Trump’s agenda has lost popularity. Democrats swept the mid-terms. Hope this is the start of something more.
Maybe it was the destruction of the White House East Wing and the construction of that ballroom while the government is idled by the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, the ongoing Epstein Shutdown of 2025.
The smirker-in-chief, with his smirking BFF, Jeffrey Epstein, of the Epstein Files.
Perhaps Farmers have become convinced, or people employed in factories where productivity is declining, or people in danger of losing their homes because they can’t afford them any longer. Perhaps it’s the measles outbreaks and the loss of SNAP benefits, or Kennedy’s vacuous guidance on medicine that’s contrary to established facts.
Perhaps it’s because he capitulated to China on tariffs, showing that he is TACO. Maybe it’s the Epstein Files or ICE’s cruel, illegal raids, or Trump sending National Guard units in to U.S. cities to intimidate U.S. Citizens, or the fact that prices are going up, not down, in general, or that Trump is using the U.S. military to attack and kill unarmed civilian combatants at sea. Or maybe it’s because of Project 2025, Trump’s continual overreach, or open and widespread greed, or the fact that he’s enshittifying the United States at an incredible pace and scale. I don’t know. But people Voted Blue.
I heard something hit the house last night. ‘Bout midnight. Turned out to be Twosda, August 5, 2025, staggering into the siding. Cool night, and mostly clear, offering views of a waxing moon and a spill of stars. We’re relaxing in 76 F air with a cloud-stained coating of sun-filled blue sky. 86 F wil be the thermometer’s top mark for Ashlandia.
Democratic governors are pleasing me these days. First, a shut out to those Texan Dems who left the state to prevent the Trump-Abbott collusion to destroy democracy in Texas and the United States. Second, huzzah to the Dem governors who took them in, and the Dem govs standing up to the GOP bullshit. California Gov. Newsome and Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul are vowing to redistrict to counter Abbott’s moves in Texas. Frankly, I think such forceful action is needed. Meanwhile, Robert Hubbell published encouraging news in More signs of life among Senate Democrats.
Hearing of the Trump Regime’s eager use of space stuff to try to distract from the Epstein list, The Neurons loaded a song about the moon in the morning mental music stream. “Walking on the Moon” is a 1979 raggae rock offering by The Police. Sting wrote the song, mentioning being drunk as inspiration and also an early love. The Neurons entertained me with visuals of Trump waddling around the moon. The Neurons thought that Trump would trip and start uncontrollabling bouncing across the moon’s surface.
I’ve had a wink of coffee. Think I’ll have forty more. Hope grace and peace has its way with you today. Cheers
Trump wants a Peace Prize. I believe him worthy of winning an Ig Nobel Peace Prize this year.
As a man of peace, he has successfully orchestrated a roundup of violent people in the United States. These people were in the U.S. posing as farmworkers, housewives, day laborers, food plant workers, mothers, fathers, and children. Using the Trump branded ESP called TSP*, his minions swept up violent criminals who are illegally in the United States by using just the power of their nose to sniff out crime before it takes place. Most amazingly, with TSP, Trump’s ICE agents are capable of identifying child criminals just by their skin color. To buttress his need for Peace, Trump had the amazing Peace Confinement Base built in Florida. After befriending alligators, Trump trained the alligators to peacefully guard the Peace Confinement Base. Unfortunatly, evil opponents to Trump’s peace efforts use that fact to malign the place as “Alligator Alcatraz”.
Trump will do anything for peace. Searching for peace between Russia and Ukraine, he humbly employed his amazing skills at changing the past to show that Ukraine was the aggressor in that war and urged their leader to accept those new facts at any cost to win peace.
Trump’s third stake in the running for the Ig Noble Peace Prize is his use of America’s military force to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran, bravely ignoring his own military intelligence’s insights and assessments of Iran to do so. In doing so, Trump modestly noted, “Might makes right, and we have the rightest military in the world.”
Finally, Trump deserves consideration for repetitive efforts to bring peace to others in the world by bringing them under his Umbrella of Peace**. This includes violently afflicted hellholes such as the barbarous and backwards New York City, the swamp of killing named Canada, the miasma of murder known as Greenland, and the Panama Canal.
Surely Trump’s words and behaviors have earned him the right to stand before the world and accept an Ig Noble Peace Prize.
Trump has won an Ig Nobel before, for his bold influence on medical science in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic began. He shared that prize with many others, though, who offered the same sort of impact on life in that trying period. I believe the time has come for D.J. Trump to stand alone and get recognition for his impact on peace.
Unfortunately, he will not win. The Ig Noble Prizes are satirical and made to make people laugh and think. There is at once too much and nothing to laugh about with Trump, and none of it is satirical.
But if he doesn’t win, surely a billionaire friend will create the Trump Peace Prize in his honor and make him the first recipient. Then they’ll need to retire the prize. Nobody else can ever be worthy. Unless they offer enough money.
*TSP: Trump Special Power
**Trump brand gold-plated Umbrella of Peace is available online for $25,000. Autographed editions are available for an additional $5,000. Order yours fast, as supplies are limited to the first 47 people. Made in China. Not subject to tariffs. Not available to Democrats or Liberals. All sales are final.
April 8, 2025.Friday, FEMA announced that it is ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program and canceling all BRIC applications from Fiscal Years 2020-2023. If grant funds have not been distributed to states, tribes, territories and local communities, funds will be immediately returned either to the Disaster Relief Fund or the U.S. Treasury. It has also canceled the fiscal year 2024 notice of funding opportunity (NOFO), where $750 million in grants was to be allocated.
Ending this program will help ensure that grant funding aligns with the President’s Executive Orders and Secretary Noem’s direction and best support states and local communities in disaster planning, response and recovery.
Just a reminder, but BRIC was established and funded by Congress. The canceled projects were jointly developed by state, Federal, and local officials using history, engineering, insights, and science to identify problems and develop ways to mitigate the potential impact.
But these projects don’t meet Donald Trump’s understanding of how government is supposed to work in the United States. He has no empathy, and as he often does, he looks backward. He’s not forward thinking. His actions are not those of a President. They are not the actions of a servant of We the People.
Peruse this abbreviated list of the many projects, states, and communities affected. And call your Congressman.
Let them know that the United States is not the sole domain of one citizen.
I’ve gone across the United States a few times. Furthest was from San Fransisco to New Hampshire via New York. I did that a few times in the military, always by train, and then SF to Connecticut via NY a few times for business, also by train.
I’ve always loved traveling by car. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, my parents loaded us into cars and off we went! One trip, barely remembered, was in a large Chevy station wagon from California to Pennsylvania. I think I was three years old. What I best remember about that was that I shared space in the station wagon’s back end with my older sister and a large black trunk. The trunk was useful as a fort and a table. Traffic being what it sometimes was, peering out the windows and waving to others was a recurring pastime. There were many coloring books involved with that trip, too.
My wife and I took a few almost cross-country trips. After I returned from my military assignment in the Philippines, I traveled to West Virginia where my wife stayed with her parents via commercial aircraft and Greyhound bus. Some of the logistics are a little foggy in my head, but I ended up visiting family in Pittsburgh and bought a used Porsche 914 there. I drove it down to West Virginia, and then my wife and I drove it across the southern United States to my new duty location outside of San Antonio, Texas. The first five hundred miles was through a blizzard. We then drove the reverse trip eight months later, when I decided to exit the military.
Funny enough, years later, there we were, in Texas again. This time we’d returned to the United States from an assignment in (on?) Okinawa. We’d been there for almost four years. Two things to know about driving in Okinawa was that it was on the left side of the road, with a right side steering wheel and the fastest speed we’d gone was 100 KPH, about 61 MPH. Renting a car in San Antonio at the airport, we were suddenly driving on the other side of the ride, the steering wheel on the other side, in the rain, at night, at 70 MPH. It was an awakening.
We then bought a new car, a Mazda RX-7, and drove it from San Antonio, Texas, to…ready? West Virginia. A big blizzard struck Texas that year. Interstate 10 was closed. Fortunately, Texas has Interstate ‘access roads’. We drove out of San Antonio through the blizzard via the access roads until we could get onto I-10. Man, I’ll tell you, traffic was pretty light.
I’ve flown cross country multiple times since then. The last time that my wife and I drove across cross country was from West Virginia to California. This was 1991. We’d been assigned to a base in Germany. She returned a few months early and was living not far from her parents in West Virginia. She’d bought a little Honda Civic. We loaded her and our three cats, Rocky, Crystal, and Jade, into the Honda, along with her belongings, and drove to Sunnyvale, California, via the Rocky Mountains. Let me tell you, the Honda, with its 1.5 liter engine, wasn’t happy about the Rockies. We’d swooped down the mountains as fast as we dared to build up speed to get up the next one. Geez, what a trip.
Not our actual car. Our car looked just like this, except it was gray.
I’ve also gone from Texas to Pennsylvania via Greyhound bus after finishing military basic training in 1975. But the one thing I always wanted to do was take a train across the country. We traveled by train in Japan and Europe, and loved it. It’s hasn’t come to pass in the U.S.
Maybe, someday, though, maybe someday…I’ll get to take a train ride across the United States.
My sister-in-law, a Florida resident and business women, President of a manufacturing company that she started, was visiting with my wife and me. My wife said, “You should go to New York with Kat (her sister).” Kat was enthusiastic, telling me, “Yes, I can show you around the town and introduce you to people,” while I was resistant, responding, “New York with Kat?” It didn’t make sense.
After a lot of cajoling, Kat left without me, but my wife was insistent that I should go to New York. I was starting to come around. A male friend – someone I don’t recognize from my life but that I knew as a friend in my dream – a dream friend, if you will – came by and told me, “I’ll take you to New York.” Kat called me on the phone then and said, “I’ve made the arrangements. You’re going to New York.”
The dream ended with me beginning to pack to go to New York.
Michael Seidel, writer 