Janet's Smiles

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.

Knowledge	Kangaroo 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In 1987 the Fairness Doctrine was repealed because critics argued that it violated the first amendment rights.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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A to Z 2026, democracy, kangaroo court, knowledge | Leave a comment

J is for Justice Over Judicial Overreach

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

Justice	Judicial 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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A to Z 2026, democracy, Glenn Kirschner, judicial overreach, Justice, Mark Elias, news, politics | 7 Comments

I is for Inclusion over Isolation

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

Inclusion	Isolation
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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A to Z 2026, democracy, Heather Cox Richardson, inclusion, isolation | 7 Comments

H is for Hopefulness over Hatred

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

Hopefulness	Hatred
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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A to Z challenge 2026, democracy, hatred, hopefulness | 8 Comments

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.

Governing	Gaslighting
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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A to Z 2026, gaslighting, governing, mental-health, narcissism | 8 Comments

F is For Freedom Over Fascism

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

Freedom	Fascism
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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A to Z 2026, fascism, freedom | 8 Comments

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 Opportunity	Extremism
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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A to Z 2026, democracy, Economic Opportunity, Extremism | 12 Comments

D is for Democracy Over Demogogue

Posted on April 4, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

D is for Democracy Over Demogogue

Democracy	Demagogue
Power in the hands of the people Guaranteed civil liberties and human rights. Free and fair elections.	Political leader who seeks support by manipulating and appealing to the prejudices of others. One man has power.

One of the ways #47 gained power again was by telling everyone lies, lies and more lies. He manipulated the truth so many times and was never called on it. He also railed and railed about things like immigration, which admittedly needs to be reformed and adjusted but by no means is it as bad as he made it out to be. People were not eating dogs. He made big promises about deporting people who were in this country illegally and that appealed to the prejudices of a lot of folks. However, as we can see now, he is not doing the deportations in a democratic way. There has been no due process and a few US citizens have been taken from their homes and families unlawfully.

He (I refuse to write his name) had said several times on the campaign trail that he didn’t need votes or only “vote this one last time and you won’t need to vote again.” Now he is talking about running for a third term, which is against the constitution. He believes the rules do not apply to him. He is also desperately trying to have congress pass the SAVE America act which will limit mail-in voting and require a lot of additional documentation needed to register to vote. I’ll talk more about that in a future post.

I want to live in a country where I can vote and have a say in who our leaders are and I want there to be secure guidelines about what those leaders can and cannot do. I am lucky, for now, that I am a white woman and there is less of a chance that immigration officers will come knocking at my door. Who knows if those rules will change at the drop of a golf club? Maybe someone will see these posts and think I need to be silenced. (LOL I wish I had that readership).

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.

Have a wonderful Easter and hope to see you back on Monday!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged democracy, demogogue | 9 Comments

C is for Constitution over Cult

Posted on April 3, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

Welcome to my A to Z this year where I am covering the theme 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.

C is for Constitution over Cult

Constitution	Cult
We the People Freedom Rights Rule of Law Separation of powers	Great devotion to a person or idea. Worship Extreme Beliefs Psychological Manipulation Brainwashing

It is true that our constitution was written many years ago and has had to have a few revisions over time but the basic principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have always been at the core. We the People is a powerful phrase. It signifies that we work together as a collective and not just blindly following one person or ideal. We have a say in what those changes need to be and we vote to make them happen.

If there is any question about whether a cult has now invaded the country, these words from Representative Troy Nehls shortly after Trump won reelection are pretty cult-like. He said, “If Donald Trump says jump 3-feet high and scratch your head, we should all jump 3-feet high and scratch our head.” And have you heard any of the cabinet meetings? Every single one of the cabinet members continue to heap praise on #47 and tell him what wonderful things he is doing.

I don’t know how many times I have heard the phrase, “they drank the Kool-aid.” Granted, people who were closely involved with the Jonestown massacre probably don’t appreciate being reminded of that disaster but it is a common statement which clearly applies to a lot of the people surrounding #47. So many times the Republicans who are in office have bowed to his wishes when clearly “We the people” do not agree with the policies. It truly is as if they have no minds of their own.

I don’t think there will be too many pictures in this A to Z but I did come across something that I think perfectly fits here. I was on my way to visit my daughter who lives in the area around the Facebook/Meta buildings. This is one of the street signs:

I know which direction I’m going.

If you want to see Speaker Hakeem Jeffries’ speech which is where I got the idea for this year’s challenge, you can see it here. Also make sure to visit some of the other participants in this alphabetical endeavor. See you tomorrow!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged constitution, cult, democracy, Hakeem Jeffries | 6 Comments

A to Z Challenge 2026 – Benevolence over Bigotry

Posted on April 2, 2026 by scr4pl80 (Scrap Lady)

This year for the A to Z I am writing about the differences between democracy and the other things. 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.

B is for Benevolence over Bigotry.

Benevolence	Bigotry
Kindness GoodWill Charity Compassion Volunteering Social Conscience Generosity	Narrow Mindedness Prejudice Injustice Intolerance Racism Homophobia Discrimination

Now I am not saying that ALL Democrats are benevolent. And I am not saying that ALL Republicans are bigots. Let me make that clear. It just seems to me that the policies and laws that each party wants to make are so vastly different.

Take the new budget. Why in heaven would you want to take away funding from cancer research or giving food to children just to give tax breaks to the wealthy and fund a larger military presence?

Does the color of one’s skin or the fact that two men or women love each other change the fact that they are human beings?

And as we can see from what has happened in the last year, the situation has gotten much worse. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” did pass and funding for things like cancer research, public broadcasting and the like is gone. The aid we give to other countries has been stopped as well. The problem is in doing that we have made our country less stable.

Is it so hard to care about someone other than yourself? I just don’t get it.

The basis for this year’s A to Z has been taken from the speech that Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, delivered on the opening of the 218th congress, which was the least productive congress in history up to that time. This congress may be worse!