I don't think the maga people have much of a plan for 2026, except to create confusion.
Meanwhile, in completely unrelated matters, the young artists of DA (a website for young artists) are confused about this new fashion of gray hair color. Artificiallycoloring the hair of women gray is, I believe, a 21st Century thing. But Asian artists just love that style. So when they're depicting say, the Goddess Aphrodite, they give her grey hair! Makes no sense.
Kay
I have been thinking: do I want to celebrate Independence Day this year? Or ever again?
But you know what? I'm glad to think that nobody owns Independence Day. The celebration is about a single thing: the Rule of Law. In an Election Year, we select someone to oversee the law, and whether, and how, the law is obeyed.
These last few years, a large portion of our fellow-citizens—not a majority, in my belief, but I could be wrong; it's a matter of knowing what people are thinking—have come to think that the laws are not working out, and that something desperate has to be done about it. It's just that they have put their faith in a weak person. Who has to, every once in a while, make a show of how strong he wants to appear.
Freeloaders. A large portion of the Conservatives* believe that too many people are enjoying the national wealth, specifically those who have little or no income. We have those who believe that these poor folks are mostly immigrants, and are in the situation they're in due to self- inflicted reasons.
But it's important to examine just how much of the National wealth is being siphoned away by these so-called freeloaders. Very little indeed.
Big Businesses. The biggest businesses have used their influence—allowed by congress who mistakenly thought that these business will use their lower taxes to benefit the people—to negotiate extremely low taxes, and to get congressmen friendly to these businesses elected. Their low rates, lower than the rates of citizens, are an enormous loss of revenue. And what's more, they keep influencing elections, resulting in low tax rates for them, forever, until someday, Congressmen realize that the low rates of the biggest businesses push everybody else's rates higher!
So there certainly are freeloaders. But they're very rich freeloaders, and they don't fit everyone's image of a freeloader.
Current Events: The Supreme Court has decided that it would limit the ability of judges to limit presidential executive orders.
This is a major development. I was confident that Federal courts would prevail, and prevent the prez from wielding this power.
To clarify: the way the law (a right enshrined in the US constitution as an Amendment, I believe) has been understood for all these years—at least since the Civil War—was that anyone born on US soil was eligible for citizenship. But the present administration takes the view that only infants born to parents—to mothers, anyway—who are in the US legally have that right.
It is a fine point, but difficult to oppose, in my view. Conservatives have been frustrated for a century at the ability for illegal visitors to this country to have babies that are automatically given citizenship. Those who have felt, since the Civil War, at least, that US citizenship should not be rationed out stingily and sparingly, but granted to any infant as reasonably possible, held to the generous interpretation of the law. But those who disliked the consequence of that law, that the birth rate among non-whites was a lot higher than among the children of whites, were pleased at this interpretation of the current administration.
The prez is not a student of the law; he truly is nothing but a real-estate developer. I am not versed in the law, either. But there are lawyers advising him, and they appear to have thought this through. The right way to do this is to get the law clarified by Congress, and ratified by the States. It would be difficult to get it through two-thirds of the states (34 states?) with state representatives swayed by emotional appeals.
As much as I hate to agree with the prez, if there were some evidence to believe that a majority of citizens supported this amendment, I would support it too.
Kay
Well, just a minute! Apparently the decision by the Supreme Court meant that some infants born in one state may be qualified as a citizen, but an infant born in another state may not! I'm too peeved to read the whole article. Here it is:
Political Musings
One thing I have wondered about for a long time, at least as far back as 2016, is (1) why do political commentators write in such high-flown language. In contrast, (2) why does the prez speak in such disjointed language? I'm reading comments about the performance of women basketball players, and some of the remarks are so poorly written as to be utterly unintelligible. I obviously can't connect the ramblings of a deranged sports fan with those of a ill-spoken president, but it's awfully tempting to do so.
Is it the case that everyone, young and old, is sick and tired of careful writing and speech, and are drawn to those who talk—and write—like toddlers? I have even seen newspaper reporting with egregious mistakes in grammar and syntax (there I go again with my big words; any readers here who are also sports fans will be sticking pins in Kay Hemlock dolls), which must mean that either those articles were written in an awful hurry, or they've had to hire summer interns who are not up to the job.
If Democrats want to be taken seriously, they may have to practice baby talk.
Kay
This blog is where I go when I want to comment on current events. But I often think about the various stories I wrote, and that sort of reflection really belongs here, too. I have two solutions I can think of.
Move all writing-related blogposts to 'Helen' Blog. Some of my readers are primarily interested in lesfic, and my comments about my own stories; they could simply head over to the Helen Blog, and only visit this one if there has been some really startling political development. Language issues, such as punctuation, vocabulary, etc, could all be left on Helen. Actually, I'll have to rethink that; it would be sad if only the president's foolishness ever got discussed on this side. On the other side, I would put any posts about matters such as references to pets, for instance, in any of the stories.
Compartmentalize the Blog. I mean, leave the blogs as they are, but have departments in each one; a Current Events department, and LGBTQ department, a Fine Arts department, and Language department, and so on.
I really don't need to fuss so much about it; but adopting one plan or the other would make it easier to do the actual blogging. The readership of the Blog is about 25 readers per post, and it isn't clear that every visitor reads the whole post!
I'm going to try a sort of hybrid approach for a while.
Kay Hemlock Bonaventura Brown
In the last 10 years or so, a new generation of Politics Amateurs—people like me, who like politics, but weren't trained in it—have been trying to make sense of the political scene. What happens when the Economy is like this, what happens when there is a big scandal in the White House, etc, etc. The older generation had a handle on this, but (a) we don't trust their instincts, and (b) these are different people, and they don't behave the same way.
First, let me out up a screen capture, so that my list of posts won't show just a uppercase 'A':
It was going to be hot, but it's 98 degrees Fahrenheit, which is extreme!
I don't have much to say, except that our two-faced president promised peace, and made fun of his predecessors for getting into foreign wars, and declared himself The Peace Candidate.
But he crowed to Truth Social: Fordow is gone! Sad, pathetic little man. He said it was the most awesome bomb that had ever been dropped in the history of the Universe.
Kay
I'm not sure that this is happening, but there's a report that the Rose Garden at the White House is being paved over!
This isn't irreversible damage, but it must make those who were around during the sixties angry. I think the point is to generate a host of irritations so that Trump's weaknesses in International diplomacy are not observed.
Mr Netanyahu of Israel is a shady character, and just as inconsistent as Trump, if not more. What he will do next is going to be unpredictable, because it depends on his calculations about how to remain in power, and not any constant philosophy. Meanwhile, Trump is doing the same thing. And, from what I can see, Iran is also doing the same thing. And meanwhile, the civilians in Gaza and Iran are watching helplessly. They can't expect help from Trump, because what he wants is to build a hotel on the Gaza Strip.
Putting a businessman in the White House is stupid.
Kay.
