Sorry, MAGA! Everything You Thought Was Wrong

 

You thought you were electing Donald Trump President of the United States.

Surprise!

Instead, you got a foreign-born billionaire, one whose very citizenship is questionable, controlling what gets funded and what doesn't, using a small squad of barely adult hackers to break into secure systems and pillage all our data. And you were worried about unelected bureaucrats? HA!

Nothing he is doing is to combat fraud and abuse. Like  Trump, all Musk is doing is petty grievances. FAA had fined Space X for safety violations! FIRE HIM! Fire all those in aviation safety!  Offer buyouts to stressed, overworked air traffic controllers. If planes collide and go down, who cares.

USAID dared to investigate some of his StarLink sales to Russia?  Destroy their agency!  If people in other countries starve because of it, or farmers lose some $2 billion in sales, so what?  LET THEM STARVE!

You thought Trump was going to root out corruption.

In addition to the actions of President Musk, Trump has eliminated all the inspector generals who monitor such things, leaving us more open to government corruption.  He's fired other government-efficiency people. He is determined to weed out people from the Federal government not to save money but to replace them with people loyal to him over the Constitution.

Private corruption will soar now. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, our only protection against bank and corporate overcharges, has been dismantled and kneecapped. Executive orders have eliminated many climate change regulations and others designed to protect us from corporate greed.  

Think that's a good thing?  You may be less enthused when you get tainted meat, when you find your workplace unsafe (they want to eliminate OSHA), when you find there is an outbreak you can't get information about because the CDC and NIH have been censored and we have left the WHO, when you no longer get weather notification because the National Weather Service and NOAA have been destroyed.

You thought he would mass deport all those undocumented aliens you rail against.

So far, even with all the noise and thunder, the rate of actual deportations is not much different from what it was under Biden.

But have no fear!  He still may pull ahead.  Of course, the economic consequences of this will be catastrophic.  But do not despair!  Those jobs may be replaced by PRISON LABOR.  Some may come from the undocumented held in concentration camps.

Isn't that a pretty picture for the United States?

You thought he was going to lower prices, specifically mentioning eggs and gas.

Psych!

Fooled you, didn't he?

You can't entirely blame the President.  Economic events are not always under their control.   I mean,  you sure cut Biden some slack for the Pandemic-caused global inflation that he got under control quicker than virtually every other country on Earth, didn't you?  No, things weren't perfect. However, the fact remains that Biden generated the best economy in decades.

Trump promised he would lower prices from day one.  When he was elected, he immediately switched course and said that would be hard for him to do.

Of course, he may still impose more tariffs, but only those who have never studied economic history would believe that this is a good thing.

You thought he was going to get rid of DEI and we would return to a merit-based system.

Yeah, he's succeeded in dismantling DEI (including a lot of cooperation from a pathetically weak business community), but he is galloping as far away from merit-based as you can get.  Think Not?  Look at the qualifications of his cabinet nominees compared to those in the past. 

This cartoon sums up best what DEI is really all about -

DEI means Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Anti-DEI means Discrimination, Exclusion, and Intolerance.

I know what side I'm on.  How about you?

You thought he would end our endless wars and bring our troops home. No more foreign adventures for us!

This may be the thing you were most wrong about.

One of the ways we knew Hitler was such a danger was when he wanted to invade and annex his neighbors. Whether it was an excuse or not, he tried to bring any nation with any German population back into the fold of the Germanic Empire.  Putin wants to do something similar to restore the Soviet Union.

What Trump wants to do is worse. He makes no pretense of wanting to reunite with countries that have roots in us. He doesn't want to improve the lives of those places' citizens, and he doesn't even really care about the benefits to the American people.

He wants to exploit and consume their resources, and he wants himself and his billionaire buddies to profit big time.

He wants the Panama Canal back so he can control the shipping lane and profit from the traffic that passes through it.

He wants Greenland and Canada because he knows GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL, and underneath the ice, tons of natural resources, fuels, and rare earth minerals await.

He wants Gaza because he wants to turn it into a real estate development, Trump Hotels, and a place for the ultra-rich to party.  The Palestinians?  He doesn't give one whit about them as long as they are GONE.

Even in Ukraine, he's dangling the carrot of getting the rights to the country's rare earth minerals to provide them any aid whatsoever.

I have no qualms about my next statement - everything he does is monstrous.  Everything he is doing is unrepentantly evil. Many will die. Many will suffer.

Yes, MAGA. You've been had. Everything you thought was wrong.

And we will suffer for many years because of it.  

The least you can do is admit your error and join us in resisting it.

T. M. Strait

AOC '28

Top 100 Sci-Fi Movies of the 20th Century!!! Part 3 No. 86 - 80

  I received this issue of Remind, or what Alison calls "my old people magazine," which ranks the top 100 Science Fiction movies of the 20th century.

Remind does have many pop culture stories, focusing primarily on the 1950s through the 1990s, although there are some references to earlier decades. Each issue focuses on different topics, such as country music, westerns, where are they now issues, and much more. I enjoy it, as I love pop history. They also have puzzles and a monthly guide to what's on TCM (Turner Classic Movies).

I thought it would be fun to review the movies on the list in reverse order and share my thoughts. The magazine's ranking of the movies is not mine.  

I won't go into detailed reviews, but I will share the IMDb ranking and my own on a 1 to 10 scale.

86)

Videodrome

Year: 1983  IMDb: 7.2 Tom: 4  Had I seen before?   Yes  Service found on: Peacock

I say yes that I have seen this, but I think I had blocked most of this from my mind.  As I will again. I am figuring out that body horro, which David Crionenberg specializes in is not my thing.  Additionally, the plot is deliberately confusing.  Fine, if you want to take the time to anaylyze it.  I did not.  Positive side?  It had Deborah Harry in a feature role, a singing favorite of mine from the group Blondie (easily in my top ten bands).  Negative side?  In addition to the goopy guts and bizarrre storyline, the lead was James Woods, who has turned super-repulsive MAGA MAX in his senior years.

85)

Repo Man

Year: 1984  IMDb: 6.8 Tom: 5  Had I seen before?   Yes  Service found on: Prime Rental

This fared a little bit better than Videodrome, but not much. At least I could follow the story even though I wasn't all that interested. Emilio Estevez plays a punk rocker who has had little job success, taking a job helping repo men. There are some aliens and a glowing item in a car trunk. Often, the science fiction elements are minimized and muted. It was an okay but not memorable trip.

84)

Year: 1997  IMDb: 7.3 Tom: 8 Had I seen before?   Yes  Service found on: Peacock

Don't think about this one too much. The idea of exchanging faces like they do is not much in the realm of possibility, even for a science fiction film. But Nicolas Cage and John Travolta do some first-rate acting in this, switching personalities and helping make the implausible at least slightly plausible. It's filled with action, and it's a fun ride.  

83)

Marooned

Year: 1969  IMDb: 5.1 Tom: 5 Had I seen before?   Yes  Service found on: Tubi

Oy. Unlike 2001:A Space Oddesy, this one has not aged well. Big budget and big star production, with a slow moving and dull story that made me have to snack and hydrate to stay awake through. It's a shame. It had my Dad's quasi-lookalike in it, Gregory Peck. And a very game, Gene Hackman. I get it. Astronauts stranded in space. Will we get them back or not? Oh, please! Just get on with it. 2 hr and 14 14-minute runtime felt like six hours. And since it was Tubi, I'd have to sit through innumerable commercials. This is emblematic of what science fiction was often like before Star Wars.

    82) 

Quatermass and the Pit

Boy, did this one take a while to find! Part of the problem is that the movie has a different name in American distribution - Five Million Years to Earth. But when I finally found it, it was pretty good! Set in London, an archeological excavation unveils an alien spacecraft, and the danger increases as the movie progresses. Well plotted, you think the movie is, like many movies of its time, cut short where it could go. But it does not! Loved the pacing and acceleration of this nifty little story. Unlike Marooned, it still holds up really well!

81)

The Adventures of Buckeroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

Year: 1984  IMDb: 6.2 Tom: 5 Had I seen before?   Yes  Service found on: MGM+

Sounds exciting, don't it? Sometimes campy is good. Sometimes, it misses the mark. This hits occasionally but mostly misses the mark. I think it's trying to play off Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, but that's a guess. Most of it is played too cool for school, and the intriguing multi-dimensional premise is not used well. John Lithgow plays the villain, and he leaves no scenery unchewed.

80)

Altered States

Year: 1980  IMDb: 6.9 Tom: 5 Had I seen before?   Yes  Service found on: Prime Rental

Another oy. More body horror and incoherent plot. Something to do with sensory deprivation and reverting to a more unevolved state. I think. I'm not sure. About ten or fifteen minutes of it near the two-thirds mark was interesting (like a Jekyll and Hyde thing), but most of it was not my cup of tea.

I know there was a big time gap between this one and the last one (October 24). I'm doing the best I can. They're not always easy to find, and the dystopian horror of our country's real-life descent has been very distracting.

The good news is that I have already seen four of the next seven films on the list, so it shouldn't be too much longer.

Unless, of course, in the meantime, I am sent to a reeducation camp.

Until next time,

T. M. Strait

AOC '28!

The Bad Place

We are in The Bad Place.

We thought we were in the land of the free. We thought we were in the home of the brave. We thought, although not perfect, we bent towards social justice and equality. We were a good place, working hard to improve life for the future. A better economy with less concentration of wealth and power, an environment where climate change was mitigated and maybe even reversed, where more and more people would get their healthcare protected, where educational opportunities would improve and be made available to all, where housing solutions would be found, where wages would not stagnant, where politicians would work together for the benefit of all instead of the wealthy and large corporations.  

But we were wrong.

We live in The Bad Place.

A bad place chosen by a plurality of the people who even bothered to vote. Chosen by some people who are actively cheering on the racism and hatred. Chosen by some people who were so naive they didn't fully understand the consequences of their decision.

Maybe the election was rigged. I don't know. We're not really allowed to even say that. They can gripe and bey-otch like they did in 2020, but we can't say a word. There was no testing. There were no recounts or lawsuits. Democrats behaved like the good little soldiers they are. And their reward for that? To continue to be trampled on and vilified.

It's making me sick. It's touching closer and closer to home. Loving couples have their very relationships questioned and challenged. The Supreme Court destroyed women's reproductive rights. You don't think they'll reverse gay marriage?

The removal of DEI doesn't mean what you think it means. Instead of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, we will get Discrimination, Exclusion, and Intolerance. Raplh's idiot cousin Bofert will get the job instead of a qualified person. Wealthy Ronald will get to put his son, who barely graduated from high school, into Princeton, and a superstar graduate from a poor family can get left in the cold. This isn't merit-based. It's NEPO based. It's who you know based.  

Every Federal job is threatened. Take a buyout that may or may not happen (Trump's record of paying employees and contractors is one of the most abysmal on the planet). Is this to save money? Hell, no. It's to replace those workers with people who are more loyal to the Orange Conman than they are to the United States.

We've revived colonialism, not for the benefit of other countries but to exploit their resources. He wants to take over Greenland and Canada to strip them for parts (pirate capitalism). He wants to take over the Panama Canal to profit from controlling a major shipping lane. He's doing this to benefit himself and his rich pals - NOT YOU.

I was baffled by what it's going to do to the economy when we deport our agricultural and other labor, and stuff is rotting in the fields? Then, it dawned on me what he was going to do. PRISON LABOR. This is why so much of what he wants to be budgeted will go to private prisons. There will be an uptick in convictions for all kinds of things and "detention camps"  for those undocumented who are not immediately deported. And they'll use that labor for pennies in all types of jobs. This is what he meant by saying the undocumented were taking black jobs. People of color have been and will be disproportionally incarcerated and then used this way. Make no mistake. It is a return to SLAVERY.

All public entities are threatened with being consumed by pirating privateers. Public school funding will increasingly be directed to private entrepreneurs primarily concerned with enriching themselves. These entrepreneurs will be free to discriminate to their hearts' content. Public libraries will be closed or turned into Christian Nationalist reading rooms.

You may think you are safe from deportation because you are a US citizen. You think wrong. They are demands to deport Bishop Budde and Selena Gomez, both who are US CITIZENS. You're not safe. None of us are.

This is just the tip of the drool cup we're living in. There's so much more. I want to return to puppies, home fun, my grandchild, sports, movies, fiction, and fun, but how can I?

I cannot sit back and try to explain to my children and grandchildren that I did nothing when fascism came to America.

There will be more. There is always more.

Because we live in the bad place.

T. M. Strat

AOC '28

 

Blackshear On Ice

 

Obligatory pictures of a Blackshear snowfall. This one is not much more than a couple inches, but it's extra dangerous because it's coated with ice.

Yep. I grew up in Michigan. I am not a stranger to driving on snow. But ice? That terrifies me. So Alison and I will stay home until the ice melts off.

Some might occur today. But with highs in the mid-thirties, it may not melt off enough to make Thursday morning drivable.

Dogs on ice! They can't break through the snow due to the layer of ice. There are two dogs out there. What? You can't see Pixie, our little white-haired dog?

Yeah.  Not going anywhere with icy snow on the car.

So, is this climate change?

Two things you can attribute to climate change -

1) Average global temperatures are rising. 2024 set new records. Each year is topping itself.

2) As climate changes, more and more extreme weather events will occur. Some would happen anyway. Some are not caused by it but are definitely juiced up by it.

I can tell you who does believe in climate change.

The Orange Conman.

Whaat? Are you kidding me, Tom?

Think about it. Why do you think he's lusting so hard over Greenland and Canada?

Because he knows as they melt off, he can access more fossil fuels and other natural resources!

Is he doing that for the benefit of the people that live there? No, no, no, NO!

Is he doing that for the benefit of the average American? No, no, no, NO!

Is he doing it to enrich himself and his billionaire buddies? Yes, yes, YES!

He wants to dismantle those places and strip them for parts.

He's already, through executive order, doing that to Alaska. He's opened to full exploitation - no environmental protections whatsoever.

No, I won't let this go.

I will keep bringing up the horrid decision made by 49.8% of the voting population.

Anyhoo...

Enjoy the weather as best you can! Stay safe out there!

AOC '28!

On the Brink of Madness

 

We stand on the brink of madness.

For many who read this, the foul deed has already been done, and the four-year nightmare has begun.

That photo, which I guess is an official inaugural photo, is ominous as hell. Its creepy look puts Dr. Evil to shame.

I don't know how we got here, but we can't avoid it now. The fact that so many who have brought us here are now on a journey that many on our side of social media refer to as "ef around and find out" is of little consolation.

The first thing that those who recognize this for the horror it is, is that it is no longer sensible to mince words. This is fascism, pure and simple. It meets every definition of the word. If you want to further refine it, it's fascist oligarchy. We have handed the keys to the kingdom to a billionaire oligarchy, and as time marches on, it will become more apparent and more evident that everyone else was used.

The Orange Conman does not care about anyone but himself. The only reason that he lets the billionaire bros into his circle is because THEY CAN MAKE HIM MONEY.

He had no trouble ditching his MAGA Orangeistas when the weather got too cold for Baby Donnie. He left them and the money they spent to get there completely in the lurch. It didn't matter. He had his close knit ceremony at the Capitol Rotunda, surrounded by his billionaire buddies.

He had no trouble keeping the 200 million he had been given for inauguration ceremonies. He got what he wanted with a Crypto Ball, where he put up an imaginary Memecoin that somehow netted him billions and billions of dollars. Some of the money was inevitably from foreign governments. And to think - we were at one time worried about Jimmy Carter and his peanut farm.

That foreign money? You don't think that will lead to corrupt influence? You've been paying no attention to your adjudicated sexual assaulter and fraudster if you don't think so. What did he learn from his first term? No one has the stones to enforce the emoluments clause of the Constitution. And now that he knows this, he's going to go big or go home! (Spoiler Alert - he's not going home.)

President Biden has looked at the conduct of the incoming administration and their plans for revenge and vindictiveness and has to do the unthinkable. He has had to pardon people who are 100% innocent of ANY CRIME. Doctor Fauci, who is a freaking hero. General Milley's only crime was defending the Constitution instead of the dictatorial ravings of a madman. The January 6th Committee, using REPUBLICAN WITNESSES, was only trying to bring the truth to light.

Tomorrow, the ICE raids will start in blue cities across the country. Families will be shattered. Innocents will be swept up, people whose only crime is seeking a better life for their family, who have obeyed the law, and who have taken jobs MAGATs don't even want to do. The potential for horrific violence will be ever-present with these raids. You can't control the forces of hate and bigotry once it is unleashed.

Civil servants who have devoted their lives to serving and bettering their country will be fired. Tax loopholes that benefit the middle class and working poor will be closed, while the super-rich will not even have to worry about a tax system.

And what an excellent strategy it was to constantly whine about the 2020 election, claiming the classified documents in the Mar-A-Lago bathroom guy was actually the winner! The Democrats, being the party of wussies that many of them are*, are now too afraid to challenge the validity of the strangest election since 1960.

This is what Trump said at his pre-inauguration rally - 

Trump on Elon Musk: "He knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide."

Those aren't MY words. Those are Trump's words.

But we can't call it conspiracy. We might look like them. I wish somebody somewhere had had the stones to demand a hand recount. I mean, good lord, how many recounts did Georgia and Arizona have to suffer through in 2020?

There are 200 executive orders coming tomorrow. I predict that every single one will damage this country's future.

If you voted for this, God forgive you, you have not known what you have done.

But you should have.

YOU. SHOULD. HAVE.

*exceptions include many progressive Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Jasmine Crockett, and my favorite for 2028 - AOC!

It's a Mystery Man

 Here I am, in Books-A-Million, holding a treasured prize!

What's special about this issue of Alfred's Mystery Magazine?

Why, my name is in it!

Sounds impressive, don't it?

Well, there are some caveats. 

First, it's just my name. I am an honorable mention in a story contest. Only the winning entry is published.

So, this is part of my big dream, but not all of it.

I have not yet had a story published in a pulp fiction magazine (currently, the big four are Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and Analog Science Fiction). That part of the dream has not yet been realized.

Also, please note that I am hardly the only honorable mention. There are ten; for all I know, that may be everybody who entered.  

To further dampen things, they release the magazine's circulation figures on the next page. Many numbers are listed, but the bottom line is that the total circulation is around 10,000 (about 40% being mail subscriptions). With a US population of around 335 million, about .003%* of the population gets this magazine.

Well, ok. Nevertheless, I am proud. It's a big step for me in the right direction.

I am writing a story for the next contest.

I am editing a story I wrote a decade or two ago.

And I am creating a new story centered on an 1880s gothic girl!

As my pal Superman says, "Never give up! Never Surrender!"

Something like that. That could be Winston Churchill.

Nevertheless, the sentiment stands!

*math could change depending on if I did it wrong

Dreaming of an Alternate Path

 

Last night, I had a dream.

A dream that the world was a beautiful and diverse place with love and tolerance for all. A place, while diverse, was also united in our common humanity, ready to tackle the biggest problems, including saving our globe from the devasting effects of climate change.  

Pooling our resources and knowledge to mitigate and reverse its horrible ravaging of our planet. Not in becoming hoarders and exploiting those who possess what we feel we want. Screw the others. Just take what we want, and damn the long-term consequences.

I dreamed that all the cautionary tales about the coming of the Kingdom would not occur because we made patriotic choices not to follow the Christian Reich path.

I dreamed of universal healthcare, affordable schooling, libraries free of extremist pressure, billionaires being a thing of the past, and woke becoming a symbol of virtue rather than derision.

Then my dream ended, and I awoke with a start.

The world is burning, and morons are blaming DEI.  

The Convicted Felon is not a Christian, but that is not stopping him from aligning himself with them to get what he wants. And that's anything and everything he wants for himself and his billionaire buddies. He is a soulless person, without caring or conscious. He really doesn't even like his billionaire buddies - they are just tools to acquire more for himself.

The Kingdom stories envision a splintering of the United States, with the bulk of the conservative states forming their own nation, The Kingdom. Another country from America's West Coast is identified in the stories as Pacifica. Consider what is happening now, with the possibility that western Canada and the same western states could form Cascadia.

The Kingdom lives as a potential projection. And it terrifies me.

Why does Donny Diaper want Canada and Greenland? Some call it a distraction. But what if it's not?

What if he is lying to us (surprise!) and knows global warming is real? There are vast resources under the ice in Greenland and Northern Canada - minerals and metals, oil and natural gas, tons of riches. What if he's decided that as these area's ice covering melts, he wants him and his buddies to control those resources?

He doesn't want to take over those lands because he wants to benefit the natives in any way, nor does he really care about national security. No. He wants to possess them and strip them for parts, just like a private equity pirate.

Just like his grandfather wanted to do, coming over from Germany and trying to make his fortune in Alaska and the Northwest Territories. Of course, Friedrich (Drumpf) Trump did not accomplish a fortune in gold, but he did establish taverns with gambling and whores. Yes, that is where the Trump fortune started.

I can still dream. I only wish I could make it so.

For the sake of my children and granddaughter, as dim as the future looks, I pray that we can emerge from this dark time.