Notes From A Bear's Journey

     You're sick of it, I know.  The endless ads, the robocalls, the AI-generated images by wanna-be influencers nestled in basements, the state-run hackers.  But this midterm election, on track to be the most expensive midterm in US history , is important for one key reason...nuclear weapons.  If you haven't already heard (even Congress hasn't been notified), Trump is in secret talks with the Pentagon to lower the threshold of nuclear use so that he could possibly (and probably) use smaller nukes against Iran, a war he both started and now sees no way to win, other than by using nuclear weapons.  Here's what the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists wrote: A new nuclear policy is taking shape in secret, crafted by a small group of Pentagon officials, that will give President Donald Trump more ways to start a nuclear war.  Little is known about the strategic nuclear review now under way in the Trump administration, but officials’ comments suggest that ...

     What a word, that.  It's everywhere, if you think about it: love, honor, and obey; his honor; medal of honor.  And yet, today's world seems to be taking more and more luster away from that word's meaning.  Think of how many times you've heard that introduction in Washington: ... the honorable blah-blah.  Really?  Be it a president or a Congressional rep or a justice, how much weight do you put into that "honor" part these days, especially when little qualification is needed for each position.  Basically one has to ask, what makes a politician "honorable?"  Or an ambassador.  Or a cabinet posting?  One only has to read through today's donor/loyal appointees and wonder, what makes them qualified.  And while earlier posts have brought up the topic of coroners and morticians (which is how Dr. Vincent di Maio made his living, so to speak), ghostwriter Ron Franscell noted that little to no training is required to be a ...

     Most of you are too young to remember a television show (in black and white) called Hopalong Cassidy .  Heck, I don't even remember much of it, but it must have somehow impressed me as a young child because my mom spent a bit or her savings to have a studio picture taken of me (back in those days, stores such as Sears and Penney's all had small "portrait" studios where for some relatively inexpensive sum you could have your picture taken in a proper setting...on film, no less!)  T his was all in the days before higher-end stores arrived such as Nordstrom or Macys, stores which would later send those everyday stores out of business (Sears would always send out a phone-book sized catalog each year, a godsend for us 10-year old boys just starting to feel hormonal urges and ogling at the models posing in grandmotherly bras and Bridget Jones panties; in rural parts of the country, those catalogs landed in the outhouse and became several months worth of toilet p...