Friday, February 10, 2023

Walkabout Thoughts #32

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…
 

Weather for the day… 50 and light clouds lots of blue sky

Podcast for the day podcast “Pod Save America“ episode, “Evening Joe"

Instagram post for the day

Fun Tweet for the day. Another (Chelsea Handler on MTG). 


From the podcast on Biden's SOTU 2023, paraphrasing for fun: “I may be old, but they’re fucking crazy”.

Regarding the white trash response from some Republicans at SOTU 2023 embarrassing themselves, and addressing President Joe Biden, or any president... keep your mouth shut. This isn’t your place. I would like to say that I’ve watched the UK government, with their PMQ's (Prime Ministers Questions) and there is a lot of energy in that room at times. I have long wished we had something like that. I’d love to have seen Donald Trump as president showing up to that every week and being dressed down as should’ve been. Instead of so much scampering away in fear and tiny dick energy from a child as POTUS45. As so many, most especially Republicans did for four years and still some today. But this is America and the SOTU happens, not the place for autocratic toxic conservative, toxic capitalistic, full-on nutcase Republican, white trash comments.

Republicans for decades wanted to kill abortion rights, while saying they didn’t, stacking our courts until finally, it happened. They’ve long wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security, wanting those more as bargaining chips, which is like threatening to withhold air from people until they agree to do what you want. That is not bargaining. After a year of them saying they were going to cut Medicare and Social Security, and one saying he wants to have to vote on it every five years, which is ludicrous, now as they approach an election year, it's all, "Oh, no, we don’t wanna do that? Not until they get in power and just do it. More and more it’s as if Putin is their leader because this is exactly what he does. Lie, then act as he likes. GOP has been mimicking old Soviet and KGB tactics since the 90s and no... I’m not gonna stop saying it, because it’s true.

I think Dan just said on the podcast that Mitch McConnell lives to kill Social Security. Yeah, ask Mitch if he wants to help do something bipartisan like, and the first thing he’ll say is, "Sure, cut that and we can talk." Why do Republicans hate Social Security and Medicare so much? I suspect it’s because of their belief in “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps“ and their belief in "job creators" as Gods and being more important than the people that work for them. Which is an ideology and has little to do with our overall reality. As if they want to give people incentive, or force them to be wealthy enough to afford everything they'll ever need. Which just isn’t the case in a country, or in any country. Government is there to protect us, to help us become successful, to give us a platform for that. As the country and government becomes more functional, stronger and economically independent, wealthier. then they should be adding to what they can do to help citizens. Especially at this point. Most, especially those who are least able to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps". Be it because of themselves their family line, or systemic balances, or prejudices, or inherent bigotry. Government needs to level the playing field which while some would call that Socialism, isn't. It's simply making things functional. It’s not giving away everything. And just because something doesn’t work perfectly, doesn’t mean you should throw the "baby out with the bathwater". Which is always the knee jerk reaction from our toxically conservative friends.

Republicans like to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme. It's not, it doesn’t follow that model. It may look like that to ignorant people. It may work on convincing other ignorant people of it as a meme or a mob chant. But it is what I said in the previous paragraph. It’s basically there for national security purposes, to better empower a nation. What was that comment? Gandhi: “The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members.
Well? Our weakest members actually are the MAGA & their broken Republican Party. But they're not who Ghandi was talking about. Rather those they abuse.

Regarding Biden’s comment to SOTU about having a talk with your Black child about dealing with the police when they pull you over in a car. Being white, I never gave that much thought. Well, my older brother did tell me when I was young how to treat police. "Be respectful, don’t piss them off because they’re in control until they leave you alone." I’ve had a concealed weapons permit since I was 21. I didn't carry it all the time. I would carry it on car trips back when is in the Air Force, driving from Spokane to Tacoma. I called the Spokane police department once and asked them, "when you get pulled over on the highway, what should you do about that?" Their comment? You’ll have to ask the state patrol. So the next time they pulled me over for speeding at 72 in a 55... shortly after I was doing over 130 for about 50 minutes, cutting an hour off of our four hour trip... I asked him. Brief aside...
HEY! What the hell is that? This is really spooky! There is a loud tone coming from... everywhere! It just stopped! Now there’s just noise echoing all around me. Now it’s not. Wow! That was Really bizarre! Maybe somebody playing with an RV speaker system or something. but damn strange! END brief creepy aside...
Anyway, I asked the state trooper. I said, "I’m legal. I have a permit. But I’m carrying a gun. I just wanted to ask you what should you do when you get stopped in this situation, because I don’t want for some reason, you find it later and think I didn’t tell you." You could see it first, in his eyes... panic. But then he quickly relaxed. He started writing the ticket up and said, "Just don’t mention it." You've got a wonder though. If that was today or even worse, a few years ago before all this became so public, and I was black... then what? How would that have turned out?

How do you know things are really fucked up in your country? When the theme of an election is "democracy and making abortion illegal". When you’re revisiting things that were long ago established and one of them even over 200 years ago. Whoever is pushing that agenda? They’re not good people, no matter what they think of themselves, or who they’ve been before this... what they're doing is not good.

Well, I got two miles on my walk today. Double last time, but way less than what I had built up to, a while back, before my knee went out. Knee is doing good. Although I did have one weird tweak today, like my femoral artery, above and below my knee. Just a shot of pain, for no apparent reason. Weird. I need to remember to stop getting older. However, saying that years ago once to somebody, they said, "So you wanna die?" I said, "No. I don’t wanna die." They said, "Then explain to me what not getting older is?" All right, that's a valid point. But I just meant not aging anymore.
I have one option on that. And there’s that artery tweak of pain again. Well, at least it’s not my left arm…

I need to remember to do what the VA nurse told me to do after I'm down walking... stretch in various ways, especially my legs, for 60 seconds, when I’m done walking.[Later: I did, felt good, I have to expand doing that more regularly. I did hang a chart of stretches from Aikido in my kitchen last week so I'd get around to it.]

As they just said in the podcast about Gov (Governor...unbelievable) Sarah, Huckabee Sanders' rebuttal to the SOTU and her saying that we now have the choice between "normal or crazy." Wow, what a hypocrite. Yeah, that worked for Democrats against Republicans in 2022, so why wouldn’t they want to turn it around and try to throw it back at them. Because that’s what they always do. There’s a crazy they point they trip on over there and look away from themselves to say, "They're doing crazy!" Or, "They’re doing crimes!" Especially true with Trump. They do weird or criminal things, the point away and say, "Hey, it's Them! They’re doing those crimes!" It's all distractions, smoke and mirrors.

Great podcast quote:  “People who turn on Fox News think it’s a window when it’s a mirror."

Another good podcast comment: "If Republicans try to claim Joe Biden is a crazy radical leftist, it’s just not gonna work. Because it's just obviously not who he is." That'll only work on the craziest of the right wing. I mean the crazy radical leftist WISH Joe Biden was that, but he’s just not.

It’s not that Republicans sound crazy to normal people, which is the majority of Americans, but they just sound... weird.

A last few interesting things:

U.S. downs "car-sized" object


The True Origin of the US Marine Corps' 'Oorah' Call
 
That's it. Stay well! Be Healthy! Go out now, be brilliant, be productive!

Cheers! Sláinte!

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