Category: Information

Sattyday’s Political Thoughts

It’s kind of weather, kind of politics.

There’s another hurricane building in the Gulf of Mexico. Models show it’s expected to hit Florida, probably on Wednesday, just a few weeks after Hurricane Helene churned through Florida’s Big Bend area and briskly destroyed and killed across several southeastern states. So right now, it’s not looking like good news for Florida, our fellow American citizens, or the United States. Hurricane Helene’s strike on Big Bend came a little more than a year after Hurricane Idalia struck the Big Bend region. That’s the weather side.

On the political side, Gov. DeSantis of Florida insists climate change is a hoax. These increasingly strong and frequent storms fed by warmer, wetter air? That’s just nature. They’re not gonna talk about climate change in DeSantis’s government. They’ll do stuff about mitigating increasing flooding problems and help their citizens recover from the death, destruction, injuries, PTSD, and increased drug use that come from a major natural disaster. DeSantis and his GOP legislature will not accept Federal money to address climate change and try to mitigate it.

It almost seems like Mother Nature replied, “Hold my coffee, and we’ll see how long Florida endures with its anti-science stance.”

Despite DeSantis and his moronic position, I hope the hurricane doesn’t hit Florida. Fingers crossed.

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Treazooms

Treazooms (floofinition) – The excited and happy activities, such as racing around, dancing, and singing, animals exhibit when they receive or are going to be given a treat. Origins: 21st century Internet circa 2023.

In Use: “As soon as he brought out the treat pouch, Musk (no relation to Elon) went into protracted treazooms that covered the living room, dining room, and kitchen.”

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Sattyday’s Theme Music

Mood: Sattyfied

Today is October 5, 2024. It’s a Sattyday. For this post, I used the day’s original spelling. Sattyday was so named in the early days of designating days of the week in England after a dog, Satty. This was just as the Saxons were fighting with Dane invaders and trying to establish England. A conversation between warring participants took place in which they postponed the battle, allegedly because Satty was dying and the Saxon leaders wanted to honor the old, faithful companion. The name stuck as a joke but eventually, its origins story became lost for a while. As spelling was standardized around the 12th century, the name became attributed to Saturn, based off existed, earlier Roman calendars. That stuck. Researchers later discovered the true story. Their findings were published the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked, so the story was overcome by the bigger news and lost once again. I later read about it in Reader’s Digest.

It’s 55 F now. We expect to put 30 more degrees on the thermometer (originally named for the cat, Thermo, but that’s another tale) on this day before we strike the high. We’re fluctuating between summer and autumn, the transition season known as autmer. It’s so named because autumn’s features are stronger than summer’s features, whereas sumumn is reversed. Yes, trees are lively with reds in many parts of Ashlandia, and gold leaves abound, all under a sun drenched bright blue sky.

Today’s music is offered by the Alan Parsons Project. It has a straighforward path. Jill on her blog featured the Hollies. One of their songs is “The Air That I Breathe”, a song from my youth which I remember and enjoy. Alan Parson was the engineer on the song, as Jill mentioned. Hence, listening to the song in my morning mental music stream (Trademark engineered), I drifted toward Alan Parsons and then the Alan Parsons Project. As this was on top of reading bizarre and false political news generated by Trump and Vance, The Neurons called up “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You” from 1977. As I’d never seen the original video based on the song, I decided to go with that.

BTW, it’s pretty fucking disgusting to me how Vance, Elon Musk, and other MAGAs like Matt Gaetz (who voted against addional FEMA funding just before Helene hit) eagerly embrace the disaster of Hurricane Helene to plant false stories about FEMA trying to stop help to Republican dominated areas. They really have no plans or strategy but to lie and obstruct. Exhibit two from Friday’s news cycle is how Vance was out there denigrating the strong jobs report by claiming that the new jobs don’t matter because they’re just taken by undocumented immigrants (paraphrasing). They’re such craven opportunists with no regard for the truth or facts, and they display this with same consistency as the Earth traveling around the sun. But of course, we know the Republicans aren’t casually lying; they’re brainwashing their base and hope to sway more by their relentless screed.

FEMA Assistance information.

Here’s the music. Be strong, stay positive, and vote blue in 2024. BTW, I made all that up about Satty, as if you didn’t know that, right? Have a better one. Cheers

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Friday’s Political Thoughts

The September Job Report came out. You may have heard about it. Way over expectations. Orgasmically great, to judge from multiple reactions from economists and economic advisors.

Critically, how it hits with ‘undecided voters’ is what has me on my chair’s edge. This is continued good news for the Biden economy. But those UVs are often puzzled about what is going on with the Biden economy and focus on how they will do in the Trump economy. After all, Trump promises great tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, which will trickle down and give these UVs an extra drop of discretionary income and a little wiggle room against the monthly vise grip of needs and expenses. Meanwhile, a veritable blizzard of explanations about Harris and her positions leave many UVs doubtful about Harris and her economic policies. Inflation, they cry as inflation continues trucking under three percent, close enough to the Fed’s 2.5 target that the Fed deemed it time to do something about interest rates.

I know, I’m riding UVs hard. Being merciless about their reasoning. UVs be like, “Well, it’d be more of the same with Democrats if I vote for Harris, who I don’t know much about because she’s only been the California AG, a Senator, and the Vice POTUS for almost four years after being a POTUS candidate in 2020, and we know those Democrats are in corporate pockets and will continue their warlike stance and maintain democracy and strive for civil rights for all. Or it’s Trump and his sweet merchandise deals like his golden shoes his cryptocurrency and that terrific line of watches, and the P2025 and book-banning pushers who back him and his efforts to torpedo democracy such as Jan 6., skirt accountability for what he says and does, and flops over on every issue, including abortion bans, but is consistently very sweet on dictators like Putin.”

Yep, we’ll just need to wait and see what those UVs say.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Mood: Fuzzcollecting

Another splash of autumn covers the day, this day being Friday, October 4, 2024. Skies, trees, sun, etc. Coolish warming air grazing around 61 F. Expectations that we’ll kiss upper seventies today, a few nicks down from the mid 80s felt yesterday. Tomorrow, we’re back into the eighties, riding the seesaw of seasonal change.

The cats traverse the doors in and out, liking the outdoors in sun patches, bundling themselves into loaves, moving when the sun shies away from their chosen skim of earth. Chess with sunshine, they think themselves kings, bishops at least, but the sun treats them like pawns.

The Neurons are wandering my mind’s corridors, apparently. They dust off a 1968 song and start playing it in the morning mental music stream (Trademark ancient). As breakfast makes its trip to the stomach’s acids, I question The Neurons about why this and now? This is Cream doing “Anyone for Tennis.” Now is today, 2024, a zillion plus one years removed from when I was a boy and saw them on television. Cream were on the Smothers Brothers Show and did this show. I found the video to it on Youtube. Their clothing snatches back reminders of the purple and blue paisley shirts and denim bell bottoms worn by moi in those days. Later, in my high school years, the bell bottoms would remain but the shirts would become simpler designs and colors. The hair was always long, thick, wild and curly, exasperating my divorced parents, amusing my sisters and aunts and uncles, and sometimes entrancing a girl.

Done with the mornin’ memory portion of the day unless The Neurons pull more out. They may at any given. Stay positive, test negative, be strong, and vote blue. Coffee has had its way with me. Here’s the music. Onward. Cheers

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Thursday’s Political Thoughts

Met with the beer friends last night. We’re a gang of retirees (one still works) who meet for a brew at a local place (of course) and discuss things. Most are out of the Bureau of Land Management (botanists and biologists) these days, though a retired helicopter designer is among us, along with a doctor, a couple journalists, retired department head of biology for our local university, and software engineers.

Small group last night. Seven participants. Discussion swiveled to the Hanford nuclear waste in Washington. Set up to process weapons grade plutonium, the plant was shut down by 1971. All through its life, dealing with the issue of the radioactive water and chemicals was a problem. Storing it in barrels was the short-term answer. The barrels began leaking. They figured a long-term solution would emerge. Plans evolved, were discarded or failed, etc.

Latest plan is glassification of waste barrels. Targeted to be completed by 2052, costs have multiplied and the project is off to a slow start. The DOE slid the target completion date back to 2069, just two years short of the 100-year anniversary of the plant’s closing. Wit this record, my friends and I have concerns about transporting the nuclear waste through Oregon, which is part of the plan.

After that long run-around, I come to today’s point. Whether nuclear waste, plastics, fossil fuels, DDT, etc, we as a civilization keep coming up with ‘answers’ without really parsing out how to deal with the problems which might come up. Problems are often treated on a “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” approach. Then we skid onto the bridge and begin struggling to find an answer. We’re often lax about it until it’s a crisis.

Now we come to the politics of today. One huge aspect of the Trump led GOP is that they seem to want to continue this as our mode. Kick it down the road. Call it a hoax. Pretend it’s not a problem. See climate change with its attendant extreme events and rising sea waters as an example. Man, those GOP cats will do anything to pretend there’s not a problem. To garner support for that, they’ll dump fake news and misinformation all over the news. Non-existent problems are created. Then they scream it to their base until the base is screaming about it too in true call and response fashion. See ‘woke’, ‘cancel culture’, and ‘immigrants eating pets’ as examples of this.

That’s what bugs me most about this brand of the Republican Party. They want to torture the clock until they can pretend they reside in another time where all was well. Basically, they want to perform and live as if the problems created by kicking the solutions down the road is a feasible governing approach. In an era when packaging plastics are leaching the carcinogens responsible for breast cancer into our food, and mass shootings keep increasing, they think less regulations is the answer. And then, to support the leader capable of leading them backward into the future, Donald Trump, they attempt to ignore or rewrite history, twist ethics and principles, and undermine others’ rights and freedoms. They pretend his adultery and multiple marriages align with their religious values. They’ll turn their heads and look away as he’s tried and convicted in court and hum quietly to themselves as he speaks gibberish and tells lies.

Not only does that render them a sad state as a party, but it renders us ineffective as a nation and will lead to greater and greater disasters. That’s a demonstrated trend. But they, his supporters, have turned off their minds and refuse to see that. This is what deeply frustrates me and many others.

But worse than frustration is the fundamental and serious consequences of their inactivity. If they believe Hurricane Helene was disastrous, they haven’t seen anything yet. We said the same after Katrina. After the disastrous wildfires in the west. After the record high temperatures established again and again and again in this century.

The way the GOP closes its eyes and minds to these issues, they will continue to refuse to see the consequences of their unwillingness to face these problems. Another disaster and another town will be gone.

And we’ll continue suffering from this conveyor belt of disasters and disease until irresponsible members of the GOP are removed from power and influence.

Please, vote blue in 2024.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Thursdayslumping

Summer temperatures are sneaking in, pulling autumn back toward sumumn, even though it’s October 3, 2024. Only a fall-ish 54 degrees F now, summer is turning the sun up into the air range and today’s heat will touch 90 F. Leaves continue their turn as their chlorophyll sinks, so it still looks like autumn as far as the trees and sky are concerned.

Today is Thursday.

Keeping it as classy as only he knows class, Donald Trump mocked former President Jimmy Carter on the event of the Carter’s 100th birthday. Nothing about any of Mr. Carter’s good works or service to the nation, oh, no, not for Trump. That’s not in him. This with Jimmy Carter in hospice.

And then Republicans will demand that Democrats, liberals, and progressives should be more considerate and less polarizing because word choice foments political violence.

Regular Trump watchers weren’t surprised. This ‘man’, Trump, has regularly mocked and sneered at others for service to the United States, such as Senator John McCain, referring to the former POW as a loser. Gotta bring it up as there are apparently a huge swath of votes who either don’t know that Trump did this or they’re fine with Trump doing this. If the latter, it displays so much of their values.

Moving on.

Today’s song came to me last night and remained in the morning mental music stream (Trademark waffling) this morning. “Ahead by A Century” by the Tragically Hip came out in 1996. And the song entered the MMMS because of Jimmy Carter. My wife and I both voted for him. We admire and respect him. Our conclusion about him is that he was way too far ahead of us in his thinking.

Stay positive, be strong, and carry on toward election day. Vote blue. Here’s the music. Belated birthday greetings, Mr. Carter. Cheers

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