

Whatever you spend it on, may I make a suggestion, if you have a little extra money yourself? Spend the gift card money, yes: buy something you’ll enjoy, share that joy with the people who got it for you, let them see how happy they’ve made you.
Then take the card that the giftcard came in, put in $75 cash, and put it in a special place. Do that every time someone gives you money or a giftcard. As I’ve gotten older, a lot of the people in my life have died, gotten ill, or moved away. Sometimes, when I’m feeling sad or depressed, I’ll go to my little drawer of cards and pull one out at random. I’ll re-read the message, and think about the person and the love that we shared at that time, and I’ll take the money and do something special for myself, to cheer myself up a bit.
Then sometime in the next few days, I’ll get the same amount of cash from the bank, put it in the envelope, and replace it in my stash: the caring we felt for each other at that time was true (regardless of how things eventually turned out), so the cards give me a little emotional boost and the cash lets me do something for myself that I’d normally not spend money on. It helps me feel better, even if only for a little time.
[I’ll also be honest and say that sometimes I’ve run out of money, and something will twinge and I’ll remember I have this little stash of cash, and having that has helped me get through some slightly tough times. But I always put the money back in the cards when I can afford it.]








after the fight.
















Their official goal is to round up 3000 people per day - which is why they’re going after anyone they can, because “the worst of the worst” have all slipped through their fingers for years and are hard to find so they have to make up those numbers somewhere.
But - they don’t have the capacity to process 3000 people per day and, even if they could, no country is going to accept that many people in a lump, even they are citizens of that country. This was always going to end up with massive amounts of people warehoused somewhere.
Of course, with the need to constantly and massively expand detention facilities (the goal is an extra 3000 people every day!), those detention facilities are going to be hastily built, under-staffed, and under-resourced: not enough beds, blankets, food, clothing, sanitation facilities, medical support, etc. Which is exactly how the Nazis ended up with the conditions in their concentration camps - remember, the camps in Germany were labor camps with extremely poor conditions.
The next step will be companies who can’t hire enough minimum wage people or who want to skip health and safety laws, to hire workers from the camps. This government will accept, because they’ll get kickbacks from the companies and an official-if-cheap wage “paid” to the government to help offset the costs of the camps.
The inmates will be housed in poor conditions: minimal shelter (don’t expect air conditioning or even heating), thin mattresses (if any), thin blankets, minimally nutritional food, no medicine and minimal medical support - pretty much WWII concentration camp conditions. With 3000 people per day, it can’t be any different.
And then the inevitable diseases will rip through the camps, and a bunch of people will die, and the rest will be weaker - no medical care, and minimal food and shelter. But there’ll be another 3000 and another, so the losses won’t be entirely noticable - except in an ever-expanding graveyard. Instead of going to all the trouble of digging and then filling in graves, wouldn’t it be easier just to burn the corpses? It would certainly limit accountability for the losses!
Oh - but what should we do with those who can’t work - the young, the old, the disabled or infirm …