My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 26, 2023 Monday
Weather for the day…yes
Podcast for the day “Deja News” by Rachel Maddow and Davy Aronson, "Episode 3: "The Meanest, Dirtiest, Low-Down Stuff""
Considering Rachel Maddow’s podcast of Deja news for this week about Republican voter suppression (when will America get tired by their exhausting antics??) do we have and why don’t we have, a whole section of intimidation laws to literally put these people in prison when they pull their crap? Laws in such a way that would stop their bullshit. I don’t mean capital punishment for voter suppression, I would reserve that for former presidents like Donald Trump, for things he did and is still doing.
What should LBJ have and the Democratic Party done to neutralize Republican illiberal newspaper voter suppression attack ads in 1964 regarding a fake, non-existent, "Negro Protective Group", who told blacks not to vote or you could end up in jail? This is America. We ARE a liberal democracy, still, and regardless what the Right keeps trying to do.
Also, you can take much or most of what Republicans claim about Democrats and dig into what they’re saying to find it’s really indicative about Republicans projecting onto any or all others to distract and obstruct the view of what they’re actually doing and what they really believe in. Autocracy, apparently.
Regarding pro-Putinist propaganda by Putin apologists claiming there are Nazis in Ukraine, forgetting their Russian war criminal president's invasion of another country. For the record, there are zero Nazis in Ukraine. However, their are those of neo-Nazi mindsets who have invaded Ukraine from Russia (and some of those type living IN Ukriane, as in any country). When Russia leaves Ukraine, the neo-Nazis will have for the most part, left. Attacking another country and committing war crimes is not an excuse for perceived, or potential neo-Nazis in another country made up from a mostly democratic majority (again, as in many countries)… As there seem to be in every country around the world. Every country has right wing autocratic extremists, some of whom find titillation in political fetishism in absorbing and presenting the neo Nazi’s nonsense. In our country, they tend to be Republicans and conservatives. All of them have been misled, but also cherry pick, as the religious do, in selectively ignoring reality, and chosing to be a patently as stupid as possible in the face of reality and thoroughly against the facts. Everyone's facts, not just "alternative facts", a term promoted by Kelly Anne Conway (divorced now from her more liberal Republican husband) deep in the MAGA slurry of Donald Trump's wake.
Regarding Rachel’s podcast this week and JFK winning over Nixon in 1960...It begs the question, if Nixon had won rather than JFK would he have turned into what he later did when he finally became president? I suspect he would have. Because that’s what happens with people of weak ego and poor character. Not to mention, with a conservative orientation and a Republican to boot. Which we’ve seen again and again. George W. Bush. Obviously and ultimately in Donald J Trump, criminal FPOTUS45.
As a political party, when you realize not enough people are going to vote for your candidate, and your response to that is, "how do we keep the other parties voters from voting against us", and you then fall on an answer such as, "we will suppress their votes," or worse, "...in anyways possible", yes… your party has "jumped that shark." You have then stepped out of an illiberal democracy into an autocratic party and one inevitably of sedition. And when you're in that GOP and Trump MAGA today, you’re moving into stochastic terrorism and your are then, you have then, fully left this country, the great American experiment and democracy itself. You're an Autocrat. At some point they are, and you have become, criminals. Where the only question of the rest of us at hand will be... how to prove it with evidence in court, and execute justice?
I should contact Eagle Harbor books and the book seller downtown and see if they would take maybe two of my books for free, welcome to sell them and keep the money, and if they want more... let me know?
Why isn’t there a law that says every state must have enough polling places, free and protected, where if you’re standing in line for longer than an hour, then the state should lose money and if they don't have money to have enough polling places, then federal money would be supplied giving states and their illiberal conservative leadership (who are the ones pulling this crap) will absolutely have no reason for THEIR voter suppression actions. And so on and so forth… remember 1964 presidential election's Republican operation, which Hubert Humphrey said should be called "Operation Evil Lie", which was pure and simple, voter suppression by the conservative party.
1964 presidential election was lopsided with Barry Goldwater losing on the Republican side and winning only later in 1968 with the eventual nightmare Nixon with an actual criminal VPOTUS (GOP took decades to advance to nominating an actual criminal for POTUS in Donald Trump). One being his home state of Arizona, with another five being States where the black vote had already long been suppressed. "Operation Eagle Eye" by Republicans wasn’t even needed in those five states because of Jim Crow laws already suppressing the black vote and the black community in general, and in so many other ways.
As we now know, if voter suppression by the right had never been utilized there would’ve been very few Republican presidents in the past 50 years.
I do realize that the 60s and 70s Republican voter suppression efforts and their "Operation Eagle Eye" did set the foundation and building blocks up for today’s illiberal “democratic free“ elections so subverted by subversive and seditious Republicans. At times, aided by America’s foreign enemies, via social media, or whatever they could come up with. With other issues such as dark money, toxic conservative, a stacked SCOTUS and federal courts, and illiberal Gerrymandering. None of that is news.
Here’s something else to consider… We hear a lot from the right about how bad the left is. We hear how the Democratic Party ruins our economy. Regardless of the fact that Republican presidents take us into wars, leave us with seriously depleted budgets and massive debt, and Democrats always seem to be the ones cleaning it up every time. But if Republicans would stop this nonsense and act as liberal democrats (lower "d"), which this country is... a liberal democratic republic… IF they would work with the other side, does it matter if they never win, if they get things done that they really do want (for the country), and not just what they want, for their always winning in their sadly toxic, anti-American, "corporate thought" agendas? If what they want is actually useful to America and Americans, and not just to their wealthy and corporate? If they would work FOR the American good and not just for Themselves? The GOP has degenerated into a party of actors who play out roles for pure power and notoriety and greed. They're propaganda is disinformed and autocratically subverted, their electorate in chaos and confusion, so now they feel like Russians who don’t know what the hell they’re voting, for. Don't we really just want to be left alone and reclaim what it is to be patriotic? Until finally they end up voting against themselves. And then Russia’s case strengthens up and we find ourselves again invading other countries (Remember "W" and Iraq?). how many of Americans mistakes in other countries are from toxic capitalism? From the greedy and conservative and the Republican? Oh surely, there were some Democrats and independents involved. But that doesn’t resolve the Right from there fundamentals and foundation in toxic conservatism.
It has a little to do with Conservatism anymore.
Republicans: "Be very good at selling bad ideas."
Democrats: "Be very bad at selling good ideas, political effort, democratic spin"
Republicans: Fraud, Republican lies & disinformation.
Democrats: Truth and facts.
Republicans: Decency for corporations and the wealthy.
Democrats: Decency for all American citizens, especially those who are people and not business or industry while maintaining a healthy business and industry.
Republicans: Enhance faith in God and religion and autocracy. God’s autocratic by the way. The pursuit of happiness of their orientation or their beliefs or their institutions... against all others.
Democrats Enhance faith in democracy to allow a country mixed with many cultures and religions and non-religions. The pursuit of happiness, not just the conservative pursuit of their own happiness.
"Operation Eagle Eye" slogan: "To restore confidence in America’s elections"...but basically, just spew disingenuous disinformation.
Rachel Maddow's Deja News podcast should be required listening in every high school and every junior high, every college and every Congress. on TV and forced onto Fox News and all conservative media.
Attorney Jim Brosnahan, who testified against William Rehnquist in that attorneys active voter suppression action in 1964, said today on the podcast that, “Anyone's vote taken away is a democratic sin. “ restricting any citizens vote is committing a serious concern and should be dealt with." Citizens lose their vote when they going to prison. Unless it is under conditions of treason, no one should ever lose their vote. No one's vote should ever be suppressed, the more votes, the better.
Next podcast "Axios today"-
Prigozhin is not a hero, he’s a "Blackwater" type mercenary group type leader, although Betsy DeVos's brother, Eric Prince is no angel either… But basically a mob boss as some claim as a Putin capo. Putin, after all, being the mob boss. In America, we have something similar with a more cowardly, less, intelligent just as media savvy, maybe more media savvy than Putin, mob boss in Donald Trump. Both countries have the delusionally propagandized and disinformed who follow those cretins over the cliff to enjoy a plummet of their country into death and despair. Chaos and despair and apathy being the rule of the day for both those leader's followers. And remember, Putin’s capo and leader of the Wagner group, started a 10 hour march to Moscow to the capital and stopped 4/5 of the way there. There’s very much speculation about what Putin will do to his capo for this sedition. What does a mafia boss do to an ill acting capo? Well? That depends on how integral he is to his wealth and power acquisition and retention model that a mafia boss has in place. Unless that model, as in Putin‘s model, as in the failure of the Ukrainian war so far, according to his 'three days to overtake Ukraine" model, he now has in its place.
Finishing up my 4th mile, then starting on my fifth and final mile for the day. My long Covid "walkabout thought" for the day being solidly executed. If I keep this up at three or four days out of every week, while the weather hasn’t been helping, although it does get better heading into summer, That would mean every week I am alternately doing 15 or 20 mile walks total. Which my much younger, VA health doctor said is way better than anything he’s doing. But, such are the joys of retirement... and long Covid.
55 million people in the south east west to Mississippi are under a heat warning as of today. Texas is in some southern locations in the triple digits and so far doing well because they’ve applied some renewable energy sources and batteries which so far are functioning nominally. Even against all the bullshit and nonsense that crippled state's governor has been putting out since the storm, two years ago. Republicans are good at one thing. Ignoring reality and not being proactive. Being worried about this moment and this moment, alone but not about their citizens, long-term.
These temperatures in the south are as far north as Oklahoma and Kansas, have been proven to be at least five times more related to human induced climate change, and denial of this at this point really is criminal, because people are dying.
Gay and Black minorities and LGBTQ+ people are here. They always have been. To deny that is to deny America and democracy. So if you’re against all that or whining about how you won’t "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps", a typical Republican comment towards those who are incapable of doing that, then it’s not about those you hate or those you speak out against, it's yourself and your group of whiners, who refuse to go out and succeed, as any American would, regardless of what obstacles are against them. Because that’s American. And whining and abusing others or denigrate any others to make it look better, well that’s autocracy and that kind of makes you a rat bastard.
Next podcast, “Cork Today“, a podcast from Cork, Ireland, where I spent a few days and a lovely time back in 2015. I so wanna go back to Ireland. Sadly, my Irish roots are too well established for a dual passport. So, thanks for that Ireland.
The podcast is talking with somebody about a herbal remedy to help you sleep. It’s got so much stuff in it. How do you want to think about taking it. I’ve tried to keep my stress levels down since high school when I went in the hospital for it. When the doctors (3 neurosurgeons) said…(and this would’ve been winter spring 1973)… "Here’s a script for Valium 5 mg, now goodbye. We would suggest you move out of your parent's house from what your mother told us." Weeks later I graduated at 17 and moved out with a job into an apartment. Then life was good. The headaches stopped. My stress levels dropped. Now today in retirement at 67, 68 end of August, I do my best to get exposure to sunlight. 15 minutes today, even five help with sleeping at night in regenerating one's melatonin. Yesterday, I had spaghetti and meatballs for lunch with two glasses of wine, testing out my long Covid healing. I did well. But I woke up at 12:30 a.m. and thought what the hell… So I took half of a 5 mg melatonin...just enough to put me to sleep and keep me there, until at7:30 AM I woke up. I feel pretty good today. Getting the exercise definitely is helping. I think the thing that helped me most in healing from long Covid was getting exercise, and sunlight. Although both can work against you, until you hit a certain degree of healing with that insidious condition.
I’d have to say as far as difficulty sleeping, all my life, especially in high school, I think it was more about ADHD and my mind running at hyper speed on multiple levels. As well as working nights through HS. As a snack bar drive-in theater worker and then snack bar manager. How long after work, late at night it took me to get to sleep, to get up early to go back to school, or after graduating, to work? I think my sleep was better after graduating HS, not having to go to school at day and then work nights. I figured I usually got a few hours sleep in HS. I would come home after work at maybe midnight, go to bed and have to be at school by 8:30 AM. I can remember many times looking at the clock before I fall asleep at 5 AM. I would just lay there in bed with my mind racing and thoughts spinning about everything... not all bad, just a mind that wanted to work 24 hours a day. My mother liked staying up all night. My older brother, who has said he thinks he got all the worst of our mom from her, well? I think maybe I left most of that out and get most of the best from her. Anyway, he felt he was a night person too. But we are day people as a race and require Vitamin D and sunlight and our schedules are ruled by that. I have to say really in much of my earlier my life, I did prefer being up at night. But life and having children has a way of rectifying that. Though, bending you to it, will wear on you to make you feel a little crazy at times.
The Cork podcast is talking about how hot it is there and how hard it is to sleep when you’re hot. People don’t have air conditioners there or some do bu no money for electricity. Cork's not a highly prosperous town, but it is a very lovely town. So they suggest curtains closed during the day to keep the place cool, windows open at and night sleep with a sheet only. Poor People's air conditioning. I remember those days.
Now they’re talking about a listener question about artichokes lowering cholesterol, and if there may be something involved there. The person is on a Staten who asked the question, and so am I. I’ve added eating two avocados a week. I don’t know if it’s helped or not, but they are tasty. Maybe I'll add artichokes, I do like them too.
I'm editing this today, Wednesday, July 5, 2023 and it's my little brother's birthday... who died of liver cancer in 1975, two weeks before today, back then, He just missed making it to 15. His doctor in Manhattan said then, that maybe in 5 years, they will be able to do a liver transplant. Five years to the week, they did their first successful one. Happy birthday, little bro...
And with that...
Cheers! Sláinte!
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