Is it time to ramp up the annual Christmas chores, you know, cookies and goodies and presents and cards? Or are you going to send out a bunch of emails and texts to a group and call it good?

Maybe you plan to call up Amazon and exercise your credit card, or better yet, head down to the village and buy something in person from one of our local merchants.

No matter which door you choose, any one of them would be a better choice than sitting in the old chair by the stove and wondering what the dickens is going on in what passes for government these days in the good old US of A.

Are you confused? Is your head spinning? Can you keep it straight? Me neither.

Welcome to the club, Grasshopper. Let's start with the latest chapter in the nation’s never-ending war on drugs. Pistol Pete Hegspeth, the SECDEF (or if you prefer SECWAR), on the orders of POTUS, has tasked the Navy to blow up a couple of dozen open outboard speedboats allegedly carrying bundles of cocaine. Pistol Pete has published the videos of the naval strikes, which killed as many as 80 crew members.

Last week, the Washington Merry-Go-Round was in a tizzy over whether PPH, a former second-string Fox weekend couch sitter turned SECDEF, violated our military regulations and shot survivors of the boat strikes. Leaders on all sides are parsing the paragraphs of the laws of war. I was a sergeant, and that high-level discussion is way above my pay grade. I will wait to see what is uncovered before taking a position. Maybe you should do the same.

POTUS says he and PPH acted to keep the dope from reaching our shores and killing Americans. Maybe, but it will take weeks to sort out this puzzle as the facts are still classified. That didn’t stop the Ds and Rs from spinning it to their alleged advantage.

But we can compare that series of anti-dope boat strikes with the knowledge that POTUS recently pardoned the former president of Honduras, who had been sentenced by a federal judge to 45 years after being convicted of running a narco state using his cops and soldiers to protect the flow of cocaine into the USA.

Here is how the Washington Post explained the conviction. “U.S. prosecutors said he built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, and as president, helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution.” The Post said shadowy figures Roger Stone and Matt Gaetz were in the pardoned president’s corner.

On one hand, the White House is blowing dope transport boats out of the ocean to keep South American dope from our shores, then on the other hand, they are pardoning one of the biggest fish caught in the tangled nets of the never-ending drug war. Can someone please explain why? If you can square that circle, please let me know.

Meanwhile, the potential fallout from the Epstein files is rumbling under the political radar. MAGA myrmidon Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has broken with the White House over its reluctance to release the secrets hidden in the Epstein files. The internet is filled with conspiracy theories suggesting all sorts of shadowy awfulness. Greene says she wants to shine a light on the alleged unidentified big shots who abused the underage girls used as sex slaves by Epstein and his muse, Ghislaine Maxwell. Greene says the women deserve justice.

On last Sunday’s "60 Minutes" program, Greene said she talked to POTUS about his reluctance to unseal the Epstein files. She said the president told her the release would hurt some people. Much of the Mega-verse and Democrats have pushed for the release, Congress passed a bill ordering it, and the president has signed it. Will the shadow secret Epstein files ever see the light of day? I wonder.

Over the weekend, Politico ran a long piece trying to explain the life and candidacy of Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner. The piece tried to lay out the confusing path that led the former Marine and Army combat veteran from high school to life as an oyster farmer and major state political figure. Can a guy come from nowhere to stardom on the Maine political stage, defeat a popular governor like Janet Mills, and dethrone Republican Senator Susan Collins? No one knows. Recent polling suggests he leads the governor by 20 points, with heavy support from potential voters under 50.

All early polls should be taken with a dose of skepticism. But you never know. In September, would you have picked Indiana’s football team to go undefeated, beat Ohio State, and win the Big 10? Indiana?