Sunday’s Theme Music
Mood: spirited
Boom goes the sunshine.
Hello, fellow third-rockers. Sunday, January 28, 2024, has risen. That sun we’re orbiting has taken over the day. Last night at midnight, it was 57 degrees F; now it’s 65 F. No clouds are playing with the sunshine. Precipitation trickled off yesterday afternoon, giving us a glorious day which is way more spring than winter. It feels like 73 F, they tell us, and I agree. The cats and I were wholly astonished by this twist of warmth, though the cats didn’t stay outside because, wind, they whined. They no like wind. Today’s high will be 68 F.
Three US military troops were killed in a drone strike in the middle East, and so tit-for-tat will begin as President Biden promises retaliation sometime and somewhere. I understand the position but don’t like it: each nation, when attacked for whatever reason, promises to get back at the attackers because otherwise there’s a perception of weakness. All that spills into politics; if President B orders retaliation, he’s reviled by many, but if he doesn’t, he’s reviled by many. Striking the balance between the two is difficult. Then there’s the long game about broader theater escalation, and the impact of retaliation on trade, goods and services, and the political machinations outside of that region. It’s a messy, messy world.
In other news, Trump has decried the border deal (yawn) being circulated to protect the US southern border. I say yawn about this because everyone expected this move by Trump. The Wall Street Journal editorial board even warned him not to do that a few days ago, reminding him of the potential damage to the GOP brand in some many words in this election year when the Republicans are trying to offer proof that Democrats are weak on border security. But come on, man. Trump is the man who lost a case against Jean Carroll, but couldn’t stop slandering and defaming her, was tried again and lost in court, and now needs to pay her 83 million dollars. Yet, he continues the very activity which brought him to that point. Will there be another case for Carroll v. Trump? I’m willing to bet there will be, and that Trump will lose again, but continue his ways, because he has no self-control and doesn’t listen to any advice except his own.
“Rock On” by David Essex from 1973 occupies the morning mental music stream (Trademark coming in two weeks). I enjoyed the song as a youngster because of its interesting, unusual sound. It’s so minimalist, with echoes and unusual beats, and a truncated stream of thought riff on rock and roll and youth. It arrived today because, as a boomer, “Rock on,” is one of my go-to phrases, just as Trump’s screaming “FAKE NEWS” is one of his go-to phrases. I say “Rock on” in response to my wife when she says she’ll be over by the home decor section of a store. Naturally, Les Neuons, being the characters they arecranked up the song. It’s their nature and they rarely swerve from it.
Side note, another heavy barrage of dreams were experienced overnight. I’m still recovering from the previous night’s barrage. It did inspire the start of another novel with Quantum Voodoo as the working title, although I’m still editing one and just began writing another with the working title of Level 7, the corollary to the novel in progress being edited, Why.
Be strong, stay positive, and lean forward. Coffee is being consumed in the phantom drawing room. Sorry, virtual drawing room; it’s a new era. Here’s the music. Cheers
Saturday’s Theme Music
Mood: Dreamy
Hello, Terra dwellers, aka Terwellers.
Today is Saturday, January 27, 2024. This is January’s final Saturday; the month will soon be history and 2024 will be 1/12 done. Roughly.
Sprinter continues its reign in Ashlandia, where the dogs are happy and the cats are above average. We never dipped below 50 F last night. The weather dwarves, Windy, Sunny, Cloudy, and Rainy, continue their stay here. Foggy has departed but Warm and Blustery have joined us. 53 F now, today’s high will park in some zone just south of 60 F.
Ol’ Tucker. He’s my young elderly black and white floof. After feeding him and Papi, I headed for the office for coffee, news, and posting. Outside the room, Tucker sang his people’s song with a spirited voice. Going out, I asked, “What is it? What do you want? What do you need?”
“Mrff,” he answered, striding to the closed coat closet.
“What, you need a coat? You leave a mouse in there?”
Tucker stopped at the door and stared at me. “Mrff.”
I opened the closet. Muttering, “Mrff,” in a soft voice, he stepped in and went left. I leaned in and watched. He went about sniffing. I let him be. Ten minutes later, I checked on him and found him asleep in dining room sunshine.
Had a boatload of dreams last night. I awoke thinking, what did I eat or do to inspire so many dreams? None were about me. Instead, they were stories being told. I developed novel concepts out of three of them. The burst of nocturnal creativity was startling.
Speaking of startling, I read three different net tales about how well President Biden is doing. First came an updated list from Daily Kos, what has Biden done? This was a bulletpoint compilation of his administration’s accomplishment. Next from Robert Hubell was a piece about Biden going on the offensive. Finally, again from Daily Kos, was a story about Fox News gushing about the Biden economy. Sweet stuff for Democrats and Biden supporters.
With all these newsworthy tales in mind, The Neurons broke out “Second Hand News” by Fleetwood Mac in the morning mental music stream (Trademark coming in two weeks). The news wasn’t necessarily second hand news; more likely the word ‘news’ evoked the 1977 song for Les Neurons. I remember when the song came out, as I was in the Philippines, in the military, but without my wife, and the song spoke to me about being alone. I am pretty familiar with it.
Stay positive, be strong, and lean forward. Coffee and I are in sync, having sipped down most of a cup. Here’s the music. Enjoy your day. Cheers
Whensday’s Theme Music
Mood: bubbly
Hello, fellow travelers. Today is Whensday, January 24, 2024. For some reason, when I started typing the date, the autotype tried changing the date to December 19. WTAF?
Moody gray clouds tease rain threats and wrestle with the blue sky. Sunshine shoots between them as the clouds jostle to takeover. There may be factions up in the troposphere, arguing over what the weather should be like in Ashlandia, where the deer are numerous and an annual subject for disagreement in our burg. It’s 52 F and mostly cloudy, and the high should have the thermometer pausing at 56 F. It’s rained and it’s windy and more might be on the way.
Reading some emails this morning, an update from Scottie’s Playground came up: Jesus 2.0/Christopher Titus/Armegeddon Update. Seeing that headline, The Neurons instantly shuffled “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode into the morning mental music stream (Trademark coming in two weeks). As Titus mentions, evangelicals have appointed DJT as their own personal Jesus. They tolerantly overlook his lying, cheating on his wives and affairs by declaring, “Everyone has a past,” and threat of violence, and snarl at the rest of us to stop being so mean to TFG and them. They’re just promoting this guy to make the world better, and they know this because god sent him!
While I cite the original Depeche Mode version of “Personal Jesus”, I also recommend and include the 2002 Johnny Cash cover. As his health was falling, JC — that’s Johnny Cash and not Jesus Christ — thoughtfully covered a number of rock songs, bringing a deeply personal delivery to them that makes ’em worth listening and thinking about.
In the means’ while, this is Whensday again because I’m weary of holding my breath and waiting for things to resolve, asking myself (drum roll), when will this be resolved? ‘This’, of course, is the Trump led, MAGA fueled, GOP supported, 3% funded effort to end Democracy in the United States. Whether that’s hyperbola is part of the whole Whensday question. We already know from experience that DJT was a sadsack of a POTUS, but weirdly, the MAGAs believe he was brilliant. I attribute a chunk of that to asymmetrical expectations.
Asymmetrical expectations were pointed out on Pondering Politics on Youtube when they dissected Gavin Newsome’s recent appearance on Bill Maher. Jessiah points out how differently the world, including the media, responds to the political parties in the US and their leaders when the MAGA segment unleashes a cruelly flavored shit storm versus reactions to when the Democratic side points something out, and Jessiah, our political nerd host, brings receipts. It’s worth a listen, IMO.
Stay pos, be strong, and keep leaning forward. Coffee has been sampled and approved, and is now being guzzled. Here’s the Cash and DM videos. Cheers
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Mood: Exblueberant
Blue, blue, blue.
Today is January 23, 2024, and Tuesday. I awoke to a rich blue sky and booming morning sun. First time I’ve seen a rosy sunrise this year. The temperature was 39 F then but it’s already climbed to 52 F. Word is, 66 F might be reached. Super.
Tucker and I saw a hummingbird flitting around our bushes this morning when we went out onto the front porch. While I enjoy this stimulating clear, warm, weather, we need the snow on the mountains to survive the summer, so come on, nature. Give us snow in the mountains. Snow could become possible, my optimistic Neurons declared. Clouds are expected to steal in, and in fact can now be seen creeping over the southern mountains. So, rain can come, and cold temperatures can return, and snow can fall. Tick, tick, we’ll see.
Three pieces of political news struck me today. (Don’t worry, it wasn’t hard and didn’t bruise.) First up, Jamell Bouie’s simple observation in his NYTimes column.
DeSantis also refused to contest Trump’s election denialism, a choice that almost guaranteed his failure in the primaries. Can you seriously position yourself as a winner and Trump as a loser when the consensus of the voters you are seeking to win is that Trump didn’t lose?
So real; why do Republicans believe anything can change so long as they support Trump’s Big Lie? No evidence has been presented; it is simply his bombastic declaration it is so, and a legion of sycophants saying, “Yep, yep, yep, it’s true.” So bizarre, they are in that party, and getting more so.
Next, we had Rep. Pete Stauber (R). The government is financing a bridge to replace the Blatnick Bridge. Rep Stauber is crowing with pride for the bridge, these monies, and this plan, even though he voted against it. This is a common GOP tactic, and he got called out for his duplicity by many folk. Whether it’ll keep him from being re-elected is another matter; many voters have limited vision when it comes to their guy.
Finally, in this trifecta of info, the Doomsday Clock has been updated for 2024 and it’s still ninety seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight that it’s been since it was begun in June of 1947. The thinkers behind it point to threats posed by AI, climate change, and potential nuclear war. Don’t worry, though; we’re an intelligent, sophisticated species and are capable of thinking through these problems, arriving at effective solutions, and then implementing them. Yeah. Sure. (Yes, that is sarcasm.)
Enough of that stuff. To the music! I have the Rolling Stones’ song of 1966 in my morning mental music stream (Trademark doomed), “Mother’s Little Helper”. Reading and thinking about people’s health issues, I muttered something to myself about getting old. Les Neurons pounced. Although “Mother’s Little Helper” is about the drugs being prescribed to and abused by women in the 1960s, there’s a repeated line in the song, “What a drag it is getting old.” Yes, indeed, it can be a drag.
BTW, today marks the anniversary of the day in 1957 when the Pluto Platter inventor sold his product to Wham-o, who changed its name to Frisbee and began selling it.
Stay pos, be strong, lean way forward and vote for progress. My cells are already soaking in coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers
A Light Monday Afternoon Offering
Monday’s Theme Music
Mood: flippant
Hello, sugar plums. It’s Monday again, January 22 2024. Dawn broke open another day of sprinter — spring and winter — on us in Ashlandia, where the people are natural and spring is above average. Rain has stopped but temperature is now 54 F with high in the upper fifties. Looks like we’ll go below 40 F for the first time in a bit and a half.
Our weather change has the cats acting joyous. They’re like, “Meow hoo, it’s nice outside. Can we go outside and sleep? Can we, can we?”
“Alright,” I replied, “but stay close and safe, and be smart.”
“We will, we will,” the mewrished. I opened the door and they dashed out, tails streaming high, sat, and began washing.
Before letting them out, I was a-singing to my floofs when I fed them. The song was, “There’s only one way to eat,” based on “There’s Only One Way to Rock.” Natch, The Neurons fired up the song in the morning mental music stream (Trademark classified). Originally by Sammy Hagar and released in 1982, it reached new heights when Sammy joined Van Halen and cranked it out together. No wonder that Van Halen was sometimes called Van Haglen. But come on, Eddie’s guitar style carries it to a higher level of rock, proving that there’s more than one way to rock, and playing against him, Sammy brought energy to his lead guitar. Fun watching the two share lead guitar in this recording of a live performance in Tokyo in 1989.
Let us pause now to lament the end of DeSantis’ run for President, 2024. He’s slunk back to Florida, where he can resume his hypocritical existence as a government agent against small, unintrusive government and equal rights for anyone who isn’t CIS. For him, there’s only one way to live, so everyone should live his vanilla way. Such an unimaginative and closed mind.
That means, though, that it’s only Nikki Haley and DJ Trump running now. Gosh, it’s such an intense intellectual race, makes my spine tingle. Not. (Yeah, that was full snark.)
Stay pos, be strong, and keep leaning forward. Remember to vote this year. I recommend President Joe Biden, because he was sent by God. (Just sayin’ that if Trump was sent by God, so was Biden. Why not, if you take that stuff without any evidence one way or the other?)
Coffee is being sucked up; here’s the music. Cheers
The Editorial
First, I know I’m always hard on the NYTimes. But they frequently give me cause. For example, a reporter this week wrote about how diverse Iowa is, and how well it represents America. Iowa, with its about 86% white population. (Yes, that’s just one aspect of diversity, but it’s a pretty striking one.) I know it sent progressives like me flocking to the net to check that declaration about Iowa’s diversity.
Of course, sites like MediaBiasFactCheck lists the NYTimes as left-biased. That amuses me; I think it highlights just how much to the right the United States actually leans. Compare it to Europe and what I read in newspapers based in Europe, and I see far less of a leftist bias.
That aside, the NYTimes has an editorial up this week titled, “The Responsibility of Republican Voters“.
Editorials like these are like shouting into a snowy hurricane; MAGA and the Republicans who keep supporting Trump or giving him cover aren’t interested in his failings. They simply want to stay in power, perhaps to correct wrongs they perceive after being fed a diet of lies by Trump and the GOP to validate their impressions, or to stick it to the libs — a comment I often see — without realizing that Trump is a beast beyond their control. As he’s done several times, if someone does something he doesn’t like, he turns on them and attacks. Besides all of that, he doesn’t keep any promises and is a vain, shallow person who’s thinking rarely advances past what is good for himself.
The Editorial Board points all this out and more in their editorial, highlighting Trump’s disrespect and disregard of the powers and rule of law spelled out by the Constitution and court rulings, and how this is so different from most other lawmakers.
‘When the Supreme Court delivered a sharp setback to President George W. Bush in 2008, ruling that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay had the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the Bush administration accepted the ruling. Senator John McCain, then the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, said he disagreed with the court, “but it is a decision the Supreme Court has made, and now we need to move forward.”
‘By contrast, as president, Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked the integrity of other government officials — including members of Congress, Federal Reserve governors, public health authorities and federal judges — and disregarded their authority. When the court ruled that the Trump administration could not add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, for example, Mr. Trump announced that he intended to ignore the court’s ruling. After leaving the White House, Mr. Trump refused repeated demands, including a grand jury subpoena, to return classified materials to the government. As the government investigated, he called on Congress to defund the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice “until they come to their senses.”’
Nice to see the NYTimes step out of their bothsiderism cocoon. It would have helped if their reportage and commentary was sharper and more on point in the past. Instead, they worked hard to project themselves as balanced and neutral. Despite that, the modern right mocks mass media and publications like the NYTimes as fake news, left-leaning, or progressive. Trump himself escalated those attacks since he entered politics.
From the NYTimes of Feb 20, 2019:
‘Even by his standards, President Trump’s biting attacks on the press this week stand out.
‘He has praised a libel lawsuit against The Washington Post, called for “retribution” against NBC for satirizing him on “Saturday Night Live” and, on Wednesday, issued his sharpest words yet against The New York Times, calling the newspaper “a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”’
In reading the article from 2019 again, it was nice to see that they didn’t say anything about the other side doing the same.
I don’t know about you, but reading posts, comments, and articles about Trump supporters doesn’t lead me to believe they’re open-minded, critical thinking individuals. I think that those people who the editorial addresses are not likely to read it. Those few who do will most likely defend Trump and jump into the bothsiderism which plagues the NYTimes and many other mass media outlets, accusing Democrats and President Biden of being worse than Trump.
Just read the comments on the editorial and you’ll see.
Despite my criticisms of the NYTimes, I am happy to see the editorial, as it validates my impressions of Trump as lawless, and not the primary enforcer of the law which this nation needs. Though it addresses people who will disregard their advice, the rest of agree, it needed to be said.
Yes, it’s all complex, isn’t it?
Michael Seidel, writer 