Second Day of the Icon, 3rd of Summer, 525 M.E. (Electra): It's raining again right now, but fortunately for me, today's a sitting day and not a walking day, and I managed to get my cushion time in and even scurried to the supermarket for a little food shopping before the rain started falling. The forecast shows two more days of rain before the sun finally reappears on Saturday.

Trump pardoned some reality-tv couple today who had been convicted by a jury here in Atlanta of fraud, but they were Trump supporters so he's setting then free. Free to commit more grifting and fraud and cheating and lies. 

Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister of Israel and a former member of Bibi Netanyahu's Likud Party, wrote in a recent opinion piece that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, and that “thousands of innocent Palestinians are being killed.” Israel, he said, "is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success,” adding, "the criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history." The “pointless victims among the Palestinian population,” he wrote, were reaching “monstrous proportions” in recent weeks.

This kind of rhetoric has been unfairly labeled as "antisemitic" by the corrupt and cynical Trump administration, but this is the former PM of Israel speaking, not some Hamas functionary. Trump has been trying to shut down major universities for expressing similar opinions, and deporting foreign students and other non-natives here for these kinds of statements, and just for posting them here, I could expect to see ICE agents outside my door sometime soon asking to see my papers.

Let's see, what else? Oh, RFK Jr is threatening to ban on federal scientists from publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, calling medical journals such as Lancet "corrupt." In its place, he's proposing to create alternative publications to be run by the government. “We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Jama and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt,” he said, because they're supposedly controlled by pharmaceutical companies.

The three publications Kennedy mentioned are among the most influential medical journals globally, established in the 19th century and now central to disseminating peer-reviewed medical research worldwide. The Lancet and Jama each report more than 30m annual website visits, while the New England Journal of Medicine claims more than 1 million weekly readers.

But wait, there's more. RFK, Jr and Mehmet Oz, a physician and former TV host appointed by Trump as the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, have intervened in an attempt to save more than 300 ostriches on a farm in British Columbia which the Canadian government had ordered to be killed over fears the flock is infected with avian flu. They are offering to move the birds to Oz’s private ranch in Florida despite the kill order imposed by Canadian health authorities.

I remember when our top health officials were trying to protect American citizens, not actively introducing new disease vectors to the population and suppressing opinions contrary to their conspiracy theories. I remember the president currently deporting students for "antisemitic views" calling the torch-bearing white supremacists marching through Charlottesville, Virginia and chanting "Jews will not replace us" "very fine people."  

It's going to rain some more tomorrow, too. And the next day.