Tag: economy

Wenzdaz Theme Music

Wenzda, January 7, 2026, has settled in for its time in the spotlight. A winter storm is supposed to be striking us. I spend time watching for signs of it.

Southern and eastern views earn sun-filled eyes. It’s a gorgeous day out there! Moving on to the west, my spirits are throttled down by a foggy, white cloud view. I’m not sure how to take these signs.

I check four weather sources, and all agree, it’s 44 degrees F out there. 45 is our projected high. The alignment between the temperature readings feels like a sign but I don’t know if it’s good or bad.

I likewise don’t know how to process the signs in the political world. Whether it’s the economy, Trump’s latest military adventures or his subtle hints he’s planning more, up is down and down is up. I tell myself, just wait. All will be clear.

Waiting is frustrating because I suspect the outcome is already too clear. For example, some thinkers believe Trump’s military overtures are being tacitly accepted by China and Russia because it provides cover for their military plans. For China, that includes attacking Taiwan. Some analysts tell us that all the signs are there but they’re mostly the same signs we’ve been noticing for a quarter century.

On top of that, I’m thinking about life in general and looking for signs that 2026 will be a better year. Questions stack up: what do I mean by ‘a better year’. Well, in general, I mean a healthier year. Less death among my friends and family and fewer GOP actions that make me fear and worry for my nation’s future. That’s the small tip of a very large iceberg in my sea of worries.

The signs and worry message permeate The Neurons’ bubble. They respond with “Signs”. The original came out in 1971 by the Five Man Electrical Band. Tesla later covered it, putting out their own release in 1990. I resisted choosing between them, giving you a Wenzda twofer.

I hope the signs for you are indicating a better life to come. How that is measured is a matter of your terms. Cheers

0

Witness

Through the year

We did stumble,

Doing weary chores

With a soft-voiced grumble.

Peeking through doors,

Working through days,

Of laughing, sighing,

And weary, changing ways.

Sometimes we shouted,

And sometimes shed tears,

Wondering how it would end,

This long, most miserable of years.

Now we sit

On another cusp,

Wondering,

What the next months

Will deliver to us?

We make promises and vow

To create changes that stay,

But will we be happier

Twelve months from this day?

3

Mundaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Trump directly attacked Venezuela this week, two strikes on two other nations in one week.

Disappointed, I wasn’t surprised. My immediate response: was this a military action or CIA activity?

I was also concerned about deaths, injuries, and property damage and destruction.

Other questions came up for me:

  • Did Trump consult with Congress beforehand?
  • Did the strike have any military and economic success?
  • How do Americans view this attack?

Trump’s increasing attacks on Venezuela and other nations are disconcerting. I worry that they’ll translate to open warfare or counter attacks.

Some comments associated with news of the attack surprised me. Several individuals cited President Maduro’s unpopularity with Venezuelan citizens as a solid reason to attack Venezuela.

I would turn that attitude back on them: Trump is unpopular in the United States. Does that provide other countries with a legal rationale to attack the United States?

Trump and his administration frame this as part of an ongoing war against ‘narco-terrorists’. They’ve not introduced any evidence to support the claims.

The true reasoning is very opaque. Trump often inspires speculation. I think it’s partly due to his established pattern of lying and his growing struggle to remain coherent.

I, with many others, often wonder: is this latest military action to distract us?

Trump has reasons to distract us. The list begins with polling, worries over the economy, and the Epstein files.

While we speculate, there’s certainly valid reasons for the speculation. As this year ends, many polls show growing disapproval for Trump, his government, and the consequences of his actions.

Trump and his administration’s behavior toward the Epstein files lends circumstantial evidence that Trump worries about the files’ contents. Delaying the release of files didn’t help. Neither does Trump’s recurring insistence the files are a ‘Democrat hoax’. Each denial increases our wonder about what the Epstein files say about him.

There’s a third pillar supporting speculation that the attack was a distraction. One, Bondi had the FBI comb through the files for content about Trump. Second, the files were heavily redacted after release. Three, a million more documents were ‘suddenly found’ and released.

Last, though, Trump continues to tout the economy as the greatest. Data doesn’t support him. One quarter showed surprisingly strong GDP growth. That doesn’t translate to Trump’s unbounded enthusiasm. Many professional forecasters project meager average GDP growth for 2025, just 1.9%. 2026 isn’t looking much better.

Job growth has been weak. Unemployment is rising.

Headline inflation isn’t sharp, but affordability worries people.

With such a weak economy and other indicators, I don’t think attacking other nations improves our situation. And that is my largest concern about Trump and the attacks.

They’re illogical, and do nothing to improve conditions in the United States.

That’s why I really wonder if they’re just distractions.

7

Satyrdaz Theme Music

Greetings on Satyrda, December 27, 2025. They said it’d be cold and we’d have snow. No snow but it was 38 degrees F, sort of cold. Sunshine is leaking in around clouds stretching a flimsy chain across blue sky. A high somewhere in the 40s is anticipated.

My stepmother texted last night. Dad has taken a bad turn. He was found on the floor, communicative and awake but confused. That was Wednesday. His wife is talking to professionals about whether Dad should go into hospice. She is due to receive an update and then will text me to call her so I can learn the latest.

I sent Mom and Dad holiday cards and letters. My sister read Mom her card and letter from me; my stepmother read Dad his card and letter from me. Neither Mom nor Dad could open their cards on their own. Dad lives in Texas and Mom lives in Pennsylvania. The parallel path of their decline fascinates and depresses me.

Dad has been married to my stepmother for over thirty years. It’s his third marriage. As Dad’s health has declined, my stepmother’s children visit him and care for him, just as my sisters visited Mom’s boyfriend, Frank, and cared for him before he died. Life’s complexities and layers are rich and interesting.

Sis wrote that she hosted Christmas celebrations on Thursday and Friday. Half the family came on one day and the other half came the next door. She said that worked out much better than having the whole tribe there at the same time.

With dreams of homes and families and news of family percolating, it’s not surprising that The Neurons chose a song about houses for the morning mental music stream. Today, it’s “Our House” by Madness.

As I wrote this post, my wife told me of some factoids she just read. Back in 1950, the average starter home in the U.S. was less than 1,000 square feet with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small kitchen. Now the average starter home is considered 2500 square feet with walk in everything and vaulted ceilings and fireplaces, kitchen, dining room, and breakfast nook. And fewer people seem able to afford starter homes in 2025.

Then I went off to dress to go out to write. My wife and I talked about it, how, while waiting to call my stepmother for an update, I was planning to go write. I shrugged. “The beat goes on.” And that’s why we have a twofer theme music offering for today. The Neurons immediately supplanted “Our House” with Sonny and Cher singing “The Beat Goes On”.

Hope peace and grace come by to present you some comfort. I’m off to the writing races once again. Cheers

5

Fridaz Theme Music

Hey, good morning, sunshine. It’s Frida, December 26, 2025. After a rainy night, the clouds shuffled aside and sunlight broke in on us. We were warned that snow might fall in the night. Peerings out the window provide no visuals that snow was encountered in our area.

My system says it’s 41 F outside. The net claims 38 F with light rain. Alexa claims 41 and cloudy. SOU marks it as 44 F. We’re basically in agreement, then, in a six degree range. That range makes sense. SOU is lower down and about a mile away. The location is subject to being foggy. If fog doesn’t show, it’s subject to being sunny. Projected highs aren’t far off with the given range as 43 to 46 degrees F.

We’re settling into the post-Christmas groove. I find this an odd period. People are coming down from the holiday high of eating, giving, and receiving. Schools are closed, as are some businesses. Others are forced to trudge back to work. It’s a Frida but lacks a Frida vibe.

Next week brings the New Year. My cynical side asks, “How many other nations can the Trump Regime attack before the year’s end? How many more people can this administration kill and displace?” Being a peace president isn’t easy, you know. That’s why Trump wanted a department of war, so he could push for peace. He’s going to threaten, bomb, bully, or kill everyone into peaceful. It’s ‘do as I say or else’ diplomacy. Which is also is political tactic, and his negotiating stance. It’s all ‘do as I say or else’.

The ‘or else’ side of things is diminishing. Everyone has the measure of Trump’s blustering. He can’t do much economically. That’s largely because he severely damaged the United States’ economic power by breaking trade agreements, and levying tariffs. That leaves Trump with the greater danger for the rest of us, to employing the power of the U.S. military, which is still potent.

With that in mind, thinking over 2025 and looking ahead to 2026, The Neurons came up with the Grateful Dead song, “Casey Jones”. “Trouble ahead, trouble behind.” Yep, Trump is driving us toward a no-win, no-way-out situation of isolation.

By the way, what does everyone think about Trump bombing another place at about the same time that the DOJ found a million more Epstein Files? That seems like suspicious serendipity to me. I can imagine a conversation inside the place formerly known as the White House:

Trump’s minions: “We’re going to announce that Justice just discovered one million more Epstein files.”

Trump: “Whatever.”

TM: “We’re also announcing we’re releasing them.”

Trump: “Bomb someone. Quick.”

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Christmas brunch was at at friend’s house, and a Czech student was present. She’s from a small village. Her school there covered elementary school through ninth grade and had only 117 students. After hearing her version of Christmas celebrations in her village, with baby Jesus delivering presents, I asked the net for more info. I learned that Martin Luther had encouraged this idea to help move people toward Christianity.

I also ended up looking up Sinterklaas. I’d mentioned that figure as another interesting Christmas variation. They all claimed to have never heard of Sinterklaas, so I had to look him up just to reassure myself that I wasn’t nuts.

I hope your holidays were and are pleasant for you. Hope, too, that whatever troubles 2025 brought to you drop away and that 2026 is less problematic and troublesome for all of us. Fingers crossed. At least we’re going to be seeing longer periods of daylight up north now, having crossed the solstice boundary.

Got my coffee. Here we go again. Cheers

0

Twozdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Dementia Donny has been living up to his hype, blasting us with more wondrous boasts about the greatest and most beautiful things he’s doing for us.

Solving real problems fell off Delicate Donny’s radar long ago. His previous magic was to ‘tell it like it is’. Morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest people fed off it. Now, with no one reining him in, his reign is a crashing, shambolic nightmare.

Affordability and inflation haunt Trump. The East Wing’s demolition reminds everyone who looks toward the White House sees it and remembers all of Trump’s past failures such as Trump Air and his string of failed promises, like “Mexico will pay for the wall”.

Now, hospitals are shuttering in rural areas. More are closing in 2025 than have in the past five years. Rising costs for food, healthcare, and energy are undermining Trump speeches that everything is better than before. Rising bankruptcies point to data that everything isn’t getting better.

Thing about it was that Trump’s bluster often covered his damage. When that didn’t work, he’d order wild distractions. That strategy was aided by those who want to further his agenda. Now, reality is engulfing the nation. Disapproval for Trump is drifting toward historic lows. Approval is becoming as weak as a memory of sunshine. Although media conglomerates still kowtow to Trump and his sycophants appease him by naming things after him, Trump is a weakening individual with waning influence.

Even Republicans are awakening to that truth. Stands are rising against him. Speaker Mike Johnson in the House remains Trump’s man but voter anger is stinging rank and file Republicans. Worrying about keeping their seats. they’re jumping off the MAGA wagon, though they carefully say little to anger Trump. He still has a big stick.

Trump’s biggest crutches remain the cadre he installed as his cabinet. Vought, Noem, Miller, Hegseth, Bessent, and Kennedy race forward, trying to do as much damage as possible before Trump shuffles off the stage. Vance is eager to seize the reins, but all know, he isn’t Trump. Although Trump can’t or doesn’t care to see it because it isn’t about him, Trump is institutionalizing regression under the guise of progress. That is how Project 2025 planned it. These are not mere villains, but morally ambiguous players dedicated to the Project 2025 cause.

Vance seems to be coming from a place where he thinks he can say, “Hey, we’re all Christians here,” and earn a stronger following. Christians might go for that but the rest of us are dubious about it. As Heather Cox Richardson related in her December 21, 2025, piece, Vance and the Project 2025 crowd continue to try to rewrite history and facts.

Speaking today at Turning Point USA’s annual “AmericaFest” conference, Vice President J.D. Vance said, to great applause: “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God we always will be, a Christian nation.”

Actually, we haven’t.

Vance’s statement flies in the face of our Constitution, whose First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” James Madison of Virginia, the key thinker behind the Constitution, had quite a lot to say about why it was fundamentally important to make sure the government kept away from religion.

In 1772, when he was 21, Madison watched as Virginia arrested itinerant preachers for attacking the established church in the state. He was no foe of religion, but by the next year, he had begun to question whether established religion, which was common in the colonies, was good for society. By 1776, many of his broad-thinking neighbors had come to believe that society should “tolerate” different religious practices; he had moved past tolerance to the belief that men had a right of conscience.

Ms Richardson’s final line in that paragraph struck me. This is where we’re seriously regressing as a nation IMO. As a progressive democracy, we were moving more past tolerance to the belief that everyone was equal but individual, but that the roots of individuality didn’t matter. What mattered was that all of us were humans, invested in one another to advance together, or fail together.

Now the Project 2025 gaggle has us as a nation regressing. We’re no longer even ‘tolerant’. Yes, Trump pushed that idea, giving it more emphasis as it gained traction. What deeply disturbed so many of us as Americans and U.S. citizens was how many of our fellow citizens weren’t willing to be tolerant. Not only were they not being tolerant of others different from them, but now they’re moving toward being more aggressively violent.

That is Trump, too. But the resentment, the willingness to be intolerant was always there, as was the violence. Trump and Project 2025 used that to propel Trump forward. Needing more votes than his base provided, Trump appealed to people upset with the economy by falsifying and magnifying how bad it was. Now the truth is out. Affordability is a bigger problem under Trump than it was under President Biden. Paul Krugman noted that the national deficit did not decrease under Trump but is bigger than it was in the first nine months of 2024.

Voters are noticing Trump’s failed economics policies. GOP stalwarts are noticing. No matter how many buildings are named for Trump, no matter how much he tries to change the narrative, the damage has ended Trump’s ability to lie and blame others.

There will be a reckoning with voters in 2026. Despite being in an ideological bubble, Trump knows it’s going to be bad for him.

He feels it, and it shows.

3

Sundaz Theme Music

Happy solstice morning greetings from Ashlandia. It’s 41 F with moderately heavy rain today. The weather systems tell me that’s how it’ll be all day, with the high reaching for 47 F. A ‘white Christmas’ isn’t being dealt to us this year.

Yes, it’s Sunda, and it also happens to be winter solstice north of the equator, December 21, 2025. Down south of zero, they’re celebrating the summer’s arrival.

We’re doing our ‘traditional solstice’ dinner but it’s being winged. Our traditional celebration evolved from previous celebrations we’d cludged together from pagan practices regarding solstice. Building on those, we started having a simple dinner of soup, salad, and bread as part of solstice. It expanded for a while, with others invited in to celebrate with us. COVID broke the tradition. We observed alone for a bit but shifted from it. Partially contributing to that was a sense of weariness my wife and I both felt; just weren’t up to celebrating, given the world’s state and trajectory.

I proposed doing soup and bread for solstice dinner again. But instead of making it all ourselves, we’d visit the Food Co-op and Market of Choice and buy some fresh soup from them.

I read about “King Mida in Reverse” in blog comments the other day. I haven’t heard nor thought of the song in years. Think I heard it on Sirus XM while driving on a long trip back before BCP – Before COVID Pandemic.

The commenter was saying this song, by the Hollies, perfectly describes the Trump effect. He’s a destructive force masked as something else. Trump will advance, mostly through luck, lying, evading responsibility, and cheating, but whatever he touches is the worse for it. Look how he destroyed so many businesses and yet enriched himself. Now he’s doing it on a gigantic scale, destroying the moral fabric, government structure, and checks and balances of the United States. Meanwhile, he’s turning us, We the People, against each other based on race and politics, cratering the economy, and making us sicker via terrible health care decisions. Yes, PINO Trump is most definitely King Midas in reverse. That’s why he throws gold on everything in a desperate effort to change the optics on what he’s doing. But the results of dropping approval ratings, rising disapproval rating in all areas, increasing unemployment, decreasing employment, and diminishing affordability speaks for itself. Dizzy Donny is failing, flailing, and fading.

Unfortunately for the U.S.A., Trump has turned over governing to Russell Vought for domestic affairs, Stephen Miller for domestic security, and Pete Hegseth and Marcos Rubio for diplomacy and foreign policy. Except for Rubio, these are individuals We the People don’t trust with the keys to a car, let alone running the nation. But that’s where we are, thanks to PINO Trump.

Lyrics

~snip~

I’m not the guy to run with
’cause I’ll throw you off the line
I’ll break you and destroy you
Given time

He’s King Midas with a curse
He’s King Midas in reverse
He’s King Midas with a curse
He’s King Midas in reverse

It’s plain to see it’s hopeless
Going on the way we are
So even though I’d lose you
You’d be better off by far

He’s not the man to hold your trust
Everything he touches turns to dust
In his hands
Nothing he can do is right
He’d even like to sleep at night
But he can’t

All he touches turns to dust

All he touches turns to dust

All he touches turns to dust

All he touches turns to dust

~snip~

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Time to chug some coffee and crank the energy motor up. Hope peace and grace sneaks out of hiding to give you a hug. Here we go. Happy solstice. Cheers

0

Satyrdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Processing More of Trump

The latest Trumpshit that really annoys is the continued withholding of energy funds to blue states and cities. This has been going on for months. The Trump Regime is withholding the funds because those states didn’t vote for him. The Trump Regime is actually framing it like that to the courts. Once again, Trump is trashing the U.S., spiting the Constitution and the law because of his vindictive nature.

That energy funding was passed by Congress and previous administrations. Yes, it’s being argued now that the TACO Regime’s actions are unlawful.

But, again, Trump can’t see the bigger picture.

Withholding this funding will affect technological development, putting the U.S. further behind other nations. As they advance, we’re regressing.

The funding provided money for projects. Those projects provide jobs. Yes, Trump has abundantly proven that he cares nothing about anyone but himself so the argument automatically beings failing. But growing numbers of unemployed people costs the government and craters the economy. Lets be reductive so he might grasp it: less money in pockets means less money to spend. Less money to spend means less things purchased. Less things purchased means less manufacturing and services, which cut into the gross national product.

I know, I know, this is all beyond the comprehension of a person who thinks starting a lawnmower is overly complicated. Maybe that’s where Trump’s cognitive testing should begin. “Mr Trump, can you open this door by using a handle?”

Assuming Trump does manage to open the door, we can then test him with a series of devices. “Mr Trump, can you start this lawnmower? Can you turn on this dishwasher?”

On the other hand, the TACO Regime is betting on the Roberts Court, who has bailed them out via shadow dockets and breaking with Constitutional precedence to protect Trump’s actions.

Also, as demonstrated over and over again, Trump and his minions love crapping on the United States. They actively hate it and show it through their actions every day, attacking American history, American cities, and American citizens.

The ‘Peace President’ continues to malign the concept.

This time, Trump is attacking ISIS. This is of course in retribution for the deaths of three service members.

“This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance. The United States of America, under President Trump’s leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people,” Hegseth said on social media.

~snip~

Yes, that dim beam of light known as Hegseth thinks that changing a word reframes WTF is going on.So, Pete, question: would that be a ‘declaration of vengeance’ against ISIS, which Trump claimed he’d 100% eliminated back in 2019?

Trump claims ‘100 percent‘ of ISIS caliphate defeated in Syria

“We just took over … you kept hearing 90 percent, 92 percent, the caliphate in Syria. Now it is 100 percent. We just took over 100 percent caliphate. That means the area of the land. We have 100 percent,” Trump said.

“We did that in a much shorter period of time then it was supposed to be,” he said. “It was supposed to take — I will not tell you what a certain general told me. But I went and met a couple of other generals. And they said how long do you think it could take, general? One week, sir. One week? I heard two years. One week, sir. Let us do it the way that we want to do it. I said: General, do it.’ And if so, what happened. We had the whole thing.”

~snip~

That’s a perfect summary for Trump. Lying and boasting, working on the same issues that he claimed to have completely solved. Or pretending it’s a hoax or fake news. Always resorting to lies to escape accountability, always depending on bullying to get ahead.

Trump & Hegseth remind me of someone else who said and did something similar.

What’s that expression about learning from history again? Something about not learning from history and repeating it.

Fact check: Trump repeats numerous false claims in prime-time address

Trump spews lies about the economy in his year-end address to nation

Fact-Checking Trump’s Prime-Time Address on the Economy

Why, he’s just telling it like it is. * Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more *

Some final Dizzy Donny thoughts from the web.

I’m in, Kerry. I’m in.

3

Fridaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Trump has announced that every street named “Main Street” in the United States is going to be called “Trump Street” by popular acclaim, beginning on Jan 1, 2026.

No, that’s not true. Far as I know. That’s how it feels, though. A golfer, he wants a NFL football stadium named after him. Tasteless, he wants the Kennedy Center renamed after him. He wants to name everything after himself for doing nothing but lying, cheating, stealing, and destroying. I’m not in favor it. Only thing I’d like to rename in Trump’s honor is toilet paper. Call it Trump paper. Then I can use Trump paper to wipe my ass.

Other than that, let’s name poor houses after him. And the homeless. He deserves that. “Look at those poor Trumps, standing out there in the cold rain.”

It’s wild how the nation is spiralling downward. Let’s cut off immigration, except for H1B visas for business. Let’s cut education and help for children but encourage families to have more children. And how will these families pay for them with healthcare, food, and energy prices increasing? We’re building AI facilities and robots to take over jobs. More companies are laying people off to use robots and AI instead of people. In Trump’s rage against Democrats, he’s attacking blue cities and states. Yet blue cities and states provide a large portion of the nation’s economic drive. So he’s gutting the nation of its economic power while trying to attract and encourage manufacturing. But who will have money to buy anything with employment falling?

Trump’s policies are already killing our local economy in southern Oregon. We depend on tourism, education, some beer and winemaking, and healthcare. Those are our largest revenue streams.

Last year, the Trump Regime cut funding for public transportation. Just like that, bus service fell to severely cut levels, affecting students, the poor, elderly, and remote.

SNAP and food assistance programs were cut, affecting the food-insecure, lower incomes, and homeless.

As costs rise for running a city and repairing things, the city is levying more fees on its citizens. That strains people’s spending and savings and cuts into discretionary spending. That results in less people spending on the local economy, with less tax money flowing to the city. See how that works? The city doesn’t.

Meanwhile, parks and rec want to open more parks. This is even though the city’s structural debt is blowing up. Parks and rec already cut their headcount, resulting less park maintenance, and its shows. Their solution is to build more parks. Build more bike trails. That’ll bring in people, they think.

Really, man, they are not paying attention.

Our local college is Southern Oregon University. SOU. They’ve responded to a continuing and growing cash flow problem by cutting programs, raising tuition, and reducing staff, including professors. With funding assistance from the Trump Regime falling, they’re facing a dire future.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is our big annual draw. They’ve seen reduced attendance for the last ten years. First, drought, hot temperatures, wildfires, and wildfire smoke pushed tourism down. Then COVID pushed tourism down. Now the Trump regime, with its open hostility towards foreigners, is pushing tourism down. A festival and region dependent on tourism will fall as tourism falls.

Finally, the local hospital announced cutbacks. This used to be the Ashland Community Hospital, but then it was bought by Asante. It has announced it’s closing its beds and surgical center. Just going to be some limited services. We’ll need to trek down the road to another hospital for assistance. But bus services have been cut. How are the poor and needy going to get there?

We’re being gouged and hollowed out in so many ways. This is just my state, my region. How much of this is being repeated across the United States? We know from news reports of growing corporate layoffs and flat employment growth. News reports inform us of meat packing facilities shutting down. Trump cuts through DOGE gutted research funding for universities, including cancer and other medical research. His policies also reduced foreign student enrollment.

As this downward spiral continues, the delta between haves and have nots in the United States will grow with the population of the have nots increasing. We’re leaning toward being a nation of underemployed, uneducated, unmotivated individuals. Our robot-run factories will pump out goods destined for foreign buyers on foreign shores.

Yes, I’m pessimistic about our nation’s future under Trump and the GOP but I’m not the only one. Meanwhile, a Yougov poll shows that while 40% of respondents think Trump will be judged as a “poor” president, 18% believe that he’ll be remembered as “outstanding”.

I guess those 18% are the haves, or perhaps have-nots who have not met their FAFO moment.

3

Thirstdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Is this a dull-witted regime occupying the building formerly called the White House?

I say yes!

After Dippy Donny’s regime shuttered the U.S. Institute of Peace earlier in 2025 and left the building empty and the work undone, the regime now renamed the building the Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace. Perfectly droll of this administration, who are all pretense and no substance when it comes to peace and finding peace. Trump always believes he can bully others into peace. “Take our deal, or else.” He claims he’s ended 60 billion wars, including several that ended before his father was born. (Yeah, that last sentence is some hyperbole, right there.)

But an empty building is a great symbol of an empty head and their empty efforts.

Meanwhile, the Roberts Court hurriedly and unsurprisingly ruled the Texas partisan gerrymandering was right on! Yeah, that’s good, the hard right court said.

Supreme Court revives pro-Republican Texas voting map sought by Trump

We also have more insight into Trump’s thinking and planning, or the lack of it, is what I should write. A new architect has been brought in to work on Trump’s new ballroom. That architect will submit their submit official plans to the National Capital Planning Commission ‘soon’.

White House brings in new architect for Trump’s sprawling $300 million ballroom

~snip~

Initially estimated to cost $200 million, Trump said in October that the new ballroom would cost about $300 million. The entire amount is being paid by donors, including him, he said. It’s “going to be probably the finest ballroom ever built, and we’re doing it to no cost to the country,” Trump said then.

~snip~

Isn’t that just like Trump? “Look how great and grand my building will be. All for just $200. Oh, wait maybe more.”

Sounds like Trump had more of a concept of a ballroom. Just like he has more of a concept of a replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act.

I’m beginning to believe the great Trump Wall will be finished first and Mexico will pay for it before the ballroom is finished.

O-oh say, can you see, how affordable everything is getting? New reporting is about rising energy costs. Before we jump into the rising costs, let’s look back at 2024, when Duplicitous Donny was campaigning and making promises:

“We’re going to get your energy prices down. We’re going to get your energy prices down by 50%.”

PBS NewsHour, Trump speaks at campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, YouTube
 (August 17, 2024). 

More at Doggett.house.gov

Now, let’s look at what’s going on in 2025 after almost eleven months of Trump rule.

The secret behind your skyrocketing energy costs

Stephanie Tate couldn’t figure it out. After three years of living in her new Illinois home, her winter energy costs last year suddenly spiked to $400 per month.

She had three different technicians come to look at her HVAC system and furnace, but nothing was wrong with it. She had her home insulation inspected and found no issues. She installed new, energy efficient windows to stop cold air from leaking into the house.

“It still didn’t make a dent,” she said.

In the summer, her bills were even higher, driven by the cost of the electricity needed to run her air conditioner. Tate tried to use her heat and cooling sparingly in hot and cold months.

“In the winter, I keep my heat well below 68 — and it gets cold here, so you just bundle up,” Tate said. “In the summer, my AC is at 75. I’m dealing with a little warm weather inside my house.”

Diving into her bills, Tate found something surprising. Her electricity bill’s delivery fees — the costs customers pay to help maintain electric infrastructure like the poles and wires carrying power to their homes — were often just as high as the cost of the electricity she used.

~snip~

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “You’re paying more for everything right now, and the electrical costs — the way they increase so exponentially and so quickly is stunning to me.”

~snip~

The nation’s electricity infrastructure is old, and utilities across the country have recently been pouring money into upgrading it; in just five years, US utilities increased their spending by $5 billion on transmission (the massive high-voltage towers carrying electricity from one region to another) and another $16 billion on distribution (the smaller substations, poles and wires).

Electric utilities are making “essential investments” to strengthen the grid, said Drew Maloney, president and CEO of the Edison Electric Institute, an electric utility trade group.

“Our electric grid is America’s most important machine — and we have to make sure it works reliably every day for families, businesses, and local communities,” Maloney said in a statement to CNN.

Part of that investment is driven by new demand growth. Electricity demand in the US used to be pretty flat. Now, demand is exploding primarily from data centers, along with new manufacturing and home and vehicle electrification. Power demand from data centers alone is projected to reach 106 gigawatts in the next decade, according to a report from research firm BloombergNEF.

~snip~

As I read it, residential consumers are funding the need for new electricity for corporations building new facilities that need a lot more energy. That will make those corporations more money, and greater profits, and pay less taxes. And those CEOs will see higher pay and greater bonuses and pay less taxes while Stephanie Tate and other Americans fund the growth.

That’s how it goes in Trump’s United States. Bend over and grab your ankles, if you’re less than a billionaire. As Trump himself warned you, “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!)”

With tariffs signed, Trump warns of ‘pain’ to come for Americans

How long will it take us to take the lesson to heart that Trump does not give a shit about anyone except the ultra-wealthy and himself?

3

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑