Hammer Mill Days

Why does it rattle so much? Is that the low end putting out all that noise? Hmmmm ... well, there's only one thing for it. Grease. Lots of grease. Oh, hi. As is so often my affectation, I will behave as if you just came upon me in a coffee shop or squatting down on the curbside, changing a flat tire. Of course, neither of those things is true in this particular universe, but sometimes we like to act as though we're interacting on a more personal level and not merely connecting via that series of tubes known as the internet. Okay ... that's a long way of saying, welcome, once again, to Hammer Mill Days, the Big Green blog, where we're liable to burn half a column just saying hi. Uh ... hi. We're at the mixing stage of our current project. What project is that, you may ask? (And well you may.) It's the next musical episode of Ned Trek, of course, and we've been working on a raft of eight songs designed to keep the plot moving forward. Matt and I have been...

It's probably best for me to start by saying that I was always against U.S. military involvement in the Syrian civil war - this was the case during the Obama administration and it remains the case now. But because our troops have been there in numbers exceeding 1,000 for years now, and that we have worked them into Syria's complex web of security guarantees, alliances, and bitter enmities, it seems only right that we should consider the consequences of whatever decisions we make, whether it means pulling troops out or putting more in. This is a situation in which every power is in it for its own gain, and that includes the United States. That's why the goddam war is still going on ... and thanks to Trump this week, it's likely to move into a new and more deadly phase. The Syrian Kurds, who made the mistake of fighting for us as part of the conflict in their country, are now in the crosshairs of a massive military operation by Turkey - an incursion into northern Syria ...