Arias ring through the room’s air. These originate in my wife’s digestive system. She’s on day 3 of a fast. A lacto-ovo-pescatarian for over 30 years, all that she’s permitted herself during these days is green tea and water. Plenty of both have been consumed.
Fasting is her go-to response to matters. First time that she fasted was while I was in the Philippines on military assignment. Living with her parents, she decided to fast and did so for ten days. In this case, she’s dealing with two fronts: RA flares afflicting her shoulder, and being dispirited about the current political clime in the United States. She’d taken to long days of doom scrolling. Friends finally told her, “You need to stop.”
So stop she did. She stopped eating and doom scrolling. How long will she continue, is the question put to her. She’s not certain. She’ll reach some point where she’ll decide she’s clean enough and will resume eating.
While she isn’t eating, she’s still treating herself to warm epson salts baths and near infrared red-light therapy in our home pod. She’s also staying in the house, limiting social contact and physical activity. She’s reading a lot of fiction.
I hope it all works. I hope she recovers and is eating again soon.
A silky blue sky weaves hope and optimism in Ashlandia. A gorgeous spring day is being promised. 63 F now, ‘they’ tell us it feels like 71 F. I agree with them. Plentiful sunshine, as ‘they’ say. 73 F is the predicted high.
This is Munda, March 24, 2025. I dig this kind of sunshine. Especially after months of rain and clouds and the kind of chilly weather that makes me feel older than I am.
The cat is also quite pleased, I think. He zooms around furniture and through rooms. “Sun recharge your batteries?” I ask. He stops, sits, stares. Classic 3s floofhavior. After three seconds of this, he sticks a rear leg out and washes its underside. I begin for the kitchen. He pauses the washing to gift me with a scrutinizing stare. “You’ll get yours,” I say, because I know that whereismyfood look.
In the kitchen, I’m doing my morning things. Gotta move faster today. Leaving to do Food & Friends deliveries at 10 AM. Everything must be slightly accelerated. Nanoseconds must be shaved away from routines. I don’t feel like shaving time off today. I’m not a Formula 1 driver doing qualifying laps.
I give Papi his first feeding. That’s misleading. He’s already eaten from kibble bowls several times. This is a wet food offering. Eyes bright, he chirps at me as I lower the food bowl toward him. “Yes, you love me now,” I say. His purr vibrates the floor.
Time is flying. I eat. Make coffee. Drink same. Clean and dress. Examine my lower limbs for swelling and find none, knock on wood. My compression socks are easily drawn over my feet and up my legs. I’m becoming very proficient getting them on. It’s the other end, taking them off, that’s the challenge. I might have made a mistake by turning down the doffing stick. I reassure myself that not using the doffing stick gives my wrists, fingers, and hands a needed workout. My self is as suspicious about that as a cat might be.
We hit the Senior Center for the food pickup and schedule. Cars surround the center. Parking is limited. “That’s a bad sign,” my wife declares. “The food must not be ready.”
I’m resigned to wait. “Go check.”
She returns with the first load of food within a minute, surprising us. We’re off and running with a minimum wait.
“Only ten stops today,” she says.
“Ten stops. I remember when we had twice that.” Yes, people have disappeared from the list. We usually don’t know what happens to them. They’re Schrödinger’s elderly people. That’s a miserably depressing thought for such a sunny, bright day.
Today’s morning mental music stream inhabitant is the Pat Benatar offering, “Invincible”. Released in 1985, it was quite a hit at that time and stays on classic rock stations as an offering for the elderly still feasting on the past. The Neurons called it up today to support the April 5 Hands Off actions rising. Annie commented on a post, “I just read that the April 5 coalition includes at least 83 organizations, among them the Communications Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union. It’s gonna be big!!”
We need big energy to combat the Trusk Regime and GOTP. We need the energy of “Invincible”. Written by Simon Climie and Holly Knight, the song was made for the movie The Legend of Billie Jean.
[Chorus] We can’t afford to be innocent Stand up and face the enemy It’s a do-or-die situation We will be invincible
[Verse 2] This shattered dream you cannot justify We’re gonna scream until we’re satisfied
[Pre-Chorus] What are we running for? We’ve got the right to be angry What are we running for? When there’s nowhere we can run to anymore
It could be that I’m overwrought by the Trusk situation in the United States.
Hope your day satisfies you in some meaningful ways. I’m writing and then planning long-delayed chores. I’ve always blamed the weather. Now that the weather has improved, my excuses are gone.
Jill Dennison shared Steven Dundas’ column about Hitler and Trump. One of the most striking sections for me:
In the case of the Germans, at least in the early 1930s, even his common followers had little reason to believe that Hitler would follow through on his most extreme statements, even Jews. On 2 February 1933, a leading German Jewish newspaper editorial wrote:
“We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check…and they clearly do not want to go down that road. When one acts as a European power, the whole atmosphere tends towards ethical reflection upon one’s better self and away from revisiting one’s earlier oppositional posture.”
Yep. We still see newspapers, Democrats, Republicans, etc., striving to downplay Trump’s intentions, just as the same was done with Hitler.
Read the whole piece. Share it widely. Maybe it will awaken more people and get them to start thinking, before it’s too late.
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.
Even though he has Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and Democrats are in the midst of an apparent leadership crisis, President Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a massive failure, according to one columnist.
Even though he has Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and Democrats are in the midst of an apparent leadership crisis, President Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a massive failure, according to one columnist.
Gibson closed, Rothkopf stressed that while there is a lot of bad news for Democrats, Trump and Republicans have much more to worry about given their lack of success.
I snickered, sighed, and shook my head over this. To me, both pieces normalize what’s going on with PINO Trusk and his regime. Trump is in now. He’s dismantling the government. Stopping spending on anything he declares ‘woke’ or DEI. Terminating anyone and any program that doesn’t align with his prejudices. Dumping on the courts. Blowing up history. Destroying treaties and alliances and wrecking the economy.
He’s deliberately doing these things. He installed thirteen billionaires as cabinet members and has aligned his administration with Putin in Russia. The GOP is now the GOTP. Republican Senators and Representatives are having shouting matches with voters who protest what Trump and Musk are doing, or these Senators and Reps are running and hiding from their constituents. Republicans have shown they’re worried way less than about voters and elections; they’re worried more about falling from Trump’s grace.
In July 2024, former U.S. President Donald Trump told a crowd, “Get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”
With DOGE under Elon Reeve Musk gutting agencies and raiding the nation’s computer systems, accessing everyone’s personal information, do you really think the Trusk Regime is concerned what Trump promised voters? Do you think he’s worried about approval ratings?
No. Trump is in; he has control. Everyone must bow to him.
Well, gosh darn if another of PINO Trusk’s cabinet members didn’t speak and stun me with his out-of-touch arrogance and stupidity. The honor today goes to Howard Lutnick.
When Howard Lutnick was ‘nominated’ — we use that loosely here, given how the GOTP is rubberstamping everything that PINO Trusk does — for Commerce Secretary, his disclosures showed he had over $806,000,000 in assets. His estimated net worth is $1.5 billion.
As the staff cuts at the Social Security Administration leave monthly benefit payments to tens of millions of Americans up in the air — alarming former SSA leaders on both sides of the aisle — Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, doesn’t think you should be complaining if your check doesn’t show up.
“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month — my mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t,” Lutnick told All-In Podcast hosts David Friedberg and Chamath Palihapitiya on Thursday. “She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month.”
Yes, I’m sure Howard Lutnick’s MIL is very dependent on her social security check to make ends meet. I mean, her daughter is married to a billionaire. Poor darling is probably living hand to mouth – not.
It’s a little bit of a different story for most senior Americans. They don’t have billionaires in the family.
When the Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley estimated that the program is “the difference between dignity and poverty” for about half of seniors in a May 2024 press release, he may have needed a fact check. The sentiment was right, but the estimate was low: 67 percent of seniors said they rely on Social Security for more than half their income in TSCL’s 2024 Retirement Survey (Figure 1).
Among the survey’s more than 3,000 respondents, 27 percent said their entire income came from Social Security. An additional 20 percent depended on the program for between 76 percent and 99 percent of their income, while another 20 percent depended on it for between 51 percent and 75 percent of their total earnings.
The rest of Lutnick’s comments:
“She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” the billionaire businessman said.
“Anybody who’s been in the payment system and the processes, who knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing,” he said. “Because my mother-in-law’s not calling, come on, your mother, 80-year-olds, 90-year-olds, they trust the government.”
How dare you, Mister Lutnick. I’ll tell you now, I’m 68. I’m drawing my social security, you know, the system which I paid into since I began working when I was sixteen years old. If my check didn’t show up in my account, I would be calling to see what’s going on and why it wasn’t paid. And it’s not because I’m a fraudster. How dare you suggest it. You may work with fraudsters because you are part of PINO Trusk’s administration. It seems like you, as Donald Trump does, might be projecting by claiming people who would call about their social security are fraudsters. We’re not like you, asshole.
One more point to my disgust with your claim, Mister Lutnick. I would have trusted the government to fix it and make it right until January 20, 2025. On that day, my faith in our government became seriously strained. I have no faith in PINO Trusk; I have less faith in DOGE. And my faith in you has precipitously dimmed.
Wonder how long it’ll take before the Trusk Regime claims Lutnick was ‘taken out of context’ or that he’s being victimized by the mainstream media, basically because they reported exactly what he said?
If you’re feelin’ some heat, that might be cos it’s Fried-day. Not much heat to Ashlandia’s thin sunshine. Black clouds dropped in and held like smoke curling against a low ceiling. Rain has been jumpin’ in and out, heavy at times. We have jumped from 37 F to 47 F, which is about as high as we can expect. This is Frieda, March 21, 2025.
Out to a late start. Final therapy session for the lymphedema. Things lookin’ good, fingers crossed, knock wood, ‘cetera. Just gotta keep it so.
As it was an early AM appointment and it was in Medord, my wife tagged along so we could do some shoppin’. Pick up ‘sentials. That done, since we’d not eaten, we took a late lunch at a restaurant where we chowed on eggs and hash browns with coffee and toast. Then it was back home and back here and at last I’m sat up in the writin’ position. I jumped immediately in novel writing because some muse critters were hammering at things they felt needed done. With those checked off, I’m turning to posting.
Today’s song comes from offhand exchanges between the other and me. Coming into the house, we chatted about getting online “to see what the orange hooplehead has done now,” as she put it. So we were asking of our computers, what’s going on?
That exchange gave The Neurons ammo to introduce “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes to the morning mental music stream, afternoon edition. But in my search for a video, I came across a cover by Pink which took me in, so here we are.
I also offer the song as theme music for all those coping with the crap which the Trusk Regime is lading on us. As one line goes, “And I pray. Oh my God, do I pray. I pray every single day for revolution.”
Coffee and I have met up a few times today, and I’m doing fine. Hope you are, too. Onward. Courage. Cheers
I agree with PINO Trump: the United States is a fat, dumb, foolish country. It’s led by fat, dumb, foolish Republicans who nominated this obese obscenity of lying, walking meat to be the country’s leader, and conned fat, dumb, foolish hoopleheads into voting for him.
Now this fat, dumb, foolish cocksucker and his regime are pillaging the nation.
As always, when Trump speaks, he projects what he’s doing onto others.
Michael Seidel, writer 