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 A blog of no uncertain musings. What goes on in my mind is often a source of wonder to me. |
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I admit it! I didn't watch all one hour, forty-eight minutes of the State Of The Union (SOTU) address last night. I mean there's only so much abuse one's mind can accept. I applaud those who watched the entire debacle. I'm pretty sure the forty-five minutes I watched could have be placed on a loop and a viewer would have seen nothing new. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said in an interview after the SOTU that a Democratic victory in the mid-term elections would in effect mark the end of the Donald J. Trump presidency. While I will embrace that potential result, I fear the "scorched earth" policy sure to happen among what powers the President and his Cabinet are sure to seize and implement. More than they're doing currently. Permit me to unpack a few of the president's untruths: Gas Prices: He said: Prices are "now below $2.30 per gallon in most states, and in some places below $1.99." Reality: As of Feb 24, only four states--Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi and Kansas--had a statewide average gasoline cost at or below $2.50, with Oklahoma at $2.37. According to Gas Buddy only five of 150,000 stations had a price of $1.99. Grocery Prices: He said: Costs are down, including several grocery prices, like beef." Reality: Costs are up across the board. Some grocery costs, like orange juice are up 30%, beef up 15%, coffee up almost 20%, and frozen fish up almost 9%. Food prices are expected to rise in 2025 by 3.3-3.4%, more than last year. Medicare: He said: "I will always protect Medicare and Medicaid." Reality: His 'Big Beautiful Bill' stripped away funding to Medicare, resulting in some 14 million people losing healthcare coverage. Millions more have seen their healthcare coverage costs double or more. Rural hospitals have closed because they have no funding. In truth, I'm relying on the fact-checking of other agencies with these figures. Some of them I looked up online; some of these prices I've seen first-hand, such as gas and groceries. Yesterday alone, I saw gas prices here jump from $2.35 to $2.69 per gallon ... in ONE DAY. And that was in an area from Lebanon to Springfield, MO. Not just 5 or 10 cents. Prices certainly don't come back down by 35 cents a day. Now I can't say that the prices jumped like this because of the SOTU address. But I can't think of any one thing that happened to cause such a jump. Oh, wait a minute--how about the US seizing oil tankers from Venezuela. Or, staging a military force in the Middle East at a level not seen since the Gulf War in 2003. Or, watching the European Union and Canada shut the US out of any trade deals by finding alternate sources. Or, the President throwing a fit because the Supreme Court stuck down his tariffs as a tax on the people, resulting in him imposing 15% tariffs on global imports to the US. (Note: he actually reduced that to 10% today.) Guess who's going to see a reduction in the items we get from abroad, and an increase in cost of those items we get? Until about 2015, I considered myself a Republican. I didn't agree with every tenet of the Republican Party. But I embraced most of them. But there was something about Donald J. Trump I didn't quite believe. Perhaps it was his TV show. He didn't come across as 'presidential.' Not then, and certainly not now. Color my kids very surprised when I voted Democrat. Lately, I've seen some spine in some of the Republican congressional members. Not as many as I'd like to see. But it gives me hope that the Republican party may still exist. The party as it exists now is a non-starter for me. Frankly, the political future of the US looks rather bleak to me. |
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