Tag: responsibility

A Building Dream

Well, I dreamed my wife was driving the car. I was in the back seat of this dark green sedan beast. Weird, I was standing while my wife was sitting, sawing at the giant steering wheel. But my head was at her level. Oddly, the steering wheel was on the right, counter to the usual U.S. practice of having the wheel on the left side.

A gorgeous woman with a low top and cleavage displayed was on the seat behind me, wholly exciting me with her presence, trying to entice me to join her. I’m like, “That’s nuts!” My wife is driving us to either shopping or school. Note from the real-life side, my wife only drives me when my physical condition warrants it.

We stop. I climb out from the back seat. I ask my wife, “Where are we?” It seems familiar, like a beach we’ve visited but no beach is in sight. Instead, white pieces are all over the place.

I pick a few white pieces up with some WTF-self quizzing. They seem bigger than they were. At first, I thought them to be building blocks like the kind children use. Instead, these are as large as shoe boxes, but they’re light. Hardly weigh anything at all.

They’re all over the place, like wreckage. I can’t imagine what happened to cause it. Hurricane? Tornado? Both are feasible but what were the pieces part of and where were they before? I’m looking around, trying to place that.

A whim drives me to collect pieces. After doing that, I realize they can be put together and stacked as a wall. Amused, I do this for a bit. Finding and gathering more pieces, I put together corners, doorways, windows without much effort. I’ve been working a while in bright sunshine, a warm breeze coming along as a visitor. I was sweating and then realized I didn’t see my wife or the car. A little thinking about that progressed but I returned to my building effort. I wondered as I did if this thing I was building was strong enough to stand, and wondered, why am I even doing this? It seemed crazy.

Two other crazy aspects emerged as I worked. The building changed, becoming a real place. I was at once sure that I’d built it but also certain that I’d never done all the things I was seeing. Second, the day seemed to be progressing enormously slowly. I took some time to contemplate where the sun was, trying to think back to where it’d been when I began, but I couldn’t come up with any answer.

That’s where the dream ended.

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Thursda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

We have such classic Trump in action: confusion, lies, misdirection, and trying to blame others. In this case, his administration rolled out an illegal spending freeze. His administration wants to vet the programs the money is supporting to ensure it aligns with his ideology.

Not how it works. He and his administration know this. But in classic vengeful, sulking child fashion, play his way or he takes his ball and goes home and no one plays.

Execution, as it always is with a Trump endeavor, was sloppy and poorly vetted. It lacked details and was so broad, it froze money to hundreds of systems, programs, projects, and communities. All across the nation, the response by civic leaders in towns, states, churches, schools, and offices was, “What’s going on?”

The press reported this. This made Trump sad. Angry. From a NYT story:

During a bill signing at the White House on Wednesday, Mr. Trump cast blame on the media for the confusion. “We are merely looking at parts of the big bureaucracy where there has been tremendous waste and fraud and abuse,” he said.

Once again, Trump proposed that you trust him over your lyin’ eyes. Even if his goal was to look at “parts of the big bureaucracy where there has been tremendous waste and fraud and abuse,” that’s not how it’s done. Laws are not ignored. The will of the people are not ignored. Nor is the voice and role of Congress.

Likewise, Trump’s reaction to the air collision between an Army helicopter and a commercial airliner is blamed on others. Trump’s kneejerk reaction was that it was DEI. What? He couldn’t specify how, only that it’s ‘common sense’. Yeah, WTF are you smoking now?

Next, Trump tried blaming his predecessor, President Joe Biden. Never did he admit or accept that his chaotic actions could have contributed to the tragic accident. The fact that he fired 100 FAA officials in the last 11 days? No, surely that had no impact. Nor did the ‘resign’ offer he sent the air traffic controllers. Of course not, right? Just a week before, on January 22, 2025, Trump issued a fact sheet that flat-out lied.

Almost unbelievably, as a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative, the Biden FAA specifically recruited and hired individuals with “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric issues, and complete paralysis over other individuals who sought to work for the FAA.

Common sense will tell you that such a ‘fact sheet’ probably did wonders for morale at the FAA.

But that’s Trump, lying, lawless, and reckless, self-identifying as a genuis when he’s just a bulllying cheat and con man who never accepts responsibility when things go wrong. Never has, never will.

He proves this every day, in every way.

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Tuesday’s Political Thoughts

TL/DR: The Trump/Vance mass deportation plan is morally abhorrent and fiscally disastrous, and Jamie Bouie has a column that effectively explains why.

Mr. Bouie’s column several days ago, Oct. 4, 2024, was The One Thing Not Named Trump That Trump Cares About. He captured what I’d been thinking about and addressing with friends and relatives. Jamie Bouie did it with a style and insightfulness which I lack.

The column begins, “The centerpiece of Donald Trump’s second-term domestic agenda is the mass deportation of what he and his campaign say are 20 million or even 25 million undocumented immigrants.”

JD Vance — and the GOP — are in lockstep with this policy. Mr. Bouie pulls together the disparate segments about the topic of mass deportation: what it would do to our economy in terms of labor and labor costs in different industries; and what it would mean to actually carry out such a project in concrete terms of those important elements of time, energy, and money. Citing information from a new American Immigration Council repot, Mr. Bouie brings the details:

“… a mass deportation plan designed to expel 13.3 million undocumented immigrants over about 10 years would crash the economy, immiserate millions of Americans and siphon nearly $1 trillion from the federal government.”

“To deport one million immigrants per year, the report says, “would incur an annual cost of $88 billion, with the majority of that cost going toward building detention camps.” Even assuming some measure of “self-deportation,” the federal government would have to build “hundreds to thousands of new detention facilities to arrest, detain, process and remove” all targeted immigrants, at an estimated cost of $66 billion per year.

“On top of that, the government would need to spend $7 billion per year to conduct the arrests, $12.6 billion per year to carry out legal processing for arrestees and an average of $2.1 billion to remove these immigrants from the country. None of this includes the cost of personnel, which could raise the overall price tag quite a bit. “Even carrying out one million at-large arrests per year,” the report says, “would require ICE to hire over 30,000 new law enforcement agents and staff, instantly making it the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government.” Assuming an average annual inflation rate of 2.5 percent, this deportation program would cost at least $967.9 billion over 10 years.“

I added the emphasis about the $1 trillion price tag. The GOP speaks with gusto about being financially responsible. Just recently, many Republicans in Congress voted against more funding for FEMA as hurricane season continues because of their concerns over the debt. Adding $1 trillion to our commitments must have them in a tizzy, right? They plan to lower taxes, so how are they planning to raise the cash to pay for their deportation wet dream while not incurring debt?

It’s critical to address this because this is typical of the lack of responsibility, increasing duplicity, and outright mendacity the GOP demonstrates under Trump. Lots of grand promises built on whipped cream pillars.

The American Immigration Council report notes:

  • “The construction and agriculture industries would lose at least one in eight workers, while in hospitality, about one in 14 workers would be deported due to their undocumented status.”
  • …”mass deportation would remove “more than 30 percent of the workers in major construction trades,” nearly “28 percent of graders and sorters of agriculture products” and “a fourth of all housekeeping cleaners.” 
  • “The federal government would lose tens of billions of dollars in federal taxes, including contributions to Social Security and Medicare. States and localities would lose more than $29 billion in tax revenue.”
  • “Overall, the American Immigration Council concludes, “mass deportation would lead to a loss of 4.2 percent to 6.8 percent of annual U.S. G.D.P., or $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion in 2022 dollars.” For comparison’s sake, the country’s G.D.P. shrank by 4.3 percent during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.”

Beyond the economic and business impact, Jaimie Bouie brings up a more critical aspect about the morality of such a move like mass deportation.

“I’ve been discussing mass deportation as if it’s actual policy — as if it’s just one option among many for tackling the nation’s many challenges. But that’s absurd. Whether or not it works to fix the problems at hand, and it doesn’t, the mass deportation of 20 million to 25 million people — which is to say the forced detention and relocation of about 6 percent to 8 percent of the current U.S. population — is a human rights abuse. It would make the United States a pariah state. And it would violate the fundamental principles of the American creed, the core belief that “all men are created equal,” that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Bingo. This is exactly why Trump is such a threat to U.S. democracy and freedom. To achieve his political ambitions, he’s willing to promote abdicating multiple basic tenets of our nation’s foundations.

And it’s so grindingly typical of the modern GOP. They’re employing doublespeak. Those of us fervently following the election campaigns and Project 2025 read of their intentions and see that they’re suggesting that to go forward, we must go backwards; to be free, we must imprison others; to follow the path set out by our nation’s founders, we must turn our backs on them.

Voting for Trump and this platform makes no sense unless you are backward, narrow-minded, bigoted, racist, and sexist, and lack critical thinking skills. Or you’re a one-issue voter, supporting, for example, ‘lower taxes’. So, tell me, or great thinker, how will the GOP accomplish their goals of mass deportation with lower taxes while reducing the debt?

Well, we know what will happen. The GOP will lower taxes for the wealthy and corporations, cause they’re the ‘wealth creators’ (a wholly disproven and laughable position). And they’ll raise taxes on the poor and middle class through service fees and local taxes. See Ohio as an example of how this works out.

The third and fourth reasons you might still vote for Trump is that ‘you like him’ (which, to me, goes back to being narrow-minded, bigoted, racist, and sexist), or as we’ve witnessing with too many voters these days, you’re not paying attention.

Read all of Jamie Bouie’s column please. And vote blue in this election cycle.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: Rainified

Saturday, May 18th, 2024, came upon us in the Churchill Valley with a load of leaky clouds. Rain was doing a heavy metal drum solo against the house. Dressing for it, I thought, maybe it won’t be as bad outside our slice of Penn Hills. Turns out our situation was better than others. Rain just increased with no evidence of mercy coming.

It’s part of a trend. Yesterday’s day of intermittent rain ended with tornado warnings and alerts, and a long downpour. Then there were tornado sightings and videos on the news and social media, and flash flood warnings. Potholes became lakes. I appreciated all the drivers’ calm and patience. Only one driver was witnessing doing something stupid. (Cue Frank and Nancy Sinatra singing “Something Stupid”.)

As for temperatures, it’s 66 F now and supposedly climbing to 77 F today. So, it’s not an overly cold rain.

Mom continues to seem to do well. Except for back pain from stenosis, and this weird cough. The cough could be associated with GIRT. She’s just hanging in there. While she often expresses disbelief in others, she has a powerful belief in herself. So, she tends to endure until she’s forced to ask others for help. I recognize it because I’m her son, and I’m the same as her in this regard. Decently intelligent, she (we) wear obstinance like it’s armor.

I am beginning to plan my return to home and my wife and floofs. One segment of last night’s dreams had me petting Tucker, my toothless black and white floof. When I walked away, he clamped onto my hand with his mouth and drew me back. That scene happened three times.

Being here, staying with Mom, watching over her and trying to help, has The Neurons playing “Victim of Love” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark flooded). The 1976 Eagles song is apt, in my cogitating. See, I wish to be back home, pursuing life, but here I am, across the country. It’s love, but also an aggravated sense of loyalty and duty. I really appreciate my wife’s support in this.

Hot, black coffee is blessing the system. Stay positive, lean forward, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Tempting Tuesday’s Theme Music

Misty and 25 degrees F. Graylight bangs in through the windows. Gray stillness enthralls the landscape.

The cold outside works with the moment to tempt my spirit to cozy up under my duvet and covers and just hang tight in that warm cocoon for just a little longer, perhaps until March. The mists rule beyond a few hundred feet, depriving me of any mountain views. As far as I know, the lip of the world’s end is just over on the next street.

This is Tuesday, December 13, 2022. Not much of a holiday vibe rings the air. Sure, there’s Christmas music on store speakers. Holiday music thrills the coffee house ambiance off and on through the hours. Stores have some holiday items on display but overall, it feels like the holiday launch was premature and already peaked. Now we’re just waiting for the finale and the curtain fall so we can applaud and go on to the next big thing. Perhaps this is only my sentiments. Not many people seem jolly. Anxious is more how I’d color them. Anxious and tired.

It’s going to be 46 F as a high today. Of course, these are the same weather geniuses telling me that it’s sunny out there. Maybe it’s same zip code, different worlds. Sunrise entered at 7:31 but it was already light throughout the house by then. It seems like daylight is already showing up earlier in the morning. The sun show will end shortly before dark.

Freedom is on my mind this morning. I often feel constrained. Most of this is my own doing as I set up schedules to write, eat, exercise, and relax. Cats (2) and wife (1) add to this constraint, by their needs and wants. So does house and car mischief and the business of residing in the U.S. So I chaff. Even so, I know others have it much, much worse. It’s a fascinating thing, a web of emotions, logic, and expectations. Not complaining, I protest, just stating it as I see it.

The Neurons noted my subject on their radar. Their response was adding “Freedom! ’90” by George Michaels to the morning mental music stream. The song is about freedom and reflects his feeling that he’d lost freedom because of his stardom. Cry me a sea, right? But many celebrities end up on Michaels’ path, lamenting what success has done to their privacy. It’s a tricky labyrinth to follow, but that’s seen in most endeavors attempted where success is found. Success pulls admiration and brings more pressure to succeed and be. It ends up like golden handcuffs.

Now, I knew this song when it came out in 1990. Heard it on the radio all the time. Knew of Michaels and his success. But I’d never seen the video associated with the song. Seeing it today, I read more about Michaels’ reflections and frustration with success and freedom.

I know, waa-ville. Okay, I accept that. Stay positive and test negative. I’m up for a cup of coffee now. The cats are with me. Not that they’ll be having coffee — I shudder to think of them hopped up on caffeine — I mean, woof — but they’ll accompany me as I leave the office, make the brew, etc.

Here’s the tune. Hope your Tuesday works out well. Cheers

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The Red Mustang Dream

I was a young man, as I often am in my dreams, probably in my thirties. I was in the home of a woman I knew. It was a standard modern place but basic and clean. I was standing in a dining area by a patio slider. She wasn’t there, but two other young women and a young man were present. They were about ten years plus younger than me. We in the middle of a conversation in which I related to them that they were ‘taking the wrong medicine’ and told them what medicine they should be taking. The man walked out to get it even though I told him that I had it with me. One of the women left and the home owner returned. She asked what was going on so the other young woman and I explained it, with me doing most of the talking, telling her that they’d been using the wrong medicine. She appreciated me correcting them because one of them was her niece (I never knew which). The young man returned then, without medicine because he could ‘t find it as “everything is closed”. I gave him a huge black backpack which contained the medicine he and the others needed.

As the young man thanked me, the other woman returned and the homeowner announced that she was leaving. She told us we could stay or go, it was our choice. I said I was going because I needed to do other things. The young man left with me. We walked down a busy small-town street for a bit, and then separated. I went over and got into my Mustang. Red, it was a 1965 convertible in very good condition, highly polished, with a white interior and convertible top. I needed work on it, so I took it to this little place. I backed into a spot and then got out to get a number and get in line, because that’s how it worked there. As I was waiting, another person arrived and backed his car into the Mustang.

I was upset, more so because he shrugged it off and walked away. He was much smaller than me and a little younger. I confronted him, pointing out the damage. Body damage, on the driver’s side front, was very slight, but the tire was torn up. Looking at it, the tire was made of white foam mattress and had lost a large chunk from the accident. He talked to the man about it but he claimed it wasn’t his fault, went and got a number and got into line.

I was upset. He’d hit my car and wouldn’t take responsibility for it. A friend arrived and I told him about what had happened. The guy who’d hit my car was in line with several large companions, who had been there when I arrived. My friend said, “Know how to start a confrontation?” I shook my head and he said, “Let me show you.”

He walked up and attempted to grab the younger guy’s nut sack, but one of the big other guys instead did it to him, saying, “You trying to start a confrontation?”

That didn’t make sense to me. As my friend was released and limped off, departing the business, I decided that I would leave. As I went to depart, I encountered another young man with thick dark hair. He was looking into the shop and asked me if I would recommend it. I told him that it depended on what he needed and how badly he wanted it, but I was disappointed in the shop and told about the accident. I asked him what he was looking for. When he told me, I said, “I recognize you. I read about your story on the net.”

He verified that was him, and then the homeowner from the dream’s beginning arrived. As the young man looked across at her, he said, “Excuse me, that’s my mother.”

Dream end.

A note that the dream Mustang reminded me that Dad had a 1965 Mustang when he was stationed in Germany in the late 1960s, blue with a white convertible top and black interior, with a 289 and four speed. I wasn’t with him in Germany, but he showed me pictures of him with the car with its top down in Paris.

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The Stock Market

There was a 2,000 point dip in the stock market (yeah, that’s a fun dip, innit) earlier this week. President Trump was quick to step forward with his insights.

“I think the financial markets are very upset when they look at the Democrat candidates standing on that stage, making fools out of themselves, and they say, ‘If we ever have a president like this,’” Trump said, referring to the most recent Democratic presidential debate held in South Carolina. “When they look at the statements made by the people standing behind those podiums, I think that has a huge effect.”

h/t to Vox.com

Trump made those comments on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. The Democratic debate was the previous night. As others pointed out, the stock market posted their losses and closed on Monday and Tuesday before the debate.

Let’s ignore that the debate happened after the losses. Trump seems to have a poor view of people trading on the stock exchange. He’s essentially suggesting that they’re so ignorant and weak-willed that a debate between the Democratic candidates to be POTUS would worry those traders and send stocks plunging.

The second aspect of it is that he’s discounting his own ability to affect the stock market. He’s in charge, but he thinks this debate between candidates to be the nominee has greater influence than him.

Wow. Talk about a lack of confidence, and high levels of desperation.

What most analysts (and non-analysts) believe is that the spreading coronavirus is affecting supply chains, travel, and productivity. They worry that a spreading virus (here’s a nifty site where you can track it) and the threat of greater quarantines and less travel will affect companies’ profitability. They base this on companies like Apple and Pepsico already warning that the coronavirus is negatively affecting their earnings, that they’re playing soccer games in empty stadiums in Italy, that the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo is in danger of being cancelled, and that Delta Airline slashed flights to and from South Korea this week. With travel down, tourism will drop. So will consumer spending. It’s all connected.

President Trump doesn’t believe any of that, of course. He’d rather escape responsibility for anything bad that happens while he’s POTUS. So much easier to blame others.

It doesn’t bode well for the future, does it?

 

 

 

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