Hell Freezes Over.
Today begins a different reality. Today, Democracy takes a back seat to Oligarchy. Today, people celebrate evil intentions. Today, one’s skin color can get them arrested. Today, science and education are the enemies of higher stock prices. Today, Americans reject the qualities that once made the country great. Today, the media makes a hard pivot to prevent becoming the target of retribution. Today, one has to do the fact-checking for themselves. Today, we stop being the country our forefathers envisioned. Therefore, it is appropriate that this morning much of the continental US wakes up to polar temperatures and life-threatening windchill. We elected to go to hell and it has frozen over.
When I took the dogs out at 7:00 this morning, the air temperature was -1F. The wind blew from the North across frozen snow, creating a windchill of -11F. I could feel my mustache freezing on my face. The dogs, who had snuggled closely all night, were quick to take care of business and quite happy to come back inside. There were no birds singing this morning. As our blue-collar neighbors left for work, no one had their music turned up loud, no one was speeding through the intersection, and no one bothered to wave. The tight grip of the polar vortex leaves everyone looking for warmth and struggling to find it.
Already this morning, President Biden has made the unprecedented move of issuing preemptive pardons to retired Gen. Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Adam Schiff to protect them against retribution from the incoming administration. This isn’t normal. In a peaceful transition of power, there’s no reason to worry about becoming a political target for legal action. Only in a country preparing to yield to a dictator are such pardons necessary.
The country we face this morning is not one our children want handed down to them. In the midst of yesterday’s temporary TikTok outage, Tipper came to me with a video excerpted from last year’s Congressional hearings into the social media app. In it, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton ‘grills’ TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi. Here’s the clip:
Now, people who’ve been watching for a time understand that the entire Arkansas congressional delegation is like a herd of orange cats: they share a single brain cell and Senator Cotton never gets a turn at using it. This was Tipper’s first introduction to the nonsense, however, and as we watched the clip together she asked, “Who the fuck elected this idiot that doesn’t even know Singapore is not in China?” Our 14-year-old, who enabled a VPN on her own yesterday, understands that what is happening is bad news for the future of the US and she’s expecting those of us old enough to vote to do something about it. “You need to find a solution,” she warned.
After all the noise and protesting, few people in the US are paying any attention as prisoners are being released in Gaza and Israel. Instead, we’re all bracing for the impact of the Felonious Punk’s sweeping executive orders, which he says he’ll issue this afternoon. Believe it or not, there was a time when executive orders were rare. Prior to President Grant’s administration, executive orders were rarely used and only for limited White House purposes. While FDR holds the record at 3,721 (most related to WWII), President Biden has issued comparatively few, less than anyone since Grover Cleveland’s second term. The idea of coming into the office ready to issue 100 orders or more deliberately and maliciously demonstrates the president’s desire to bypass the role of Congress in establishing laws.
Here’s the thing: while federal employees are bound to follow executive orders as if they are law, the rest of us don’t. Executive orders are limited by the Constitutional reach of the Executive Branch. States can defy them. Cities can defy them. You and I can, and should, defy them. We do not have to be complicit in this rush toward dictatorship. We have choices and we are duty-bound as citizens to exercise them.
As chaos unfolds in DC, the rest of the world’s rich and powerful are gathering in Davos, Switzerland for their annual conference on how to run the world. According to Oxfam, billionaires’ wealth grew three times faster in 2024 than the year before. The wealthier billionaires become the more poverty the rest of us experience. With poverty comes disease and hunger. Along with the poverty comes a feeling of helplessness.
The good news: there are more of us than there are of them. We hold more power than any of us realize. All it takes is one nationwide strike to bring the powerful to their knees. We’ve been loathe to do that for fear that our 401Ks would suffer, but my friends, your 401Ks are meaningless if we allow the creation of an economy that won’t let you retire. We’re almost at that point already. There is absolutely no reason to not kick the stilts out from under the economy and take the country, and the world, back for people who are in the true majority.
I, for one, refuse to cooperate with the incoming administration. I’m not watching anything to do with the inauguration. I won’t cooperate with any executive orders. I won’t ‘turn in’ neighbors whose citizenship might be questionable. I won’t out people who fall anywhere on the LGBTQIA spectrum. I will support the use of alternative fuels. I will encourage those who defy this government. I will resist, dissent, and deny any unreasonable use of power by any government agency.
What about you? Are you willing to take a stand or will you roll over and play dead?
What the world needs now are more badgers and fewer possums.
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Roses Of Success
Oklahoma native Krista Tippet wrote in this morning’s On Being email, “It feels important for me to say that when I speak of the general tumult and distress of being alive now, I know we are feeling this on every side of our life together, every side (and of course there are far more than two sides) of every issue. A burning reason in my mind that we must stop fixating on distant levels of power — as that barrage would have us do — is that our country needs healing. That healing is not merely political. The American (and global) political drama is a symptom of pain and fear, of uprooting magnitudes of change, of dreams and hopes shattered and betrayed, and alienation from each other and ourselves.”
How do we heal? Take a step back. Carve time out of your day when news apps are either turned off or ignored and engage in something completely different. It really is the only way that any of us are likely to retain a semblance of sanity. Our brains need a break from the 24/7 disaster cycle that has taken over our newsfeeds. Let’s be honest: nothing you do today is likely to immediately impact anything that happened yesterday. You can take a break, go to dinner, watch a movie, have sex, or any other number of things that are not watching the news.
I thought that was what I was doing last night when I streamed the 1968 musical interpretation of Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I keep returning to the movie time and again for multiple reasons. One, the scene where Dick Van Dyke is pretending to be a puppet is some of his best work ever. Two, the Sherman brothers’ music is still pretty kick ass. Three, my initial reaction to The Child Catcher was traumatizing and I need a reminder that bad things happen to bad people. It’s also fun to go academic and draw parallels between this book and Fleming’s James Bond character.
What I’d forgotten was an interstitial piece where the elder Potts, who has been mistakenly kidnapped and assigned the task of building a flying car, is bemoaning his fate. Flying car? Why, that’s impossible! The other inventor/scientist-type characters remind him of a well-known truth: There’s a lot of failure on the road to success. The song is so much fun that I decided to share it with you this morning.
As I sat here last night watching that song, I found it impossible to not correlate it with the ongoing disaster that is the United States government. The Friday Night Massacre at the Pentagon alone is enough to think that our world is hopeless. We’re sitting in a dungeon of despair wondering how we’re ever going to make this car/country fly. Nothing anyone has done seems to be slowing the constant barrage of illegal activities being perpetrated by this White House.
Yet, there is still hope. The Supreme Court won’t allow Felonious Punk to immediately fire the head of the whistleblower office. That’s a win, a small step forward to getting the country back. Another judge blocked executive orders eliminating DEI initiatives. And still, a different Judge upholds a ban on DOGE accessing sensitive Treasury information. See? It’s not that nothing is happening, we’re just having difficulty seeing the small steps forward because of the explosions coming from the administration.
Then, there was Punk’s exchange with Maine’s Gov. Janet Mills at yesterday’s Governors Conference. When President Shitforbrains threatened to take all federal funding away from her state, the Governor simply replied, “See you in court.” Those four words were a win. She stood up to the bully when no one else in the room dared do so. Oh, but that’s not the end of the story.
Allegedly, the Department of Education opened an investigation into Maine shortly after the exchange. The Governor responded, “Maine may be one of the first states to undergo an investigation by his Administration, but we won’t be the last. Today, the President of the United States has targeted one particular group on one particular issue which Maine law has addressed. But you must ask yourself: who and what will he target next, and what will he do? Will it be you? Will it be because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or think differently? Where does it end? In America, the President is neither a King nor a dictator, as much as this one tries to act like it – and it is the rule of law that prevents him from being so.
“I imagine that the outcome of this politically directed investigation is all but predetermined. My Administration will begin work with the Attorney General to defend the interests of Maine people in the court of law. But do not be misled: this is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he cannot.”
Felonious Punk underestimates the power and determination of women all the time. I’m sure he’s thinking that he can just bully the Governor into falling in step with the president’s ridiculous stance on trans athletes. Gov. Mills didn’t get where she is by taking that kind of bullshit from anyone. Have you ever met anyone from Maine? They’re a unique group of people whose attitudes are hardened by the natural challenges that come with living in that far Northern state. They don’t put up with nonsense. They are extremely defensive of their rights. I have no question that they will go to war with the White House if necessary.
Okay, so Coffee Prices Are at a 50-Year High. I don’t like the headline or the reasons the problem exists. The coffee in my mug this morning isn’t high-end, but it’s good and hot, and keeping my eyes open long enough to type this update. I don’t expect anything major to happen over the weekend, so I’m planning on continuing to take a break from the news and finding other odd things to enjoy. There are plenty of possibilities.
Dare to enjoy the day.
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