How a Grown Up Ends a War and Wins
It is not my intention here to give our current president a strategy for a gracious exit from the War with Iran. I am writing this only because I believe he is incapable of adopting my solution.
Years ago, my very smart husband, AdventureMan and I played strategic board games. One time, I beat him in only six moves, at which point he stood up and stomped his foot (a very strong statement from a normally restrained man) and yelled “You can’t do that! It’s unorthodox!”
And that’s how wars are won. Yes, you can waste billions on sophisticated weaponry, and have a lot of fun with bombs and destruction. High T at work. You can also waste lives, and I believe that is a crime against your country. Our young people are not expendable.
We’ve all started fights we can’t win. It’s wired into us as human beings. What is the way out?
“I’ve made a big mistake. I take full responsibility. I’m sorry I got us into this mess, and now, I am going to do everything in my power to make it right.”
Those words, and the humility it takes to say them, save relationships, re-establish peace, and a firm foundation for moving forward.
It takes a grown-up to say them. It takes a grown-up to even think them. To continue on a losing path is wasteful and self-destructive.
We are not winning.
It’s time to own up, exit, and begin rebuilding our alliances.
New York’s Participation Trophy for Trump and his Iranian debacle. Everyone invited to contribute; no achievement too paltry to commemorate. The more gilt, the merrier.
Tightrope, No Safety Net
It is astonishing and hiliarious what you can find on the internet these days if you look. I entered “image Trump on a tightrope” and came up with more than I had hoped for.
We are in dangerous times. Our President is reckless, and leaves a trail of wreckage. All the guardrails, so carefully set up to avoid corruption, abuse, waste and degradation have been dismantled. The watchers have been fired. The laws have been weakened, if not destroyed.
The relationships with reliable allies have been demolished with bravado, as if it were a good thing not to have cooperative friends.
A civilized society operates within constraints. It demonstrates self-restraint for the greater good of all. Have you ever heard this President exhibit a single concern for the citizens of the USA? Any note indicating a desire to serve and protect? You know, like the oaths of public service require?
The safety nets are gone. ICE operates with impunity; poorly trained, without accountability, preying on the most vulnerable among us. We are told in the earliest books of our religion to “welcome the stranger.” We are told by the crooks, rapists and bad people in charge that the immigrants are “crooks, rapists and bad people.” They have little protection, and, it seems, no longer have the rights guaranteed by the court system so carefully developed.
Our president and his family skim billions from the economy and deals made on the basis of presidential power. Croneys make billions from an endless war which serves no purpose and has no credible way of ending.
Our trusted institutions teeter on collapse.
I pray for our country, as I watch with horror and anticipate the next outrageous proclamations of the president and his confederacy of dunces.
Biases: Believing Our Delusions
This is from a daily reading by Richard Rohr, a theologian I love reading for his broad outlook on belief and spirituality.
None of us is free from biases that skew our thinking. He lists several of the thinking errors below.
Recognizing Our Biases
CAC (Center for Advanced Contemplation – ed.) faculty member Brian McLaren has done thoughtful and helpful research about what makes us see things so differently from one another. He identified thirteen biases that we outline today. Being a former pastor and an excellent communicator, Brian found a way to make these complex ways of seeing simple and memorable. He writes:
People can’t see what they can’t see. Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .
Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.
Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.
Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.
Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.
Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.
Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.
Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.
Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.
Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.
Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).
Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.
Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.
Trump’s Murky Repairs on Reflection Pond
Our taxes at work paying Trump’s cronys in no-bid contracts.
Alaska 2026: Homer Happy Surprises
We are up and eager for our boat trip into the Katchemak Bay. We have cereal and banana, pack up some snacks, and put on our sunscreen. It is not so brightly sunny as prior days, but sunny enough to burn. We find the meeting point, and another couple joins us, then the crew and we get on the boat. Once again, we are four customers and a captain and deckhand.
Even better, the man in the other couple introduces himself and adds “You will notice I have an accent. I am Jordanian.” AdventureMan, ever quick, asks him in Jordanian Arabic “From what part of Jordan do you come,” and we all laugh at his utter astonishment. Once we started talking, we never stopped.
We watched otter, and learned how they attach themselves to the kelp so that they don’t drift too far from their food source.
We saw countless birds, and one great-grand eagle. We saw puffins galore. And at the same time, we were having these conversations, figuring out who we knew in common as we are near to the same age.
We had so much fun with this couple that when the wildlife tour ended, we decided to eat lunch together at Captain Pattie’s on the Homer Spit, a place AdventureMan and I have eaten at on earlier trips to Homer. The wife and I had the Alaska King Crab Legs, which were hideously expensive, but not so expensive as I have seen them in other places, and these were perfectly prepared. True Love: AdventureMan knows me to be a frugal woman. He did not bat an eye when I ordered the King Crab.
I know exactly when I last had Alaska King Crab. It was my birthday, many years ago, and my son and I were staying with my parents in Seattle while my husband attended a military school. As we sat down to dinner, suddenly my husband appeared! He had flown in to surprise me! And my mother served King Crab legs with melted butter, and she made a Baked Alaska for dessert. I must have been 30 years old.
We had such a good meal, and such good conversation. Even the wait staff was part of what felt like a great celebration.
After lunch, we headed out to explore downtown Homer. We ended up at the Homer Farmer’s Market, and oh what fun.
We had thought we wouldn’t buy anything, but I found some Spruce Syrup (like Maple syrup, sort of) and we found some barbecue.
Yes, even though we had just eaten lunch, we knew this BBQ was special, and we ordered up two plates and had them wrapped so we could put them in the little refrigerator and have them for dinner.
They were wonderful! I’d like to say we had them on our deck patio, watching the sun go down, but here’s the problem – the sun doesn’t really go down, or it goes a little bit down but not at dinnertime, more like around two a.m. Even then, as you have seen, it is not DARK dark.
It’s hard to settle down for the evening when it is so light out. We go for a walk in the neighborhood, then come back to catch up – me with my photos and notes on the trip, AdventureMan with his reading.
Slight of Hand and Wires and Mirrors; No Accountability
Our leader announced a speech to the nation, which turned out to be nothing but repeats of “Truth” social posts and comments previously made. A boring, disjointed 19 minutes of nothing credible. Credibility is stating a mission and following through. Chaos is changing the mission and its achievements every ten minutes or so. If you don’t believe me, watch the stock market.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain, The Great Oz and his handlers are changing how our democracy operates. The failed military officer, Pete Hegseth is examining and removing African Americans, females, and especially African American Females from promotion lists. He is firing the top general who questions his judgement in toying with a time honored system where the military chooses its leaders based on performance and leadership abilities, not their gender nor their color.
Does Hegseth understand demographics? Does he understand that military recruitment is problematic these days days, that the pool of recruits has shrunk dramatically? Does he understand that brawn no longer wins wars, but fighter planes, drones, new ideas and weapon development are fighting a new kind of war, where every gender and color contributes the the nuances of creative strategies available to a commander in chief who genuinely understands how to function in the fog of war?
Today Heather Cox Richardson alerts us to another slight of hand, the kind of small change the controllers hope will go unnoticed: The challenge of ACCOUNTABILITY and how it impedes a sitting President. She quotes the following, and it quite takes my breath away:
Yesterday Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, of the Office of Legal Counsel, published an opinion for the White House that claims the Presidential Records Act, which requires that presidents keep records of their official business and turn them over at the end of their term, is unconstitutional. Gaiser clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
“The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II. The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose,” the memo reads. “For these reasons, the PRA is unconstitutional, and the President need not further comply with its dictates.”
(taking a moment to catch my breath)
We burden our elected president with the requirement that we know what he does and why he is doing it?
How can anyone believe this lunacy? Any person in a position of responsibility has to answer to his polity! Elected politicians all the more. He answers to us, the voters.
Our leader has a lot to answer for. We can’t trust anything he says, from minute to minute. Our treasury has been declared insolvent. He is sending our children off to war with unclear orders and insufficient leadership.
He has hired a confederacy of ignorant, greedy sycophants. He has gutted our diplomatic service. He has gutted Consumer Oversight. He has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. He has corrupted the Department of Education.
He is terrified he cannot win and is attempting to take over national elections. Meanwhile, he is bankrupting our country with garish monuments and wars we never agreed to fight.
He is subjecting women to outdated standards and taken away their rights to make decisions for their own bodies.
He is corrupting our social system, taking medical care away from those who need it most, and callously neglecting the veterans who have served our country so loyally.
He has made agreements with other countries that we only learn about by accidental comments.
This can’t go on. Give us Accountability. Oversight. Congressional Approval. Fair and Free Elections. Constitutional Restraints!
Another Brick in the Wall
Do you believe this man really has your best interest at heart? Don’t look at what he says; look at what he does. He has an agenda – self-enrichment. He has a strategy, and that strategy is outlined in Project 2025. Take a look. See how quickly and radically our democratic system and values are disappearing.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Treasury Department has terminated its collective bargaining agreement with unionized workers employed at the Internal Revenue Service, the agency said Friday, in an escalation of President Donald Trump ’s push to exert more control over the federal workforce.
The union contract for the Bureau of the Fiscal Service was also terminated this week, according to two people familiar with the decision. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.
Workers at the IRS and the fiscal service bureau, which processes payments for the government, are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union. They were informed by agency leadership that Treasury terminated their collective bargaining agreements, using an executive order President Donald Trump signed last March as the authority for the terminations.
In a letter to IRS workers Friday, viewed by The Associated Press, IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Alex Kweskin told employees the move “deepens our commitment of operating as one IRS, a collaborative team focused on serving American taxpayers.”
The contract terminations come after Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, issued a memo this month to agency heads calling on them to comply with Trump’s March order and notify labor unions “that they are terminating any applicable CBAs (collective bargaining agreements), whether represented by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) or another labor union.”
The union had sued the federal government last year over Trump’s executive order.
And while a D.C. court issued a preliminary injunction against the government, that was stayed pending an appeal. Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a decision in a separate case Thursday that cleared the way for the implementation of Trump’s executive order.
Doreen Greenwald, president of the Treasury employees union, said in a statement Friday that the IRS “cannot unilaterally end” its contract with the labor union. She said the federal sector labor statute requires the IRS to have a collective bargaining agreement “with the exclusive representative of its bargaining unit employees,” she said.
The National Treasury Employees Union represents roughly 150,000 employees in 37 departments and agencies.
From Oppressive Governments
Prayer from today’s Lectionary:
PRAYER (contemporary language)
Almighty God, we thank you for the faith and witness of Paul Sasaki, bishop in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, tortured and imprisoned by his government, and Philip Tsen, leader of the Chinese Anglican Church, arrested for his faith. We pray that all Church leaders oppressed by hostile governments may be delivered by your mercy, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may be faithful to the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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