Red Sky in Morning – EXTRA

Red Sky in Morning – EXTRA

This morning, for the second day in a row, we have awoken before 6am. I am in the habit of looking first at my CPAP machine to see how long I have slept. I do this before I look at the clock to check the time. This morning it said 7 hours and 12 minutes, which is good, but then the clock said 5:41am, which seems suboptimal. I would prefer to sleep until 6:20 or so, but beggars can’t be choosers and I am a sleep beggar for sure. Nothing means more to my daily productivity than a good night’s sleep. Seven hours is my gold standard, especially if it is uninterrupted, which it was last night.

While walking out to the main part of the house, I noticed the rising sun in the East and noted especially that there was a very colorful sunrise. Some old adages stick in your mind and few rise higher than “Red Sky in Morning, Sailors Take Warning.” The basis for this wives tale prediction is that clear skies in the East that reflect Westward clouds with moisture, tend to refract red coloring onto the Eastern horizon. There is also the possibility that particulate in the air, such as from a volcanic eruption or wildfire, can cause this refraction. Well, I have heard of no local volcanic activity, but the news is awash with reports that California and the entire West Coast is ablaze with wildfires. The Cal Fire Map, which has become one of my most often visited websites, currently shows no less than thirty major, named fires underway in the state. Lucky us for the moment, there is really only one of these that is in San Diego County, and that is the Valley Fire, which has burned 17,655 acres and is considered 27% contained. By CalFire standards, that is a nothing-burger, and it is well South and East of us, so we are sitting pretty for the moment even though our local fire brigade has given us all a Red Flag Warning, just to be vigilant and safe.

But then I sat down and realized upon going through all my news feeds that the California Wildfires are the third story in today’s local and national news. The top stories are about the Woodward book and about the latest Whistleblower Complaint out of Washington. How can I not note that what is happening in Washington is by far the greater conflagration and is burning far more acreage than all the West Coast wildfires put together. The sailors that really need to take warning are those of us sailing merrily into the future of the 2020 election and beyond. We are doing unwittingly and with no alternative what first responders do by choice every day, we are heading straight into the maelstrom. On this morning, meteorology be damned, the clear skies are in the West and the clouds and particulate in the air are all in the East and lingering over our nation’s capital.

And what a wonderful symbolism there is with the red sky adage. While Woodward’s book, Rage, is not released for a week, he has wisely released the audio tapes of his eighteen interviews with the man in the high castle. As Republicans look for someone to blame for this election-year PR debacle, the fingers are pointing at onE of the weaker members of the herd, Lyndsey Graham, who supposedly encouraged Trump to give Woodward the interviews after he was “vindicated” by the Senate impeachment trial. The big bombshells from the interviews seem to be focused on Trump’s Coronavirus response and the fact that he knew what he was doing when he lied to the American public and then manipulated the reality to serve his electoral desires. The secondary fallout is about all his adjutants like Matis and Coates, who have admitted their concerns about Trump’s competency and fitness for the job. But the real red sky imagery has to do with the Whistleblower Complaint announced by Adam Schiff that has come from a high-ranking member of the Department of Homeland Security, where the ILLEGALLY serving acolytes to Trump (Chad Wolf and others) have been deliberately manipulating national security advisories to specifically reduce discussion and release of information about further attempts by Russia (that would be the reddest of the red) to interfere with US electoral process in 2020.

Wow! Red Republicans manhandling not just news reports, but national intelligence reports to hide the Red State’s attempts to push the Red Republican agenda during the election to the benefit of the Red State’s ongoing mission to dismantle American democracy and undermine the Western Alliance as it currently and more weakly exists today. There cannot be a bigger, more worrisome warning flag (yes, what CalFire would call a Red Flag Warning) of totalitarianism and fascism than that.

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