Archives for February 2025

Friday, February 28, 2025

I happened to turn the TV on for a few minutes mid-afternoon. There was a meeting in the White House: Trump, Zelensky, and lots of others, notably Vance.

I have now learned that the problem of achieving peace in Ukraine is that Zelensky isn’t grateful enough. Yeah. Not only that but Mr. Trump pointed out that people in Ukraine are dying. Wow, more insights. And that Obama and Biden did nothing. Putin is innocent and the pillorying of Putin is due to Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was either in his bathroom or his bedroom.

When Mr. Zelensky tried to explain that they had made agreements with Mr. Putin and that he, Putin, broke them it was J. D. Vance that pointed out Mr. Zelenskyy wasn’t grateful enough and Mr. Trump went on about Hunter Biden’s laptop. When Mr. Zelenskyy mentioned that Putin would come for him too but he wasn’t feeling it because America has a big ocean separating them from Russia. Mr. Trump was quick to tell Mr. Z not to tell him how he feels. Tough talk. I wonder which ocean Mr. Zelenskyy was talking about The American Ocean or the other American Ocean?

Mr. Trump was right back to saying we gave Ukraine $350B in aid, which he said was much more than Europe. Even though Mr. Macron politely corrected him and said that the aid was about even, and others have pointed out that the aid is actually $124B from the U.S. But why quibble? 

If this was a boxing match, people who know something about Russia, gave Putin a knock out.

What we learned is, with 80% of the people in the U.S. not trusting Putin, our President, JD Vance, and others like Lindsay Graham have now switched sides in this war and are supporting Russia.

And Mr. Zelenskyy was asked to leave the White House. No happy happy before the microphones. No mineral blackmail deal.

Mr. Z and his team asked for a reset, but the orange one wasn’t having it.

Friday, February 28, 2025

Well, Trump is doing something no one thought possible – ruin a country in a short amount of time.

Last time it took three years for him to tank the economy. Now? He’s got a team that has been regurgitating the same offal for years and they are determined to “fix” things based on false assumptions, uneducated stupidity and malice. 

Take Social Security, after saying he wasn’t going to touch Social Security his Doge team shut ten field offices, got rid of the department that helps seriously disabled people get benefits and, of course closed the Civil Rights office. So what’s a person who wats benefits to do? They can go to the web site. Oh, but all those people are gone too.

We are told Elon is not in charge of Doge. It’s a woman who was surprised to learn that she was while on vacation in Mexico. Elon said in the first cabinet meeting that they may make mistakes, but they will fix them quickly. Take for instance the ebola folks. Yeah. Fired. Rehired. Bird flu? Same deal.

Meanwhile, Bobby Jr. is “doing his thing.” There’s been a measles outbreak in Texas. People have died. That’s normal say Jr. Really? Have you googled “last measles outbreak US”. You might be interested to know that the disease was declared eradicated in 2000. Now? It’s Baaack!!! It seems everyone who has measles was not vaccinated or their vaccination status is unknown. There are no cases of a person who is vaccinated getting measles. Maybe, there’s a correlation?

Same for polio and other diseases that we know how to stop with vaccines such as mumps, chickenpox, Hep A or B, and Bubonic Plaque.

Yeah, that’s right, The Black Death is making a resurgence. Turns out marmots in Mongolia are infected with it and their health department has warned people not to eat marmot meat. Guess who went there to eat marmot meat? Don Jr. Right on. He knew there were warnings not to eat it. Some kind of illegality thingee, which he ignored. 

But not to worry, Don Jr.’s hunting buddy is heading up the FDA’s food safety group. This after the old head of the group resigned after 89 of the people in that department were fired. He thought it would be “useless” to continue given the distain the administration has shown toward them. But Don Jr’s buddy? Well, he has some legal degrees and claims to have extensively advised about regulations and chemicals in foods. That is a good thing because the FDA was looking into a listeria outbreak in supplemental shakes.

Let’s clear up one other thing – “probationary hires.” It’s not just new hires. It’s anyone who has been promoted into a new job. They are probationary in that job for one to two years. There are people with 15 and 20 years service whose careers are on the chopping block.

Ya know what I haven’t heard of is any waste that has been found. I mean little things, but nothing that Doge or people who have been railing against “The Deep State” have found.

I have seen that the Doge folks have little or no understanding of many of the areas they are running through with buzz saws. Take for instance Social Security and people being 150 years old. They found bunches of them. Are any of them getting checks? Who knows. No one checked. Did they bother to learn that if Social Security doesn’t have a birth date for someone they put in “1875”? Lemme do some high level math here 1875 from 2025 is, hum, well to get to 1900 would be 25 years, and to 2000 is another 100 and to get to 2025 would be 25. So 25 + 100 + 25 would be 150. Hum, so it seems that the number of people reported to be 150 years old is actually the number of people who may not have a birth date? Just guessing.

Meanwhile, airplanes keep dropping out of the sky. Depending whom you listen to about such things and how you cherry pick your facts (e.g. Fox News – worse under Biden, Eric Swallwell – none under Biden, Washington Post – “the American Airlines crash at Reagan National Airport on Jan. 29 was the first fatal accident of a commercial airline in 16 years — and the deadliest in almost a quarter-century. “

It seems that we’ve been experiencing a lot of plane incidents recently. Now Doge says they’ll come in and fix the software. What? You’ll let people muck around in code they’ve shown even the most basic knowledge of the code to be terrible to muck around in code that keeps panes flying? Well, don’t worry according to the not director of Doge they will make mistakes but they will fix them fast.

Sunday, February 16, 2025

We saw Wicked – finally. In a movie theater.

It was different than the play. They didn’t play up the mall rat speak of Galinda, the good witch. They tried. They hinted at it, but it didn’t quite come off, which was okay. What they did instead was to play up Elphaba, the green one, and how she was really smart and good and trying. This as opposed to everyone else who was just keeping their heads down and trying to be one of the gang. Talk about a pastiche for what is going on right now in this country. Oh man. It was spot on.

They saw cruelty and did nothing. They pretended not to see. They heard gaslighting reasoning and went along. 

In other news, I read last night how a person was fired from the Park Service. It was heartbreaking. A job they loved. Naturally, it was done in as cruel as bureaucratically possible. No warning. Cutoff from all systems. Boom. See ya.

I had heard that USAID folks were let go with no warning and cut off from the app that would allow them to be extracted if in danger. This is the kind of thing Trump did to Comey. Fired him when he was out west and they got pissed when he heard that Comey took the FBI jet back to the east coast.

It’s also interesting that I have heard of no fraud or abuse that has been found. I have heard:

– The interestingly only the agencies that are investigating Musk and his companies are being whittled down or done away with.

– That six AGs have quit rather than drop charges against the NYC mayor. One of them is an arch conservative. And the thing is they aren’t dropping the charges, just letting them sit and fester to see how well Adams does in letting ICE into churches, jails, and hospitals to rip people out of those places.

– That Guantanamo is going to be used for hard care criminals that are to be deported. Yet, those that have been sent there don’t fit that description.

– That they let everyone go who was taking care of our nuclear weapons and decided to let them back in on a provisional basis.

– That spending and the economy is way down. That everything Trump complained about being too expensive under Biden is up, way up. Eggs, Gas, clothing – doesn’t matter it’s up.

– We now have an HHS Secretary that says we should take an eight year break from vaccine research. This while an outbreak of measles is in Texas, ebola in Africa, and bird flu has moved to cows and humans.

– We have the main author of dismantling the government as outlined in Project 2025 is now head of OMB.

– Elon has called for the blocking of Reuters from having a government contract. The Reuters he is referring to is a separate company from the Reuters the news service that has written investigative articles about his companies. Well, they are owned by the same parent company so close enough.

Carry on. 

I have to wonder when will reality hit them so hard that they will be washed away, and what will be left when it does?

Yes. Well. Important matters await my immediate attention. I need to see about repairs to the Bat Signal. After those damn kids crawled all over it. Fortunately, or unfortunately they didn’t turn it one when one of them was on the lens. Could have fried them. It’s dangerous when you don’t know what you are doing. But if you don’t know? Well, C’est la vie. (That French or is it Spanish, for ”i’m sorry they don’t live here anymore.”)

MEGA!

Eggs at the local grocery store $6.08 for 18.

That’s $4.06 a dozen.

Ahd there’s only one choice.

Remember the good old days?

Eggs were $2.59 a dozen, even less.

And you had choices.

Now?

Fuggetaboutit.

Thursday, February 6, 2024

Elon Musk, reportedly the world’s richest man, is continuing his attacks on the poor. USAID is being shut down, as is Head Start.

He is turning up the screws on Federal employees to resign. He did this at Twitter and is being sued for not living up to what he promised.

Meanwhile, his gang of six, the boys in short pants, have been given access to the keys to the kingdom in the form of the Treasury Department’s payment system. What they will do to that is yet to be determined.

60 Minutes has turned over its tapes of their interview with Kamala Harris to the FCC. Part of Trump’s on going $10B suit that CBS showed Kamala in a positive light.

Fighting between Rwanda and the Congo has left 3,000 dead and the Red Cross says there will be more.

Ukraine is appealing to conservative American Christians to help keep the aid flowing by attending the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC.

Trump has said Gaza should be turned into a resort. Nice beaches and all that. Hey Donnie, the last time you suggested this boffo idea it was North Korea, right down the road from Un’s concentration camps for political rivals or anyone for that matter who showed anything but total subservience. How’d that turn out?

Hello? Hello?

And in other news efforts to contain deadly diseases have been shut down. It’s the mantra of the Republicans to, as one article explained it, treat infectious diseases like mega-donors. By cutting off funding to NIH and cutting ties to WHO there are now reports of outbreaks of avian flu and ebola. These organizations had contained and were close to ending HIV, TB, and malaria. But hey, why not give them a chance to go wild again?

Apparently, part of the MAGA cult belief is that vaccines and disease prevention is bad. To show their distain not only do they not get vaccinated, they don’t wash their hands. That’ll show them.

And in international get tough affairs Trump has gotten both Canada and Mexico to bend their knees to the great orange one! They’ve agreed to do things that they agreed to do when Biden was President. Way to go Donnie!

Egg prices have skyrocketed and gas is above $3.00 pretty much everywhere. What happened? Transgender chickens. Yeah, that’s it.

PS It’s been pointed out that what I thought was a bull is a cow. Who knew cows had horns? I took a picture of two signs one was clearly a cow, The other I ASSumed was bull. My bad.