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Rest In Peace -United States of America

Rest In Peace
United States of America
July 4, 1776 – January 20, 2025
“Even God could not save her from the religious.”

There needs to be some serious soul searching amongst the denizens of this country.  There was no sane, moral or ethical reason for having voted for the chimera that is Donald J. Trump, especially this time around, as his psychopathy had been on full display for years.

If you voted for him because your religion is preaching an Armageddon / Second Coming of Christ fantasy, and he is the the agent that God will use to fulfill those end days delusions, you need to apply critical thinking skills to what they are  spewing from the pulpits and to religion in general.  But then again, it seems to me, the only way for people to be religious is to forego thinking critically about it.  With the Evangelicals embracingTrump as they have, faith has become a four letter word in my book.

God save us from the religious.

For the first time in my life I am truly afraid, afraid of future, afraid of what this country is becoming, afraid of many of my fellow citizens, afraid of what DJT and his ilk are going to do to this world. The only bright spot I can see in this cluster f*** is that I will not be around much longer to witness it.

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Public Comment Period: Proposed Monumental Arch at Memorial Circle

Submit your comments at: https://savingplaces.org/monumental-arch

Yet another example of El puta pendejo‘s ego run amok.  No matter how you spin it, this is a monument, aka Arc de Trump, to the insatiable hole that is the tRump’s ego.  I had no idea that it would have such a drastic and negative effect on what the National Park Service is calling the viewscape. However, it right in line with his defacement of the White House and his attempt to plaster the obscenity that is his name all over Washington, D.C.   I see it as slap in the face to all veterans buried at Arlington and to Lincoln as the 250 foot tall Arc with dwarf the Lincoln Memorial and the entrance to the Arlington Cemetery.

And what a horrible waste of tax money when he the Republican party are doing their best to take away health care and social program from millions of Americans.  Does his hubris, his cruelty have no bounds?

If you have been to Washington, D.C. you will know that this space is perfect the way it is.

The Romans used to march defeated armies through their arc in Rome.  I suppose Cadet Bone Spur needs a place to march the defeated Iranian army through.

May Isis save us all.

From the National Park Service website:

National Park Service is accepting public comments on this project until June 15, 11:59PM MT. Learn more below and on nps.gov.

If you submitted comments to the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) or Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), please submit again to NPS. This is a new comment period for a separate government entity.

Members of the public have the opportunity to provide input on a proposed Monumental Arch at Memorial Circle on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, near Arlington National Cemetery and along the Potomac River.

The location of the proposed Arch will interrupt the highly significant relationship between the Lincoln Memorial, across Arlington Memorial Bridge, to Arlington National Cemetery and Arlington House. One of the most symbolic landscapes in Washington, D.C., the vista was designed to represent the post-Civil War reconciliation of the north and south of the United States.

It is because this viewshed carries so much meaning to the country that the National Trust has raised concerns about the proposed Monumental Arch, whose scale, location, and design will disrupt this important visual and symbolic vista. In addition, the Arch will dwarf the Lincoln Memorial and disrupt the long, open, and uninterrupted viewsheds, overwhelming the entry to Arlington National Cemetery—the hallowed resting place of 400,000 veterans and their families and a powerful reminder of American military sacrifice, selfless service, and national unity, all within sight of the monumental core of the Nation’s Capital.

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Borowitz has a point…again

While written as satire, this absolutely nails the results of the disastrous policies of this malAdministration. I have no idea how these folks sleep at night.  I can only believe they no conscience, no shame, no regard for their fellow human beings. It is beyond my comprehension that after all this, there are people that still support this convicted criminal and obviously incompetent occupant of the White House.

What El puta pendejo has done to the White House is simply a microcosm of what he is doing to the United States.

May Kumugwe save us all.

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C.R.A.P.

Just to be clear, the background picture is by 18th century Dutch painter, Aert Schouman, possibly a self portrait.  Or so AI tells me.  AI also identified it as a meme currently circulating.  I won’t get into the fact that the definition of meme has changed from its coinage in the late 20th century to its current usage as crap circulating on the Internet.  Language evolves and changes.

May Deep Thought save us all.

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The Stupidity Pandemic

There is a lot of food for thought in this video.

It has struck me for sometime now that folks are more than willing to outsource their cognitive work to computers or other people.  With the invasion of AI (Artificial Intelligence), things are only going to get worse, much worse.

And no, the irony of my finding this video on YouTube is on not lost on me.  After all there is a reason that the YouTube rabbit hole is a well known phenomenon. Nor is the irony of the authors of this video pushing their other videos to keep you engaged.  Nor is the irony of my silly little blog screaming into the black hole of cyberspace, although I try very hard to keep my facts straight.

If you saw any of the Alien movies you will remember the Facehugger aliens. I am not sure there is a lot of difference between them and our cell phones.

Although I worked in technology for 30 years, I am beginning to feel more and more that we have opened up Pandora’s box with computers.

And so it should not go.

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My 4th of July Conundrum

Well, maybe not a real conundrum as I have only celebrated the holiday sporadically.  Every few years I will go to a fireworks display, usually at the suggestion of someone else.  Although when I lived in Tulsa, my apartment complex was right on the Arkansas River.  Every year they had a fireworks display put on from a bridge about a 5-minute walk from my apartment.  I simply stepped out onto to my patio to watch.  The last few years we have stayed home as Prancess Lily is so terrified of fireworks that Robin does not want to leave her alone.  When the muchachos were younger we made a little bigger deal of it, but those times have passed.

My problem is this.  This is the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Normally, I would think this grand and a cause for celebration.  However, El puta pendejo aka the current occupant of the now defaced White House, is dead set on making this event about him. A real President might be the head cheerleader of such a celebration, but he/she would step aside and let the celebration be the most important thing.  Given the current state of this country, I see no reason to be celebrating.  (I started to write our country, but I feel like my country has been taken away from me.)  The United States of America, as currently manifested, is not a country to be lauded. Maybe there is a way out of this depressing morass, but if the billionaire’s puppet known as the Republican Party and the Religious Right have their way it is only going to get worse.

The 250th anniversary of our country is feeling more and more like another thing that Cadet Bone Spur has put his reverse Midas touch on. And I certainly do not want to celebrate anything Trumpian.

And so it should not go.

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Quote of the Day – Franz Kafka

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.” ~~ Franz Kafka

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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Quote of the Day – Carl Sagan

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

I came across this excerpt of an interview Carl Sagan did with Charlie Rose.  Sagan died in 1996, and the interview was in the last year of his Sagan’s life.  He died much too young of myelodysplasia. For my money he nailed the current situation in the world with technology 30 years before the current invasion of AI (artificial intelligence).

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. This combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.  If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious leader who comes ambling along. It’s a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the people had to be educated and they have to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don’t run the government, the government runs us.” ~~ Carl Sagan

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” ~~ Carl Sagan

I originally posted this as one quote, as that is what the source I got it from did.   On further research this was actually a mashup of a couple Sagan quotes.  The poster eliminated the part in red then continued with a second Sagan quote as if it was part of the first. But it remains valid as far as I am concerned. Both quotes from Sagan on the same subject.

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #7,863

yeah I know you did not ask!

You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.

My moment of terror:

There I was lying wide awake in our king size bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to Señora and the The Wee Dog breathing, but in not rhythm.  Then it suddenly dawned on me, I was THAT guy!

Ouch.

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Quote of the Day – Tom Waits

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“We have a deficit of wonder. I think it’s because of computers. When I ask people questions now, they get on their computer – `Gimme a few minutes and I’ll let you know….’ And I’m, like, ‘Nooooo!’ I want them to wonder about it, man! I don’t want to know the answer. I just want them to wonder about it.” — Tom Waits

Not everything worthwhile is coded in 1s and 0s. And an AI generated answer certainly takes the mysticism away and any opportunity for reflection on a subject… IMHO. Life does not come with a technical manual, or at least I hope so. Although reflecting on that last sentence, humans have been trying to write such a document for millennia and fighting about which is the correct document.

I do not know if Tom Waits is an acquired taste or not, but sometimes, depending on my mood, his music is all that will do.   Out of curiosity,  I went and counted.  I have 11 of his albums.

His official website: Tom Waits

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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Quote of the Day – Robert O. Paxton

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“[Fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” ~~ Robert O. Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, defining fascism in his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism

He was writing about American Fascism that reared its ugly head here in the United States between the two World Wars.  Unfortunately, it sounds on point for what is happening in this country at this moment.

May Omoikane save us all.

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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