Reflections on Another Green-Gray Christmas

And heartfelt thanks to both my paid and free subscribers

It’s Christmas Day in northeast Ohio. The grass is green, the sky is gray and a little foggy, the temperature a few degrees above freezing. IOW, not so different from my Christmases Past in San Antonio.

No coat of white. No big, fluffy snowflakes coming down like they do in A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Even though my history tells me Jesus of Nazareth was most likely born under the Sign of the Fish in the spring, since Zoroastrian astrologers were reportedly present, Christmas has pretty much replaced the old Winter Solstice celebrations in the West.

This year, the little town in which Jesus was supposedly born—Bethlehem, not Nazareth or Jerusalem as I’ve seen Very Smart People like Wolf Blitzer claim on Jeopardy!—is being bombed for Christmas. Not even Herod or the Romans did that.

It kind of puts a damper on things, so perhaps my gray day here is appropriate. A few other things are also somewhat dampening, such as

• I got my notice from Social Security they will be reducing my benefit by $200 a month so I can pay Medicare premiums so I can get the Medicare I’ve paid far more into than I ever did Social Security.

  • On the bright side, it still pays 80% and I don’t have to pay a couple hundred dollars more a month for a rentier Medicare Parts C & D plan for their profit and my family’s penury.

• A lot of other Americans got notices their already rapacious health insurance premiums will triple come January 1. Talk about spreading the joy of the season.

• I see my Australian, British, and German friends having to guard their language so that maybe they won’t get arrested for acting like decent human beings, and it really does piss me off on their behalf.

  • The First Amendment is still a really good idea. I highly recommend it.

  • If any of you ever feel the need to call out some government minister or something, send your thoughts to me and I’ll call them out in no uncertain terms. Don’t worry about me; there’s a Federal Courthouse 11 miles from my house, and the filing fee is in the bank.

On the bright side, I was halfway expecting a shiny brand new war with Venezuela for Christmas, but noooooo…apparently we’re going to just play Pirates of the Caribbean with oil tankers and dream of unsinkable golden battleships.

• The war drags on in Ukraine because kleptocratic Europeans and Americans don’t want to give up their grift just yet. All I can say with any confidence is that this war will definitely be over by next Christmas.

• The Sahel Confederation is a bright spot in West Africa, and I’ll take the opportunity here to say Thank You to whoever in Burkina Faso has recently become a subscriber of mine. Ouagadougou is the coolest national capital name in the world. Say it fast a bunch of times and it makes a great dance line, and your leader seems to be a good one.

  

• Thanks also to my first follower from Iran. I didn’t know that was possible, I’m glad I was mistaken, and there is a video on the Iranian Revolution coming for your review soon.

• My wishes for the very best of all possible fortune to my six followers in Palestine. I know it does no good, but I do worry about you.

• I see new subscribers in the Caribbean, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and half of Latin America in general, and I’m going to try to focus on some more of your history, of which most Americans are woefully ignorant.

I would like to go over all 88 countries and 49 US states from which all of my subscribers hail, but it is Christmas Day, everybody has the day off work, and the biker club down the street invited us to their big afternoon feast, so Other Things To Do will drive me away from keyboards for awhile.

May you have the joy of the day, and if that’s not feasible, hope for a far better day next year.

Thank you for reading, good day or night, and good luck.

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