Month: March 2026

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The other night I got reacquainted to Patty Griffin’s song Let Him Fly. It is a song about a woman breaking up with a man who isn’t ready, if he ever would be, to settle down. He isn’t a bad man just a wandering man, he honestly tells her this and she had some hopes of keeping him even though he told her so but she now realizes it is hopeless so she surrenders to her fate and lets him go.

Her lyrics are filled with sadness but absent of anger which carry the heavy weight in most break up songs. There is none of this you are a rotten son of bitch and I don’t know why I put up with you so long which consume most break up songs. It is sad without being vindictive. She loves him but she needs something more than he is willing to give. Two mismatched people instead of one good one and one evil one.

The song is spare — just a guitar and Griffin singing in her clear strong voice. At times you can barely hear her guitar, it follows her singing but does not direct it. I could imagine her singing this song a cappella.

Even though her album cover is for more than one song, it really fits the mood of “Let Him Fly.” It looks like someone crumpled up photograph of Griffin and then, having second thoughts, retrieved it from the trash bin because he decided he wanted to keep it. It certainly captures the spirit of the song.

I highly recommend Patty Griffin’s “Let Him Fly.”

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As I get older, I am beginning to understand my peculiarities that stumped me before but are beginning to make sense now. I used to think I hated shopping. Any shopping. I did everything in my power to get in and then get out with whatever I thought I needed.

I thought, for the longest time, this hatred of shopping placed me on some superior moral ground. The capitalist overlords failed to entice me into a life of mindless consumerism. Something occurred to me as I was dodging super large shopping carts in Costco the other day. It isn’t so much that I hated shopping, it is more that shopping overwhelms me. I can feel my nerves begin to jangle every time I enter a store.

I can manage shopping if I have a list with specific items to be acquired by the time I return home. I find. I buy. I leave the store as quickly as possible. I rarely, if ever, will buy more than what is on the list. The list is sacrosanct.

On the other hand just lallygagging in a store to kill time almost always ends the same way — me fleeing after a few minutes without purchasing anything.

For example, I love to read so bookstores should be heaven for me. Not by a stretch. I want to purchase almost every book I pick up. Everything sounds like something I would like to buy, so much so that I reach fairly quickly a point of indecision. I can’t choose anything because I want everything which I know that I neither can afford nor will ever find the time to read them. So I punt and buy nothing.

Big ticket items provide a somewhat different problem for me. I don’t have a vision of what I want. If I am buy a car, all I want is something that moves me from place to place with a minimum of problems. A lot of friends I know walk into car lots with a strategy of getting specific things they want, and how to maneuver the salesman into giving them the deal they want. They know all the bells and whistles they want to purchase. All I want is a compact white Ford.

Worst of all, choice just baffles me. The more options I have the more stumped I become. Two or three choices I can manage. More than that I am wondering how I can get out of this showroom without looking like an asshole.

What I am saying is that shopping is overwhelming for me. I don’t so much hate it as all these products and choices leave my mind so overstimulated that I my mind is whirling with all the choices and I become exhausted and all I want to do is go home and take a long nap. This is why I hate shopping.

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The problem that many people, including myself, have with Donald Trump is he is, above all else, an asshole extraordinaire. That this detestable prick is president of the United States is both extremely depressing and a source of conflicting feelings about what he does.

So let me lay it out for my present destress:

  1. I dislike Donald Trump and disagree with most, if not everything, he does.
  2. I like the United States. It is my home.
  3. Donald Trump is the president of the United States.While I think he is a fuck up and fucking up everything he lays his tiny hands on, he also leads my country.
  4. I want my country to succeed whenever possible.

Which leads to the question, how can I hope for the best for my country with this miserable little shit running the country?

For example, the war with Iran. I think it is a big mistake. On the other hand, I think the world would be a worse place if the United States lost it. Muslim extremism, chaos in Iran and in the neighboring region, Women’s rights, Gay rights, things could get a whole lot worse if he were to lose. I can’t see how any of this would be better if the United States lost.

But, then, Trump is such a detestable man, if he wins, he will take credit for the victory and thus become even more insufferable. He will think he is smarter than he actually is and will continue governing as he had thinking he is wiser than he is. Thus making him even more likely to make even more risky decisions because he keeps rolling the dice and coming up a winner.

My one fond hope, though highly unlikely, is that Trump will be forced to work with Congress and our Allies to obtain a settlement that frees Iran from Muslim extremism while also bringing some peaceful resolution to the troubles in the region. So what I want, I guess, is for Trump to succeed only after he throws himself on the mercy of Congress and our Allies in order to ensure the victory.

Barring that, all I see is a mess.

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Every day, every new outrage, and I think is this the one that is going to bring the whole rotting edifice down but, to my surprise, the rickety all structure is still standing.

Yet the rot is so pervasive that almost anything could bring it down. It is both remarkably sturdy and remarkably vulnerable at the same time. How does it survive all this rot? Then I take a deep breath and remember, oh, right, now I remember — I am the problem. The present system, as configured, is all I know. Whatever comes next is unknown. This mystery is more than a little frightening. I want the system, with all its flaws, to survive.

It isn’t encouraging that every idea I have heard regarding change now seems to involve a bit of violence. It is mostly this fear of violence that keeps me firmly on the side of the present system for all its problems. There still is the notion of democratic give and take as the best way to resolve our problems despite the rot. I maybe wrong but the risk of political violence seems, at present, unwarranted.

What I fear though is this reflexive support for democracy is waning. To what I do not know. I do know that blood on the streets is to be avoided mostly because the idea is always that it will be the bad guy’s blood (read here the people who disagree with me) and not the good guy’s (read here the people who agree with me) blood. But we all know that once blood starts flowing, both good guys and bad guys bleed the same color and it is horrible.

I don’t have the answer but I do know this — the present approach seems to be a shouting match where the only way to win is to outshout the other guy. The gerrymander wars shows two sides with little confidence that either can win through the political process so they redraw the lines to keep their power. People appear to be giving up on changing minds through persuasion and creating imperfect but workable institutions through compromise.

And all we have is the rickety and rotting system to defend us in the coming political storm. It is a bit unsettling to think about.

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One of the vows I made when I started exercising many years ago was that I would never exercise when injured or if I felt sick. If I screwed up a knee or had a cold, I waited a couple of days and then start with a less vigorous routine until I returned to normal. Once I was back to good health, I returned to my routine. This has served me well.

Until now, at 68, it is impossible not to exercise without being sick or injured or both because I am always one or the other. If I stopped exercising every time I was sick or injured, I am afraid I will never return to exercise at all. It is that difficult for me to find a block of healthy days for me to keep this youthful promise to myself.

So another broken promise to myself in a string of broken promises to myself.

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The one thing that keeps haunting me about Jeffrey Epstein is how many seemingly decent people knew something was wrong but did nothing. How can this be? Whenever I think the Holocaust, I think it couldn’t happen again because surely somebody would speak up before things got out of hand. Yet, Epstein Island, the Lolita Express come along to prove me wrong.

Jeffrey Epstein is a very small part of the problem too. There will always be assholes but, hopefully there are more decent people willing to stop injustice. This didn’t happen, at least, not for the longest time. Workers at his home, guests for the weekend all just continued on as if this was a normal way for a rich man to behave. Who am I to stop him?

There is the crux of the problem here when someone has money and power. What can I do stop him and, more importantly, what can he do to hurt me. Being in the warm sunshine of wealth and power has a price and that price is silence to their crimes. Who wants to tangle with a billionaire? They have more money and will probably win any legal struggle and not before bankrupting you.

The rich and powerful sometimes pay the price but, more often than not, they get off scot-free.

And it is still going on. All the lawyers redacting documents at the Department of Justice — marking through the names of the rich and powerful people who Epstein entertained — shielding them from justice for a few more years as many of these suspects race with death. Why exactly are they being protected? Their reputations?

I disagree that they should get this protection if all they did was spend the weekend with a known sexual predator, but it is something I could live with if I believed that anyone who partook of more than food, drink and place to sleep were being pursued. But, unless I am missing something, redaction also means the end of any investigation into what happened on Epstein Island, so I say fuck them, embarrass away. Embarrass so they lose their jobs. Embarrass so they can’t show their faces at Cape Cod. Embarrass so they can’t get their kids into elite schools.

If they are avoiding prison, they can, at the very least, be forced to hang their heads in shame. These seemingly decent people didn’t act and, if they get away with it, they will continue to keep their mouths shut as the rich and powerful continue their crime spree through 21st century America.

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I might be barking up the wrong tree here but something that rarely gets talked about regarding the Epstein Files really bothers me. Why didn’t the Biden Justice Department take action on these files when they had a chance in those long years between 2020 and 2024? It is baffling.

What is even more baffling is that until MAGA Republicans made an issue of releasing the Epstein Files, I was blissfully unconcerned about their existence or what should be done with them. I can’t recall it being an issue until the 2024 election which, in and of itself, reveals a lot. Nobody wanted to talk about it, so nobody was making an issue of it.

The question is why. I will take a wild guess here and say that they were protecting Democrats and Democratic donors from embarrassment.

Thanks to a bunch of MAGA yahoos the Epstein Files regained notoriety during the 2024 Election. They thought they could use them as a cudgel to swing at Democrats during the election. And swing they did. So hard, in fact, that Donald Trump, who probably thought he would never be forced to release them, joined in the swinging. It became an issue.

So Trump got elected, and some of his supporters continued to campaign, much to the chagrin of Trump, to see the Epstein files. Democrats, now in the minority and desperate find their own cudgel to knock Trump and the Republicans around, decided it was time for their release. Forced to do so by his Republican allies, Trump and his Justice Department redacted the files in such a way as to protect Trump and his allies while pointing the finger at the Clintons and their allies. Unfortunately for Trump, even the redacted files held a trove of information implicating Trump in Epstein’s crimes.

Now this is where things gets tricky for me. Thinking that I am a smart person and a political realist, I thought there could be nothing in the Epstein Files that actually could serve as hard evidence that Trump committed a crime. Why would the Biden Justice Department sit on evidence that could, if nothing else, damage Trump’s campaign for the presidency and elect a Democrat. Politics is rough and tumble enterprise. If you have to throw dirt on your opponent, your throw that dirt — particularly if the election is going to be close as the 2024 election was.

Yes, your allies might suffer some embarrassment or, even, God forbid, some legal trouble, but it would be worth it in order to defeat Trump — a right wing ideologue who’s personality was ill-suited for the presidency. You throw in everything plus the kitchen sink Well, apparently, I was wrong, you keep the most damaging information possible from the public.

Someone somewhere in the Biden Justice Department realized that they couldn’t just release files that were damaging to Trump. They would have to release all the files, even the ones damaging to Democrats, or nothing. Surprisingly, they opted for nothing. Protecting their allies was, then, more important than defeating Donald Trump.

Now here we are in the second year of a mad man wrecking the world all because people were afraid to reveal the bad behavior of their allies. To say that these people have distorted values is an understatement. They are willing to prop up a rotting system with an array of bad actors. Why? Well, maybe, we might be about to find out.

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TSA agents are no longer being paid due to a partial government shutdown. This is ridiculous. Really ridiculous.

First government shutdowns are ridiculous to being with. Taxes are being paid. There is money to pay them because, if there was no government shutdown, they would be paid. It is an accounting problem. Members of Congress are being paid. Since members of Congress are government employees and they continue to get their paycheck, there must be some accounting trick that makes this possible. Why not use this same trick with TSA agents.

I would argue that TSA agents are actually more essential to public safety than members of Congress. Millions of people travel by plane every day. Even I go to the airport on occasion and in order to board a plane I must go through TSA to get there. This matters to me.

On the other hand, I can’t tell you the last time I needed a member of Congress to do, well, anything. I think it is safe to say never. It would seem that the government would prioritize the TSA agents’ paychecks over, how shall I say this politely, unnecessary government employees like members of Congress.

It is down right irritating that Airports are begging for money in order to help TSA agents through this shutdown. I get that they are just trying to help out people who are having a hard time through no fault of their own. Yeah for their good intentions but this is a very bad idea and fails spectacularly to deal with the real problem — the ongoing congressional stalemate regarding budgets.

Trying to help these people through private charity only encourages Congress to continue in their intransigence. Why settle now when we can hold out longer to potentially gain the upper hand? Right. I can’t remember a time that this has happened but OK, hope springs eternal. The food banks and the gift cards only delay the inevitable, why not just cut to the chase.

Holding people’s paychecks hostage in order to get your way on something that you don’t have the votes for in Congress is quite simply wrong. The idea is that the Republicans will be shamed into giving into the Democrats. I’m sorry to say, I don’t think the Republican Party is capable of shame. So holding out for a win here is pointless. The party in the minority never gets their way and the only thing that really happens is a lot of hard working people are inconvenienced.

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Texas Legislators are discussing how to keep Furries out of the schools. Furries, in case you are unaware of what they are, and why should you as they are a complete figment of the right wing imagination, are children who identify as animals, specifically cats, and, therefore, require a litter box in their classroom in order to use the toilet. That there is no evidence that this is a problem in any Texas school is beside the point. Never mind. Some child could and, because of this highly remote possibility, the Texas legislature needs to act.

Now a Republican Congresswoman is fighting to keep strippers out of the classroom — a problem, again, with no reported occurrences. No matter the insignificance — the nation must act now because strippers in g-strings are camped outside schools just waiting to perform. It is sad, to say the least, that so much of what is troubling the right wing are not even remotely problems for our schools. But, by all means, lets spend precious time protecting children from strippers and furries when we could spend more time discussing an actual existential problem for pupils — something like, I don’t know, school shooters.

Think about it. If you can only protect children from one thing, who would your rather slip through the protective net for children — a school shooter or a stripper?

What’s the problem you may ask. These legislators are acting preemptively against a possible problem in this crazy world we live in. It isn’t hurting anyone and, if lighting strikes and it actually happens, there will be laws in place to protect children from the experience. But this isn’t some harmless ask from a publicity seeking legislator, it does real harm. Every moment these officials spend protecting children from these monsters under the bed is time, money and energy taken away from actual problems. It is a waste of time which isn’t harmless.

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A couple of weeks back I saw this Facebook post regarding a dementia cure. Since I knew people dealing with dementia, I watched this video of Sanjay Gupta talking about his father’s remarkable turnaround from dementia with a very simple and natural tonic — honey and some spices all cheaply available without a prescription. The video had an additional warning about how I had better watch now because Big Pharma was going to have the video taken down soon because they didn’t want this cheap cure available when they are spending all this money on research for dementia medications and will fight anyone messing around with their profits.

Sanjay Gupta. Big Pharma as the villain. Cheap cure readily available. Somehow all these ingredients fed into my gullible mind so I sent this link onto some people who were dealing with dementia issues. I did give the caveat that I hadn’t researched it much but, hey, Sanjay Gupta, it was worth a look.

Only it was a large pile of bull shit. In the following days, I began to receive Facebook posts from Clint Eastwood, Michael Caine, Bruce Willis and Steve Martin all making similar claims as the Sanjay Gupta video. And all with the same warning about Big Pharma. At this point, I began to get a little suspicious. These big name individuals could collectively fight Big Pharma if this was genuinely a problem, why haven’t I heard about this? Why isn’t this on the news? So I investigated and found out it was a scam (see link above).

I don’t think of myself as a gullible person but, there it is, I fell for a scam. The scammers fed into my prejudices (Big Pharma) and hopes (an easy cure for dementia). Instead of checking out the information, I let my hopes get the better of me. I saw it, I gave it some credence and then passed on the information to other people. If these people clicked on the link, they are now being flooded with Facebook posts regarding this false dementia cure.

The internet is full of bull shit maybe more bull shit than actual truth. Most of the time I can tell the difference but sometimes a whopper gets by me. I should check out anything before I pass on information. Message received.

Still this experience scares me. It was so easy for me to believe in something that was completely false. As I am getting older, I realize that the scammers are a bit more sophisticated about modern life and more knowledgeable of the latest technology than I am. I feel like I am one Nigerian Prince away from falling hard for these crafty mother fuckers. I feel vulnerable.

Worse still, there is apparently nothing that can be done. The crafty mother fuckers are going to get away with selling their snake oil as they can use all their technological know how to hide themselves and geographical boundaries to protect themselves from the law. They are free to use famous people’s images without their permission. They are free to bilk gullible people out of their money. All we, as a society, can say is you better learn how to take care of yourself which is really no help at all.

In the mean time, I am glad to report that the state of Texas is going after the imaginary problem of children identifying as cats, otherwise know as furries, so that schools are now required to put litter boxes in the classroom so the furries can eliminate their waste. That there is no, and I mean no, verifiable cases of this every happening is besides the point. Action is needed about the furries and action was taken. Deep sigh.