1. It’s Tuesday, January 5, 2016.

2. Yes, this is the first Subjectism of 2016. Sorry for missing the past week.

3. I’m very nostalgic for last week, when it was in the 50s. It’s 16 degrees here this morning. Cold and dark. That’s how I view the whole of January. I’m not a fan.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m a little cranky this morning.

4. And nothing feeds my cranky side like right-wing nut cases. Which bring us to Burns, Oregon, and the terrorist occupation of a federal wildlife refuge. 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but nobody in Oregon or anywhere else in the United States elected these people to any position to speak for anybody. So, basically, they’re terrorist renegades who decided to seize territory they are in no justifiable position to hold.

What makes them different from the Islamic State, other than their racial makeup?

Of course, there will be a defense of these terrorists by people on the right. Fox News people have already said these people are just protesting government overreach. Here’s the thing: the wildlife refuge occupied has been federal property since 1908. More than a century. So now these cetriolo, both on the scene and in the rest of the country, have decided that the government is overreaching. 

These are worthless bastards. And terrorists. Call them exactly what they are. And deal with them in a way that does the least harm to innocent people – and the most harm to them.

5. Then there’s the Iranians and the Saudis.

As this New York Times article shows, unless you are Muslim, it’s hard to grasp why Sunnis and Shiites don’t get along. But get along, they don’t. Non-Muslim Americans tend to lump all Muslims into one, usually negative, bunch. But Sunnis, including the Saudis, dislike Iran as much as Americans with long memories of the 1979 embassy takeover. And Shiites, including the Iranians, hate the Islamic State as much as Americans with memories that don’t have to go much further back than the San Bernardino shootings.

The usual tensions boiled again when Saudi Arabia executed a cleric who advocated for Shiites’ rights. Then Iranians reverted to a nasty habit – they attacked the Saudi embassy. The Saudis and the states that rely on them for support – Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – have withdrawn their diplomatic ties with Tehran.

Islamophobic Americans probably think this is great. Let these guys beat each other up and the world will be a better place for Christendom.

But that’s a stupid view, to say the least. We need Iran and Saudi Arabia to help us get rid of the threats posed by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Both terrorist organizations are Sunni in orientation, so the Saudis might be a little more reluctant to help – indeed, the Saudis are believed to be the primary funders of radical groups tied to al-Qaeda.

I’m sure the White House, 10 Downing Street and others are working overtime on keeping this situation from getting out of hand. The fact that we actually negotiated with Iran on the nuclear deal probably gives us a little more traction that we might have had otherwise.