Welfare and Poverty

When the big depression of 1929 happened, I assumed it was just bad luck all round.  But reading I have done recently is convincing me that it was the insatiable appetites of the economic upper-crust coming into a colliding course with the social structure they had set up.

It wasn't just enough to set up factories and schools; they had to find ways to keep the workers (that's us) healthy and happy.  Franklin Roosevelt set up Social Security and other welfare systems so that everyone could aspire to a middle-class life, at least in the future.  All of us would pay into a retirement savings plan, which the Federal Government would manage for us.

Not everyone was happy about this.  The upper-middle-class—the people who owned businesses, and who believed that they were paying an unfair portion of the taxes— didn't like the aspirations of the workers, who hoped to better themselves.  It took close to a century, until most Americans felt that Social Security, and Food Stamps, and Medicare and Medicaid were considered a part of a healthy society.  But there still were people who thought any taxes were too much.

What Trump has tried to do—and largely succeeded—is to find a large set of scapegoats whom to blame for the dissatisfaction of all these anti-welfare people.  It's the fault of Immigrants, first and foremost, then non-whites, then women, then Democrats, and so on.  As long as his supporters hate these same categories of scapegoats, Trump is riding high!

Unfortunately, there is another group of people who are interested in what Trump does; these are the people who have funded Trump, and are hoping to make a lot of money from his economic plans. 

Most of my readers know by now that these people have lots of investments in Wall Street.  If Trump keeps the stock market going up and down, and if he tips his investor friends the wink about exactly when he's going to announce some good news, then they can quickly arrange to buy certain stocks just before he makes his announcement!  Once the announcement is made, the value of those stocks shoot up, and the holdings of these speculators gains a lot of value.

Bad news works the same way: if Trump warns his cronies before he makes a bad news announcement, these fellows have enough time to sell off their stocks at reasonable prices.  When the bad news is announced, the value of those stocks plummets, but it's too bad for whoever bought those stocks.  Stock trading is a silly game anyway; people who do nothing but buy and sell stocks, hoping that their value is going up, very rarely make a killing—unless they know some inside information.  Trump is making a game of creating inside information. 

But to go back to the dismantling of the welfare services, and Medicare and social security.  These are the most vile things that Trump has done; it is singling out people who live in poverty, to make life miserable for them.  Many of these people do vote Democrat, but there is a lot of evidence that the GOP is planning to prevent them from voting.  This will make a lot of people really see red.  In the past, a lot of these people have taken this sort of beating at the hands of Trump and his MAGA buddies, and taken it lying down.  This time, are they going to do the same?  There's more of us than there is of them.  

Our Semi-Something Whatever went Delightfully Pfft!

The Quarter Milennial Anniversary of the USA was, as far as I could see, a great flop.  This seems to be a huge pivot of our president from being a publicity and attention hound, to being a full-time money collector.  Scott Bessent has taken steps to devalue the US dollar, which means that when we pay our multi-trillion-dollar public debt, we're paying with money that has little value.  I don't think that Trump understands this completely, but he's clearly apprehensive.  But who is he collecting money for?  By now he is probably realizing that he can't enjoy his ill-gotten gains for very long.  He may live another decade—unlikely—but his mind will be too far gone to be able to enjoy his avarice.

But when—and if—a major turn in the political fortunes of the Republican Party were to come about, (and it was a fun party for them, but now it's coming to an end,) we can enjoy a true celebration of this political milestone.  I wonder whether stronger guardrails will need to be put in place, to deter undcrupulous ambitious trump wannabe's.  All the members of ICE will need to be identified and made to suffer.  It isn't in our nature to be so harsh and retributive.  But maybe we will need to deny our nature this once.

It's going to be necessary to be harsh and firm with the Zionist movement too.  It is they who have reached out over continents and oceans to subvert Americans and our parties, and our citizens, to distort our values, and aid them in their cruelty.  I wouldn't be surprised if the events of October 7th were set in motion by the Netanyahu administration, but of course to accuse them of such without evidence would damage our credibility.  But our eyes have certainly been opened.

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Phones in Billtown

At the time my family and I moved to Billtown (1983), we had to rent our phone unit from AT&T.  They had an office around where the ACME Ribs place on Market Street is (at one time, it was across the street, where the Brown Library parking lot is now), and we would pay about $1.95 every month.  They advised us to rent, because, they said, if anything went wrong with it, they'd simply replace it.  (My friends had a hard time convincing me that the chances anything would go wrong with it were very low indeed!)

Then, K-Mart began to sell phones, so we could own our phone, and get a colored one!  (Sears also sold phones, as well as Radio Shack.) We could get some pretty fancy phones, including ones with answering machines, and clock radios (which would automatically mute when a call came in).

I only got inspired to make this post because Katie brought home a jigsaw puzzle from Goodwill, a poster of pretty phone units from Eastern Europe.  They look pretty much like the colored phone sets from around 1985.

Soon after, we could get extension sets we could put all over the house; but they were all connected to a single main unit.  Around this time, too, AT&T started putting in DIY phone plugs in the wall; we'd buy our phone unit, and plug it into the wall.  If your house still had the old time wires hanging out of the wall, they'd sell you a modernization kit that could convert the hard-wired setup into a receptacle for a phone plug. 

It was around 2000 that smart phones arrived, and you know the test!

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Politics in Motion

For years, without thinking, I've looked for explanations of where Trump, and MAGA, and Musk, and JFKjr (and the comedian GOPers in the Senate) came from.  My big mistake was that their origins don't explain everything, especially why Trump still calls the shots. 

As Trump morphs, and declines, I think the chain of MAGA reasoning evolves.

Back when Trump was a TV golden boy, he would not have made a mistake like trying to 'gild' the reflecting pool.  But now his brain is sort of getting spongy, and—depending on what his people wanted from him (they all didn't want exactly the same things from him)—they recalculated what they needed to do next, and so now things are different.  Different enough that how they will react to the chaos that comes out of the Oval Orifice will be different.

The FBI man Kash Patel (i'll insert his name later) is truly a loose cannon.  He believes he can get away with anything, but my guess is that that might change. 

Todd Blank is hard to figure out.  Only Trump could pick such a goon to be AG, but in Trump's cunning way he realizes that a better lawyer would not try some of the shenanigans that Blank is willing to risk.  So loyalty—as always with Trump—trumped ability. 

Marco Rubio is a big question in my mind.  But he's got into acting the big Secy of State on the international stage, and that sort of theatre is possibly what he craves.  But doesn't he look silly being Trump's mouthpiece?

Rand Paul.  He's playing to the slowly evaporating MAGA masses. There are still some comments on my Facebook page that respond to many anti-MAGA remarks with canned talking points, and I'm at a loss whether these are bots, or operatives assigned to keep up MAGA morale.  But Rand can fool some of his audience some of the time, but most of the international folks on Facebook are a cut above the local ignoramuses on there, and know at once that Rand is just a rando.  He does side with the sane when Trump does something insane.  But this Dr. Fauci show does look like a command distraction. 

 

Still to be addressed (I may never get to them):

Hegseth, JFK, Tulsi Gabbard, Sean Hannity and Jeanine P, John Roberts, Alito, and Thomas;

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"The Buck Stops Here"

Donald Trump—who is president at the moment—is not a normal person, and not in a good way. 

He has a few basic motivations. 

1. Taking revenge.
2. Making money. 
3. Attracting cheap attention. 

Items 1 and 2 are obvious; everyone is well aware of how much money he makes from schemes that are not exactly illegal.   Also, he throws people he does not care for under the bus.  He also makes money in such a way that he hopes that his perceived enemies will be very angry.  I myself am not super angry, so if Trump was aware of my existence he just might be annoyed.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know about me!

But the most pathetic thing that he does is to attract attention.  It's just like cheerleaders, saying "Look at me!!!"  All this reflecting pool nonsense is because he wants to draw attention to himself.  Someone should make an elaborate movie starring Donald, and then accidentally burn it.

Also the Arch, the Ballroom, the Kennedy Center; all to draw attention to himself.  The war in Iran.  Our attention probably briefly flagged, and he wanted it back. 

Most of the brutal ideas he's trying to implement aren't his.  Stephen Miller originates many of them.  Even some of the most hare-brained schemes come from outside. 

There are also runners who bring him ideas from certain Big Business robber barons.  Some of those ideas seem too clever to have been hatched in Trump's feeble brain; they're probably Elon Musk's brainchilds, especially if they have to do with Bitcoin, and stuff like that.  Or with Don Jr, Eric, and that Jared Son-in-law.  They don't have very deep understanding of non-fungible assets; they just pick up a bit from here, a bit from there; just enough to get themselves in financial trouble. 

Interestingly enough, Iran—or some Iranian group—is said to have taken out a Fatwa, a contract, on Trump. That might not be true; if we leave him to his own devices, he'll kill himself by accident. 

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Write!

About 20 years ago (it may have been even further back in the mists of the distant past) I began writing a story.  It was about a girl, who was able to do all sorts of amazing things.  Presently, after doctoring up this story, I published it as an e-story on a website that published stories online, but I used a pseudonym. 

That was the beginning of a flood of stories that I wrote, under various pen-names, until I 'sold' close to about 5000 copies of those stories.  People buy stories on the internet for all sorts of reasons, and often they don't remember the names of the authors, so I'm not really well known as an author.  Remember, I use pen-names, so it's difficult for anyone to connect me with those stories.  I'm never going to disclose my authorship, because some of the stories are a bit racy.  (Even this Blog is under a pseudonym, though I have no problem letting anyone know my real name, but now writing under the net-name Archimedes has become a habit.)

If all the things I do, writing these stories gives me the greatest satisfaction.  I read a post by an author, who writes that writing a novel would be the most satisfying thing a person could do, and I want to throw my support behind this advice.  She says that you could write for just an hour a day, and still end up with a respectable novel.  I agree.  I'm not going to say how long my stories are, just to make it harder for me to be connected with my pseudonyms, but—in retrospect—these stories are quite huge, and far exceed the (size of) 400-page books found on internet retailers. 

Well, start writing, dear readers!

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Preparing for Life!

This post is for a very specific audience: students in college or university; or parents of students in college or university.  Knowing what you want to be once you finish your education has often been praised as indicating a person's future success.  I will add an asterisk here: congratulations; it is good to have a goal in life.  But prepare for anything.  Be prepared, as British Boy Scouts (or boy scouts anywhere) take as their motto.  Most people with moderate intelligence unconsciously prepare; they learn first aid; they learn CPR; they learn how to calm a hysterical person down, how to change a flat tire.  I think most people need to learn more than this first layer of general preparedness. 

Learn as many skills as you can.  There's no way to predict the roles you'll be called upon to play.  Entertain children.  Cook meals.  Camp in the woods.  Sew or mend clothes; do complicated laundry: colors, delicates, knits.

Teach unexpected subjects.  This is something I had to learn, being a mathematician.  I had expected to have to teach people of roughly the level at which I had been when I was a freshman.  But standards always change, and I had to adapt. 

Once you're a parent, your responsibilities become a far- reaching array of demands, and you'll be remembered for the most unexpected jobs you did. 

It will be the rare person who earns adulation for their main occupation; usually, praise is only earned for the most tangential services you may have performed in passing.  The more intelligent, the more public-spirited, the more outgoing you are, the more enthusiastic will be the praise you receive for some inexplicable service. 

Be interested in as many things as you can, and learn what it takes to be helpful in those areas. 

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