[conspire] (forw) Columbus Day

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2025 10:57:33 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Ruben Safir <mrbrklyn at panix.com>
Subject: Columbus Day
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

A neighbor noted:

  The irony

  https://apnews.com/article/trump-columbus-indigenous-peoples-day-biden-ee34f1873a9af8ea85ac732b9edf82fc


I replied:

Observance is really on a statewide basis, and the Toddler-in-Chief
signing a "proclamation" has no effect.

There are many things the Toddler-in-Chief does that are destructive and
dangerous.  I want to acknowledge that.

However, _also_ the Toddler continually signs many, many proclamations
and orders that are purely ridiculous, have no effect whatsoever, and
should be either sarcastically mocked or simply summarily ignored.

This is one of the latter.  The press will not say that truth plainly.
We citizens must apply the requisite reality filter.

Another example:  Early on, Trump 2.0 issued an Executive Order
(https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/the-iron-dome-for-america/)
decreeing that a US equivalent of Israel's Iron Dome short-range missile
defense shall henceforth protect the continental USA.  This was covered
with a straight face by the press, as if it were meaningful -- as if
were part of consensual reality.

There are three obvious reasons why the EO was idiotic.  First, no
funding whatsoever.  For that reason _alone_, it has to date, and will
in the future, have zero effect.  

Nada.  Ayin (אַיִן).  Rein du tout.  Ingenting.  Nichts.  Nihil.  Niente.
Nothing.

(Sure, I'm a little bit polyglot; nice of you to notice.  In order:
Spanish, Hebrew, French, my father's native Norwegian, German, Latin,
Italian, and English.)

Second, an Iron Dome system, if it were real, would be pointless and
stupid for the continental-USA context.  At best, it would protect
Detroit from Windsor, Ontario and San Diego from Tijuana, Baja
California, neither of which neighboring cities have thus far been known
for missile barrages.

Third, even if Canada or Mexico were conducting aerial warfare against
the USA, the evolving threat of greater concern is not missile (guided)
or rocket (unguided) projectiles, but rather armed drones.  Hezbollah,
prior to its getting kneecapped, partly by the IAF but mostly by the new
Syrian regime cutting off its supply chain, flew slow, low drones
_under_ Israel's Iron Dome sensor arrays.  They're still scrambling to
develop a fix for that hole in defense, the main candidate being a laser
air defense system called Iron Beam in English, "Shield of Light" (מגן
אור) in Hebrew, being co-developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems
and Lockheed Martin.

So, in short:  Expect utter-nonsense proclamations and orders from this
insane, incompetent junta, and filter it out of what to be concerned
about, and out of your comprehension of the world.


----- End forwarded message -----