Nasty News Roundup

Instructions for incoming congressmen.

I'll save you the trouble of surfing the web or reading a newspaper, freeing up your time to do better things. Here's a hint of how our country is doing:

1. Democratic Socialists are infiltrating the halls of Congress, quietly carrying out Obama's 2008 vow to "fundamentally change America." One upcoming battle is in Pennsylvania, where a Gazan-born Socialist is preparing to make a run to unseat Democratic Senator John Fetterman in the next election.

2. A Broadway show opening this week is about a group of men living in a home for sex offenders convicted of crimes against minors. One critic called it the playwright's "finest drama."

3. The "new normal" in many of America's hospitals includes up to a 24-hour wait to be seen in Emergency Rooms. It's about to get worse.

4. Waymo's driverless taxis have been seen passing stopped school buses and going through stop signs. The company promises to "fix its software" to make them safer.

Have a nice day!

How To Be Your Own Best Friend

"Water Lilies" by Claude Monet

Since Debra left this world -- it's been four years and three months --  I guess I am my own best friend. I love my blog. And my paintings. Good thing, because judging from my readership stats and sales of my work, hardly anyone else does.

I read my old blog posts whenever I can't sleep and get up in the middle of the night. Like this night. They are funny and interesting and always contain at least one fact worth knowing. 

My paintings adorn the walls of my house and make me happy. Each one is beautiful in its own way. Every one I finish becomes the best painting I've ever done, until the next one.

Here's the fact: Claude Monet, the French Impressionist, completed a new painting every 10 days and left behind 2,200 canvases when he died. I am not a fan of his work -- too sappy, and they all look alike -- but he must have loved it.

Film Review: IRENA'S VOW

Irena, at left, and a crowd of citizens watch a public hanging.

With antisemitism on the rise once again worldwide, the real-life story at the heart of of Irena's Vow is a timely reminder of just how cruel some regimes can be. And despite knowing how things turned out at the end of WW2, still it's a taut thriller with tension building throughout its two-hour run time. 

A grim Holocaust movie set in Poland during Hitler's reign, its focus is on a young Polish girl separated from her family and forced to work as a housekeeper and cook for a powerful German General. After witnessing the incredibly brutal deaths of a mother and her infant -- you'll want to cover your eyes for this one -- Irena vows to do whatever it takes to save lives. As it happens, there are a dozen Jews working as tailors in the General's basement who are slated for death in the coming weeks, and Irena devises a complex and daring plan to save them.

First and foremost, Irena's Vow offers a gripping depiction of the unimaginable horrors endured by people who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Superb acting by every cast member, most of them foreign actors unknown in our country, makes the story unforgettable. That said, several scenes are curiously off-kilter and stretch believability, breaking the film's intense hold on your emotions. In one way that might be a good thing, since as it was I was sobbing on and off throughout. 

Even with a relatively happy ending for Irena, one comes away frightened of what's brewing right here in America. Everyone with a beating heart should see this movie, currently streaming on Netflix.

Marriage Advice From One Who Knows

Before you decide to tie the knot, there are some basics to consider that can mean the difference between a happy life and a life sentence in Hell. 

The most important thing is NOT how much you are attracted to your partner or how you both laugh at the same things or how you both love Thai food and Scottish Terriers and the rest of that rot. The most important thing is to look closely at your beloved's immediate family and assess their potential for future disaster.

Are you sure you want to spend every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Passover or whatever with them? Are they going to make good grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins? Does one or more of them drink too much, do too many drugs, or look like the Goodyear Blimp already? Because these problems will only worsen over time. 

Ask yourself: Are there Al-Anon meetings in the offing? Will family gatherings require the involvement of child protective services, or possibly the riot police? Trust me: Family matters, and I don't mean yours.

Politics 101 Circa 2026

Imam Hakim Jeffries addressing the new Congress.

In case you just woke up from a coma ten minutes ago, the Republican candidates lost many -- if not most -- if not all -- of the races in the recent election, which was held four days ago. But never fear: to catch you up, every newspaper and website explains it all ad nasueum, writing the same things. In a nutshell, I have summarized everything for you here:

President Trump sucks. Elon Musk sucks as much, maybe more. All MAGA voters suck. In fact, everyone connected to the President sucks. Democrats promise to impeach Trump and anyone who ever looked at him, sat next to him or supported him. The Republican Party is finished. The Democrats are in the driver's seat, and the Muslim Socialists, led by new Imam of the House Hakim Jeffries, are at the wheel. Oh, and don't forget -- Trump sucks, now and forever, always has and always will.

That's about it. Now you are fully up to speed and can engage in a thoughtful conversation about politics with every Democrat you meet.

Mission Accomplished!

Question: Who once tweeted, “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”?

Answer: You might have guessed Barack Hussein Obama, or his loathsome spouse, or maybe even one of their daughters. You'd be close, but wrong. Instead it was an Obama disciple, just one of the newly-elected, anti-American victors in Tuesday's election debacle.

Now a U.S. Representative-elect for New York's 13th congressional district (Harlem and The Bronx) and a member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, the writer was Darializa Avila Chevalier, also known as DAC (Oh, how cute -- just like AOC!)

Question: Who once said, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."?

Answer: Barack Hussein Obama, October 30, 2008, while campaigning for the presidency. It took a lot more than five days, but mission accomplished.

Why A "Blue Tsunami"?

I've read a lot of articles written by so-called political pundits -- and FYI it's pundits, not pundants --that the reason the Dems won big in the midterms is because of high gas prices or the Iran war or the use of force by ICE agents and some other reasonable hogwash, but we all know the real reason is that they just HATE DONALD TRUMP -- always have and always will.

They hate his wild hair, his fake tan, his daughter Invanka, his beautiful wife Melania, his gold toilets, his White House ballroom, his rough personality, his name-calling, his tweets, and whatever else you can think of. That's it. The average Democrat  -- most notably a recently-arrived Somalian who doesn't even speak our language but still voted in our election -- knows little about Trump's policies. They just hate his guts for being too rich, too smart, too powerful, and most of all, for knowing more than they do about just about everything.

Which is why simpletons like AOC, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, average dummies who are non-threatening, are at the top of the list of Democrat favorites. In their world, the dumber the candidate the more the public can relate to him/her. 

End of story.

Gotto Go!

The popular "Troy Jackson" Halloween mask.

Last night the Nazis, a.k.a Democrats, won the midterm elections all across America. Here in Maine it's especially poignant, with our fabulous Senator Susan Collins, the first female Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee which holds jurisdiction over all discretionary spending for the entire federal government, losing her seat to a pudgy career logger who fathered two kids with his second cousin and was recently ejected from his own Facebook group for being rude to his supporters. 

But here in Maine, that's okay. While Maine law prohibits marriages to an individual’s parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews, aunts, or uncles, cousins are fine. The law initially banned first cousin marriage, but an amendment passed two years later (in 1987) allows such unions "if the would-be betrothed present a certificate of genetic counseling signed by a physician certifying their potential children have an acceptably low risk of physical deformity or cognitive impairment."

Today I'll start packing up the house, as I certainly can't stay here -- that's obvious. Florida is hot, but at least the lion's share of residents are intelligent --- and naturally Republicans.

Fat And Skinny Had A Race (Skinny Lost)

Two of the beautiful people.

One of my favorite episodes of The

Twilight Zone first aired on November 11, 1960, which would have made it my sister's 18th birthday the year I was 13. Entitled "Eye of the Beholder," the gist of it was that in an altered society, pretty people were considered to be ugly and the hideously ugly were beautiful.

This is what's going on today right here and now, in this society where we live. It's happening online, where hundreds of videos of morbidly obese women dressed in bikinis or other flesh-baring attire are posted. The women look gross and disgusting but get comments like, "You are beautiful" and "I love your body," from men and women alike.

I can only conclude that the fatter we get as a nation, the more we tell ourselves that's the way things should be. Only it isn't.

Morning Coffee In The Nuthouse

When I married a man 11 years younger than me I assumed he would still be mentally fit when I started losing my marbles, and that in fact he might help me keep some of them for a longer time. Sadly, it has not turned out that way.

This morning, having awakened at 3:45 and realized that sleep was no longer a possibility, I was in the living room reading when I heard my husband come down the stairs and enter the kitchen and start making coffee. The sound of the coffee grinder was not right. Instead of the usual low, electrical purr, it was an angry clacking sound. It grew louder, and I was surprised that Mitch felt it appropriate to keep going. However, after about one minute the clacking subsided and the grinding continued normally.

Next, Mitch started making noises like "Harrumph" and "Hmmm," which made me, sequestered two rooms away, wonder just what the heck was going on. Finally he found me and reported that the wide blue rubber band that had been wrapped around the bag of coffee beans was missing. He posited that it was the reason for the clacking sound and that it had been ground up with the beans.

I found that laughable. No way! How could the coffee grinder continue to work with a big fat rubber band in its blades? (I also mentioned that if that were truly the case he was mental and needed help.) Assuming he had simply dropped it somewhere, I began sweeping the kitchen floor. Meanwhile, a pot of coffee was brewing. Undaunted, Mitch opened the top of the coffee maker and inspected the grounds. Soon enough he found what looked like a small piece of a rubber band buried in the wet mess.

Refusing to drink the now freshly-brewed coffee, saying we could surely die if we drank ground-up latex, I thought of David O'Lenick, the other man I could have married. (My high-school beau who was my age, I wondered if he was still alive.)

To settle things, Mitch asked Claude, his A.I. companion, the following: "If I grind up a rubber band along with coffee beans in my coffee grinder, and then brew coffee with the mixture of ground beans and ground rubber band, would that be toxic?  Also, would you think that the person who did this has a mental illness?"

Claude said DO NOT DRINK IT! -- it could cause all sorts of problems, digestive and otherwise, even leading to death. As for the sanity question, Claude said if it were an accident, then no worries, but if it were part of a pattern of distressing or unusual choices, speaking with a health care professional would be a helpful next step.

 And that's what's happening in our house this morning.

Dastardly Dems Destroying Democracy

Anti-Trump protesters in Maine.

Here in Maine, the death of democracy is evident on the highways and byways of every town, where political signs have become the weapon of choice. The vandalism at the hands of the Maine Democrats is stunning in its efficacy, as each new day dawns to find more and more signs touting Republican candidates missing. All but a handful of those supporting Senator Susan Collins have been defaced, destroyed or spirited away. Ditto the signs for lesser Republican candidates, be it a member of the local school board or the Maine state senate. Interestingly, none of the signs touting Democrats for those very same offices have been tampered with. 

What can we conclude from these sophomoric shenanigans? One thing only: the party protesting that Donald Trump represents "the end of democracy" is the very same one that is actively out there killing it. To them, "free speech" means "only if you vote our way."

It's sad and depressing to witness this peevish behavior of the so-called adults who comprise the lion's share of our demographics. Constantly touting their love of democracy, they are actively destroying it. The only conclusion I can think of is that frequent consumption of lobster eventually eradicates functioning brain cells. (See photo.)