Tag: human rights

Thursday’s Theme Music — Driving Me Crazy

Ashland, southern Oregon. Thursday, August 27, 2026.

Another cool morning — 62 F right now — which will see temperatures in the mid to upper 80s again. No clouds are in view, just blue sky over a brown and green landscape.

Had beers with friends last night. Talking about Dolly Parton dominated. All admired her talents and abilities, but we addressed her sense of humor and willingness to support others more than anything. She’s left a tremendous legacy of kindness, a beacon of light in this nasty Trump era.

Mom is sick this week. She’s complaining of being in pain everywhere and freezing. I’ve asked for updates but she’s not responding, and my sisters aren’t communicating with Mom. The assisted living facility won’t tell me about her because security; they don’t know me.

Our conversations last night about what’s going on in the United States often circled back to the same point: Just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier, it does.

Then I was reading about a rancher who is upset about Trump’s policies which were affecting her. She defended her vote for Trump, and it’s essentially because she worries about transgender children and her offspring being exposed to transgender children. Yes, oh my!

Which brings me to one of the most ludicrous things Trump ever said, and that’s a long list.

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

It’s an absolutely batshit crazy claim. These weren’t off hand remarks. This was Trump campaigning to lead the nation, feeding their fears and petty anxieties. And they have been absolutely debunked.

Just like Trump’s claims of stolen elections.

Does Trump believe what he said that day in August?

Doesn’t matter to me if he believed it or not. He said it to fuel hatred and divide our nation. We are stronger as a nation if we’re all helping one another and pulling together and was — and keeps — deliberately undermining that critical premise.

And then Trump has the gall to claim that he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker and unifier.

A unifier does not deliberately use hatred to turn citizens against each other. Nor does a peacemaker. A peacemaker also doesn’t start an unnecessary war, as Trump did with Iran (now going into its sixth month). Nor does a peacemaker order the military to kill over two hundred people at sea without going through the legal system.

Yet MAGA seems to generally support this. They foster a “conditional unity”, which is, we will support your and your participation and existence, as long as you’re like or fit into our narrow definitions of genders, sexual orientation, skin color, place of birth, ethnicity.

We’ve learned these lessons before. Under Trump, they’re being dismantled.

Yet, there will come a time when we’ll need to learn and employ these lessons again.

Today’s morning mental music stream inhabitant is by FYC. FYC is Fine Young Cannibals, a Brit group. The song today is “She Drives Me Crazy”. The band released it in 1988 and it’s about love and relationships. Makes it apropos for today. The Neurons fed it to the MMMS after I was thinking about how Trump and his supporters drive me crazy.

Sample Lyrics

I can’t stop the way I feel
Things you do don’t seem real
Tell me what you’ve got in mind
‘Cause we’re running out of time
Won’t you ever set me free?
This waiting ’round’s killing me

Hope you’re rocking this day and making good time on your daily life goals. Be good to yourself and to each other.

Cheers

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Munda’s Theme Music

It’s Munda again! July 14, 2025. I don’t know about you, but we’re just ripping through July in Ashlandia. The days and hours whisk by like they’re passing on a blink of light. Some clouds slashed with grays and whites have braved our blue skies. It’s cooler today, peaking at 97 F, and should drop into the sixties at night. Yesterday saw 102.8 F at our place at 5 PM. We’d been doing well without running the A/C but my wife requested it at ten last night. She said that she had to apply something to her face but her face had to be dry, and it wasn’t dry. Nope, because it’s a humid heat. So we ran the air for about thirty minutes.

Our local fire, the Neil Creek, is 20% contained. Smoke is almost non-existent in the taste of today’s air. I’m grateful for that on behalf of my sinuses.

There are six birthays in July in my extended family. Two of those people, though younger than me, have already passed away. Cancer in both cases. Don’t know the specific cancers. A cousin’s birthday is today, my sister’s birthday is tomorrow, and my wife’s birthday is Wenzda.

Some Florida lawmakers visited Trump Concentration Camp Florida. Democrats, of course, found the conditions appalling. Republicans thought them okay, on a par with other ‘detention centers’. “Nothing to see here,” Republicans said after going on the guided tours. Just like there’s nothing to see in the Epstein files, right?

I was awakened (names and causes will be omitted) at four AM. Although I felt quite ready to return to sleep after jumping back in bed, my mind began playing a 1987 song, “Night Train”, in my mental music stream. It stayed through for the morning. I’m pretty sure of the cause and effect behind this one. The cat is a night train. And someone (hi, Ark) mentioned “Night Train” in the comments the other day. I’d not heard the song in yonks so I hunted down a video and watched and listened and thought and remembered. And, as it’s night, I suppose all this made sense to The Neurons and they brought the song up. The lyrics also played into it as I tried ‘guess the time’ and looked for signs of daybreak. “Down on the night train, I feel the starlight steal away, use up a lifetime looking for the break of day.”

Coffee has been introduced into my body once again. Time to get out there and rock the day away. Hope your day rocks you in a good way. Cheers

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Satyrda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Yeah, look how Trump has ‘made America great again’.

This is a classic Trump product: rolled out with great fanfare, but basically a piece of shit.

So that’s Trump’s thin, shallow idea of greatness. Build crappy places. Abuse other people in the name of religion and patriotism. Sell cheap goods for marked up prices. Tear lives apart. Destroy and enshittify. It’s mindless. Senseless.

The right wing likes to call out TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome, a perjorative whenever people label Trump’s actions and words as negative. But the real TDS is their inability to see the truth. Or, with many, their preference for what he is doing: tearing down; destroying; enshittifying. Dehumanizing others. Dehumanizing themselves.

Why do that to a nation you profess to love unless you’re deranged?

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Saturda’s Theme Music

Yesterday was a hot one, as they advertised. Today, Saturda, May 31, 2025, is expected to cool into the mid-80s. It’s 72 F and sunny now, and the clouds have ran away for grayer skies.

It’s May’s last day. Five months of 2025 are history. It’s been as chaotic as a Black Friday sale in the United States. As we spring into summer, I’m not enthused about what will come out of the Gold House, as Nan calls it. Her reasoning is spot on. It ssed to be the White House, but the present occupant, PINO TACO, is remaking it in the right’s craven, gold-worshipping image. They say that’s what the Bible says to do.

From Gold House, I crossed to Heart of Gold. My Neurons went onto a Neil Young kick. Soon they had “Old Man” playing in the morning mental music stream. The music faded for a while as I rambled through a litany of problems, stories, and challenges. Some were personal and narrowly defined from my novel-writing half of living. Thoughts about Mom’s health boiled in, and then came sympathy for a friend who is enduring a mess in his life. Prosaic matters like fixing the oven — the part has arrived — took over. Then there’s the ever-growing worries about the human rights, war, climate change, the nation, the world, and measles.

I read in MedicalXPress this morning:

There are 1,088 confirmed measles cases in the U.S., up 42 from last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Texas, where the nation’s biggest outbreak raged during the late winter and spring, reported 10 additional cases this week for a total of 738.

There are three other major outbreaks in North America.

The Neurons shot a gap to bring “Don’t Let It Get You Down” by Neil Young into the morning mental music stream. It’s a 1970 song which will probably get you down, because it makes you listen, think, and feel. I once heard a DJ say that Young announced this song by saying, “This song is guaranteed to bring you down. It’s called “Don’t Let It Get You Down”.” It was a song I preferred to hear with a glass of red wine, either overlooking a body of water at sunset, or in a dark room, alone.

Into the day I go, with a cuppa coffee to help me carry the load. Funny, but our existence is fleeting in the great rush of time and space, but sometimes it seems so long.

Here we go. Cheers

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