That’s the level of ignorance we’re dealing with in Trump. Which really, really, really makes me wonder about his MAGA supporters. I do not question why the GOP supports him, or Project 2025, or oligarchs and billionaires. He (and his MAGAs) are very useful idiots for them.
Tell you what. I’ve just made up three new words*: ignorant, bloviating, idiot. I think they’re going to get a lot of use, especially when people think, speak, write, or remember Donald J. Trump.
*Yes, I know I didn’t make up those words. Who do you take me for? Donald J. Trump?
Current political events and trends in the United States got you down? Are you, like me, frustrated and angry about what’s happening to the United States under the Trump Regime? Are you appalled by how PINO Trump and his minions are trampling the Constitution and the balance of power? Maybe you’re ready for VoodooByMoodoo.
The chances that standard law and order, court rulings, or Congress will address Trump’s lawless ways seem to be dimming. Maybe Voodoo is the answer. At the least, it might provide some stress release as you stick a pin in a little orange doll. Maybe, with luck, you’ll nail his brain or heart. I wouldn’t bet on either; both are incredibly tiny. They said evidence of either were not found during his last physical. The physician pretended
VoodooByMoodoo. When nothing else seems to work. After all, we’re dealing with a lot of zombies out there.
They call themselves MAGA.
Borrowed from Teri Seitz @teri-teri-boberry.bsky.social.
If you want to save democracy in the U.S., here’s a reminder to protest against people who would crown themselves as our rulers, like Trump. Yes, I know our democracy is not perfect. It can be improved. Letting it fall to a self-serving, empathyless individual like Donald Trump is not the answer. Nor is letting it get torn down to be rebuilt. Better to save it now, fix what he and the Gutless Old Trump Party have broken, and then work on improving from there. Cheers
Sunshine and warm air is spilling throug Ashlandia once again. 61 F now, Thirstda, May 8, 2025, will overtake the gorgeous day known as May 7, 2025. 80 F will be bestowed on us. Sure, it’ll be windy, that but’s okay.
The cat is happy, if I’m judging his tail right. Standing upright, like a sundial gnomon, we could use it to tell the time but he won’t stand still long enough. After eating, visiting, and grooming, he resumed his back fence residency.
Being out back depressed me. Wasn’t the sunshine. No. That’s fine and welcomed. It’s the lack of bees and butterflies. No humming birds, either. Also missing were the regular Jay visitors. All have desserted us. I hope they come back soon.
We discussed politics last night at the beery thingy. Like, re-opening Alcatraz. Such a gennyus move…not. Only a simpleton would think it is. Right now, simpletons are running the nation.
I’m late to posting this because of computer issues. I suspect it’s update stuff but basically, I’ll be busy doing stuff and thump, the computer gets
Four songs hover in the extended morning mental music stream. A common theme threads through them: small towns.
From 1975: “My Little Town”, Simon & Garfunkel. “Billboard described the song as “a good, nostalgic Americana style song that builds throughout.”[4]Cash Box said it has “catchy piano beneath historic harmony growing into a brass hook ending” and that “you’ll remember the melody by the third time you hear it.”
From 1985: “My Hometown” by Bruce Springsteen. This was a sad reflection on the demise of small towns in the United States, the end of mills, the end of jobs, stores closed up and boarded up. Reflected in the lyrics are the tensions experienced in the 1960s over segregation and integration and the violence which resulted.
1985 also brought us, “Small Town” by John Mellencamp. “”I wanted to write a song that said, ‘You don’t have to live in New York or Los Angeles to live a full life or enjoy your life.’ I was never one of those guys that grew up and thought, ‘I need to get out of here.’ It never dawned on me. I just valued having a family and staying close to friends.” h/t to Wikipedia.org
Then, from 2023, “Try That In A Small Town,” performed by Jason Aldean and written by a committee. In a review of Highway Desperado for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated “All its success was based on how the single and video deliberately pushed cultural buttons; strip those away, and ‘Try That in a Small Town’ is just another in a long line of crawling, glowering, arena-country from Aldean.”
Chris Willman of Variety called it “the most contemptible country song of the decade [and] the video is worse”, saying that the song “is close to being the most cynical song ever written about the implicit moral superiority of having a limited number of neighbors” and is “a list of hellishly dystopian tropes about city evils that seems half-borrowed from Hank Williams Jr.‘s ‘A Country Boy Can Survive‘, half-borrowed from the Book of Revelation“. He said that the video “conflates the act of protesting with violent crime”.[7] Marcus K. Dowling of The Tennessean wrote that “online critics highlighted the following song lyrics as emblematic of songs heightening pro-gun violence and lynching sentiments upon many in his rural, small-town fanbase”.
Tennessee state representative Justin Jones tweeted “As Tennessee lawmakers, we have an obligation to condemn Jason Aldean’s heinous song calling for racist violence … What a shameful vision of gun extremism and vigilantism.”[24] He explicitly referred to the song as a “heinous vile racist song” which attempts to normalize “racist, violence, vigilantism and white nationalism” in a later interview on CNN.
Kevin M. Kruse, professor of history at Princeton University specializing in 20th-century America, called out the song for “calling for people who aren’t law enforcement to mete out violence against people who haven’t broken any laws,” a callout to “law and order” that is “actually lawlessnness.” h/t to wikipedia.org
For me, the subject of small towns arose as my adopted small town copes with growth and development, rising costs and diminishing prospects. We’re wrestling with the need to change but can’t agree on how to change. As with many small towns, few want to abandon ‘what worked before’. That leaves us stymied about what to do and how to do it. As exhibited in “Try That In A Small Town”, the professed preference is to gut the other side.
I’m aware I do that a lot about the MAGAs myself. We don’t see eye to eye. We lack agreement about what are facts and history, and cause and effect. The polarization depicted in the last of these four songs is becoming the norm. Part of the background noise is about gun violence. As part of the left, I’m tired of hearing about thoughts and prayers and the need to arm teachers and increase security at schools, fairs, airports, malls, and other places whenever another mass shooting takes place. Put forward is this video is the threat to escalate violence.
How do we bridge these gaps?
It’s interesting, to, that the right wing is pushing to return to the values of previous years. To what year do they want to return? To the 1960s, when civil unrest and protests swept the nation and the small towns’ death rattles began? To further back, like the 1950s, when the United States entered into trade and defense agreements and taxes were high on the wealthy? Or earlier, when lynchings of Blacks were not uncommon, women lacked rights, and deaths from back street abortions were high, and the young died from measles and other diseases.
Let’s pause, perhaps, and remember how those big box stores, like Amazon, Walmart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, grand supporters of Trump and the GOTP, drove a spike through many small town businesses. Yes, and Starbucks and Costco, too.
The day is ending. Hope it was a good one for you. It was pretty good for me. Let’s do it again tomorrow. Cheers
I’d say that more people need to start thinking. However, we know from videos and posts, many are not interested in these positions. They’re not really pro-life. They’re not deep thinkers. They’re simple hypocrites. Easily conned, they don’t want to admit that they’re not knowledgeable and really don’t understand much. Most are just haters, and most have been convinced that hating Democrats provides the solutions to their problems.
Just a thought, but there should probably be a demonstration planned for June 14, 2025.
It is so funny in a haha not funny way, that as this nation wrestles with government cuts to save money, he wants to spend a huge amount of money to idolize himself.
That shows his true character. Those who cannot see it are deliberately blind.
What an absolutely brainless sack of meat Tommy Tuberville reveals to be again anagain anagain. That doesn’t paint his constituents as a very bright crowd, either.
The Senate voted Thursday to strike down a rule capping most bank overdraft fees at $5, a measure adopted late last year by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that had been expected to save Americans billions of dollars per year.
The rule would have limited the fees banks and credit unions could charge when customers spend more than they have in their accounts, typically $35 per overdraft. The bureau estimated it would save American households $5 billion a year. It was immediately challenged in court by banking trade groups.
Democrats are preparing to fight the resolution in the House, where they hope the slim Republican majority will work in their favor.
Call your representatives in Congress. Let them know that this is not okay. Banks make enough profits. They don’t need more.
Out in Texas, they’re busy building a nanny state. Cos words are scawy! Sex is scawy! Books! Scawy! Freedom to read bad! Censorship is good!
They’re trying to take a quantum leap back to another era, where sex is hidden and all the men are virile and heterosexual and women are pristine and pure. You know, like it never was, except in fiction.
Currently, if someone is charged with providing sexually explicit content to a child, they can argue that the content was provided in pursuit of a scientific, educational, or governmental purpose. SB 412 and HB 267 would remove this affirmative defense. This defense exists because, while some people provide explicit content to children to harm them, books that include sexual content have long been a valuable component of secondary education. Many classic works of literature, including “The Odyssey,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “Brave New World,” and “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” have sexually explicit scenes.
Under SB 412, which the Texas Senate voted to advance last week and now awaits approval by the House, teachers and librarians would no longer be able to argue that sexually explicit content can serve an educational purpose. Only law enforcement officials and judges would be exempted under the new law. SB 412 also leaves in place an exception if the adult providing the sexually explicit content is married to the child, which is legal in Texas, with a judge’s approval, if the child is at least 16 years old.
George Orwell would be proud of these ‘modern’ Texans. Set up the cameras! Thy must, in order to ensure no one is circumventing a law and providing ‘dirty’ material to children who are only seventeen. Unless they’re married. Children can be married in Texas. So a child can be married and then be expected to have sex and raise a child but until that point, knowing about sex in literature is verboten.
Man, that is one fucked up state, thanks to the uptight, fucked-up Republicans guiding them. Might as well go ahead and start calling it the Nanny Star State.
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.
Michael Seidel, writer 