Tag: politics

Twozdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s a tale of two worlds. It’s the best of times, it’s the craziest of times. It’s a world defined by facts and reason where people come to share discourse about serious problems based on the evidence presented, and it’s a world where a powerful elected official shows serious problems with reality.

This makes it all hard to write. I want to rage about Trump’s insanity. But that’s the problem: he is sick. He should not be in a position of power. He should be retired to somewhere safe, where he can rest with medical care. Trump constantly trolled President Joe Biden as sleepy Joe, always claiming that President Biden was too old and feeble to be POTUS. Well, here we have an expanding body of empirical evidence that Trump’s grasp on reality is as thin and untenable as a cobweb.

Between his psychobabble Tylenol announcement, antifa EO, and his UN speech rife with falsehoods, Trump has blown out any perceptions that he shares the same reality as the great majority. Acting on some fabricated form of history and facts, he makes speeches, boasting about ending wars without naming them, claiming to save thousands of lives, chides others for being ignorant, oblivious to the ignorance which he displays. Whereas before, he was laughed at in his UN speech, this outing found a silent audience; they heard and saw how sick he is. Unless you’re Trump or a MAGAt, you don’t laugh at the sick. Yet, Trump probably saw and heard awe for how great he was. In his mind, they were silent with respect for how brilliant he is. That’s how disconnected he has become.

Tragically for U.S. citizens and the rest of the world, the GOP and Trump’s enablers gleefully go along with his madness. It serves their purpose for him to push his alternate reality unto everyone else and upend science, medicine, logic, truth, and history.

MAGAts seem too mired in their own hatred or alternate reality to raise their voices. This shows again and again through FAFO stories about how shocked they are to be victimized by the person and policies they support. They pretend Trump is religious, despite his history of conning, lying, cheating. They pretend he is fit and strong and muscular, even though pictures show an unhealthy, obese individual. They pretend to hear brilliant insights when he speaks, even when he incoherently rambles. They pretend that he’s religious, sent by God, although he’s committed adultery, paid for sex, has been indicted and convicted of crimes, and shuns the poor and sick while hoarding money.

Most of the wealthiest 1% seem addicted to greed and just keep grabbing whatever they can, regardless of what happens to the other 99% of the population. They’re just looking out for number one; number one is them.

Useful tools like former Fox News are broken individuals who like having attention, power, and position. They’re in over their heads and know it, but that’s okay, because Trump supports them. They’re all going for an ugly spin around the toilet bowl.

Project 2025 participants in Trump’s administration want to break the world. They’re the most dangerous, because they’re organized and serious. They want to create a crucible for cheap slave labor where the wealthy and powerful will flourish with little moral challenge to their ways. Where they can claim their one true god guides their cruelty, hatred, and bigotry. Where white men rule with a few exceptions as salve to prove to themselves they’re not racist, not sexist. They won’t be happy, nor satisfied. But they will be in power. In control.

Concerned only with themselves, bankrupt of morals and empathy, power and control are what they seek. They do not care who they hurt, who is used, or what laws are broken to do it. The ends justify the means in their minds.

This is nothing new. Acting on avarice, greed, and hate, others have peddled lies and misinformation to mislead otherwise good people in order to advance themselves. History shows that’s happened in the United States before. It’s easy to dupe people by drowning them with fake information, especially when it’s what they want to hear, and especially when the wealthiest control most of the media, and the wealthiest are willing to go along with the scheme. The difference now is that a deeply disturbed individual, Donald J. Trump, now commands them.

That is what we must face and overcome.

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Twozdaz Wandering Thoughts

I was deep into my DIY project. New breakfast bar lights. My wife came running in. “I need to take a bath and get cleaned up. The rapture is tomorrow!” As my eyebrows climbed, she enthused more deeply about how it’s on the Internet that the rapture would take place on September 23, 2025. It’s on the net, so it must be true.

“So don’t be surprised if you can’t find me,” she finished.

I nodded. “Yes, I know I’m going to be part of the left behind.” I’d long resigned myself to that. Don’t know if resigned was the right word. I think the world might be a better place with less people. Better if God plucked them out and took them elsewhere rather than having disease, starvation, pestilence, war, and violence take them away.

“Maybe you’ll be allowed to visit. Came up to the holy gates and talk to me.”

“Well, I guess we’ll see.”

This morning, she asked, “Hey, what happened to the rapture?” She then confided, “I had a plan. I was going to hide and leave a pile of clothes on the floor so that you’d think I was taken in the rapture.”

“What happened?”

She grinned. “I forgot.”

Guess the joke was on her.

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Twozdaz Theme Music

“Right now, it’s 71 degrees in Ashland,” Alexa burbles. Yeah, bull. I check my Oregon Scientific home system. 58 F. That feels correct. Wherever Alexa gleans her weather, it’s down in the valley, where the sunshine has cleared the mountains and trees enough to burn off the mountain night chill.

This is Twozda, September 23, 2025. Autumn has grabbed the season. Trees are doing their leafy transformation. Travel ‘n tilt are spinning us toward the cold in the Earth’s uppers. Summer is coming down under. Still, sunshine will unfold and coddle us in Ashlandia until we’re crisping in the mid 90s. That’s F. For Fahrenheit.

Headlines are blushing about one of Trump’s newest EO. Dancing off shards of his alternate reality, TACO declared antifa a terrorist organization. Antifa is neither of those things. But that Donnie’s showing his inferior mind skills. Also blasts open impressions that he’s not the spear tip of a fascist movement. What better says that you’re fascist than to outlaw an antifascist movement? The question to put to Donnie and his ilk: how many terrorists attacks has antifa been behind? But we know Donnie will bluster something like “three hundred million,” without moving a wrinkle. He’ll smoothly lie, “Antifa was burning down D.C. Making it unsafe to walk the streets in Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis.” His brain and mouth cannot connect with truth, facts, and reality. Like, it’s rightwingers who are the primary source of U.S. violence. Most prevalent among them are white males bleating about how unfair life has been to them. Like Donnie. Look at the gun facts. Men, and white men, are more likely to be a shooter. They’re usually conservative to right-wing. Like Donnie. But in Donnie’s alternate history, he is a hero, and not a feckless bully, fool, and coward. Otherwise he’d come right out and fess up to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

I was thinking about Trump’s sentences. How they tangle. Lines of Christmas lights. Hoary spider webs. Restaurant clink and babble. Some words pop up in a brief burst of sense. “Then he said that he wasn’t going to do that. I got so angry.” Then the tide of indecipherable overwhelms again. Some cheeky Neurons responded with “Blinded by the Light”. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band had a hit out of it. Bruce Springsteen wrote the lyrics. It’s one of those songs that even when you know the words, some troubled region still queries, “But what does it mean?” That’s how I think of much of what Delicate Donnie says: but what does it mean? The gibberish is almost English as spoken by someone not tethered to precepts of logic, history, and sentence structure.

Hope peace and grace get out from under the rock and comes out and gives us some support. Coffee has found a place among my Neurons. Here we go. Cheers

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Mundaz Theme Music

Autumn is in through the door. The temperature slipped to the upper 40s. Even stoic Papi came inside to slip, nesting in the living room Malabar chair, where a pillow case is draped over the cushions as a fur collector. 74 F, we expect 86 F as today’s upper limit in Ashlandia. Summer will not go easily. Trees are shedding leaves though. The ones hanging onto the branches are leaving their greens behind. This is Munda, September 22, 2025.

I’m off to a late posting start. We did our monthly Food & Friends delivery this morn. Then my wife wished for breakie so we went to a restaurant for that. Back home, it was 73 F in the house with sunshine streaming in, but she was cold and cranked up the office space heater, poor dear.

Right-wing insanity offers me deep reasons for new headshaking. We have a Catholic cardinal comparing Charlie Kirk, spreader of hate and bigotry, to St. Paul. Even as that ‘say-whaat?’ is processing, I read an excellent Daily Kos piece about Nebraska, Arkansas, and Tennessee FAFO farmers lamenting Trump’s tariffs and their impact on their soybean crops.

Trump-loving farmers want blue states to bail them out again

Just as Trump and the GOP are claiming free speech for them but not for thee, meaning anyone who opposes their right-wing authoritarianism, these farmers want their safety nets for them but not for everyone else.

Today’s theme music is born from thinking about MAGA et al. “Hey You” by Pink Floyd from The Wall from 1979 was brought into the morning mental music stream by The Neurons based principally on a few lines: “Hey, you! Don’t tell me there’s no hope at all. Together we stand, divided we fall.” Enuff said.

Back in the saddle again. Time write and roll. Hope grace and peace find us, and soon, damn it. grumble grumble old man mutterings, etc. Cheers

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Sundaz Wandering Political Thoughts

More bizarro thinking keeps emerging from Trump’s reality divergent existence. He also proves he friggin’ stupid and ignorant of history. His latest is this gem:

“Trump, 79, Insists George Washington Would’ve Voted for Him”

Trump says President Washington would’ve voted for Trump because, Trump said, “On the world stage, we are once again putting America first. That is what we do, we help others, but we have to put America first. Exactly as George Washington would have wanted. He would have voted for us.”

  1. Trump does not put America first. Trump puts himself first. He’s enriched himself through grift and graft since taking office. George Washington strikes me as intelligent and would have been aware of Trump’s self-serving principles and practices of lying and bragging.
  2. Trump is usurping powers, leaning hard on the right-wing Roberts Court to provide him cover. Trump is trying to pretend he’s king. George Washington emphatically rejected the idea of a king in the United States.
  3. Trump advocated overturning the legal results of the 2020 election, when he lost his bid to remain in the Oval Office to President Joe Biden. Despite all of the legal rulings and evidence against Trump’s stolen election claim, he refuses to accept the truth and continues to push it as an alternate reality. As part of his efforts to resist leaving office, Trump actively pursued various extralegal methods to stay in office, including encouraging supporters to overthrow the election and bringing in false electors. George Washington walked away from office with dignity.
  4. George Washington willingly served in the military and did not seek trumped up reasons to avoid such services, such as bone spurs.
  5. In 1793, speaking to members of the New Church in Baltimore, Washington said, “We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition.” h/t Wikipedia.org. Trump avoids truth and reason while pushing bigotry as a staple of his support, another reason why President Washington would not have voted for Trump.

I wonder, too, how President Washington would have viewed Trump’s indictments and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

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The 503 Dream

I was with two others. We were on a black and white train. Very long but familiar, I never knew the train’s entirety but understood that it was a bullet train.

Coming into a station, I covertly leaped from the train. My goal was door 503. Reaching it, I slipped in, grabbed a syringe, and hurried back out. Outside, I looked around for authorities. With none seen, I tossed the syringe to my compatriot. With the syringe caught, he went into a train compartment. I knew he was administering something from the syringe. Impatiently, I urged him, hurry, worrying about being discovered, concerned about the train leaving the station.

My other companion came out with the syringe. He threw it back to me. I caught it and returned it to room 503, then managed to jump onto the train as it began moving. I thought I saw a soldier or police agent watching me. When I turned for a better look, they were gone.

Back in the train, my companions and I found each other and went to a private place to speak. Ensuring we were alone, one companion, younger, but white like me, with like dark, curly hair, gave an update. The shot had helped. More is still needed. I related that I thought I saw someone spying on me, and that worried me. After discussing risks, we concluded that we’d still need to get more for our friend. We’d need to be more careful, more watchful.

The train pulled into the next stop. One of my friends and I stepped off the train. The police presence was immense. We gave one another furtive, questioning looks. With time ticking, I decided to risk getting the syringe with the realization that we might not be able to get it back into the room. If that happened, the loss could be discovered. That would probably result in greater vigilance and security. All that troubled me.

I hurried away, looking for room 503. Just as I found it, I spotted a police officer following. Pretending to go elsewhere, I stole away to watch and wait for an opening. When the officer turned away, I hustled to 503. Breaking in, I grabbed a syringe and ran back out.

My companion was not in sight. Police were. I hid the syringe and fretted. At last I saw one of the others. With a glance around, I tossed the syringe to him.

He fumbled the catch. I gasped in horror, worries skyrocketing through me. He managed to find and pick up the syringe and then scurried away. The train issued a warning sound that it was time to go.

Dream end

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Sundaz Theme Music

Another still chill morning embraces Ashlandia. Sunda, September 21, 2025. Awakening at 7:07 AM, I stare at the time and the light, noting how much morning light we’ve already shed as we edge forward and autumn gets ready to pounce on us. 66 F, 76 F is the day’s expected high, with muddled clouds squatting on us.

My wife is angry with her phone today. Not a phone savvy person. It makes noises at her and she barks, “What,” and picks it up with a malevolent gaze. It wouldn’t surprise me if she throws it down. She and phones are not friends. She plays a video of the “We Don’t Care Club” which has us laughing. Here’s a sample.

Sis shared photos of Mom in her new room. Looks warm, full of light, but cozy. I think Mom will be happy there for a while. We hope being on one level will reduce her fall risk. We’re all at least mollified for a while that she should move into assisted living.

Trump’s continued attacks on the United States has me infuriated. More Americans disapprove of his actions. A gap is growing between MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans. MAGA think Trump will deliver them to the land of milk and honey. Polls show that the wealthy, with the financial padding and income to pay more for goods, are increasingly happy with Trump’s policies. Not a surprise. Trump is exercising leverage and power through the Federal structure. The latest is his H1B 100K plan. That’s sure to gouge the U.S. healthcare system, technology development, higher education, and the economy. Trump and the GOP powers will be happy. As the fallout trickles down to the MAGAs, they’ll get upset but they’ll reliably blame Obama, Biden, and Democrats in general. Then Trump will attack another ship or place, kill a few more in the name of peace, and MAGA attention will wander away. Meanwhile, Trump makes himself richer at all others’ expense.

Meanwhile, my wife and I were just discussing someone’s bizarre explanation about how an earthquake shows that God was upset with Charlie Kirk’s death. Next, we might start hearing that Kirk actually rose after three days.

Today’s song emerges from Papi and I doing late night stargazing. Just considering the stars last night, I wondered about those far-off gems. They seem so docile out here but to consider them as explosive places, places with gravity that can suck me in, crush me like a can under a garbage truck, trips the mind into deep wonder. That brought up the line, “Someday you will find me caught beneath a landslide in a champagne supernova in the sky.” And here we are, with the song still playing in my morning mental music stream.

May peace and grace find you, and do it soon, damn it. Off I go, into the mildly cloudy day. Cheers

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Swear, Cry, and Sigh

Saturday Memes … Food For Thought

Jill Dennison has done it again. She’s collected some memes that definitely need to be shared with more folks. Some made me swear, some made me cry, and some were rewarded with heavy sighs. Sometimes, I did all of that at once. Here a few to whet your interest. They show, with these simple words and images, how far we’ve been twisted by Trump’s alternate reality in the United States. Head to Jill’s site to read ’em all. Cheers

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Satyrdaz Theme Music

A still, flat Ashlandia morning, a time of broken clouds and dissolute sunshine. The ticking clock competes with a far-off crow cawing a morning song. Satyrda, September 20, 2025. Two days before autumn but autumn feels like its taken control. 70 F, 86 F is speculated as the high. Summer is taking its last breaths.

Today’s song filling the morning mental stream is “Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie. I’m not sure why The Neurons laid down the 1975 song today. Nothing in my dreams point to this as the dream’s closing song or soundtrack. Nothing in my empty head points to why The Neurons have it playing as I do the morning deeds.

I enjoy the songs’ lyrics about confusion and rebellion, acceptance and dismissal. This live version plays with the melody. As with anything Bowie, he does it with unique style and fashion.

Hope grace and peace finds and keeps us. I know a lot of us are dubious that will happen anytime soon, if at all. I’m logically in the same arena of thought, yet, as an optimist, I still dream of a better time coming. Cheers, M

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Humor May Help

Stephen Colbert Responds to Kimmel Affair with Hilarious Video

From Diana Ravitch’s Blog, “Stephen Colbert Responds to Kimmel Affair with Hilarious Video“. I think we owe it to ourselves to laugh and mock Trump’s cancel culture.

Trump’s BFF, J. Epstein, would have probably enjoyed it.

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