Life On A Sandbar

It’s different. The birds are different. They are more subdued. Oh, I can see them up in the treetops, but they’re not calling to one another. It’s almost like they sense the rain coming.

Most days, there are all types of birds, from flocks of grackles to the pounding of a woodpecker. As long as it’s not raining, I usually lay out on the back deck, listening to an audiobook. I lean back in the chaise lounge with a lemonade or a soda and listen to my books. There is always some distraction—an airplane overhead, the birds, or just an ant zeroing in on my lemonade.

But today, it’s overcast, and the clouds are leaking raindrops. So today, I decided to heed the ways of the birds and hunker down.

Wink, Wink, Nod, Nod

He didn’t come out and say it but he threw out hints to his MAGA base.

Donald Trump says transgender people will “end” if GOP keeps Congress in midterms
The Fox host he was talking to didn’t push him to explain what he meant.
LGBTQ Nation
Alex Bollinger
August 31, 2026

Donald Trump said in an interview yesterday that voters should treat the 2026 midterms as if he is on the ballot, while bringing up how he is going to make “transgender… end.”

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who is now a Fox News host, asked Trump on his show yesterday about the upcoming midterms, in which it seems likely that Republicans will lose ground in Congress.

“I think we’re gonna do very well,” Trump said. “I’m gonna take a lot of time, and I’m going to help people get elected, if I can.”

[…]

“We’ve done a great job; we’re the most respected country right now in the world; we’re more respected than we ever were, and I think people wanna keep it that way, so I think we’re gonna win.”

What has he been smoking “the most respected country right now in the world”?

 

Is this Trump’s “Final Solution?” The elimination of the trans community?

---

Updated: 3:30PM

The Pink News reported that,

It remains unclear what Trump specifically meant by saying “transgender” will “end”, but transgender people themselves are obviously not going anywhere. Trans people have existed throughout history and across cultures, and there is no evidence that political repression or efforts to force people to suppress their identities can eliminate being transgender.

For Trump, however, the issue is clearly still part of his pitch to Republican voters. His message to them is essentially that the fight over transgender people’s rights should be treated as a reason to turn out for the GOP in November.

And with the midterms approaching, Trump appears to be making an agenda around trans people and trans issues a huge part of the case for keeping Republicans in power.

“For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”

That is what is written in stone over the entrance of the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

But what no one can see is the little asterisk that Trump stuck there… *Unless there is a profit to be made.

Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer

The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.

NOTUS

By Anna Kramer

August 28, 2026

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.  

National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.

The courts once turned them down... but now they are trying a different route: a swap.

Because the ranch is basically landlocked, it takes around 90 minutes to drive around to the park entrance, which is why the previous owner's requests failed. But this new land-exchange tactic changes everything, turning a 90-minute detour into a matter of minutes.

The Sierra News Online writes,

Opponents Warn About Precedent

Critics of the current proposal say the issue extends well beyond the amount of acreage involved.

California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff have objected to the potential exchange, while conservation organizations and former park officials have raised concerns about allowing national park property to facilitate private development.

Among those speaking out is John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center.

Buckley told NOTUS there is no current residential population at Hazel Green requiring access to Yosemite and argued that the primary reason for the proposed connection is to make new development of the property more feasible.

Critics have also raised concerns about additional traffic, wildfire risk, impacts on natural resources and the precedent that could be created if Yosemite land were exchanged to facilitate private development along the park boundary.

The Yosemite local of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents park employees, has also opposed the proposal, saying employees are concerned about potential effects on park resources, visitor safety and an already strained workforce.

Kingsbarn argues that the exchange should be viewed differently.

The company says Hazel Green is already privately owned and can be developed independently of Yosemite. Its position is that providing a shorter route to the park would reduce miles driven over existing roads and that an equal-value land exchange would leave Yosemite with no net loss of acreage.

Then there is that phrase: “... an equal-value land exchange would leave Yosemite with no net loss of acreage.”

The debate is over what “an equal-value land exchange” means. Proponents see it as X acres for X acres, but conservationists see it differently. They see it as thousands of acres of wilderness that will now have a road through it, and you cannot place a price tag on that.

The Guardian reported that,

And while the threat to sell off part of Yosemite National Park is about a quarter-mile parcel on the park’s edge, Yosemite is a crown jewel in the national park system and, arguably, the world’s first national park.

To let any bit of it be sold off for the benefit of a corporation’s planned development on the park’s western border would compromise the inviolability of national parks and sacrifice public good for the sake of private profit. This is of course the ongoing agenda of the Trump administration.

Then there is the fact that it is a National Park… that Congress has set aside for the people of the United States. And this will turn the public land into private land.

Public lands belong to all of us, a gift from the past because people worked hard to protect these forests, mountains, canyons, and a trust for the future, because the public should include everyone in this country alive now and everyone yet to come.

The Trump administration’s ruthless efforts to turn over public lands for mining and logging and fossil fuel exploitation while it also dismantles the Forest Service and Park Service is about turning long-term well-being for the many, human and more-than-human, into short-term profit for an elite.

And here is the kicker… it will be a private road. That means only the billionaires can drive on it to their million-dollar condos, benefiting just a small number of the nobility.

Do You Have A Warm Fuzzy Feeling?

I don't... this is from Axios,

 Two key reasons led to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll's resignation, announced Monday: the feeling that his modernization initiatives were being blocked, and the chaos created by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's firing of senior generals.

Why it matters: Driscoll's wartime resignation, on top of Hegseth's firing of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George this spring, leaves the military's largest service without Senate-confirmed leadership, civilian or uniformed.

The last sentence is what got my attention. With this administration in the middle of a war... it is now all Hegseth's cronies and that doesn't sit well with me. Especially with a critical election coming up and all the threats Trump made about the election and using the military. No... this doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

There Is A Pattern

There is a pattern

[Editorial]

Trump is known for stalling, and his administration is doing the same. Back in the first part of the year, a judge ordered the ban on unescorted media access to be lifted. Here it is in August, and they still have no unescorted access. Why? Because of legal wrangling; the Pentagon won a key legal appeal in July. Now that is being adjudicated in the courts.

Then there is the case of Stars and Stripes. The newspaper has a special law from Congress dictating its independence from the military. The Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, fired editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer, and reporter Lara Korte because they printed a story on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

Then there is this, reported in The Intercept:

U.S. Central Command maintains a secret directory of journalists who have been blacklisted by the press office, according to an official with CENTCOM public affairs. The disclosure comes amid a failed war in Iran, a “cover-up” of U.S. casualties from that conflict, and repeated refusals by CENTCOM to address questions about civilian deaths in Iran, including the killing of a family recently disclosed by The Intercept.

The CENTCOM official who revealed the existence of the list threatened that this reporter could be added to it for calling the command too often.

“You’ll be put on a list of people to disregard,” Richard Allee, an executive assistant with CENTCOM public affairs, told this reporter. When asked for clarification — “You have a list of people to disregard?” — he confirmed it with an emphatic “Yes.” When asked which reporters or outlets were currently on the list, he replied, “I’m not privy to give you that information.”

Remember the sayings: “No news is good news” and “Whoever controls the press controls the mind.” Well, the current administration keeps the news close to its chest.

It was the conditions of the USS Abraham Lincoln coming to light that started the chain of events.

The story breaks; sailors jump ship.

Why?

Lack of food, sanitary system backups, low morale.

Why?

Resupply bases bombed, supplies destroyed, causing ships to have shortages.

Why was the ship deployed so long?

The war is going on longer than planned.

Did firing the planners and the logistics people have anything to do with it?

This whole thing reminds me of the song “For the Want of a Nail.”

I would say that this whole war is a clusterfuck, since even before the planning started, and I think the real reason they want to cover it up is their own incompetence.

Figures Do Not Lie.

And you know the rest of the saying…

Well, Trump & Company came out with a report linking us to violence!

New Trump administration report links trans support to political violence

The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has released a new report claiming that support for transgender rights is associated with “left-wing authoritarianism” and a greater willingness to justify political violence.

Pink News

Siân Thompson

Aug 28

Critics have dismissed the 20-page report released on 27 August as “junk science” and accused the administration of using taxpayer money to manufacture a justification for targeting trans people and their allies.

The Human Rights Campaign released a statement the same day as the report, writing: “The entities that conducted the supposed ‘research,’ the Manhattan Institute and the Network Contagion Research Institute, are both known conservative-leaning think tanks with track records of producing reports that align with extremist right-wing positions.”

[...]

The report then attempted to connect those views with support for political violence by asking participants about things including damaging property, attacking police and the killings of political and business figures, namely Charlie Kirk and Brian Thompson.

The survey also included 13 statements that respondents were asked to rate their agreement with on a seven-point scale to measure their “left-wing authoritarian tendencies”. Statements included “America would be much better off if all of the rich people were at the bottom of the social ladder”, “We need to replace the established order by any means necessary”, and “Getting rid of inequality is more important than protecting the so-called ‘right’ to free speech”.

You know what this reminds me of? The 2018 study by Lisa Littman, a researcher at Brown University, on “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD), and the 2024 Cass Review.

A key principle in any research is where you draw your subjects from. The population you study and the way you recruit participants should have a direct bearing on the question you are trying to answer. In this case, you can see the potential for bias just from the name of one of the research organizations: the Network Contagion Research Institute.

“Contagion”? Being trans is not contagious. We are born this way!

Researchers created their own “Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale” to measure support for trans people, asking participants whether they agreed with statements about respecting transgender identities, names, pronouns, gender expression and children exploring their gender.

The report then attempted to connect those views with support for political violence by asking participants about things including damaging property, attacking police and the killings of political and business figures, namely Charlie Kirk and Brian Thompson.

Okay, I was a researcher on a study funded by HHS through the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale. I was an MSW intern on the study, and I had to be certified to work with human subjects.

One of the things we had to do as part of the study was “validate” our measures—to make sure they were actually measuring what we intended them to measure.

Somehow, I have very serious doubts that those questions were properly validated.

Critics say the broader concern is not simply the report itself, but how its findings could be used. Certain right-leaning media outlets have already begun citing it as evidence that trans people and their allies pose a threat to American society at large.

As a trans person, this scares the crap out of me.

In Germany in the 1930s, the Nazis did something similar with Jewish people: they portrayed them as a threat to the nation and ultimately declared them enemies of the state.

That history is precisely why I find this kind of rhetoric so frightening. When a group of people is repeatedly portrayed as dangerous, diseased, contagious, or a threat to society, I think we should all be paying very close attention.

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I was using ChatGPT to research this topic when this message popped up!

This content can’t be shown for safety reasons. Learn more about our intended model behavior in our Model Spec.

Now I was research a legitimate in how history is repeating but it is being censored! It appears to be censoring topics  

Your Paper's Please

I remember back in the fifties the big selling point of our republic was you don't need travel papers when you travel here in the U.S., you didn't need any ID.

But all that under Trump has been changed! A U.S. citizen born in Denver was deported. KXAN writes that...

Morales said he repeatedly told authorities that he was born in the United States and that he had copies of his birth certificate and social security number at his home in Austin that he could share with them. He was deported, anyway. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security disputed his account and accused Morales of having entered the country illegally.

According to Morales’s lawyers, that changed as they provided more documents as part of a lawsuit challenging his removal. His legal team submitted additional hospital records, affidavits from witnesses and his certified birth record from Colorado. The U.S. Department of Justice allowed Morales to enter the country while a lawsuit regarding his detention and deportation proceeds, his lawyers said. His lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, picked him up in Laredo, she said. 

[...]

“Brian’s case raises an alarming pattern of behavior on the part of the federal government,  demonstrating that they’re willing to racially profile, detain and deport U.S. citizens, “ Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “In order to prove citizenship, someone who is born in this country has to provide more than just civil documentation about who they are, and the federal government being permitted to require this level of evidence for someone to simply reside in the U.S. is extremely concerning and unacceptable.”

This is what a fascist authoritarian state does.

We Seen It

[Editorial]

We’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it in Provincetown. What?

Gays and lesbians who think it should only be LGB. That trans people are dragging down gays and lesbians. The BBC writes,

Debate around trans rights is also fuelling the Pride culture war. Some gay and lesbian people who describe themselves as "gender critical" - and whose beliefs mean they're sceptical of some of the aims of the trans rights movement - say they feel sidelined by Pride; while some trans people say they no longer feel safe attending.

A lesbian woman who describes herself as gender critical, and did not want to be named, told me she no longer attends Pride because she thinks it has become dominated by a focus on trans issues.

Grimes, one of Reform's highest-profile gay members, argues that Pride has moved away from its focus on gay equality and become bound up with the wider gender identity debate: "You've slain the dragon in the pursuit of equality and now all you are left with is a few rambling sheep." He says that "public subsidy" for LGBT issues has become a "cash cow" that fuels "narratives of victimhood".

For some, the focus on trans rights is a reason to step back from Pride; for others, it underscores why events like Sparkle matter.

What we have seen here in the U.S., and what those who want to divorce us seem to forget, is the Rev. Martin Niemöller poem “First They Came.” We see it in deep-red Republican states: they’re going for the gay-inc. holy grail of marriage equality. We, the trans community, are the convenient low-hanging fruit. Conservatives don’t see us as LGBTQ+; they see us as all “gay.”

They forget we were the ones fighting for our rights at Stonewall, Compton’s, Dewey’s, and the Black Cat Tavern. We led the way, and they followed in our footsteps. We are only the bellwether of things to come. They want to bring us back to the 1950s, when we could be arrested. Conservatives dream of the “Father Knows Best” era.

[/Editorial]

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When I went to proofread and discuss the post... ChatGPT censored it! So I tried the same thing with Gemini and DuckDuckGo AI and none of the rejected the proofreading!

It is becoming much more apparent that ChatGPT is over reacting and labeling anything LGBT as too controversial and censoring it.

The Gig Economy

[Editorial]

Jobs have changed. We have gone from a company being the bedrock of the community to chasing the lowest common denominator.

All around were bedrocks of industry—Stanley Works, North & Judd, United Aircraft, Aetna, and Travelers. But like other businesses, they fled to states with lower taxes. Then many of them fled overseas.

There are things that can use the gig economy, like construction, and there are jobs that are conducive to working from home, while others require all employees to work together as a team, such as in a factory.

In 1978, I got a job building control systems for all types of plants, including nuclear. There were some employees who had already been there for ten years. I worked my way up to running a testing department with 24 technicians, and we had very little turnover so we all knew our jobs. When you do one-of-a-kind designs, you have redesigns; we even had a fancy name for it: Problem Disposition Report (PDR).

It was for "Oops!" You know, you go to mount something on a cabinet wall and there is something in the way... so you write a PDR. The engineers go and battle it out, then send the PDR back and say, "Do it this way instead." We say okay and go on and do it. But with a job shop, they get out their pens and start adding up the changes... um... let's see... taking that off and moving it there will cost you... hmmm... 4 million dollars. Therefore, a company of bean counters who never ran a custom engineering shop ran the company over 9 billion dollars into the hole! The company that bought us out is known for TVs.

So what I am getting at is that when these gig people go from job to job, the company loses tribal knowledge. When a problem is found, the people who designed it are no longer around to help fix it.

We are also in the beginning another revolution: the AI and robotic revolution! I tie them together because I think very, very shortly the two will be merged.

I urge you all to read the 1952 book by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Player Piano:

Why you should read: Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut

by Rachel Bradley

 

Before writing his breakout work Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., an American science fiction writer, worked in Public Relations at General Electric.  He observed the cutting-edge automation of what was traditionally machinists’ work.  According to Vonnegut, GE’s decision to have a computer “make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do . . . But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs.”  So summarizes the heart of Player Piano, Vonnegut’s first novel, a book that arguably came well before its time (published in 1952) and now deserves a second consideration.

Goodreads put it this way:

Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

What good science fiction does is suggest possible futures, and Mr. Vonnegut nailed it!

[/Editorial]

It Is Not A Spectator Sport

We are in a quagmire! Going to hell in a hand-basket! Or whatever other clichés you want to use, we are in another election cycle and the same thing is happening now as it did in 2024, and the election before, and before that, and…

Take a look at the current crop of political ads. Do any of these sound familiar?

• "Lowering costs for working families," "bringing down the price of everyday goods," and "making the American Dream affordable again."
• "Bringing back American manufacturing," "putting American workers first," and "building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up."
• "Bringing common sense back to Washington," "fighting for the forgotten communities," and "taking on special interests."
•  “I will stand up to Trump!,” "Standing up to executive overreach," "Protecting our democratic norms and institutions," and "Serving as a check and balance in Washington."

How many of these have you heard just today?

Okay, let me ask you a question… how are they going to do it? As they say, the devil is in the details! Yet the campaigns tell you nothing about the how. They purposely don’t tell you. Because if they don't, your mind fills in the blanks: "Yeah, cutting my taxes!" or "Yeah, they are going to make billionaires pay their fair share!" But the moment they specify what they actually want to do, they risk losing the other half of the voters who think the opposite. So, they keep voters in the dark by relying strictly on buzzwords.

Also, have you noticed that they don’t even mention their party anymore? It happens for the exact same reason they use empty buzzwords. If a candidate says the party name out loud, half of the voters immediately turn off their message. A mental buzzer goes off: "Oh, that's from the party I don't vote for," and they tune out completely. So, candidates now drop the party label altogether.

Meanwhile, the local newspaper gives candidates space to write about the upcoming election. But what do they write about? My two kids, Dick and Jane, our lovely dog Spot, and how they know the issues facing the town firsthand because their kids are in school! Um… okay. So what are the actual issues, and how will you deal with them? Zip.

Boycotting elections is self-defeating because it just hands power to the status quo, and staying silent leaves you vulnerable to manipulation by buzzwords. So how do we actually push back against the cycle? How do we bring substance back to elections?

The answer is looking at you in the mirror.

It is you!

Elections are not a spectator sport—you have to get off your couch and do the research! What has the candidate done in the past? If they have never run before and have no track record, and tell you nothing except platitudes, that also tells you a lot.

When I wanted to look up candidates, I started with Ballotpedia. When I found out who was running against Governor Lamont & Ryan Fazio, I checked his background, and then looked up his voting record on the Connecticut General Assembly's website. 

Well, there is this fabulous new tool called AI, where you can ask weird questions like, "How do I find a candidate's voting record?" Seconds later, I had direct pointers to official government portals and tracking resources:

•     The Connecticut General Assembly website for official bill tracking and session votes.
•     The LegiScan Connecticut Page to view sponsored legislation and past roll call votes.
•     Public legislative tracking databases like BillTrack50.

WOW! That was easy.

I then asked it a couple of follow-up questions: "Has Ryan Fazio said anything on abortion?" and "Has Ryan Fazio said anything on trans rights?" For the second question, it replied that he joined other Greenwich officials in condemning hateful signs at Town Hall, but otherwise, his primary legislative record and platform steer clear of culture-war debates, focusing instead on state economics and local policy.

The thing is habit and tribal loyalty are powerful forces. When people feel overwhelmed by work, life, and daily stress, falling back on party lines feels like a safe shortcut, even if it means buying into the exact buzzwords and empty promises you write about.

The bottom line is that you cannot sit on your butt and vote based on who has the prettiest ad on TV. We have to stop falling for family photo-ops and start digging into actual records.