My God, they put Jesus and his parents in cages, as though that’s what U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents would do — you know, keep the spirit of love and compassion from entering the United States of America.

Are they suggesting there’s an equivalence here between the divine family and a bunch of illegals . . . drug dealers, rapists, possible killers of American citizens?

First the good news.

If one of the worst pieces of legislation ever drafted becomes law, there is one small measure in it that we can be pleased with. RootsAction.org and World BEYOND War and many other organizations and activists from Puerto Rico and the rest of the United States and beyond urged Congress through a petition and a variety of lobbying approaches to provide $10 million for the purchase of closed detonation chambers in the clean-up of military contamination in Vieques, Puerto Rico.

This was one of dozens of positive measures passed by the House of Representatives but not by the Senate. Unlike most such measures, this one survived the “compromise” between the two versions of the bill.

Roger Hallam is of course right in his short book, Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse. While some portion of humanity heaps scorn on the victims of the fossil fuel propaganda who deny climate science, only a much smaller portion points out the equally delusional and disastrous denial of the need for nonviolent revolution.

Facts are facts, as Hallam points out. The current political systems cannot change fast enough. They have to be overturned. This is no more open to dispute than the fact that humanity is roasting the globe. But it is perhaps even less acceptable to those who believe that they can believe what they choose to believe.

“NGOs, political parties and movements which have brought us through the last 30 years of abject failure,” writes Hallam, “– a 60% rise in global CO2 emissions since 1990 — are now the biggest block to transformation.” Hallam is a founder of Extinction Rebellion and points to the obvious need for mass civil disobedience.

From three different vectors, the oligarchy is on the march to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. Pete Buttigieg has made big gains. A timeworn ally of corporate power, Joe Biden, is on a campaign for his last hurrah. And Michael Bloomberg is swooping down from plutocratic heights.

Those three men are a team of rivals -- each fiercely competitive for an individual triumph, yet arrayed against common ideological foes named Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The obvious differences between Buttigieg, Biden and Bloomberg are apt to distract from their underlying political similarities. Fundamentally, they’re all aligned with the nation’s economic power structure -- two as corporate servants, one as a corporate master.

It’s not the New York Times this time. Although it is another pile of Pentagon papers. Now it’s the Washington Post in an eerie déjà vu moment telling us we were lied to about a war by three presidential administrations: George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Last time it was four – Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

After more than 18 years the Taliban’s in control – or contesting U.S. forces for control – of Afghanistan.  The longest running war in U.S. history has cost $1.5 trillion, but that’s only a part of the price tag. Just like President Johnson refused to raise taxes for the Vietnam War, the U.S. will pay $600 billion in interest on borrowed war dollars by 2023.

But the longest long-term cost of the war is the $1.4 trillion that will be spent on Afghanistan war vets by the year 2025.

Of course, the U.S. military budget doesn’t include veteran’s benefits as a category. Rather veteran’s support is shifted to Health and Human Services to minimize the actual cost of the U.S. war machine.