determine our destiny.  There's a good substack on the subject here.

ICE is buying up giant warehouses.  They plan to convert them into detention centers.  If the goal here is to deport people here without documents, why do they need detention centers this large.  I scraped this off twitter.  Why do they need this many square feet?  Where is all this money coming from?  The tax payers, of course.  I would like to see some detail on these buildings.  The only good thing happening, is the locals don't want these built in their neighborhoods, and so some of the sales have been cancelled.  

Last week Vinay Prasad, who is head of vaccines in the FDA, unilaterally chose to not review Moderna's new flu vaccine study.  He did not like the control arm that was used in the trials.  Never mind that the vaccine in the control arm is one currently in use, and was previously approved for the drug trial.  Moderna's response was: “Moderna’s CEO announced the company will no longer invest in new Phase 3 vaccine trials for infectious diseases: ‘You cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the U.S. market.’ Vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, herpes, and shingles have been shelved.”  So, way to go Vinay.  However, today someone higher up in the food chain at HHS as announced that the new vaccine trials will be reviewed.  Perhaps all is not lost.

There is a list of Notable People, and the locations of their graves, at Arlington Cemetery.  The Secretary of Defense, Petey Hegseth, has removed Colin Powell's name, as well as every person of color and women from the list.  Only white men remain.