Tag: Trump

  • ODDS and ENDS: Still Cleaning, Thanksgiving, and Wrong Week…

    (You got to hide your love away…)

    I’m still processing Trump’s victory, what this says about us as Americans, and at the end of all of this contemplation, I am going to have the cleanest kitchen in The Five Boroughs. I know what I’m really doing; trying to put order back on the world of chaos I find myself in. It’s working, as any good therapy does, but it will still take time. Deep down, I sort of do hope that I am over reacting. That Trump’s term will be a big nothing burger of incompetence and gaffs, but the economy improves and we all go on with our lives. But I also know nothing is really over. And there always is a tomorrow to try again. Not the most encouraging thought, but it’s all that I got right now. That and I have some grout to scrub.

    Thanksgiving is not too far away, like less than three weeks. This is the holiday that I look forwards to the most. I love making food with my family, and taking it easy. The kid is old enough now to start making her own dish for the event. And it’s an all day event in our home; A special baked good breakfast of some sort, noshy lunch, and then the dinner when everything is ready. Each year it runs a little different, as we like to keep evolving our Thanksgiving menu, adding this dish, or retiring that side. But as I get older, it’s the time with my family that means the most. Planning together, shopping as a family, putting all the pieces together starting the night before and the day of. All that time shared together.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Doomscrolling is Back, My Picked Apple Goal, and Letting Go

    (I didn’t say no, but that’s not a yes…)

    I am back to my old doomscrolling ways, like it was October 2020. Oh, and this has 100% to do with the 2024 Election. The nerves have started kicking up again, and I keep scrolling on all the platforms looking for something to make me feel better, help me relax, and tell me that everything is going to be okay because the rest of America would never do what I think the polls are hinting that they might do and plunge us into another four years of orange chaos!!! If I learned anything about the internet, if you search long and hard enough, you will find what you are looking for.

    We went apple picking last weekend, and I even wrote blog about it, AND I even got a weird comment about it, which I think was snarky and sarcastic. As what happens with apple picking, you bring a shit ton of apples home. The wife does a good job of making a couple of deserts from the apples, and we put apples in the kid’s lunch, which she claims that she eats, or someone eats. Yet, year after year, we have to throw away some of our apples because they have sat on the counter too long, and are starting to rot. This year, we made a pact in our home to collect fewer apples, in the hopes that we will be less wasteful. And damn it, I’m holding to that; I will eat an apple a day, maybe two even, not just to avoid going to the doctor, but to do my part in ensuring that we eat every stinking apple that we selected from a farm in upstate New York!

    So what is the difference in giving up, and letting something go? If you give up you’re a quitter, if you let it go, then you are practicing self-care? There is a fine line there. But when this question pops into my head, this is the scene that plays out…

  • Debate Thought

    I should have made snacks last night. The wine was good, but I needed something to eat. If only I had some popcorn…

    The spin has begun from what happened last night between Harris and Trump. Consensus is that Harris won the debate, and I have to agree with that. I won’t waste your time, as there are plenty of news outlets you can go to find out why and how this happened. I do find it odd that you would come here first, though I am flattered, as I do not believe that I am a solid or creditable news source.

    The one thing that I noticed last night with the spinning and analyst, and even in the paper this morning, is that the criticism, for both Harris and Trump, concerns that they didn’t go into detail about their plans. They didn’t give enough information.

    I’m sorry, but that’s not what televised political debates are about, and it has never been about information. Look, the first one, Nixon and Kennedy, what does everyone remember about it? Nixon sweating under the lights and Kennedy looking calm and in control. Does anyone remember the tax policy they discussed?

    What do people remember about these debates? Reagan’s “Four Years” line, or the “Not exploiting his opponents youth and inexperience.” How about, “You’re no Jack Kennedy,” or Bush looking at his watch, Gore loudly sighing, binders full of woman… I think you get the point.

    These debates are about creating and capturing emotional reactions. Logic has no place here; it’s window dressing. Besides, everyone is sitting at home with a smartphone in their hand, so when they want to find something out, like is that how tariffs work, or how does the child tax credit get paid for, they just look it up. Why would a candidate waste valuable screen time, getting all wonky on policy, when they can work to get voters comfortable with the idea of them being President? I believe Trump and Harris are of this thought.

    So please, political talking heads and hacks, please drop this crap about not learning about policy in these debates. You should know better.

  • Debate Night in America

    Are you throwing a Debate Night Party?

    I bought a bottle of wine which I plan on splitting with my wife, as we watch the debate and yell at our TV. But not too loud, as our kid will be sleeping in the next room.

    I thought about buying snack foods that are orange, but that seemed a little too silly.

    No, I will celebrate Debate Night, the way my forefather’s celebrated all the way back in 1960; slightly tipsy.

    To be honest, not looking forward to the debate. I didn’t watch the last one between Trump and Biden, as something told me it would be a train wreck. I mean, it was a train wreck, but not the way I thought it would be. There isn’t anything that will happen tonight that will make me change how I am planning on voting. I guess something could happen, it’s not impossible, but not probable either. No, Trump will try to act all normal, but will slip into “Trump” mode and say some weird shit. Harris has a bunch of canned one-liners, some focus group zingers, that she’ll try to land, but will come across as wooden. You know, like Chris Christie’s Donald Duck line…

    Sadly, these things, these “debates,” aren’t informative, just entertainment. It’s a tightrope walk, and we are only here to see who will fall off. There are such things as debate contests, which have rules, and allow people to stake positions, and have the other person question them, and rebuttals, and so forth. I mean, if we really wanted to know where these candidates stand, we could ask them to, you know, really debate.

    But we don’t.

    We like this form of competition. It gives both sides the ability to claim that they won. We’ll get a bunch of memes out of tonight. I will have Twitter on and follow the outcry/outrage, or general hilarity of people commenting on what is happening.

    It does make me wonder if any of this really matters?

  • Weird

    Funny how one well placed word can unravel a person. The right word, said at the right time can cut to the core of someone, revealing what they fear most. And once that word is out there, being applied to that person, no matter how they try to defend or deflect, that word sticks to them.

    And “weird” was that word yesterday – just slicing through so much MAGA bravado, and leaving grasping Alpha Men with nothing to say except, basically, “I’m not weird! You’re weird!” But it was too late, damage was done.

    And the “weird” label hit MAGA Men at their most vulnerable spot – questioning if their world view was actually normal. The MAGA reaction says to me that most of them, MAGA Alpha Bros that is, know deep down what they are saying and believing in, is abnormal, if not outright weird. I can hear them thinking; “The shit that Trump says; it is weird.” “Maybe I am the weird one, but not in the outsider who’s cool kind’a weird; just the bad weird.”

    What I find most ironic is that this used to be a Trump skill. You know, he’d find that one word that encapsulates his opponent; “Lying” “Sleepy” “Cheating” “Meatball” “Little.” I hate to admit it, but Trump was really good at it. He would throw out a name, it would stick, and no matter how hard they try, that label stuck, and Trump would repeat it, over and over and over and over…

    So, the tables have turned. The bullies are being bullied by words. Poetic justice is just the tip of the cliches I can use here.

    I doubt that “weird” will live beyond this week’s news cycle.

    But it has been fun to watch.