Tag: Afghanistan War

Friday’s Theme Music: “Fooling Yourself”, Trump

Ashland, Oregon — Friday, March 6, 2026.

Our temperature is 51 F. Sunshine broadly spreads across the valley as thin gray fog recedes. Today’s high might be in the low fifties, we’re told.

Papi doesn’t care about temperatures. That sunshine provides a warm bathing space and he uses his tongue like he hasn’t washed in weeks.

As I sipped coffee and read the news, I thought about the illusions that Trump and his supporters and enablers entertain. That only whites matter, that history should be rewritten to reject anyone who was not a white, Christian heterosexual. It’s so narrow and foolish; again, I’m reminding that we’re only as strong as the weakest among us, only as smart as the least intelligent in our ranks, only as healthy and wealthy as the sickest and poorest.

Trump initially sold those ideas to supporters but has abandoned them. He ran on a promise of lowering prices, convincing many that he would do so on day one of his second term, improving the economy. Now, asked about rising gas prices after his attack on Iran and its impact on gas prices, Trump shrugs it off.

“I don’t have any concern about it. They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.”

I don’t trust Trump’s analysis or promises. Trump has littered the political landscape with broken promises: he would deliver a new healthcare plan in two weeks. He would never golf because he would be too busy working. Mexico would pay for the wall. There would be no new wars. Prices would come down on day one. He would end Russia’s war on Ukraine on day 1. Those are just the ones I easily remember.

Trump also claimed that last year’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities had destroyed them. Now he says the war is needed to destroy them.

While thinking about Trump’s positions and policies, The Neurons filled the morning mental music stream with “Fooling Yourself” by Styx. I last played this on my blog when COVID-19 was raging in the United States.

Back then, I quoted and commented on these statements and beliefs made by a MAGAt.

No worse than the flu and already going away. No, the greatest threat to America comes from “libtards” and their willingness to give everything away (he believes “Obama destroyed America and the economy”). Further, Trump’s recent sickness was really just a cover for him to rise up and finally vanquish the Dems and “libtards”.

Again, I think Trump supporters are fooling themselves. Trump is fooling himself.

On February 19, 2026, Trump said at the ‘Board of Peace’ meeting in the Oval Office:

“And there’s nothing less expensive than peace. You know, when you go to wars, it costs you 100 times what it costs to make peace.”

Nine days later, Trump launched a war that’s costing over $60,000,000 a day for the United States. This doesn’t address the cost of the other nations, such as Iran, the center of the destruction. Nor does it address the cost of lives lost, disrupted, and destroyed, regardless of the nationality, age, or religion.

And after a year in office, the Ukraine War continues.

The video I chose joins the song’s writer, Tommy Shaw of Styx, performing it with the Cleveland-based Contemporary Youth Orchestra. I hope you watch, listen, and enjoy.

May your day find you warm, safe, and blessed with love and good fortune.

Cheers

4

Twozdaz Theme Music

Twozda, November 4, 2025, has pounced on us like a kitten hunting a leaf. 51 F in Ashlandia, rain clouds hide the sun. Rain is expected to visit off and on throughout the day. More leaves are surrendering to time, filling the ground with fading, decaying colors.

Mom continues to be lively back in Pennsylvania, according to sis. Which is thought by all of us to be good. Thought I’d share this photo of her from her 90th birthday. Yes, that’s a kitchen knife in her hand.

Mom, 90 birthday celebration, October, 2025

Today’s music is owed to a dream. This was one of those long, movie-like dreams my mind spins to entertain me while I slip. In this one, I was part of a group of young people. We’d found some books, then realized there was significance to the books, and then, ‘lo, a book was missing. We knew who collected the books, so we thought we’d recreate the journey he took to collect the books. Maybe that would reveal the missing book. We were traveling by train and car mostly, and yes, the travel took us behind the old ‘Iron Curtain’ into previous nations controlled by the Soviet Union. There was romance and comedy along with suspense. It reminded me of the 1980s Dabney Coleman film, Cloak & Dagger.

Anyway, my amused reflection of the dream triggered The Neurons into offering songs about spies in the morning mental music stream. After considering different music, The Neurons concluded that Carly Simon and “Nobody Does It Better” is the best choice.

Dick Cheney died. I was surprised. Thought he’d died in the 1990s. I knew he’d been re-animated to be Veep under Dubya, but I thought that spell wore off once he was removed from office. He was only 84, which also surprised me because he often seemed very old. The tributes will pour in for him. They’ll gloss over what he did to help forge a path to our current mess and speak of his service to the nation. Few will mention how extremely wealthy and powerful he became as part of that service. He did speak out against Trump in the 2024 elections and endorsed Kamela Harris. Just noting that.

Speaking of Trump, the Trump created Epstein Government Shutdown of 2025 rolls on. As someone else predicted, Trump became TACO and yielded somewhat on SNAP. Judges ruled that he must pay it but I think it’s most likely he’s doing it due to voters turning against MAGA politicians who worried about losing their seats, which might lead to the House flipping in 2026. Like others, I think Stephen Miller strongly influences Trump, and that having people die from starvation, even if in red states, is okay with the Regime. Death from starvation will make people more desperate and pliable, is their reasoning. That reasoning then goes, those folks will be willing to work for lower wages and can probably be pressed into service doing jobs that migrant workers used to do. Yes, the Trump Regime is trying to create a class of low-wage slave labor, like we had in ‘the good old days’, and thus help ‘make Amurica great again’. Sickening. Bet Epstein is smirking down on Trump, or up on him, depending on your thoughts about the afterlife.

Breaking News:

Trump Says He’ll Defy Court Order And Won’t Give Out SNAP Benefits

In a Truth Social post, Trump said Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”

There’s the TACO we know! Breaking the law, breaking the law. Not taking responsibility. Blaming someone else, as he always does. And screwing We the People.

Analysis I’ve read said that not paying SNAP will disproportionately affect his beloved MAGA base. Of course, in Trump’s altered reality, SNAP recipients are all scammers, people illegally in the United States, or people on drugs. The Trump Regime dismisses the idea that income-challenged families and individuals, the disabled, and children depend on SNAP. That administration is deliberately, maliciously, and dangerously warped.

Off I go. Hope grace and peace spring out from their hiding places and embrace us all. Till then, I’ll coffee up. Cheers

9

Saturda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I caught up on reading several posts by Heather Cox Richardson that I’d missed. I appreciate the historic angle she brings to news about Truskzilla’s destruction of the United States. Reading her, I belatedly realized, gosh, I’ve been normalizing Trump and his supporters.

I thought they cared about the United States and its founding principles. Wrong.

Or that the history and heritage of this nation matters. Nope.

That they worry about the Federal deficit and trade imbalances and the stock market. No way.

That usual barometers such as court rulings, disastrous economic results, or opinion polls would have an impact. No fucking way.

That the usual things like how history will judge them matters. It doesn’t; they believe, winners write history. We’ll be the winners. We will write the history.

I did understand that they didn’t care about democracy or voter rights. I did understand that they’re racist, sexist, misogynists, and reactionary. But that was mostly to unite people and put them in office. They needed racist, sexist, reactionary misogynists as their voting base to get them in through the front door.

Those are all normal terms about the normal course of events. Using them in terms of what Trump and the Trusk Regime is doing is normalizing them.

They are not normal. Nor can what they’re doing be called normal.

The Trusk Regime is interested solely in being in power. This is a coup. They’re interested in remaking the United States as an imperial power under a dictatorship. They suggest to each other, why build that mighty military if you’re not going to use it?

Like many dictatorships, the Trusk Regime and GOTP will put up window dressing as a democracy and a republic. But they are setting up the nation to be a military force. Cutting away the things we depend upon as a society — a working and reliable Federal government, healthcare, a safe and healthy environment, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, to point out some — destabilizes us. Growing unemployment increases people’s desperation. Rising prices limits their options and undermines food and shelter security. Sending children back to work breaks family. Ripping apart the education system reduces the nation’s collective intelligence, and with it, its will. All of these actions, taken in blitzkrieg fashion, demoralizes a growing number of people and spreads an increasing sense of helplessness.

That makes the people ripe for propaganda.

With the economy in shambles, other nations can and will be blamed for the growing poverty and starvation. Trade wars and political differences will be magnified and amplified. Trump, a prolific liar, has perfected the arts of projecting, deflecting, and blaming. That’s why he’s been boosted into position as the head of this monster.

They have X to help spread their misinformation. AI bots. Facebook. Threads. A weakening, capitulating media, itself owned by corporations and oligarchs, has already begun joining the effort.

A frustrated, starving population provides ample troops. And just as we saw with the Cheney/Dubya Iraq and Afghanistan wars, marketing can sell false causes. Helpless people hungry for someone to blame other than themselves will be served other nations as targets.

The clock is ticking. And the war drums have already begun beating.

2

America First

I was accused of seeing too much of the big picture the other day. Guilty, I answered.

The march last weekend to protest Trump’s agenda reminded me of the marches and vigils against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We, the protesters, were told we were unpatriotic. Saddam Hussein was a threat, a bad guy who had to be removed for the good of the world. Afghanistan needed to be punished for shielding OBL and his organization.

I was skeptical then. I saw a lot of lies and patriotic zeal being organized in support of a fraudulent crusade. Yes, I supported the troops, an expression that still fills me with anger. I’ve never envisioned yellow magnetic ribbons or lights of any color really being a supportive move for people killing and being killed far, far away. Perhaps that’s my cynical streak. I’m angry that so many of them died in false causes, and that we destroyed so many Afghani and Iraqi lives and families. Worse, I felt the pursuit of war to end violence doesn’t work, and that we ended up creating larger numbers of enemies through our military actions.

When, later on, Judith Miller’s bullshit became more fully exposed, and President Bush came out and said, “Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11,” and when weapons of mass destruction were never found, everyone said, “Gosh, how were we all so fooled?”

Number one, not all of us were fooled. Number two, you stopped thinking and remembering; that’s how you were fooled. You were fooled because you wanted to believe. Then you had buyer’s remorse.

Because I see the big picture, I don’t automatically put America First. In no general order, I put freedom, equality, human rights, and the planet and environment first. I question those who assert ‘America First’ without thinking about what it means and the greater ramifications of a policy predicated on America First. As I understand it, the United States of America was established to create a more perfect union, a place where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were rights we were born with, along with a bunch of other rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In other words, the United States is not an end in itself, but another step along a greater path, and a sanctuary from those who had their rights taken from them..

Besides not putting America first, I don’t put men first, nor whites. I do see it as a weakness to imprison others in order to restore ‘your rights’ and privilege. Our weaknesses are what will keep us from improving our country and our world, and from solving our problems. If we don’t nakedly bare our problems and address them but instead blind ourselves with mindless propaganda, we will create larger problems. Especially if, under guise of America First, we begin torturing and imprisoning people; we begin building walls and establishing a larger military at the cost of arts, education and the greater public weal; if, under the guise of America First, we morally, ethically and financially bankrupt our nation; if, under the guise of America First, we destroy precious resources and kill others because they are not Americans; if, under America First, our servants in the Federal government are told they are not allowed to interact with the citizens they were hired to serve.

Some will have already quit reading, writing me off as another soft liberal; others will urge me, “If you don’t like America, why don’t you leave it?” I’ve never said I don’t like America, and indeed, the United States of America was founded upon a huge liberal experiment, the idea that we could have a government of, by and for the people. I want a better nation, a nation that is a true, principled leader for freedom, democracy and equality, not a land of killings, walls and slogans.

 

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