Cross-posted at:      REALLY?  SERIOUSLY?

Good morning from my Hunker-Bunker in West Seattle.  I am here at home today and tomorrow so I can be at the Stadium this weekend.  So it’s just me and my cat today.  The other half is in Vancouver filming a television series for the next two weeks.  I was going to head up there today, but I have to spend some quality time at the Social Security office raising Cain.  I have a “You People,” speech already rehearsed.  Don’t worry, I will be uncharacteristically calm in my delivery, but it will be riddled with some lite sarcasm.

What you see above is The Freemont Troll.  Why post it here, as the featured photo?

Would you have rather I posted a photo of Trump or Biden?  If I’m going to post a photo of a “troll”, I’ll pick one that I like, okay?  Our troll, is located on Troll Avenue, under the Aurora Bridge in the Freemont District of Seattle.  Freemont is the hippy part of town, full of the artsy-fartsy old hippy-types in an area riddled with strange sculptures and often hidden-in-plain-sight oddities.  For example, just a few blocks from the Freemont Troll is a sculpture called, “Waiting for the Interurban“.  If you look closely, there is a face on the dog.  There’s a story behind it…

Just a couple of the hundred or so treasures found in Freemont just walking down the street.

What does this have to do with anything?  Well, it’s something you probably didn’t know anything about prior to coming here, or if you did, you were pleasantly reminded of it, weren’t you?  Like I said, I could have opened with some political rant or rave, but my real life isn’t consumed by political crap, so why should I be any different here?

Do YOU spend your entire waking hours on political nonsense?  Do you sit on your keister watching cable news for hours on end?  Do you sit in front of your computer for hours arguing with people online about how Biden (or Trump) is and will continue to ‘ruin’ this country?

Yeah?  Then please stop.  For your own sake and sanity.  There is more to life than the political nonsense that only serves to keep us divided and at each other’s virtual throats.  It’s not real.  It’s part of the matrix set up by the ruling class to keep us occupied with stupid shit while they can go about their agendas behind the scenes.  Spending all of our time wallowing in this crap will only make us feel crappy.  Why not laugh it off and find other things to focus on?  That doesn’t mean you ignore the bullshit going on, just don’t spend all of your time on it, that’s all.

That said, here are some of the political bullshit that I found this morning:

Headlines That Caught My Eye This Morning

Item 1:  Trump Loses His Third Try in a Week to Delay Manhattan Trial

Only guilty people with no viable defense and out on bail will try to delay a criminal trial for as long as possible.  Innocent people are in a hurry to prove their innocence so they can get it all over with and out of their lives.  Everyone in jail wants to get to a trial as soon as possible, because jail is the worst place on Earth to be.  Prison is much less restrictive on the human body, mind, and soul.

The fact that Trump is going to all lengths to delay, delay, delay is a sure sign that he not only knows he’s guilty, but that he is most likely to be found guilty in trial.

Item 2:  Republicans panic about post-Mike Johnson meltdown

What, exactly, has this current crop of Republicans accomplished on their agenda this term?   What bills have they written have passed the Senate and been signed into law, thus furthering their brand?  What have they done for the people who voted them into office?

Better yet, what could have been accomplished?

Well, we could have a much-needed update to our immigration and border laws and policies where most of the Republican wish-list was fulfilled, and very little of the wishes that Democrats have championed for years.

Was it perfect?  Is anything perfect?  No, of course not.  But it was a good start, wasn’t it?  Whichever party is in control of the government in 2025 could have taken the provisions in the proposed Senate bill and expanded on them.  I doubt that there will be much of a bipartisan effort after the next election though.  This was kind of a one time chance to get something done, and the House Republicans couldn’t get past their own bullshit to see that.

Item 3:  Uranus and Neptune aren’t made of what we thought, new study hints

The thirteen-year-old in me forced me to post this headline…

Item 4:  Three sons of Hamas leader Haniyeh killed in Israeli airstrike

This was the very first image that popped into my head when I first read this headline.  “My Three Sons”.

I’m not going to lose any sleep over the ‘loss’ of any active members of Hamas.  I am making the assumption, without bothering to read this that the three son were active members of Hamas, and not just the offspring of a Hamas Fucknozzle.

There are at least a few of you who seem to think that I am Pro-Hamas when I speak out against Israel’s prosecution of this war.  If I have to take the time to make this clarification only tells me the level of ignorance going on here.

But let me clarify, in hopes that maybe this will turn that light on inside your head.

•  I am pro-Israel, but I do not approve of the current government.

•  Israel has a right to exist and the right to defend itself.  The key word being “defend”.  Israel does not have a right to be offensive.  They don’t have a right to kill innocent civilians or non-combatants.  They don’t have a right to attack and destroy occupied hospitals regardless of whether there are civilians being used as “human shields” or not.  These are violations of long-established international laws and conventions.  We’ve literally sanctioned, if not attacked numerous other countries for far less.

•  Palestinians also have a right to exist and defend themselves.  Oh, I know, this is blasphemous.  A good Palestinian is a dead one, right?  “Israel was there first”, and/or “God gave Israel that land…” are false arguments.  Neither are true, nor are they relevant to any modern-day reality.  It’s the same stupid argument Putin makes when he claims Ukraine was always part of Russia.  It’s not true, nor is it relevant.  The fact is the indigenous people inhabiting the land at the time the modern-day nation of Israel was created are considered “Palestinians”, but they are the remnants of a lot of people who came to the ‘holy lands’ and stayed over Millenia.   There are Muslim Palestinians, Christian Palestinians, even Jewish Palestinians, and atheist Palestinians.  There are Caucasian Palestinians, black Palestinians, Asian Palestinians…

•  Hamas needs to be destroyed.  But not by any means necessary.  Scorched earth tactics is fine if you are only killing Hamas, but not at the expense of the civilian population.  That’s a RED LINE.  There are other ways to accomplish the task, that I can get behind.  But not if it means killing innocent people.

For example, Israel has most of the population of Gaza pretty much cornered.  Instead of rolling in and killing everything that moves under the guise of “destroying Hamas”, they could set up checkpoints and evacuate the population and filter out the suspected combatants as they try to escape.  I mean, everyone would accept that kind of a tactic.  Even Egypt would offer intel.

Item 5:  Arizona Republicans Thwart Attempts to Repeal 1864 Abortion Ban

Okay, I know that the headline is written to trigger the emotions of pro-choice activists.  But I can fully understand the legislative need to ‘thwart’ immediate calls to overturn any law, regardless of it’s genesis or whether it should still remain a law or not.  It’s been a law since 1864, it could wait a few months or so in order to contemplate and debate what to replace it with.  Besides, there IS an election coming up in a few months.  Whoever controls the state legislature and governorship controls the issue.  This will bring everyone out to vote — the more, the merrier.  You have no right to complain about your government if you don’t vote.

I don’t think that anyone, Left, Right, or in-between, believes that a law from 1864 — before Arizona was a state — should remain on the Arizona law books.

For example, should people from Mexico be allowed to vote in Arizona elections?  It’s a law from 1864…

Here are some other laws Arizona had on the books in 1864

Item 6:  ‘Serious possibility’ that Fed’s next rate move is a hike, warns Larry Summers

The Fed made a mistake back during the Carter administration when they thought they had beat inflation, so they dropped the interest rates too early.  Inflation came roaring back.  This time, the Fed is going to be exceptionally cautious, and will probably raise interest up another quarter.  They are twisting the knobs and pushing the buttons while braking and accelerating at hopefully the proper times as they try to guide this huge ship back in the lane it belongs in.

Is this a Joe Biden problem?  A Donald Trump problem?  Nope.  It would happen just like this if the Freemont Troll were in the Oval Office.  (hey, is he available?)

We’ll get there.  We seem to be heading in the right direction, but you do have to expect a few stops and starts along the way.  We are doing better economically than the rest of the world, if that’s any consolation…

Item 7:  California spent billions on homelessness without tracking if it worked

Amateurs.  Seattle King County has also spent billions of bucks on ‘solving’ the homelessness problem with very little to show for it.  If anything, the number of homeless has increased each time there is a rent increase by the corporate landlords.  There are a handful of hedge funds that own most of the rental units in the Seattle area.  These hedge funds have been buying up rental properties and apartment complexes all over the country over the past ten years or so, and they’ve been jacking up rents on a regular basis based on the median wage of the area.  This means that anyone who falls below that median wage range is about to be priced out of their rental homes.  If you are a tradesperson in a single-income family, you are probably not going to be able to afford housing anywhere close to your jobsite.  Maybe a county or two away…

Also, if your credit score drops below 600?  Forget it.   Have you ever been arrested?  Forget it.  Are there any public records on you?  Yup, forget it.  You will play hell trying to find a place to rent within 75 miles of Seattle.

So what did Seattle spend billions of bucks on?  Committees and studies.  Then hearings about the studies and arguments on who is on the committees.  Then investigations on the previous members of the committees…

We could have given each homeless person an apartment for a year and still have money left over for the following years…

They could be subsidizing rents based on income and needs.

Item 8:  An astronaut is landing on the moon. For the first time, it won’t be an American

When I read that the first person we land on the moon again will be from Japan, the first image I thought of was the Republican response:

AMERICA FIRST!

Well, they have to be from somewhere, don’t they?  But the fact will always remain, that America WAS first.  We done did that already, a long, long, long time ago.  We quickly lost interest.  The Cold War was over, and we didn’t have to prove our prowess.  Our metaphorical dicks were demonstrably bigger.

So now other countries want to plant a foot and a flag on the moon, and for the “first time” it’s not going to be an American doing the steppin’. So be it.

Item 9:  FBI concerned about possible coordinated attack in US after Russia massacre

Um… Shouldn’t the FBI always be concerned about any kind of attack, coordinated or not on American soil?  At least in the back of the mind kind of thing?  Keep an eye out, and ear to the ground?  Listening to the “chatter”?

Item 10  The Hidden Costs of Homeownership Are Skyrocketing

Didn’t I just prattle on about homelessness?  This is related.

Remember Al Bundy in the 1980s television sitcom, “Married With Children”?

It was a fictional show about a shoe salesman and his family and the shit that he went through in his life.  Pretty damn funny, if you like that kind of schtick.

But there is an underlying story here.  Al Bundy, as the sole wage-earner in a family of four, working as a shoe salesman in a mall store, was able to buy a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, two-car garage home in a neighborhood lot in suburbia.  This part wasn’t fictional — a salesman could conceivably buy a home like this back in the sixties, seventies, and eighties.  Single-income families owning homes were the norm at one time.  A mall store shoe salesman might have been a bit of a stretch, but the point is that homes were a lot more affordable, relatively speaking, than they are today.  I heard on the radio yesterday that unlike any other inflationary scale, median housing cost in the US has risen 700% since 1970 (according to the AI connected to this interface, if you can believe it)

Item 11: OJ Simpson is Dead  BREAKING…

Who?

The sooner people forget about this shit-stain, the sooner his version of eternity dies.

Need help with substance use disorder or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.

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