For Cee’s FOTD
TOPLINE: Organizations that vigorously oppose government spending took Paycheck Protection Program loans, including some that have criticized the CARES Act, which created the PPP program, according to data released by the Small Business Administration (For more, click on link below.)
Republican Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 campaign for president, was interviewed on MSNBC. In response to a very general question regarding the Trump Presidency, Mr. Schmidt spoke for two solid minutes and gave the most insightful and brutally honest response of what the Trump Presidency has done to our great country.
“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And, I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And, he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And, there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.”
“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.”
“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale.”
“And, let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are, because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/steve-schmidt-donald-trump/index.html
Click on link to see video by The Meidas Touch. (Go to second video.)
https://news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-jr-meidastouch-085910824.html
This is the first time this hibiscus has bloomed since I planted it. Nice surprise this afternoon! 
This poem was inspired by a misread line in Jan Wilberg’s Red’s Threads blog. What she said was, “Everything is very still here.” How I at first read it forms the last line of my poem, which also fulfills the dVerse Poet’s prompt of “Blue.” In place of one quadrille, the poem is actually composed of two quadrilles, the last line of one rhyming with the first line of the second:
Blue Monday
It’s not that I’m lonely. I’ve plenty to do,
and yet for some reason, I’m just feeling blue.
The thunder has stopped, though the night’s overcast.
The stars I saw three nights ago were the last
interrupting the dark that surrounds like a shroud.
Here I am still apart from the world’s rowdy crowd.
My dogs curled up in slumber, my cats in their bed,
all of my company curled in my head.
Alone in my house with familiar things near,
everything, everything’s still very here.
Film Legend
Once I was unstoppable, but now my moves are tentative.
My tones once sweet and wheedling have now turned argumentative.
My salad days gone limp, “cute as a penny” turned to brass,
people take as vitriol what once they saw as sass.
My image has been shattered. When I look in the mirror,
I prefer to view me far away instead of standing nearer.
I once was an ingenue with all the roles I wanted.
I faced the cameras brazenly, unfiltered and undaunted.
But now I find the only lenses on my face
are trifocals. The cameras? Gone without a trace.
Prompt words today are brass, tentative, unstoppable, benefit and shattered. Photos from Unsplash and other free sites.
For Cee’s FOTD
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 