Walkabout Thoughts #13

My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:

Weather for the day… 47° 99% humidity overcast.

Podcast for the day is Rachel Maddow‘s "Ultra" podcast episode four

Instagram post for the day and second post.

I'm a little late posting this blog as I walked a few days ago...then this happened:

I just heard that Patrick Haggerty has passed away last night. Life long friend of my friend and cartoonist, Pat Moriarity. Haggerty was a founder of Lavender Country, who put out the first known gay-themed album in country music history. His band started back when I was in high school in the early 1972. I only met him a few years ago through Pat. Tonight is Pat's and his Son Jack's annual "Sausage Fest" party (sausage referring to a BBQ event with live music). Patrick was at previous years' events. I last saw him not long too ago and he looked healthy. He was always a pleasant and happy guy. Tonight's event will be a little less, without him. 

We will all miss him. 

Pat Moriarity with the late Patrick Haggerty

Rachel Maddow’s podcast, "Ultra", points out painfully clearly, exactly what and why Donald Trump has been dividing America as he has been. It’s all about taking control, authoritarianism, money, power and glorification of one person in a populist society. And there’s nothing good about it. As in 1940s Republicans they are trying to do it all over again. They’ve now become trapped by it. Just as they were in the 1940s.

Second podcast for the day is Pod Save America: “Fetterman vs The Phony Sociopath.”

Just to reiterate what they just said at the beginning of the Pod Save America podcast about the Oz and Fetterman debate, the media did not do its job in explaining to the public about stroke recovery. The moderators explained at the beginning about Fetterman using a teleprompter to better understand questions, they should have explained more about the process of healing from a stroke. They dropped the ball. Just because he’s having some issues right now, generally speaking people heal from this and their mental processes are not impaired. I agree with the podcast that this was gross negligence on the part of the media in days after the debate, if not just the commentators at the debate.

All the doctors that were interviewed about Fetterman's stroke said that he was being very normal in stroke recovery, he didn’t peer to be impaired mentally, and actually, considering when the stroke happened, he's doing better than most people would. That’s kind of an important thing to know. When you have an issue with your neuronal brain pathways, the brain is very plastic in the ability to build new pathways, but it takes a little time. Which in this case has nothing to do again, with mental processes, just some communication issues. Which for the most part, isn't an issue. When you consider some of the Congressional Republicans who don't have issues like this having happened to THEM, but they still sound on the Senate floor like they are mentally deranged or damaged, I just don't see this as an issue of any substance. Certainly not by comparison. 

Another good point from the podcast, if you take someone who broke their leg who has to then, weeks after that, go up against a professional runner, is that gonna look like a questionable candidate at that point? Yes. But as the Bone mends will he then be able to run at the level he could before, as many people do? It’s just the process of healing and physiotherapy in the case of a broken leg. All of which Fetterman is doing toward getting back to his optimal level. I'd take him even as suboptimal in comparison to someone like Oz.

It should also be mentioned that Fetterman has some big brass balls going for that debate. Ask yourself how many Republicans would’ve backed out? Quite a few.

As for “Doctor” Oz, it’s been put in the record by other scientist at the University he was kicked out of, that he has a “disdain for science and evidence based medicine.” Oz has made millions off of other people's suffering.

They also have a good point about the Democratic strategists who gave quotes and how they’re worried about Fetterman. And their comments about this in the podcast are true. Republicans don’t do this kind of wimpy shit. Especially when they should say something, but they wont because it's party first, over America. Their career first, over American citizens. Their money and power first, over the US Constitution. And no, I don’t want Democrats doing that. But they should have some rational cohesion and perspective. It’s like Republicans don’t have the compassion. At least not in their political and career fields. While Democrats do. Which is why they tend to buckle sometimes and fear looking bad. They care. Republicans just don't. Real Republicans still do. But there's fewer of those every day as they abandon their party or retire from politics. Forced out by the Gran Stupid. Everyone should fear looking bad if you’re doing the wrong thing. But when you want to believe you’re doing the right thing in  doing the wrong thing? Fuck me, people. Good grief…

Just to mention something about the process of walking to get in and maintain physical conditioning and health... Today it’s been a week tomorrow since I’ve gone for a 5 mile walk. I really wanted to go for a walk today, weather is amenable, so I am. But when I got out here, it was really hard to get started. I did my first mile and I wanted to give up. I did my second, and I really wanted to give up. But as I’ve seen before, when this happens, if I can get that 1st mile or two, or three, down, it gets easier. But if I give up because it’s so uncomfortable, then I gave up and I don’t achieve anything. Obviously one or two, or 3 miles is better than none. But going the limit to actually achieve your goal, really is important in so many ways.

Let’s consider what Dr. Oz said about abortion and how it should include a woman, her doctor, and her... local political officials(?). What you’re describing is a Soviet Union kind of State. They had political officers who could wreck your life and career. They could end you up in a Gulag in Siberia for some really stupid shit. "Mind Police", stuff. That is what Dr. Oz and this Republican party under Trump's America are proposing we be turned into.

Speaking of hypocrisy, if abortion is murder as Dr. Oz has said, what Republicans purposely are pushing out is anger to build into violence for the Trump MAGA effort. We will honestly never know how many have already died from that because, that connection wasn’t made. Or that connection was made, even by the police, but the attacker wasn’t found. Or they were found, but it wasn’t covered in the media. When we see how unprotected our congressional Democrats are because, they’re not given protection unless their in the leadership, or under very specific threats... While this threat to many of them. If not all of them nowadays, as a general threat and one that can come to a head very quickly to end in pain or death of one of our congressional or government Democratic leaders. If not also a threat to their families, who have been consistently threatened. Who threatens a 12 year old girl, or a five year old boy? MAGA Republicans do and are. How is that being on the right side of anything? And just to mention speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi‘s husband Paul. Someone actually broke into his house and attacked him with a hammer so he had to have surgery and could’ve died, but apparently his going to do OK. But this shouldn't have happened. This should have evoked outrage from the entire Republican party. But all we heard were very few making comments. And why? Because deep down they fear it happening to them. Or if Democrats finally ever have enough of this Republican nonsense and were to turn the tides, it could be them next. This has to stop. All should speak out on this. All. Everyone. Stop tearing America apart. And, for what? Not what those who are doing this, think. It is beliefs in the Netherworld, that doesn't even exist.

It kind of boils down to this, if you want America to be a theocracy, ban abortion. That’s step one. Even in Ireland, abortion is legal. Ireland! America needs to get this shit together. We need a secular government. Because only that will allow theists to have the religion they want. But personally, NOT by government decree! Forcing us into their religious beliefs and into our government, never ends well.

Let's be clear about Trump's, Truth Social. Those aren’t “truths“ being “tweeted“ on there. Since he and the MAGA and Republican have turned reality around... to be accurate, they're “tweeting“, “UnTruths “. Or "MisTruths". Or, "DisTruths". But sure as hell not "Truths".

Back to Fetterman, there’s a lot of people who’ve loved him for a long time, who voted for him before, and will vote for him again. Whose comments on the debate were, yeah he had difficulty speaking, or answering questions. But he got out what I wanted to hear, and it’s still him and what he believes in, and what we know he’ll fight for. That is why I am still for him and would still vote for him. But, I haven't lived in Philly since I was a kid. But I still have an affinity for the state, as well as other's I've lived in like NY & NJ.

I just started my 4th mile. I’m feeling better than my second and 3rd mile starting out. I still just want to go home. As of right now, I know I’ll make my 4th mile. And then I just have to get started on the fifth. and last mile.

I just shot my Instagram post for the day. And I mentioned about my book “Suffering Long Covid“. Which just went live in the e-book in book format on Amazon yesterday. That was a lot of work. It was hard to do. When I started it there was still a lot of brain fog from long Covid. Although I’m still not over it, I am feeling better, as long as I keep exercising. Yesterday, I got my flu shot and a tetanus shot. They were out of the pneumonia shot and I’ll have to go back next week, when they get more in. Good times! Never say die, never give up!

Republicans hatred of Nancy Pelosi is bizarre. How is that right in any way shape or form? How? What if someone didn’t like your job and someone went to your house and killed your family? How does that make sense.? America, you got to get your shit together. You don’t attack people's families for what they do for a living. You don’t attack people in government for doing their job. We’ve built a country to be nonviolent. I know 20 years of war and decades of violent movies haven’t helped. But we have a choice. Resolve things through litigation and elections in politics. Or constantly be going to war against one another. And if you choose the latter, you’re really, REALLY stupid. If you take offense to be called stupid, then really look at what I just wrote above, and think about what your position is. And if you can’t see what I’m saying here, stupid may just be the definition you’ve selected to be.

We need to decide. Are we pro-truth, pro-democracy? Or are we pro-autocratic propaganda and pro-pseudo-theocracy to be wielded against us for the power of the few and the elite who many of you think you’re against in loving someone like Donald Trump and his cadre of wannabes? This bizarre MAGA logic is warped when placed up against the light of reality.

For those who buy into the MAGA bullshit. Do what I did when Trump was running for president. And I did again after he took office. Pick out your top 10 political favorite items. Then really go out and dig into if they’re true or not. Avoid your little bubbles of "I like this information" to find whatever it may actually be. And really dig into substantiated facts. Or just take five. What I found out myself was about nine out of 10 things I believed were true turned out to be true. While one wasn’t true and one was half true, or actually maybe a couple were half true. But doing that changed my mind a little bit. I saw some of the other side's point of view a little bit better. If I find something is true I don’t wanna believe in it, and the other side's right...yes, I will change my mind. The trouble is, I suspect for people who say they have done that, and  yet still believe things that aren’t true, that they’re not very good at research or vetting their information. They just think they are. I've met so many people like that. On both sides, actually. It’s either that, or they've bought into a cult-like mentality. And whenever that happens? Nothing will convince them, no matter how true or provable something is. Sadly, that’s where we are with far too many people. The only reason we had an insurrection on January 6, 2021, inspired by a pathetic, failed president who was about to leave office, but couldn't bring his ego to let go. THAT's who people want to follow? Wow, unbelievable, truly.

About the paragraph above. If you wonder why my number of 10 items I believed were true remained so high after double checking on them, that’s not proof I have a cult-like mentality, too. I’m actually just very careful about things I believe in because of my past, my history, and my education. Which was not only very good, but I worked at it harder than anyone I knew back in college at that time. And that’s the thing. If you’re careful about your initial beliefs and update them and correct them, no matter what you feel, or how bad it makes you feel if you’re wrong...do it. Then when you vet that information you’ll find that you’re right on a lot of things. And not “right“ just on things that the Right wishes to believe and in against all odds, reality, proof and evidence.

I’ve made this clear many times so I’ll do it again… For what he’s done and what it is going to do to America, I fully believe Donald Trump should be indicted, should be tried, should quite obviously be judged guilty, and should be quickly executed. I do not actually believe in capital punishment. I do not think the state should be killing its citizens. But I do think there are times where someone needs to be destroyed. But very, very few times. Someone killing one person, isn’t enough. Killing many, as a serial killer may not be enough. But it could be, it depends on the case, on the individual. But when you affect things that are on national and international levels… When you have obviously gotten citizens killed as a leader, a national leader, then you deserve our highest punishment. And when you’re someone like Donald Trump who can’t keep his mouth shut, who spawns sedition and insurrection, and doesn’t know how to say things that are truthful or good for the nation or humanity at large, well, then you destroy things like that. For the sake of the Nation and humanity.

And with that downer paragraph or two out of the way… I’m starting my fifth mile somehow. I feel good enough to do it, though I’m beat the hell and I don’t wanna do it. Although I kinda do. My left ankle which I’ve had problems with this summer is starting to ache, even with the support sleeve on it. But I think I can make this last mile so I’m going for it...

One of my kids and spouse and puppy came over last night. Did some sound engineering on my video desktop workstation and then played some Fallout New Vegas on their Xbox. As I was telling my other son yesterday, I have played games so little because a long Covid this year, that I felt like playing video games just wasn’t warranted. So I have now written and published one book on long Covid. I’m starting another book (which is already mostly written, on my documentary, “Pvt. Ravel‘s Bolero“. About its history, how it came to be and what all it means as a filmic poem. After that, I’ve got a finish creating the DVD for that movie. Which is also mostly done. And then, I might go back to finish up Fallout Four, which I’ve got some 700+ hours into, from over the past two years of healing from long Covid. Last night, watching them play Fallout New Vegas, it give me the urge to want to waste some more time playing a video game again. I take that as a good sign. Healing up from a long nightmare. I’m playing now near the end of the game and I just need to make one final decision and then go for it. And then maybe back into the beginning of Skyrim.

Right now they’re interviewing someone on the podcast about elections and election workers. And she says, people have a lot to do with our election now and are interested. And even some high school seniors and juniors are involved because they’re worried about their future. And it occurred to me that over the course of history Humankind has physically pushed adulthood into older ages and as we’ve become more intellectual and knowledgeable, kids are intellectually becoming adults sooner. But we’re still limited by factors such as when our brain physically finishes developing and how we still don’t know that much experientially speaking, until we get enough experience out in the real world and on her own. So we’ve gone from marrying kids off to making them wait until they’re 18, except in some southern states out there. But we lowered the voting age to 18 because kids could handle it. A draft is set at 18. And as this politician on the podcast just mentioned, kids in high school are much more motivated about politics now, because they’re very aware of the world anymore. Albeit I'd argue, a bit too superficially, far too much of the time. We’ve seen that before though, in the 1960s. But I suspect, this is a lot more dire situation.

Now about physical conditioning… I think what I’m experiencing is months or even weeks ago, had I missed a day, it was hard to get back to my base mileage, which was 3 miles for a while. This is taking a lot out of me today to do 5 miles, after a week off. But I think my conditioning has gotten to the point where I could possibly do this once a week. And after a little while, it won't be taking so much out of me to do that. Which is all good news overall. (Note from later...Yeah, I'm hurting, so many for a while (or forever) I'll need to exercise more frequently, unlike when I was younger...nuts)

I know we vote for whoever we want and we put them in the House or the Senate in Congress in Washington DC. But I really think we need some kind of standards. If the past few years has taught us anything, it’s that some people should never be anywhere near our government. Just like where you think it’s your second amendment right or not, some people should never have ownership of a gun and sure as hell shouldn’t be allowed to open carry it and most especially, some shouldn’t ever be able to conceal carry. Not to mention SCOTUS in 1886 made it very clear that the Second Amendment had nothing to do with private militias in that they’re unconstitutional. To wit: ""§ 5. It shall not be lawful for any body of men whatever other than the regular organized volunteer militia of this state and the troops of the United States to associate themselves together as a military company or organization, or to drill or parade with arms in any city or town of this state without the license of the Governor thereof, which license may at any time be revoked..." But that’s another mess altogether…

OK! Hey there is a fawn up ahead about half a block for my second Instagram shot of the day! Cool. Two fawns. And a deer! :) 

Cheers! Sláinte!

My New Book - "Suffering Long Covid" October 2022

I felt the brutality of COVID-19 for the first time starting February 9, 2020. It was a Sunday. I spent the week with what I thought was the flu at first, but quickly realized was something I had neve reexperienced before. By the third night of trying to sleep and being unable to because I was counting my breaths, carefully trying not to cough... I realized something was very wrong.

Suffering Long Covid

I lied in bed debating going to the emergency department at the nearby hospital, only two miles from my house. I was exhausted after several nights of no sleep. If I drive, could I pass out? If I don't, could I die? Should I call an ambulance? And then, I passed out. I woke the next day actually...feeling a little better. The worst was over. 

But long covid was about the begin. That lasted somewhere between eight and fourteen months. Due to the nature of it, it is really hard to tell. I spent most of 2020 in my recliner in my living room. Awake, then asleep, lethargic. Exhausted. Sometimes feeling ill, sometimes not. I was feeling ill for one to three plus weeks each and every month of 2020 as it essentially zipped by. 

I was unsure at times over that next year if I was having reoccurring covid (by a month or two into it, I had realized I had contracted the new novel coronavirus), or if I was catching new iterations of covid. 

Or a new variation. I'd considered in the beginning when i realized what I had contracted, and survived, that I should write a book about it. But that first year or so I was just too exhausted and without energy to even think of it. I had brain fog. Weird blood clotting issues. My VA doctor had me take many tests and all came back looking like I was healthy. Except, I wasn't. 

March 28, 2022. Again it was a Sunday night. but early the next morning I was in the Emergency Department of St. Michael's Medical Center in Silverdale, Washington, eleven miles from my home.

It was a very disturbing night that went from paramedics at my home for the first time in my life and at 2AM. That saw me with sinus tachycardia, driving myself to the hospital in Bremerton, where I live. Two miles away. At 3AM. Paramedics had given me the OK to drive myself before they left and having offered me the ambulance. But I wanted to do it myself.

I ended up driving around in the dark, unable to find a massive medical center. So I went home and tried to sleep. After a few hours I got up and called the Veterans Administration triage nurse. She told me to drive to the next down that morning to the emergency department. So I did. It turns out the hospital two miles away, which I had used for twenty years for my kids and my family, had closed down only six months previous, and I hadn't heard about it.

I got a Zio chest patch heart monitor to wear for two weeks and then I was sent home. A week later I had paramedics at my house, again on a Sunday, again at 2AM. This time for blood pressure that was far too high.

I had more tests and again, I was healthy. Except, I wasn't. As I started feeling better, well enough to think, I thought I should write that book about this experience and share what I had learned. It started slow, but I got something down on paper. 

Eventually, I finished the book. Just as I had finished an internationally award winning documentary that spring of 2021, "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero", began as just a way to try to start thinking and working on something, anything, again.

And now that book is available, too. 

"Suffering Long Covid" is now available as a book and ebook on Amazon. I have included my daily logs that I kept for my own benefit at first and then for my doctor to prove some of what I had been experiencing. I've also tried to support things I say in the book with references and links to information. 

I'm not a medical professional but I am a researcher and writer. I thought my story was interesting and if nothing else, I had learned a lot about COVID-19 and Long Covid. As science and medicine learned, I learned. I had nothing else to do by feel ill and as I had energy, research what was happening inside me. Why I was so exhausted and kept feeling ill. While all the tests at hospitals said I was fine. When I wasn't, quite obviously.

The book was difficult to write, but got easier as time passed. It was interesting to read my logs as I was already months later forgetting how bad things had been. I realized I wish I had a book like this to have read, and maybe others might find it, in some way or another, useful to them.

So here it is...if you have long covid, and I hope you don't, sometimes it helps to see what others have gone though. if nothing else, there are some very interesting pieces of information and references in the book.

I wish you all well. Be healthy my friends! 

Cheers! Sláinte !

Walkabout Thoughts #12

My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:

Weather for the day… When I started out It was sunny and 58° air quality was good.

Podcast for the day is The Lincoln Project, "Mobilizing the Election Heroes with Bob Brandon"

Second podcast is the The Mary Trump podcast with Soledad O'Brien

My Instagram post for the walk & just for the heck of it someone else's post

Started the day off not feeling so great. So I’m kind of pushing myself to do this when I would really rather just stay home. But it’s either walk today or, because of visitors coming tomorrow and weather the next days, I can't walk again till maybe Wednesday.

From the podcast. They mentioned both "Vet the Vote", a veteran's organization, and
another group called, "Power the Polls". Both interesting organizations to look up online. Being a vet myself with prior service, we need to take care of our vets more than we have been. And I do not mean me. But there’s people out there in a lot worse situation than I am. For myself, so far anyway, I’m doing pretty good. But at this point there’s no guarantees. We have Republicans saying they want to end Social Security and Medicare, and the VA. Insanity. You don’t ask for people's support, who become veterans and senior citizens, and then take away the support you had promised them, just because you don’t feel good, or something. You cashed the check, pay the bill.

So apparently, the original idea was if you work, than you deserve and can pay for health insurance. Seems like there’s a problem with that. How many millions have worked hard, but didn’t receive health insurance and couldn’t afford it? Kind of an endemic situation, certainly historically. I was just thinking about that because on the Mary Trump podcast they’re talking about Rosa Parks and how she had a lot more to do with the civil rights than people know. One year her tax return shows her and her husband only made $700 that year. She wasn’t getting compensated for all her traveling and speaking, etc. The history we don’t know and should. And that many, to be honest, simply don’t care about. Why do I care? Because if you’re an American, you’re an American. And all this bullshit about harming other Americans over disagreements and beliefs and religion and government... needs to stop!

Talking on the podcast about Rosa Parks and her statue in Washington DC. It’s of her sitting down, exemplify the misconceptions of her as passive, using her most famous political statement on a bus, once. When she’s really so much more. Got me to thinking about the documentary on Sinead O’Connor I watched yesterday, "Nothing Compares". About how the Prince estate, his sister and I think siblings, refused to let the documentary use Sinead's most famous song which she covered from the Prince song. The comment from the sister in the estate was that she didn’t think Sinead deserved to use it. And that Prince's live version with the singer Rosie Gaines, is better. Well that’s her opinion in her center building she has control for fine. But I would argue that Sinead's version of the song, at least in my mind, is much better. Type the song title into YouTube and who comes up first? Sinead. I mean Prince is a genius in music and all, but the song Sinead turned out (and I assume it must also have something to do with the engineer and producer(?), I don’t really know the story on that), but when I listen to those two songs, I definitely lean closer to the Sinead version.

I’m surprised, certainly historically speaking, how many don’t know that when a road or highway was going through a potentially optimal route, if it was going through a rich white neighborhood, suddenly it was going through a poor black neighborhood. Or a minority neighborhood. I’m pretty sure this is a class issue at its root. Where, when they realized it was going to go through a rich white neighborhood, where I think the word there is "rich", it'll get shifted to a poor neighborhood. If it was between a white or minority neighborhood, it did not go through the white neighborhood. And showing an example against that, does not mean the exception proves the rule. The reality remains the same.

From the Mary Trump podcast. This is an interesting point in lexicon, spin, and misperceptions. Mary mentions how Rosa Parks was a very strong individual and she "presented well" that orientation. Immediately she corrected herself and said, "I don’t think she presented herself in any other way than who she was. But that she had a very exceptional and effective presentation of who she was. Statements like that have a lot to do with the whole gap, or disparity, between the right and left in America today, politically speaking. Especially when someone knows exactly what was meant and intended, but disingenuously parrots it out in the worst possible light. Especially when they do it mean-spirited political reasons.

I think my life may has been better since I cut out corn syrup and years before, sugar. That made me think about pancakes. Actually, I was thinking about sweets. And when go to the store I try not to buy those. How do you replace syrup for pancakes? How do you make a syrup that isn’t just sugar free, but not so concentrated in bad things it tends to be made of? I started wondering about when I was a kid, back in the 1960s. When we ate plenty of sugar and corn syrup. I hadn't known corn syrup was what made up the syrups we ate . I didn’t know when I was a kid I was eating corn syrup on pancakes. I thought it was maple syrup, because it said it was maple syrup. Sort of. But I was a kid. What did I know in how to read a label correctly? I remember saying something at the breakfast table one day when we were eating pancakes. My mom, still making more at the stove corrected me saying, "Well, that's not real maple syrup. We can't afford that. It's really expensive." It wasn't until then that I realized we had been eating maple syrup flavored syrup. On that topic, I noticed a while back that maple syrup is now thin and cheaper, when it used to be thick and more expensive.

To be clear, all through my life I have never cared about political thinking. I voice my opinion when I feel secure in knowing what I’m talking about, based on facts. As I can and do nowadays because, well, it needs to be done. But I have concerns for what’s correct and have “voted“ against myself and my group, if it was the right thing to do. Sometimes we do have to suffer to do what’s right. As I raised my kids. You should always do what's right whenever you can. There will be times you will not be able to. There will be times where you will do the right thing and it will break the law and you will be punished for it. At that time you have to be able to see that, see what you’re doing understand it, and then make your choice. To protect yourself or do what’s right? We don’t always get rewarded for doing what’s right in life. I wasn’t taught that as a kid. Many of us weren’t. I was just taught to do what is right. Don't lie. Don't be dishonest. Being silent and allowing others to believe untruths is dishonest. Spinning something that allows others to believe untruths is dishonest. Yet today it's a mainstay not just of politics, but especially so the Republlcian Party, especially under the auspices of MAGA and Donald Trump. But that's how fascism works. Too many of us as we’ve seen of late, believe they are free and clear to do and should do, whatever is best for them and their group. No matter who it hurts or how much it punishes others. And they carry that out in a righteous manor. While it is often in reality, anything but righteous or correct and true. Righteousness is far too often for ill purposes.

All that being said… Fuck Republicans, or liberals, or Antifa, or Black Lives Matter, or any of them! Fuck Republicans, MAGA, conservatives, or liberals, or communists, or socialists… All that matters is doing what is the most correct thing to do, at that time. America's supposed to be based on a meritocracy and majority rule, with considerations for minorities. It's not meant to be minority rule. Republicans need to come to terms with that,

Where did I get my life orientation? I was raised fairly strict, old country, Slovakian Catholic. On my mother side. My dad, was Irish and I think his family was protestant. I didn't realize that until some years ago. That I wasn't an Irish catholic kid.  I take my greatest orientation from my Irish side, which I find now through DNA, I am much more on the Scottish side. Whatever, it’s Gaelic. I started Isshinryu karate 1965 in fifth grade. That’s where I started picking up my Asian influences in philosophy. Before that I’d been reading science fiction by our golden age authors of sci-fi. Junior high, I was doing civil air patrol search and rescue. I joined the Air Force as law enforcement, ended up a parachute rigger. Signed up for the OSI at the end I got accepted. Then later got out instead and ended up getting a college degree in psych & writing. It was then that I realized how much psychology parallels Buddhism. I am for decades now, a non practicing Buddhist. Which is inaccurate in using that western term. I’ve read fundamentally original Buddhist dharma. The teachings of Buddha. Written down hundred years after Buddha died, just as with Jesus Christ and Christianity. Seems obvious to me that where Jesus lived and grew up, he had learned of Buddhism and other religions from traveling caravans. And so he incorporated Buddhism into his teachings. But he was unable to do that too much because he still had to fit into a people's beliefs that were Jewish. They had to be able to accept his teachings. He had to connect, to change them. His being a Jew after all. Just as America’s founding fathers had to incorporate God into their daily life and even if they were atheist had to translate to theorist about that. The belief by some now that we’re a fundamentally Christian nation, all because it’s founded by people of that culture and religion, is confused history and lacking in an understanding of psychology, sociology, and political dynamics, along with an accurate application of social studies. It was hard not to notice in psychology, toward my university degree in that discipline, in which I focused on phenomenology, just how similar it was to many Buddhist teachings. It was also interesting when I read the book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979), how they seemed to understand physics, I don’t know, a thousand years ago, or two (let's just say a while back). Buddhists don’t see me as a Buddhist and I could really care. I don’t go into the mystical, beyond the scientific, even though the scientific can go into what seems like the mystical. And the mystical can inform the scientific. But my orientation was always to do right in life. And ironically enough, with the once far right wing right now, it’s no longer anymore about doing what’s right (functionally and realistically speaking, orientation or intention now has little to do with action and function), and hasn’t been for a long time and that's gotten worse and worse.

Part of how we got here today politically is by too many treating voting like either a game or an important. They rationalize to save time and effort that voting doesn’t do anything, affect anything, or do any good at all. That whole line of thinking has gotten really old and destructive.

When you, or others you see, denigrate others, remember how many of those people's ancestors in America, and elsewhere, were denigrated, brutalized, and even murdered long ago. Some even in their home countries. Or as they migrated through other countries to America. Germans were once looked down upon in America. Obviously the Irish were, and they wised up and started joining police departments. But then sadly, many of them abused others and their own. This country was founded and based upon immigrants. The isolation and stranglehold on our immigration laws, for decades now, is embarrassing and damaging to our country. But sure, feel free to believe people saying the opposite for personal fun, partisan joy, and the destruction of any or all others, as long as it’s not you, or your group.

All my life I’ve been an independent voter. I was excited about the first time I could vote, when I turned 18. Partly because of when I grew up and it was a new thing. I’ve always voted for the best candidate, regardless of party. I probably still would or will. I just can’t vote for any MAGA candidates. And the reason for that is, it would be like having an election, say for mayor. I wouldn't  vote for someone who is running to be dogcatcher, or president (pick your damage). I’m not gonna vote for the dogcatcher candidate who is running for mayor. I’m voting for the best candidate who is actually running for that position. MAGA candidates are not running to be whatever their candidacy is stated to be for. It's for another reason than to do that job actually. It's to rot the government out from the inside. It’s for a beliefs founded in not just nothing, but the opposite of something, which oddly enough, is more damaging than if it were for nothing.

For those who put up a gallows during the January 6 insurrection? How did they not see they were a throwback to the 19th century while this is the 21st? They weren’t even doing that in the 17th century, in America. Maybe around the time of the Civil War when insurrection was in play, as it was today so recently. We're based on being "civil", not civil war. Using the US Constitution to support contentions for civil war, cuts off that foundation via that very foundation

The whole idea about America, is to be non-violent and having changing government so we avoid an autocracy. Twenty years of war in Afghanistan, warped our mentality. So much of who we are being based on action movies led us to believe in the coolness of violence. When you don’t fix social problems, you end up with violent crime. When you try to fix violent crime, you get more violent crime, far too often. We've gotta be an adult and stop putting down intelligence and knowledge and support the hard work of fixing our social issues. WE can’t just make more lies and expect it to be fixed. "Band-Aids" on a broken leg does little except bring us closer to sepsis and losing the leg or our lives (or country).

When that Republican politician stormed out of an interview and said "because of you and what you did here" [to be fair she was asking a honest questions needing answers, about what a lowlife this guy was] "I will never interview with your network again and that’s your fault." I so just wanted to hear her say back to this clown, "OK, thank you very much for showing us all here today, what... I mean, who, you are. EH, hell yeah, WHAT you are.“

A free country cannot survive without a Free Press. Unless… You convince a third of the country to disbelieve that Free Press. And more a more suitable press is Your propaganda press. It worked in Russia, it’s working there now. It's worked for Trump in America. It's working here now.

Stupidly, I grew up reading really good sci-fi books and believing in a one world government, to the orientation of one day having multiple planet governments. Idealistic? Maybe. But when they talked about globalism in the 90s, I wasn’t considering what happened. Moving our manufacturing jobs to China? OK, fine. Maybe. Regarding those people whose jobs you’re taking, you've really got to make sure you take care of them. We didn’t. But then for corporations to give up their IP to China who blackmailed them for it (give up your IP or you can go back home)? I didn’t see that coming. When I heard it was going to happen, I was pretty annoyed. When I heard corporations were actually going to do it, I was angry. Well, like someone said, it gave us things like the iPhone and so on. We made some advances we may not have been able to make, certainly not as quickly. Or as cheaply. But look what happened. Look where China is now. That’s not to say globalism is a failure. That’s just saying you have got to not be stupid. And the countries involved can’t be ripping off other countries. You have to be good neighbors. Too often that didn’t happen. Just as with quitting smoking. Takes a few times to get it right. Looking at toxic capitalism as a junkie's addiction and becoming more addicted to make more a massive profits at the abuse of citizens. Yes, it’s a concern. And then when you have a government or say a Republican Party, as a party of big business, and get into bed with that. That’s a really big problem. And to be fair, I’m sure there’s some Democrats involved in all that too. But it’s not the Democratic Party platform. It is the Republican Party platform. There it is, secreted in the back of their mind and platform. Not that they’ve had a platform for a while and not the current platform makes a lot of sense either.

OK, Mary Trump is now talking about her guest doing a news piece for a sports network on the problems in prisons. Which gets me on the whole prison problem issue. The fact that you can lose your right to vote, I find disgusting. If you go to prison for espionage, fine. Or treason, fine. But I think that’s part of the problem. We don’t value American citizenship as much as we say we do. It should be nearly impossible to lose your rights in this country. Because that’s part of what we’re based on. The fact that we had to go through all this effort and bullshit to get blacks the right to vote, even when they had that right. To have to GIVE women the right to vote, even when they should’ve always had it, in being half of this country. It’s ludicrous. The fact that we’re continually discovering laws that need to be passed to protect our citizens against ourselves? It’s nuts. And against other citizens? And not just against our government, but against entire political parties? I know we were warned about political parties as dangerous, since the founding of this nation. But then why did they go and start political parties a few years after saying not to?

Well, that's it for today. Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #11

My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:

Weather for the day… When I started out I was hoping I could get my walk in before the rain started. Air quality index was 50, rated "good". During my walk I checked it and it was 33. Last time I checked it was 30. I felt a slight drizzle begin and then immediately stop. Could be a few degrees warmer though and it’s supposed to be 53° today. It was 51 when I left home. Wearing a fleece and shell. I got my jacket shell when I purchased it on the way to the airport in 2015, headed to Ireland. I wore that walking all over Ireland, literally its four corners. It still looks brand new. That day that I left home, where I had a couple acres in the woods and had raised my kids who had  moved out by then... I walked a mile to the park-and-ride, caught the bus to the ferry, and rode the Bainbridge ferry over to Seattle. Then on the way to the underground light rail station to Seattle airport at SeaTac, I stopped at the North Face store on the corner. I looked at a lot of stuff with the salesperson and finally settled on this $99 coat shell. At the time I thought it was expensive and buying a "shell" was weird. She was looking at me like I was crazy there in the store. But I bit the bullet and I bought it. And I grew to love it all the way around Ireland. It was perfect for layering, because the weather there was so much like here in the Pacific Northwest. I was cool when it needed to be and kept me warmer than I'd expected. I felt very at home. And today, almost eight years later well, I went in August so just over seven years... it looks like it’s never been worn! Plus you can roll it up and it fits in its own pocket. I love the hood too, and the inner pockets.

Podcast for the day is from Pod Save America.

Second podcast for the day is John Heilemann's Hell and Highwater. With Michael Dowd and Jennifer Palmieri.

Instagram post for the day is getting a lot of attention...

For those complaining that the MSM lies (for rational people unaware what that indicates, "Mainstream Media", how it's three letters not two is curious), have a fundamental misunderstanding and limited comprehension of how journalism functional (outside of right wing disinfo/propaganda entities). When investigating a report and stumbling on a misperception or incorrect facts, in it getting reported, it will typically later be corrected. But with the right wing MSM )which there is)… they’re reporting lies upfront, not misperceptions, but intended, outright lies...that don’t change. Because... they’re lies. The only time those change is when they find a more effective lie, or their lies are shown to be such obvious lies that even the right questions them. At which point they shift to a better lie and encapsulate the first lie. Or rationalizing or explaining it off to their right wing believers, who will just see it as something they merely had to make more clear in what they were intending to say. Trump was an expert at that. To the point that people still think he’s a great guy and someone to vote for, rather than demand for him, justice, prison and execution.

People have got to stop knocking people who complain about the arising the cost of milk, or gas to get to work, or to transport their kids. These are real issues. While the rich and wealthy in complaining about costs, we are indeed looking at greed, for the most part. But when you can’t afford to take care of your kids, or your loved ones, that’s a whole different paradigm you’re dealing with. People need to realize that Republicans aren't going to save them and that their whole method of operation has nothing to do with helping them. Other than what they say to get votes, to get more power and money. Money by the way, that is greatly coming from those people in dire need, and the rest of us doing at least a little better. Look, I’m not rich. I’m retired and just getting by on a pension I luckily earned, and Social Security that Republicans want to take away. Which would essentially put me out on the street. So thanks for that! After spending years in the Air Force and a lifetime paying taxes and into Social Security, they want to punish me/us? WTF? And so, fuck them! Thank you, very much! Please sir, can I NOT have another?

President Biden this week gave a speech where he said, if Democrats retain and gain power in this election, he will First Thing, sign into law protections for abortion. If you’re against that, well you got to admit then you’re a misogynist and this isn't about pre-birth children at all. Because it sure as hell isn’t about protecting them once they're born, as we’ve seen time and again. The second thing he said was that he’s releasing more gas to lower the cost of gas nationwide. Which has already been going back down. Regardless what Republicans are claiming. And we're still working on Saudi Arabia and that whole nightmare jackasses contingency, related to OPEC.

The AQI was 50 today when I left home. It’s overcast. The winds have blown the forest fire smoke away and it’s supposed to rain soon. Rained a little bit yesterday. It’s a nice day for a hike, or a walkabout. Now to be accurate, I do believe a “walkabout“ is a walk about and not a standard closed course like I’m doing, walking up and down the same street. My "walkabout" part of my walkabout is metaphorical, in my taking in new information from podcasts and ruminating on things and sharing those thoughts. That is definitely a walkabout. So maybe my title it should be in quotes, but… it’s not.

From the podcast: “Voting for Republicans will not fix inflation. It’s voting for abortion bans and guaranteeing that inflation will continue.” I would also add it will throw Ukraine to Putin. After all we’ve done. After all NATO and others have done to protect and save them against an illegal and genocidal war by an autocrat (who Trump loves) who hasn’t been fairly elected in 20 years. Guaranteeing that you will be elected, as Putin has (nooo... he’s not afraid of open elections at all...), is not an open and free election.

To be clear when Republicans call liberals “extremist“ what they’re actually saying is they’re leaning too far into progress which makes conservative and those with a more backward orientation to social evolution, uncomfortable. When liberals, Democrats and many independents, say Republicans are extremist, they’re actually being extremist, in having enabled, ignored, supported and acted upon sedition and insurrection. That’s something no one should ignore. I don’t care who you are or what side you're on. 

Replacing the government is not in the US Constitution. Regardless of what the framers, a few of them, may have said. If you’re claiming the Constitution as the foundation of your rights to an insurrection, you’re not reading the American Constitution at all. You’re just listening to Republicans, Trump, conspiracy theories on the Internet, and our enemies across the world who full heartedly are supporting you.

So MAGA types are recording people dropping off ballots at drop boxes, some even following those people after that (i.e., Intimidation). Voters should drop ballots while friends surround them with an opaque curtain. That will drive MAGA nuts. This recording people voting is immature intimidation tactics. What are they, in 2nd grade? This wouldn't intimidate me in the least, though it might some. It's the level of irritating like: "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you!" Good grief. They're devolving. It's just setting up for later actions and gumming up the entire election process, both now and later.

This is more foolish. Even MAGA know Republican's support business, especially big business. And most of them know corporations are price gouging us right now, when they shouldn’t be. Corporations have been set up to help America, by the American government but right now, all they’re doing is reaping profits. Every time in my life that I’ve heard America was an economic trouble, corporations price gouge. Sometimes maintaining a price, is price gouging. And they’re raising prices. But we need all Americans to connect those two things and realize that Republicans aren’t your friend in this. I don’t care who you are. Because even the corporations and wealthy they’re supporting. are based in this country. Damaging the country is not good for anybody. Except for short term profits. But what Republicans don’t get is there’s more to life than numbers, money, and enrichening oneself with wealth and power. I know, sounds stupid saying it, why wouldn't they ignore ethics and reap rewards, right? That's kind of sick though. Those people, people like that, should never of been allowed in politics. Seeing the left as the same, is just incorrect and factually delusional.

It was the Democrats that went after big Pharma recently, and why many, when it kicks in, will be doing better. Republicans didn’t do that, they have been fighting that kind of thing, all the way. Returning Democrats to power after this election means they will go after big Pharma again, as well as corporations. And no, Republicans don't like that. But you're not, we're not, corporations. Not sure how that is so hard for some to see.

It seems to me with Republicans and MAGA doing all they can to end elections, to curb elections, to make it more difficult to vote, we’re on a path to eliminate in-person poll booth voting and we need to immediately go to mail-in ballots. That eliminates all this nonsense about polling booths MAGA types are trying to pull. To gum things up, question everything, intimidate ...that's not AMERICAN. There may be a few problems for some regarding all mail in ballots, but we'll just have to work that out. It may take a year or two if we start now, but it solves a lot of problems Republicans keep drumming up. We’ve been rapidly moving into remote work in recent years, saving our infrastructure and our roads. Considering pandemics and right wing abuses of our citizens in relation to elections, this seems like a pretty obvious fix.

Have you heard that some counties/states are going to hand counted of election ballots? Even though we know for a fact it’s less accurate because of human error then machines? This whole movement by Republicans in the far right, against machine counting is unbelievably divisive. Anyone that knows anything about people and computers should know that hand counting is a bad idea. It's WHY WE DON'T DO IT!

Early Georgia election numbers are in and voting is up 85% from the last midterm election there. Doesn’t mean anybody’s winning, it just means it’s good that we have more people getting involved in voting. Because I really believe if everybody in America voted there would be no MAGA, and there would be no Republican party such as we have. There wouldn't have been an insurrection. Or fear now that Republicans will end democracy here.

Democrats need to be focused on working class people without a college degree and Latinos. Because that seems to be where the leaking votes are going away. That’s from Democratic candidate Tim Ryan. I added the part about Latinos though. Ryan’s opponent is JD Vance who has two mega donors. That, is never good for any candidate's voters.

I need to call Comcast and ask them if there’s a way I can save money while keeping what I’ve got in my current package. This is something you should do every so often for phone and cable and maybe some other things. At least half the time I've called about that, they’ve had some way I can save at least some money and sometimes, a lot.

I have to say, people like Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, JD Vance, after having Trump slam them really hard, especially if I was about to get up on stage after Trump said how much I kiss his ass… I would definitely have a come back, You've got to punch back. Those like Trump and Putin, either appreciate that or respond appropriately and not how you might think. I would definitely punch back at Trump when I got to the mic, in a way (if I were MAGA like JD Vance and Trump), where I would get in a comment where the audience would go, "oh I don’t believe he said that" followed by some laughter and applause. Otherwise, why am I up there? Something that would resonate. But I would never let anyone racially slur my wife like McConnell allowed from Trump. Or to attack me like that and I don’t give a damn who they are, I’m coming back at them. And frankly, there’s some integrity involved. Because if you lose your candidacy over something like that, you deserve it. Find another career. That’s the problem with these MAGA Republicans. They have no boundaries. Their ethics are in the Trump cesspool/swamp he created. Their ambition has completely eviscerated their ethics. Do anything to win? The only place that makes sense is in war and it often doesn’t even make sense then. Which is why we have the military governed by civilian authority. When war gets to a point like Putin is in where Russia has been consistently defeated, someone hast to take the reins and say, "OK STOP! ENOUGH ALREADY!" But that's the problem with autocracies. Single point of failure.

JD Vance has invested in companies with foreign workers. Deflating his self promoted image of himself. Looking at his stance on China, there's no there, there.

Tim Ryan had a good point about paying off college tuition loans in that we should at least let some of these people, with high interest-rates, be able to get lower interest rates as that alone would help a lot. And, we need to fix the problem that is the high cost of college tuition. I stand by what I've said, that we get a K-12 for free since over 100 years ago, because we knew that would raise the entire country up. And it did. It was massively cost effective. But everything has advance so far that we need to make that now, K-14. So people can get out of that in a level where there are more jobs open to them. When I graduated high school in 1973 I knew at the time I wasn’t prepared for any decent job. It made me angry. Which was why after three years of trying (to get a really good job, I did have one), I went in the Air Force. I got out, then got a couple of degrees which the VA paid for. But, tuition wasn’t ridiculous. I got a high tech job eventually and made a decent amount of money. Which allowed me an mostly reasonable retirement. I didn't get to a job with a retirement plan until late, or I’d be even better off.

I worked at University of Washington for 7 1/2 years and when I talked to them years later about being vested for retirement, they said I was a few months short. I had thought for years I was vested when I left. I asked them a few years ago about that and they said, "Yep, you're a few months short." But after I left the UDub where I worked at University bookstore, the University of Washington Medical Center, Harborview Medical Center and the UW Personnel office, I was asked to come back and work for Harborview Medical Center again. I wasn’t salaried, though. But I’m just curious if that added that few months on, that I needed? Maybe I was invested there for retirement. But you know how things go right? Probably not.

I mentioned in previous walkabout blogs about tightening your core as you walk and counting your steps. So I’ve been doing that since I first... actually before I first mentioned it, and today I’m doing 100 steps counts. What’s interesting is that it’s gotten easier I can do it for longer now and noticed today that when I tightened up my stomach muscles, sucking in my belly button toward my spine, it also tightens up the muscles above it in my chest, I’ve to my shoulders. Which was not my conscious intention. But that’s where the muscle tone has moved up to. Cool. This, after two years of Covid and long Covid, which kept me extremely sedentary all through 2021, and then again from March 2022, until not that long ago.

Speaking of which, it’s been a few days since my last walk because of the smoke and poor air quality from forest fires. It was over a week before that walk, since my previous one. I wasn’t sure if I’d make it today, but it looks like I am gonna make my standard 5 miles. Took a lot out of me, but it feels good.

Also, I had been complaining about my left ankle which was really painful and problematic since I began walking months ago. I can say now that I believe it’s been healed, at least since my last walk. Though I continue to wear an ankle brace sleeve.

The other day I tried drinking a glass of wine with lunch. Because of my long Covid, it would make my blood pressure go crazy when I did that. So being able to drink any alcohol is a sign of healing. And it went great! I had bought a little four pack of individual, inexpensive wine bottles. Tasted pretty good. I decided yesterday that today would be a good day for a steak. It’s been a couple weeks or so since I had a steak. I'll take the frozen steak out of my freezer, toss it in my air fryer and a little bit later, not very long, I'll be eating steak and win. I can even throw some shrimp on there I keep in the freezer. A class act lunch as a reward for getting my 5 miles down. And for dessert, I have a very tasty (and not very big) sugarless ice cream bar on a stick. Very creamy. Doesn’t taste sugar-free like what I grew up with that tasted nasty and bitter. And it doesn’t affect my blood sugar level at all. Which is good for long covid. Which seems to be fading.

I mentioned this before, but when I walk I use speech to text for my transcription. Especially when you get tired walking, you don’t always enunciate clearly when you get into thought and talking. So I will get back home and remember I had some really insightful things to say but I don’t have a clue what I was saying for a sentence or so in a paragraph because it makes no sense. It’s both comical and frustrating. Sometimes a bit angrifying. But, I’ve learned it’s better than nothing. So I do my best. I get home, I transfer the file to my laptop, put it into my blog, read through it once, cleaning it up as best I can and post it. It’s a bit rough and my thoughts sometimes are a bit jumbled. But I’m not trying to write the great American blog here. Just sharing some ideas. And besides, I want to finish up my book on long Covid. Which is done and the cover graphics are now with my cover artist. I made up the cover but he’s going to take the concept and make it look better than I’ll ever be able to make it look.

Back to this nonsense... it’s truly odd how Republicans don’t give a wit about them being our threat to democracy and only being focused mostly right now on inflation. Because that’s the best selling point they’ve got. Whatever you do, don’t look at who they are, or what they’ve done. Certainly not as judged by any neutral observers.

This is a progressive country and always has been or we would never have been founded. We just have an infatuation every so many years with fascism, autocracy, and conservatism. When you take a group like that, who is a frustrated minority and are consistently out of power...when they get back in power (and then fail so often) it frustrates them to the degree that they become toxic unto themselves. That’s why in part, we had a January 6 insurrection.

My next walk may be Sunday, but if not, probably Monday, in two days. All depending on weather and air quality (that I think may be good at least for a bit).  I'll be able to listen to the next "Ultra" podcast episode! So looking forward to the rest of its' entire season!

Have a great weekend.

Walkabout Thoughts #10

My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:

First podcast today is Rachel Maddow‘s, seriously amazing and disturbing, "Ultra", Season 1 Episode 3 that just came out today.

This podcast, or Rachel... and I am very serious, need to win some awards for the Ultra podcast.

Rachel details in the episode the explosion of the Hercules gun powder plant who supplied in the US military back in the 40s. And how months before that, a citizen had put together an agent cell to infiltrate American fascists and Nazis planning to overthrow the government. Who then notified Congress about it. Who turned it over to the FBI. But the government did not follow through with due diligence. This is another fascinating episode in this tale of how Donald Trump was not the first fascist to try to take over America, just the first president. And how the FBI dropped the ball back in the 1940s and with the Jan. 6th, 2021 insurrection

Next podcast I listened to is, John Heilemann‘s "Hell and Highwater" podcast part 2 finishing up with Maggie Haberman. Something people need to think about in voting for Trump ever again as president...if he were to get elected again, what makes anyone think he would leave office at the end of the second term? When he’s not allowed a third? And how would that stop him from trying? It wouldn't. That's the point.

Third podcast is Political Gabfest, Bonus Edition, Michigan and Arizona Midterms

Weather today is overcast, the air quality is good in the 40s for AQI. First day I’ve been able to go for a walkabout in a while. Air quality doesn’t seem to be affecting my heart or blood pressure, yet. Today there was a change in airflow coming off the ocean in the west, pushing the smoke east. It’s a little moist today. But nice overall.

My Instagram post for the day.

The thing about MAGA, other than being ridiculous and easily debunked if you really wanted to do that… is that it’s not about intellectual level or critical thinking to sink into it. I mean, it is as far as vetting information. But it’s really about holes in one's mental concepts and paradigm of reality. In one’s desires, politically speaking Also religiously speaking. Do note that many atheists have a very religious structural orientation to reality, because so many were raised as theists and grew into being atheist. It’s not about how smart or educated you are, it’s about those blindspots in the hierarchy of one's thinking. If you push certain buttons in the mind, as Trump did and is doing, as MAGA and QAnon types are doing, it lights up certain pleasure zones in the brain. And when we lighten up those pleasure zones, we become kind of stupid. Which explains adultery, libertine orientations, and various disabilities like pedophilia and even, serial killers.

America’s wannabe fascist leader in the 1940s said Hitler had the brown shirts, Mussolini had the black shirts, so why can’t I have the silver shirts? And so he started that organization of silver shirts. Much like silverfish insects who are disgusting to all who fully examine them running about their bare feet, at the most vulnerable of times.

About all this...I keep saying to read Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny”, for how tyranny, through Fascism, comes to power as we're seeing in America now, and as we’ve seen before. And yet, for some reason none of us learn about this in our history classes. We're going to need to change that. Or all this will happen again, and again. Until this country crashes. This is our second time. That we know of so far.

This thing about the American Nazi "silver shirts" is interesting. In 1978 when I lived in Spokane, Washington, I was in the Air Force at Fairchild Air Force Base. 15 miles outside of Spokane. I met a guy that seemed nice, at the gym, who with his wife took my wife and I across the border to the hills of Idaho, where we met his friends. At "The Church of Our American Christian Heritage". Who basically look like the Silver Shirts. It was a day that scared the hell out of my wife and I. Little old ladies in a fascist church spewing the most vile anti-somatic and anti-non-white and minority bullshit. I listened in their church with a sermon from their national leader up from Georgia that day, who didn’t know there were newbies in the crowd. I wasn’t really buying what he was saying anyway, until he started talking about his visit to Vancouver BC, in Canada. A city I love, dearly. Both Victoria on Vancouver Island and Vancouver on the mainland, north of Seattle. He started talking about what a vile cesspool Vancouver is because basically, it’s just such an international city. Which is part of what makes it so cool. I had to cool my rising blood pressure and anger has he vociferously, furiously denigrated one of the most beloved cities in my life.

The story Rachel is telling in this episode of her Ultra podcast, is essentially what is a small group, compared to the population of America, who were trained well enough to make specific attacks on our infrastructure, to truly damage America. Reminds me of a "60 Minutes" piece ("How safe is America's Electric Grid?") they did not long ago. Someone in, I think Southern California, who took pot shots at a power station in the middle of nowhere. That seemed to experts as obviously a practice run targeting Americas infrastructure where a bullet could do massive damage to a region of the power grid. While it would be perhaps too expensive to secure all those locations with proper armed guards and dogs etc. They can be outfitted with enough electronic surveillance equipment to be remotely monitored if anyone coming up was acting suspiciously. We should have a rapid response team who can go check it out before damage is done. Are we doing that good enough? Probably not. Again we’ve been forewarned and did little or nothing. Examples? The Hercules gun powder plant in the 1940s mentioned in the "Ultra" podcast. Or, 9/11 in the 2000s. January 6 insurrection in 2021. We need to wake up! And as painful as it as it is for America, we need to begin to be proactive. Even though toxic conservatism professes otherwise in that it’s progressiveness which is socialism, or communism, or even Satan. Pretty childish really. It’s ridiculous if that is what stops us from acting protectively and we get hit with yet another actual and real fascist attack... ever again.

If you don’t listen to Rachel Maddow's "Ultra" podcast, if you don’t listen to podcasts, you really should listen to Season 1 Episode 3 that came out today (Mondays) about the American fascist Nazi attempt to overthrow the government in the 1940s and how the government stumbled so that it took a citizen to build an undercover cell to get the info. Eventually forewarning Congress in a public hearing, telling them there was going to be a massive explosion at the Hercules gunpowder plant, which serviced a lot, including America’s military. And yet, nine months later, it happened just as he said it would. Sounds familiar. We were also warned about the Jan. 6th insurrection. And yet, things were not set up to protect us, but rather hindrances were put in place to allow it to happen. History, repeating itself, or just rhyming?

I don’t believe in theology, I don’t buy into the metaphysical, like demons and evil and such. I do however love it in storytelling, has I grew up Catholic. And I’ve certainly written about it in my fiction. My most extreme example being my last book Anthology of Evil II Part II The Unwritten, where I literally describe Hell as it interacts with two other real universes. Still, if anyone were to be evil, it would be Donald Trump. Why? Because he has spawned ignorance and abuse, misinformation, and has supported and been supported by, our worst actors on the planet. Including Putin. And now his interplay with Herschel Walker, who he fully supports because he wants somebody that’s stupid to follow the Trump paradigm and succeed. Someone to just do what he's told by the Republlcian Party. He’s trying to bring about that movie… and you know which movie ("Idiocracy"). A film story we're headed further and further into, day by day, election by election.

Apparently in Maggie Haberman‘s book, she details how Trump, in the 1990s, told his biracial girlfriend she got her brains from her dad's side of the family, who is a white guy. What a nice racist boyfriend, right? Said she had brains.

Trump has been the most powerful force in the Republican Party and America's lower intestines. He’s moved on up past the bigger intestine, now. He’s in the stomach, approaching the esophagus, and pretty soon all that dripping shit that’s been coming out of some (too many) Republican mouths, will soon become a fire hose, should he ever get reelected.

China committed a kind of genocide in Tibet through Chinese Settler colonialism, overpopulating another country with the children of the invading Chinese. With many bullshit disingenuous arguments as to why they were (rationalizing) doing “good“ there. We’re seeing the same thing with Republicans now here, only in a political sense. While they fine tune an ancient racist Jewish conspiracy, where they’re over populating lower official government positions with MAGA nut cases, so that eventually they’ll take over. If we don’t do something about it.

It is definitely a problem in binary thinking in being full theist or atheist. Being agnostic can also has it’s dangerous. I would call it "bilious logic" or "encapsulated cloud logic" or "fuzzy logic". Not to be confused with actual fuzzy logic. Which is actually something. [fuzzy logic: Fuzzy logic is an approach to variable processing that allows for multiple possible truth values to be processed through the same variable.]  There are some topics/subjects where, if you don’t take a hardline stance against it, you’re asking to slide into a binary understanding, eventually in the opposite direction than had initially been intended. It can evolve into an "infection". We're seeing that in its toxicity today. It’s overcome our conservatism and republicanism as it evolved into things like the "Tea Party", and MAGA, and Trumpism. It’s self-destructive but begins by fueling itself through the destruction of others, until the pleasure received from being inhumane takes root, and it's too late to see it's gotten out of control.

Especially in politics, if concern of something should evolve into fears of other things. Unless there’s actually something there to fear. So often, not. As well when we do fear something real, we need to be sure we’re not simply concerned about some thing else, as that can evolve into a fear that evokes binary fight or flight. And yes I know there’s also, freezing, with fight or flight. Don’t be a rabbit just run or freeze up, or flight. Fighting for what we should believe in and not just what we do believe in. [Fight, flight or freeze are the three most basic stress responses. They reflect how your body will react to danger. Fawn is the fourth stress response that was identified later.] Fawn by the way, is what we se from those close to someone like Donald Trump. Or Vladimir Putin.

I should add a side note in my long Covid book on my personal history about the OSI and the Berlin incident with the KGB in 1977. Something like, "Here’s a story you’ll never hear anywhere else." And true enough. I already did a FOIA request For my medical records and my mental health records which they didn’t send. But I should do one about me and the OSI see what it shows. It's sometimes surprising what those show, and what they don't.

Regarding new political candidate Kari Lake who for decades Phoenix trusted as a news anchor. That’s fine. She walked away from a media career, giving her some weight, because MAGA types don’t trust media. Unless it says what they like to hear, obviously. Like Fox News, etc. Problem there is, they trust the wrong media when they do. But look, don’t trust either her politics or her ambition. Because she’s bought into the Trump Disinformation loop paradigm that's destroying this country. Literally do not trust those supposed "leaders". Remember as always, if you do want or like to trust them? Trust but verify. The thing is, if you verify these people they fail verification all the time. Still, if you’re MAGA, they won’t fail it. Because of whatever rationalization is being put into play so one can believe that due diligence was accomplished. The only due diligence they’re doing however, is of an allowance to continue to believe the disinformation.

Somewhere above I referred to “this information”. But we have to understand that’s a bigger subject and it seems the current MAGA political disinformation campaign that's been going on now for years, is more than just a piece of information. It’s efforts, dynamics and processes that they're putting into play and that have been put into place to support all that. The big lie is just one more of all that. We really need to pay attention. And act, and act accordingly.

Cheers!

Walkabout Thoughts #9

My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:

Today’s podcast is from Rachel Maddow's "Ultra", an excellent 8 part podcast, episode 2. Reasonably the most important podcast in America today, because it details fascism and insurrection in America. And how it turns out, back in the 1940s, that was the last time it was tried. The parallels with Trump's insurrection today, with his MAGA and the Republican Party today, and with Christianity, evoke a painful similarity.

BTW... How to watch Thursday's House Jan. 6 committee public hearing.

My second podcast is with John Heilemann‘s "Hell and High Water" podcast, part 2 with Maggie Haberman. In case you missed part 1, best to listen to it first. It's another good podcast that America needs to hear. Especially the mentioned, George Stephanopoulos interview with Trump from 2016 where he asks Trump about Russia and his comments about Putin over the years. Disturbing, abrasively irritating, more lies and such Trump bullshit. Denying what he had said for years, how he was good friends with Putin, trying to make it seem more than it was, then back peddling, intensively. Trump tried to complain to George after the interview that Russia was mentioned too many (3) times but George got his say in first, in saying that he know what Trump was going to say, that George's people were annoyed with him too, in not pushing it even more than he had. Pretty funny, really.

I’ll be detailing bits and pieces from today’s podcast with Rachel about the first time religion and government power through conservatives generated, initiated, and propped up America’s first insurrection after the Civil War in the 1940s.

Today’s Instagram post

Today’s weather is good, cool, perfect for a hike, or a walkabout.

Finally after a week of air quality so poor was triggering my long CoViD that I had to wear a mask day and night, finally realizing I just needed to move my HEPA air cleaner from just outside my bedroom, into my bedroom and close the door, which going forward will require a space heater. Air quality is good enough today finally, that I can do my 5 mile walk again. Hopefully I’ll be able to achieve that today. So far I’m, out here and walking. And that’s better than what I’ve been able to do this past week because of these damn forest fires (thanks again global warming and our inaction and denials for decades). This is slowing down my being able to finish my book on long CoViD and publishing it, ASAP. Frankly, this was a scary week past. And poor air quality is supposed to return Friday. I don't want to go through this again having my blood pressure and pulse affected, because I'm breathing.

So Putin and his Duma welcome any states in the United States to secede who want to secede to Russia. This is ridiculous. This whole concept of seceding from America has been ridiculous for a very long time. We fought a Civil War over it, they lost, so...STFU.

It’s good to note that the satellite we smashed into an asteroid actually hit the asteroid and moved it off its course. Finally, we have something. Now they want to build a space telescope just for finding those objects. We're long past the time for this.

So before the Trump insurrection, which led to the largest investigation in FBI history, if not for main justice, too, a 1940s insurrection was the FBI’s third largest file, bigger even than Martin Luther King‘s. This is the subject of Ultra, the podcast I'm listening to.

For a couple of decades or so, conservative/Republicans have thought that some of the worst words they could use against their opponents, those who believe in a free democratic America, who are not toxically conservative, thought using words like "cuck" (attacking sexuality), "snowflake" (attacking apparently, masculinity), "fag" (attacking both sexuality and masculinity of heterosexuals, those they deem "normal", but are just the majority), and the actual word that fits them best, while worse than all those words, in a manner of how you view it, is "fascist", or "insurrectionist", "seditionist", "anti-democracy", "anti-American". All the things MAGA are doing, while claiming otherwise.

What’s bad about religion? Why's it so dangerous in a society? Because it sets you up for things like fascism. A belief of faith in having a need for a solid foundation, regardless of facts, and simply ideology. When you get "power" (i.e., Congress people, governors, leaders), and political ideologies that align with fundamentals of religion, especially in American Christianity, as it also is in Iran with Islam in a theocracy, those ideologies begin to invoke and stage the tenets for fascism in that democracy. We sought in America’s 1940's insurrection, paralleled with the Nazi insurrection in Germany, as is now, this current fascist fascination with the Trump MAGA insurrection.

How do you know when to be worried about fascism in your country? First off, read Timothy Snyder‘s book  "On Tyranny". Second, when a political group joins a religious group. or adds religion into their arguments, and then start demonizing some “other“, like immigrants, liberals, BLM, Democrats, etc., there’s your sign. As for the reverse argument that they claim they're being demonized, when you start doing illiberal, harmful, seditionist things, well, your labeling yourself, your demonizing yourself. All that other people are doing is simply reacting and making observations of your ill behaviors. 

Maybe we should allow citizens to have military weapons. Bear with me a moment. At least weapons they’re allowed now. But they have to instead store them on military bases or something similar. They want a gun at home for self protection? Fine, but a shotgun, best home device there is. An AR-15 is a stupid home defense weapon. Then say they’re only allowed to shoot their military weapons, on those bases, at a range there, monitored and protected. That way we’re not “taking their guns“, but we ARE "well regulating" them. Have a national database of the guns, the owners, who uses them and when (Yes, this is scaring the hell out of a certain minority of mostly white people). THEN, if a militia decides to commit an insurrection, we'll know if suddenly a bunch of guns are being taken and tried to steal them off the base. Anyway, something on that order. Because we absolutely should not have military weapons, assault weapons, in the hands of civilians. That was always a stupid idea. As we’ve seen clearly in the facts. It's why we never did that before. Until we did. Realized our mistake, ended it, then ridiculously started it again. Why do any of that? There’s something to be said during an invasion by a foreign country, to be able to call up civilians who have knowledge of and accuracy in their training on weapons. But to allow them as we're seeing today, to keep them at home, sets us up for an insurrection of delusional nutcases lead by a delusional autocrat. ?Well regulated"! That’s the key term. Not to mention the 1886 SCOTUS decision, that militias that are not the national guard, and they are not constitutional. This whole private ownership indicator about the second amendment, is nonsense. We do have to consider that we’re already starting at an uneven keel, with even this kind of a program. Because seditionists do tend to be either active military, veterans of military, National Guard, or police. So how do you well regulate that, in regard to these concerns? How? Well, you DO something! NOT nothing.

Interesting, back in the 1940s when Father Coughlin's Christian Front organization saw his people being arrested, he acted like Peter with Jesus, in the bible, denying he knew them. They weren't HIS Christian Front, though he knew very well they were (Sounds a lot like Donald Trump, doesn't it...). Playing as traitor to his own people, so his own armed, bomb making people could continue his sedition toward their insurrection. Again, from Ultra podcast.

I've mentioned this many times. When I was a kid, I was walking with my grandmother somewhere and I said “I hate…(something).“ She stopped me and said, "We don’t hate." We were raised old Slovak, old country Catholics. But she had self-educated herself and did her best to do, what she told me to always do, “Always try to have people around you, smarter than you, and you’ll always learn from them.“ Anyway, I said to her, thinking I was smart in elementary school, “What if I hate Satan?“ Thinking clearly, that I had gotten her on that one. She said, "No, not even Satan. Look, hate uses energy. We need all the energy we can muster to make it through life. To be good people. To spread the good around the world. So there’s no place for hate." So, I hate no one and calling me "Just a Trump hater" literally has no meaning whatsoever. IF I don't like something, there's a good reason for it.

Conservatives who have been unknowingly following toxic conservatism for decades here in America, need to stop following and believing in the bubble generated by Putin and Trump type propaganda. I’m not saying they’re working together. But there is a similarity in autocracy that aligns up, making within that bubble, it appear as real and good. And it’s not. You don’t have to listen to CNN, or MSNBC. But you do have to get accurate information outside of that bubble. Good luck.

Trump gained traction in the beginning, going back to 2011, because Republican voters wanted someone who would fight. Just as Democrats have long wanted for. And Trump would fight. The problem with that is the same problem with single issue voting. So, you vote for someone who fights… but you completely ignore and will get on board with the content of what he’s fighting against? That’s like second grade level crowd manipulation. And the GOP fell right into it. Along with a lot of independents and some Democrats. And still are, remarkably so. Although there is trending now in moving away from him. But sadly, some of that is trending toward his new wannabes and mini-me types. Those wanting power like Trump, and willing to do anything for it. That in America can be fine, but you stop at the point of trying to break America and end democracy. Otherwise, you're not part of this country, and you make yourself an enemy of this country. 

You know, I would very much prefer to be listening to podcasts on psychology, phenomenology, metaphysics, science… But those are all more long-term pursuits and considerations. When you’re in a room suffocating for lack of oxygen, that has to be your first concern. And we’re in a position where fascism and sedition are looked at longingly by conservatives and we need to eliminate that political "carbon monoxide" and replace it with clean, clear air...politically speaking.

How do you know you’re on the wrong track? When you look at things you’re saying and those you praise are saying, and you can label it as xenophobic, Protectionist, isolationist… Well, there’s your signs.

Conservatives who don’t believe in our elections, who don’t trust… Here’s how I’ve gone through life after someone once pointed this out to me. I was that way too, in my 20s. First of all, don’t worry about looking like a fool because someone tricked you. That’s on them, not you. Trust, but verify. I had trouble making and keeping close friends back then, because I couldn’t trust anyone. Because of my childhood. But once I changed my mind decided to trust everybody, but verify, and to trust myself, things got better. Life got better...and easier. So we trust our elections and if there’s questions we follow due diligence. Which in some of these 2020 elections, we’ve done. Multiple times, to the point of absurdity. But conservatives still refuse to believe it and not want our election system. Thinking that's the quick fix. Fix something NOT broken. Believe the fantasy because...that's more fun. Well? That’s immature. It’s a lack of trust in themselves, and a phobia of being held to look the fool. What that does is make you INTO a fool. Then who do you vote for? Only Fools. So Trump became president and now, they want him to be their dictator. Let's not do that!

Walkabout Thoughts #8

My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:

Yes, some of this is smart, some is dumb. But all is recorded as I'm walking and listening to podcasts and I'm responding to the content of those, and my walking environment, and my thoughts in general. It's not a well designed set of thoughts. And therein lay some of it's usefulness, humor, or insight (or not)...

Today’s Instagram post is a view of my nearly finished new fence. Here's the before video.

Today’s podcast is from Pod Save America and Mary Trump's Podcast. I listened to Pod Save America for a while, but my curiosity about Mary Trump‘s podcast got the better of me and I switched over.

Weather today is overcast, cool, humid. OK, here we go...

The Trump Dead Brain Trust (TDBT) has now called for the murder of Mitch McConnell. Frankly, humanity wouldn’t even miss him, America wouldn’t miss him. Congress wouldn’t miss him. But Senate Republicans and the once Republican Party kind of would.

I've said this for a while now. Four years under POTUS45 was four years living in Donald Trump's mind. What we get for that now is that Republicans have turned even more narcisissistic (partly why they liked Trump). How else do you explain loving doing anything you want no matter how offensive or hurtful to others while laughing at the demise of democracy? Which after all, really is about people coming together safely and productively, who are all very different.

Wouldn't it be interesting if it was the radical radical white, right wingnut, toxic conservative, fake Republican, Trump dead brain trust... so rapidly developed by Donald Trump and on such very fertile ground, prepped by the GOP for years, which led to exactly what they've been railing against? A big brother state we had to create to protect the country from THEM? What if it’s because of people like them that actual Big Brother (or Deep State if you enjoy your fantasy name) that is built to protect all of us, because of them as they become increasingly ever out of control? Weird, right? I think they call that a self fulfilling prophesy.

You know, that WOULD make sense because MAGA are trying to destroy America as we know it. A country set up to be as protective as possible against royal power, the power-hungry and toxically autocratic. Republicans have done their best to bend toward these power-hungry toxically capitalistic & conservatives who may very well Evoke a new kind of Patriot Act to act in ways we never would’ve allowed or conceived before. All because of this Republican Party, because they allowed someone like Donald Trump to be elected, become a POTUS and now an FPOTUS, who is allowed respect he never gave the office of president, as well as a variety of protections he fully doesn’t deserve. Trump needs to be treated like the toxic conservative and #1 criminal citizen that he is, so we can eventually correct this massive American misstep as our second darkest blotch on our history, after the Civil War and slavery.

“Christians for Trump“ should be an ever growing organization to take down Donald Trump and the foul stench he’s evolved and amplified. Just as the Russians and Chinese have done to us. Trump really is our greatest threat as a domestic terrorist and leader of an actively operating disinformation machine.

We should find a way to start charging Donald Trump and the Republican Party for all the millions of dollars they have been cost America to protect people Trump has targeted. Even former FVPOTUS Pence who had Secret Service protection that cost more while he was in office, because of Donald Trump and his enablers and his MAGA dead brain trust wanted to kill him. This decades long zombie Republican Party has got to be purged, as well as those who Trump seated within our government. Not to mention those in our military, long before Trump even hit the scene, and in our local law-enforcement. We have ignored this festering ideology thinking it was about free speech, when it was really about sedition.. 

When I was in the SAC in the USAF, with a secret clearance for nuclear weapons, I met a nice guy who I eventually discovered, in a rather uncomfortable way. when I was taken with my wife to a compound he belonged to in the back hills of Idaho. We visited his friends at a white Christian nationalist compound. Had I known, I wouldn't have gone and it made me nervous and somewhat terrified my wife. Some of those there were dressed in Nazi like uniforms. They dissembled on that point, saying their Nazi-like uniforms were NOT Nazi uniforms. THEY were NOT Nazis. If you were to compared their uniforms, that was true. But they were definitely Nazi-like uniforms. They also saluted like Nazis, and in their church. Which, knowing history, was chilling. I considered notifying the Air Force that next work day, but my best friend talked me out of it. He said, they know where you live, they picked you up from home, right? Your wife is  alone when you're at work, 15 miles away at the airbase. I eventually later went through the process to join the OSI and I was accepted. I should’ve told them. But then, nothing would’ve happened. Because of all our rights. Because they knew how to lay low, below the "radar". And back then our not knowing what would come all these decades later. Or how it would end up in a "Donald Trump" fascist wannabe, Nazi type as president, with his invoking sedition and insurrection. But there’s been a kernel of this toxically conservative Christian white nationalism in our military for decades. As well as in our law-enforcement. None of this is new. It boils up every so often and we (the Feds, the FBI, etc.) take it back down every so many years, maybe once every decade or so. This has to be properly addressed and quashed with our greatest rationales and reasonable prejudices for our own protections. For our democratic Republic. For the survival of this country whose shining light across the world has been tarnished and dimmed in its actively being worked towards putting that light out. By the Republican Party of all people. And then desiring to ignite a new and darkly disturbing light under the auspices of autocracy, or kleptocracy, or oligarchy, or literally anything they can get to replace democracy with. Things those people will support in MAGA, or QAnon, or whatever  stupid side of the Republican Party that they can get to "click", until one day they will realized, when it is too late, that they called for their own demise along with the rest of us. They may hope they will have time, that there will be time for them to make their dark revolution permanent. But inevitably, eventually, as we see worldwide all through history, it always happens and they will fail. But first the amount of damage, degradation and destruction they will invoke will be monumental. And THAT is if they do not act like Donald Trump and try to take all down with him as he falls. 

So, Dr. Oz has done medical experimentation on dogs where they were terribly mistreated. Apparently this came out recently. I never paid any attention to him or his "snake oil" marketing. But apparently Columbia University ended up cutting ties with him. I mistakenly thought Oz was a nice guy. Much like I believed for years that Donald Trump was. But only because I saw him on the Letterman Show when Dave would call some billionaire up in New York City who was always there to talk. Of course I'm sure that was prearranged. He seemed like a nice guy. So by time The Apprentice started, I had read his book and it seemed good. I didn’t know it was bullshit and written by a ghost writer. But I should’ve known. I had bought into The Apprentice phantom-Trump, fake TV "titan of industry" manufactured by a production company company and his producer, Mark Burnette. Who owes America for never releasing those tapes he has of Trump showing who he really is. Mark, your Karma has got to be some of the most foul on this planet right up there with Trump's. Here’s hoping we'll get to hear when it strikes. Same as with Trump. Same with his family. Except, Mary Trump. Same as it should be with Trump's MAGA/ Russian/ Republican/ QAnon/ conservative toxic individuals and associated groups.

Regardless what anyone says, COVID-19 is still alive and thriving. Not like it was to be sure. Things are indeed better. We do have vaccines now. But, you can still get it. President Biden said the pandemic is over. I think he misspoke. In a certain sense or form of the pandemic, that is over and that is what I think he was referring to as things are better now. But it’s over when it’s over and it ain’t over yet.

I had two vaccines, two boosters and I still got a really bad form of CiVuD that left me with long CoViD for the second time. I got the updated booster about three weeks ago in September 2022 when it became available. So... Be careful. Be healthy.

To be clear about those who say, "Hey, I never got it!" Look. A lot of people did get it and never showed symptoms and were never tested. Some of those who were tested came out negative and yet, they had it. That’s just the way it is. I have a friend who is showed no CoViD symptoms, but may well have had COVID-19 and now seems to have long CoViD. I told her she very well may have had COVID-19 but just didn’t know it and you can still get long Covid. So protect yourself, and don’t be ashamed, embarrassed, or cowed by friends or especially, by ignorant strangers

Anyone wonder why retired criminal millionaire Donald Trump doesn’t have a podcast? There’s a good reason.

COVID-19 has only been around for 2 1/2 years at this point. We still don’t know much about it. Maybe another 2 1/2 or five years from now, we will. Probably, we will. But that’s not now. The biggest things we need to protect ourselves now, is from ignorant information spread as science or fact, and the virus itself. Though one other element is definitely our own ignorance. Especially, if we don't realize just how ignorant we are. 

For the record, being anti-abortion is not being pro-life. But is being anti-science. Does you’re anti-abortion stance make you a good person? Well, if you're a five year old, maybe. If you’re an atheist, and anti-abortion? Do know that you’re supporting a religious belief. Way to go to fight for the other side. The separation of church and state is being broken down on purpose. Why a shattered Republican Party with their criminal, autocratic leader, supported by a ridiculous belief system of toxic conservatism, of QAnon, of a far right extremist MAGA cult of their Lord Trump who is doing his best to play antichrist. As we’ve seen, even the church of Satan, which isn't quite what you might think it is, are actually fighting more for what is right, against those fake righteous right wingnut toxic conservative types, delusionally thinking they are the "good people." There’s your sign. Don't you think there’s something seriously wrong with the Republican Party, when even the Church of Satan has the moral higher ground over them?

Blaming Pres. Biden for the gas prices in a world economic crisis in part initiated by Donald Trump, yeah I’m just not seeing how much of it is actually Joe Biden's fault. Though from an illegal war by Trump's buddy Putin, who has gaslighted Russia into genocide in Ukraine, a country historically very close to Russia and their people, blaming Biden is like blaming FDR for World War II. It takes a real incompetent person or conservative party, stupidly historically unaware of current world problems and civics, in a MAGA dumb mindset to be pushing this kind of agenda at this time. Stop embarrassing America. Just, stop it!

It’s ironic how many entitled Republican Party attacks lack any moral or legal common sense about actual American entitlements that we're entitled to as a right in being American, from those people acting criminally entitled. Being "American" should carry weight and benefit. This "logic" involved in the Republican Party selling their disingenuous wares to a subset of Americans who've been following toxic conservatism for decades, truly boggles the mind

From Mary Trump‘s podcast... in 2016 most white women voted for Trump... in 2020 even more voted for Trump... after years of misogyny and crime and bullshit. However their husbands voted more for Biden in 2o20. all which has something to do with white women historically leaning into segregation. - Wajahat Ali

Remember on these podcasts you listen to, the "skip forward 30 seconds" button, is your button friend. Also be aware, when commercial time comes up and you go to skip it, sometimes you don’t need to because it will go right back into the show. I guess maybe they got enough money from their ads or it's a rerun or something

Herschel Walker is a misogynistic violent person not to be elected to public office. I’ll never understand why the facts and information are actually out there and yet people won’t do their due diligence to be sure they aren’t voting for a criminal. I mean they actually elected one as POTUS45. How stupid was that? I don’t know what comes after stupid, but that would be it in still supporting him. Yeah, the world and all of history will definitely see you.

Why are people so attracted to Autocrats and Fascists and this Republican Party and Donald Trump? I don't see the attraction. Is it because we work hard, and we’re bored, and some of us seek entertainment for entertainment's value? Never registering one iota that it actually affects us, our lives, and others, and the world, negatively? The Apprentice wasn’t real! As many “reality“ TV shows are not real. "Unscripted" does not mean real. It means produced. "Donald Trump" is not real. Not the one people are attracted to and vote for. "Donald Trump" is a manufactured brand. I suspect if you put people individually into a room with him for some length of time and he had to be completely himself and exhibit who he truly is, maybe one percent of one percent of his supporters would walk out of that room still a supporter. While those remaining loyal to him we need a serious mental health evaluation. Just as Trump does.

Trans kids' situation being referred to as a “culture war“ is as much a culture war as when science says something is a bacteria instead of a virus. MAGA of course would argue that it would be a culture war. And they’ll deny that. But if we put it into action, 100% they'd start arguing how science doesn’t know what they’re talking about. This referring to culture war stuff, when it’s actually science, is abusive, ignorant, and truly only for the self-destructive who wish to push that out to the rest of our country. It’s not our fault that some people are so entrenched in their little bubble of unreality that they can’t move forward and would instead prefer to elect criminals. But it is up to us to stop it.

Look. I've said this time and time again. I don’t hate Republicans or conservatives or MAGA people. I don’t hate Russians. I don’t hate Chinese. I don’t hate North Koreans. It makes me angry that their beliefs are so delusional, sure. And detached from reality. It makes me pity them and the rest of us, for them. But not really for them so much as for their foolish beliefs. Many of which are founded on thousands of years of ridiculous religious belief. Beliefs which have been weaponized by those seeking power and wealth. I just don’t believe in hating people. I don't believe in hating other Americans. But I do despise stupidity in those purposely sowing disinformation, and cramming it down other people's throats. I also don’t hate ignorance. I think it’s something we’re supposed to help others be brought up out of. I have a saying that I’ve been saying for decades now, that "ignorance is noble" because we all begin ignorant. But it is our job to farm and plant in our mind, to sow good and useful thoughts, so we can eventually harvest wisdom and share that with others. Benefiting all, and not just ourselves. Which seems anymore to be the only thing the Republican Party is based upon. Let's leave that for petty dictators (who Trump; loves so much) in Putin, North Korean leaders, and so on. Let's not bring it anymore into America. Because that's not what we were founded to do.

Anyone, who you’re arguing with about the bullshit that’s going on, who devolves into "whataboutisms" is just trying to distract or pivot, like saying "not all white people are like that" or "not all Republicans are...", or whatever… Those people are energy vampires so stop talking to them and get out and do something useful.

Our Republic, our democracy, is about humanity. Not about politics. Politics is a means to an end. We’ve seen time and again hardliners who, one put with people they hated, who spend time with them end up walking away, saying, "Wow, I was so wrong about them. I was so wrong about their problems. Now I see the abuse they live through every day. I wanted to fight against the abuse I saw they were experiencing while I was walking with them, nd I found myself wanting to punch out people, who are just like me and abusing them in public and in private. Who are harassing, terrorizing these people, who don’t deserve it. All because of politics that says they hate us, they want to end us, or they want to replace us. Well? They don’t. They just want to live and experience life as everyone else does and can."

Republicans, Congress in general...do NOT pass new laws to protect FPOTUS' like Donald Trump. Pass new laws, as you just did, that even Mitch McConnell signed onto, to protect America and our democratic republic...from THEM. We're who is important. Not THEM.

This just popped in my head from the other day… I saw pictures of a Russian nuclear train, allegedly headed to Ukraine (nope, see link to article). It seems to me when you know something like that is there, any other country in the world should’ve taken that train out. We have to be (correct) more proactive as a planet. Especially, if they are known and headed for the border even if it was still in Russia. Well, maybe. If it's going to Ukraine, fine but if wasn't and  you take it out, maybe not so good? Or maybe it would make a long needed point. The point needs to be made clear by the entire world that we're tired of these despots and tyrants and genocidal assholes who act like normal respectable leaders and plying legalities that are actually illegal and even murdering their own citizens. All while the world watches doing what? Nothing? Nothing immediate, proactive and substantive? It would be nice if we could just come together as a planet (but oh no, cries of one world government and loss of autonomy from the wanna be autocrats). We are all in the same sandbox, let's just start making sure we all play nice. I'm tired of this adolescent orientation of an entire planet being abused by a few.

It’s true what someone is saying on the podcast that the 2022 midterm election could be it. Our last chance. If we succeed to keep our government out of the hands of toxic Republicans and autocrats, Trump MAGA, QAnon, and other fools of that type of poor materiel… we will still have to start it all over again for the 2024 presidential election. Aren't we tired of this yet? However, if we blow it now, we’ve probably blown it for good. We may one day look back on this and see 2022 as the seminal moment when we decided to let democracy go. I mean yes, you can go back to 2016 and say it was when Trump was elected, or back to the early 1990s with Newt Gingrich on C-SPAN play acting at midnight in pretending he’s in front of a full Congress, spewing his lies and bullshit and showing the Republican Party how to use SOVIET style disinformation and propaganda to skew America away from democracy. All for the purposes of perpetual power and wealth. There is an argument to be made that all of this began when our motto was changed from "e pluribus unum" to under the more easily weaponized, "In God We Trust". With all the patriarchy, bigotry, and toxic theology that can be loaded into that phrase, with that as a foundation. As it has been and still is being done.

If America were to split off into different small countries, I don’t see how there wouldn’t end up being a war at some point. With those believing in democracy trying to protect those in the new abusive countries. Which would then be run by the abusive states with new Republicans, with some of the worst track records around for human beings and abuses of civil rights and reasonably perhaps, name themselves the Republic of Gilead.