Friday night, last night, he quietly signed an executive order amending the one that allowed Bush to call up reserves and Guard for up to 24 months of service, and to call a limited number of military retirees back into service.

Here's his amendment: The consequence of this is the amendment to (Executive Order) 13223 signed by Trump, extends the state of emergency and allows the federal government to recall into service any “retired member of the Regular Army, Regular Navy, Regular Air Force, or Regular Marine Corps.

So...what does this mean? Will Trump attempt to play the 'war card' to stay in power?

Here's a link to an interesting opinion piece in Daily Kos: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/21/1708645/-Forget-the-war-of-words-the-EO-Trump-signed-Friday-night-anticipates-a-war-with-massive-casualties

I bring this to all of your attention not to encourage we all get tin-foil hats, but to make the point that we are being battled by the forces of the Mercers and Charles Koch on a thousand different fronts. The idea is to get us, and our sense of moral outrage, to become jaded, to numb us, and to make all this 'the new normal.'

Never have we been this close to losing our republic.

Never.

This morning, I watched some CNN videos to get going.

I played the one where Trump solemnly intones that he met with 'the president' of the Virgin Islands.

After that vid had played, I turned it off, and thought about what would have happened if Obama had said this. I mean, the entire Republican noise machine would be in high gear, screaming about it.

But Trump says it, and we have a few jokes on late night...

Factoid for you:

On Friday, October 13, 1307, Knights Templar throughout France were rounded up for 'heresy.'

Just saying.

Cromwell wouldn't recognize 21st century evangelical christianity.

You know why? Charles Koch and other radical libertarian billionaire freaks have used their very well-funded propaganda network to turn today's right-wing christians into social Darwinists.

Quite a twist for people who don't believe in evolution, eh?