NOTE from my brother yesterday : In the meantime, if you want to get a short yet sobering "state of the union" you should read Kunstler's post today: "An Ill Wind" EXCERPT: [ "Something ominously foul rides the late summer breeze as our country, and Western Civ with it, tilts into the season of growing darkness. Can you sense it? Death is in the air, and not in the usual Halloween vaudeville mode, either, with the cackling lawn zombies and top-hatted, tap-dancing skeletons. This ain’t no foolin’ around. We have never been so unprepared for a calamity in plain sight and that is because the people who run things have made it happen in combined acts of wickedness and stupidity. After decades of mere racketeering, arranging things so as to bankrupt anyone who gets seriously ill, corporatized health care now presides over a harvest of medically-induced death, pretending dumbly that there is nothing to see. Get this: the people are seeing it now, and talking about it, and there will be no stopping their discovery of exactly what has gone on, or their wrath in the afterwash. The chief architect of this epic debacle, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Captain Queeg of American Public Health, has announced his exit from the scene “to pursue the next chapter of my career.” He was coy about what that might be. I think the job title is: defendant. It will be a milestone in human history to witness The Science itself go on trial, should it live long enough. What awaits to take its place? Vizirs with wands and pointed hats? Crones riding broomsticks against a cold, lifeless moon? A principality of dark magic? Descent into the underworld? The medically-induced termination of life at large scale accompanies the current effort to provoke the suicide of culture and nationhood — more orchestrated depravity and folly. Institutions are turned against us like flame-throwers. The FBI might break down your door next in its quest to suppress dissent. The composers of official mind-fuckery never sleep, assuring that you will not know which end of anything is up. Your purblind legislators just set 87,000 new IRS agents on your asses, as if that was any sort of a good idea. The courts exist to protect The Party, but which party? (What does it matter, at this point? quoth Hillary Clinton.) Take your pissant complaints about those alleged constitutional rights someplace else, like Twitter and Facebook, where they can be expunged as soon as you hit the “post” button. You’ll be dead soon, anyway. . . . " Here's a link to the post: https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/an-ill-wind/]