July 3, 2025: Disaster

 

Congress passed the Big Beautiful Bill today, even though most Americans oppose the bill as written. President Trump will sign it into law tomorrow and make a big show of his victory. But the BBB is, in fact, a disaster for America.

Let us be blunt. The Republican agenda is intended to further divide the rich from the rest of us because they themselves are rich or want to be.

Welcome to feudal America.

The Big Beautiful Bill is a betrayal of the general American population. Its effects will be far-reaching. Just one is the removal of incentives to use solar power. 280,000 Americans are employed by the solar power industry. Trump wants to promote fossil fuel and coal instead of, not in addition to, solar power. The future of the planet, and of our descendants, lies in the balance. He does not see the future moving away from fossil fuels. He would see the solar industry die in the bargain. What a way to help American business!

We have already seen the Trump administration push back against any effort to tell the true history of the United States. We have already seen them threaten anyone who might disagree with their view of the world. Now, with the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, we will see this adminsitration throw more and more people into poverty or near-poverty. We are already morally bankrupt. To help the poor old rich, we are going to face fiscal bankruptcy in the near future. And America will slip out of greatness.

We are traveling backward in time. Human rights belong only to white males of property descended from northern European immigrants, those brave risk-taking ancestors who crossed the Atlantic looking for a better life and then brought slaves to do the work and pushed indigenous people into tiny corners of the land. We want those times back. Women didn't vote. Slaves counted as 3/5 of a human only for census purposes. It was a great time to be rich and white and male. That was the Great America Trump wants back.

But wait. I'm a white male of northern European descent. Am I speaking against my own interests? No. Emphatically, no! I see taking help services away from people in need, both here and abroad, as a betrayal of our supposed Christian values. I see white-washing our history and pushing back to the times of Andrew Jackson as a sin. If you want to make America great, you help others. You learn from your mistakes, not ignore them. Anything less is indoctrination to the whims of one person, and that will lead to a whole new generation of Brown Shirts.

Is The GOP on self-destruct?

These are interesting times. For me, in particular, the coming month is going to be filled with joy, laughter, long walks and hopefully a very cool boat ride that will include a stop at Wild Hose Island. It does mean that I may be too busy and too happy to blog, at least every day, while Olaf and Anneke are here. It also means that the world at large can do its worst, and probably will, considering the state of politics today, and I won't comment.

Yeah, like my mouth can stay shut.

Remember the bumper sticker I mentioned the other say? "The problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created them." I keep thinking about those words, and I look at the political animals that roam the Washington zoo unchecked, unvaccinated, and unrepentant. The fact is that Barack Obama is perhaps the only man in Washington who didn't have a hand in creating the mess he inherited. Among the choices available, he is the closest thing we have to a fresh approach.

He's not perfect. In the American climate of "I want it now," he has not righted the ship of state as quickly as we all want. He has spent much of the last four years trying to get the Republican members of Congress fall in line through compromise, and yet they did not play. In that way he wound up taking many of the best parts out of Obamacare, for example, and still the GOP opposed it, and still does. Obama's greatest weakness is that he tried to find the middle of the road in a town that has lost the concept of compromise.

I was sitting at the car shop today while my car was being readied for our upcoming trip to Yellowstone (incidentally, a Republican was at the helm when Yellowstone was made the first national park, for what that's worth). I read a Newsweek magazine article written by a lady GOP leader who complained, what the @*&@!! are the republican men thinking? She stated that the men in her party are actively alienating women by focusing on issues long ago settled -- they're not stupid, they're suicidal.

I only hope she's right. If it works out, I'm going boating with dear friends who happen to be Republican, as well as my Dutch family, and although I am dying to know how much the leaders of the GOP are embarrassing them, I plan not to talk about politics at all. No elephants or donkeys, just horses. Wild ones.

Offline, Old Hope, and Bumpers

There are days when I have so much to write about that I have trouble deciding which subject to choose. Today I decided to write about everything, and let the words fall where they may.

First writing subject is "not writing." Things are going to be wonderfully hectic over the next few weeks (all of September, actually). That means my blogs will be hit and miss, mostly miss. My projects will sit by while I have fun playing tour guide for Olaf and Anneke, who arrive September 1 for a three week stay. It's their first visit to the United States. They love mountains and hiking, so Montana is tailor made for them. For Diane and myself it is a perfect excuse to explore our new surroundings.

Then we have a wedding at the end of the month, plus we may be getting two of our cats back during the week between O and A leaving and Myra and Ryan's event. Not much time for musing on the keyboard.

Next, the old hope. My nephew Richard forwarded me a fun article for anyone like myself who thinks his age means the limits are falling on him "fast and furious." Roger Clemens has been making news by un-retiring (again) and preparing to pitch at age 50. Minors to start, Majors to follow . But Richard's story is about an ancient player named Bill Lee, the Spaceman, who had a colorful career back in the
80's and now is 65 years old. Seems Ole Bill just won a professional game on August 23 for the San Rafael Pacifics, a Minor League team. Think of it -- competing with the big boys, young enough to be his grandkids, and winning the game! Forget the New Hope. Pin your star to the Old Hope!

We read a bumper sicker yesterday that read: "The problems we face today can not be solved by the minds that created them."

I love those words. They are not party or agenda specific, they merely state that if we want to solve our problems, don't rely upon and re-elect the very officials who brought them into being in the first place. Problems need innovative solutions from people with fresh perspective.

So, you might ask, what problems? On MSNBC this morning, I heard that the United States ranks 78th in the percentage of women in elected office. 78th! We're behind Afghanistan. So who exactly are we to criticise anyone?

It occurs to me that the GOP likes us to be backward. Another area where we rank far lower than we should is in health care. Their opposition to Obamacare means that they want us to wallow in mediocrity. There must be money in it. We rank somewhere in the middle of the pack among industrialized nations, and to hear the Republicans talk, it would be okay with them of we slipped further back -- anything would be preferable to agreeing with the Democrats on any issue. This divisiveness rears its head every time we turn around, but Obamacare is one of the hot button issues the GOP continually harps on as we march toward November. Obamacare is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction -- that is, if you believe that every American deserves health care coverage.

The GOP does not.

We are also mediocre when it comes to education, particularly mathematics and science. Once upon a time we led the world in these fields, and drew to our shores great minds from everywhere else to help us lead. No more. Look elsewhere for new discoveries and technologies unless they come from a handful of brainiacs sitting around figuring out how to make last month's newest fad obsolete. No child left behind is a bust. The gaps between the United States and the rest of the world are widening, and the GOP seems to want to accelerate the process. The world is moving away from us, or, as the saying goes, perhaps it is we who are moving away from the rest of the world by standing still.

I do not blame the GOP entirely. We the people elected them and many of us push their agenda of non-compliance and progress stalling. Meanwhile, the Democrats do nothing but compromise, only to have the Republicans obstruct anyway -- like the pre-war allies offering Hitler what he wanted on the promise that he would be satisfied until the next time.

People shout from the rooftops how important this election is going to be. I don't see it. The people running in 2012 -- all of them -- are exactly the minds who created the problems in the first place.

Okay, okay, I'm going to backtrack a little bit, but I'm not the first politician to do so. Come November, a choice must be made, and the candidates both have clear agendas each is pursuing. In that sense the election is crucial. Do we pick a man who inherited a mess forty years in the making and who has made steps to improve our lot, and who seems to be in touch with what a human being, male or female, is; or a man who cannot seem to differentiate between what is good for a male dominated businessman society from 150 years ago and the world we live in today?

Look at Todd Akin. Members of the GOP will say that he is not typical of the Party's values, but this is the man who co-authored a bill that wanted to redefine rape. With Paul Ryan. That Paul Ryan. The Paul Ryan who himself wants to impede a woman's right to choose. Comic and commentator W. Kamau Bell (catch him on F/X before his show's six episode run ends) refers to the GOP as the Circle of Idiots. And yet the polls show the race for President is neck and neck.

Akin's words were poorly chosen, but the sentiment expressed there demonstrates the reactionary vision the GOP has for America. Everybody has to know his or her place.

It is a world that may have worked once, a few centuries back when most people did not know better and before the invention of the guillotine. All it gets us now is the same stuff, different day. Democrats may be progressives who are not progressing, but Republicans are running backwards at full speed.

So maybe it will be the most important election ever. Which direction do you want to go? Please remember that, no matter what Washington has done for the past several years, standing still is not an option.

$३०० Tennis Shoes?

Today's blog is sort of a news items miscellany.

We begin with the latest technological advancement from Nike. Somehow the company has seen fit to justify a new pair of tennies with a price tag exceeding $300. I can buy a kayak for that, no shoes required.

At $300, those shoes ought to be able to run the 100 in 8.9 seconds no matter who is wearing them.

Then there is Mitt Romney pointing out that President Obama pinpointed $90 billion of the stimulus package toward research and development of green energy. Romney bluntly states that this is a waste of money, that green energy isn't working, and that the price tag is outrageous. Of course, $90 billion is less than ten percent of the overall stimulus, and green energy is an area upon which we are going to have to rely at some point in the not too distant future, when the fossil fuels run out or get so audaciously expensive as to be useless. And, of course, we spent twice that per year during the Bush administration on the two wars we were fighting. Iranian oil? I don't see much. Afghani oil? Non-existent.

Everything is relative.

Romney also speaks highly of creating jobs in America, forgetting conveniently how many jobs he himself has outsourced. If he were really honest he would tell us why he outsourced, and call for remedies to the issues that prompted him to find a better bottom line overseas.

The Republicans still go on and on about Obamacare as if it were the greatest scam and deadliest sin ever perpetrated on the American public. To me, after compromises and adjustments, Obamacare is far from the plan it should be. But then, I look at the eighteen or so countries with better health care for their citizens than the United States and dream of universal health care. I guess that marks me as a socialist. But FDR called for just that in his second Bill of Rights back in 1945, three score and seven years ago.

This means liberals are looking backward, trying to bring equality to all citizens, from a playbook set down long ago; while conservatives are looking someplace altogether different from a playbook based on obstruction and partisan politics that was established only recently.

It's a topsy-turvy world.

The fact is, the political discussions that we hear on the TV these days are utterly disturbing. Real issues slip by the wayside while opposing candidates keep telling us what their opponents did, not what they themselves will do. It's politics as usual, which is to say politicians running on vague promises and empty words.

I keep saying it: these guys (and gals) ought to try walking a mile in my shoes. I paid sixty bucks for them five years ago and thought the price was outrageous then.

Paul Ryan, Really????

What prompts my second blog today is the fascinating news that Mitt Romney introduced Paul Ryan as the next President of the United States, er, scratch that, he meant Vice-President. I have only one thing to say. Paul Ryan -- really?

Okay, I have much to say on the subject, and I imagine that I will be saying it over the next few months, until the wise American voter rejects Romney and Ryan and the policy of richness enhancement on the backs of the rest of us; or turns out to be amazingly stupid and votes to destroy Medicare and Social Security and increase taxes on the rest of us while the rich get more and more breaks. Is it that simple? You bet. Even simpler.

In 2005 Ryan said that the influence that brought him into politics was Ayn Rand but backtracked when pressed by the Catholic Church seven years later. But wait, there's more. In 2008, according to the Wikipedia article I read this morning on Ryan, as a member of the house finance committee he was privy to a private meeting with the lords of finance of the day, including Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, with the aim of urging him and other Congressmen to support or craft legislation to help the troubled banks as the bubble was about to burst. That same day Ryan apparently sold his shares in some of the banks he learned were in trouble, and bought shares in Goldman Sachs.

If that isn't insider trading, I don't know what is. I mean, didn't Martha Stewart wind up wearing an orange jumpsuit for something like that? And Ryan is up for second chair. I'm just saying.

I hear a distant echo flowing across the land, whispering, "I am not a crook, I am not a crook."

Let's Wage War On Iran

It's Iran's fault. Gas prices are climbing faster than they fell over winter, and Americans can expect to pay upward of around $5 per gallon by Memorial Day. The experts cite uncertainty in the Middle East over Iran's nuclear program as the cause; in other words, speculation is driving up the price of gas. We can look at this two ways: either oil interests are taking advantage of the high media upset to gouge us; or, the media upset at being gouged will prepare us for yet another war designed to liberate a people from the terrible government that is not cooperating with the United States. In other words, Iran is bringing US wrath down upon their heads and I expect that we will have our soldiers, freshly home from Iraq, back in the saddle again by September, faster if Israel jumps the gun.

Turns out that Iranian oil imports are a small fraction of what we buy here, but a larger component of European oil supplies, so if the Europeans have to look elsewhere for more fuel then in turn America will have less reserves to draw from as well, and on and on. Meanwhile, somebody stands to make a great deal of money, and it's not you and it's not me. That being said, when our pocketbooks are affected, we will buy any excuse for war. Ultimately, if the powers that be want a war, they will get it. There's money to be made on death, too.

Remember, we have declared that we love the Iraqi people, so much that we wound up killing thousands of them to save them from a dictator we did not like. We love the Afghanni people, so much so that we killed thousands of them to save them from a religious group we didn't like. We love the Iranian people -- so much so that I fear we will be willing to kill thousands of them to save them from an elected government we do not like.

This is politics, American style. When you play politics that way, people die. Innocent people die and we apologize for that. And somehow the price of gas goes up anyway.

So a year from now, look back with nostalgia: "Remember when gas was just three bucks a gallon? Those days are gone forever!"

And somebody will get rich.

More Political Digressions

The philanderer beat the businessman. The Constitution came in fourth. Maybe the Republicans ARE as confused as the Democrats.

Now we are being set up to hear the President of the United States say, “He turned me into a Newt.

Meanwhile, Congress is ineffectual, even invisible, except when its members are posturing. I mean, has anyone seen or heard from Al Franken?

Digressing Into Politics

Is it any wonder that Americans increasingly don’t want to vote? Looking at the Republican circus, it would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. One of these guys is going to be their choice to run for President. Romney was a shoe-in a few days ago. Now he hasn’t even won the first test that he won. Gingrich is moving up on the outside – depending on how voters view his alleged open marriage proposal. Santorum – who exactly is this guy? And Ron Paul is simply too set in his Constitutional ways to appeal in a general election.

There people are running to be the leader of the Free World, still the most powerful position in the world. All too often the voter has been left with choosing the lesser of two evils – and all too often, we choose wrong.

Maybe the convention will be deadlocked and the Party will draft Chris Christie.

The irony in Washington today is that our government works by gridlock. Checks and balances assure that nothing outlandish is done, at least not before it is watered down or explained to death and is no longer outlandish – or helpful. Gridlock protects our democracy, but there comes a point when, as one observer suggested over two centuries ago: revolutions happen when nations move forward but governments stand still. Gridlock may work when the country needs as little interference as possible, but is deadly when we need help. FDR saw that and acted on it, letting the dust settled after. Everyone in Washington today seems to be in love with gridlock and non-performance, from the White House on down, and we the people are stuck watching individuals with money and power run against each other.

We decide. Sure. Give me one candidate who doesn’t want the job. Oh, yeah, I think one name came up in there someplace, but he’s a Republican . . .

Postal Blues

Back to blogs. This one is about one of my least favorite subjects, the Postal Service. Having been retired from that institution for over a year, it seems I still pay attention to the news when it blurts out. Whether that is my own self interest, watching closely to make sure my pension is safe -- I don't trust what politicians tell me -- or out of some perverse sense of loyalty to a company that went out of its way to . . . well, I shouldn't go there. Not yet.

The news yesterday reveals that the PO is dropping its guarantee of overnight delivery within the same zip code zone. Again, this business is planning to compete with other like businesses by CUTTING service to its customers and decrying, they'll get used to it. After all, the Internet ether has replaced Bill paying and catalog shopping for so many, so what if there are still a million or two people out there who don't have the Internet or don't trust the ether to protect their identities.

Not that the service is all that great. Admittedly, even as a former employee, I am aware that much mail is being lost out there. I myself have lost half a dozen packages while an eBay seller, with considerable loss. A close friend and businesswoman reported to me that a package she ailed half a year ago containing $3500 in merchandise, equipped with confirmation and tracking, was lost, and all she gets from the PO is "Oh, well." The same individual reports the loss or delay of several bills "in the mail." This kind of empirical data shows that the Postal Service has forgotten the Service aspect of its job.

Frankly, the Post Office doesn't care.

Ask a carrier or a clerl or a mail handler on the job, and THEY care. But their hands are tied and their throats are being systemmatically choked. and if they want to keep their jobs in todfay's hostile climate (not that it was ever friendly -- the term Going Postal entered American jargon for a reason). they bhave to swallow hard the changes thrown at them in the name of progress, allow the work to be piled on to fewerr individuals, and, in those immortal words, suck it up.

Again, I wonder if the Post Office wants to fail. After all, how does a business that laready has cut almost half its work force since I began there three decades ago, and over 100,000 jobs in the last few years, continue to lose money? Then it hit me in one word: Congress. The Postal Service is the onbly private business answerable directly to Congress. Congress must approve any and all suggestions, adjustments, and price hikes, often tying the hands of those who actyually might know something about running a mega business. And, frankly, our Congress isn't running anything well these days, except for animosity and debt.

Shame

Okay, it's time to get political. Maybe just for a moment. In the weeks while I was virtually hibernating, several surveys were coinducted and information releasewd, some of which is downright shameful for an American to have to acknowledge about America. While the protests agaiust Wall Street (and by extension, Corporate America) continue to grow, and grow more hostile, recalling to many the 1960's when our vested interest was our own lives . . . it turns out that there is much statistical evidence to support and substantiate what the proesters are saying: America is falling down and the gap between the well off and the rest of the country is growing.

Survey says: one in six Americans live below the poverty line. One in eleven people seeking work cannot find it. And one in four American children goes to bed hungry every night. We know how poor much of the rest of the world is, how a billion human beings planetwide eeks out a living on a dollar a day or less. But this is America! A dollar here may buy you a burger but won't cover the tax on it and certainly won't get you something healthy to eat. Our standard of living is high, which makes our poverty line higher than for other areas of the world. And yet 17% if us are poor. In America!!

Meanwhile, CEO salaries and bonuses have multiplied exponentially even when the corporations they represent are losing profits. We have spent billions of dollars to assure ourselves of the deaths of a handful of individuals abroad -- Bin Laden, Kadafi, Hussein, And yet people are starving within the United States. Our priorities are screwed.

If they sray that way, America runs the real risk of slipping further down the list of Industrial Nations. After all, we barely have any industry left. We seem to consume and consume, those of us who still have income and credit. But as the gap widens, history shows, that disparity will lead to more and more derision, and eventually to violence. This is not the direction I want to see for America, and yet as long as Corporate America is run by greed and Washington elects to bicker and quarrel and stonewall instead of act, it is the direction we will take.

There are long term problems that need to be faced and conquered. But first we have to get rid of short term thinking. Any suggestions as to how?