The people who host us

 Here we sit in a wonder site at our friends home right on the Catalina mountains. Does it get any better? Sometimes. We have some wonderful friends with wonderful homes, but the real treat is the cooking, and good company. 

Vote for The Tea Party and Hitler comes free

 Don't ever forget, Hitler was elected. Payson is gradually being taken over by the local Nazi faction, you know the guys who go to the fantasy land of Tea Party meetings. The three Stooges, Otto, Bell, and Ferris bathe in the glory of stupidity. Attend a town hall meeting and just listen to these guys bloviate. The best one ever was when Ferris tried to withhold funds from the library because it promoted pornography. These scoundrels would wear Trump mask and shoot people in the back just to bag a terrorist. Nothing appeases the Tea Party in Payson more than a good paranoid fantasy. Otto and his gang ran on the theme the last council was crooked and they would root out the deep state. Once elected they turned over every rock and found nothing. Next, they took the 1% tax the last council instituted, and they promised to remove, and used it to their own glory. Do we want a town run for the benifit of the broke guys living on social security in a run down moble home. If the Tea Party gang is the only group that votes, the I guess you get what you vote for. 

When the Nazis get me

Kadizzle lives in a little MAGA town — a place so deep in the conservative echo chamber it makes our old Republican farm town in North Dakota look like a monastery of honesty. And that’s saying something, because the North Dakota crowd could be crafty and crooked when they wanted to be. But they never perfected the industrial-scale lying and reality-twisting that the Payson Tea Party brigade has turned into an art form.

Payson has its own propaganda mill: KMOG radio, a station that would make Hitler nod in admiration. Their morning ringmaster, Kenny Murphy, presides over the daily ritual — open with a pious prayer, then unleash a flood of grievance, fantasy, and political fairy tales so thick you’d need hip waders to get through it.

Every washed-up politician scraped off the bottom of Trump’s shoe seems to find a microphone at KMOG, eager to retell the gospel of The Big Lie. And our mayor, Steve Otto, happily pays the station to help him spin alternate realities over the airwaves.  The new town manager has already caught on: if you want Tea Party approval in this town, you’d better support the local Ministry of Truth and call it “community outreach.” The town manager has dipped into the town budget to help KMOG along.

Kadizzle has seen it all up close. Years ago, the former local GOP chair, Gary Morris, showed how easily truth can be bent, folded, or tossed aside in a courtroom when party loyalty is on the line. And the mini-MAGA faithful here? They aspire to be just like their idol. They imitate Trump’s swagger, his contempt for facts, and his talent for bulldozing the truth as if it were a sport.

Welcome to Payson — where the hats are red, the lies are loud, and reality is whatever the loudest man on the radio says it is.

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Brother Tom went on to the next game

Remembering Tom

Tom was the second oldest in a family of nine. Kadizzle came in at number seven, which put a good stretch of years between us. I used to joke that Tom was the only one out of nine who never finished college—but he was also the one who built a thriving business from nothing. Mountaineer Excavating rose out of Tom’s stubborn determination and long days servicing the coal mines in the Ohio Valley. Today his son Kevin, armed with an engineering degree, runs the company, shifting its focus to the region’s natural-gas boom. The legacy Tom started keeps rolling on.

Tom’s generosity was legendary. He didn’t just help the community—he helped all of us siblings in ways too many to count. When I was a broke college kid, Tom simply handed me a car. That was just Tom.

I remember the early days when he was driving his own rig, hauling steel and frozen goods across steep mountain terrain. I went along on several trips. One run I’ll never forget—though I somehow managed to sleep through the exciting part.

Tom’s truck lost its brakes barreling down a mountain grade. I was in the sleeper, dead to the world. By the time I woke up, we were gliding into a small town at the bottom. Half asleep, I said, “Tom… that’s a red light, and you’re going right through it.”

Tom, calm as a man ordering a cheeseburger, just said, “I know. I don’t have any brakes.”

That was Tom. Unshakeable. Capable. Quietly steering disaster into something manageable.

The stories about him are endless. I could write pages and still barely scratch the surface. Tom was unique—he played the hand he was dealt and played it well. And it worked.

A mouth full of scripture and a heart full of hate

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The Three Stooges of Sanctimony, Otto, Bell, and Ferris

There they are—the three stooges with mouths full of scripture and hearts full of hate.
Just like Kenny Murphy over at KMOG, they know the choreography by heart:

1. Open with a prayer.

2. Wrap themselves in the Bible.

3. Salute the flag like it’s a magic talisman.

4. Then dive head-first into full-throttle Trump lunacy.

It’s a practiced hypocrisy—smooth, polished, and absolutely shameless. They can quote Corinthians by breakfast and spew conspiracy theories by lunch. Their holy trinity is Fox News, Trumpism, and weaponized ignorance.

Hypocrisy by the Barrel

These folks would deprive kids of a livable future if it meant currying favor with the local Tea Party choir. Kenny, bless his heart, would probably sell his own grandmother into slavery rather than face the reality of what the Republican Party has turned this country into.

Truth, to this crowd, isn’t a value—
it’s an obstacle.

They twist it, bend it, crush it, and when it finally snaps, they plant lies where the truth used to grow. And like weeds, those lies spread. Fast.

God, Guns, and the Grand Delusion

Invoke God?
Check.

Wave the flag?
Check.

Practice a single principle from either?
Absolutely not.

For this crew, the Bible is a prop and the flag is a costume. Christianity becomes a marketing scheme, and patriotism gets shrink-wrapped for radio consumption.

Trump taught them the model:
Greed → grievance → self-promotion → chaos.
They followed like apprentices learning from a master con-artist.

Our Local Disciples of Delusion

Here in our corner of Arizona, they worship at the feet of their chosen saints:
Eli Crane and Wendy Rogers—two of the most enthusiastic torch-bearers for the alternative-reality movement.

Nothing these people say has to be true, it just has to be loud.
Stories matter—
the truth doesn’t.

Give them a conspiracy theory and they’ll swallow it whole.
Give them an honest lecture and they’ll run for the exits.

In the End…

This is what happens when a political movement trades integrity for identity, faith for fury, and country for cult. It becomes a show—loud, angry, and disconnected from reality.

And like all bad shows, it needs three things to stay alive:

• A villain

• A script

• And a cheering section too frightened or too stubborn to admit the obvious

Welcome to the Tea Party gospel,
broadcast daily,
right here in the land that used to be sane.

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I.

Ebike nirvana

 Old Kadizzle was about to go on an ebike ride when he found his ebike would not turn on properly. Hoping to get back with the gang and ride Kadizzle went to the bike shop. In a fit of stupidity Kadizzle bought a new ebike. The new bike is better than peanut butter, more power, and a lot of new features. The specialized Evo 3 has a lot of technology built in, and it is a pleasure to ride. However, it is way more bike than Kadizzle is capable of exploiting all the features. The bike is meant for a crazy person to ride down ski slopes in the summer over rocks and trees, with an occasional jump of ten or fifteen feet. The bike actually measures jumps. The bike cost more than the motorcycle.  As they say you only go around once. 

Now to local politics. Over on The National Association for the Advancement of Humanity blog the subject is the local propaganda station. We need you to call the local Fox News outlet KMOG. Read the blog and find out how you can fight the falsehoods. https://naftaoh.blogspot.com/

Up. Early and trying to find some hope

Kadizzle went nuts and bought himself a new ebike. The old one needs a new on off switch and someone could have an ebike for a bargain price. Our team will once more go on an extensive ebike expedition today.  

Like everyone else Kadizzle is enraged with the Trump Nazis. Please go over to the National Association for the Advancement of Humanity blog and read about our local Christie Noem, that would be Kenny Murphy. If you want to puke listen to him on KMOG support the killings in Minneapolis. https://naftaoh.blogspot.com/

Pretend like you don't see this

 

How did we get here

Title: Welcome to the Dictatorship—Please Mind the Lies

Somehow we woke up and discovered we no longer live in a functioning democracy. Federal agents shot two protestors in Minneapolis, and—surprise, surprise—the government assures us they’ll “investigate themselves.” That’s the sort of accountability you expect in a banana republic, not a constitutional democracy.

Then comes Kristi Noem, sprinting to the nearest camera to declare the protestors “terrorists” without a shred of evidence. Not one fact—just a reflexive lie to serve her strongman.

And, as reliably as thunder follows lightning, Trump—now functioning less like a president and more like an autocratic ruler—echoes her lie. Truth has become irrelevant. Evidence is irrelevant. What matters is loyalty to the Leader.

We’re no longer living under a system of laws or justice. Trump has taken in $1.5 billion through the most brazen scheme of political bribery in American history—pardons for cash, foreign deals funneled through family members, and influence for sale to anyone with a checkbook. And yet his loyalists cheer him on. No president in history has lied so much, so often, or so shamelessly.

Meanwhile the Republican Party—once a real political party—has become a full-time propaganda machine. Thousands of dedicated, ethical public servants have resigned rather than serve this new dictatorship.

This is not normal. This is not freedom. This is not the America we were promised.
It’s time to say it plainly: the dictatorship has already arrived, and it arrived wrapped in a red tie, a Fox News chyron, and a mountain of lies.

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