Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Again, a light of good news. Not all CEOs are profit-driven greedmeisters. Not all of them are weak-minded or fearful. Not all are ready to abandon their principles or their employees and roll over and do other tricks just because the Trusk Regime decrees it.

Marriott’s CEO spoke out about DEI. The next day, he had 40,000 emails from his associates

Snippet:

Much of the company’s success is driven by trust in leadership—including former chairman Bill Marriott, current chairman David S. Marriott, and CEO Anthony Capuano. 

In an interview at the Great Place to Work For All Summit in Las Vegas with the organization’s CEO, Michael Bush, Capuano spoke about a recent crossroads—and how he responded. 

Marriott’s CEO speaks out

After Trump announced sweeping changes to DEI in January, many executives and companies were left reeling.

Capuano says he met with his executive leadership team in Bethesda, Maryland, where they decided to take a week to research and process before meeting again. The CEO then flew to Los Angeles for the Americas Lodging Investment Summit. While there, he was inundated with questions about Marriott’s approach to DEI in the future. 

Rather than stay silent, Capuano recalled many conversations with his mentor and former chairman Bill Marriott, and decided to speak. 

“The winds blow, but there are some fundamental truths for those 98 years,” Capuano said. “We welcome all to our hotels and we create opportunities for all—and fundamentally those will never change. The words might change, but that’s who we are as a  company.” 

Capuano says he went back to his hotel that night hoping he had said the right thing. 

Capuano’s message was simple, but it didn’t go unnoticed by associates. He was overwhelmed by how his employees responded. 

“Within 24 hours, I had 40,000 emails from Marriott associates around the world, saying ‘thank you,’” he said. Many expressed appreciation to work for a company whose values aligned with their own. 

Marriott is among Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For that are sticking up for DEI policies right now. Others on the list include Delta and Cisco. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

See, Donald? This is leadership.

Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I’ve been busy tracking the PINO Trusk administration’s actions. It’s like tracking a hurricane as it roars toward humanity. Oh no, where is it going to hit next? Hope those folks will be okay. Shame about those Trump voters who thought he cared about them. Hope they’re okay despite their vote. Because they’re other humans, right? They are human, right? I have that right, don’t I? I guess it could’ve been bot voters who won the day for Trump. Wouldn’t put it past DOGE and the GOTP at all. But that’s a conspiracy for another day.

Right now, I’m wondering about the tipping point. When will Hurricane Trusk cause enough damage that the majority of American citizens will come together in one voice and finally shout, “Enough, you fuckers! Stop it right now.”

That tipping point moment is predicated on multiple vectors and variables, so it’s a hard prediction. My original call was April of 2025. That’s what I told friends back at the beginning of January. I thought, hey, inflation, high prices, the contempt with which Trump treats history, minorities, and women; emptied shelves caused by trade wars, parks going to crap, and the air and water starting to stink; tourism swiftly cratering, rising unemployment, flopping tax revenues, threats against Medicare and Social Security, and people would be mighty miffed by April.

I don’t know ’bout April any longer. There’s a mass of individuals out there quite willing to endure those things. Mostly, I think, it’s because they don’t want to admit how fucking wrong they were about Trump. That they’ve been tricked, had, conned. Also because some of them are so underwater in the MAGA swamp that they won’t fully get what’s going on. Part of that will be because the right wingosphere will feed the MAGAts what they want, which is GREAT NEWS about HOW GREAT TRUMP IS, regardless of the truth. We’ve seen it before. Lot of them believe that Trump built an impenetrable wall across our southern border. Doesn’t explain why they worry about ‘illegals’ now, but then, that’s their thinking level.

If I had more energy, I’d propose a national betting pool. We could all pick a date and bet that is the tipping day. But that would be a messy thing to figure out, especially with PINO Trusk and his regime dicking with the numbers.

Maybe I’ll do it on another day. After I’d had a few glasses of beer. It seems like a beery thing to do.

Wenzda’s Theme Music

Sunshine tangoed in. Then clouds waltzed in, batting the sunshine out. No rain is falling but it’s still early. With a temperature of 39 F, we should be safe from snow for a few hours, though ‘they’ say it feels lie 27. S’posed to top off in the low 50s this afternoon. No word on what it’ll feel like. All this is as expected on the horn of spring as winter fades out in Ashlandia on Wenzda, March 19, 2025.

Boy, this week has been a crazy month, right? You never know what new insult Trump and his minions will levy on We The People. This time, the Trusk Regime has decided that the Code Talkers so invaluably employed during World War II were DEI hires.

“Were it not for the Navajos,” Major Howard Connor said, “the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

Today, Erin Alberty of Axios reported that at least ten articles about the Code Talkers have disappeared from U.S. military websites. Broken URLs are now labeled “DEI,” an abbreviation for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”

That’s right. Under Trump’s ‘leadership’, the Trusk Regime and the GOTP continue to spit on the honor and bravery of the people who fought for this nation. Someone should remind Trump and his regime that if it weren’t for the Code Talkers’ help, we might all be speaking Japanese.

Trump always claims he loves the military but look what he’s doing to it. Also claims to love the Constitution, and look what he’s doing to it. Ditto the nation. Who will rid us of the pestilence called Donald Trump before our world is destroyed?

The Neurons are playing the 1982 Culture Club song, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, in the morning mental music stream. This came about because I read that in many polls, Trump voters support the Trusk Regime’s actions…until they’re personally affected. Then they’re often swearing and crying about what Trump is doing. Like the Miami Venezuelans who supported Trump during the elections.

Venezuelan migrants in South Florida say they feel betrayed by a Trump administration decision to end legal protections for hundreds of thousands of people who fled dictatorships and sought refuge in the U.S.

The move by the Trump administration is a turnabout of a long-standing U.S. policy that has extended TPS to more than a half-million Venezuelans.

Come on, man, betrayal is Trump’s middle name. So, yep, now those Venezuelan Trump supporters are hurting as fellow Venezuelans are returned to the conditions they tried to escape in their country so that they could pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit fof happiness. They stand alongside thousands of farmers, ranchers, bankers, VA employees, veterans, FBI agents, and firefighters shocked to learn that Trump doesn’t care about them. Once they voted for him, it was one and done.

So this song, “Do You Really Want to Hear Me” and its plaintive refrain, is perfect for them. I mean, it’s not like they couldn’t see what Trump did before as POTUS, as a businessman, as a husband, or as a person. He’s always been all about himself. His voters were fools to think otherwise.

Coffee is again soothing my troubled breast. I’m ready to launch one more time. Hope you have a solid, satisfying day. And awaaayyy we goooo. Cheers

Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Are you surprised? Elon Reeves Musk pushes the falsehood, Hitler didn’t kill millions. Sure, and guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Same sort of empty sophistry. Musk says, “Their public sector workers did.” Right, and armies didn’t kill people during the war, it was the soldiers. Next, Musk will be telling us that he didn’t do anything, he was just following orders. Oh, that’s right, he already said that.

Are you surprised? ‘No pain, no gain’: GOP tells Americans to suck it up as economy worsens Emily Singer has a sweet wrap of how the GOTP are trying to tell their constituents that the pain is good for them.

Take Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Please.

“No pain, no gain. That’s what we used to tell our football players. There’s gonna be some pain with tariffs. But tariffs got us back as a strongest economy in the world when President Trump was in the first time. He knows what he’s doing. Democrats get out of the way. Shut up,” Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said on Fox Business.

Yes, because a football game and working to keep you and your family from starving and safe from bad weather is exactly the same.

Senator Tuberville also gets a A in lying, saying that Trump’s tariffs got us back to the strongest economy in the world. But he is GOTP. Lying is as easy as breathing.

Are you surprised? American consumer sentiment plunges on trade war fears Americans continue to grow worried over President Donald Trump’s escalating and haphazard trade war, according to the University of Michigan’s latest consumer survey released Friday. Consumer sentiment fell 11% this month to a reading of 57.9, a preliminary reading showed, down from last month’s reading of 64.7 and reaching its lowest level since November 2022. That’s a sharp retreat from December, after the US presidential election, when sentiment rose to its highest level in months.

Most of us saw this coming but there was a large segment of the sheeple who were eager to fuck around and find out. Now, here we are.

Are you surprised? “Trump Shutters ‘Voice of America'” Trump has closed down the Voice of America, the government-run radio service that has brought news to 420 million listeners around the world since 1942, during World War II. 

Who benefits by closing the VOA?

Russia. China. North Korea. Iran. And every other authoritarian regime.

Yes, and those are Trump’s buddies.

Gosh, who could have predicted that shit?

Are you surprised? Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website Page honoring Charles C Rogers for his Vietnam war service is now defunct with letters ‘DEI’ added to website address.

So, this man, who actually served his country (unlike Donald Trump and Elon Reeve Musk) and was wounded in combat and was honored for his service, has been dismissed. That’s a slap in the face to every veteran who risked their life and spent time in the trenches to defend the Constitution of the United States.

But then, that is the Trusk Regime in a nutshell. Unsurprising in their inability to understand truth and principles. Dedicated to only furthering their own wealth, no matter how much they must lie, like that jackal, Tommy Tuberville, no matter how much the laws, history, and heritage of this nation, of this world, must be twisted and ignored. Trump claims to respect our military and veterans, but with his actions, he demonstrate otherwise.

I, for one, am not surprised.

Saturda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

In this corner, we have Oblivious Man.

Oblivious Man, whose superpowers are obvious, is Richard Grennell. Mr. Grennell made the news in wake of JD Vance being booed at the Kennedy Center.

Apparently taken back by the booing, Mr. Grennell responded.

Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump named as the center’s new president, posted on social media on Friday morning that the video showing Mr. Vance being booed “should challenge us all to commit to making the Kennedy Center a place where everyone is welcomed.”

“It troubles me to see that so many in the audience appear to be white and intolerant of diverse political views,” he wrote. “Diversity is our strength. We must do better. We must welcome EVERYONE. We will not allow the Kennedy Center to be an intolerant place.”

Gosh, Oblivious Man, you do know that you have your job after a purge by the intolerant individual who appointed you to your position, don’t you? You know, the one who called the Kennedy Center Board ‘too wokey’.

Yes, because PINO Trusk has been so fucking inclusive as he espouses his positions against diversity. So welcoming is PINO Trusk as he establishes a list of 43 countries whose citizens are not very welcome in the United States. So fucking tolerant is PINO Trusk as he investigates colleges for being too tolerant, too welcoming, too inclusive, arrests people for not thinking like him, while pursuing mass arrests and deportations.

Oh, Oblivious Man Grennell. I hope you wake up and smell the bullshit.

Munda’s Theme Music

Roll out those lazy, hazycrazy days of winter. Yes, winter has compromised Nat King Cole’s hit about summer. Fact is, the Ashlandia day facing us here in southern Oregon are all of those things he uses to describe summer. A blotted, bloated face of puffy and sullen gray clouds mumble hello. Weak sunshine is acting like a wallflower trying not to get noticed. 44 F now, the temperature is gonna skyrocket to 45 F, they tell us. Betting window is open on rain.

This is Munda, February 17, 2025.

First, a quick reminder. Friday, Feb. 28, 2025, is a planned day of boycott. Hope you’ll participate. We are. The more the merrier. While it’s targeted on corporations which rolled back DEI policies under PINO Trusk’s encouragement, like Amazon, Target, Best Buy, PBS, NPR, Coca Cola, Pepsico, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and more. Costco is one of the few major corporations which stood firm against DEI changes. Share the news. Make it real. It begins at 00:01 AM on Feb 28th and ends at 11:59 PM.

We should all be insulted by Trusk’s moves against DEI. Unity is needed for a strong nation. There was a reason why DEI evolved. PINO Trusk and his disgusting rinions are trying to pretend those things didn’t exist or didn’t matter. Total bullshit. Beyond that, call out to those companies: don’t you realize how much stronger and more successful via DEI? No, you don’t. You’re too weak, craven, and greedy. Shame on you. Kudos to Costco.

Yeah, going with the Bangles’ version of “Hazy Day of Winter” today for the theme music. It’s a Simon & Garfunkel original but the Bangles successfully covered it in a more rock and roll style in 1987. But in the spirit of inclusion, I’m including both versions. The Bangles version has overwhelmed the S&A 1966 original in the morning mental music stream. That’s how it sometimes goes.

Bonus offering: Haim.

As the song says, “Hang onto your hopes, my friend.”

Coffee and I have reached detente again via some kitchen diplomacy. I’m sailing along on a stream of caffeine. Keep it real and have the best one you can. Cheers

Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Each morning, I post to WordPress. The first time each day, WP usually suggests tags to add. I click to add them. And every day it tells me, ‘No tags added’.

It amuses and dissatisfies me.

Amuses me because it’s so consistent. Dissatisfies me for the same reason. See, it’s offering something, and then it’s failing. Every day, without fail.

For me, it’s part of a much longer list of small tech failures encountered on a daily basis. Little things. Buttons and widgets not working. Apps crashing.

We see it on a larger scale. One is quiet, like how fucked up deliveries with the post office have become. I tracked a package last week from Newark, California, to Roseburg, Oregon, to Portland, Oregon, to Roseburg, Oregon, to Medord, before it reached me in Ashland. Ashland, BTW, is closer to Newark than Roseburg, Portland, or Medford.

This week, I tracked a package to Fife, Washington. Where the package entered another dimension and the system has no idea where it is.

We all figure it’s a one-off, so we don’t complain about it. Then, when we do, we often discover the problem is affecting more of us than we realized. It’s a larger problem than realized.

But sometimes, the tech failure is so visible, we can’t look away. Take the Boeing aircraft failures. Or the Boeing Starliner failure that has stranded two astronauts at the space station.

The United States is steadily spiraling downward in many ways. We can’t deal with our gun violence; the GOP stops actions. We can’t deal with climate change and wildfires and the extreme weather it causes: the GOP stops it. We can’t deal with quality failures…well, that’s more about money.

People can’t afford houses. Meanwhile, college students are drowning in debt. Do you think that’s not related?

As always, as these things happen, the GOP is pointing at other things as problems that aren’t problems. Books in schools. DEI. Declining church attendance. Voter fraud.

Yes, there’s a pattern here. We as a nation are stagnating. As a small group gets wealthier and achieve a better life, the rest of us are left dealing with small problems. Problem with small problems is that they add up.

Just ask Boeing.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑