Monthly Archives: March 2025

A Frightening Possibility!!!

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Here is a post from Forgottenman that I hope you’ll read. It actually deals with a blog my friend Jere sent to me that I wanted to post but wanted him to check it out first.  Here is his reaction and hopefully you’ll give us yours as well.:

Mike Brock’s “Notes From The Circus” Blog

Posted on 

This isn’t my usual type of post¹, and it’s hard to find the “Start” button, so I’ll plunge right in.

A couple of weeks ago, I somehow stumbled onto Mike Brock’s Notes From The Circus blog. I was not familiar with him, and I tried to read some of it, but I got bogged down in some of his philosophy-speak² – those shorthand references to concepts that (I imagine) more easily dwell in late-night sessions of a gaggle of students, scholars, philosophers huddled in the back conference room of the campus library. I bookmarked his blog to check out further another day. Today is that day.

Why today? Because that’s when Judy/Remi/LifeLessons sent me a note asking “What do you make of this??? Should I post it?” The link was to a recent post on Mike Brock’s blog! (I had not mentioned him to her previously! Yeah, even with 1400 miles between us, she and I are somehow still joined.)

(For the rest of his post and a link to Mike Brock’s frightening appraisal of current events, go here: https://okcforgottenman.wordpress.com/2025/03/09/mike-brocks-notes-from-the-circus-blog/

My Name, for dVerse Poets, Mar 9, 2025

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My Name

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My Name

It would have never occurred
to my mother or father
to look up the meaning of the name
before giving it to me.

In the Apocrypha,
Judith slew the Asian general
to save her people.

In Ethiopia, Judith is “Yodit,”
cruel usurper of the throne
and destroyer of Axum.

These women my parents had no knowledge of
might well have scorned the “Judy” I evolved into,
despite my mother’s best intentions
of always calling me Judith Kay.

Uncle Herman called me Jude
and I loved that,
but for years,
until I married,
nobody else ever did.
I never had many nicknames,
except from my father who called me Pole Cat
and my sister who called  me Jooj Pooj.

My oldest sister, Betty Jo,
knows her name
might have been prompted
by the popularity of Betty Boop
and my sister Patti Adair
has the same middle name
as her cousin Jayne
because my mother named them both,
but there is no story
for my given names.,
except that my mother liked them both.

I can draw a wading bird
using just the letters of my first name
in the correct progression,
lifting the pen off the paper only twice,
to form  the eye and leg.
Yet for years,
my name was a bird
that hadn’t found its wings.

My surname was carried to America
in the hull of a ship—
when my grandmother,
born of Dutch-immigrant parents,
married to an immigrant
Dutch baker to have a son
who passed the name Dykstra on to me.

Judy Kay Dykstra

The last two letters of my first name
and my middle initial
are the first three letters of my last name,
and the remaining four letters, rearranged, spell “star.”
Nobody planned that.

Judykstra
Judykstar.

The “dyke” part of my name is self-explanatory,
and the suffix “stra” is derived from
the old Germanic word “sater,”
meaning “dweller,”
and although I’ve never lived by a seawall,
I like my name in its Dutch Shoes.

My surname
is not frequently seen
in the phonebooks
of most towns.
I’m not the one
who put it in famous places
like “Dykstra Hall” at UCLA or
in baseball statistics
on the sports page,
and it was John Dykstra
who had it engraved
on the academy award.

But it was my name written
along with my phone number
over the urinal at the library
in turquoise magic marker
by a disgruntled student,
and it took one month of late-night phone calls
from men asking, “Do you . . .?”
before a caller admitted
where he found the number
and was persuaded
to wash it off the wall.

And it was my name
written on the label of
a favorite coat left at the pier
and never returned,
so ever afterwards,
perhaps, my name
pressed against someone else’s neck.

I keep trying to change my name
into something else.

Into a bird.
Into a married name.

Drop mine, take his.
Keep mine and his,
I take his, he takes mine,
so we exchange names, both keeping both.
In the end, though, he drops mine, I keep both.

Judith Kay Dykstra-Brown. Bob Brown

My name next to his on a gravestone
in my hometown in South Dakota,
only mine open-dated.

My name on a paycheck every month for years,
and in the records of the tax collector,
then on a social security check.

For so long,
I was not yet within my name.
I wanted it to hold me,
but I couldn’t squeeze into it.

Until, finally,
my name on books and art
that told its full story.

Judy Dykstra-Brown.

I made it mine.

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The former head of the Social Security Administration “You’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits within the next 30 to 90 days.”

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Last week, the former head of the Social Security Administration issued a grave warning to the American people:

“You’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”

Why is former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley sounding the alarm?

  • Because of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being “run” by Donald Trump’s presidential stand-in Elon Musk.
  • DOGE is infiltrating critical information systems, closing dozens of offices all across the country, and forcing through massive staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration.
  • Social Security started sending monthly benefits in January 1940. In the 85 years since, payments have never failed to go out.
  • Today, 73 million Americans depend on Social Security every month.
  • And at the risk of stating the obvious, they have earned those benefits. Social Security is not a government handout. (Unlike the numerous tax breaks and subsidies that billionaires like Elon Musk and giant corporations get courtesy of American taxpayers.)
  • People pay into the system throughout their working lives, then get money back once they reach a certain age.

By the way, Elon Musk recently said this on the mega-popular Joe Rogan podcast: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

Why are we letting someone who thinks that way mess with any part of the federal government, much less one of the most important and successful programs in our nation’s entire history?

Tell Congress:

If Social Security misses payments even once, millions upon millions of Americans — who have already paid into the system — will suffer. Not just Democrats. Not just people in supposedly blue states. Not just the “coastal elites” Republicans have convinced themselves are some kind of all-powerful bogeyman. You must work together to prevent the so-called Department of Government Efficiency from interrupting Social Security payments and to undo whatever damage DOGE has already done at the Social Security Administration.

Click to add your name now.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

– Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen

Donate | Public Citizen | 1600 20th Street NW | Washington DC 20009 | Unsubscribe

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More Cruelty. Unbelievable. “Give me your tired, your poor?”

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Heather Cox Richardson

Letter from an American, Heather Cox Richardson:

This morning, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke of Reuters reported that the Trump administration is preparing to deport the 240,000 Ukrainians who fled Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and have temporary legal status in the United States. Foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova reminded Americans that “these people had to be completely financially independent, pay tax, pay all fees (around $2K) and have an affidavit from an American person to even come here.”

“This has nothing to do with strategic necessity or geopolitics,” Russia specialist Tom Nichols posted. “This is just cruelty to show [Russian president Vladimir] Putin he has a new American ally.”

The Trump administration’s turn away from traditional European alliances and toward Russia will have profound effects on U.S. standing in the world. Edward Wong and Mark Mazzetti reported in the New York Times today that senior officials in the State Department are making plans to close a dozen consulates, mostly in Western Europe, including consulates in Florence, Italy; Strasbourg, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Ponta Delgada, Portugal, as well as a consulate in Brazil and another in Turkey.

In late February, Nahal Toosi reported in Politico that President Donald Trump wants to “radically shrink” the State Department and to change its mission from diplomacy and soft power initiatives that advance democracy and human rights to focusing on transactional agreements with other governments and promoting foreign investment in the U.S.

Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” have taken on the process of cutting the State Department budget by as much as 20%, and cutting at least some of the department’s 80,000 employees. As part of that project, DOGE’s Edward Coristine, known publicly as “Big Balls,” is embedded at the State Department.

As the U.S. retreats from its engagement with the world, China has been working to forge greater ties. China now has more global diplomatic posts than the U.S. and plays a stronger role in international organizations. Already in 2025, about 700 employees, including 450 career diplomats, have resigned from the State Department, a number that normally would reflect a year’s resignations.

Shutting embassies will hamper not just the process of fostering goodwill, but also U.S. intelligence, as embassies house officers who monitor terrorism, infectious disease, trade, commerce, militaries, and government, including those from the intelligence community. U.S. intelligence has always been formidable, but the administration appears to be weakening it.

As predicted, Trump’s turn of the U.S. toward Russia also means that allies are concerned he or members of his administration will share classified intelligence with Russia, thus exposing the identities of their operatives. They are considering new protocols for sharing information with the United States. The Five Eyes alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the U.S. has been formidable since World War II and has been key to countering first the Soviet Union and then Russia. Allied governments are now considering withholding information about sources or analyses from the U.S.

Their concern is likely heightened by the return to Trump’s personal possession of the boxes of documents containing classified information the FBI recovered in August 2022 from Mar-a-Lago. Trump took those boxes back from the Department of Justice and flew them back to Mar-a-Lago on February 28.

A CBS News/YouGov poll from February 26–28 showed that only 4% of the American people sided with Russia in its ongoing war with Ukraine.

The unpopularity of the new administration’s policies is starting to show. National Republican Congressional Committee chair Richard Hudson (R-NC) told House Republicans on Tuesday to stop holding town halls after several such events have turned raucous as attendees complained about the course of the Trump administration. Trump has blamed paid “troublemakers” for the agitation, and claimed the disruptions are part of the Democrats’ “game.” “[B]ut just like our big LANDSLIDE ELECTION,” he posted on social media, “it’s not going to work for them!”

More Americans voted for someone other than Trump than voted for him.

Even aside from the angry protests, DOGE is running into trouble. In his speech before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Trump referred to DOGE and said it “is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight.” In a filing in a lawsuit against DOGE and Musk, the White House declared that Musk is neither in charge of DOGE nor an employee of it. When pressed, the White House claimed on February 26 that the acting administrator of DOGE is staffer Amy Gleason. Immediately after Trump’s statement, the plaintiffs in that case asked permission to add Trump’s statement to their lawsuit.

Musk has claimed to have found billions of dollars of waste or fraud in the government, and Trump and the White House have touted those statements. But their claims to have found massive savings have been full of errors, and most of their claims have been disproved. DOGE has already had to retract five of its seven biggest claims. As for “savings,” the government spent about $710 billion in the first month of Trump’s term, compared with about $630 billion during the same timeframe last year.

Instead of showing great savings, DOGE’s claims reveal just how poorly Musk and his team understand the work of the federal government. After forcing employees out of their positions, they have had to hire back individuals who are, in fact, crucial to the nation, including the people guarding the U.S. nuclear stockpile. In his Tuesday speech, Trump claimed that the DOGE team had found “$8 million for making mice transgender,” and added: “This is real.”

Except it’s not. The mice in question were not “transgender”; they were “transgenic,” which means they are genetically altered for use in scientific experiments to learn more about human health. For comparison, S.V. Date noted in HuffPost that in just his first month in office, Trump spent about $10.7 million in taxpayer money playing golf.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out today that people reporting on the individual cuts to U.S. scientific and health-related grants are missing the larger picture: “DOGE and Donald Trump are trying to shut down advanced medical research, especially cancer research, in the United States…. They’re shutting down medicine/disease research in the federal government and the government-run and funded ecosystem of funding for most research throughout the United States. It’s not hyperbole. That’s happening.”

Republicans are starting to express some concern about Musk and DOGE. As soon as Trump took office, Musk and his DOGE team took over the Office of Personnel Management, and by February 14 they had begun a massive purge of federal workers. As protests of the cuts began, Trump urged Musk on February 22 to be “more aggressive” in cutting the government, prompting Musk to demand that all federal employees explain what they had accomplished in the past week under threat of firing. That request sparked a struggle in the executive branch as cabinet officers told the employees in their departments to ignore Musk. Then, on February 27, U.S. District Judge William Alsup found that the firings were likely illegal and temporarily halted them.

On Tuesday, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) weighed in on the conflict when he told CNN that the power to hire and fire employees properly belongs to Cabinet secretaries.

Yesterday, Musk met with Republican— but no Democratic— members of Congress. Senators reportedly asked Musk—an unelected bureaucrat whose actions are likely illegal—to tell them more about what’s going on. According to Liz Goodwin, Marianna Sotomayor, and Theodoric Meyer of the Washington Post, Musk gave some of the senators his phone number and said he wanted to set up a direct line for them when they have questions, allowing them to get a near-instant response to their concerns.” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters that Musk told the senators he would “create a system where members of Congress can call some central group” to get cuts they dislike reversed.

This whole exchange is bonkers. The Constitution gives Congress alone the power to make appropriations and pass the laws that decide how money is spent. Josh Marshall asks: “How on earth are we in this position where members of Congress, the ones who write the budget, appropriate and assign the money, now have to go hat in hand to beg for changes or even information from the guy who actually seems to be running the government?”

Later, Musk met with House Republicans and offered to set up a similar way for the members of the House Oversight DOGE Subcommittee to reach him. When representatives complained about the random cuts that were so upsetting constituents. Musk defended DOGE’s mistakes by saying that he “can’t bat a thousand all the time.”

This morning, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. ruled in favor of a group of state attorneys general from 22 Democratic states and the District of Columbia, saying that Trump does not have the authority to freeze funding appropriated by Congress. McConnell wrote that the spending freeze “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.” As Joyce White Vance explained in Civil Discourse, McConnell issued a preliminary injunction that will stay in place until the case, called New York v. Trump, works its way through the courts. The injunction applies only in the states that sued, though, leaving Republican-dominated states out in the cold.

Today, Trump convened his cabinet and, with Musk present, told the secretaries that they, and not Musk, are in charge of their departments. Dasha Burns and Kyle Cheney of Politico reported that Trump told the secretaries that Musk only has the power to make recommendations, not to make staffing or policy decisions.

Trump is also apparently feeling pressure over his tariffs of 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on imports from China that went into effect on Tuesday, which economists warned would create inflation and cut economic growth. Today, Trump first said he would exempt car and truck parts from the tariffs, then expanded exemptions to include goods covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) Trump signed in his first term. Administration officials say other tariffs will go into effect at different times in the future.

The stock market has dropped dramatically over the past three days owing to both the tariffs and the uncertainty over their implementation. But Trump denied his abrupt change had anything to do with the stock market.

“I’m not even looking at the market,” Trump said, “because long term, the United States will be very strong with what’s happening.”

—

Notes:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plans-revoke-legal-status-ukrainians-who-fled-us-sources-say-2025-03-06/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-pivots-russia-allies-weigh-sharing-less-intel-us-rcna194420

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-elon-musk-government-workforce-cuts-opinion-poll-2025-03-02/ (despite the title, this is the Ukraine-Russia poll.)

https://apnews.com/article/trump-speech-congress-transcript-751b5891a3265ff1e5c1409c391fef7c

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/scary-subtext-paid-protester-line-trump-republicans-rcna194694

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/18/g-s1-49450/elon-musk-doge-leader

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/25/politics/amy-gleason-doge-acting-administrator/index.html

https://www.newsweek.com/doge-plaintiffs-trump-elon-musk-congress-speech-2040150

Paul Krugman
America is Trapped in a Burning Tesla
Just two days ago Steven Rattner published an article in the New York Times describing the mood among big-business leaders, which I would summarize as smug complacency. Donald Trump, they appeared to believe, was basically their guy, someone who would cut their taxes and remove those pesky environmental and financial regulations. He might be saying some…
Read more
2 days ago · 3608 likes · 274 comments · Paul Krugman

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-government-spending-has-not-slowed-under-trump-so-far-data-shows-2025-02-26/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231336/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-golf-doge_n_67b50fbfe4b0319f377e6c6a

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/05/congress/musk-defends-doge-house-republicans-00215271

Megan Lebowitz and Julie Tsirkin “Trump and Sen. Marshall baselessly claim angry constituents are paid ‘troublemakers,’” NBC News, March 4?, 2025. (I did this article this way because it’s one of those awful “live” streams that make it impossible to find anything.)

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5175061-house-republicans-town-halls-protests/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/act-now

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/05/musk-congress-anger-doge/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-wapo-piece-on-post-constitutional-america

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/politics/trump-seized-boxes-returned-air-force-one/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/embassies-consulates-closures.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/trump-state-department-cuts-l00206494

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/trumps-mass-firings-of-federal-workers-spread-chaos-nationwide

https://www.wcpo.com/transgender-mice-fact-check-trump-2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/upshot/doge-spending-cuts-changed.html

https://www.axios.com/2025/02/28/trump-federal-employees-firing-court-judge

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
Courts to Trump: No
This morning in New York v. Trump, a case brought by a group of state attorneys general working together, U.S. District Judge John McConnell, the chief judge for the District of Rhode Island, ruled against the Trump administration in a significant way. The attorneys general…
Read more
7 hours ago · 1812 likes · 188 comments · Joyce Vance

https://www.reuters.com/business/tariff-reprieve-likely-be-extended-all-usmca-compliant-goods-lutnick-says-2025-03-06/

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/06/nx-s1-5312069/trump-federal-funding-freeze-court-order

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69585994/161/state-of-new-york-v-trump/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-in-massive-backtrack-on-tariffs-after-stock-market-plunge/

https://www.reuters.com/business/tariff-reprieve-likely-be-extended-all-usmca-compliant-goods-lutnick-says-2025-03-06/

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/06/trump-cabinet-musk-025093

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y03qleevvo

X:

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onestpress/status/1897611749597020461

Bluesky:

meidastouch.com/post/3lisr5cfd2k2m

yasharali.bsky.social/post/3lis4q5meph2f

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“The Offering,” for SOCS, Mar 7, 2025

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The Offering

My cat surprised me with a gift
but I must say, I’m rather miffed
with the hairball that she left––
(those locks of which she’s now bereft.)

Was this donation made by chance,
or was it planned far in advance?
Did she commence her furry tearing
with the intent that she’d be sharing?

I wonder if she formed that ball
with any future plans at all
to heave it out upon the chest
of one I thought that she loved best?

Oh that she could communicate
whether it was love or hate
that prompted this  hair artistry
produced and then coughed up on me!

 

The SOCS prompt is to close eyes, open book, point to word, open eyes and use the word as a prompt, so here goes. The prompt word that suppllied itself was “Surprised.”

Flour of the Day, Installment Two

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We really enjoyed the Fat Tuesday parade yesterday. Below are a few photos, some with captions. Click on first photo to enlarge it and see caption. Then click on rt. arrow each time to see rest of photos.

The Fat Tuesday parade was colorful
With weird characters
Young men dressed as senoritas
People on the floats throwing flour at the crowd
And young men with bags of flour throwing it back.
Taking special aim at the only two gringoes in the crowd.

When I got home, I went in swimming, ducking under the water and scrubbing my  scalp so the water could wash out the flour.

Then, hours later––OMG! I scratched the top of my head and the whole top of my head was covered in a big thick scab !!! I couldn’t even peel it off. It felt like it was pulling my skin off when I tried to, and it was  all over the top and back of my head!!!!!  I was scared to death.

Judy (Reeves, my house guest)  looked at my head and said that it was  flour from the parade that had mixed with the water from the pool and formed a hard thick crust when it dried. She said she wouldn’t have known except she had had it crust in her eyebrows.

If we managed to get a flake separated from the hard crust on my head, it would be formed around hairs   and we would need to pull it to the end of that hairs to remove it.

Just crazy.  I went in and took a shower, shampooed and scrubbed my head, brushed with soft and then steel bristle brush. Brushed and brushed. Blew dry. Brushed and brushed again.. Later in bed, felt head..still crust in one par–– rebrushed––Went back to bed.

My alarm didn’t go off so I woke up late and hurried to take Judy in to the writing class she was conducting in Ajijic. Got there early. Came home and put car outside because it was covered in flour. Came in and got the table ready for the writing group that meets here Thur. and Fri. Setting up a TV tray , I squeezed my finger in the table joint and raised a huge swollen bruise. I was crying in frustration and so embarrassed––no reason to be so shaken, but it hurt like Hell. Poor Y. was outside and I was still crying when she came in, but just as she did, the music switched songs and and started playing   “Take it Easy…” I started laughing and told Yolanda the music was saying “Tranquillo.” She then showed me a finger very bent at the first joint and said it was a finger she had cut off and they sewed it back on. That certainly got me leveled out. Don’t know why I was in such a tizzy.  Just my natural state lately, I guess. Time for a vacation.

Been having such a good time with Judy. We just talk and talk and lose track of time. Were going to bed early but at 1:30 we were still talking. Everything set for tomorrow as long as I don’t have to use the 3rd finger from my pinkie on my left hand. And for some reason my hair looks great!!!

Can’t say the same for my car, however:

The only car wash place I know of in Ajijic has closed down, but Yolanda, again, came to the rescue.

The minute she finished deflouring the car, the phone rang and it was Jesus saying I needed to come get my three large art pieces out of the cultural center gallery as the exhibition closed today. So, I had to turn around and drive back to Ajijic with Yolanda to help me.  My pieces have big stands and heavy glass covers but luckily there was a man in the gallery who helped us carry them to thhe car and when we got home, although Pasiano was gone, there was a man passing who helped us carry things down to the house. So fortunate.

When I came out of where I was installing the second sculpture in bedroom, he had left and I had meant to tip him. Turns out Yolanda had done so, taking the money out of the money I leave in the kitchen drawer to buy garrafones of water. She tipped him exactly what I meant to. Once again, she knows exactly what to do before it is even mentioned.

Only one more trip into Ajijic today to pick up Judy after her class. Third trip there today.

Flour of the Day…for Cee.

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The aftermath of the Fat Tuesday parade in San Juan Cosala.  Instead of confetti, they throw flour!  Thank goodness it didn’t rain.

Good for Carlos Slim!!!!!

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I’d like to know what the little post it notes said as well! (Thanks, Brad, for passing this on to me.)

Please Read this Poem!!

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What is the logic of not believing in abortion but believing it is okay to let babies die of Ebola in Africa because we have cut off aid to fund vaccinations…or to allow children to die of measles because our misguided head of national health does not believe in vaccinations? Nothing in the Bible says charity should be ended at national borders or that the rich should profit by the neglect of the poor. Think, people, think! And please read this poem written by my friend Andrea Huelsenbeck at: https://arhtisticlicense.com/about-artistic-license/:

 

And, in case you don’t read comments, Lisa has included THIS link which also deals with the topic alluded to above.