Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
The net has a few comments catching my attention today.
It is January 6 and we have the fifth anniversary of Trump’s first attempted coup to remember.
MPS offers a succinct reminder.
Never forget that Republicans voted for this. Three times. That’s your root-cause analysis right there.
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:
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.
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
Dawg, what a gray, wet day looking in on us. It’s up to 36 F with clearance to soar to the mid 40s. Sunshine is lacking and what sun shows up is shaded in fifty shades of gray. This is December 3, 2025.
Today’s music emerges from an exchange with my wife. She was leaving for exercise class. I was still abed. It’s her habit to check on me before she leaves to ensure I’m alive. Hearing her coming, I held my breath and stayed motionless. “Is he alive?” she teased. I felt her hand pressed on my hip. Then she pressed on my scalp. After about ten seconds, I sprang up and proclaimed, “I’m still standing.” We laughed like idiots.
But that’s how “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John arrived in the morning mental music stream on this Wenzda.
Reports on Mom shows her doing pretty good. Sis has stocked Mom’s lair with her favorite munchies and drinks so Mom has some independence of others. Mom has become better at using Alexa to call for assistance. The one major complaint now is that Mom has her television at supercharged levels. Sis says it’s so loud sometimes that they can’t hear their television upstairs over Mom’s TV. I used to complain about the television and radios’ volume (yes, that’s a plural on the radio) when I visited Mom. She always blamed Frank. Guess it’s the ghost of Frank cranking up those devices now.
Lot of news rolling out about Trump falling asleep at meetings. ‘Member when he used to criticize and mock President Biden for falling asleep? Now he can’t seem to stay awake.
Some say it’s because he can’t sleep at night because worries about the Epstein files revelations drive him to midnight sessions of shitposting. Rumors are that Epstein’s ghost has begun haunting him, whispering in Dizzy Donny’s ears reminders of what a failure he is, how weak and vulnerable Deceitful Donny is, and how Duplicitous Donny’s failures are catching up to him. Once BFF with Epstein, TACO now tries to claim he barely knew the guy.
Got my coffee and I’m out of here. Hope peace and grace show up and sing you to sleep. Here we go, into another Wenzda. Cheers
Another cold morning, although that stuff is relative. Cold for us for December 2, 2025, is 32 F on awakening. Climbed to 39 F now. Been sunny and clear all morning on this frosty Twozda. Looking for a high in the low to mid 50s.
Read that Trump fired some immigration judges in New York. They’ve probably been following the law and ruling in accordance with same, following rules of evidence and procedures, and going by precedence. All that is a no-no in Trump’s alter reality where his rule is law in accordance with standard playground rules where he’s the bully who gets to say what’s what. Judges are suing him for wrongful termination, adding to his stress levels. COSTCO is also suing the Trump Regime for the tariffs. COSTCO ate the tariffs instead of passing them on; now they want Deceiving Donny’s regime to pay back the tariffs because they were illegally declared and collected. Besides that, TACO is still sweating out Epstein files details, faces declining popularity due to rising prices, persistent failures, has had his attorneys general declared illegal, lost some court cases, and is using words or doing things that are finally pushing Republicans to say, “Enough.” Glad they’re starting to catch up. The rest of us have been shouting, “Enough,” since 2016.
WordPress tells me my stats are booming! Again. This seems to happen every seven to ten days, starting a few months back. I suspect bots seeking commentary on Trump. Don’t know who’s sending the bots or what they’ll do with the information they collect. So far, it just intermittently drives up my traffic.
The music today comes by way of convo with my wife. This is in conjunction with discussing something we were talking about buying. As part of the conversation, there was discussion about driving to a place that’s not real close but not real far, you know? Far enough that it’ll take gas and time but not so far that we’d need to stay overnight. Anyway, in this day and age, the alternative is to go online. So it was a question of “Do we want to go all that way?” Yes, we are essentially lazy.
Anyway, catching the surface vibes, The Neurons responded with a song from the 1970s by a group called the Raspberries, “Go All the Way”. The conversation was late last night but the song is stuck in the morning mental music stream. Found an interesting video of the song being ‘performed’. Looked like a classic lip-syncing event on The Mike Douglas Show. Wow, remember it?
The vocalist is Eric Carmen. After the band broke up, he went on to a successful solo career. Remember “Hungry Eyes” and “All By Myself”? Same guy. He also co-wrote “Almost Paradise”. He died in 2024, 74 years old.
Got my coffee in me and it’s time to rock on. Peace and grace aren’t here yet, but it could be the cold keeping them away. Maybe if I travel to somewhere warmer, I’ll find them there. But I’m not up to a trip today. Here we go. Cheers
This is it! November’s final day. Yep, it’s now Sunda, November 30, 2025. Like yesterday, it’s chilly. Up to F at my home. Fog took the day off though. We’ll break the fifties again, temp wise. Yesterday shifted in temperature and inclination sufficiently for me, out walking, to say, “Hey, it’s not bad out here.” Certainly is better than those places being buried in snow.
The ‘We Ain’t Buying It’ campaign rocks on as protest agin the corporations aiding and abetting the Trump Regime takedown of U.S. democracy. That right-wing campaign seems to be fumbling and flailing as Dizzy Donny hisself likewise stumbles, fumbles, and flails. Courts outside of the Roberts Court consistently rule against Trump decisions. Doesn’t matter. Enabled by Republicans in Congress, backed by a weaponized DOJ, supported by billionaires and the Heritage Foundation, Dozy Donny presses forward.
A stench floats from the TACO Regime. Look at what they’re doing. There was the Trump Epstein shutdown and the Epstein files. Constant grifting, whether it’s Trump phones, Donny T crypto, Melania schemes, the regime works hard to make money for the Trump mob. Meanwhile, they’re rewriting history to discount what anyone other than white men did. Overseeing the destruction of the actual White House building. Presenting a shambolic Russia-Ukraine ‘peace plan’. Flip-floppin’ over tariffs and wreckin’ the economy. Guttin’ of the Federal agencies and programs approved by previous Congresses and administrations. Wantonly, randomly disappearing people, including legal immigrants, including American citizens. That’s just a short, high-level list.
This is Trump’s vision in November, 2025, after eleven months. People are no longer overlookin’ this crap. Scales are droppin’ from people’s eyes. Polls are rolling in: they disapprove of Trump and what he’s doing. FAFO stories are spilling out as MAGAts, happy to do unto others but unhappy to have it done unto them, complain about what Trump is doing to them. All I can say is, ’bout fuckin’ time.
A bevy of dreams again last night. One was about me being a bear protecting other people. In another, I was flying some kind of ship, protecting people. I awoke, thought them over, began cleaning up and dressing. After considering the weather and picking out my clothes, I began singing a song about getting my blue jeans on. At first I thought it a song which I’d made up for myself once upon a time. Then instrumentation slipped into the song. By then, I thought it was a faintly remembered tune, dug up by The Neurons, slotted into the morning mental music stream. Using the little I remembered, I discovered “Jeans On” by David Dundas, from 1976.
Time to coffee up and head out. Hope peace and grace find us and does it soon. Till then, hang on. Cheers
Jill Dennison has again brought us a luscious pre-Thanksgiving offering to humor and politics. I didn’t want to share them but The Neurons felt they were so compelling…anyway, here are my favorites. Hope you go by her site to see the rest.
And the link to the rest…
And a bonus offering for your time…
It’s a sunny but pale blue sky heavy with chilly hair outside my windows. Sunshine coats the rooms but the heating system works against the tilting, spinning, revolving Earth’s travel through space. It’s gettin’ colder here. Winter is on the way. 42 F today, 52 F is our high after a night of light rain.
Power outage struck at ten fifteen PM. It was to last three hours. Social media kept us informed. No, not the city, or emergency services, or the power company, or any official outlet. Those were mute. This was off hours, don’t you know? Nobody works on social media for any city org during night’s darkness. Nope, it was neighbors on FB and NextDoor sharing where power was out, the probable cause and the city’s estimate for when it would be back up. One had learned the last by calling the power company. Overall, we all refrained from calling the company because we knew it was a wide outage and we knew they were busy. But we hungered for information. Social media filled that gap.
The Neurons have “Breakdown Dead Ahead by Boz Skaggs going in the morning mental music stream. This is in direct response about 1) stories of Trump losing his grip (along with tangential questioning about who will run the GOP with Trump gone) and 2), the fucked-up place where We the People stand. Thanks to the Roberts Court, Project 2025, aided in some part by the super wealthy who own media chains and outlets, we’re drifting further and further from a nation of equality and freedom. A twisted form of ‘Christianity’ is being given a pass to the detriment of other religions. Prices are rising, affordability is falling, and the regulations which worked to give us fresh air and water and healthy food choices are being shoved aside.
Meanwhile, yes, since the Trump Epstein shutdown has ended, and the Trump files — sorry, it was a slip — the Epstein files are being released. CNN has pointed out the massive loophole to that. Basically, anything ‘under current investigation’ is exempted from being released. And who makes that call? The Trump AG and DOG. That loophole aligns with the suspicion many of us carry that the Trump Regime will not let the full truth out and will protect Dizzy Donny. As my wife summarizes in her succinct way, “Oh, we knew it was going to be dirty.”
I’ve checked the front and back entries. No peace and grace out there. Don’t know when they’ll show. They haven’t been answering my outreach. Tried emails, texts, phone calls, and there’s nothing. It’s like the Trump Regime has disappeared peace and grace. Meanwhile, I comfort myself with hot, black coffee. Okay, here we go, boiz and gurlz. Cheers
Trump’s lying has been documented and analyzed yet again.
President Donald Trump tells a lot of lies. Trump also regularly accuses others of lying.
And sometimes he does both at once – telling a lie about something while accusing someone else of lying about it. In other words, the president has been dishonest even about others’ honesty.
It’s a subset of his years-old “I know you are but what am I?” tactic of trying to turn common criticisms of him against his opponents. And he’s used it a bunch this fall.
I thought Trump’s deception was bad then. It got much worse. In 2017, Trump averaged 2.9 false claims per day. By 2018, it was 8.3 false claims per day. What started as a side project I could handle in a few hours a week started requiring regular all-nighters. By the time I joined CNN in mid-2019, it required a second reporter, Tara Subramaniam.
Trump’s 2017 dishonesty tended to be impromptu ad-libbing. His 2018 dishonesty was much more scripted; he used serial lying as a deliberate strategy in the midterm elections. Then he used serial lying as a deliberate strategy in his 2019 Ukraine scandal. Then he used serial lying as a deliberate strategy in his response to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic – holding daily “briefings” so wildly dishonest that CNN needed me to go on TV right afterward to debunk the nonsense viewers had just heard.
~snip~
Trump now jokes about his lying. What is weird is that some people still believe him. Or, more weirdly, that they are upset when it turns out that what he lied about something and it hurts them (see cattle ranchers, timber companies, soybean farmers, and families of immigrants, for example), yet they still support him because they think the Liar-in-Chief is better than anyone else out there, that this liar will somehow lead us out of the chaos that he’s created.
Some of Trump’s recent lying weirdness is all about the tariffs. Trump has been saying for a long time that American consumers won’t pay the tariffs that he imposed on imported goods for everything and anything.
Now, though, Trump is reducing tariffs to lower prices. The question before us is, if we don’t pay the tariffs, how will this lower prices? Why will changing the tariffs matter, sports fans?
We know the answer: it’s because Trump is lying.
Remember, Trump is reducing tariffs to lower prices at a time when, in his constant lying, Trump claims that prices are down and that stories about prices being high are lies the Democrats are telling. How the hell does that make any sense at all?
“Every price is down,” he said Thursday. “Everything is way down,” he said at another Thursday event. “Prices are down under the Trump administration, and they’re down substantially,” he said Friday, adding, “Everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden. And the prices are way down.”
None of that is true.
~snip~
The evidence that Trump constantly, religiously, and consistently lies is fully and pervasively documented. Now Dozy Donny wants us to believe that the Epstein files are a Democratic hoax.
As President Donald J. Trump said, “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party.”
~snip~
Trump also wants us to think that with all the time that his AG has had the Epstein files, with all the time and access that the DOJ under him has held onto the files, that he will not make some attempt to redact or remove references to him, or to hide them. Why should I believe that? With his history, any document issued under Trump’s name is automatically suspect by anyone familiar with history, facts, or the truth.
Yet, with the evidence of all of Trump’s lying filling the net, Dizzy Donny expects us to accept on his word that the boats which he ordered the U.S. military to destroy are all narco terrorists and drug dealers.
GÜIRIA, Venezuela (AP) — One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver.
The men had little in common beyond their Venezuelan seaside hometowns and the fact all four were among the more than 60 people killed since early September when the U.S. military began attacking boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs. President Donald Trump and top U.S. officials have alleged the craft were being operated by narco-terrorists and cartel members bound with deadly drugs for American communities.
~snip~
Man oh man, when oh when oh when will the MAGAts catch on to this lying?
That’s the wrong question, isn’t it? The right question is when will they care enough to stop supporting Dozy Dizzy Donny and his regime of distraction? When will they accept that they’ve been conned? When will they realize and admit that Trump is destroying the United States, ripping off the treasury, and enriching himself?
Way it’s going, we might have colonies on Mars before any of that takes place.
Bold sunshine shoots the windows today, Satyrda, November 15, 2025. 52 F now, the other numbers are 65 and 42 F for the day’s highs and low. Sunshine and blue are dominating like an NFL team playing a high school JV team. Lovely to rest my eyes on the panorama and what remains of the colorful leaves after the wind tore through over the last several days.
I was walking yesterday evening. Sidewalks and paths are wealthy with discarded leaves. I kicked ’em up as I passed through them like I was six years old. I always enjoy making that ruckus among the leaves. Meanwhile, I deliberately summoned the music to “New York State of Mind” by Billy Joel. My lyrics were adjusted to “Ashlandia State of Mind” and our local streets, activities, and centers of interest. After singing it last night and gazing out on this morning’s view, The Neurons resurrected the song for my morning mental music stream.
The Trump Regime has made statements about demanding all SNAP recipients re-enroll. They believe the debunked myths that SNAP is corruption riddled. 42,000,000 are receiving SNAP. The huge effort to re-enroll them all will fall on the states and the recipients. Recipients who are often children, working poor, struggling lower middle class, elderly and disabled. If this doesn’t scream, THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT, what does?
With the Trump Epstein Shutdown ended after a record run, attention is swinging hard to the Epstein files and Trump’s place among their annals. Dizzy Donny is displaying deeply demented demeanor. Many like me speculate that he knows the terrible things the files will reveal. Here’s hoping for the best.
BTW, that idea about 50-year mortgages is crackers. Won’t do much for helping affordability. Folks still need down payments, need the income for paying property taxes and insurance, and insurance is going higher and higher in many regions due to more extreme weather — but please, let us not say anything about climate change. Heaven forfend the TACO Regime even thinks about doing anything about that. See, with mega AI centers being planned and built, pollution will go yet higher. Demands on water will go yet higher. As will demands on electricity, causing the price of everything to increase, crushing affordability, but never mind all that. Realizing those things and planning to address those things takes something other than greed, lying, and cruelty, and that’s all the Trump Regime has.
The day is calling and the coffee is singing. My hope remains that peace and grace lift themselves up with a mighty shake and come around to yours and mine. Here we go again. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 