Seriously Delusional

 

White House Economic Advisor Gary Cohn Says That With an Extra $1000 in Tax Savings, a Family Could Buy a Car or Renovate a Kitchen

In the Bush years, it was $400, and we were all supposed to rush out and buy a new TV for Christmas.

Now, it's $1k (and they say there's no inflation...!)--maybe--and we can go out and buy a car or renovate our kitchen!

(I guess we'll just have to finance the rest--$20k?  $40k?--at usury interest rates...for the rest of our lives.)

The GOP has gone from out-of-touch to delusional in less than a decade.

Maybe we can pony up that "extra" $1k for a new second-hand couch to put on our front porch.

SMDH...

14 Years...

A Time For Fear

 

Human beings developed the technology to annihilate the earth in the 1940's.  For more than 70 years, we have somehow managed to avoid ending ourselves and our planet.  Our one hope to avoid Armageddon has been the reasonable caution of sane leaders.  Our greatest fear:  that some crazy person, some insane asshole who sees through the eyes of one maddened by power, would get control of the switch.

Having personally lived my entire life under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, I know how easy it is to compartmentalize the fear of total annihilation...how to hog-tie it and stuff it far into the back of one's mind.  Not to do so has hardly seemed a choice...to live with that kind of fear right in front of us, every day, would surely drive us mad. 

But now...NOW is the time to bring that fear front and center.  We need it to motivate us to act against the crazy man in the Oval Office who might just hit that button.

Thinking he won't, or can't, could be the end of us all.

Finally!

Surely it was yesterday that I was sweltering in the smoky doldrums of late summer, longing for autumn, cool and colorful...and wincing when I realized it was still August and I would be stuck with crackling heat and dust for another month.

And yet, this morning it's full-blown fall, with juncoes and sparrows, doves and jays squabbling over seeds under the feeders; while the spiral notes of crane calls and discordant symphonies of goose barking waft over the channel from the east.

I feel as if I have come home.  Or, perhaps more accurately, home has come back to me.

October is definitely my favorite color...!    

Choose Love

It's that anniversary again. 

The one upon which every person who would like to identify as a "good" American posts images of flags, or smoking towers, or firemen, or two bright lights piercing the night sky where two brick-and-mortar towers used to stand...

...emblazoned with the words, "Never forget."

I've made no secret of my opinion of that sentiment, especially in regard to this event  in particular, this event that everyone rabidly wants to never forget.  I was prepared to go into great detail about WHY I loathe the very words, and certainly the fear, hatred and ultra-nationalism that inspires them. 

But I realized I have already written that essay.  Four years ago.

You can find it here:

Never Forget? 

I will add this to my list of things we should never forget:

Take one look at the state of our national government, at who sits behind the desk in the Oval Office, at who controls the do-nothing Congress, at the deep and deepening divide between political ideologies in America...and never forget that THIS is the result of the actions of morally bankrupt leaders exploiting a national tragedy to accomplish their own corrupt agenda. 

The politics of fear.

The politics of hate.

The politics of  "I got mine."

The politics of division.

Bin Laden, damn his soul to perdition, did indeed all but destroy this country on that day 16 years ago.

So I'll not be admonishing anyone to "never forget" in the conventionally accepted sense of those words.

But I will share this sentiment that a friend shared on Facebook, which I find represents exactly how this anniversary should be treated:

 

Still Denying It?

The Northwest is on fire...

...and the Southeast is under water.

 

Welcome to climate change...

Where Indeed...?