Hammer Mill Days

Jesus. You can READ by it, for crying out loud. When the hell are they going to run out of bottle rockets? Where the hell are the cops? Oh, right ... we're off the books. Never mind. Another late night here at the previously abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, our adopted squathouse of longstanding and that of a pack of crazy people with a fondness for pyrotechnic displays. Our upstairs neighbors appear to be celebrating some obscure personal holiday this week, marking the occasion with obscene displays of fireworks over the mill every night and raucous drinking, dancing, fist-fights, etc., in the afternoons. At least they're quiet for a few hours in the morning, when they are apparently sleeping off the previous night's bender, but that's short-lived. And here we are again, at 2 in the morning, blinded by the rockets' red glare, deafened by bombs bursting in air. (And strangely, the flag was still there ... their family flag, with some strange runi...

He did it again. Trump flapped his jaw and violated the UN charter without even blinking. This past week, he was sitting in the White House with the Pakistani leader, chatting with reporters, and out came this: "We're not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don't want to kill 10 million people. I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone. It would be over in, literally, in 10 days. And I don't want to do that—I don't want to go that route." I don't have a lot of Afghan friends or acquaintances, but the one I have any regular contact with was appalled by this, and rightfully so. This, of course, isn't the first time Trump has casually tossed out the notion of blowing some country sky-high, whether it was North Korea or Iran or Venezuela. But I believe this is the first time he has made ...