Category Archives: Future

"New Normal"?, 47, Arts: Cartoons, Congress, Constitutional Crisis, Coup, Cross-Generational Issues, Eggs, Federal workers, Future, Limericks, Medicare, Newspapers, Project 2025, Pushback, Russia, Signs of the Times, SNAP, Social Security, Ukraine, Unions/Labor, Zelenskyy

Welcome to a Showdown Week: Musk vs Fed workers + AFGE (But What About CONGRESS??)

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A free Bonus from the gang at “What Goes Around Comes Around” Media: this first cartoon is from 2017, when Trump tried to KILL Obamacare, but was stopped by nationwide constituent pushback. Can Congress WAKE UP again??

PS. To Constituents: KEEP UP the pressure!

Now some blasts from the cartoon past …

A Sunday Doonesbury strip from 2019. The record of Congress today is lagging; but Trudeau gives us a reminder of what can be possible if a party recovers its mojo and goes for it.

 

Below: Sorry, fella — the Big Guy says the giving season ended on January 20. And yeah, it may be permanent. You could try down the street at the Post Office,  I think they’re hiring — Oh, wait—

Here’s a sneak preview of another coming congressional attraction . . .

Now “breaking” news: this photo was taken Feb. 23 in a busy & otherwise very well-stocked market in North Carolina. As one can see, the limit wasn’t necessary, because the only eggs in the whole place, at any price, were a stack of gleaming eggplants.

Stopping inflation? Prices dropping? More “efficiency”???

I don’t think so.


Finally, a bow and hat-tip to the beleaguered federal workers who are the unwilling but increasingly assertive and courageous front-line troops in this struggle. Stay strong and push back! You’re not only to save your careers — you’re fighting to save your/our country!

 

From The Guardian

“New Normal”, Climate, Cross-Generational Issues, Disasters, Fire This Time, Future, Signs of the Times, Weather

Gwynne Dyer: Happy(??) Climate New Year

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Welcome to ‘Uncharted Territory’

Gwynne Dyer, January 2, 2025

New Year is when we do the accounts for the year, and the bad news always gets top billing: how many wars are going on, how big were the natural disasters, etc.? Climate change now has its own slot in this annual accounting, and here is what the climate pundits will say.

First they will acknowledge that 2024 has been the hottest year since we began keeping records a few centuries ago. This will be accompanied by the usual clucking about how naughty we have all been, not cutting our greenhouse gas emissions fast enough. Continue reading Gwynne Dyer: Happy(??) Climate New Year →

Arts: For Kids, Biden, Election 2024, Fire This Time, Future, Hope, KKK, Life Is Good, Poets and Poetry, Signs of the Times

Rebuilding After the Earthquake, and A Birthday Rainbow

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Spring Friends Meeting, Snow Camp North Carolina

 

This post was delivered as a message in Spring Friends Meeting on Eighth Month (August 11, 2024).

 

Today after meeting, Wendy and I are going to a small family birthday party, for a great-granddaughter who has turned seven.

That quiet gathering will be a very modest landmark in what has been a  very intense and weird month.

For that matter, this last four weeks have been vivid pieces of a  weird patchwork quilt that  raggedly covers eight long years.

Or nine years actually. It began as I watched an almost surreal ride down a golden escalator. From there it set off an improbable clamor that reached its first peak in an earthquake on November 8, 2016.

Not a geologic earthquake, but a political and cultural shaking every bit as real. Continue reading Rebuilding After the Earthquake, and A Birthday Rainbow →

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William Penn Died This Week; Just When We Needed Him Most

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Three hundred and six years ago, on July 30, 1718, William Penn died, in England. Aged 73, he had been in very poor health for almost six years, after a massive stroke in 1712.

This is not exactly news. And in recent years, Penn has been out of fashion in many Quaker quarters — disowned and erased for having owned slaves, who labored at his estate Pennsbury in his proprietary colony of Pennsylvania.

The slaveowning was bad, and should not be forgotten. But if we cancel and further erase Penn, it is Friends, and friends of Friends, who are in my judgment the big losers.  Especially now. Continue reading William Penn Died This Week; Just When We Needed Him Most →

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Meme Alert: This Just Fell Out of My Coconut Tree . . .

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The Economist:

United States | The “brat” vote
Is Kamala Harris “brat”?

America’s TikTok election just became more interesting

Jul 25th 2024|new york

“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”, begins a viral clip of Kamala Harris. It resurfaced in the days after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, but this video has a twist.

The song “Von dutch”, by a British pop star, Charli xcx, begins to rev in the background. Ms Harris’s signature belly laugh rises up. A lime-green filter with the word “brat”—the cover art and name of xcx’s new album—flashes across the screen.

“You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” says Ms Harris. The beat drops. Enter supercuts of Ms Harris.

Continue reading Meme Alert: This Just Fell Out of My Coconut Tree . . . →