Tag: politics

Fogda’s Theme Music

Mood: brandnufogncoffee

We’ve slipped into foggy bottom or foggy bottom slipped over us. Fogda, Jan. 6, 2025. 40 degrees F, sunshine has taken some time away, apparently, giving us over to clouds and rain. 56 F is the projected high. An air stagnation advisory has been slapped on us.

Yesterday turned into fine, sunshiny day. Of course, we were slightly out of town for most of the afternoon, and in a slighter higher elevation, visiting our friends for a party. Good cast of characters, and the house is beautiful. The owner joked that it was a two-bedroom five two hundred square foot home with five fireplaces. Main house had a beautiful small living room and a large living room which used to be the original owner’s home movie theater. That was a natural for that original owner as he owned a chain of movie theaters. Finances crashed and he quit using the house during COVID. The owner related that everything had quit working and they needed to repair and replace multiple things when they bought the home. But they did the job and it showed. There’s also a .5 acre fishing pond, heated pool, a separate artist studio, two-bedroom guest house with a two-car garage, and an RV parking garage with space for three RVs, which cracks up the current owner. “Definitely something we don’t need,” he said. It’s about eight minutes out of Ashlandia. A hallway off the foyer has his and hers coat closets, along with a guest closet.

Papi continues losing fur at a startling rate. He’s not going bald or anything; fur keeps growing in to replace it. We don’t know what’s going on. His appetite is good, he’s as perky and conversant as ever, and he looks good. We keep thinking, must be the weather, but he’s never done this before. We eye him for signs of things going amiss. If it’s there, we’re missing it.

Today’s song was born out of texts swapped between Mom, me, and a sis in the Pittsburgh, PA, region. They had snow coming down, impeding traffic, limiting outdoor options. The Neurons took the opportunity to start “Snow (Hey Oh)” by Red Hot Chili Peppers in the morning mental music stream (Trademark blizzard). The 2005 song is about getting a fresh start. Hey, it’s kinda still a new year, new month, new day, and a new government administration in the U.S. Okay, I kind of choked on that last one. I’ve always enjoyed this hard rocker. Easy to follow and sing along. And hey, it’s also about surviving, so there we go.

Be chill and don’t thrill. Coffee and I ran into each in the kitchen and swapped some spit. Hey ho, listen to what I say yo, it’s a fresh new day. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Grenday’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I read a note on Mastodon. Here it is:

I wondered about the veracity. Because anything on the net is suspect these days. So I searched on the G spot, “Did meta donate to biden’s inauguration fund”. As you can imagine, the results came back with pages informing me about how the Z guy and Meta donated bunches to Trump’s inauguration, and others’ reactions to that. Didn’t answer the question, of course. Search engines rarely do these days.

Tried Finecomb. Even worse results.

Bing came closer to the answer on page two of its results. FoxBusiness reported, “Biden inauguration bankrolled by corporate donors like Amazon, Google, Boeing”. Check out the story. Other than that headline and a qualifier that’s it’s not that unusual as a business practice for corporations to donate to inauguration funds, they didn’t cite any company’s actual donation.

Finally, I tried DuckDuckGo. Sadly, their results were about the same as Alphabet’s search engine.

What is funny in a sad and bitter way is that FoxBusiness barely covers the fact that corporations and oligarchs are pouring money into Trump’s inauguration fund after that headline grab about Biden’s inauguration fund, that I could find. That just doesn’t seem like news to them.

BTW, I did learn through FoxBusiness that Robinhood donated $2,000,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund. So while there’s a lot of shrieking about Meta & Z guy, the B guy and Amazon, and Google, others are rushing in with little fanfare.

Ann Telnaes sure had it right, didn’t she?

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She Called It Right

Without intended irony, I read about Ann Telnaes’s resignation in the NY Times.

Ann Telnaes is an award-winning, highly-regarded political cartoonist. I’d long cut ties with the Washington Post as Jeff Bezos, the WaPo owner, revealed his colors and moved away from being a supporter of responsible, trustworthy journalism. (I keep ties with the NY Times mostly for the cultural information but they don’t inspire me with their journalism, either.)

The NYT story, by Benjamin Miller, said that Ann Telnaes resigned after her cartoon was rejected. She accurately portrayed Bezos and other billionaires genuflecting at a statue of PINO-elect Trump. Bezos, who would not let the newspaper endorse Kamala Harris, didn’t like cartoon, demonstrating once and for all, that man cannot handle the truth.

And Ann Telnaes called it right.

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Saturday’s Wandering Political Thoughts

It begins to appear that democracy will not end with a bang nor a whimper, but a tweet. There are billions of individuals, mostly men, but peppered with women, who will cheer that. No, I take that back. They will not cheer because they will not know that democracy has ended. The trappings will continue long after the government has been re-shaped into some form of authoritarianism that endorses wealth and greed and treats the wealthy has a separate class, with a better set of rights and more lenient judicial tolerance.

Yes, much of it has already taken place. The groundwork is there. The billionaires are lining up to make it happen. And social media is the engine.

This gloomy view comes out of a new Dame magazine article. MPS brought it to my attention via their post, “It’s the Media”, as did Scottie’s Playground. I new some of the information Dame presented, but they delivered with deeper and harder facts.

The Dame article is “America’s Right-Wing Propaganda Problem Might Be Terminal“. The article’s great, overarching declaration is, Millions voted for Trump with a distorted understanding of who he is, what he supports, what his policies will actually accomplish, and how severely his second term will hurt them and those they love.

Yes, many of us were aware of the ignorant, undecided voters out there, wholly uncritical thinkers who were briefly engaged with the election, voted, declared themselves good citizens — I Voted — and helped create a disaster set of circumstances. But their ignorance was firmly aided by the right wing, funded by billionaires like the latest villian, Elon Musk, and gleefully supported by the GOP.

Listen, if the GOP tells you that they love America and support democracy, don’t buy it. They do not. Some Republican voters probably do love America and support democracy, but they’re being conned, and they don’t know it.

Worse, of course, is that this phenomena is not just rooted in the United States. It’s a plague, a virus, that’s spreading around the world, undermining democracy and freedom without any shots being fired. This — a right-wing media composed of angry, hateful males who pose as pseudo intellectual influencers to spread their bullshit — is why we’re seeing right-wing influence increasing. People are being told lies. Immersed in the media speaking to them, they’re unaware of the truth or reality.

I still believe Trump’s administration will implode and he will personally crash. He was a convenience to advance their cause. He will be tossed aside. I’m convinced that many Americans will never realize that happened. I remain certain that the economy will worsen under Trump, but again, right-wing influencers will tell them that its great, and they will believe it so.

And so, the United States of America will become a shell of what it was, an empty vessel that once offered the kind of hope for equality and justice which is theoretically possible, and the right-wing media will tell them that’s great again, no matter what their life is like.

And they will believe.

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Frida’s Theme Music

Mood: Happysad

It’s a gorgeous January day. It’s also a sloppy January day, dark and gloomy. Depends. Comparing the day’s weather to other places and their situations, you can easily judge one way or the other. We’re not especially happy because this Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, is sunny, cloudy, and rain, or suncloura. We’ve been having many suncloura days. That’s part of the trick, too: if there’s a succession of like days, it weighs on us. All of this falls onto the final piece, whether you like this kind of weather, or even thrive in it, or you fall into the circle of thought that it’s okay but could be improved. The temp. BTW is 44 F. High will be 51 F.

Another local restaurant went out of businesses on Jan 1. Pie +Vine is the closure. It replaced Piatta’s about ten year ago. Both were owned by the same folk. I’m sad because it means unemployment for some. Conversely, the food has been steadily declining since it opened. Conversations about eating there often mentioned how bad the last meal or the last service was. The same people own several other restaurants. People are not pleased with the owners because they gave no warning to their employees. Just locked doors and put a notice on the door, we’re closed and done. Not the way to treat people, and several employees claim those owners have done the same thing at other businesses across the years.

My wife and a friend are going to see Wicked today. I opted out. Didn’t want to slice another three hours out of another writing day. The movie is two hours and forty minutes but then you need to reach the theater, park, etc. So. They decided they’d first meet for coffee and pastries, so the outing has been extended to about four and a half hours. I’m pleased to have solitary time. I love my wife and enjoy her company but we are together a lot.

Over in the news, I see Republicans making false claims about the New Orleans and Las Vegas terrorists. The Army vets are claimed to have just come over the border. Those lies have been thoroughly disproven but the base will digest it children going after popcorn. Meanwhile, ‘Trump Warned About Invading Mexico’ in a Newsweek headline. “Experts are urging caution.” The article is slanted IMO toward Trump actually using military actions in the way it’s written. GOP talking points about the border are given without any fact-checking or counter-discussion. Piss poor journalism. Seems more like a balloon being floated to see what kind of reaction the idea of invading Mexico gets. It’s been comprehensively demonstrated that the GOP doesn’t need facts to sell their ideas. Given how the Roberts Supreme Court has treated Trump, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump does use military force. Democrats and the international community would condemn it but the GOP would probably crow, “What a man!”

I can imagine such an action quickly escalating into economic arenas, with Mexico retaliating by cutting off the flow of exports, affecting manufacturing, especially cars. Mexico is the number one car manufacturing nation in the western hemisphere. Most of the cars are shipped to the U.S. If car availalability in the US drops, prices go up, driving up inflation and decreasing sales. That would apply to not just new cars but used cars; it’s a ripple effect. The lack of sales revenues would cut into state and local tax revenues. Given all these things, someone might be able to talk Trump and his bloodthirsty Administration down. Hard to say. Trump likes the idea of being ‘manly’ in a corrupted, negative way that was once prized as the epitome of manliness.

Today finds “Missing You” by John Waite circulating through the morning mental music stream (Trademark missing). The 1984 song is all about missing someone while lying to themself and denying that they miss them at all. That’s how it goes with me when the wife is away. The house feels chillier. It’d definitely quieter. I miss turning and saying something or having her ask or tell me something, even if I do also resent it at times. Such are relationships.

Have a proper Frida. Do it up right. It’s the first one of a new year. The new on the year is already fading. Here’s my coffee and the music. Cheers

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Tursda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Colson Whitehead has sadly summarized my own initial gloomy feelings for 2025.

Colson Whitehead, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author:

I have no hopes for 2025. Humanity is disappointing. We killed the Earth. Villains triumph and the innocents suffer. I imagine these trends will continue.

I wish I could be more like Garrett Needham.

Garrett Needham, 13, of McKinney, Texas (interview):

Stuff has gotten so expensive. If we could just form a system to support everybody. America was based on freedom, but right now it seems like only the wealthy have the freedom.

These quotes are from a Peter Coy penned-column in the NY Times. Business executives often mention AI. Like Roland Busch, for example.

Roland Busch, the chief executive of Siemens, the industrial company based in Munich:

2025 will be the year of industrial A.I. It will be a powerful tool to address skilled labor shortages and boost productivity, creating substantial growth opportunities.

I’m trying to pivot to be more like Douglas Hofstadter.

Douglas Hofstadter, a computer scientist at Indiana University in Bloomington and an author:

I hope somehow to regain some measure of hope in this, the most ominous-seeming year that I have yet faced. Over this past year, and especially these last few months, I have lost much of my once-strong faith in humanity, but I hope, somehow, to regain at least a little bit of it in 2025. How, I certainly don’t know, but hope springs eternal.

Really, though, it’s a balancing act for me. I react to the news and trends. So far, they’ve not been overly reassuring.

The year is still young, though. The year is still young.

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Tursda’s Teme Music

Mood: Yawninspired

It’s a nice day for a white sky, Billy Idol might have sung for today. A flat white sheet mottled by gentle grey moguls hangs loose across our valley. A little blue slips in from the far western edge on my field of sight. Sunshine chips through where it can, coming in with a fair facsimile of light. 46 F, windy, it rained last night. Might rain today. Might achieve a 51 F high.

This is Tursda, January 2, 2025.

Many are not aware that January has an interesting populist origin to its name. The first part of the year in the nothern hemisphere was often dark, cold, and quiet except for storms. Outside wasn’t a hospitable place. Inside caves, huts, and other primitive dwellings, not much was going on, either, as a lack of light, Internet, and decent heating kept folks huddling. Those first months became known as Jawnsuary. That j was actually a y; the period was Yawnsuary because they were so dull and boring. Later, the first month of the year became known as January to appease the god, Janus. Winter festivities were promoted to lift people’s spirits and change their attitudes. Religious leaders told people, “The cold, darkness, and suffering is good. It helps you appreciate the light and warmth that comes later. Snow is good. Look at all that you can do with snow. Have a drink, you’ll come around.” High priests built the first snow churches, snow men, and snowballs. Religious leaders led the way in going outside to have fun in the snow. That’s why religious leadership often wore heavy black, red, or blue robes. To stay warm outside, and to be visible in the snow. That’s a fact, jack.

Today’s music started last night when I, reading some news reports, dubbed some people as crazy. I know, it’s not nice, and often maligns people with genuine mental health and emotional issues by lumping those who are deliberately delusional, greedy, evil, and corrupt in with them, such as certain right-wing leaders. Anyway, catching a sniff of those thoughts, The Neurons came up with Gnarls Barkley and their offering, which is just called, “Crazy”. It’s playing now in the morning mental music stream (Trademark impaired). This song is not to be confused with the song, “Crazy”, covered by Patsy Cline, and written by Willy Nelson. They do have things in common in their lyrics, like believing something which is a delusion. I’ll include them both so you can compare the two different but impactful songs.

Stay groovey and be hip. Coffee and I have renewed our vows for 2025. Here’s the music. Let’s go get ’em. Cheers

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Twosda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Musk is busy backtracking over in MAGAland. The MAGAt War erupted when tech right billionaire Musk urged more HIB visas to let more foreigners legally enter the United States specifically to do jobs that Musk feels Americans are not capable of doing. As that sentiment began kicking off explosions of angry indignation, Musk’s dodgy DOGE sidekick, Vivek Ramaswamy fed the flames by noting that Americans were mediocre.

Woo, boy, that went off like a feminist telling a Hell’s Angel to calm down and ride away.

PINO-Elect Trump did his best to calm the situation by lying, because that’s what he knows how to do. Stepping up to the moment, he declared that he was for and has always been for H1B visas.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he said, according to the outlet’s report.

Which, the Internet’s digital record shows, is a lie. A Forbes article in 2021 specifically addressed how Trump and his adminstration tried to end H1B visas. He blocked visas and suspended them in 2020.

Elon Musk, showing the depths of his hypocrisy and why he’s such a perfect fit for the latest GOP, first escalated, but then called for posts on X to be more positive.

“Please post a bit more positive, beautiful or informative content on this platform,” Musk told his 209 million followers on Sunday night.

Classic ‘do as I say, not as I do’ Republican guidance. As when the GOP calls for cutting the national debt whenever the POTUS is a Democrat, after a Republican POTUS, such as Trump, say, raised the national debt. Huh, huh. A 2021 ProPublica article gives the details.

The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. 

Well, I for one am willing to help Musk with more positive posts on X, cuz I’m positive that X has become a terrible social media outlet since Musk took it over. I’m positive it’s losing money, too. And I’m positive that he helped it become the angry cesspool that it is by removing restrictions and moderators. I’m also positive that his own attitude and lies on X contributed to the lack of positivity on X. I’m also positive that Musk doesn’t own up to any of those things and will blame it all on someone else, such as the mainstream media.

Except, of course, for me to be more positive on X, I’d need to be on X. And I am absolutely positive that is not going to happen.

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Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

The 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, passed away this week at the age of 100. Andy Borowitz had a simple, short statement about President Carter, and what he represented to the nation, and to voters, and contrasted it to what the Republicans keep offering us. The GOP seems to want to take us and keep us in a cesspool.

“Jimmy Carter Deserved Better. So Do We.”

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Sa’day’s Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s a gloooommmy glooommmy day here. All rain and descending swirling fog. We’re getting less of it up by my home but the weather down toward the valley floor is icky yuck wet, as a meteorologist would say.

Daily Kos delivered a bright ray through the gloom. Furious Democratic Rep COMPLETELY NUKES Trump’s “Modern McCarthyism” They’re talking about Rep. Melanie Stansbury, NM-D, and her magnificent comments about JD Vance’s bill. As Rep. Stansbury highlights, the bill essentially creates a blacklist of who can’t work for the Federal government, based on their perceived loyalty to PINO-elect Trump.

“Welcome to the new House Committee on Un-American Affairs and the new McCarthyism,” she said. “We have arrived here today with this bill.”

The bill has the support of the Heritage Foundation — the conservative think tank behind the notorious Project 2025 policy plan — which issued a letter of support, Stansbury noted.

Led by Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation, supported by Trump and his MAGA base, the United States is goose-stepping back into less free, less democratic times. We’ve been led down this path before. The attached video (same one from Daily Kos) has part of Edward R. Murrow’s editorial about McCarthyism in it.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

We can substitute Trump or MAGA or Project 2025 or the Heritage Foundation or the GOP for ‘Senator McCarthy’. The policies they pursue and the campaigns they use fit McCarthy’s brand of divisiveness, political repression, and fear-mongering.

Good to know that individuals like Rep. Stansbury has our backs.

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