Another week of Trump

Yesterday, our Republican led Congress lowered the cost of health insurance by lowering benefits and by allowing insurers to make insurance obscenely unaffordable to anyone who isn't young and healthy. This is expected to leave 24-million people without any insurance due to age and pre-existing conditions. After passing this law writ in blood, Republican Congressmen took a bus ride to the White House to drink beer with the president, their happiness undiminished by having caused the suffering and death of millions with act that was vigorously opposed by every single healthcare related professional group. America can always find trillions of dollars to kill people in war, but it regards every cent that is spent on such basic needs as education and healthcare as another cent closer to bankruptcy.

Trump expressed anger that he lacks the dictatorial power of Russia's Putin and Turkey's Erdogan. He praised the Phillipines' Duerte as a strong leader based, it would appear (due to the lack of other possibilities) upon Duerte's contempt for Obama (whom he called "the son of a whore") and his use of lynching to resolve his county's drug problem. Finally, he called North Korea's  Kim Jong Un "a pretty smart cookie," and said that he (Trump) would be "honored" to meet him. On the homefront, he continues to blame Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for all of America's problems.

Trump became so outraged by lawmakers who dare to oppose him that he said, "Our country needs a good government shutdown," implying that will refuse to approve a new budget in October.

Trump vowed to "Make School Lunches Great Again" by replacing former president Obama's healthy food initiative with all the white bread and sugar that America's overweight kids and can stuff down their diabetic gullets. He also overturned Michelle Obama's initiative to provide academic encouragement and validation to girls.

Trump signed yet another executive order (he's ahead of Obama by nearly two to one, although he called Obama a "weak president" for relying on executive orders). Today's executive order will allow tax exempt churches to give both verbal and monetary support to political candidates. There was no word as to whether the the fact that most Christians voted for Trump (he won 81% of the evangelical vote*) was a factor in his decision, and no explanation for why he even bothered to eliminate a requirement that the government ignores anyway. Christians are now asking Trump to sign to sign an executive order allowing them to violate the civil rights of gays, atheists, women who use birth control, and transgender people, all in the name of Jesus.

The Republican Congress repealed internet privacy protections so that big business can make more big money.

Trump started eliminating banking laws that were implemented to prevent big banks from the kinds of reckless behavior that led the country to the brink of financial collapse in 2008.

Trump announced plans to deregister more than 24 national monuments. In my view, no president during my lifetime deserves high praise for protecting the natural environment, however, Trump exceeds the others in his callousness for the environment because while doing nothing to preserve it, he has gone to pains to hasten its destruction in the name of greed.

Finally... More than 53,000 people have signed a petition that was targeted at mental health professionals, stating Trump should be removed from office because he is insane. Yale psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton warned against creeping what he calls "malignant normality" meaning that under a malignantly narcissistic leader like Trump, "alternate facts," conspiracy theories, racism, science denial and delegitimization of the press become the new normal." I consider the truth of this to be obvious. When our president demonstrates persistent and far reaching suspicion regarding his own investigational agencies, has no consistent set of values, praises murderous dictators as examples of effective leadership, never admits a mistake, and clings tenaciously to easily disprovable lies, he has a serious problem that I would to grow ever more serious under the demands of the presidency.



I have tried to keep an open heart to Republicans, and I have tried to believe that there is surely some limit to how far Trump can go without losing their support, but I have found it impossible to do either. It is my sad conclusion that the Republican Party is dominated by two kinds of people. The first are devoid of  environmental concerns, couldn't care less about civil rights, and don't give a fig how many lives they wreck--or even destroy--as long as it puts money in their pockets. If a Congressman doesn't kowtow to them, they'll use their riches to defame and replace him or her, and thanks to a ruling by the Supreme Court, no one outside of Congress will even know where the money came from. 

The second kind of Republican is a conman's wet dream. As long as a candidate says he loves guns and Jesus, detests the least hint of liberalism, and shares their abhorrence of abortion, gay rights, and even birth control, then that person will have their vote. These people are SO stupid that they accept the lie that the best way to help themselves out of poverty is to make rich people richer so that  some of the wealth will "trickle down" to them. The majority of these Republicans live in the most ignorant, religious, and impoverished parts of the country (the parts known as the "Bible Belt") which happen to be the very parts of the country that are the most dependent upon government welfare programs. Some of these states are SO dependent upon the federal government that they get more money back from the government than they pay into it, and this makes them every so much as like a dog that bites the hand that feeds it, the conclusion being that they're only stupid, they're malevolent. I know much of this due to having spent 37-years in Mississippi, a state is near or at the bottom in regard to every measurable standard of living unless you count religion in itself as a standard of measurement, in which Mississippi is at the top. Of the ten states that have the lowest standard of living, all but one are in the Bible Belt.*** 

Just as the gun lobby cite deaths from gun violence as proof that the country needs more guns; the citizens of the state with the lowest standard of living and the highest incidence of church attendance, argue that what will correct the former is more of the latter. While these citizens parrot their leaders in extolling private enterprise--while deprecating government--they overlook the fact that, even if those leaders force the government into default, they will continue to enjoy a singular benefit among government employees, namely that they will to draw their own government paychecks even while the rest of us go into the hole They also forget that when those leaders insist that government health insurance sucks, and that the private sector will do an infinitely better job in providing us with health insurance, is is never their own government financed health insurance they're talking about because like that very much indeed.

* http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/ 

** https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/05/04/trump-malignant-narcissistic-disorder-psychiatry-column/101243584/ 

***http://politicsthatwork.com/graphs/standard-of-living

I go on a date, but don't get fresh

Ollie in back, then Brewsky, then Scully

I took myself on a date today (Peggy was busy designing  button trays for competition at the Oregon State Button Society Convention) and showed myself a lovely time by drinking lots of free coffee at Winco's (an employee owned supermarket), buying lots of old books at St. Vinnie's (the thrift store where I get most of my books), and watching a truck burn-up at Jerry's (a locally owned lumber company that makes me pity people who have no better place to shop than Home Depot). 

The only bad thing about my date was that some asshole stole my cap from my shopping cart at St. Vinnie's (I took my cap off because I was hot). I repeatedly looked everywhere for the thief before finally pretending to leave the store on the off-chance that he would see me, think I was gone for good, and put my cap on his contemptible head. I finally gave up on getting my cap back and spent a whopping $2.49 for a replacement that I like better than the one that was stolen. I own upwards of 100 caps (I even had two other caps in the car), so I only bought a replacement in the hope that it would make me feel better about the theft, which it did. I sincerely wanted to kill the thief, and really would have too if I could have found him, and known that I wouldn't get in a lot of trouble. I hate that thief to the depths of my being for his willingness to cause me unhappiness for such a small gain. (I'm not the forgiving type when it comes to criminality, and the hatred I feel today, I'll feel for as long as I live.)

Now I want to tell you why I went to the doctor on Thursday:

1) Worsening back pain that dominates my thoughts and increases the longer I’m on my feet each day.
2) Anxiety that verges on panic.
3) Achy eyes and blurry vision, which my optometrist attributes to my badly dilated eyeballs twitching.
4) A facial tic.
4) Trouble keeping my extremities still. 
5) Hands that tremble to the point of being obvious to others.

I thought it likely that all of these symptoms but the pain might be caused by my latest anti-depressant, so I gave the doc a list of  antidepressants that I've never taken and that sounded good on the internet. He gave me a prescription for Remeron and told me to wait until bedtime to take it, but I was so desperate that I took one as soon as I got home. Although I became dizzy and staggered, the tic, trembling, twitching, and jerkiness were almost gone, and the anxiety was gone.

I'm now feeling so happy and spontaneous that when I took myself to Jerry's on my date, I almost succumbed to the urge to buy a pretty little yellow DeWalt table saw. When I got to St. Vinnie's, I became so enraptured with every third book that it was an enormous challenge to stop at twenty-one, most of them antique novels, although some were books of cat paintings and cat cartoons. (I also love cat photographs, but alas, St. Vinnie's was out.)

Speaking of being madly in love, I'm head-over-heels for my beautiful little tuxedo kitty, Scully, and she's head-over-heels for me. She couldn't wait for me to awaken naturally today (as is her custom), so she cried at my door until I opened it and embraced her for yet another day made precious by the beauty of her body and spirit. When Peggy and I finally got burned-out after forty-plus years of taking care of dogs, I wondered if I could ever love a feline half so well as I had loved a score of canines. I need wonder no longer, and while I adore Brewsky Katoosky and Ollie Somali (Ollie is sitting in my lap as I write this), Scully Scullaria is most definitely her daddy's little girl child who, sad to say, will turn one on May 6. I say "sad to say" because kittens are way more fun than grown cats.

I can no longer imagine life without cats. While I'll never stop missing the love of dogs, my cats are also loving creatures who adore one another and their daddy and mommy. They're also beautiful, self-cleaning, never have to be let outdoors to go potty, and would think I had completely lost my mind if I tried to take them walking in the rain. I can't get enough of cats, and who knows how many I would have if Peggy weren't here to put on the brakes.

Remeron.... I just hope it'll keep working.

What doth the Lord require of thee...

The photo shows a World War II American Marine on the island of Tarawa. He is kneeling before a tank that has been blown off its track, and in his right hand is a canteen from which he has poured water for a kitten.

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8)

Eugene Sledge was an Alabama boy who, decades after the war, wrote about his experiences as a Marine on Tarawa and other islands. He told of being penned down for days in shadeless lava in 115-temperatures with decaying corpses all around and nothing to drink but water that had been tainted with diesel; of Marines who had been captured, tortured, and finally killed with their dicks in their mouths; of a Marine using his Ka-Bar to slit the cheeks of a wounded Japanese so he could more easily remove the man's gold teeth. Sledge wrote that, even amid such horrors, there were instances of kindness and justice, such as when the tooth-stealing Marine was stopped at gunpoint and his mortally-wounded victim mercifully shot.

“… what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
 
The Marine in the photo is surely dead, but his nobility lives on to give me life.