What's Going On?

Since Donald J. Trump was sworn in as president last year, his government has not managed to accomplish any of the things that he stated as the goals of his presidency.  One set of things that he mentioned in passing were to 'destroy' the government in Washington D.C., the government machine that Obama and Biden managed to make life moderately comfortable for some of the poorest of the poor.  In a few weeks—with the help of Musk—Trump managed to hollow out those complex departments, which ought to have saved the government billions of dollars.  But it is doubtful whether that has happened. 

But he has convinced the world that the US can be governed even if three-quarters of the population are dissatisfied with the government.  Trump probably does not care about that particular outcome (except that, maybe some of the people in his inner circle do).

He has convinced the world that, even if he has committed some crimes that at one time would have guaranteed that he would have been hounded out of office, he wasn't.  It's been a study in the political loyalty of feeble-minded people.  Almost as if he took a bet about it. 

He has convinced the world that the way to control the Gaza Strip, and maybe convert it into a lucrative casino in the desert, is by starving the Palestinian population, or bombing them to death, with the help of the villain Netanyahu. 

He is eager to remain in office for a third term.  He can't get anything done in it; he's already too feeble to even stand straight.  It's just to show that he can, even if he'd be the oldest candidate to ever aspire to the office. 

He has personally acquired a lot of personal wealth.  The MAGA followers aren't helped in any way from that corruption; some of them probably like the fact that "the Libs" are indignant about it. 

Don't forget the fact that soon after the elections of this November are done, lots of laws that effectively defund many welfare services go into effect.  This is Darwin in action: people who are not thoughtful enough to prevent crooks from messing up their lives, will not be able to have children.  (They will be unhealthy, their families will be undernourished, their children will be uneducated.)

Kay

Palm Beach International

Palm Beach is an affluent community in Central Florida, near which Trump's home, Maralago, happens to be located.

One thing that annoys me is this habit of the Trump Administration naming, or renaming, various and sundry things after themselves.  The Kennedy Center, for instance, was named after John Kennedy, the first Irish-Catholic, and at the time, youngest President of the USA.  Trump declared that it would be called the Trump Kennedy Center, after himself.

Now, there are rumors that the Palm Beach International Airport would be renamed after Trump.  The only thing about this nonsense that pevents me from being absolutely furious, is that it is a little bit comic, too.  PBI, the Palm Beach Airport is not, as far as I know, a very important airline hub.  But soon, when Trump leaves office, there will be all these Trump this- and-that left behind, which will very probably soon revert to their original names.  So these renamings are only temporary distractions, to draw our eyes away from some sneaky action that they're really planning.  It's puerile, really, and in bad taste.  In fact there's a great deal about the Trump administration that's just in bad taste.

Kay

February

I'm almost certain I posted a blog less than a week ago, but it's nowhere on the site 😞; an enemy has hidden or destroyed it.

I'm not sure of the original Latin meaning of the name February; I know 'febrile' means feverish, so February might mean 'hot'.  Over here, February is cold and wet, so that theory is probably one for the trash can.

[Added later:  The month of February, Google says, is named after an ancient Roman  spring-cleaning festival, called Februalia, or something like that.  Was there a lot of sloshing of boiling water around?  That would lend a little weight to my 'heat' theory.  Oh, I give up!]

For various reasons I have been losing weight in the past several months, to the point where my friends and relatives are concerned, and are encouraging me to eat more.  I like to snack on junk food (an unfortunate new trend), and that causes ordinary people to actually gain weight, which goes to show that I'm special.  My doctor said, yes, I look just a bit skinnier than he would like, but it's way too soon to panic.

Well, the other day, I was visiting my friend, and she made an enormous bowlful of Pasta Salad (I don't know why I capitalized that) which she knew I liked.  It had all the stuff I like to have in it, including the quartered pepperoni slices, slightly roasted (well, microwaved for 15 seconds).  Also, cheese morsels, and lovely colorful rotini, sliced celery, cubed cucumber bits, black olives ... the whole bit.  After it was properly cooled (you have to persuade the salad that it has been cooled; if you eat it warm, it becomes very unhappy) I ate a bowlful.  It was a triumph!  The salad dressing was perfect (Italian, with sun-dried tomato strips), and not too much.  Heaven.  I think whoever invented Pepperoni should be given a culinary Nobel Prize!!  The true calling of pepperoni is pasta salad; I think pizza should be a mere side hustle. 

Despite the wonderful Okayness of the salad, I did notice that the cucumber bits were a little not-ready-for-prime-time, but of course I did not tell my host; after all, the pasta salad was a labor of love.

I stayed over that night, and in the morning, my friend added to the salad some fresh bacon bits!  You might be startled to see the word 'fresh' in the same sentence as 'bacon', but I merely wanted to emphasize that these bacon bits were fried at home; my friend is into bacon in a big way (a bigger way than your standard Boomer), and she fries the heck out of her uncured bacon.  She crumbled all the bacon that she and I between us could not eat, and mixed it into the salad.  Once again, we cooled it, and ate it for an afternoon snack.  OMG, I thought something horrible was going to happen to me, because the pasta salad was so awesome, that I thought we had exceeded the permissible awesomeness for the day, and I assumed there would be a terrible penalty.  The bacon added that tiny bit of extra salt that brought the salad within the realm of culinary holiness.  I felt we ought to embed a little of it in Carbonite, to remember forever the fabulousness of this dish!  (But then, 25 years from now, we would have been frustrated, trying to actually eat it, just to see whether it had held up.)

I went home that evening, to get some fresh stuff to wear (yes, clothes is the word you would normally use, but this is me, you understand) and then came back the next day, and the pasta salad was still there.  Would I like some for breakfast?  Hey, why not?

Here is where things get interesting.  By this time, the cucumber bits had soaked up the dressing, and tasted just perfect.  The pepperoni tasted as wonderful as always.  But the bacon bits had stopped tasting as fantastic as the previous day!  Yes, they tasted vaguely baconish, but not at all the little miracles they had once been.  Let this be a lesson to all of us. 

Kay

Martin Luther King Day

Well.  I heard, on the grapevine, that MLK Jr day is no longer a holiday, but that Trump's birthday is <smirk>.  

No, I had misunderstood what I heard.  MLK day is still a holiday (AFAIK), but entrance to national parks is no longer free on that day.

I'm not sure how much of this paragraph makes sense: 'I don't have a big problem with this—but I do have a small problem; after all, I was told that there were great difficulties to set this holiday up—and I think we ought to celebrate MLK on this new day.'

Getting too excited about anything to do with trump will only get him excited too, which, at his age, is dangerous, his admirable MRI's notwithstanding. 

Kay H B.

P.S.  just ignore this whole post. 

Unwanted Expansionism

This is January 7th, 2026.  Trump has announced that the president of Venezuela has been kidnapped by US forces, and brought here.  He also said that 'We will be running things' in Venezuela.

Jack Smith, the attorney who was originally appointed to prosecute the case against Trump for keeping classified materials in Maralago, delivered convincing evidence (against Trump) that he had conspired to steal the 2020 election.

I'm convinced that Trump needs to step down, or be thrown out of office.  There is a long list of actions by trump that are illegal, appointments by Trump that are improper, but everybody knows these; some readers very likely pride themselves on not reading long lists.  So here's my opinion: he has to go. 

Kay H. Brown

Christmas Holidays

Dear Readers, and other friends!

I have just finished sending off a sort of holiday letter to the few people I correspond with semi- regularly, and I thought I ought to send you guys a sort of holiday greetings too!

Well.  There are not a lot of matters to be happy about this year.  Reluctantly starting off with political topics: after a painful several months of Trump making it clear that Liberals are not high up on his list of people to care about, he's managed to make it appear that he's aging, and not in good health.  (Or maybe he really is!)  I never thought I'd be one to rejoice at someone getting ill, but maybe Trump will go away, and leave us to try and straighten things out as well as we can.  Because of the long-drawn-out attack phase of the past eleven months, some of the less rabid MAGA types are beginning to see that he does NOT have their interests at heart. 

The Beatles family: Paul, Ringo, Julian and Sean, and Dhani, got together to play and sing a holiday song for the fans.   It was "Simply having a wonderful Christmastime!"  They could have used "So this is Christmas" by John Lennon, but they might have had a discussion and decided it was a bit too obviously political, which might have reduced some of the goodwill they had with (a generalized concept of) Beatles fans.  In the olden days, they used to send out a newsletter and a Sound Clip for the people in the Beatles Club.  Who knows whether the BC is still alive and functioning anymore?

I used to wallow in Holiday Music when I was younger, but these days I don't have the motivation to do it.  I have a couple of discs of Carols, a disc of Christmas songs [e.g. Frosty the Snowman], some holiday humorous songs [Grandma Got Run Over], but since I spend most of my time between my house, and my friend's house, figuring out where to play my music is too much of a problem!  My friend also used to watch a movie, like "A Christmas Story", or sometimes one of the Scrooge movies, and occasionally both.  This year she's not in the best of spirits, so I haven't been pushing the movies.  Once her obligations for the season are all discharged, she might pick a new movie to watch.  She has grandchildren who visit (some of whom are major Kay fans, but of course that's not what they call me) but they're not quite old enough to sit through a movie.  Or maybe they are ...

Do you readers have snow on the ground?  I'm so envious!  We have about a 1/2 inch of snow, wherever it hasn't been blown off or plowed off.  Where I live, you get the occasional deer coming to check out the prospects of getting some grub near my house; I just leave them alone.  If course it's deer hunting season right after Thanksgiving, which might explain why there are fewer deer around right now.  (You must excuse my ignorance; I'm not hooked into the whole Hunting and Fishing culture.)

I have a tiny little Christmas tree, decorated only with those crystal balls!  In the old days, they would wrap the balls in silk, and they were called 'satins', I believe. 

Some years I have traveled to visit during the holidays.  This year,  I have an invitation to visit my cousin's home (I wrote about her in the Summer, I think?) but I have to weigh the cost versus the benefit of saying I'll be there!  I have to rent a car ... or worse, take a bus ... Also, I hate to be a nuisance during the holidays. 

Anyway, a happy holiday to you guys!

Kay

OMG

This is a post from a Lexie Hull fan group.  (Or maybe Lexie herself; she does things like that.)

She looks a lot more muscular than she does in her team uniforms.

Go, Lexie!

Kay