Barefoot, Pregnant, and in the Kitchen Redux

[Hold on, we'll get there.]

There is simply too much going on in the world of politics to mention it all here:

-Elon Musk continues to take his chainsaw to the federal budget and work force under the guise of rooting out “fraud, waste, and corruption”.

-Last week Elon sent an email from a non-secure personal server to federal workers demanding the report five things the accomplished in the previous week. Failure to do so would be understood as your resignation.

-The House of Representatives (which now apparently only represents the 1%) passed a budget along party lines that includes steep cuts in Medicaid (even though they promised they wouldn’t touch it!), the continuation of a $4.5 trillion tax cut for the 1%, and a $2 trillion deficit. 

CAPTAIN'S NOTE: The Senate may still save us.

-The Medicaid cuts, they claim, were due to “fraud, waste, and corruption”.

-We will hear more of the “fraud, waste, and corruption” mantra in the days and weeks ahead.

-President Trumpf floated the idea of an immigration visa that would guarantee the path to citizenship; this “Gold Card” would cost $5 million. Details were skimpy, but I know South American Cartel members who would readily pay that to get an American citizenship! 

-The Stock Market is dropping, consumer confidence is dropping, unemployment is rising, and experts warn we are headed for a terrible recession.

But that is not what has your Captain in a turmoil right now.

An article written by Amanda Marcotte for Salon appeared today on the internet warning of the Republican move to remove rights from women.

Don’t say it can’t happen.

Don’t say it can’t happen here.

We’ve already seen enough in the last month to know that it can and will.

Marcotte reported this movement began with the anti-abortion movement.

“Right to Life”, they claimed.

They encouraged women to get involved since, naturally, giving birth is largely still a female thing. A woman’s voice would carry more weight in the fight against abortion.

But now that Roe v Wade has been repealed and states are passing draconian laws forcing women to carry every fertilized egg to term, the Right has turned against these women in leadership.

One such target is Kristan Hawkins, the 39-year-old head of a "student" anti-abortion group. They want her gone.

One reason: while she holds the proper anti-abortion credentials, she objected to Republican legislators introducing bills to charge women who get abortions with murder.

But mostly, she's a woman.

Christian Nationalist pastor Joel Webbon, who supported misogynist Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, declared, “We need Christian men leading the fight against abortion.”

Webbon also argued that giving women the right to vote was a mistake.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: This strikes an odd tone, since 45% of female voters inexplicably voted for Trumpf in 2024.

Apparently for people like Webbon, having a dominant female in the household is emasculating to Republican men.

They want their women to submit.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: This idea of submission is one the Captain threw out long ago when presiding over wedding ceremonies. I make it clear the two parties involved come together as equals. This became vividly clear several years ago as we watched some friends get married in a church of another denomination. In the ceremony, the bride vowed “to honor and obey” while the groom vowed merely “to love and to cherish”.

Nope!

Uh-uh!

No way, no how!

Webbon went on to liken women to children. “Well our society doesn’t let five-year-olds vote.”

He says that a woman is like a child and “God has appointed men to protect them.”

There is a growing movement among Christian Nationalists to repeal the 19^th Amendment, and to support a “household vote” system in which men vote on behalf of their families.

That's another idea floated by Pete Hegseth.

CAPTAIN'S NOTE: Who the hell appoints a Fox News reader to be Secretary of Defense anyway!?!  

Oh. Right.

House Republicans recently passed a bill (which didn’t make it through the Senate) requiring citizens to have a passport or a "birth certificate matching their name" to vote.

This, my friends, is a two-prong attack.

It was likely intended to harass trans voters who have changed their names.

But it also impacts women who took on their husband’s last name in marriage.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: And statistically, Republican women are less likely to have a passport in the first place.

Vice President JD Vance, among others of his ilk, also think it is too easy to obtain a divorce. He wants to make it more difficult for women (predominantly) to leave their husbands.

Even when she is being abused.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Not surprising, Red States have a higher divorce rate than Blue States.

To quote Marcotte’s article,

“Feminist writer Moira Donegan wrote on Bluesky that the right-wing woman ‘believes that sexual and reproductive service to right wing men will earn her their protection, affection, and material support. She is wrong.’ Instead, Donegan wrote, ‘it is a core belief of the right-wing man that no woman, however compliant, has any claim on him that he must respect.’"

 To cap it off, last week a Republican representative in Florida was accused of beating his 27-year-old girlfriend (who is not his wife). She called the police, had bruises to show. Later, the fearful woman changed her story. In fact, through the phone the police heard the representative in the background telling the woman to change her story.

The U.S. Attorney in Florida did not sign an arrest warrant for the representative, the normal procedure for when a member of Congress is involved.

Why?

Because the Rep's vote was needed to pass the Republican budget!

And because of the growing malaise about the value of women. 

It's like they read "The Handmaid's Tale" as a "How-To" guide!

The Captain would declare this a warning to the women of the United States.

But as mentioned above, 45% of female voters voted for Trumpf.

Yes, despite being an adjudicated rapist and his hot-mic comment about “grabbing them by the p*ssy!”

We are in a world of hurt.

 

 

Hard at Work

Mates, just in case you turned off your televisions this weekend, let me give you an update of where we are right now.

Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) - which doesn't really exist, according to the current Department of Justice - has disrupted pretty much every corner of the federal government. 

The declared purpose of this not-elected, not-legislated, and not-vetted department is to find $2 trillion in wasteful spending. Musk is described as merely a "senior advisor". 

Nonetheless, his team of computer programmers barely old enough to shave have accessed personal information from FDA, USDA, FAA, DOE, and the National Parks Service, just to name a few. 

They have illegally offered buyouts, have placed thousands of federal employees on leave, and have terminated thousands as well - some of whom actually took the buyout offer but later received a termination notice! 

They reportedly even fired the people who safe-guard our nuclear weapons, not knowing that is what they do. 

Then they had to scramble to hire them all back!

CAPTAIN'S NOTE: The salaries of all federal employees combined makes up less than 5% of the federal budget. 

They are looking at cuts to Social Security and Medicare now, even though every politician ever has promised to keep their hands off the Trust Fund.

And now they have their eyes set on "inventorying" the gold deposit at Fort Knox!

They are justifying this with a lie, that some of the gold has been stolen. No proof. They just made it up. 

A senator gave credence to the claim, saying he has asked to see the gold and has been repeatedly denied.

Like Schrödinger's Cat - the gold is in the vault and the gold has been stolen. We won't know which is true until Musk can get to it.

And then we can be pretty sure it will be stolen.

None of this was supposed to be in the prescribed duties of DOGE. 

And yet no one is stopping them.

With his unbridled power, Musk has called for the producers of CBS' "60 Minutes" to be imprisoned for reporting on his alleged illegal raids of USAID, and the Associated Press has been banned from the White House Press Corps because they refuse to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as "Gulf of America".

Which lead to hilarity...

Yet, when Vice President Vance made stupid remarks in Germany this past week, he insisted on his First Amendment right to free speech.

Funny how that works.

As for the price of eggs, it continues to soar, despite Trumpf's promise of lowering prices "first day in office". 

Charlie Kirk, a Trumpf mouthpiece, wrote an op-ed for Newsweek telling us we should stop worrying about the price of eggs. 

Naturally, he blames President Biden for the rise in the price of eggs.

"What [Trumpf] is doing right now is saving us millions of dollars!" 

"Putting more money in your pockets!"  

Which is all fine and good, if it were true. 

 

I mean, just how are all those laid-off federal workers going to afford anything without a job? 

So political action groups combined to buy a large ad in the Washington Post calling for the firing of Elon Musk. 

The Jeff Bezos-owned WaPo refused to run the ad.

Another case of Free Speech, I guess.

Since WaPo won't run the ad, here it is for your viewing pleasure:

CAPTAIN'S NOTE: The face is crossed out due to the policy of Banana Winds to not display the image of criminals.

CAPTAIN'S NOTE 2: While not yet convicted, what Musk is doing to our government right now IS criminal!

Meanwhile, "Nero fiddled while Rome burned."

A website has been created to track how often Trumpf is on one of his golf courses. 

In his first four years as president he was on the golf course an average of once every 5.6 days, despite telling us he would be so busy being president he wouldn't have time for a vacation.

Here's the current situation:

Every time the president goes golfing, it costs U.S. taxpayers approximately $3 milllion.

Then there was his taxpayer-paid trip to the Super Bowl, which was estimated to cost $15-20 million dollars, and his trip to the Daytona 500 to joyride around the track in the presidential limousine (another $5 million+).

CAPTAIN'S NOTE: Air Force One costs approximately $2,964 per minute to operate.

If Musk was serious about cutting government waste, he should look first at the Oval Office.

Writers like Jay Kuo remind us to take a deep breath... that it is still early... it takes time for lawsuits to be filed to reign in some of this madness. 

In reality, all it should take is for the Republicans in Congress to grow a backbone and defend the Constitution, the rule of law, and their own responsibilities to legislate.

But, alas, that is not happening.

The lot of them will be remembered for this at the mid-terms.

If we are allowed to ever vote again. 

Bamboo.

Bamboo.

Yer Captain has learned a little bit about bamboo in recent years. 

A couple years ago a friend posted a plea for help eradicating the bamboo forest that had invaded her yard. 

A previous owner thought it would be unique - "exotic" - to plant little bamboo sprouts in her garden.

Several years later, a forest of bamboo had taken over her yard.

It crept into neighboring yards as well.

The Captain was happy to oblige with the removal of the stalks, some reaching 40 feet high.

"Capt. Dave's Bar" was constructed with some of it.

But simply cutting down the stalks did not solve the problem.

You see, bamboo spreads and grows through an underground root system that can reach to several feet long.

New sprouts pop up along the length of the root.

That's one reason it is called an invasive species.

The only way to eradicate it is to dig up and remove the entire length of the roots, an ugly and back-breaking but necessary process. 

Transition to modern day politics.

This is what we are up against in America today. 

Not one man.

He is just a front-man. A face. 

He's that bamboo stalk.

He likes to talk. Bluster. 

A cascade of run-on sentences, incomplete sentences, incoherent thoughts.

But people listen.

Even though he never makes sense.

He is a buffoon.

The people surrounding him are like the bamboo root system, enabling him, urging him skyward.

Meanwhile, they are laughing at him behind his back. 

He is being used to spread their agenda and he doesn't even know it.

His ego is being stroked, and that's all that matters to him.

Like that kid in 3rd grade you made eat a worm. 

He thought if he did it he would become one of the cool kids too. 

The cool kids just made fun of him even more. 

In this case, "the cool kids" are the dictators of other countries that he emulates.

They have power. Absolute power.

They throw people out of high-rise windows and the press reports it as an accident.

He wants to be like them.  

He is not.

He never will be.

If he were to be removed from office, another would take his place.

The rich will still get richer, the powerful will grab even more power.

And the rest of us will stand helplessly by and watch it happen.

Simply removing him will not solve our problem.

No, we have to remove every single one of them, roots and all.

From the spineless lap-dog Speaker of the House who has given over his Constitutional Legislative responsibility to the Executive branch to the bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court Justices who have surrendered also the Judicial branch of government; from the Senators who kiss his butt even though they are "concerned" but go along with his every whim anyway to the Representatives who join him in his desire to burn the nation to the ground; and let's not forget the grotesquely rich who have funded all this and who benefit the most.

They all have to go!

Every last one of them!

Roots and all! 

But we have to do the work. 

The hot, hard, back-breaking work of cutting down the stalks AND removing the roots.

And we must start now, before it is too late.

Following World War II - in which the greatest nations in the world combined their will and their forces to combat a madman bent on the destruction of Europe - high-ranking Nazis were hauled before an International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg for their part in the rise of Adolf Hitler and the atrocities that followed. 

"Just following orders" was not a legitimate excuse.

"Party before country" will not be accepted this time either.

If we, the people, do not act now to remove not just this person but the entire invasive species growing and spreading beneath our feet in front of our very eyes, history will not speak kindly of the once-great United States of America.

You have been warned!

 

 

About DEI

This post will be brief… because it’s really not that complicated.

Since the peaceful transition of power in January, the new administration in Washington has undertaken a massive effort to kill DEI initiatives in the federal government, in businesses, in colleges and universities.

Just about everywhere.

Captain’s Note: DEI means “diversity, equity, and inclusion”. In short, DEI is an initiative designed to encourage employers to look beyond straight, white, Christian males to flesh out their workforce.

Yes, the Republican Party, which has always claimed to be Pro-Business – in much the same way they once claimed to be “the Party of Law and Order” – is now demanding businesses bow in fearful allegiance to the president’s whims.

And sadly, many are caving in to his demands.

Almost too readily.

It’s pitiful to watch, really.

It almost makes the Captain think there are a lot of closet racists in America.

But surely not.

I mean, it’s 2025.

We’re more than 60 years removed from the signing of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, and national origin in public accommodations, employment, and other areas of life.

Haven’t we moved beyond all that by now?

Apparently not.

In the president’s narrow worldview, there couldn’t possibly be persons of color who are smarter or more qualified to take so many high-paying corporate jobs.

His argument is that employers are being forced to choose less-qualified candidates in order to fulfill DEI quotas.

Therefore, obviously, white men are being discriminated against.

One speaker at the president’s inauguration dared quoted Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, wherein the great civil rights activist dreamed of a world where his children would be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Twisting Dr. King’s words, the MAGA world is claiming that because of DEI initiatives, white men are being judged unfairly due to the color of their skin.

In fact, now THEY talk about color-blindness – as in, “It’s okay to hire all white men because we’re not supposed to notice there are people of color in the room.”

Color-blindness.

After the recent air tragedy in Washington DC, the president whipped his followers into a frenzy, blaming the collision on DEI hiring during the Biden administration.

The best people were not in the tower.

Captain’s Note: As far as I have heard, neither the air traffic controller nor the pilots of the airplane and helicopter were people of color.

It was also not because a shortage of air traffic controllers which left one individual to handle the jobs of two.

Or because the president had already fired key individuals in the FAA.

The vice-president, an unqualified individual himself – who has his job only because he is a white male backed by other white men with big money – claims that over the past 10 years there have been hundreds of headlines of white men seeking ATC jobs who were turned down due to the color of their skin.

That is an outright lie, but then, this is what we’ve come to expect from this nascent and inexperienced puppet administration.

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) brought it home after a recent round of interviews with potential Cabinet picks, a lot widely noted for its lack of qualifications, asking what qualifications did they have other than the color of their skin?

A valid question, Senator!

Now mates, admittedly there is little this ol’ Captain can do to stop what’s going on in Washington right now.

Dammit!

But here’s a hopeful word: the Captain – and his church – are not at all beholden to the government to do its bidding.

Yep, he can’t fire me!

As followers of Jesus Christ, we serve a higher authority – who gave us an example through his words and actions for how we should comport ourselves during this life: caring for one another, caring for the stranger among us, caring even for our enemies.

Captain’s Note: Yer Captain is still working on that last one.

Therefore, rest assured that if you sail with the Captain, I commit to you – as best I am able – to continue to work for diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of life, community, and government.

And, like Dr. King, I truly dream of a day when people are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character – which the current administration sorely lacks.