Sunshine is ending

 Soaking up a little sunshine as the day gets cloudy. Morning entertainment is battling the Hoopleheads. The level of hypocrisy among the unwashed is amazing. In Payson we have the three Stooges, Charlie Bell, Jim Ferris, and mayor Steve Otto. Little Trumpers they play the same game of lying and deceit their pappy does. Kadizzle was blown away watching Bell and Otto praise the library. Maybe they forgot Stooge number three Jim Ferris wanted to defund the library because it promoted pornography. Ordinary people can see right through the Stooges, and Trump, but the special Tea Party glasses show a hero when you look at a worthless lickspittle playing you for a fool. 

One percent own as much as 90 percent.

 

---

Reading The New York Times today, Kadizzle wasn’t surprised—but he should have been. One percent of Americans now hold as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined. That’s not a functioning democracy. That’s an aristocracy.

We like to pretend we still live in a land of opportunity, but the numbers tell a different story. In today’s America, having ten million dollars doesn’t make you rich—it barely gets you through the front gate. The real power sits far above that level, in a class so wealthy it writes the rules the rest of us live by.

And the political system? It follows the money. It always has. The people in power are tied to the same interests that benefit from this imbalance, and they have little incentive to change it.

Meanwhile, behavior that would destroy anyone else barely makes a dent at the top. Scandals come and go, headlines flare up and fade out, and nothing fundamental changes. Wealth shields power, and power protects wealth. It’s a closed loop.

So what do we do? Mostly, we look away. We normalize it. We cruise along as if this is just how things are supposed to be.

But it’s not normal. It’s not sustainable. And the longer we pretend otherwise, the harder the reckoning will be.

Wi Fi at 35,000 ft.

At last American Airlines has free wifi up in the skyfi. Here the Kadizzles sit on some kind of Airbus headed to Phoenix blasting away at the Hoopleheads. It makes a flight go quicker. Another bonus are the Airpods Kadizzle bought. They are excellent at noise suppression. 

Well tonight Trump will do his best to start World War Three. Who could possibly still support that worthless con man?  

Can we ever clean up the Trump mess?

The damage done during the era of Donald Trump isn’t the kind you fix with a policy memo or a change in leadership. It’s deeper than that. It’s structural, cultural, and psychological. It’s the kind of damage that lingers long after the headlines fade and the slogans stop echoing.

Some consequences hit fast. Gas prices, for example, can spike overnight and grab everyone’s attention. But the more dangerous effects are slower, quieter, and far more persistent. Inflation doesn’t announce itself with a bang—it seeps in. It erodes savings, shrinks purchasing power, and quietly locks younger generations out of homeownership. It’s not just that things cost more; it’s that the future becomes less attainable.

And then there’s the environmental toll. Policies that roll back protections don’t just disappear when administrations change. The air doesn’t clean itself overnight. Pollution accumulates. Climate patterns destabilize. Fires grow larger, storms grow stronger, and what used to be called “unusual” becomes routine. The cost of neglect shows up not just in dollars, but in the quality of the air we breathe and the safety of the places we live.

But perhaps the most lasting damage isn’t economic or environmental—it’s cognitive. Reality itself has taken a hit. A significant portion of the country now operates in an alternate version of truth, one shaped more by loyalty than by facts. In that world, contradictions don’t matter, evidence is optional, and belief outweighs reality. The merging of political identity with religious fervor has created something powerful and deeply resistant to correction. When a political figure and a religious figure become interchangeable in the minds of followers, debate becomes nearly impossible.

This distortion has consequences. It fractures communities, erodes trust in institutions, and makes cooperation feel like betrayal. It turns disagreement into hostility and replaces dialogue with slogans. Once that kind of thinking takes hold, it doesn’t simply vanish with a change in leadership—it persists, spreads, and hardens.

History shows that institutions can be repaired. Economies can recover. Even environmental damage, to some extent, can be mitigated. But rebuilding a shared sense of reality—that’s the hardest task of all. It requires time, education, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.

The cleanup isn’t just about policy. It’s about restoring trust, reestablishing facts, and reconnecting people to a common understanding of the world. And that kind of repair doesn’t happen quickly. It takes years—maybe longer.

Because when reality itself has been bent, straightening it back out is no small job.

What does if feel like to be Stupid?

I got up this morning wondering what does it feel like to be stupid. I put on a MAGA hat, pasted a Trump sticker on a jacked up pickup truck, and then realized I was missing something, it was a huge American flag flying from the back of my truck. I felt like and idiot, but I knew how to make it worse. The Tea Party was the answer. I went to a Tea Party meeting and listened to Fox News conspiracy theories repeated. In a room full of redneck Hoopleheads I felt at home as an idiot. Right away I noticed no one was allowed to speak unless they agreed with Trump and the lies he told.  It hit me I was missing something, a gun.  If you want to be part of the network of idiots, you need a gun, concealed or carried in the open.  With my new look I took off to the grocery store. It worked, people looked at me and treated me as an idiot. All I needed to do now was join the Republican Party. 
 

Strange Twist on Trump

 

Trump: The Accidental Salesman for Renewable Energy

History has a strange sense of humor. Sometimes the very people who try to drag the world backward end up pushing it forward.

Take Donald Trump.

Between the chaos, the chest-thumping, and the ever-present threat of conflict, Trump may be doing something he never intended—accelerating the world’s shift to renewable energy.

War has always been about control. Control of land. Control of people. But most importantly—control of energy. Oil pipelines, shipping routes, gas supplies. These are the real chess pieces behind the headlines. And when a leader behaves unpredictably, when conflict becomes a daily possibility, the rest of the world starts asking a simple question:

Why are we still dependent on anything that can be taken away?

That’s where the irony kicks in.

You can’t embargo sunlight.
You can’t sanction the wind.
You can’t bomb a solar panel into submission across the entire planet.

Countries are beginning to understand that energy independence doesn’t just mean drilling more oil—it means eliminating vulnerability altogether. And nothing does that better than renewables.

Solar panels don’t care who the dictator is this week. Wind turbines don’t stop spinning because someone decided to flex military muscle. Renewable energy doesn’t answer to strongmen, oligarchs, or unstable governments.

And when global tensions rise, the math changes fast.

Every missile launched, every threat made, every supply chain disrupted—it all sends a signal to the rest of the world: Get off the grid that can be controlled.

Europe has already felt it. Parts of Asia are moving faster. Even countries that once dragged their feet are now sprinting toward solar fields and wind farms—not because they suddenly became environmental idealists, but because they became realists.

Energy security is national security.

That’s the part no one talks about enough.

Trump may rail against green energy. He may mock it, dismiss it, or try to prop up the fossil fuel past. But the instability that follows him is quietly making the case for renewables stronger than any climate activist ever could.

Because fear is a powerful motivator.

And nothing drives change faster than the realization that your entire economy can be held hostage by someone else’s decisions.

In the end, this may be Trump’s unintended legacy—not the slogans, not the rallies, not the bluster.

But a world that looked at the chaos and decided:

We’re done being dependent.

The sun rises every day.
The wind keeps blowing.

And no dictator can turn either one off.

Here we sit

Wild grandchildren are fun. Granny and Granpa are in New York with Evie and Quinn. Constant excitement. Quinn constantly shooting Grandpa with his foam darts. Evie dances, and fights with Quinn. Cold is a new thing for two old North Dakota people. It has been so long since we have been cold. Yesterday we helped build the new enclosed raised garden which will be the source of vegetables this summer.  

 Trump has now grifted almost 4 billion dollars with his bribery schemes, and other crooked kickback deals. Trump has set back green energy by years, and now started a war to divert people from his sex crimes. No matter how much he lies or steals, or violates the constitution his cult will not abandon him. Trump's downfall will be gasoline prices. The cult reads little and gets all the cult news from Fox News, but the cult members cannot ignore the news at the gas pump. 

Sylvie is headed to New York

Stop right here. Kadizzle is going to make an extensive brag about his wonderful granddaughter. If this is not your cup of tea, go sit on the toilet and read something interesting. Sylvie is amazing. Erin is her helicopter mom. Sylvie goes to the Denver School for the Arts. Her acting career has been notable since she was ten. Sylvie has had major parts in many plays. Recently she got a scholarship and will need many more for college. She is a straight A student taking college courses. Soon she will travel to Scotland to participate in an acting extravaganza. On weekends Sylvie dresses as various Disney characters and is the star of children's birthdays.  Add to all that she is a good athlete, and artist. Grandpa loves that little girl that is now almost six feet tall.