Tag: commentary

Satyrdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

TL/DR: Trump lies a lot. So does Speaker Mike Johnson. And they’re wrecking the United States. Also, an explanation of the TLLs.

GOP duplicity and hypocrisy increases. Not surprising, really. Duplicity and hypocrisy are not finite. Tariffs don’t affect their availability. Duplicity and hypocrisy are as cheap and free as words. With the Epstein Shutdown of 2025 diving toward unpopularity reaching MAGA’s levels of hatred for diversity, Trump and the GOP are lying more about it.

BTW, this is Trump’s third government shutdown in less than five years of running the government. Spell that out, Trump has had a government shutdown in three out of five years of governing. Such a weak leader, isn’t he?

Except, we know the Epstein Shutdown isn’t like the others. This shutdown is to, one, distract people from the Epstein files and stop their release so that all the dirt that Trump did with Epstein is kept hidden from the light.

The Smirketeers. Donald Trump, left, with Jeffrey Epstein, second from the right, BFFs.

Perhaps as importantly, the Epstein Shutdown gives cover to the Project 2025 architects, enabling them to orchestrate the MAGA takeover of the Federal government. They want only GOP loyalists in there. Anyone critical of Trump or the anti-Christ known as Charlie Kirk must go! Third, and even more importantly, Trump can barrel through the Constitution and its checks and balances and broaden the cold war he’s conducting against Democrats through Federal funding of projects in blue states and blue cities. It’s all pretty cunning evil, certainly worthy of another Austin Powers movie.

Here’s where the hypocrisy, duplicity, and well, general lying kicks in.

Trump says it’s all the evil Democrats’ fault. Claims, they want funding to give trillions away to illegal immigrants. That’s a bonafide Trump Lie Level 5 lie, or in net shorthand, a TLL5. Trump lies so often and completely, we’ve been forced to develop a scale to discuss his lies.

Trump Lie Levels Examples for Clarification:

TLL1: Trump’s lies about his golfing or his weight

TLL2: Trump lies about coming out with a healthcare plan to replace ACA

TLL3: The lies Trump told about $50 million in funding for Hamas condoms

TLL4: Trump’s lies about immigrants eating pets.

TLL5:  Democrats shut down the government because they want to give free health care to immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, a lie Trump continually repeats.

Going along with Trump’s lie, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Hell) is now praising the Federal government that he so often maligned. From Carl Hulse in the NYTimes.

Shutdown Politics Has G.O.P. Singing Government’s Praises

“You’re talking about women, infants and children who rely upon these supplemental nutrition programs that are now not being funded and being shut down,” Speaker Mike Johnson lamented on the Fox Business Network. “They are affecting FEMA services in the middle of the hurricane season.”

Never mind that Mr. Johnson led Republicans this year in pushing through legislation to slash nutrition assistance programs as part of the party’s marquee tax cut law, or that President Trump has taken an ax to FEMA grants during his first months in office.

In the upside-down political messaging surrounding the shutdown fight, conservative Republicans, usually eager to assail government largess, have transformed themselves into enthusiastic evangelists for federal spending and programs. It is part of a bid by the G.O.P. to maximize the pressure on Democrats, who routinely advocate for government workers and services, to relent in the spending battle.

Speaker Johnson pushes TLL5 lies out there, pretending he cares about people and how the government helps people. Johnson’s actions, as Carl Hulse pointed out, Speaker Johnson has consistently and cruelly demonstrated that he does not give a shit about anyone but Trump and whoever will help keep Trump and the GOP in power as they destroy the United States in all but name.

The truth is the Democrats want the CR being offered to include provisions to stop healthcare premiums from rising. The GOP under the Trump and Johnson tandem put those into effect in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill passed earlier this year. Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is outraged about it.

Greene ‘disgusted’ if health care tax credits expire and premiums double

We need to vote these liars out of office. Stand up and be heard. Wake up those who are sleeping through the Trump Destruction Machine and what it’s doing to the United States. The longer it takes to wake others up and stop the destruction, the longer it’ll take to rebuild and resume our effort to be a democracy with justice, freedom, and equality for all.

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Fridaz Bumper Sticker

Pretty damn shameful that Trump said it. More shameful that more Americans are unaware he said it and that they’re unaware of Trump’s attitude toward his fellow citizens, the We the People he’s supposed to serve. A Republican, California Sen. Brian Dahle, saw the quote repeated on a Gavin Newsome tweet and chided the California governor for it, denouncing it as inflammatory. No word on what Sen. Dahle said after learning it was a repeat from Trump himself. Given the moral courage most Republicans like Brian Dahle have been showing, I expect continued silence.

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Fridaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Ah, so the ‘no new wars’ POTUS, Trump, he who thinks he so richly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, has declared a war on drugs. After having several Venezuelan boats attacked and destroyed by the United States military, seventeen people killed, Trump is now attacking United States citizens in Chicago through ICE, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives raids. United States citizens were dragged out of their apartments during the night. Their apartments were trashed. All without due process.

ICE Agents Rappel from Helicopter in Overnight Chicago Raid, Dragging Kids from Beds to U-Hauls

All this by the Grand Old Party, the party begun by Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln, who declared, “A house divided cannot stand,” a phrase he took from the Bible. How sickening now, less than two hundred years later, that party is deliberately pursuing courses to divide the United States by wantonly attacking United States. It’s not just part of the war on immigrants that he began on day one as the 47 POTUS, recklessly abducting, shackling, and deporting people. No, Trump is also attacking Blue states, deliberately withholding funds that were appropriated by Congress. These funds supported approved projects to improve situations. Some are infrastructure. All employed people. Without the approving funding, these projects will most likely un-employ people. That’ll drop state, local, and Federal spending and revenue. Trump, in his hatred for the United States, is deliberately sabotaging the economy. It is surreal.

A house divided cannot stand. You’d think the GOP would know that phrase. You’d think they understand the principle behind it, and the history upon which the speech was made. Yet, they mindlessly endorse and encourage Trump’s war on their own nation. Trump is even trying to set up the use of the U.S. military against United States citizens.

All this by a man with six deferments, an individual who never served the country, who now holds pretensions to being king, an absolute and tyrannical ruler, a dictator. There’s supposed to be a term limit for the presidency, but he’s changing the White House without regard to tradition, norms, history, or good taste, building a monstrosity of a ‘ball room’. Many think these changes are a signal that he never plans to leave.

Donald Trump has left a path of destruction and failures behind him. He’s been a failure at everything he attempted except for lying and being a con man. He declared multiple bankruptcies. He has several failed marriages, cheating on his wife just as he cheated on his taxes. He’s even a failure as a friend, once declaring that he and Jeffrey Epstein were friends, and now denying him, just as Judas denied Jesus in the Bible. Now, as POTUS, like his businesses, his ‘university’, and his marriages, he’s destroying the United States, dividing its population. Are he and his GOP enablers really so dense that they don’t think that destroying the economies of the blue states won’t contribute to the greater downfall of the United States economy?

A house divided cannot stand.

We’ve learned that lesson once. Well, some did. It’s clear that MAGAts and the GOP in general have forgotten that lesson. Either that, or they, like Trump, hate the United States and the freedoms and principles for which it stands.

I can’t conclude that it’s anything but that: Trump hates the United States, as do his supporters. Because as we know, especially with Trump, actions speak louder than words.

And Trump, clearly, is intent on destroying the nation.

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Fridaz Wandering Political Thoughts

A reminder that the law-and-order crowd do nothing to further law and order. It’s all a scam they’re running on gullible people.

And Trump reveals, he does see himself as a weak President.

How the world views Trump.

Actions shout the truth. It’s not about ‘America First’.

Talk about fraud, waste, and abuse. That’s exactly what the Trump Regime is.

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Thirstdaz Theme Music

September continues for a few more days. It’s Thirstda, September 25, 2025. 74 F in Ashlandia. Blue but hazy sky. Sunshine. Reaching for 86 F. Leaves have not started freefalling but the fall color shift has begun.

A dream provides today’s music. It was a weird damn dream, featuring the strangest game of basketball ever, and a zombie sort of white man. The dream ended with me victorious in basketball, gaining others’ freedom, and then walking away, leading five others. As I left, I began singing a song made popular by The Animals, “We Gotta Get Out of this Place”. Written by Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, it’s a powerful protest place against the pressures and conditions of modern first world life, we were become so defined by work, paying bills, and trying to stay safe. When I started singing it in the dream, the others joined in as we walked up and out of a square, concrete tunnel, sort of the kind often encountered in underground parking garages.

Just want to note, BTW, Weil and Mann also wrote the hit songs, “On Broadway”, “Kicks”, “Make Your Own Kind of Music”, “Here You Come Again”, “Walkin’ in the Rain”, and contributed to “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'”, and “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration”.

Whenever I think of this song or play it, I remember a childhood incident. I was eight when The Animals came on The Ed Sullivan Show to perform. Mom was very excited; she thought there would be animals singing. So we all tuned in to hear a human rock band singing this song, severely disappointing Mom.

Trump continues throwing apples at bogey threats. Now he’s pretending the violence in the United States is caused by ‘the left’. That’s how it is in his fact-free alternate reality. Actions like this lower freedom, democracy, unity, and respect. But it makes Trump feel pretty.

Deification of Charlie Kirk mounts. Put his likeness on the silver dollar, Republicans urge. Sure, cement this era’s insanity for the future to more fully and completely understand.

A government shutdown crawls closer. Trump refuses to negotiate with Democrats, chickening out once again, because he knows he’s a terrible negotiator. TACO, in control of the House and Senate, wi;th the Supreme Court backing him, has to resort to lying on the net once again in support of his alternate reality, this time claiming that Democrats want to give trillions illegal immigrants. It’s as shady and ugly as previous lies he’s made, like immigrants are eating people’s pets. His fact-free existence continues as a problem for the rest of us. From his ridiculously uninformed medical advice to his absurd grasp of history and his overinflated sense of himself, all he does breaks down centuries of trust, progress, hope, and peace.

As a bully, Trump is threatening to be cruel and stupid as part of the shutdown. That’s his normal style. Bully, bluster, blame others, and do stupid things. In this case, the WH issued guidance that it’ll use the shutdown to fire folks. “With respect to those Federal programs whose funding would lapse and which are otherwise unfunded, such programs are no longer statutorily required to be carried out,” the memo says. “RIF notices will be in addition to any furlough notices provided due to the lapse in appropriation.”

It’s part of the Trump Offal Office Circus. The GSA just announced it’s hiring people Trump let go through DOGE because getting rid of them screwed up the government. Ditto, the IRS. Now, here goes TACO down the same alternate reality hole he always goes, dragging the nation and world down with him.

I wonder what Trump’s BFF, Jeffrey Epstein, would say at this point?

Well, got coffee, so I’m good for the moment. Hope peace and grace grows stronger in the face of Trumpnanigans.

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Twozdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s a tale of two worlds. It’s the best of times, it’s the craziest of times. It’s a world defined by facts and reason where people come to share discourse about serious problems based on the evidence presented, and it’s a world where a powerful elected official shows serious problems with reality.

This makes it all hard to write. I want to rage about Trump’s insanity. But that’s the problem: he is sick. He should not be in a position of power. He should be retired to somewhere safe, where he can rest with medical care. Trump constantly trolled President Joe Biden as sleepy Joe, always claiming that President Biden was too old and feeble to be POTUS. Well, here we have an expanding body of empirical evidence that Trump’s grasp on reality is as thin and untenable as a cobweb.

Between his psychobabble Tylenol announcement, antifa EO, and his UN speech rife with falsehoods, Trump has blown out any perceptions that he shares the same reality as the great majority. Acting on some fabricated form of history and facts, he makes speeches, boasting about ending wars without naming them, claiming to save thousands of lives, chides others for being ignorant, oblivious to the ignorance which he displays. Whereas before, he was laughed at in his UN speech, this outing found a silent audience; they heard and saw how sick he is. Unless you’re Trump or a MAGAt, you don’t laugh at the sick. Yet, Trump probably saw and heard awe for how great he was. In his mind, they were silent with respect for how brilliant he is. That’s how disconnected he has become.

Tragically for U.S. citizens and the rest of the world, the GOP and Trump’s enablers gleefully go along with his madness. It serves their purpose for him to push his alternate reality unto everyone else and upend science, medicine, logic, truth, and history.

MAGAts seem too mired in their own hatred or alternate reality to raise their voices. This shows again and again through FAFO stories about how shocked they are to be victimized by the person and policies they support. They pretend Trump is religious, despite his history of conning, lying, cheating. They pretend he is fit and strong and muscular, even though pictures show an unhealthy, obese individual. They pretend to hear brilliant insights when he speaks, even when he incoherently rambles. They pretend that he’s religious, sent by God, although he’s committed adultery, paid for sex, has been indicted and convicted of crimes, and shuns the poor and sick while hoarding money.

Most of the wealthiest 1% seem addicted to greed and just keep grabbing whatever they can, regardless of what happens to the other 99% of the population. They’re just looking out for number one; number one is them.

Useful tools like former Fox News are broken individuals who like having attention, power, and position. They’re in over their heads and know it, but that’s okay, because Trump supports them. They’re all going for an ugly spin around the toilet bowl.

Project 2025 participants in Trump’s administration want to break the world. They’re the most dangerous, because they’re organized and serious. They want to create a crucible for cheap slave labor where the wealthy and powerful will flourish with little moral challenge to their ways. Where they can claim their one true god guides their cruelty, hatred, and bigotry. Where white men rule with a few exceptions as salve to prove to themselves they’re not racist, not sexist. They won’t be happy, nor satisfied. But they will be in power. In control.

Concerned only with themselves, bankrupt of morals and empathy, power and control are what they seek. They do not care who they hurt, who is used, or what laws are broken to do it. The ends justify the means in their minds.

This is nothing new. Acting on avarice, greed, and hate, others have peddled lies and misinformation to mislead otherwise good people in order to advance themselves. History shows that’s happened in the United States before. It’s easy to dupe people by drowning them with fake information, especially when it’s what they want to hear, and especially when the wealthiest control most of the media, and the wealthiest are willing to go along with the scheme. The difference now is that a deeply disturbed individual, Donald J. Trump, now commands them.

That is what we must face and overcome.

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Twozdaz Theme Music

“Right now, it’s 71 degrees in Ashland,” Alexa burbles. Yeah, bull. I check my Oregon Scientific home system. 58 F. That feels correct. Wherever Alexa gleans her weather, it’s down in the valley, where the sunshine has cleared the mountains and trees enough to burn off the mountain night chill.

This is Twozda, September 23, 2025. Autumn has grabbed the season. Trees are doing their leafy transformation. Travel ‘n tilt are spinning us toward the cold in the Earth’s uppers. Summer is coming down under. Still, sunshine will unfold and coddle us in Ashlandia until we’re crisping in the mid 90s. That’s F. For Fahrenheit.

Headlines are blushing about one of Trump’s newest EO. Dancing off shards of his alternate reality, TACO declared antifa a terrorist organization. Antifa is neither of those things. But that Donnie’s showing his inferior mind skills. Also blasts open impressions that he’s not the spear tip of a fascist movement. What better says that you’re fascist than to outlaw an antifascist movement? The question to put to Donnie and his ilk: how many terrorists attacks has antifa been behind? But we know Donnie will bluster something like “three hundred million,” without moving a wrinkle. He’ll smoothly lie, “Antifa was burning down D.C. Making it unsafe to walk the streets in Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis.” His brain and mouth cannot connect with truth, facts, and reality. Like, it’s rightwingers who are the primary source of U.S. violence. Most prevalent among them are white males bleating about how unfair life has been to them. Like Donnie. Look at the gun facts. Men, and white men, are more likely to be a shooter. They’re usually conservative to right-wing. Like Donnie. But in Donnie’s alternate history, he is a hero, and not a feckless bully, fool, and coward. Otherwise he’d come right out and fess up to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

I was thinking about Trump’s sentences. How they tangle. Lines of Christmas lights. Hoary spider webs. Restaurant clink and babble. Some words pop up in a brief burst of sense. “Then he said that he wasn’t going to do that. I got so angry.” Then the tide of indecipherable overwhelms again. Some cheeky Neurons responded with “Blinded by the Light”. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band had a hit out of it. Bruce Springsteen wrote the lyrics. It’s one of those songs that even when you know the words, some troubled region still queries, “But what does it mean?” That’s how I think of much of what Delicate Donnie says: but what does it mean? The gibberish is almost English as spoken by someone not tethered to precepts of logic, history, and sentence structure.

Hope peace and grace get out from under the rock and comes out and gives us some support. Coffee has found a place among my Neurons. Here we go. Cheers

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Mundaz Theme Music

Autumn is in through the door. The temperature slipped to the upper 40s. Even stoic Papi came inside to slip, nesting in the living room Malabar chair, where a pillow case is draped over the cushions as a fur collector. 74 F, we expect 86 F as today’s upper limit in Ashlandia. Summer will not go easily. Trees are shedding leaves though. The ones hanging onto the branches are leaving their greens behind. This is Munda, September 22, 2025.

I’m off to a late posting start. We did our monthly Food & Friends delivery this morn. Then my wife wished for breakie so we went to a restaurant for that. Back home, it was 73 F in the house with sunshine streaming in, but she was cold and cranked up the office space heater, poor dear.

Right-wing insanity offers me deep reasons for new headshaking. We have a Catholic cardinal comparing Charlie Kirk, spreader of hate and bigotry, to St. Paul. Even as that ‘say-whaat?’ is processing, I read an excellent Daily Kos piece about Nebraska, Arkansas, and Tennessee FAFO farmers lamenting Trump’s tariffs and their impact on their soybean crops.

Trump-loving farmers want blue states to bail them out again

Just as Trump and the GOP are claiming free speech for them but not for thee, meaning anyone who opposes their right-wing authoritarianism, these farmers want their safety nets for them but not for everyone else.

Today’s theme music is born from thinking about MAGA et al. “Hey You” by Pink Floyd from The Wall from 1979 was brought into the morning mental music stream by The Neurons based principally on a few lines: “Hey, you! Don’t tell me there’s no hope at all. Together we stand, divided we fall.” Enuff said.

Back in the saddle again. Time write and roll. Hope grace and peace find us, and soon, damn it. grumble grumble old man mutterings, etc. Cheers

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Sundaz Wandering Political Thoughts

More bizarro thinking keeps emerging from Trump’s reality divergent existence. He also proves he friggin’ stupid and ignorant of history. His latest is this gem:

“Trump, 79, Insists George Washington Would’ve Voted for Him”

Trump says President Washington would’ve voted for Trump because, Trump said, “On the world stage, we are once again putting America first. That is what we do, we help others, but we have to put America first. Exactly as George Washington would have wanted. He would have voted for us.”

  1. Trump does not put America first. Trump puts himself first. He’s enriched himself through grift and graft since taking office. George Washington strikes me as intelligent and would have been aware of Trump’s self-serving principles and practices of lying and bragging.
  2. Trump is usurping powers, leaning hard on the right-wing Roberts Court to provide him cover. Trump is trying to pretend he’s king. George Washington emphatically rejected the idea of a king in the United States.
  3. Trump advocated overturning the legal results of the 2020 election, when he lost his bid to remain in the Oval Office to President Joe Biden. Despite all of the legal rulings and evidence against Trump’s stolen election claim, he refuses to accept the truth and continues to push it as an alternate reality. As part of his efforts to resist leaving office, Trump actively pursued various extralegal methods to stay in office, including encouraging supporters to overthrow the election and bringing in false electors. George Washington walked away from office with dignity.
  4. George Washington willingly served in the military and did not seek trumped up reasons to avoid such services, such as bone spurs.
  5. In 1793, speaking to members of the New Church in Baltimore, Washington said, “We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition.” h/t Wikipedia.org. Trump avoids truth and reason while pushing bigotry as a staple of his support, another reason why President Washington would not have voted for Trump.

I wonder, too, how President Washington would have viewed Trump’s indictments and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

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Swear, Cry, and Sigh

Saturday Memes … Food For Thought

Jill Dennison has done it again. She’s collected some memes that definitely need to be shared with more folks. Some made me swear, some made me cry, and some were rewarded with heavy sighs. Sometimes, I did all of that at once. Here a few to whet your interest. They show, with these simple words and images, how far we’ve been twisted by Trump’s alternate reality in the United States. Head to Jill’s site to read ’em all. Cheers

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