Thursday’s Political Thoughts
I enjoyed the Trump Univision town hall meeting from the other day. Here was a chance for voters to ask questions, and Trump could directly answer them, all unembellished by liberal media, teleprompters, ghosts, or voodoo. Of course, he didn’t dance for them as he did at a recent rally, so you know, they lost from that POV, I guess.
A man asked Trump about Jan. 6 and Trump’s role. Trump replied, “You had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me, they came because of the election—they thought the election was a rigged election and that’s why they came.”
“Some of those people went down to the Capital. I said peacefully and patriotically, nothing done wrong at all, nothing done wrong. Action was taken, strong action.”
I like the video pan of the crowd as Trump is answering. Stern-faced, arms crossed, the people listened. When Trump says, “Ashli Babbitt was killed, nobody was killed,” a woman did a double take.
The camera caught it. She was clearly listening to what Trump said and heard the doublespeak inherent in his response.
My other favorite segment of that town hall came when Trump was asked about climate change.
Trump responded with one of his ‘beautiful, rambling weaves’. Yeah, that’s my snark showing through.
I want to highlight how he veers into his standard alphabet cereal answer. “So I always feel that with the climate and I have been a great, I have been an environmentalist. I built many things. I own Doral next door — ”
Point of order: Trump did not build Doral so it has nothing to do with his environmental record when it comes to building things.
But Trump goes on to make you think he did, “I own Doral next door and we did that in a very environment way — “
‘Environment way’? Where did Trump get his great, beautiful degree again?
“I got awards, environmental awards, for the way I built it, for the water, for the way I use the water, the sand, the mixing of the sand and water.”
Trump didn’t get involved with Doral until 2012. Fifty years after it was built. If he won environmental awards for Doral, I can’t find it on the Internet. They seem to exist in much the same way as his healthcare plan: a concept promise of what could be.
Or an outright lie.
Vote blue in 2024.
Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts
Coffee warms my throat as I watch fat dark gray clouds sailing across the sky. Sunlight clears the clouds, dramatically lighting their heights. Looks like fall, alright.
Many people live by the weather when it comes to the season. I’m one of those. My attire today are jeans. Long pants. Long sleeve shirt.
Wind, chill, and rain, and lack of sunshine pulled the decision to don jeans free of my brain cells. Much as anything, it’s that feel to the air, the color of the sky, and the mood it all presents as winds chase leaves down the street, that the seasonal change is really here.
So, I’m wearing jeans, looking back on the hot, smoky summer, shifting my gaze toward the future, to the coming winter, and what it might bring.
Much like my ancestors probably did. Without the jeans.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Mood: coffeegalvanized
It’s a stillish fall morning outside the windows. Rain’s been falling from darkly loaded clouds. They’ve overtaken the blue and sun today.
It’s Thursday, October 17, 2024. Chilly with that rain, the high will be 61 and the low will be 37 F. Freeze warnings are in effect for tomorrow morning’s early hours. On the bright side of matters, our air quality is excellent, just single digits.
Got a call this morning from the county emergency system. Today is the great shake-out. They wanted us to pretend an earthquake was underway and practice surviving it. I’ve been through a few smaller quakes so I easily imagined the shaking.
The situation provoked some pre-coffee thinking. When I was a child in Wilkinsburg, PA, I remember us doing a duck and cover under my desk, in case the commies launched their nukes. Then, in the military, we were always practicing surviving war and natural disasters. There were fake NBC attacks. Fake unexploded ordinance to deal with. And of course, nukes and EMP. What would happen if we lost our telecommunications; how would we survive? We practiced decoding messages which would send us to war, and other exercises to receive notification hostilities were over. My career’s final years saw me fighting simulated space wars. Throughout, I was engaged in war planning, getting ready to deploy equipment to some theater’s front lines, etc., and reporting on our efforts to get ready and be ready, briefing the general who was our commander five days a week at one assignment, and getting ready to brief him.
Naturally, here in southern Oregon, we stay ready for wildfires. We have checklists and go-bags for evacuation. I’m fairly prepared in that regard, as I wrote local plans, checklists, and guidance for evacuating bases for wherver I was, and trained others in executing that stuff.
Seems like a lot of my life has been about getting ready. I was getting ready to be an adult as a teen. Beyond getting ready for war and natural disasters during, I was constantly getting ready for flu season, to move to another assignment, and I was getting ready for retirement.
Now I’m getting ready for my foot surgery. Getting ready for Mom and Dad to pass. That could be my life motto: “Get ready.”
Of course, as I reflect on my needs to get ready as a child and adult, I think it’s better than the active shooter drills so many children now go through to get ready for the real deal. Their need is driven by people with guns walking into schools and committing mass murder. My need to get ready was much more abstract and distant.
I have a pre-op appointment for my foot surgery next Wednesday. It’s to get me ready for the surgery. Actual surgery takes place the following Wednesday. The pre-op appointment came out of the blue. No phone call or coordination about what time works best for me; just a sudden message through Mychart telling me that the appointment was made. Poor communication, to me, and sort of arrogant, and annoying. Like, hey, what if I was out of town that day? Fortunately, I’m not, but still…
Today’s music comes via Tom MacInnes’s website. I enjoy Tom’s posts about music history, along with his experiences as a teacher and a father, particularly his stories about reading with his daughter and his students. Yesterday’s post was “The Great Canadian Road Trip…Song #76/250: Sk8er Boi by Avril Lavigne”. I ended up with “Sk83r Boi” in my morning mental music stream (Trademark bopping). It’s a lively, energetic song, and completely free and clear of political nuances, so I latched onto that. I need a political break from scanning news on either side of the schism, and tales of polls, rumors, innuendoes, and courts. Just give me some simple teenage offering.
I’m pretty pleased with it as a song choice. The Neurons had been offering “The Monkey’s Uncle” from the Disney movie with the same title. I don’t know why the hell The Neurons chose that song. Never saw the movie, but I knew of its elements, and obviously that song and some of the other songs the movie offered. That was from an era of beach movies. I never dug ’em.
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has been introduced to my systems once again and I believe I have a pulse. Here’s the music. Get ready for the election.
Cheers
Wednesday’s Political Thoughts
The GOP’s outrageous lying has my spouse issuing full-throated growls.
Some claim that lying is part of the political process. While acknowledging that truth, what’s happening now seems different. The Trump led GOP spreads fictions as easily as others butter toast. It doesn’t matter how far their claims stray from facts, truth, or reality. No subject is sacrosanct. If it will win them a vote, they’ll lie about it, and then lie that they lied about it.
My wife offers a solution. President Joe Biden should use the Supreme Court’s newly forged presidential immunity and start having these people making outrageous claims arrested. She doesn’t know what the charges would be; she figures President Biden is president, so he’s immune, right?
Sure, that’s kind of what the Roberts Court said about presidential immunity, leaving it open to interpretation what goes over the line.
We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office. At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity. At the current stage of proceedings in this case, however, we need not and do not decide whether that immunity must be absolute, or instead whether a presumptive immunity is sufficient.
My tack is different; I think doing as she suggests would undermine our democracy and weaponize the DOJ in ways that won’t shut down for many election cycles.
She’s willing to take that risk to keep Trump out of the White House. She’s willing to do so, she says, because she does not doubt that is what the Republicans would do.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Mood: wetandsane
It’s 54 F degrees. 61 is being looked at as the high. Rain and clouds give us a sloppy wet one in greeting. It’s Wednesday, the humpiest day of the week. October 16. We’re on the tenth month’s downside. November and the holidays beyond loom behind an uncertain gray veil, put there by the impending elections and the uncertainty sown by Trump.
Well, for some of us. Others are all, que sera, sera.
Had coffee duty this morning. Ordered two Starbucks Travelers and delivered them to the Family Y, where a surprise birthday party for a 95 year old friend was being put in place by her daughter. Used to be our neighbors across the street. Life and circumstances changed that. Now she lives in a cottage in her daughter’s backyard closer to downtown, about 1.5 miles away. This woman — the 95 yo — no longer drives so she walks around town or takes the bus. She’s vigorously involved in her church activities and other charity, and she exercises three mornings a week at the Y. My appreciation of her and admiration for her remains broad and deep.
I was asked to assist through my wife, natch. Her daughter reached out to my spouse, and my spouse reached out to me. No problem. I was due to deliver the coffee at 9:15 and entered at 9:16. My wife saw me and exclaimed, “You made it!” She made it sound like I’d finished the Oregon Trail.
Today’s music in fact comes from the latest Trump rally fiasco. No, not the one where he left people out there without rides back, without facilities, water, or food, as darkness came down. No, this is another one.
This is the one in Pennsylvania where a few of his attendees fainted. Instead of continuing the rally, Trump requested music.
Rather than continue after paramedics assisted the two people, Trump instructed his staff to just play music from a playlist he has personally curated and famously often turns on during dinners at Mar-a-Lago.
“Who the hell wants to hear questions?” Trump said at the event where the entire point was to take audience questions. “Right?”
What followed was more than 30 minutes of Trump swaying on stage and occasionally doing his well-known two-handed dance to some of his favorite tunes, chatting with the event’s host, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and occasionally interacting with attendees who were seated behind the stage.
“This is the weirdest church service I have ever been to,” a first-time rallygoer who did not give their name told NBC News of the music portion of the event, which opened with “Ave Maria.”
So rather than questions and answers about policy, as expected at a political rally, Trump delivered some dancing and music. And at least one attendee mused about it being a ‘church service’.
I mean, really, WTF is going on over there in MAGA land?
The music it inspired The Neurons to play in the morning mental music stream (Trademark blown) comes by way of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. “Karn Evil 9” is all about the show. Guaranteed to blow your head apart. That’s how I feel ’bout many of the Trump shows. It’s a show with little substance. He gushs about himself and he insults others.
Off into the rain I go. Be strong and stay positive. Vote blue in 2024. Let’s keep sanity in the White House. Coffee and I have come together on a plan to jumpstart my heart.
Here’s the music. It’s a long one. Great drum solo. Cheers
Barfloofian
Barfloofian (floofinition) – 1. An animal who seems alien or foreign to a location, or who is not accepted as belonging. Origins: 14th century Floofman.
In Use: “The kittens’ appearance in the household disturbed Samson, who seemed appalled by their smells, looks, and sounds, treating them like barfloofians whenever they got close — at first.”
2. Animals who are deemed lessor or lacking in some manner because they are different.
In Use: “Corky was a dog and understood that. He got along well with other dogs, and loved his humans, but had no interest in cats, who he thought of as rude and snotty barfloofians.”
Today’s Wandering Thoughts
I found myself thinking about my parents as I dressed this morning. One is from Iowa and resides in Pennsylvania. The other is from Pennsylvania and lives in Texas. They divorced way back in the mid 1960s. Were friends or friendly off and on. Now Mom is bitter and angry about Dad; Dad is reflective about Mom.
I left their homes when I was 17. I’ve visited both as they moved around, remarried, and raised other families. As they’ve aged, Dad tells me he’d like to be closer to me. Mom tells me she’d like to hear from me more often because she worries about me.
But a large elephant marches through their desires. I’ve been married 49 years. Mom visited me once, when I bought her an airline ticket and forced it to happen. Dad visited me once in my first year of marriage, dropping by with my father-in-law for thirty minutes while they happened to be in the area. It just didn’t seem like they were deeply invested in being part of my life.
I don’t feel abandoned by them. Dad admits he wasn’t a good father and wasn’t there. Mom insists she was there as much as she could be. I do see their sides but I’m indifferent to Dad’s efforts for us to be closer or to Mom’s request for me to alleviate worries. I could employ simple sophistry and claim, they made me who I am, but really, I head little from them across my decades of living. Sure, they always sent birthday and holiday cards, but mostly there were months of silence. Yes, I know they each raised other children and went on through a few more marriages.
I get all of that. My feelings about them slice along a spectrum. I love them as they love me, from a distance. I know they made sacrifices on my behalf to ensure I had food and shelter security and a place to call home. But at an early age, as I watched their fights and listened to their arguments, I made a decision to be independent of them. Sure, there are days when I surf the spectrum of our relationships when I want to help them out of guilt or empathy. They become less as I move through my life, age, and deal with my own issues.
My parents both have been supportive in many ways. They tell me they’re proud of me. My wife points out that it all would’ve probably been different if she and I had children.
But we didn’t, and this is where my parents and I stand, like many other parents and their offspring, at a complex crossroads which we never leave.
Michael Seidel, writer 