Taking a chainsaw to government. How much is Homan's budget btw? When is Trump gonna lower my grocery bill? He said during the campaign it would happen "very rapidly" (his words). What's his obsession with the Gulf of Mexico? There's not even a movement behind this. Has he forgotten about Greenland? So much on his plate. About the only good thing is he wants to open up the JFK files.
It's wearying. I might devote the rest of his term blogging about cats.
A Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the entrance to the Trump Hotel in Vegas. Being investigated by the FBI as a possible terrorist event. Driver killed and a few others suffered minor injuries. Also a truck plowed through crowded Bourbon Street in New Orleans around 3 in the morning and killed at last count at least 15 revelers and injured 35 others. 42-year old Army vet and Texas native Shamsud-Din Jabbar was the driver and killed in a shootout with police. Had an ISIS flag in his pickup. Both the Cybertruck and pickup both rented through the car renting app Turo. Possible link between the two events being investigated. FBI thinks Jabbar was not a lone wolf but possibly had terror associates. NYC and Yonkers recorded their first murders of the New Year.
Not an auspicious start. It would have been really nice not to have anything to blog about today. Ease into the New Year ya know?
Cats? Pipe smoking? The Middle East? No foreign policy post for Dennis Rodman in a Trump Administration? My drone is better than your drone?
Recent case in Yonkers. A couple brought a very young cat which was severely injured to a local vet clinic and dropped it off without giving their names or phone numbers. Anonymous good Samaritans but there's a bad twist. Cat later died and tested positive for rabies. The County Health Department is desperately trying to track the couple down to have them tested for the virus. Got me googling rabies again with my hundred other topics. Rabies is still generally considered fatal but...
As always though talk about anything you like.
I'm not one of those knowledge off the top of my head type guys. I'm more of a Captain Google tbh. Wikipedia the Assad dynasty in Syria and you could easily go into the wee hours. Get your brandy snifter. Bashar al-Assad during his earlier life actually graduated medical school and then went to London to train to be an eye doctor but was recalled back to Syria after his older brother died in a car crash and he then became heir-apparent to the regime....military academy...Syrian occupation of Lebanon...Arab Spring...Syrian Civil War...war crimes...human rights violations...chemical weapons...the UN, Obama, Trump. Turkey's Erdogan later became a kind of foe and worked behind the scenes...LOTS to go through. Bashar al-Assad has now been ousted as we all know by rebel forces and the head of HTS an al-Qaida offshoot is practically running the new government. Turkey is heavily involved and the new HTS-led Syrian government is trying to moderate its image. Putin has granted al-Assad and his family political asylum in Moscow. He may have brought a bag of gold coins with him. He always wore nice suits and believed in climate change and even recognized the State of Israel in private. Otherwise a brutal dictator.
There I've done my homework. Trying to give this blog some heft.
A lot of old people watch the news all day. Had an uncle watched the news at 5 a fire in Brooklyn. Then he watched the news at 6 the same fire in Brooklyn. OK so now you're extremely well-informed now go watch a movie. Old people also big on the weather. I don't have to look at my weather app anymore. A customer tells me what it's gonna be.
Being overly or extremely well-informed also means absorbing through a kind of unconscious osmosis the biases of the mainstream press. Watched the PBS Newshour last night. Story about "Rising Hate." They had on an "expert" from the Southern Poverty Law Center who tied it all into MAGA and Trump's cabinet picks. RFK Jr. might be a little quirky but he's a hater? The SPLC is a lot like the ADL. They hate conservatives and conservative groups. No counterpoint on the Newshour of course.
Maybe I'll rename myself the Grouchy Blogger.
Perpetually pissed off about politics. They may not be able to unclog a toilet but politics is the subject they know best. Most people might know their local representatives but the political junkie knows every Congressman and Senator in all 50 states and their respective scandals. It's hard to keep up to speed with them. "What do you think of Mr. Pepperidge's nomination to be Assistant Secretary of the sub-Interior?" Who? My late aunt God rest her soul passed away a few years back from a cancer. Politically conservative they say she argued politics with her liberal son-in-law right up 'til the end. Dunno. I'd be pondering my mortality.
When I came back from my 3 year blogging hiatus I had to google Tulsi Gabbard. I'm always a little behind the curve and a day or two late on today's news. Gotta take care of the feral cats. Half of my YouTube search history is about health problems. Rearranging my finances. Puttering around the house. I'm busy.
What's up with the political junkies? Like a bunch of angry nerds.
I have actually read in some online forums about people who have broken down emotionally and mentally over the Trump victory and have to be counseled. I kid you not. Now let's remember Trump also won the popular vote and his victory was big enough you could call it a mandate. The legacy media is pretty much dead at this point as they're not as influential as they thought they'd be. People are gravitating more towards alternative independent media like Joe Rogan and not even giving a passing thought to what the New York Times has to say these days. Ole Gray Lady hubris.
Whither this blog? Start any post even mildly favorable to Trump and there's threadshitting. I don't plan on this place becoming a dumping ground or landfill for Trump hatred over the next four years. Criticism yes but there's a fine line between that and unhinged, valid takes and deranged rhetoric. I'm also seeing a lack of critical thinking skills like Trump wants every Latino person who voted for him to leave the country. That's just low-effort shitposting. Another one people who haven't gone to college don't know how to vote that's just plain intellectual snobbery. You know some calculus and some Nietzsche that makes you special? Saw a bumper sticker once that said "Without Truckers America Stops."
Word of advice to the Democrats: Next time leave Taylor Swift out of it.
It would have been better off if he had won the last time around against Joe Biden. He would have been nearing the end of his full presidency by now and the era of MAGA would be coming to an end. We could all be talking about other subjects. The trend lately has been to give most recent presidents two terms. Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama. This is why at the time I thought the American people would reelect Trump. This gives the president the opportunity to finish the work he started and gives his foreign policy a certain stability. World leaders are used to dealing with him. Instead we got Sleepy Joe. IF Trump wins now there's talk of riots. Why I don't know. If he had won against Biden we wouldn't be going through this. I make no case that the election was bad just that the American voters should have reelected him the last time for practical reasons. Not voting for him this time because his personality has reached a critical mass for me. Other conservative bloggers have said this is not the way to go but to each his own.
This was a tentative blogpost of mine since if Kamala Harris wins on Nov. 5 this thread will have little to no value. However if I'm reading the polls right she just might come out on the losing end. IF Trump wins but the election is close he clearly has no mandate and will govern a divided country.
I'll have to sit out the most important presidential election of our lifetime. Don't they say that about every election though? If Trump wins it'll be without my help. Trump's reverse strategy of turning off voters - as I'm sure you've heard at a campaign stop in Wisconsin last Saturday he called Kamala Harris mentally disabled from birth because of the admittedly horrible Biden-Harris immigration and border policy. Talk like this can only throw sympathy in Harris's corner. I don't expect any presidential campaign to be totally softball but I don't remember any presidential candidate talking like this. There is something seriously off about Trump. While there was still time the GOP should have gone with somebody else. Might be a good time to blog about other stuff.
As part of my ongoing aging blogger series my next field of inquiry is varicose veins. That'd be Misty btw one of my former house ferals.
As I said I rewatched some of the clips from the debate on YouTube and thought Trump did well despite the pets. It has been officially declareth however that he lost the debate. Mine must be some weird minority opinion. Welcome to Stranded the place of weird minority opinions. You might find a few.
A commenter at a conservative blog opined that God intervened in the assassination attempt for a reason and so not to despair. If you're a religiously-minded person that is not an invalid view imo. To date not much has come from the FBI's investigation as to motivation. Kind of odd. Usually by now you'd hear from some neighbor that Crooks looked up at the nighttime constellations for political messages at 3 in the morning or something. That he was able to put a ladder up against the side of the building to scale the roof is really something. The Home Depot - how doers get more done.
For me one debate sufficeth. If there's another one my biased newsfeeds will declare by sunrise the next morning that he lost that one too. Regarding the cats and dogs one of my first reactions was there needs to be some serious research on this instead of the usual superficial snoping. There's feral cats all over the place. It's not out of the realm. On the other hand Trump pronounces things in a Shakespearian manner like there's some pet apocalypse going on. Maybe fodder for the next Stephen King novel.
Conservatives need to pop a Prozac.
Seriously though we have polls coming out of the ass. We could have polls of polls. What did you think of our last poll? Harris and Trump haven't even had their first debate yet and I would submit these early polls mean nothing. Every time I turn on my phone there's another Trump/Harris poll. Harris has better hair than Trump. Polls in the past have sometimes proven to be wildly inaccurate. Remember when Hillary was supposed to win the election handily against Trump? The polls might mean more if they take a break and don't poll for awhile. Dunno.
I was never polled in my life. Well maybe once I got a call on my cell and answered a series of questions. Where are these people on the street stopping people to ask their opinions? I'm still waiting to be taken seriously.
What do you think of me blog? Take a survey.
The Rise of the Kens and Karens
I'm seeing it in retail. From my end food service. They come in for an item you don't have that day. Instead of talking about with the department they go to the manager. Manager gets involved. Rookie deli clerk makes their sandwich slightly off as per their instructions they go to the manager. You're short-staffed that day everyone called out that's not my problem. Angry shoppers. I'm a quiet shopper. I don't make issues. I don't get the workers in trouble. Mild Z.
The blogosphere. Everyone just calm down and let's talk about barn owls.
I recently took a 3+ year hiatus from blogging and came back. The reason for the rest period was twofold. First the toxic nature of our political environment being foremost. Secondly you couldn't have a rational discussion of covid at the time so I chose to ride that one out. So eventually I decided to return but nothing has really changed.
The toxicity of politics has only gotten worse. There are commenters in the blogosphere who are constantly argumentative, rancorous, have a contrarian spirit and who make no attempts to search for common ground. They don't understand the point you are making (feigned ignorance?) and distort your words through their own political filter. I think part of the reason for our current political environment is a kind of overreaction to Trump. He may win he may lose but the hyperbole and rhetoric continues unabated even in the wake of the recent assassination attempt. I don't want to be a party to that and find it horrible.
It might be pretentious to call blogging an art form but this is a time for creative decision-making for me anyway. Maybe Lista had the right idea blog only for yourself. Everyone has a different philosophy of blogging. If you don't fit in here find another blog that resonates with you. There are plenty out there.
That's it for now. Stay free:)
