N is for Normalcy over Negativity

Posted on April 16, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

NormalcyNegativity
Business as usual
Typical
Expected
Standard		Criticism
Gloom
Lying
Complaining  

You know at this point I don’t ever think we will get back to “normal” here in the United States. Too many things have been changed by this administration to ever put back into place. It may, however, give us the opportunity to create a new “normal,” one that has truth, decency, compassion, innovation, gentility, love at its core.

First we have to get rid of the negativity and hate that is being spewed on a daily basis from that guy. The way he talks to the reporters he doesn’t like, especially the women, should absolutely have people in more of an uproar than they are. When he starts on his rampage of spite and tells all those lies the press should get up and walk out as a whole. At the very least they should be calling out the untruths.

All of his constant complaining is so exhausting. I guess that’s the point though, to make us so tired of it all that we just give up. Well sorry bud, that’s not happening. The protests are getting bigger and bigger and the overturn of Orban in Hungary last weekend should give us all hope. Not to go back to “normal” but to take the best parts of what we used to be and build on them. We can do it!

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. 

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M is for Maturity over Mar-a-Lago

Posted on April 15, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

MaturityMar-a-Lago
Responsibility.
Addressing what is going on in the world. Ability to admit when you are wrong.    		Play
Gatsby parties
Golfing
Inability to accept when you are wrong  

I cannot think of any president who took the responsibilities of the job less seriously than #47 does. I mean, there are serious things going on in the world, mostly of his doing, that need his attention more than the golf course does. Almost every weekend since he was elected! And he used to complain so much when President Biden went to Delaware.

And how selfish is it of him to throw these lavish Gatsby type parties when the rest of the country is struggling to put food on the table.

He’s just a spoiled child and unfortunately he has surrounded himself with people who like to play just as much as he does. I mean, how many times has the government been shut down because the Republican controlled congress can’t get it together. Seems like they take vacations or recess at the drop of a hat as well. 

I can’t wait until November when we can elect some mature (and I don’t mean old) folks to get this country back on track. 

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. 

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L is for Liberty over Limitation

Posted on April 14, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

LibertyLimitation
Being free from oppressive restrictions.
Able to make your own choices.  		Unreasonable restrictions
Laws
Constraints

The Constitution of the United States guarantees its citizens the right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness, not life, LIMITATIONS, and the pursuit of happiness. Patrick Henry said, “Give me LIBERTY, or give me death,” not “Give me limitations or give me death.”

Now clearly there have to be some LIMITATIONS and laws regarding the safety of others. You can’t just take a gun and start shooting people for no good reason (oh wait, we DON’T have good restrictions regarding that, do we?)

Women should have the LIBERTY to decide whether or not to have a baby and should be protected against rape and incest. People should be able to love who they want and have the ability to feel comfortable in their own skin (oh wait, we DO have restrictions on that, don’t we!)

Seems like we have gotten a few things backward. Time to make some changes!

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. 

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K is for Knowledge over Kangaroo Court

Posted on April 13, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

KnowledgeKangaroo Court
Knowing something through experience or association.
The body of truth.
Being aware of something.  		Finding someone guilty without good evidence.
Ignores recognized standard of law.

They say “knowledge is power” but in this day and age finding the truth is getting more and more difficult. We used to have a thing called the “Fairness Doctrine” where both sides of a situation needed to be presented equally so that people could make informed decisions. From Wikipedia:

“The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of political polarization in the United States.”

In 1987 the Fairness Doctrine was repealed because critics argued that it violated the first amendment rights. That paved the way for broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh to get a foothold and now as we can see Fox Entertainment doesn’t care whether they report the truth or not, yet many people rely on them for as their news source.

This in turn led to the kangaroo court (think Hilary’s emails, Hunter’s laptop, etc) and also to the investigations into such people as Leticia James, Mark Kelly and Jack Smith to name a few.

So what are we to do now? I think if we want to have the knowledge to make informed decisions we need to listen to more than one news outlet. We need to do our own research to make sure we are getting the actual facts. That’s why I like Heather Cox Richardson so much. When she writes she includes the sources for all of her facts and encourages us to check her statements.

Here in California we have a situation where our frontrunner for Democratic governor of our state, Eric Swalwell, has been accused of sexual assault by a few of his staffers (I think 4 so far). Because of this he has removed himself from the race. Some folks are claiming that it is horrible for him to be judged before the case has had its day in court but at the same time, there is a lot at stake in our race because California has what they call a jungle primary and the two top vote getters move on to the general election. That could mean that two republicans could win. We can’t take the chance of having no democrat on the ticket. If, in fact, the allegations are not true, Swalwell could run again in a few years if he wants.

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. 

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J is for Justice Over Judicial Overreach

Posted on April 11, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

JusticeJudicial Overreach
Impartial adjustment of conflicting claims
Fair
Conforming to truth
Using the law to punish crimes  		Court acting beyond its authority.
Making decisions that intrude into the Legislative or Executive branch.
Excessive and without substance.

I think this is one of the comparisons that bothers me the most. Using the law to punish crimes! Should be pretty simple, right? In my opinion part of the reason we are in the predicament we are in now is that the judicial system failed us right after the insurrection of January 6, 2021. It took WAY too long for criminal charges to be brought against #47 and his cronies. And even now, there are laws against many of the things that he is doing and yet congress is too slow to act.

On the flip side, those judges who are beholden to that guy for their positions have overstepped their boundaries when making rulings regarding things he has done. I’m specifically thinking of Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida who has made several decisions favorable to him even though they don’t always follow the rule of law. She has even gotten reprimanded by the circuit judges stating that her rulings were inconsistent but nothing has been done about that either. Don’t even get me started on the “supreme” court.

As with yesterday’s mention of Heather Cox Richardson as someone I routinely follow, Attorney Mark Elias of Democracy Docket and Glenn Kirschner with Justice Matters. I find their explanations and insights very helpful as truthfully this whole mess is very confusing. I will admit that before now I took our democracy for granted. We can’t do that anymore.

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. 

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I is for Inclusion over Isolation

Posted on April 10, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

InclusionIsolation
Making room for others
Adding to  		Setting apart
Being alone

I don’t think we need to go far to find examples of this. From the minute he made fun of the disabled reporter we should have known that #47 would not be tolerant of people who in his opinion are “less than.” His distancing himself from all of our natural allies is just disgraceful. And now he wants them to come to his rescue with the whole Iran issue. I don’t blame them at all for keeping out of it and I totally understand why they would want to form alliances without including the US. How can they trust us after this?

Remember what it was like when you were young and perhaps not included in a game or invited to a birthday party? I’m not saying that you have to be best friends with everyone but to just generally push someone aside because of disabilities or differences isn’t very nice. What a world it would be if we were able to truly include people who are different than we are. So many ideas and possibilities. Granted it is not always easy to understand other cultures or languages and it may take a little more work on our part but most of the time it is worth it.

Side note: I missed an opportunity yesterday to include a very important link to a very important “H.” I don’t know if you have heard of Heather Cox Richardson. She is an American historian and professor of history at Boston College. Since 2019 she has been writing Letters from an American nightly. Starting on Facebook, she has grown to include a Substack account and other social media platforms. In addition to her newsletters she does two podcasts a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) on YouTube and Facebook. I don’t know what I would do without her insights. She takes the craziness that is our life now and equates it to things that have happened in our history. She gives me hope that we can overcome this time and when we reclaim our country from the insane ruler we have now, we have the opportunity to make a much better place to live. All of her work is free to read/listen to and I highly recommend.

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. 

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H is for Hopefulness over Hatred

Posted on April 9, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

HopefulnessHatred
Full of hope
Optimism
Anticipation
Expectation of positive outcomes		Extreme dislike
Ill will
Resentment
Intense negative response

Hate is a very strong word and I don’t use it often. I try not to use it about people. Let’s just say I extremely dislike #47 and what he is doing to our country. He gives off such negativity and is so resentful of anything that he considers a slight to himself. His speeches are full of threats and constant vitriol. I can’t listen to them.

Contrast that with the speeches that Kamala Harris gave when she was running for President. She was always talking about how the policies she wanted to put in place would lift up the middle class and while she did speak against #47 it was more against what his policies would do and not about him personally (other than that he was a liar). Listening to Kamala talk definitely gave me hope for the future. I guess that’s what made the loss even more devastating.

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. 

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G is for Governing over Gaslighting

Posted on April 8, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

GoverningGaslighting
Directing and making decisions for a country.
Guiding the actions of someone or something.		Psychological manipulation of a person that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts and perceptions.
The act of grossly misleading someone for one’s own advantage.

It seems to me that we have not had very successful governing lately. Even though the Republicans control both the House and the Senate very few decisions have been made. Indeed most of the time the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has sent the representatives home without passing any legislation. We have had a shutdown of the government for months at a time of either some or all of the departments because the funding was not passed to keep them open. As of right now the fight is over the Department of Homeland Security because the bill includes funding for ICE and Border Patrol. Sadly this affects the other services like TSA agents which in turn causes problems at airports, etc. There was a lot of money appropriated for DHS in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that was passed last year and if the department had not spent money on frivolous things (advertising and airplanes for former Secretary Noem for example) they would still have plenty of money to pay salaries of regular working folk.

Instead we have gotten endless misleading statements from those in power to try to convince us that “the people are eating dogs” and that there are millions of undocumented people committing heinous crimes on every street corner. We are told that “gas prices are going down” and that “affordability is a hoax.” I know what I am paying at the gas pump and grocery store. Those prices are not going down!

We have the president getting us into a war with Iran and threatening to destroy an entire population. I don’t think that that qualifies as good governing for our country. He says that the Iranians were in the process of getting nuclear power and would have been able to attack us when there is no credible evidence to that fact.

I think it is time for the “governing body” to get a spine and actually DO some governing. Stopping this incredibly dangerous behavior from the petulant child in the Oval Office would be a great start.

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. I wish that he would heed his own words and rally the other representatives to take back some control.

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F is For Freedom Over Fascism

Posted on April 7, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is the A to Z of Democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation. 

FreedomFascism
The absence of necessity, coercion or constraint in choice or action.
Unrestricted ease.
Ability to make your own choices. Liberation
A right or liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.		Puts nation and sometimes race above the individual.
Autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader.
Characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition.

I know I am much happier when I have the ability to make my own choices about what I can read, where I can go, what religion I choose (or don’t choose) to follow and even what I can write on this blog.

Old #47 has made it his mission to try to suppress (Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel) and even take revenge on his opposition (going after Leticia James, Jack Smith, etc).

Leaving it at this today. As we all know the guy threatened to demolish Iran tonight so we’ll see what happens.

Side note: I did get a comment from someone who felt that I was attacking them personally with my opinions here. I left the comment and my response. Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear enough. NEVER have I said that all Democrats are perfect. Never have I said that ALL Republicans are bad. NEVER have I said that my opinions are anything other than my opinions. I really believe that part of the reason we are in the mess we are in is that Democrats didn’t do enough after the assault on the Capital in January 2021. I believe that our system needs work to make it more just for all. Perhaps we will get the opportunity to make that happen. I certainly hope so.

As always, credit goes to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries who gave an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives at the beginning of the 218th congress. 

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Economic Opportunity Over Extremism

Posted on April 6, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

My theme for this year’s A to Z is democracy. This is your trigger warning. If you are going to be bothered by my descriptions of what I believe America should look and feel like, please stop reading and come back next year when my topic may go back to music or scrapbooking or interesting tidbits. Please respect my space and DO NOT leave disinformation or inflammatory statements in the comments. It’s my blog and I will delete them. Thanks for your cooperation.

E is for Economic Opportunity Over Extremism 

Economic OpportunityExtremism
Education
Employment
Financial Resources
Health
Federal Assistance		Uncompromising
Outside the mainstream attitudes of society
Zealous
Out of control

I don’t have to do much research on this one. Opportunity Economy was one of the cornerstones of Kamala Harris’ platform when she was running for president. Her vision of assisting new businesses to get started, a tax break for first time homebuyers and cancelling out of control student debt would certainly lead to a better future for most people. Oh how I wish!

I have been very fortunate to be able to work from home for the last 28 years and being able to claim a home office deduction on my taxes has been a huge help. The sale of the stock we had through my husband’s employer allowed us to get the downpayment for our home. Because he was subsequently disabled, the loans we had to take for our daughter to go to college were forgiven by the Department of Education. All of those things have really made a difference in our lives. 

And now look at the extreme plunge the stock market has taken, the overzealous use of tariffs and most recently the war with Iran with no actual planning or foresight. Our retirement funds fluctuate, general prices are continuing to rise and #47 is off playing golf saying that he “doesn’t care” about the situation. Great. According to him, “We can’t pay for childcare. Our primary focus is the military.” He is truly out of control. 

As always, thanks to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries for giving me the basis for this year’s challenge. Last year I made it through the letter E before I had to stop. Starting tomorrow the posts will be fresh from the oven – LOL.

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