Jill Dennison published a thoughtful post regarding the 9/11 attacks. Like many, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing. For some reason, early that morning, I woke up suddenly ill and went down to the living room at our home in California. Settling on the sofa under a blanket, I turned on the television and heard the news of the first attack. Then, as I watched, I saw the second aircraft strike. It was a very surreal time. My wife recalls it and always comments that it’s not like me to go down and turn on the television like that. She always felt that I had some sort of psychic reaction to the mass deaths that drove me out of sleep.
Wenzdaz Wandering Thoughts
I am apparently a beaucoup sneezer. My sneezes aren’t small blemishes on the aural experience. They explode out of me with Krakatoa force. I’m also sneezing several times a day, basically at home, mostly in the home office (snug), causing me spouse and I to both speculate that something in that region is causing the sneeze.
Well, I let go of three eruptions the other day.
My wife said, “Did you read about the murder in Ashland?”
I was horrified. “No. When did that happen?”
“It didn’t happen yet but I hear that a wife was driven to madness and killed her husband after he kept sneezing.”
Yes, I laughed. She wouldn’t do something like that.
I don’t think.
Munda’s Theme Music
Boom, and it’s June’s last day n 2025. Boom, it’s another Munda.
Today is Munda, June 29, 2025. Boom, it’s gonna get hot again in Ashlandia. 99 F. 73 F at the mo. My friend in Melbourne, Australia is miserable with cold, wet rain. I feel for him. The weather rarely satisfies us for many consecutive moments, especially if you’re a prince like me, cognizant of every ripple casting anything less than perfection.
Despite a heavy load of dreams, today’s music comes from PINO Trump’s “One Beautiful Big Bill”. News outlets are generally roiling with disgust about the bill. It’s a grab bag for the rich and strips away help for the poor and sick, and shreds protections for our land, water, and air. The bill removes gun controls and taxes so it’ll be easier and cheaper for people to pay guns. This, in a nation already slathered with gun violence. Just this weekend, two fire fighters were shot and killed and others were wounded in an ambush in Idaho. People polled are heavily against the One Big Beautiful Bowel Movement, for just reasons.
Yet, this bill is the perfect bill for this nation at this point. Filled with what the fuck provisions, sponsored and pushed by a liar and a cheat (yes, that’s Trump), it’s a bill by a billionaire for a billionaire. One that encourages and rewards greed, violence, and selfishness. Perfect for the ‘Christian Nation’ visualized in Project 2025. I have always considered Trump a con man; now his con has come to full light, and his supporters are the main marks.
BTW, read Mock Paper Scissors small’s bite on the bill: Playing Clue: GOP, In Congress, With Paperwork. If that doesn’t cause your GRRRR Meter to max out, nothing will.
Today’s song, then, is “Nasty” by Janet Jackson. The Neurons popped the song into my morning mental music stream after I read about the bill and the GOP capitulation and hissed, “Nasty.” That was all it took, and I was hearing, “Nasty. Oh, you nasty boys.”
Just read that Trump is to visit America’s newest Florida funpark, Alligator Alcatraz. Maybe a gator will get ‘im. It’s good to have dreams.
Hope your weather fits your needs and your day works out beautifully. I’ll do my best. Give me a cuppa. Here we go. Cheers
Wenzda’s Wandering Thoughts
I’m on a doom-scrolling slowdown. I wasn’t even generally doom scrolling. I was just going through the news and blog posts. Too often when I did, I found myself muttering, “Bastard,” after reading something. Like, the tale of the manhunt for the father who killed his three daughters. “Bastard.” Or the Trump appointee idiot who doesn’t know the U.S. has a hurricane season. Is he American? How long has he lived in the United States? If he’s been living in the U.S., has it been under rocks in Utah or somewhere? “Stupid bastard.”
There is Trump, of course. Donald J. “Trump Again Chickens Out” TACO Trump. And Rep. Mike Johnson. Both are bastards. Unfeeling, uncaring, unprincipled bastards. Bastards who have sold whatever was left of their souls.
Johnson was called out for only citing CBO figures as accurate when Dems are in charge. Trump’s budget bill is called the OBBB. They say it means “One Big Beautiful Bill”. I believe OBBB means “Only Bullshit Being Boosted”. More and more constituents are calling their reps and senators on it. Not that the Republican side of things will care. See Joni “We’re all dying” Ernst, for example. More Republicans are reacting to criticism by claiming, “I didn’t know that was in the bill.” See Rep. Mike Flood and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for example.
Then there’s hate crimes like the murder of Jonathan Joss, unarmed and shot to death while mourning the loss of his home and pets. Shot dead by some asshole who hates gays. “Bastard.” The murderous bastard who killed Jonathan Joss probably won’t get the punishment deserved. There’s too much systemic hate, bias, and prejudice built into our judicial systems for fair trails when the victims are gay.
This is our nation now, bending over backwards, encouraging us to look away from the shit happening on our streets. People being disappeared by armed masked paramilitary who show no insignia or badges. People killed for being whatever disturbs thin-skinned, cowardly white people.
This is Trump’s America. The land the MAGAts want, a hateful place where the truth is spit upon, where science is dismissed and undermined, where murder and violence is called for by the POTUS against anyone deemed ‘his enemy’, where the past is being whitewashed of contributions by any person that TACO doesn’t like or admire, and that is a long list of honorable, intelligent people who refuse to kiss his ass.
“Land of the free and home of the brave?”
Not in Trump’s America.
Twosda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
The headline is startling.
Urgent manhunt for former Arkansas police chief imprisoned for rape, murder It’s a gritty tale, thick with drama and hyperbole.
As law officers search Arkansas’ rugged Ozark Mountains for a former police chief and convicted killer who escaped prison this weekend, the sister of one of his victims is on edge.
Grant Hardin, the former police chief in the small town of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was serving lengthy sentences for murder and rape and became known as the “Devil in the Ozarks.”
I’m surprised that he’s on the run. Trump just pardoned another convicted sheriff. His own DOJ was behind the prosecution and sentencing for former sheriff Scott Jenkins. Jenkins was found guilty and sentenced for bribery. But Scott Jenkins is a Trump supporter. Naturally, Trump pardoned him.
I figure that Grant Hardin should turn himself in, declare himself a massive Trump supporter, and ask for a Trump pardon. All he’d need to do is make a few speeches about how Biden was behind his prosecution and wax about how brilliant Trump is, and how the mango one is the greatest president ever, and a Trump pardon would surely be forthcoming. The violence shouldn’t matter. Trump is not that far removed from accusations of rape, and he eagerly pardoned all the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, even though people were killed through their violence. I figure another pardon for another convicted rapist and killer is fitting for Trump, the ‘law and order’ president.
It’s the kind of nation we’ve become.
Wenzda’s Wondering Thoughts
I might read and watch too many mysteries and thrillers. When I was shoveling off our walks and driveway, I flashed to different film and television show scenes where they’re digging to bury a body, recover a body, or looking for evidence. I didn’t find any of those things. Not even treasure.
Also, we survived the storm well. One of the comments my wife and I said to each other was about how dark the bathrooms were due to snow covering the solar tubes and skylights. We are such spoiled first world people.
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Mood: eeeeeaaaaaauuuuuuuuuahhhhhhhh
Just tired today, you know? Like I’m an inflatable man with a slow leak. Bent over as I sit, air seeping out, growing smaller, more flaccid, more bent.
Haven’t had coffee and brekkie yet. That might change the self-impression.
It’s Wednesday. December 18, 2024. Almost 50 F out, a wind mutters and sings like it doesn’t know all of the words. Sometimes it remembers most of the chorus. It rained in the early morning. It’s to begin raining and keep raining for most of the afternoon. A sun is been pasted into the sky among the pillows of unwashed clouds. Peeks of blue sky skittishly open and close, an amateur fan dance. Gonna get to 53 F. Not bad for the verge of winter.
Some news begins like an ugly joke. Hear the one about the bear falling on the hunter? But it’s not a joke. It’s a stupid slash of life. Bear was treed. Had been shot by the hunter and another hunter. And it fell on the hunter, who died. I’m happy for the hunter, who after all, died doing what he loved: killing other creatures. Lester Clayton Harvey Jr.
The friend turned out to be a son, and there was a group, hunting and chasing that bear. And the son, yes, says, Dad died happy.
“Dad was doing what he loved most, bear hunting with me and some of his good friends when he was injured,” his son wrote in a post on his Facebook page Dec. 11. The post included photos of the group hunting, with a bear in some of the shots.
They don’t mention if the bear died in the story. That omission speaks volumes as they praise the hunter. Caption showing a picture of the bear accompanying the article says, “A black bear climbs up a tree. A 58-year-old Virginia man is dead after a bear fell out of tree and struck him during what appears to be a hunting accident in Lunenburg County Dec. 9, 2024.”
Which isn’t what happened. Look at they shade that tale. The man died when he shot a bear in a tree after he and a group chased the bear into the tree. Reacting to its wounds, the bear fell out of the tree, killing the man.
I notice my computer is slow today. As if it’s affected by the same low-key blahs afflicting moi. Maybe it’s a December thing. The Neurons have picked up some cosmic playing which eventually unfolds and refolds into Cream playing “Crossroads” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark pending). Ah, that’ll do.
Off to make coffee and brekkie. Find something for my spirit and body. Have a better one. I believe I’m sinking down. Cheers
Tuesday’s Wandering Political Thoughts
David Prosser read my brief comments about the Wisconsin school shooting from earlier this week (three dead) and my bitter comment about ‘thoughts and prayers’. He doesn’t reside in our nation so he’s not fully indoctrinated to our cycles of mass shootings and thoughts and prayers. He asked me to expand a little.
Here it is, David. A short summary of some high and low lights in our national conversation about gun violence in the United States. Direct quotes from articles are italicized. Links are provided so you can read the quotes in its full context.
Sickening routines have become normal in the United States. Gun violence breaks out; people are killed. Thoughts and prayers are offered for the victims and the family members of those victims. Investigations are conducted and speeches are made. Little changes.
“Thoughts and prayers” have become an unironically overused expression. Substantial action to reduce gun violence is usually shunted aside as meaningless. The ones shunting it aside are normally Republican ‘leaders’ like United States Senators such as Mitch McConnell, or President-elect Donald Trump, and his right hand man, JD Vance.
2019, via Austin American-Statesman [9]: Back-to-back massacres in El Paso and Dayton kill 31. Cue the thoughts and prayers!
“Melania and I send our heartfelt thoughts and prayers,” tweeted President Trump, who vows to veto gun control.
“Elaine’s and my prayers go out to the victims,” tweeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who blocks votes on gun control.
Vice-President-elect JD Vance says that our gun violence a fact of life and we gotta live with it [1]. “If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”
Vance was addressing the subject after a 2024 school shooting in which four people were killed in Georgia.
The subject of ‘thoughts and prayers’ as a useless response has been around for a while.
2017, via Newsweek [2]: In the hours after Stephen Paddock killed nearly 60 and injured more than 500 early from a Mandalay Bay hotel room, surrounded by a cache of 10 legal weapons, reactions from politicians stuck to piety, not policy.
Donald Trump tweeted his “warmest condolences.” Later, while addressing the nation, the president called the shooting an act of “evil,” quoted Scripture and announced the flag would fly at half-mast. “As we grieve, we pray that God may provide comfort and relief to all those suffering,” he said.
The article enumerated more Republican politicians tweeting about their thoughts and prayers in response to the killings. The article noted:
The similar speeches and social media postings after shootings in Orlando, Florida; San Bernardino, California; and Newtown, Connecticut have been frequently criticized by gun control advocates, including the New York Daily News, which ran “God Isn’t Fixing This” on its front page to condemn the “coward” politicians who only talk.
2018, via CNN [3]: Semantic satiation is the phenomenon in which a word or phrase is repeated so often it loses its meaning. But it also becomes something ridiculous, a jumble of letters that feels alien on the tongue and reads like gibberish on paper.
“Thoughts and prayers” has reached that full semantic satiation.
For the last few years, after every mass shooting, the term immediately trends on social platforms. It’s not a good kind of trending: Among the earnest pleas for social and legislative action, the aftermath of each successive shooting inspires more and more memes and cynical jokes.
The article went on to note,
There has been no major gun-control legislation in the nearly six years since Sandy Hook, the tragedy that was supposed to change everything. In fact, in the years following Sandy Hook, more states loosened gun buying restrictions than tightened them.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School murders took place on December 14, 2012 [4]. 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people. 20 were children.
2017, via Time Magazine [5]: After the horrific shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, a rhetorical tennis match ensued. Some politicians offered up their “thoughts and prayers,” as many have following other mass shootings. Others responded by criticizing “thoughts and prayers” as a pathetic substitute for taking concrete action. On Wednesday night’s episode of Full Frontal, Samantha Bee even organized a gospel choir to parody the phrase. Those critics, often liberals, were then taken to task for their unholy dismissal of “thoughts and prayers,” which in turn led to criticisms that those criticisms were just a deflection guarding another deflection.
Devin Kelley shot and killed 26 people and wounded 22 others at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas in November, 2017.
Some laws have been passed. But Republicans do not want to touch anything related to gun rights in the United States, including background checks or gun restrictions, so those measures remain weak and ineffective [6].
As the Biden administration reiterates calls for tougher gun measures in response to the mass shooting in Maine last week, House Republicans updated a fiscal 2024 spending bill with provisions that take the opposite track.
House Republicans are looking to use the appropriations process to block a proposed rule to implement a provision included in the first bipartisan anti-gun violence package passed in years.
Between the actions taken by the GOP in Congress, the obstacles they throw up against curbing gun violence, and Republicans like JD Vance, we see that the GOP is basically okay with gun violence. Action is louder than words — or thoughts and prayers. Republicans would rather take no action than to risk alienating their base [10]. Secret tapes of the NRA discussng this were aired by National Public Radio (NPR):
In addition to mapping out their national strategy, NRA leaders can also be heard describing the organization’s more activist members in surprisingly harsh terms, deriding them as “hillbillies” and “fruitcakes” who might go off script after Columbine and embarrass them.
And they dismiss conservative politicians and gun industry representatives as largely inconsequential players, saying they will do whatever the NRA proposes. Members of Congress, one participant says, have asked the NRA to “secretly provide them with talking points.”
When Republicans do take action, it’s been to try to build schools into fortresses, providing them with armed guards, and even advocating, arm teachers. That’s Senator Cruz’s master plan. Ted Cruz believes that’s the best solution [7].
“We know from past experiences that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus,” Cruz said in Washington on May 24, just hours after the shooting, before many details were known.
“Inevitably when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”
The first problem is that according to actual research, no, armed guards don’t solve the problem of gun violence and gun killings in school. The second and larger problem is that besides schools, there is gun violence and murders at businesses, post offices, movie theaters, churches, synagogues, and homes. Police officers have been ambushed, shot, and killed. Besides them as victims, the police have also been quick to draw and shoot to kill. Senator Cruz doesn’t have suggestions about curbing shootings in all those locations outside of schools.
Next, we can talk about the defend your ground shootings and murders. Trayvon Martin. Ajike “AJ” Owens. Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis. Ziad Abu Naim. Joshua Switalski.
What the GOP does often talk about is that the gun violence isn’t about the guns; it’s about mental health. Experts believe that while mental health issues contribute to gun violence, it only accounts for about 4%, leaving us to deal with another 96% of gun violence incidents [8]. The GOP bans research on gun violence, probably because they know that the facts are against them [9].
I do believe we have a mental health issue when it comes to gun violence in the United States, and that is an unwillingness to face that we have a big gun violence problem. Until we do, kneejerk responses like “thoughts and prayers” are doing nothing but letting the problem fester and grow. It’s like knowing you have a disease but refusing to face it.
And that is a problem.
Michael Seidel, writer 