Mood: roly poly
Congratulations; we are now into November, 2023’s eleventh month. Hope your November Eve went well. Ours was a quiet one, just a pot brownie and some streamV and reading.
Today is Wednesday, November 1, 2023. Ashlandia, where winters are mild but brisk, is chilly this morning. 37 F has climbed into the low forties under gray yarn clouds wearily highlighted by tepid sunshine. Amazing me, the weather masters declared that our high will be in the low 70s before the sunny period goes away — sunset, I think it’s called.
As it is now November, we’re preparing for turning back the clocks this Saturday, thinking about how we’ll spend that extra hour.
Politics occupy much of my gray mass again. Well, I call it politics but much of it has to do with the trials involving the former POTUS, DJ Trump. His children are testifying in one trial this week. As none of them seem able to keep the story straight and tell the same thing under questioning, it’ll be interesting to see if or how the stories explaining the property valuations will differ.
Meanwhile, I was thinking about how I’d like to see us move forward and move on toward solutions for the many problems besetting us, but the GOP has become so radicalized under MAGA leadership that I don’t believe this nation has forward gears any longer. We’re just stuck spinning our wheels, slowly slipping backwards toward a new era of white heterosexual male dominance.
You’d think that I, a WHM, would say, gee, that’s cool, my people will be in charge. First, many white males are not my people. Our values diverge too completely. Second, I’m one of those people who believe in equality and justice for all, and that it shouldn’t be predicated on sexual orientation, gender, pronouns, education, wealth, skin color, or religious beliefs. Someone should start a country based on those principles. From my point of view, intellectually, morally, spiritually, culturally, our nation is only as free as the least free of our peole, only strong as the weakest of our people, and we can’t advance as needed to solve our problems if we keep spending resources and energy trying to fight ourselves.
But that’s just me.
Catching wind of my thinking, The Neurons are offering Olivia Rodrigo and “Vampire” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark indeterminate). See, Olivia is singing about her relationship with another. That other is manipulative, using her and abusing her, sucking her dry, she sings, just as the GOP is doing to the United States. Take Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Please.
Tuberville, a MAGA Repubican Senator working alone, has deciced that the US military was too woke. It’s such a bullshit concept that I gag just thinking about his projection. But this upsets poor Tommy. So, to make the military, which has existed for 200 years plus and developed its policies continuously throughout that time with expert input, into his own image, Tommy has decided that he will decapitate the military by blocking senior promotions until the military gives in. This has been going on for months.
What’s bunching Tommy’s panties up now is that the US Senate has grown concerned about how this affects military planning and readiness, you know, because fucking war takes few breaks. I’m not for war, and the way I see it, cutting off the military leadership’s head emboldens other nations whose leaders think that waging war is a good way forward. So, back to the main point, the Senate, led by Democrats but supported by Republicans, are going to change the rules and terminate Tommy’s tantrum. More or less. There are exceptions.
This, to Tommy Tuberville, a man of the people, is very unfair. See, it’s all about Tommy, in Tommy’s mind, and now he’s whining, wah, look at they’re trying to do to me. Wah, they’re not including me in any talks. They are so unfair and uncompromising, not even willing to negotiate with me, just because I’m a senator terrorist holding our military hostage. They’re mean and un-American.
Yeah, suck it, Tommy, you vampire.
So here’s Olivia Rodrigo with the soft but emotional “Vampire”. Hope you enjoy it.
Stay positive, remaing brave, and keep leaning forward. I have coffee; here’s the video. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 
Hello Michael. I was about to sign off the computer when I read your post. So much information, so much great stuff that you understated in your post. Like you, I was in the military. Something Tuberville has not done. It is totally integrated. But he wouldn’t know this again because he did not serve, and he is ignorant of history. Tuberville is not just not against a woman’s right to choose, he can not seem to understand why this would affect military readiness. Plus he is a racist who has made many statements in favor of the Confederacy and the statues put up in the 1920s celebrating the generals of that side. More important to the nation is this uneducated racist white man has decided he knows more about what the military needs to do for the national security than all the decades long serving military officers. I won’t go into how it must make a black solider having to be in a base named after someone who wanted to keep them a slave with no rights, but I think you understand what I would say. When I was in the Army back in the 1980s, even then we had to fight some southern boys who couldn’t let go of their racist bigotry. Well they learned it from their parents since birth. But it was quickly stamped out in the units I was in.
As to being lumped in with the White male group as a whole. Those people that say why don’t you stand with your people or your race are the same as the maga people that keep saying / thinking they are the majority and everyone thinks as they do. Every time I hear them say how everyone knows … or tRump say “your favorite president … Himself” or when he talks about how everyone agrees he was the best, the greatest at this or that, or that everyone agrees no one did it better … I get so angry at the fact this small minority thinks they are the entire country. It is like the damn fundamentalist Christians in Florida claiming everyone agrees with them on removing all LGBTQIA mentioning books from libraries as pornographic. They are a minority in a minority. Every time DeathSantis talks about how the entire country supports his positions on Covid (which caused a lot more deaths in Florida than states that pushed the vaccine) and denying history and erasing the LGBTQIA from social view, I have to remind my self of how large his contributions from Russia have been. He doesn’t talk for us in Florida but for Putin and also his own membership in the fundamentalist church.
Oh wow, just realized how long this got. Sorry. Great post, lots I agree with. Hugs. Scottie
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A long comment but I like the points you made and agree with them, especially regarding the integrated military.
I anger about Trump’s supporters claiming they speak for the nation, too, and how the media tacitly supports them by toning down their rhetoric for them (by not reporting it) while trying to keep 2024 exciting and compelling by treating President Biden and Trump the same or making more out of President Biden’s shortcomings than what they are. Infuriating.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Scottie. Hugs ‘n cheers, M
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