Mom

I lost my mother last September. She was 86. She was also a teacher, poet, and whiskey drinker.

When I lost my dad, back in September of 2021, it was a much different situation. He was hit by a stroke, out of the blue, and then he was gone. He was almost 83, and I was sure he’d be around well into his 90s because he had been in great shape.

Mom had a much tougher path. She’d taken a couple of falls since Dad passed, and they really messed her up. By the end, she was in chronic pain and had to be heavily medicated. She spent her last two months with home hospice care, dependent on others to get to the bathroom and move from chair to bed. It was an undignified life, and she hated that; hated being a bother to anyone. So when she passed, it was really a blessing because her suffering was over.

So now my brother, sister, and I are 60-year-old orphans.

I can’t complain because we’ve had a good run. So many people lose one or more parents early in life, so we made out. I hope my retirement is half as good as theirs was. But still, over the last several months, things would happen in my life, and I’d itch to tell Mom about them, and it would come back to me that she was gone, leaving me nothing to do with my news. She loved to hear stories about the latest thing the dog did, or how our kitchen renovation was going. I guess I never outgrew the phase where I want to tell my parents about something I did and get their approval.

Anyway, we had her Celebration of Life last Saturday, and a slew of relatives came to Baltimore from Pittsburgh, California, and North Carolina, to enjoy lunch, some drinks, and tell some stories and remembrances about Mom.

2016

This was my presentation:

Once upon a time, a traveling entertainer was on the road and came across a beautiful kingdom. He asked the first person he saw to direct him to the palace, so he could request an audience with the king and ask about landing a performing gig there.

Eventually, he was shown to an ornate chamber where the king and queen sat high on their thrones. Brought before the royal couple, he realized that the spotty road food he’d eaten earlier had left him uncontrollably gassy, and he loudly passed some of it before he could even begin.

The king was greatly offended and thundered, “How dare you fart before my queen?”

To which, the entertainer replied, “I’m sorry, Your Grace, I didn’t know it was her turn!”

 

That was one of the first jokes my mom ever taught me. She knew that potty jokes always landed with grade-school boys. So she provided me enough material to kill on the playground for years to come. That was helpful because when you’re always the new kid and you’re not the biggest or toughest, it’s good to be funny. She also inspired in me a love of wordplay, which I’ve used to torment my friends and family ever since.

I’ve always said that I’m a combination of both my parents. Some things I got from Dad were the need for things to make sense and call Bullshit when it doesn’t, the will to mess with people just for fun, and an enhanced sense of practicality.

From Mom, I inherited much different set of personality traits.

The first was a need to create via writing. I never had Mom’s gift for poetry, but I picked up journaling from her, which fed my need to chronicle and catalog everything in my life, like a born scorekeeper. Like, it’s not worth doing if you can’t record it and tell someone about it later.

And with writing came her family’s knack for storytelling. Her father and brother were two of the masters, and Mom carried on the tradition, regaling us with the family stories from her childhood and on. Modern life doesn’t provide us with as many one-on-one storytelling opportunities as it used to, so I turned to writing and eventually blogging to tell my stories.

Mom was my first editor, from book reports to research papers, and all I ever wanted to hear was, “That’s fine, turn it in as is.”

Now, I never, EVER, heard that. And remember that all of this was back before the internet or even onscreen word processing. I had to use a manual typewriter, and it wasn’t until college that I got to use a fancy electric one. So, anything more than a small misspelling meant that I’d have to type the whole damned thing over again. Sometimes we’d go round and round about a correction. It took a while before I realized that she was always right about those things, and it would have been easier on me if I had just gotten started on the retyping.

I remember once I mailed Mom a short story I’d written up, and that Sunday when I called for feedback, Dad answered the phone. I asked where Mom was, and he told me she was out, shopping for more red pens.

That was probably just Dad messing with me, but I couldn’t be certain.

Another gift from Mom was that of political activism, idealism, and the pursuit of social justice. I learned empathy from her and to try to leave the world better than I found it. Again, that’s another thing that surfaced in my more recent writing. Mom was my biggest fan and usually the first commenter, right up until she could no longer use an iPad.

Sometimes, still, in these last few months, I’d do up an essay and think, “Mom will really like this one… oh yeah...shit.”

Not only was she our mom, but she often acted as a backup, auxiliary Mom to the rest of the Neighborhood. All of my closest friends knew that when they were having troubles at home, they could come by for some comfort and a hot meal. Especially on Friday nights, when everyone knew they could find a crock pot full of mac n cheese. That was Mom’s specialty. My buddies would go on about its savory qualities, describing everything from the aroma to the ~pfffft~ sound it made when you broke the top layer.

And then there were the Morning-After-Barn-Party detox sessions. I’d crawl down from my room and survey all the human wreckage sitting around the kitchen table… blankets around their shoulders, hair all messed up, and Mom plying them with coffee and hot homemade cinnamon rolls. We’d reconstruct the night by playing another game of I Did What? Mom would just be over there shaking her head in exasperation.

Sadly, the Crock Pot Mac n Cheese came to an end during the time Mom was staying with us. Mom was always saying, “What can I do? What can I do?” Mostly it was just “Get out of the way, get out of the way,” but sometimes Sweetpea would ask her to make a batch of mac n cheese, which Mom was only too happy to do.

Then one night, as I dug into a big helping, it tasted a bit off. I couldn’t quite place the ingredient, so I tried some more. Still not right. Then Sweetpea took a bite, scrunched up her face, and asked Mom, “What did you put in this?”

Mom said, “Just some olive oil,” and pointed to the bottle of dish soap on the counter.

Meanwhile, I was still poking around my plate, trying to find a place that didn’t have as much soap in it. I just couldn’t stand having to dump the whole batch, but it had to be done. And that’s when we figured it was time to retire Mom’s wooden spoon, which as my brother and I fully remember, she could wield like a ninja when we needed our foolishness to end.

At my parents’ 50^th anniversary event, Dad explained that there were two reasons they’d been married for so long. For one, he traveled a lot. And the other was that he married an angel. When it was Mom’s turn she stood and said, “Everything he said is true,” then sat back down.

I think she might well have been an angel, or at least as close as we humans get. We're fortunate that we’ve been able to stand in her light as long as we have. I know we’re all better people for having had her in our lives. May her spirit live on through us.

2013

Doing the Passport Boogie

The thing to remember about the SAVE Act is that it’s not tied to the current president. This was something dreamed up in Project 2025, meaning it comes from the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Republican plans and strategy. So even if it doesn’t pass soon, in its current form, we may well see it surface again.

With that in mind, Sweetpea and I took steps last week to obtain passports, which seem to be the silver bullet to getting registered to vote. Both of us have expired passports. Hers is recent, but not recent enough to just get it renewed. Plus, she underwent a name change when we got married, meaning if the SAVE Act ever goes through, she’d be affected by the new registration requirements.

My passport was laughably old; I got it in 8^th grade to take a spring break school trip to Paris and London. But still, the passport directions said that it could be used to provide proof of citizenship for a new one. I don’t necessarily need a passport to vote, but I figured, for one, you never know what new voter suppression wrinkle they’ll come up with next, so it’s best to be prepared. Also, we may want to go someplace exotic once Sweetpea finally retires from teaching. So why rush later when I can just go through the process with Sweetpea, at our leisure? She was on spring break last week, so it provided the perfect opportunity.

I could have used my official birth certificate copy, but the directions gave me pause. They said it had to look like “this,” showing a certificate-looking, generic document. My copy looks like a DMV application, not “certificate-like” at all. My dad obtained the copy in 1975 from the state of Pennsylvania, and that’s how they came. He needed it to get social security numbers assigned for his three kids, to present each of them with 10 shares of stock, as Christmas presents. The copy should have been enough, but I didn’t trust that it would, in this day and age of agencies adhering to every iota of a rule. Just to be safe, I applied online for a new copy. It still hasn’t arrived, so I don’t know what it will look like. I figured, if I end up needing it, I’d rather it already be on the way. But that was a $15 charge.

I looked up the government website that covered passports and found the form they require. There was nothing complicated about it, but it required that you supply the city and county in which your parents were born. I knew, but that could be a stumbling block for others. You could fill out the form online and then print it, so I did that, rather than risking a data mistake due to my atrocious handwriting, should I complete the form by hand.

I’d been in a drug store about a month ago and noted that they did passport pictures, so we went there for ours. They charged $16.99 per shot. I suppose we could have taken them ourselves, but it seemed to be an intricate process to make sure you were lined up correctly. I figured we’d leave it to the professionals. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Then, photos in hand, I went back to the computer and looked up where we could submit our applications. Our local post office was our best bet, so we set up an appointment for last Tuesday. I thought there would be some kind of back room they’d take you to for going over the paperwork, but they did it right there at the window. We also saw that they take passport photos as well, and we probably should have used them because theirs were only $15. Furthermore, we learned that the drug store missed that Sweetpea had her glasses pushed up on her head. Directions stated that no one may wear hats or glasses for their picture, and that includes glasses on the head. So we had to pop for another photo.

After chuckling about my junior high passport photo no longer resembling my old, grizzled ass, the clerk took in our documents and got us settled quickly. The charges were $35 for the Post Office fee and $130 for the passport fee. The $130 had to be cash or check, no credit cards. So the total for each of us was $181.99, plus the $15 for the extra photo and birth certificate, which brought it to $196. Can you say “poll tax?”

We were in a position to handle the cost, but do you think many people working for an hourly wage are going to cough that up for a passport they wouldn’t otherwise need, just to cast a vote? That’s the exact result expected by those who dreamed up the SAVE Act. It was designed to be a deterrent, so only the well-to-do (who traditionally skew conservative) would vote. It should have been called the SAVE our GOP Asses Act. And that’s not just me blowing smoke. Republicans are saying the same thing:

This is why it angers me so much, and why I keep beating this dead horse. The Republicans know that their true goals play very poorly with the average citizen, basically anyone who’s not filthy rich. That’s why they campaign by fearmongering on religious and social issues, which don’t cost them anything. They don’t have anything tangible to offer towards the economy or environment, to draw people in. They want to cut the programs millions of people rely on, like Social Security, Medicare, libraries, the postal service, FEMA, SNAP, WIC, etc. If it’s money going to common people, they want it cut. So they literally have nothing left to attract the people they’re financially harming; all they have left is rigging the voting system. They close election stations, reduce the number of voting machines, coerce Red states to gerrymander to pick up districts any way they can (thus triggering Blue states to do the same in response), limit early voting, curtail or eliminate mail-in ballots, and add onerous and expensive voter registration requirements.

They do all this so that rich people can get richer by rigging the tax system and business regulations, obtaining sweetheart government deals, and ensuring their grip never weakens. They don’t give a shit about you or anyone else. All we are to them is a resource to be exploited.

Let There Be Light

A lot went on last week. The Iran War dragged on, with various accounts of whether there was a win, talks were going on, talks were never going on, the “decimated” Iran air defenses were active enough to shoot down two of our jets, we successfully retrieved the pilots, the Attorney General was fired, and the president sent out a profane Easter message to all, with a shout out to Allah. Just another week in the life. But what’s really important is that I fixed something around the house. Now that I’m retired, I’m going to have to do a lot more of that.

My dad wasn’t much of a “fix-it” guy. He could do some basic stuff, but was never one of those toolbox and workshop types. So I never inherited the home repair gene. Granted, I’ve spent most of my adult life as an apartment dweller, so there wasn’t much I ever needed to do, aside from changing bulbs, hanging a few pictures, or hooking up TV cable and stereo equipment. I can also build the occasional piece of furniture from a kit, like end tables or dressers. I assembled our giant entertainment center some 30-odd years ago, which took me two days. But for stuff like plumbing, painting, or electrical, I always stand aside and let the professionals take over.

My oldest buddies are most definitely certified DIYers, but they live a couple of states away. They’re not much practical use, but I do get to regale them with my tales of Bluz the Incompetent Handyman. I should have probably kept my yap shut about it over the years, but I trade the teasing for the priceless look on their faces when I tell them of the latest thing I fucked up.

Like the time I was trying to hang curtain rods in a new apartment. I had just moved out after separating from my first wife, back in the late 90s. I borrowed her electric screwdriver and was desperately trying to sink a couple of screws into a window frame. The frame was soft pine, but no matter how hard I grunted and pressed, the screw would not bite. After about 20 minutes or so, I examined the electric screwdriver a little more closely and noticed it was set to retract, so no matter how hard I pressed, it wouldn’t sink because it was turning the wrong way. (D’oh!)

I didn’t set it that way, but my mistake was assuming that it was set correctly when the Ex gave it to me. Once I flipped the switch, I was done with the curtains in about ten minutes. I had to call my buddies that night to tell them the story; it was just too good to keep to myself.

Now, to the most recent endeavor, the on/off switch to the bathroom light broke Saturday night. We figured it should be a simple matter of buying a new switch and swapping it out. I was also keen to replace the electrical outlet beside it, which was still the original piece from when the house was built in 1959. It looked like this:

The problem was that it’s not wired for modern 3-prong plugs. And unfortunately, three-prong outlets are all we could find at the local hardware store. I was pretty sure I could handle swapping out the on/off switch, but I didn’t want to start messing around with more in-depth wiring issues, so we decided to table that part and just ride with the plugs as is, because they at least still work.

Now, I haven’t worked with electrical wiring since I was a junior high student, and built a hot dog cooker by banging two nails through a piece of wood, splitting a cord from an old iron, and wiring one side to each nail. (Put the hot dog on the nails, and the part between the nails will cook in a matter of seconds. Try that at your kid’s science fair!) So the fact that I was even attempting something like this was daunting. But I figured, I’d open up the panel, take a look around, and if it was any more than taking wires off one thing and putting them on another identical thing, I’d bail and call the experts. Otherwise, I’d take a shot.

So, the first order of business was to find the circuit breaker to shut off the power to the bathroom. That took a little trial and error because while our fuse box had labels for each breaker, none of them said “bathroom.” But we found it.

I swear, even though I KNEW there was no juice, it was still nerve-wracking poking around in there. I knew that any minute, I'd get a big shock and Sweetpea would be able to see my entire skeletal system. (OK, maybe I should have watched more YouTube tutorials and fewer cartoons.)

Ultimately, it looked like something I could handle. I only needed to disconnect the two black wires from the screws (on each side) and reattach them to a new switch capsule, then screw the whole unit back into the wall and replace the cover plate.

And that’s what I did. It took about 15 minutes in full. Sweetpea ran downstairs to turn the breaker back on, and when tested, both switches worked as they should.

Then it was time for celebration. We threw our hands up, and she said, “You have created light!”

I said, “Now bring me your finest meats and cheeses!”

With that, I reviewed my mental checklist for the event:

Replace the switch capsule          ☑

Don’t black out the house         ☑

Don’t start a fire                       ☑

Don’t electrocute yourself        ☑

Don’t fuck it up                         ☑

Meats and cheeses                         ☑

 

Odd Bits - The Housekeeping Edition

As we did in October, the wife and I attended our neighborhood’s little No Kings protest on Saturday. Last time, it drew about 70 people at its peak. This time, it was about half that. I attribute that to the fact that it was about 40 degrees out with a brisk wind, rather than a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the locals. I was kicking myself because I stood in front of our closet for ten seconds, wondering whether I should bring gloves or not. Within five minutes of being out there holding a sign in that wind, I knew I had chosen poorly.

The cars were honking enthusiastically at the signs, which ran along the same general lines as they did in October, only with a few added pleas for peace. Sweetpea and I reused the same array of signs we made before. My favorite signing came from a protest I saw online (I failed to note where):

Now, “Over The Rainbow” would be a bit of Commie Leftist propaganda rather than a timeless classic.

From the Department of “I Totally Called That”

Over the weekend, TFG mentioned that they are building a large military complex under the new East Wing.

Yeah, no kidding. I pegged that in October:

“Since he was having it all rebuilt from scratch, I figured there would have to be some secret 'special rooms,' something he’d need to be off the books. Something like a protective bunker, something built with today’s best tech, where he could hide out indefinitely, all the while being able to surveil his domain and keep track of what’s being shown on TV. Maybe even have a studio in there from where he could get himself onto Fox and Friends. He could install a special safe to hold the Epstein files that only he could access. And, of course, his own McDonald's.”

Now he’ll have a place that, if his voter-suppression tactics and outright denial of results don’t work, he has a burrow from which someone will have to pry him, like a rabid badger down a hole. I’d recommend one of our famous bunker-busting bombs, if we have any left. Come to think of it, I bet he’ll make sure we’ve used them all up, maybe blowing up some “underground South American druglord fortresses” in October of 2028.

Never forget that the presidency is the only thing keeping him out of jail, and his loyalist Justice Department is doing the same for his family, cronies, and Cabinet. He has zero motivation to leave peacefully, and we need to expect as much. There is no line he won’t cross to keep this gravy train rolling. I bet there will be a helipad within waddling distance, too, so if he must flee, he can get airborne quickly, to shuttle off to Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or some other friendly dictatorship that offers him quarter.

Paper Chase, Cont’

Just to let you know how it turned out with my newspaper subscription, from last week’s post, the situation has been resolved, temporarily.

I called last Tuesday afternoon, and after fighting through a voicemail system that definitely did NOT want anyone speaking to a human, I finally reached an East Asian call center and got my discount reinstated to $159/month. That works out to $5.12 per paper, as opposed to $6.80, undiscounted, which is still crazy but less insane. Cover price is $4.00... I remember paying anywhere from a quarter to a dollar on the street downtown, on days my paper wasn't delivered before I left for work.

I expect I'll have to do this every six months from now on until I die or tell them to screw it and go to weekends only.

Like I said, I mainly keep the paper for the comics and puzzles. I know there are alternatives, but I have my reasons for still wanting the paper. Getting a paper is really an ingrained habit. My parents always got a daily paper or two, so I grew up with it. I’ve had a paper delivered for my entire adult life, save for the 4 years I spent in a particular apartment complex that didn't allow indoor delivery (mid to late 80s).

I've tried doing crosswords online, but I just don't like it. And printing them from online would also cost me a fortune (in paper and toner). I like the daily routine of doing my puzzles during lunch (away from my computer desk) or weekend breakfasts. Sweetpea and I both do them. I do the Baltimore Sun puzzle (which is actually the syndicated LA Times puzzle), the NY Times, the Jumble, and the Sudoku.
I've been doing the puzzles at lunch continuously since 2010, and even started a results-tracking sheet in 2016. Yes, really. I used to keep track on my desk calendar, but started a spreadsheet in 2016 to look for the longest streaks and other personal records.

Someone got me a crossword puzzle book about 15 years ago, and I couldn't use it. It was a book of NY Times puzzles, but they were from the early 1970s. I couldn't complete a single one... it was like they were from another planet.

I like that the puzzles are up to date, always changing, and keep me sharp. Or at least, make me a fountain of useless trivia.

Also, this is Baltimore, and I married a native. We need newspapers to line the tables on blue crab night.

By the way, the paper never mentioned anything about local No Kings protests, including only an article about the big one in Minnesota and all the star power that appeared there. And they didn’t cover much about Speaker Johnson killing a vote on funding DHS and the TSA before sending everyone home on vacation. So remember that when you see the next troll blaming the Dems for long airport lines.

 

Paying Them to Mislead Us

I just got my bill for my daily newspaper, and it seems they removed the discount for which I bargained with them last fall. They did say that it was a six-month deal, but I was hoping they’d forget. They charge $215 a month now for home delivery, which I find to be insane. When I started with the paper, it was about $35. I’ve got to call into the circulation department tomorrow and get my “haggle” on.

I swear, if it wasn’t for the comics and puzzles, I’d chuck it all. I get my significant news online, so I don’t really need that. The paper does keep me up on what’s going on locally, though, and lets me keep track on how the rich are attacking city and state government (both of which are run by the Dems). And due to a press time of around 6-7 PM, most important stories are a day late. Forget about sports game coverage, it’s always from two days prior. Their hockey coverage is abysmal. Last week, they used the previous day’s game results grid, so even two days later, there was still no information.

The problems started when the paper, the Baltimore Sun, was bought by the owner of the conservative news outlet, Sinclair Broadcasting. Now, instead of a reliable stable of in-house reporters, most news articles are farmed out to Sinclair national desks, and often run transcripts of what their Fox “News” affiliates ran on-air.

The old paper definitely had a liberal leaning, reflecting the prevailing views of Marylanders, but they kept it to the Op-Ed pages. The current version splashes its bias across every page, and it is especially obvious if you know how to spot it. Here’s one from last Friday:

With all the ways TFG, his family, and minions have been skimming money from the Federal till, they’re still carrying on about Hunter freakin’ Biden. They rarely even mention all the ways the president is raking in illegal dollars from overseas governments and influencers, let alone outright theft from other countries.

Also note that it comes down to “the whistleblowers say they’ve been vindicated.” Right. Trump said he was vindicated by the Mueller Report, too, remember? (Obviously, TFG doesn’t really remember it that way or he’d have provided a more gracious condolence than he did.) Nowhere else in the article does it say that anyone in authority has “vindicated” anyone. This is a nothing-burger article, meant to reflect negative attention onto Democrats at a time when the president is swimming in bad news and controversy.

They’ve been working hard at that, as evidenced by this article:

My take is that they got some bad polling news, showing that people were unhappy with Republicans on the war, the Epstein Files, the price of gas and groceries, the tanking stock market, etc. But the Sinclair National Desk couldn’t just run the story; they had to drag the Dems along, too. So the article is more about the classic “Dems in disarray” story than about how people are souring on Republicans. And notice how at the end, they talk about “threats against lawmakers and their families,” but they don’t mention where 99% of those threats come from.

Here’s another assassination by headline regarding the funding of the DHS:

They make it plain that those Commie Democrats are holding up funding for the DHS, but never mention that they’ve introduced seven (as of now) bills to pay the TSA agents and all department workers except for ICE, which they will pay if they agree to obey the same laws that local police do. Republicans voted no and killed the bill every time. They’d rather continue the illegal war on brown people than pay workers whose job actions are perfectly above board and not in question, essentially holding them hostage until ICE gets to keep free rein to kidnap anyone with an accent and send them off to detention camps unknown. Also note that female minors in custody are coming up pregnant, which they were not before entering custody. Perhaps this is another reason Republicans are fighting birthright citizenship.

None of that is in the article, just the skewed look at Dems holding up the works and Republicans excoriating them for it, taken from interviews that ran on Hannity.

Adding to their penchant for guiding readers to conclusions while omitting essential facts, we have this one from last month:

Yes, those stupid, socialist, Democrat, commie, liberals want ID from people just to shovel snow! Haw haw haw, they’re so dum!

But one simple line nullifies the whole perception.

The snow shoveling was a paying job with the city. Therefore, if people want to be paid, they must provide documentation! Do you remember all the documentation Republicans insist we provide to prospective employers, to show we’re not illegal aliens? That’s what they’re ridiculing. In actuality, the whole snow shoveling thing worked like a charm. The sidewalks and streets were cleared in a day, and people got paid for doing it. Running an article like this goes against every journalistic principle. It does, though, fit right in with being a shill.

And speaking of unforgivable newspaper sins, wouldn’t you think the paper might have kept an editor or two? JFC, how incompetent does one have to be to include a typo in a headline? Doesn’t anyone over there read?

Lastly, and this has nothing to do with the fast-fading newspaper industry, have you seen the design for the new 250-Year Anniversary coin, bearing the stern visage of our malevolent president?

Anyone alive and going to the movies in the early 80s remembers this famous pose. I think somebody owes Steve McCroskey a percentage.

Looks like he picked the wrong week to quit smokin’.

 

The SAVE Act is a Threat to Democracy

Thankfully, word is that the heinous, disenfranchising, election-rigging SAVE Act is unlikely to pass the Senate. Not for lack of trying, though. Not only has TFG been furiously jumping up and down on levers of power, trying to move Congress to nuke the filibuster to get this thing passed, but the PR game has been ramped up. I’ve seen several memes hitting Facebook via my conservative friends and their Conservative Media Bubble talking points, claiming that A) it’s just a voter ID, and B) it’s no big deal to obtain the required documents. Funny how it’s always “no big deal” for someone ELSE to jump through hoops.

Naturally, they omit the vast problems with this bill, like the time and cost involved in the not-so-simple task of tracking down and obtaining long-lost documents or replacing ones that are no longer acceptable.

The part about how a married woman’s birth certificate is no longer acceptable is particularly insidious. That’s a huge swath of Americans who immediately become disenfranchised for doing absolutely nothing wrong, other than taking their husband’s name (which is something Republicans tend to want women to do).

Consider how the GOP created this standard, on purpose. Why do you think that is? Tell me how it can be anything but the continued devaluation of women because of their perceived bias toward voting Democratic. (Which is a self-created problem due to their pursuit of limiting reproductive rights. Maybe if they weren’t trying to limit women to being incubators, they might have a better image in their eyes.)

So it’s not like it’s an oversight or something. In fact, they’ve had more than enough opportunities to remove that onerous requirement, but they’ve actively resisted doing so.

No, this is how they want it. They want fewer women to vote.

They could also create a Voter ID plan that would garner public support if they created a simple means of obtaining a valid document. But they won’t do that either.

They’re even willing to disenfranchise their own base. Look at how the SAVE Act affects red states:

Their stated basis for all of these new requirements is supposed to be about preventing voter fraud. That’s what they keep returning to in every argument: tall tales about illegal aliens affecting elections. This is the hollowest argument of all. There is no individual voter fraud in any statistically relevant case.

The only voter fraud found has been at the institutional level: doctoring voting machines, “losing” or pre-filling ballots, and providing incorrect details on where and when to vote. And this is in addition to the “soft” voter-prevention techniques of limiting early voting, voting by mail or drop-off, closing voting precincts, limiting hours, and threatening to have ICE teams monitoring urban voting locations. On the latter point, they’ll SAY that ICE is only looking for undocumented immigrants, but we have already seen through that. They’re rounding up anyone who fits the visual or linguistic description. If I were a legal immigrant, I wouldn’t go anywhere near a voting booth, because I wouldn’t want to risk my freedom. And that’s exactly what they want.

And ALL of these voter suppression actions were taken by Republicans. NONE of these things would be prevented by individual voter ID requirements.

Despite there being practically zero voter fraud, Republicans are insisting that a significant portion of our population wade through months of red tape to acquire new documents, counting on the fact that many won’t have the time or inclination.

This is what a political party does when they know their message is not landing. And this group has entrenched itself in positions of power, with no intentions of ever giving them up. Because they know that if they do, many of them are going to jail, from the standard minions to the top of the org chart.

There’s literally nothing they won’t do to prevent that from happening. Just look around.

Source

Truth is Another Casualty of War

This may be the first war in my lifetime where we can’t find out what’s happening on the evening TV news. This administration has a throttle on war news and will never release information that doesn’t glorify their mission.

Recall in previous wars, bombings, or raids, there was plenty of film being shown on TV: missiles hitting their marks, airfields blown up, mobile anti-missile guns wiped out, etc. We all remember that famous footage from the Iraq War of one of our missiles going through the window of some fortified bunker. It was an impressive display of American war skills. We’re getting a little of that, but not much. And we’re certainly not seeing what Iran is doing in their own defense.

Remember a few months back when the Defense Department made all journalists who covered the “war” beat swear an oath that they’d only report what the Pentagon gave them? Remember how the honest journalists quit and were replaced with friendly flaks who were only too eager to push propaganda? Well, that’s why we’re not going to get an honest take on Iran War activity.

Also note that recent events have created a whole new web of Administration-friendly national news outlets. Besides Fox “News” (and the minor cloned conservative outlets), CBS has succumbed to MAGA fever, and now CNN is heading there as well (after CBS/Paramount’s successful bid to take over the Warner Brothers universe). Add the Sinclair chain of stations, and you have a massive broadcasting voice that is willing to repeat whatever the Administration wants. And they’re certainly not going to air anything that runs counter to the claims of excellence and victory.

I’ve been seeing some alternate viewpoints on Facebook, but I don’t really trust them. There was a time when I could rely almost 100% that the liberal assertions were true, but that’s becoming increasingly unreliable.

This is the most truthful thing I’ve ever seen from a Republican.

I’ve read several outrageous claims I initially believed (because they were completely in character with other known MAGA outrages) that turned out later to be false. Either Liberals are now participating on Conservatives’ reality-distorting playing field, or the Russians/Iranians/Chinese are trying to make it look that way. Then, people don’t know what to believe, which is right where they want us.

One claim was that there was an order that went out from military commanders to all their soldiers that they were to think of the Iran attack as a holy war to bring about Armageddon. That tracks with the new Whisky Pete’s new Christian Nationalist military, but Snopes later debunked it as unproven.

But the main issue here is with the other claim I saw, that Iran has completely blown up at least 30 of our air bases in the Middle East; blown up as in completely wiped out. Billions of dollars blown to dust and operational surveillance up in smoke. Many details added depth and realism to the claim.

My take is that there have been some bombs or drones that have landed (see: our seven known casualties to date), even some key radar installations included, but we’re still operational.

But I totally believe that if such a thing DID happen, we’d have to find out from foreign news sources who are not beholden to the US government. Word would eventually leak out as the bodies came home (or disappeared en masse), but it would take a while. In the meantime, just like these guys want, I’m sitting here not knowing what to believe.

The problem is that in some of these FB newsgroups, anyone can post, which means the quality and veracity of the message varies. Usually, a commenter will call the hinky stuff into question, but, of course, you have to look. I hope these groups will begin to police themselves. I think anyone who posts misinformation should have their posting rights removed or just dropped from the group. The one advantage we’ve enjoyed for so many years is that the points put across by Dems and Liberals have generally been factually correct (compared to those of Republicans and Conservatives, the expert purveyors of logical fallacies, especially in TFG’s era). If we lose that edge, we fall even further behind in the fight for hearts and minds in the coming elections, which will be tough enough to win. And it will be even tougher to have that win count for anything, with a giant orange thumb on the scale. 

Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb Iran

So, like everyone who was paying attention last week predicted (myself included), we’re at war with Iran. I’m sure the president expects the country to rally around him the way everyone did with Bush II during the Afghanistan War. There’s nothing he’d like better than to see himself portrayed as a battle-hardened wartime president.

And I don’t think there is much support for Iran’s theocratic regime either. There’s no question that the Middle East would be better off without them in command. Word is that the Supreme Leader was blown up over the weekend, along with the people the Administration thought would be next in line. In fact, they even had plans to work with them to set up a new government. It probably would have worked better if they hadn‘t blown them to bits.

Who knew we had the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in our arsenal?

I’m actually surprised there wasn’t a plan to capture some of the clerics in charge, so they could be debriefed. I bet TFG would love to hear more about how these few people used religion to keep the masses in line and themselves in power indefinitely. That’s a good source of knowledge gone to waste.

So while it seems like good news on the surface, I still have nagging doubts. Right off the bat, you have to have a hard time believing any information that comes from this White House. This is an administration that has turned lying to your face into an art form. There’s no assertion too ridiculous to pursue if it’s something the president sputtered out. So excuse me if I don’t believe anything until I’ve seen confirmation from outside the Administration. And with the consolidation of national news media under Republican control, we can’t trust many of them to report independently. I expect most will simply parrot whatever the White House tells them.

The other thing is, these are people who go off half-cocked regularly. The president says what he wants, and they fly into action. Where’s the plan? How do we even know that there is one? These guys have cocked up a bunch of initiatives only to have to walk them back amid unforeseen consequences.

For all we know, he may be angling for a new Trump Tower in Tehran. He might be acting on someone else’s behalf, maybe someone who has compromising information on him, like we all suspect Israel and Russia do. Maybe his defense contractor donors need another influx of cash, so they request that we use up some of our weapons stockpile so that they may sell us replacements. Or maybe he and Whisky Pete just want to see some things go boom, and feel that swelling in their man parts, like so many other fake tough-guys. And for whatever reason, this “Operation Epic Epstein Fury” (thanks Hackwacker) certainly provides the distraction that they so desperately need. Before too long, we’ll be hearing that they’re far too busy with this war to worry about pursuing Epstein-related charges.

As for American casualties, that’s just an abstraction for this Administration. They don’t give a rusty fuck about losing our servicemen. “Suckers and losers,” remember? They’re just assets on a balance. You can tell by the way they’ve essentially neutralized the VA, making an already overwhelmed institution even more ineffective, by starving it of money and resources.

And if they don’t care about our losses, they sure don’t give a shit about Iranian civilians caught in the bomb zones. Right out of the chute, the first thing we heard was that we blew up a school for girls. Granted, when this first came out, I had doubts about the veracity. I mean, it’s right there in the Middle East playbook: Declare losses of benign entities and claim victimhood. You see it every time, when they claim we blew up a school, or a hospital, or a falafel factory. They omit the part where the factory was making falafel AND IEDs.

But by now, I’ve seen a lot of confirmation and nothing to the contrary, so I believe the part about the girls’ school now. And I also believe that no one in the Administration cares. Do you think they’ll seriously admit to a mistake? About anything? Not these guys. If asked, they’ll come up with some kind of ridiculous rationalization.

But it makes you wonder, that with all our famed intel and spy capabilities, how did we come to bomb a girls’ school? That’s not a great way to change the hearts and minds needed to foment a new West-friendly government. It’s just more evidence to them that we’re a well-armed Goliath who can’t be trusted.

Late Development

New reports call into question the White House's rationale for the bombing, that Iran's attack on us was imminent. Not so, says the Pentagon, in a Congressional briefing:

Oops. But again, it just goes to show how easily this Administration lies to us.

Tariffs and Gold

It was kind of surprising to see the Supreme Court rule against the current Administration when it struck down the president’s unilateral tariffs. They haven’t voted against him very often and are seen to be in his pocket. But there’s subtlety at play here. The six conservative Supremes aren’t necessarily as loyal to the president as they are to the rich and Republican (with a sub-loyalty to religious wingnuts). When their interests align, they’re happy to overturn precedent and upset the apple cart.

But with the tariffs, the big-money crowd values a predictable and reliable economic atmosphere, and having a toddler throwing tariff tantrums when the mood hits him is unsettling. It shakes the stability that they need to milk the Market to the degree to which they’re accustomed.

Decision aside, we’re still in the same place because the Emperor is now pushing a 15% global tariff, as revenge for having been told “no.”

Talk immediately jumped to the prospect of refunding the tariffs paid, which is problematic. The payments should really go to the US citizens, not the vendors. The vendors who first paid the tariffs have already been reimbursed by us through raised prices. The Government paying them back would be double-dipping, unless the vendors were required to then reimburse those who bought their goods and services at the tariff-heightened prices.

Do you really think that’s going to happen? In fact, how would it even be possible? How would they know who to reimburse and for how much?

I imagine people who used a grocery store loyalty card might have left usable tracks. And there may be some help from credit card records. But those who paid cash or didn’t participate in store points programs would be SOL.

So, the alternative would be for the government to refund us directly. And because they would be just as limited in tracking individual purchases as retailers, the only fair way to do it is a universal check distribution. And that will never happen. This government will never part with cash money to be sent back to the unwashed masses.

And who knows where that money even is? It wouldn’t surprise me if all the tariff money was funneled to another offshore bank in Qatar, controlled by You Know Who. Maybe that’s why he’s so dead-set on imposing tariffs, despite presumably being told by everyone, from cabinet members to donors, that tariffs are direct taxes on US citizens and not a fund received from foreign countries. It’s another grift for his personal benefit. And that’s all we are to him: a source of revenue to be harvested upwards.

So I’m not holding my breath on the chance of seeing some money falling back down to the common citizens. If anything, the vendors will get a refund, which will then be used for bonuses and stock buy-backs, just like the tax windfalls of the past. Once again, the wealthy benefit, and the rest of us get screwed.

Going for the Gold

I enjoyed watching the Olympics again this year. As a retiree with my afternoons open, I was able to watch a lot of the live coverage during the day. Then I could pick and choose what to watch during the evening recaps.

 My newest T-shirt.

Watching yesterday’s gold medal hockey game between the US and Canada was thrilling. Just from a purely hockey perspective, the game was tremendous; everything a hockey fan would want out of a game. It was a fast-paced, hard-hitting, and hard-skating game that went down to the wire in overtime.

I was rooting for Team USA, but not as rabidly as I might have in the past. Part of me wants to express dissatisfaction with the state of things in the US, but the other part of me knows that it’s not the athletes who are to blame. I mainly root for the players who play for my favored NHL team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. If the Penguins’ Sidney Crosby had been playing for Canada (rather than having given up his spot due to injury), I might have drifted over to their side.

Who ended up in the US locker-room celebrating but FBI chief, Kash Patel, who apparently had nothing pressing to do this week? 

Waste of Kash.

Maybe he was looking for his girlfriend in there. That certainly justifies commandeering a government plane to fly to Italy on the taxpayer’s dime. I suppose he’s just emulating his boss, who also loves crashing sports teams’ celebrations that have nothing to do with him. It’s no wonder they need to bask in other people’s glory; they create so little of their own.

The women’s hockey finals were just as captivating, as they also went into overtime. The Canadians tied up a 1-0 game late, then the US won it in OT on a great inside dangle and a point-blank shot from the crease. (Sorry, that’s a lot of hockey lingo!) Although sadly without the name recognition, I found the women’s game just as captivating and well-played as the men’s final. It was a great week for hockey. The men should have supported them better when the president made light of them on his call to the team.

I’m always fascinated by the high-flying and high-speed sports like the ski-jumping and half-pipe acrobatics. It amazes me how people can learn how to do that without maiming themselves.

The skating was enjoyable as well. I felt terrible for our big men’s singles threat, Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God,” who, after all the hype, totally ate it on his long-routine performance. But I loved that our women’s contestant, Alysa Liu, won gold on a tremendous performance. She had such a positive attitude that it made it easy to root for her.

Short Track Speed Skating, singles or relays, is like a combination of skating fast and human bowling. It’s just chaos in motion, and every so often, there’s a huge crash, and people go flying.

I’ve always thought I’d like to take a ride on a bobsled because it looks like so much fun. Then I saw accounts from famous fans who tried, Jason Kelce and SNL’s Colin Jost. Both made clear how utterly terrifying and physically jarring their ride was. So maybe I’ll just leave it at watching from the sofa. I don’t need to start chiropractor treatments anytime soon.

I have to really hand it to those brave souls who do the luge (going feet-first down the bobsled track on an open sled), or skeleton (same thing, only head-first). I think “skeleton” is an apt name for that event. I bet there are dozens of them buried near the practice track.

I watched a little curling early on, but it seemed like the coverage never ended. CNBC was practically locked onto curling coverage, to the point that their “C” might as well have stood for “Curling.” Bocce on ice… got it.

I was watching the gorgeous Mikaela Shiffrin win a slalom event and noticed how much she looks like Kylie Kelce (podcasting wife of aforementioned Jason). A couple of days later, I see the two of them talking about that very thing on Kylie’s podcast. They may not be identical, but they sure look like sisters to me.

Hotness either way you go.

So, now that we’re done playing international games to demonstrate peace, cooperation, and sportsmanship, it’s time to start a war with Iran. Stay tuned.

The Antagonist General

By now, I presume you’ve already seen all the coverage of Pam Bondi’s Congressional testimony, wherein she provided nothing but insults and presidential glorification while refusing to answer even the most basic questions about the Epstein files.

Obviously, she was performing for an audience of One, seeking His Majesty’s favor by being boorish and acerbic to her questioners, and effusive in praise for her horned-up Master. I’m sure to him, she did exactly what he wanted her to do. Do you think those Burn Books hadn’t been audience-tested yet? He knew the game plan. Of course, if she draws too much heat, it’s not like HE’LL take the fall. He’ll cut her loose for it and assign a new AG who is just as morally pliant as she is.

We ought to note that it’s been another week without a single Justice Department action on the information released in the Epstein files. Zero charges filed, zero investigations announced, zero activity. Oh, and zero fucks given about “accidentally” releasing the names of a handful of Epstein victims. Bondi wouldn’t even acknowledge their presence in the room when called out. Common decency would have at least called for an apology for outing them publicly. But then, that would have flown in conflict with a prime Republican axiom, “Never apologize, never admit you were wrong, always double down.” One can only conclude that those names were released as a warning to other victims and witnesses.

Right now, all we can hope for is that other countries, where they still condemn the raping of children, release the details that Justice is so actively suppressing. At least then the public may act on the information, even if the US legal system refuses to do so. Boycotts and civil suits may be the only alternative until the balance of power is returned to the non-pedophiles.

How the Media Shows Bias, Continued

The newly Conservative-owned Baltimore Sun continues to frame the main news section stories in favor of Republicans, or at a minimum, against Democrats.

This was front-page, upper-right corner material. You can see the focus of the headline is about Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, criticizing the “Trump Agenda,” despite adopting a couple of items from the Big Ugly Bill. It could have just as easily been characterized to give credit to the governor for using a political enemy’s idea, because it benefits the public. But they’d rather infer some kind of hypocrisy instead, because it goes against common Republican behavior. Because THEY will eschew anything a Democrat says, just because a Democrat says it, they assume that Democrats do the same.

I can say, personally, that I think there are a couple of points where I agree with the otherwise-nutball RFK Jr, like eliminating artificial dyes and sketchy preservatives from our food. I don’t think that makes me a hypocrite, just an informed consumer. It certainly doesn’t mean I buy into his anti-vax lunacy. But a Democratic governor doesn’t get the same courtesy.

Here’s another hatchet job, this one about the governor’s upcoming (at the time of the article) State of the State speech. You can see the fix is in from the first sentence: “Some political analysts have a question ahead of the governor’s State of the State address… will the governor use his speech to take shots at the president…” Who do you think those “political analysts” are? I guarantee they’re from Fox “News” or elsewhere in the Sinclair conservative universe. This isn’t news; it’s a fishing expedition designed to short-circuit any prospective criticism of their own leader. And that’s fine, in the OP-ED section. But not on the front page.

Governor Moore can’t even wind his watch without some hack from Sinclair or The Sun calling his motives into question. They really have it in for the guy. And I have no doubt it comes right from the top. It’s not an accident that Governor Moore was one of only two people who were “uninvited” from the annual Governor’s meeting with the president. Trump doesn’t like this guy, not only because he’s a Dem, but he’s a Black Dem who lives right in DC’s back yard, and he refuses to roll over for him. TFG obviously has no qualms about expressing his thoughts to media outlets about how they cover the news. Every story about the governor gets framed as something negative, regardless of the details. At the absolute best, they filter it through a lens of how it affects Republicans.

Last week, the Super Bowl halftime show got the same treatment:

This is all about the widely-trumpeted FCC investigation into whether there were suggestive lyrics broadcast during Bad Bunny’s halftime show. The tell is that it took them seven paragraphs to let us know that they found nothing objectionable, once the translations were done. They spent the first six paragraphs quoting Republican politicians who were lobbing charges and insults. This could have easily been headlined, “No bad language found in halftime show.” But that’s not what they want us to think about; it’s the possibility that there might have been. Someone who only sees the headline might easily think there was something indecent included, and that’s what The Sun wanted.

After the declaration, they give the remaining four paragraphs to Republicans criticizing the show and the NFL anyway. Also note that the source that they’re quoting, “On the Money,” is a column from the conservative mouthpiece, the New York Post.

It’s typical of the way Republicans operate now. They did the same thing with their investigations of Hillary Clinton. They speechify and ask incendiary questions. And when the answers provide nothing actionable, they talk about the juicy questions and hypotheticals again. Or open another investigation.