Trump-headedness is my made-up word and the definition is: A mental condition during which one spouts facts contrary to the truth in order to further one’s own welfare, ego or pocketbook.
For Sunday Confessionals, we were asked to create a new word for the dictionary.
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This is an excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s latest “Letter from an American.” To see the entire piece go HERE:
“It is the policy of the Government of the United States to provide equal opportunity in Federal employment for all qualified persons, to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and to promote the full realization of equal employment opportunity through a positive, continuing program in each executive department and agency.”
This democratic government was popular, but as the memory of the dangers of fascism faded, opponents began to insist that such a government was leading the United States to communism. Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, along with the deregulation of business and cuts to the social safety net, began to concentrate wealth at the top of society. As wealth moved upward, lawmakers chipped away at the postwar government that defended democracy.
And now, since the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Monday, the dismantling of that system is happening all at once.
The Guardian reported today that incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered a halt to almost all foreign aid, with the exception of military assistance to Israel and Egypt. The Guardian notes that this order is likely unlawful, since Congress sets the budget and in 1974 declared it illegal for the president to impound funds. Still, a source foresaw the end of the global influence the U.S. has had since World War II, telling The Guardian: “Freezing these international investments will lead our international partners to seek other funding partners—likely US competitors and adversaries—to fill this hole and displace the United States’ influence the longer this unlawful impoundment continues.”
As Peter Baker of the New York Times notes, new president Donald Trump is trying to break NATO by demanding that members increase military spending to 5% of their nations’ economies, although the U.S. currently spends about 3% of its GDP on defense. If we were to meet that requirement, Baker points out, the U.S. would have to increase its defense budget by $567 billion a year. Isabel van Brugen of Newsweek reports that an Italian news agency says that Trump intends to pull about 20,000 U.S. troops from Europe and wants Europe to pay to maintain the rest.
Trump has undertaken to dismantle the postwar democratic government at home, too. He has stopped the funding for repairing roads, bridges, airports, and ports that passed Congress in a bipartisan vote in 2022, as well as taken away funding for new solar manufacturing plants and other new systems to address climate change.
He has frozen all travel and communications at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” one researcher told Dan Diamond, Lena H. Sun, Carolyn Y. Johnson, and Mark Johnson of the Washington Post. “This is like a meteor just crashed into all of our cancer centers and research areas.”
And, of course, Trump has declared a war on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. In his revoking of LBJ’s Executive Order 11246, itself based on FDR’s Executive Order 8802, he explicitly rejected the principles for which the Americans fought in World War II.
I just discovered a very strange thing. Here are three photos of the rustic bench that my friend Lach “saved” for me by infusing the rotted wood with epoxy . The first is a photo of just the bench, the second of Lach with the bench. The third has Lach sitting on the bench and me behind, but where has the bench gone? He seems to be sitting on air!!! How could this have happened????? Has AI taken over my photo file and started pulling jokes on me?
I swear, I did not alter the photo..and would not have had the skill to have done so.
Why I do not Ham on Rye it
You cannot borrow steal or buy it.
Sumo wrestlers never try it.
Female starlets do or die it.
Vitamin makers fortify it
You never cookie, cake or pie it.
Pizza parlors terrify it.
Now and then I me oh my it,
but I hope I don’t defy it,
for if I ever hope to guy it,
I simply must stay on my diet!
For dVerse Poets, a poem of negation.
Mirror Image
Who is the person
reflected in my mirror
over the past 77 years?
First me
then my mother
then my grandmother.
A reflection first of youth,
then lines
deepening into cracks.
It took me a minute to write the poem but two plus hours of sorting through 160,000 photos in my photo file to find photos to use with it. I never did find the actual photo I wanted to use. So goes life. It is true that a few years ago I started to see my mother instead of me when I looked in the mirror. Recently, it is my grandmother’s deeper wrinkles I see.
For this week’s W3 prompt, Tia offers us the following guidelines:
We were sorta wary of perhaps encountering a shark after a shark incident 20 kilometers south of La Manzanilla a year ago. Luckily, we didn’t encounter one in the water but then the second to last day, this one washed ashore!!!
This is the first time I’ve been back to La Manzanilla in a year and the activity was amazing with thousands of sardines jumping up into the air around us and frigate birds and pelicans swooping down to try to catch them. This video shows frigate birds diving to scoop up sardines from the beach.
The first fish looks sculpted from sand but was actually a real dead fish that had been beached, coated by sand and somewhat ossified. All first 5 photos taken in a 24 hour period on the beach in front of our beach rental in La Manzanilla. As for the apple, 2 mornings before, I had written a poem about an apple on my blog, and searched for a photo in my photo file. Finally found one and posted it, then came out to the beach and discovered this apple lodged under the bottom of my beach chair. I needed a photo. Nature provided!
Allenda asked me to take a photo of Casa Gaviotas, where we are staying for a week. For years, I rented this lovely little house right on the beach in La Manzanilla, Mexico for two or three months a year. I always rented the bottom floor of the house and over the years got to be friends with a number of people who rented the upper level. This year my friend Brad rented the upper, I rented the lower for just one week and friends Kristine Trejo and Isidro Xilonzochitl came with us. We have been having a great time. Here is the house.The palapa with hammocks is the front porch of the house.
Daniel used to be my neighbor but now it is a boat rental agency and coffee shop. Miss Daniel who was a town institution for many many years.
Click on photos to enlarge.
For Cellpic Sunday
That’s my friend Christine Anfossie singing at a local beach venue. The little boys worked for hours to dig a big box in the beach, then to build three rounded chairs in it to sit in so they could observe the sardines they collected in buckets along with sea water to fill it. Their own aquarium. I asked if they were going to eat them and they said no, just watch them.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 