Woke up today (heh heh, yes, woke) to a crazy world. It has rained 2.5 inches overnight here (and still coming down), catapulting the 2022-2023 Fallbrook rainy season into the top five seasons in the last 25 years.

Then the stock market decided that a couple of banks melting down were worrisome enough to join them in the slide downhill. The Dow dropped 500 points immediately after someone decided that Credit Suisse was (is?) in trouble.

A San Francisco board has again asserted that it thinks $5M per qualifying person in reparations payouts is the right amount. I’m not going down this rabbit hole again except to say I’m against this kind of reparations, and I’m at least thankful that they’ve settled on such an unserious number.

The two leading GOP Presidential candidates, Desantis and Trump, have both decided that the US aiding Ukraine is a bad thing. Let’s just let Russia expand into Europe, no problem. They’re appealing to the hate and xenophobia of the MAGA base, knowing that calling anything a gift or aid to someone who doesn’t look like them riles those knuckleheads up.

Just thinking of Trump and Desantis, let’s go back to the banking thing. There’s a very distinct pattern here:

• In one of their early actions in 2017, Trump and his cronies removed leadership in the US’s health system (CDC, NIH, USDA) and replaced them with unqualified partisans. The pandemic happened, and people wondered why our response was so lame.
• In 2018, Trump removed the Obama-era regulations on railroad safety. Palestine Ohio thanks him.
• Also in 2018, the Trumpsters removed the Obama-era Frank-Dodd Act, banking regulations intended to make sure we never have another bank meltdown like the ones in 2008. Silicon Valley Bank can thank Trump for allowing them to play with fire and burn their house down.

These aren’t opinions, these are facts. Nobody likes to be regulated, but an awful lot of regulations are there to protect US citizens. Trump’s four-year unrelenting war on regulation has had consequences, terrible consequences. These facts alone should be enough for people with any sense to oppose either of these two clowns holding office.