Somebody is up to something good

 

I was reading one of the news composite sites where they pull news from various sources. One of the articles was about a State Senator from Utah changing his party affiliation from Republican to Utah Forward party.

I haven’t jumped on the internet to research the Utah Forward Party, yet as you can imagine the change to a third party caught my eye.

I read through the comments on the article and there were quite a few positive comments about switching. Some even addressed maybe it is better to piece meal a new national party at the state level. Or another words third parties develop in individual states and then coalesce over time into a viable new major party.

I am all for something like this happening. I scream we need new parties, yet understand that it won’t suddenly appear overnight. Glad to read about his change. Personally not all on board with his exact reasons, yet hey, a win is a win.

So if you are in Utah and are looking for something center right which from the little bit I read appears to be their direction, then check them out. For everyone else, lets keep our eyes, ears and mind open.

One of the comments even stated tired of the us versus them attitude currently in politics so hats off to that commenter also.

Cheers all

Trump’s yo yoing tariffs and the Republican tax bill

 

Pretty straightforward. How can we trust any numbers the Republicans introduce about tariffs to offset their income tax cuts for the rich if we have no idea how much (even) potential revenue will be collected from tariffs?

It is madness to even think the American public can trust what the Republicans are doing if their leader changes his mind as consistently as Trump does. First of all most of us don’t trust what they say from the beginning, yet it just becomes more and more obvious they have one goal in mind and that is the tax cuts for the rich. Somehow or another they will talk their way into it no matter how much they destroy this country. Maybe one day the rich will realize if this country falls apart at the seams and no one has any money those tax breaks are worthless. Let’s hope it is today, tomorrow at the latest.

The performative show the other night was a waste of time since it was all bluster and show and tell. Nothing substantive mentioned except we will screw you to get what we want. Of course they didn’t say that, but they did.

Musk needs to be fired. Vance needs to go back to Ohio and stay there. Johnson needs to find God and listen to what God says. And if anyone thinks a crypto reserve is no more than another sham or like Musk says a ponzi scheme then they deserve to lose their money, yet the rest of us still remember 2008-09 and do not need nor want another financial disaster. And that will happen if Trump starts investing America’s tax dollar into that scheme. Or cuts taxes with no real budget in place, or keeps cutting the government with no real plan in place, the list goes on.

Trump is driving this train high on narcissism and Casey cannot find the damn brakes, much less any reliable track. My apologies to the Grateful Dead.

And ironically Trump is making the President of Mexico very popular in her country. Heck she may make Mexico great (again?).

Too bad the man who needs our help the most and deserves it since he is fighting for liberty and against oppression is treated like the third step child once removed from an abusive parent. Again Vance needs to go back to Ohio and sit on the porch and chew straw. Nothing he says shows any competence. And too bad Trump wants to gut the Department of Education, we certainly need better public education right now.

The list of madness goes on. And tomorrow will bring us more because in two weeks the government shutdown madness reaches another crescendo.

Americans just don’t want the truth

 

And this is any American, they fight hearing it daily. And this goes back decades. I think in the 1960’s there might have been a desire for truth. Then the seventies happened and people either got too high and effed up or they became Republicans. So the need for the truth wasn’t put on the back burner, it was put out with the trash.

Think about this for a moment. When the Republicans introduced trickle down economics, they should have been tarred and feathered. Even the name was the biggest hint. It was the rich saying we come first and you come what fifth, you will get what trickles down. At that point working and middle class America should have brought that government down in a heartbeat. Called for elections the next day if they really cared about themselves, much less the truth.

Trickle down is the biggest joke played on the American body ever. And yet here we are still talking about it today in one shape form or another.

Please don’t tell me it works. Please don’t tell me the Democrats are against it. Please don’t tell me squat until you are ready to make real change.

The first sign the Democrats aren’t against it is the fact, we still need major campaign reform, we still need lobbyists out of Washington, we still need to support the middle and working class, we still need better public education and I could go on.

And the Republicans still support it in its current Donald Trump tax breaks for the rich and then whatever else falls from the table you might get concept.

Neither party cares about a better America. They only care about staying in power, which means lying to their base and taking millions in campaign contributions. Did anyone try to legislate Citizens United away? DID THEY EVEN TRY??????!!!!  NO!!!!!!!!  Or were any significant campaign reform ideas legislated, much less passed? Nope

We would rather complain than work even if the work is better for us. Hate me, I don’t care, but I am telling the truth. You don’t want the truth, heck like the movie says, you cannot handle the truth because that takes real work. It is easier to be lied to than make change, even if it is the change we desperately need.

You might say, you just ate a great dinner, had a nice fine table wine (even the better half enjoyed it and she doesn’t like white wine), are digesting and should be at peace, and I should. Yet, I watch what happened with Zelensky and watch people act like he is in the wrong. Sure some people stood up and said that was a bunch of crap, but where in Congress is anyone pushing bills to change the narrative. Too much work. Too much reality.

We let the power brokers lie to us, fail us, ignore us, and sit here with our fine table wine and whine. Yes I am just as guilty since I am not beating my Representative’s door down. I should be, we all should be.

Go back and check the history if you believe we shouldn’t help Ukraine. Just in case you don’t know, we signed an agreement as the United States to protect them if they gave up their nuclear weapons in 1994. And now we watch Trump tell the world our word means shit. Again some outrage, but for the body politic as a whole, we fail Ukraine, we fail ourselves and we don’t give a damn about ourselves because if we did we need to hold our government accountable.

The tax breaks are crap. So the next time you are outraged either as pro Trump or against Trump or whatever remember the concept is trickle down. So when you don’t get yours, don’t complain because the rich are getting theirs first as always.

Nothing wrong with the rich until WE, THE PEOPLE, let them run roughshod over us. And they have been for decades.

I guess we get to enjoy our spring of discontent wine or no wine.

Something fun, something ugly

 

There is something I always tell people that if they read this they will know immediately who is writing this blog. I write under this alias(?) of a name so I can say what I want to say and not have to listen to people tell me how wrong I am. And as you know dear reader I never tell you what to do or think, yet….

Do not grow old. Live long, prosper, live a fruitful life, but under no circumstances grow old. It is way too much of a pain to bend down and try to pick something up or be extra careful with just about every movement so you don’t throw your back out. Or watch what you eat or drink, how much you exercise, why getting out of bed is an immense struggle just to put your feet on the floor. You ever hear the phrase you must give thanks every morning when you sit up and put your feet on the floor. When you get old, you certainly understand that phrase with multiple meanings.

 

And for your paranoid, outrageous conspiracy theory of the day. Have you ever wondered why Trump is so okay with Putin taking over Ukraine, you know a border country that really isn’t Russia’s yet he makes believe it is Russian. Why would Trump even care? I don’t know, yet if I was the Mexican President I might want to know.

Watching the dominos fall, great real world experience for Econ 101 students

 

I am not an economics major, yet like most even average Americans we can see the dominos being lined up to fall.

I am not one hundred percent sure a recession is coming, yet if you lay off thousands of people especially concentrated in one area, yet also some in other areas you can perceive what might happen next. Many local businesses will suffer do to reduced business such as restaurants and other local spots in D. C.. Once the local businesses start losing money then they either lay off or close completely. Once they close then distributors and wholesalers lose customers and you guessed it, they start laying people off. Company by company up the corporate food chain will be impacted. More workers losing work with less employment opportunities in an area either creates a spiraling situation in that area or a drain of the workforce as they move elsewhere to survive.

If this drain in D.C. starts to migrate then where does it head next. Of course and as always the workers, especially the service industry workers are hit hardest. If they cannot find work, then things start to get dicey as they look to alternate means to survive.

Do they do the right thing and move to new locations and start their own businesses or find employment? Or do they wallow and let circumstances sour their attitude? Well lets not speak bad of those less fortunate.

And in our current Administration’s worldview, how would they react to large scale claims to the unemployment system? If current direction of cuts are the leading example, many people could be left with nothing.

That’s okay because Trump says he can fix it all and it is only him. So Econ students get out your pen and paper and start taking notes because Trump will save the day and you can record the great savior at work. Or you can deal in reality and take notes about how bad things get when you let a fraud take over the government. I bet you can even get a book or two out of it.

Have fun

Oops forgot to add the call to action

 And like all milquetoast calls to action it is probably what you expect. Write your Representative or Senator, just like that the world’s problems are solved. Okay not really, however, if you are specific and let them know you mean business it might help a tad bit.

And let me make this easier for you.

For your Representative go to this link:

Find Your Representative | house.gov

You can enter your zip code and you have their email address. And if you feel you need write or address your Representative professionally there are resources you can internet search to help you.

For your Senator:

U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators

There are two per state so you can write one or both. And same for Senators if you want to make sure you write a proper salutation or what not, there are resources on the internet.

And if you think what should I say, well in my milquetoast call to action, try talking about, why is Musk in charge of my information?; how about writing legislation that overturns Citizens United; why don’t you control the budget, not Musk; we want a balanced budget, yet we want it done correctly which is Congress’ job, how about working on making Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid healthy, instead of hacking up the government, why don’t we make these agencies more answerable to Congress and the money allocated for them; how about tax breaks for me, not the one percent who do not need the money; and make sure they don’t lie to you about trickle down economics and all that BS; and whatever else you might think of like making the Department of Education a quality endeavor instead of just pushing over a cliff; or what about accountability to people who hurt the people with their actions. The list can go on yet  for now just touching on these subjects is a start or even a few.

Now here is the real call to action. Let them know you expect results and if you do not get them, you will work within their district to primary them. Yep this means if they continue to screw you then you need to recruit someone to run as a Democrat or Republican probably starting late this year to run against them in the primary. And be prepared to work.

As you know I would prefer just to ditch the Republicans and Democrats completely and elect a slew of independents, yet if you help overall the parties then that might work too. As long as you let them know, you are paying attention and expect results now. If not expect a whole new crop of people looking to replace them in Congress.

Either way it is time Congress went back to doing their job, which is control the purse strings, hold the Executive branch accountable for how the money is spent, balance the budget and most importantly represent you.

You pay their salaries through your hard work, why not spend an extra few minutes a day making sure they work hard for you.

Or primary the lot!

I’m sorry to say, you won

 Wait who is the you in the title? Is it every bogeyman you can think of in our modern society? So, guess who is losing? No one? Well no, but why aren’t we winning.

And as you have figured out by now whether you want to admit it or not, you are not winning by design.

Common sense, practical thinking, taking time to actually study is discouraged. Is it by society’s bogeymen or by us?

It could be us since we spend more time playing games on our phones than reading books, well thought out articles on the events of the day, even watching worthwhile videos on Youtube beyond how to fix the washing machine at home (those are worthwhile because it never hurts to save some money, the problem is when you absolutely need to just to eat) or history videos, yet do we learn anything to apply to our modern world. We do, but how do we apply it?

I am coming across five times more negative than I would like, yet it is hard to drive a point home in the modern world without being hit upside the head by the problems of our society. And there is so much doom and gloom. Do I espouse a revolutionary world? No, I would just like to make our world better within the existing system for all of us. You know, the milquetoast of revolutionaries. The polar opposite of Trump.

Yet, what is wrong with wanting something better in a practical fashion. Apparently everything in our modern world. You have heard the phrase in some shape form or fashion, if you ain’t rich, you ain’t shit.

And that does seem to be the modern mantra. And then as always our elitists love to tell us how to live  in this world, there is now de-influencers. Yep, you are now supposed to listen to people tell you not to buy everything you see on the internet and we need people that are popular to tell us that? “back in the day” we use to call that common sense, now the idea of common sense is to be discarded along with everything else that helps us do better such as values and morals. And have you noticed elitists love to tell us how to live like we need them to do such. Otherwise how would we exist. Elitism is just another entity taking our souls and lives away from us and replacing it with programs and self help books (maybe the ones we shouldn’t be reading) to live a better life.

We are stuck though. To lead a better life requires effort, not just the watching the washing machine repair video work, but work at many levels. Is it revolutionary work? It should not be, however we keep postponing it so eventually it may need to be. I hope not. I prefer my little milquetoast attitude if we just do better, things will be better.

Partially goes back to my need to start using resources better. There is quite an extensive list of viable and even easily readable books on what is happening and not looking down your nose at us elitism with valid answers to our problems. I don’t use them enough or this blog would be peppered with them right and left with answers. You read a well thought out book on society and resources supplement or enhance the point the author wants to make. And there are the books, articles  etc that can supplement why I am trying to encourage you to take action in our society.

Do I get lazy and say you need to do your own research? No because to prove my points I need to direct you to the correct resources. You know, common sense approach to helping you help me.

 

And I also feel that the world’s bogeymen have not won yet, even though that might be hard to prove with the richest man in the world running amok in our lives vis a vie his access to all our information through the entity that is supposed to protect us. The picture looks bleak.

And there are many saying we are in decline and that eventually we will need to rebuild from the ashes after we have burnt the planet down. Again the milquetoast in me says we can do better. The longer we wait the harder it will be to prevent the complete burning of our house.

So what next for me, you, the winners, the losers, the in between, the future generations, the diehards, the decrepit? I don’t know. What I do know is I am not ready to give up on us and hopefully one day a few of you will agree with me. After that it is just another small revolution to bring back common sense and decency to our lives and a government that is responsive to us not them.

Yes it is a dreary cloudy day here in North Texas so maybe I am just feeling a bit morbid. Who knows? It is about to become cold. The news tells us it will be the coldest two days of the year. Let’s hope we survive 36 hours of below freezing temperature because spring is right around the corner. And yes this is Texas, surviving 36 hours of below freezing temperature is a big deal, said sarcastically.

Cheers

The one problem Trump cannot and will not solve

 

For every society to be successful, the fundamentals of the society have to be strong. One problem we face today is young people do not know what is a healthy relationship. They want to know. They struggle with trying to find out why the myth of being in love is such a failure for them. They look all the time for the right answer, yet it alludes them like trying to catch up to the horizon. You drive or even sail across a beautiful never ending open field or desert landscape or calm waters with very gently lapping waves against the boat towards this far away line that divides the sky from the earth. Yet it keeps moving or changes over time and then fades into darkness as evening comes. There is a dream, a point they want to reach, but then the sun goes down and they are left with another lonely night to contemplate what might have been.

And it is not their fault, nor anyone’s really because so many of us grew up not knowing what is a healthy relationship.  You know it is a problem because there are so many books to help you find a healthy relationship. And tomorrow there will be a new book released upon a public trying to survive in whatever version of a relationship they feel is the right one for them.

And yet there are answers or even an answer, but we struggle with it because society runs us away from it. And how we are chased away depends on who is doing the talking. Liberals will use terms like partnership. A couple needs to develop a partnership for their relationship. In some ways there is some truth to that, but that cannot be the foundation of a healthy relationship. A partnership is better defined for businesses than people in a relationship. Or women need to have control over their own bodies, which they do, but that also leads to acceptance of women commoditizing their bodies with prostitution or pornography. The more a woman has to use these tools for economic survival shows the more a society has lost track of what is a healthy woman. Woman should not have to sell themselves to earn a living, no matter how many people tell you that you are liberated and in control woman by doing so. The more woman sell themselves the more it shows the economics of that society are struggling, the values and morals are struggling, the foundations are more aligned with control of people than people being liberated. Women as a commodity is just one symptom of a society in decline and you may think things like OnlyFans help women be liberated because they have control of the situation, I say quit lying to yourself. Liberation comes from you being respected as a person.

Conservatives will talk about the need for the family, women should stay home and be traditional  or “trad” wives. What is a traditional wife? Is it one that stays home and does all the domestic chores and takes care of the children while the man goes off and earns the bacon? Honestly only in farm households and suburbia in the 1950’s do/can we even conjure up that picture. There is no real traditional wife. The era more determines what the role of the wife has been than some idealistic dream to make people think that is the correct relationship. So how do you define what is a healthy relationship in this modern era? Too many people fall for the myth of the traditional wife without really applying it to today’s world. And just like prostitution a traditional wife can be commoditized for the benefit of the man. If the expectation is she is the servant of the man, it is her role to only please then you do not have a healthy relationship. Yet some on the Christian right are trying to sell you this perverted notion of a relationship. In no way shape or form is that the role of a traditional wife. Control of another person is not a relationship.

And in both cases of a partnership or traditional wife concept a healthy relationship can be built. The relationship though shouldn’t be defined by society because society has it’s own morals that could be good or could be destructive.

Some people can simply say the only reason we have relationships is to procreate, to continue the species. And yes that is one reason to have a relationship and if we were still living in the wilderness and had no more intelligence than animals that might be all we need. We have something more in our banged up heads and that is a brain that functions differently than animals. So procreation is not the only reason for a relationship, but in a relationship you do need to be open to life because for us to continue to grow both in number and in higher ideals you need to create more life.

And before I go any further I am not going to say I have the correct answer. Sorry to burst the bubble here, yet it is you that has the answer for you. The problem I am addressing today is no one helps you to find that answer. I am somewhat active in life so I speak with many people including young people and I hear over and over why can’t I find someone.

Or people who think they have found someone and they aren’t sure why it isn’t working they way they thought much less some perfect dream.

Our society throws so much garbage at us, we lose track of why we even want a healthy relationship hence we cannot define one.  And for a society to be great, become great or be great again, the foundations of human relationships need to be strong. And yes that includes families, raising children with values, parents who understand each other and want to be with each other.

If you talk to anyone in a long term relationship, many will say you have to choose to love. And yes you do. There are going to be days, you do not particularly feel like loving your spouse. It happens. The difference is people understand when you are arguing and need to stop, or choose to love or others for a variety of reasons do not stop and choose to hate. And once the underlying separations begin it takes more and more work to coming back to choose to love. Our society encourages the choosing to hate.

You have to win, you have to be right, they didn’t love you in the first place your friends will say, how dare they treat you like that your friends go on, and in being on your side they are not helping you. Sometimes you will be right, sometimes you won’t, yet both times you need to stop and walk away and come back to it when you are ready to discuss. Will feelings be hurt sometimes? Will you have to compromise sometimes? Probably all times is the answer.

The only way you win is when you both decide what is best going forward. And the answer yesterday may not be the answer today. Our society does not tell you that.

And healthy relationships are more than partnerships. You need the emotional attachment that does not come from a business relationship. Yet in whatever agreements you make to run your family, make decisions about your finances they need to be made together and sometimes it will feel like a partnership.

All in all though we, as a society, spend more time destroying relationships than building them up. So if you truly want to make America great or great again, we need to start at home. We need to find ways to support couples and families. And this is hard. Many of us including myself did not have good role models. And not because my parents were bad. Both actually were good individuals, yet both struggled with each other and by the time I was five my parents were divorced. It took many years for me to even begin to understand I needed a relationship with someone and it needed to be healthy. And from there it took many years of marriage to begin to create a healthy relationship. And it was a struggle, yet for some reason my wife and I kept going. Yet perseverance by itself is not the answer. How many times have you heard “we stayed together because of the kids?” And then poof the relationship is gone. Perseverance by itself is not the answer and is one reason why I know I do not have the answer nor does a self help book either.

People need to know though they need a healthy relationship and from there what they do is share it. First with their children and then with their interactions with others in society.

Again I do not have the answer, yet I can say by showing the person you want to have a relationship with, you need to respect yourself and them and then you need to choose to love. So easy to type onto a page with written words, so difficult to do once much less daily in our current world. 

And by chance after you read this, get off the internet and go talk to someone, give them your love and respect for just a moment. That at least is a start.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Idealism is a failure

 

I was meandering around in my brain and that thought came up. And I thought that already has to be a book. I internet searched the phrase on three different search engines and nothing that matched it exactly appeared or found.

There are quite a few references discussing the failure of idealism yet not the exact phrase. Here are some interesting references I found:      

               The phrase “your idealism is a epic failure” (which appeared in the text box as I typed idealism is a failure.) coughed up this:

How does your idealism make you suffer? : r/infj

Reddit · r/infj

70+ comments · 8 years ago

 

I am the opposite. For many many years now, I've practiced the "Fail Fast. Fast Forward" approach; which means I learn quickly from my mistakes ...

Idealism is Just Sophistry: The Fatal Flaw of External Reality ...

Jan 14, 2024

What does Nietzsche mean by "All idealism is falseness in the ...

Mar 6, 2023

Clarification for idealism : r/askphilosophy - Reddit

Sep 14, 2024

Why reject idealism? : r/askphilosophy - Reddit

May 11, 2014

More results from www.reddit.com

 

(“a epic” is what the phrase contained, not an epic. Don’t know why)

Or I found:

Dave Pollard

https://howtosavetheworld.ca › 2009/05/06 › the-curse-...

 

May 6, 2009 — I have always been an idealist. Even as a young child I imagined worlds that were, in every way, perfect and simple.

 

 

Newsweek

https://www.newsweek.com

 

What's Wrong With Idealism? - Newsweek

Published: Jan 15, 1995

Author: Newswee…

Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins

What remains is idealism without ideas. It offers no guide to political action and creates the illusion that important decisions can be taken without conflict. The result is a failure of...

 

 

Essentia Foundation

https://www.essentiafoundation.org › idealism-may-not...

 

Idealism may not be what you think | Essentia Foundation

 

1.     

Florida Atlantic University

https://www.fau.edu › spa › pdf

 

^[PDF]

The Failure of Idealism: Mental Models and the Inability to …

The Failure of Idealism: Mental Models and the Inability to Change Public administrators are attracted to ideals. American public administration has been intimately involved with the …

 

So you can go down many rabbit holes with this one phrase, yet as I was thinking I could not see how any idealism worked. And I think many of you with just a quick thought may come to the same conclusion. We have many “ism”s yet we do not have many utopian societies. Yet the phrase that caught my attention the most is driving me mad because as I contemplated about the failure of idealism I realized idealism fails because it has no path of action. The phrase I found that came closest to my internalized meanderings is:
               What remains is idealism without ideas. It offers no guide to political action and creates the illusion that important decisions can be taken without conflict. The result is a failure of leadership. In the Clinton administration, principles enshrined in high rhetoric, such as America's commitment to Bosnia's national survival, are frequently abandoned when their cost becomes apparent.

 

This is from the Newsweek article” What’s wrong with idealism”  listed above.

 

The article pretty much describes where my thoughts devolved into to a point yet I also think that it is much more. I guess you have to look at how broad of a definition of idealism you want to use. Are we talking large scale idealism such as communism or democracy? Are we going to say the ideal has to be all encompassing for mankind? And is that where the failure lies? Or can you as the Newsweek article discusses relate it to a specific idealism that tries to solve one problem in society?

 

The article also discusses the people behind idealism or people trying to create an ideal solution to a problem. They have specific groups in mind and there is also much more, yet their example does highlight problems with trying to come up with an ideal for any situation.

Idealism in any shape form or fashion according to my brain offers no guide to political action. The authors of any ideal have to back out of the ideal and create a path to achieve the goal. In it’s most generic sense communism needed socialism to arrive at communism. Somewhere someone had to centralize all planning so all wealth could be distributed equally. Could it still be achieved? I doubt it since there are too many humans involved. And is it because of humanity or human nature that idealism will always fail? Probably, yet we still create ideals all the time. There is something ingrained in the human spirit that wants a perfect world, some kind of equality amongst men.

 

Philosophers spent millennia developing idea after idea to no avail. No one has turned the table on the foibles of mankind and figured out what we need to do to all be equal.

 

And this is not my original point, yet it must be said at this moment. This is why I believe our Constitutional Republic is the best idea so far. The key behind it is the concept of equal opportunity with protections stated for those not in power or not as “equal” as others. The failure of course is humans still want to control other humans and in our case is it the economic hierarchy  that so many of us foolishly believe will support the masses also. No wonder socialism looks so good to so many. Socialism will fail, yet capitalism only succeeds for the one percent, the rest of us are serfs. We did come close by the 1950’s. Yet it is not this time that Trump refers to when he says make America great again. No he has a different America he wants to make great. Unfortunately too many of his supporters think it is the 1950’s and (white) American workers are going to be treated well. At one point our parents and grandparents worked hard and started creating equal opportunity in practice, yet the one percent said “holy shit, this doesn’t work for us” and began the process of buying off our government for their benefit.  No revolution, no bodies lying in the street, just plain old economic power plays because they could. So most Americans do not realize how bad they were screwed. You look at the wealth gap from the 70’s to now and it is obvious, but no one  wants to do that because then you have to admit how much of a patsy you became.

 

Anyway the above paragraph was not my original intent in thinking about why idealism is a failure. Or

maybe I was thinking the above because that leaves us with one successful idealism and that is the idealism that since I am richer than you I am better than you and you must follow me or you are a bad person. It seems like that is where our society is headed unless some philosopher can create a new idealism that replaces all the failed ones that we can rally behind and watch fizzle out once we try to put it in practice without a true path for implementing it.

 

Idealisms are failures for many reasons yet I will cling to our idea of a constitutional republic until someone comes up with something better. I just hope others realize it is up to us to fight for it before it is too late.

 

Or maybe just maybe the ideal world is not of this world and we need to focus not on things on this earth. It seems when we lose our moral compass and our faith is when our societies decline. To what truth do we follow? Ours? Or? Right now it seems our society has no moral compass and more and more the lack of morals much less the casting aside of our Republic’s ideals show we are in a great heap of fecal matter.

Latest podcast is live

 a podcast that is a bit of a follow up to my blog post: "the help I need is out there" is live. Please go to Youtube and search for dallasareaopinion and look for the latest edition on resources.

Cheers

Everything Elon Musk is doing is unconstitutional

 He was not elected, he was not confirmed by the Senate for a Cabinet level post, there is no job description for what he is doing. Trump cannot just say he is implementing his policy when there is no office for him to work from nor has he been identified as a Federal employee.

Everything he is doing is unconstitutional. Someone needs to get a Court to halt any and everything he is implementing until exactly what his role is defined.

The help I need is out there, yet

 

There are so many resources out there to help validate many of my points. They may not completely line up with my exact wailing that we need new parties and new leadership, yet they are out there.

You may or may not remember a television ad where some guy is on a deserted island. He is scraggly looking with unkept long hair and beard like he had been there awhile. It is the typical tropical island, there are palm trees all along the shore waving in the breeze, the waves are rolling onto the not white sand, but very light tan sand beach, he has written large letters into the sand either saying help or SOS I cannot remember exactly and he is sitting next to a fire looking desperate or lost. And if you are so inclined you might feel the heat of the fire or smell the salt water in the air. As he is sitting by the fire he hears a helicopter and goes running out to the beach waving his arms all excited. The scene cuts to him riding in the helicopter and he asks how did they find him or something similar and the lady flying says, oh we are with the resort on the other side of the island.

Or another words what he needed was there all along, he just didn’t explore enough. I am not quite that far removed as him because I do read and watch Youtube videos on all sorts of topics, yet I never add these references or points they make to strengthen or as said above validate what I believe is needed.

The reason I finally bring this up and you guessed it I plan on referencing more books, articles, Youtube videos, or whatever else I find that leads to me to validating my points and thoughts.

Now all of these references may not line up exactly with my views yet they show that more and more and not just recently people are looking for something different than what the Democrats and Republicans have been offering for decades and I do mean decades. True it was in the background maybe because people would relegate the need for change with earlier iterations of conspiracy theories or other fringe ideas. Yet people were making honest discussions of the failure of our two major parties. And this was in other areas of society also.

Some of the frustration of people eventually led to the rise of Donald Trump. Now some people consider Trump a bit stupid. They are idiots. He is not a genius, yet he certainly understood or heard what people were saying they needed or wanted and found a way to align it with what he wanted. Now that is a worn out argument so I will move on. Or maybe it isn’t because the Democrats cannot seem to grasp that yet.  I will move on though.

My reference for today is a book titled Hate, Inc. by Matt Taibbi. This book focuses primarily on the media. He is a well respected author and writer and leans more to the left. Or he has written primarily for left leaning publications like Rolling Stone. And apparently the book originally was written on Substack. He acknowledges this in the first two sentences of the introduction. He goes on to describe how the book evolved and what the reader can expect either from the evolution he made or if a new reader, as I was when I first read the book, what the book wants to address.

The subtitle of the book better explains why it is important to my arguments, “Why today’s media makes us despise one another”. This book explores the evolution of both left wing and right wing media creating an environment that pits us against the other side. Some liberals may say this is all because of Fox News, yet Mr. Taibbi shows us this has been developing long before Fox News came about. And he also breaks down that it is both sides of the media using some of the same techniques to divide us for their readers to maintain a loyalty to their brand. There is a substantial amount of history of the media over the last few decades and if you are not a regular member of the press you might get lost in the weeds of his references. Still he spells out what has happened and most readers can easily see what has developed over time, who are some of the culprits and make sense of his observations and reflections.

I am not going to write a book review on it, even though I could. This just plays into my wheel house so much so that I could not make an objective review. That wouldn’t be fair to help a reader to determine if this was a book they wanted to read. I am just going to tell you, read the damn book. Every American and maybe a good chunk of the world should. Go to the library and check it out if you don’t want to make him rich by buying it, but read it. We have all felt it, yet we do not want to pull ourselves away from our side because we need our side. Our side validates our beliefs. And as humans beings social animals this is needed. What we also need is to think critically and make decisions based on knowing all sides. This is pointed out in the book, yet I say again, read the damn book. He does a much better job of laying out what is going on than I could in some blog post. This isn’t a recent book yet all his points are still valid and probably the situation is worse than when he wrote.

There is going to be much more to come on using other resources including this book and there will be some podcasts using and on other resources*. Expect one soon.

I hope you continue to have a prosperous and Happy New Year. It is the Chinese New Year this week so do something exciting and celebrate the world.

Cheers

*Why is it all the great writers have the great editors, as always an editor is worth their weight in gold, too bad I have neither.

I’m cravin’ some misbehavin’

 

It happens to all of us sooner or later, and for someone like me much more than any should.

We start daydreaming, we are cooped up too long, we get caught in the dead of winter and even though the days start to inch longer, we still feel a longing of sorts to get out and do something and not whatever it is we are doing.

In the days of youth spring break dominates the thinking and you got to be careful because some serious misbehaving happens. Other times such as the dog days of summer we look for cooler weather, a change of colors, someplace to sit and enjoy a sunset over a body of water, or even fall sporting events such as the World Series or the start of football.

So it never matters the time, we are always look to another time to shake up our lives.

And this misbehaving can be so many things, for a person stuck at work too long, a long lunch may be tempting; or the mind can ramp things up and vacation days start to hit the synapsis and dance like sparkles of sunlight bouncing of that aforementioned body of water; for a person on a diet it can be a donut; for a religious person it could simply mean skipping morning prayers; or for a lay religious person it might mean treating yourself to what you gave up for lent three weeks in; and speaking of Lent, Mardi Gras may tempt others; sleeping in maybe what a workaholic needs; and actually doing something different is what drives a desire to misbehave.

Some people think misbehaving is bad and yes it can be, yet also it can be good. Our lives are so full of emails at midnight, morning meetings where we drink too much coffee to get through, taking the kids to the emergency room for a broken bone or high fever in the middle of the night, or the car not starting or a tire is flat when you are running late to get somewhere.

Yet no matter what goes on, life is too short to continually try to make it perfect, to assert our control over events, to rely on others to make us happy or to wake up and feel completely out of control. We need moments of getaway. And as much as we may like a five star hotel, sometimes a simple hike down an old city trail can be a joy, yet whatever it is, it needs to be done.

There is the saying all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and it is so true. Sure sometimes a person’s circumstances require that said person has to work all the time and that is sad, truly sad. Somehow we need to treat each other with respect and compassion that a person should not fall into such a dreary or dreadful life. Life on earth is a joy and everyone should have the opportunity to experience it. We are given a few fleeting moments on a beautiful planet so no one should be sentenced to a painful life. Unfortunately it does happen so always be open to share with someone your time, thoughts, help or resources to give someone “a break”.

So go misbehave every once and awhile yet just remember, if all work makes Jack a dull boy, then all play makes Jack one heck of a menace. We do have our responsibilities. Do we want to feel accomplished and left out though? Learn to mix things up, find new friends, new experiences, see new places and especially learn to smile spontaneously. So go crave to misbehave today (or tomorrow).

Life doesn’t always have to be earth shattering.

Cheers

The real reason for the TikTok ban, censorship is more monstrous than you think, and other assorted nightmares

 

Opportunity.

Opportunity is the real reason for the TikTok ban. Many say and partially rightfully so that is competition. The American social media companies want to get rid of TikTok because it is competition to them and eating into their market share, profits etc, however, if you sit back and think about it, Tik Tok gives millions of people opportunity that people do not have in other areas.

The plutocrats or oligarchs, or whatever you want to call them, want to control the world, yet if there are avenues for millions of people to have an opportunity that is a threat to them. If people can be successful in areas they cannot control this is a threat to them. And as we know, the rulers do not like threats to their rule. So what we are really looking for to replace TikTok is not just another medium, but one that opens up doors for people to be successful on their own. And so much so that it threatens the elite because opportunity is what keeps us thriving as a populace.

 

So on way too many occasions I go out and make comments, snarky comments etc on other social media platforms or on the comment boards to news articles and so on. What I am finding is the infamous “community guidelines” or just “X” in general are out of hand. I cannot prove my “X” example, but I have been putting critical comments on “X” about Musk and Trump and then if I go back to check what I have put on there, those what use to be tweets have disappeared. Unfortunately I have not taken screen shots of the original post, but I am seeing a few of my posts not show up under a search for me. I don’t normally search for my stuff, yet I had posted a critical comment and then I went back to edit it or make a comment to it and couldn’t find it so it got me checking other posts. I feel some are missing.

Second the “community guidelines” are seriously out of hand. I entered this comment on a story:

We need new parties or independents to gain control of the House just to reset the power structure and give more power back to the people.

I copied the comment verbatim onto a word document  when I got back the message it violated the community guidelines for the site. Seriously I tried it twice and received the same message about violated the policy. How on God’s green earth does the above comment violate anything. There are no derogatory or vulgar words, no hate speech, no what?????? Please read this again and let me know if I am missing something. Otherwise this is serious censorship at a whole new level. I understand a site can create their own rules, but this???

 

And with Trump’s second term upon us, do we fear the worst? Or is it all bluster and nothing gets done. The acquiescence of Republicans towards him is more than pathetic, but what really burns me is his cabinet. Only loyalists to a fault and with many of them very wealthy it is beyond the pale that this government represents anything other than a grab of greed and power for a very select few individuals. And add in Trump and the rest of the Republicans have bad public policy as a goal, what is the average Joe and Jane supposed to do. And as David Bowie once sang, but even more relevant today: scary monsters, super creeps, keep me running, running scared.

Hopefully I am wrong, but I am not too thrilled about the next four years, especially since the clueless Democrats still haven’t figured out what hit them.