.Friday Firesmith

friday firesmith – what does trump fear?

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It’s been said that everything Trump says or does has one purpose and one purpose only; it’s a distraction from the Trump-Epstein Files. While running for president, Trump was beating the drums of having those files released, but then, once reelected, it took a full blown revolt of the Republicans for the files to see daylight. Now Trump is saying it’s a hoax, he isn’t in the files at all, and we just need to move on.

Trump was charged with raping a woman, convicted, and his cult didn’t bat an eye. He’s turned Elon Musk loose on sensitive files in the Social Security administration and MAGA didn’t blink twice. He murdered people with air strikes to prevent drug runners from running drugs then pardoned a convicted drug smuggler, invaded Venezuela, and stolen their oil. He has done everything Putin has asked him to do, and his cult salivates at the sound of his voice.

So with the rape, murder, and outright disregard for rule of law and due process, you now have to ask yourself only one question when it comes to Trump: what is in those files that has Trump running scared?

Early on, there was talk of a “pee tape” where Trump was engaged in sex that involved waterworks. Is that video going to be released? Will it be streamed?

Lately, the files had some mention of Trump performing a sex act on “Bubba.” Is that out there? Did Epstein have a library of videos of powerful men doing strange things with other men?

Ghislaine Maxwell is still alive, and of all the people involved with Epstein, Maxwell was the one person who was in deepest. And she has life insurance or most certainly she would be dead by now. What has she hidden away, where is it, and what would be released if she died in prison? We cannot know. But we know the Justice Department took Maxwell out of a real prison and put her into a minimum-security country club for rich felons. Or felons who know where the bodies are buried and has video.

We know Putin and Epstein traded emails and we know Trump was the subject of those emails. We know Trump has taken Russia’s side in the war with Ukraine. We know Putin hasn’t slowed down, not even a little, the Russian War in Ukraine.

But think about the weird and outrageous behavior, even from Trump in the second term. It’s a long stream of bizarre acts of a man who is either losing his mind, or he’s trying to distract everyone from the truth.

The closer midterm elections get, the stranger Trump will be. He knows that if the Democrats sweep the House and the Senate, he’s going to be impeached, tried, convicted, and removed from office. And he’s going to prison.

Prison is the driving force behind everything Trump does. He doesn’t want to go to prison, so he has to find some way to distract everyone all the time.

So, what’s your theory on distraction? What does someone have on Trump, and who is that someone?

And if you had to charge Trump with one thing and nothing else, why would it be treason?

Take Care,

Mike

( picture added by admin, may or may not reflect the views of the above author or 83% of Americans at this current time – But here’s hoping! )

friday firesmith – America is rising

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I was out protesting the second Gulf War. It was incredibly unpopular to do so, because of Weapons of Mass Destruction that Colin Powell assured us that Iraq was on the brink of using against the United States. Colin Powell lied to us.

That war began in 2003, which was 23 years ago. We still have troops there and not a whiff of a Weapon of Mass Destruction has ever been discovered. But what the war proved is that Americans will believe lies told to them without any hard evidence at all, and they will not remember it well enough to hold the liars accountable.

Here we are today, with millions, if not billions, tossed away in Iraq every year, and lies are more common than used diapers in the White House.

Trump’s War on Minnesota has taken a turn for the surreal. He and Pam Bondi, his Attorney General, have declared anyone murdered by ICE to be a domestic terrorist, despite what video evidence has shown. They’ve murdered nurses and school teachers, practically anyone who gets in their way, but suddenly, it’s ICE who is crying foul.

Trump isn’t paying ICE their bonuses. They don’t have the Health Insurance they signed up for. And they’re getting doxed every single day by average Americans who are just plain tired of living in a police state.

America is fighting back.

Last week, dozens of high schools reported students simply walking out to protest ICE snatching children at schools, to lure their parents into surrendering. The students, in most cases, were told if they left the school buildings, they would be punished. Thousands walked out anyway.

The “No Kings Protest” and the “Anti Ice Protests are growing larger each week. Two weeks ago, in Valdosta Georgia, a blood red Republican town, two schools had walk outs and a protest downtown in subfreezing temperatures drew one hundred brave, and chilly souls.

People I have known for years that voted for Trump before they realized what he was, are now joining social action groups. They’re showing up with their children. Things are going to hell and they realize all issues begin at the top.

And this isn’t even mentioning the Epstein Files.

Mostly, there is a core group of activists who believe all things that Trump says and does, no matter how weird or how many people are killed, is an attempt by Trump to push those files away from the light.

The problem, at least for Trump, is those files have been released in countries not run by an Orange Dictator. The names of American politicians and fat cats are going to be brought into the light. The files mention Trump’s name thousands of times. He has every reason to fear those files. He could go to prison forever plus a million years.

Trump had lied, and he has back-stabbed, and he had robbed his followers for years. Now, suddenly, the game is over, and people are angry. Those of us who have opposed him since day one are seeing a wave of new protestors making signs and yelling.

America is rising against the Orange Pedo.

Why are you still worshiping him?

Take Care,

Mike

friday Firesmith – How Jack Daniels saved a marriage

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My friend Steve was a great guy as long as he was sober. When he drank, he kept drinking until he lost control of his memory and his keyboard. The day after he would be apologetic but his wife, Barbara, took most of the damage. Social media was a big problem, and Barbara woke up every morning after one of Steve’s benders and started tracking down what he said and who he said it to.

Then came the day that Barbara packed her stuff, moved out, and took the dog and the kids with her. Steve was freaked out. He came to me for help and I told him to seek help for this drinking binges and before he got the woman back, he would have to prove he was willing to change.

I told him to ditch his online girlfriend or lose his wife. No. Other. Choices.

His online girl was a looker to be certain. Younger, hotter, interesting, and she didn’t exist.

I was surprised. But all of this, this train wreck that one night of hard drinking Steve went through, never really happened.

If a group of women conspire against you, there is no hope of defense. If you’re too drunk to see it coming, you might as well close your eyes and just go along for the ride.

Reba Reynolds never existed.

But she did flirt with Steve while he was drunk and online, and she did look good. But she was a photo of a cute woman no one knew. A complete fabrication of Barbara, her sister, and a couple of friends. First, they were just going to see if Steve would respond to a strange woman. He did. First test failed. Then they wanted to know how far he was willing to go. Second test truly failed. And finally, they wondered if he would agree to meet Reba somewhere privately.

Steve bailed. Even drunk, really and truly drunk, he backed away from the abyss. As they were setting up the date, Steve simply closed out the program, shut the computer off, and passed out on the sofa.

Of course, the next morning he got a message from Reba thanking him for the photos and expressing excitement over them meeting in person.

Barbara moved out that day. Steve was left with his imaginary friend and his drinking habit.

Steve broke up with Reba. Told her he wanted his wife back. He started a fire in his burn barrel and I think the space station could have spotted the bourbon burning.

He went to AA, avoided his friends who drank, and stayed upright and sober. Reba would show up every once in a while, but he blocked her.

One day, years later, when he had been sober for so long he lost track of it, I asked him what happened. One of Barb’s friends had told me, and sworn me to secrecy, but he never asked, never wanted to break the spell of trying to get clean, and just left it where it lay. But he told me he always wondered what a fifth of Jack Daniels looked like when it burned. He put a bunch of wood in the barrel, set a bottle upright, and torched it. As the blue flames finally went out, Steve realized he wasn’t likely to remember that much bourbon any other way but on fire. The wife, the kids, the dog, his home, his job, and life as he knew it shook him, but that one moment of clarity came from watching Jack Daniels burn.

Take Care,

Mike, Day 87.

Friday Firesmith – in memory of curt

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Fire is the way I remember people. It’s a way of feeling warmth again, of seeing light again, and of reminding myself every fire goes out. With everything that is going on these days, it’s hard to take time to stop and look back at loss. There’s so much of it and once you reach a certain age there’s more people missing from your life than those who remain.

Curt was my best friend from the third grade on. He and I stopped speaking back in 2002 when he got involved in serious drugs. We were in our forties at that time, and playing Russian Roulette with chemicals was getting to be dangerous. He pulled a gun on his brother in law, his son disarmed him and they fought him, and a deputy arrived. Curt attacked the deputy and wound up in jail. He called me to bail him out and I wouldn’t. His wife called me and asked me to give her time to serve papers and get rid of the guns.

Someone called me in 2013 to tell me Curt had lung cancer. When I went to see him it was already in the later stages. In January of 2014, Curt died with a cigarette in his hand.

The man was an excellent guitar player. He played twelve string and six string, sang some, but I remember when he was thirteen or fourteen years old he was good. He was good with people, effortlessly, they seemed to know there was some sort of magic surrounding Curt, and I was the one who women came to in order to meet him. We dated sisters at one point when we were roommates, and one night he suggested we switch women and both girls agreed to it. Their mother had a fit. It didn’t stop us, nothing ever could, until Curt got connected with the wrong woman and the wrong drugs.

Curt was a good chess player, taught his oldest son to be even better at chess than he was, or for that matter, even better than me. At one point I was really good, but that second generation Curt raised was awesome. Curt knew how to hunt, fish, and even play golf. But we both started smoking early in life and eventually, that killed him.

I still remember being outside. It was cold as hell, and I had gotten a good fire started. I sent Curt a photo of the fire and a few minutes later his nephew called me. Curt was dead. The funeral was good, inasmuch as one can be, and a lot of people I hadn’t seen in decades arrived to see him off. We buried Curt beside his mother in a small cemetery next to a small church. The road to the church was paved now, and that was a shock to me.

It’s been a dozen years now. His oldest son has a son, and I hope he becomes a guitar player and learns chess. It hurts in a way that I cannot put to words Curt won’t know this kid. And worse, the child will not know Curt.

Let’s take a break this week from what’s going on outside in the world, and remember the people we’ve loved, and lost, but will never forget.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – The death of america (as we know it)

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Trump’s plan to take by force the territory of a NATO country is the third rail of his presidency. As of yet, nothing he’s done seems to shake the MAGA folk from believing the truth that this is a person who has no business running a hot dog stand much less a country.

The invasion of Greenland will end the world as we know it.

If you thought tariffs were a stupid idea, just wait until we’re cut off from buying or selling anything from Europe, or anything that has to pass through Europe to get here.

We’re going to lose every base we have in Europe, including those in Germany we fly wounded troops from Iraq to when needed. How are we going to supply the men and women in uniform without NATO’s help? How are we going to respond quickly if Iran invades Iraq, which they can do now that America is cut off from the Middle East?

If Trump attacks NATO, an organization we helped build and maintain for over seven decades, who will trust us after that?

Putin will have no force on earth to restrain his dream of a Greater Russia. With a NATO blockade of the Suez canal oil coming from the Middle East could be cut off easily, and there is nothing America could do to get it back. Without the bases in Europe, America is an island in the Atlantic with nowhere to land planes.

It gets much worse, and it gets there quickly.

Iran can take Iraq in less than a week setting up a Shia Superstate. China can take Taiwan and become the Pacific Superpower dictating trade and movement of ships without interference from America at war with their former closest friends. Taiwan is the biggest and most important producer of computer chips on earth, and a war with NATO hands them to China.

The Middle East goes hard over to Islamic Extremists, who have long yearned to be rid of American influence. India will be forced to become closer to Russia or China, simply because after attacking NATO, America will lose the trust of everyone on earth.

Go through your house and toss out everything not made in America. Your jeans, appliances, your car, your dishes, your flooring, your computers, and you’re going to find that Trump doesn’t produce anything but conflict and strife.

We cannot wake up one day, elect a leader who is both sane and knowledgeable, and hope the world as a whole trusts us again.

Unless we rise up against the end of America as we know it, and we do it soon, everything we have ever known will simply wither and disappear, leaving us with nothing but memories if the way things once were, and landfills full of red hats.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – the invasion of greenland

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(trigger warning for those overly sensitive readers ~ admin)

If you aren’t paying attention to why Greenland is suddenly becoming a hot topic, let me remind you of a few things.

First, reading is a habit I picked up about age four. It was, and still is, the most important method of retaining information the human brain that has ever been created. Video information doesn’t have the impact of reading as far as information retention is concerned, and if you have a camera and half a brain you can make a video.

Second, Greenland is the cork in the bottle, the stopper that seals Europe’s northwestern borders from Russian aggression. We, the Unites States, help operate, maintain, and use extensively, the passive sonar systems that cover vast stretches of icy ocean waters in that part of the world. We, the United States and NATO, keep the Russian submarine fleet under near constant surveillance and we know where nearly every Russian missile submarine is at all times.

Russian missile submarines carry nuclear warheads that target American cities and military installations.

We, the Unites States of America, are one stupid decision by an aging and slightly coherent orange painted elderly narcissistic felon away from losing this protection from the Russians, forever.

If you are stupid enough to think we shouldn’t try to defend against nuclear weapons that are targeting our nation simply stop reading this right now, because you are not intelligent enough to understand the threat. If your loyalty to a president is greater than your love of America, and you are fine with a nuclear arsenal aimed at your children, then leave now.

We can’t get that system of protection back once we lose it. The moment we declare war on Greenland we lose the faith and trust of our NATO allies. We can’t elect anyone who will be able to go to Europe and tell them it was all a mistake, and the Good America is back.

Europe will respond to all things American as an existential threat, as well they should. All trade treaties and immigration will halt.

Every military installation in Europe will be seized, or worse, will surrender to European forces.

If you think the American military will blindly allow American security in the northern Atlantic to be totally destroyed by the whims of a man who wears a diaper and cannot speak coherently on his best days, you are deluded.

We, the United States of America, have voted into office the one person on this planet that could create the conditions for a military coup.

Men who have spent their entire lives hand in hand with our European Allies to protect this nation are not going to sit idle while the best military alliance in human history is destroyed. They shouldn’t. They should do what they have to do to keep this nation safe, as our military has always done.

You want to know who I trust? I trust the collective of humanity who believes that the unity of free nations is more important than the personal ambitions of two elderly white men who are going to be tried for crimes as soon as they leave office.

If you do not believe this, if the wall falls down, and we discover that isolationism is suicide, I hope your bunker is deep enough to stop a nuke. I hope it’s deep enough to be the final resting place for Democracy, and the dream that the Constitution offered humankind as a guide of governance.  Across the world, people are holding their breath, waiting, wondering, and asking, “Where are the Americans?”

Where are we?

Take Care,

Mike

(admin note – Damn, son!)

photo credit – via

friday firesmith – half naked small cokes

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Before soft drinks were mass marketed, no one drank one every day and certainly didn’t drink more than one. The six and a half ounce original size was enough for everyone involved.

The photo below is what is considered small today, and there is no end in sight.

A lot of advertising goes into selling soft drinks, and anyone who wants to make a lot of money will have ads on social media. And here we go. Two activities drive social media use. The first is the need to interact with other people on more manageable terms. The second is habit.

The size of soft drinks went up and up because the companies selling the product made large sizes cheaper per ounce so people naturally spend more to get more. Getting a sixteen ounce cheaper than a twelve, and a twenty ounce cheaper than a sixteen ounce drove sizes larger.

Social Media is the same. But instead of money, it is the time you spend on social media that determines how much dopamine you get.

Oh, look, the rabbit hole, it got deeper.

AI, other than being responsible for some truly wretched writing, has slipped into the first part of the equation. People who are trying to manage their ability or lack of ability on social media, can now get an AI “companion” to hang out with or to talk dirty to, instead of finding a human. Those ads that target my demographic think I want a  companions with great dental work, implants, and who wear as little as possible and still be shown on social media. Some of them look perfectly human, but humans are not prefect but that’s another subject.

AI is not a singularity but rather a collective. Irrespective of intent, AI delivers what the instructions ask for.

Just like the people who began drinking soft drinks because of marketing, the size of the product in AI companions will grow bigger. Not in bottle size, like soft drinks did, but in time, the currency of social media.

Don’t believe me? How many times a day do you pick up your phone?

Let’s step back to the AI companion for a moment. These programs are designed to keep the person behind the keyboard behind the keyboard, in a word, time. The more time the human spends with the AI companion the more normal it becomes. The small coke was 6.5 ounces and now you can get a 32 ounce, designed to be one serving, at any convenience store.

Soft drinks have both sugar and salt, and humans have gotten accustomed to have a lot of both in their diets. It’s taken a while, but now people realize it’s not a good thing, and so subspecies of soft drinks have arisen with less of either, but we don’t know what chemicals replaced the addictive ones.

Subtly, soft drinks went from being a rare treat to a multi-billion dollar industry. The effects of this much mental and emotional junk food being released on a population has never been fully understood or measured.

We do not know, and cannot know, how AI companions will shape how multiple generations of companion users will manage interactions with humans.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Normal

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When I read Tara Westover’s memoir, “Educated,” she brought up a point most people wouldn’t get because they never thought about it. I missed it. And once Westover pointed the obvious out, it seemed like a neon sign, but that’s the nature of people, especially those who are raised in small towns. Normal is what you grow up with and see every day. That doesn’t mean it’s normal outside that context. In fact, it might not be anywhere near normal.

Westover’s father was a lunatic on the order of magnitude. More than once he told his family not to use seatbelts while he was driving, and drove through blizzards at sixty miles an hour because God was looking out after him and his family. God wasn’t. Mr. Westover wrecked his van more than once, injuring his wife and children. He barely survived an accident involving a gasoline explosion, and so did his oldest son. But to Tara Westover, who grew up in this environment, isolated from the rest of the world, this was normal.

I awoke a couple of hours ago, about two in the morning, and couldn’t remember the name of the pizza place in my hometown.

Pizza Hut experimented with have a franchise in Blakely Georgia, but it closed sooner than later. Blakely is one of those towns that is on the brink of becoming bigger and always will be. It keeps spreading away from the center of town, as most small towns do, but it’s like a condiment on a butter knife trying to cover an entire bun. There’s only so much.

People in small towns yearn for change as long as everything stays the same. No one ages, no one dies and no one is unhappy, until someone old dies, unhappily. But replacements are a dime a dozen, and the process begins anew with each death, only the names change.

But I can’t remember the name of the original pizza place.

So on occasion, my father would send me to go get pizza. He could give me money and I would walk the mile or so to the pizza place, whose name is gone forever now. I never stopped to think it was odd he sent me out on foot to get food, but it was never warm when I got back. No sidewalks or anything like that, and I wonder if people saw me walking with a pizza. We could have called it in, a minute or so both ways in a car, and then the pizza would still be hot. Of course, I ate it anyway because it never occurred to me things could be different.

The house that belongs to my father was always his house. I was a tenant, off and on, until I bought my first house, yet the house I bought was my first home, the first place I ever felt like I belonged. My father’s house was a prison when I was in school, and later, it was a symbol of my failure to launch, but never home. Never.

I’ve lived in the house in the woods now for nearly twenty-five years. Six dogs and a cat found their final resting place here. The nearest pizza place is eight miles away. The memories of my hometown pale a bit more every year, and Google Maps show me an alien and unwelcoming town where I was a stranger when I lived there, and I always will be.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Home for Christmas

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Back when I was in the Army I ran into men who had never left their hometown before. I found that odd, but then again, there I was in Fort Stewart Georgia and I was from Georgia. But a guy we called Buddy, his last name was Eastern European and had about a gazillion letters in it. We called him Buddy. It was a lot simpler.

Buddy lived in the north part of Minnesota, grew up on a farm, was a large man but seemed to shrink sometimes, when he was sitting around with us, playing Risk and drinking. He would sit on the floor, his back to the wall, and he seemed to almost disappear in his silence.

Christmas rolled around, his first Christmas in uniform, and he couldn’t get a flight into anywhere close to where he lived. The whiteout conditions sealed him out of his home state, and away from his family. Buddy started drinking early in the morning on a Monday, Christmas Eve day, and most of the guys who were going home were already gone. I was leaving Christmas day, and could leave early and be there by lunch. I asked Buddy to come with me and he shook his head.

            “That would make it worse, I think,” he said, and fell deeper into silence. We drank, played Risk, and the guys who had been in for years had gotten used to the routine of not going home, and some of them didn’t want to for one reason, or a lot of reasons.

            Buddy was a quiet man who read frequently, drank on an  irregular basis, and by and large seemed neither happy nor unhappy about being in the military. When he called home from the payphone in front of the barracks he would spend an hour or so talking to his folks, or his sister, or grandparents, and this made him happy. His father sent him a photo of a new tractor and he passed the picture around like it was the first photo of a new baby.

            As the night grew thinner, most of the guys wandered off, and the winner of the game, it wasn’t me, I remember that much, declared himself ruler of the known world, but somehow Buddy had disappeared.

            I went back to my hometown, stayed a day or so, then returned. Buddy and I had breakfast together and he seemed more alive. Buddy had met a woman. Instead of going to his room and passing out, Buddy had left Christmas Eve and started walking. He walked all the way to the edge of the base, and then he kept going, until he hit an all night restaurant. He got something to eat and the waitress sat down at the table with him and they talked for the rest of the night. She had married a guy in service, divorced him because of drinking, and wound up sticking around Fort Stewart. Buddy walked to the restaurant two or threes times a week, and finally, she picked him up after work one day, and took Buddy home with her.

            They got married after I left service, and I found out when I dropped in for a visit six months after I got out. Buddy was with his woman and he rarely hung out with the guys anymore. He still had three years left on his contract, but he had shown the guys a photo from his father, where they were building a house near the one where Buddy grew up. However many Christmas days he missed being in uniform, he had found love in an odd way, and in the end, Buddy was home for Christmas not because of where he was, but who he was with.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – a “BAH HUMBUG!!!”

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A week before Christmas and I rather chew glass soaked in rubbing alcohol than hear one more Christmas song. This close to zero hour and shoppers have become predatory and feral. Going into any grocery store at this point requires a spotter with a scope, air strikes on call, and body armor. I’m thinking of taking a shopping cart and going full on Mad Max and putting spinning razors on the front with a flame thrower.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I’ve always hated Christmas. Even as a little kid I knew there was no Santa Claus. I also knew Christmas was a time America, as a culture, reaffirmed the idea that poor people were somehow to blame for their lot in life.

Santa brings toys to good little girls and boys.

Poor children don’t get as much, or anything at Christmas.

Ergo, poor children are bad.

American Christmas is a competition to see how much your kids mean to you, and most people aren’t even aware this is happening. Yet ask kids what they do the day after Christmas and they’ll tell you they’re comparing what they got versus what other kids hauled in. Worse, the overabundance of gifts makes for overstimulation, which leads to a let down when the buzz dies. By New Year’s, the people buying presents are ready to go on a bender. The people who got the presents feel oddly hollow.

In the meantime, every scrap of wrapping paper, all the plastic packaging, all the Christmas trees that haven’t already burned a house down, and all the food no one ate will be thrown away. The trashcans lining the road will be filled to overflowing. All of those trashcans all across America are a symbol of waste, not wealth. They are a symbol of bribery, not love. They are a sign of a civilization based on consumption, not care.

Retail stores can count on between 20 to 25% of their yearly sales to come from Christmas. With all the waste, I wonder what would happen if we simply stopped buying Christmas presents? Would we discover we do not need so many shopping malls and giant stores? Would we have more room in our homes? Would we spend time with our families instead of buying them off once a year?

What if after Thanksgiving, we put a 20% sales tax on gifts just to calm people the f*ck down and stop the madness?

Sunday, I’ll build a fire to coax the sun into returning to warm the Earth again. That’s all the celebrating I will do. I might have a friend or two over, and we’ll sit and stare at the coals, and talk about the things we remember.

On the 25th, we will feel a bit sad that Christmas isn’t what it once was, but it never was, and in some odd way, we know it. It will be a week or maybe longer before the trash is picked up, and in the end, the mountain of trash will be the most permanent reminded of Christmas 2025.

Take Care,

Mike