Tag archive: Sisyphus

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Trump & Sisyphus: Futility in Motion

Asteroid Sisyphus is named for that worthy denizen of Hades, doomed to forever roll a rock uphill, only to have it roll down again, thus necessitating endless repetition of the action.  As such, astrologically, Sisyphus represents futile action without purpose or accomplishment – repetitive, pointless effort which achieves nothing lasting. 

In light of President Trump’s repeated, one might say endless, refusal to accept the clear results of the 2020 election, where Americans handed him his hat and showed him the Oval Office door, it occurred to me to take a closer look at asteroid Sisyphus, to see what role it might be playing in the election and its aftermath.  It’s not just Trump who’s beating this dead horse:  90% of elected Republicans in Washington refuse to publicly acknowledge his loss, and his “legal team” has been rejected in all but one of the nearly 50 court cases filed to overturn the results in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.   

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Aster-Obit: Alex Trebek

On Sunday, 8 November 2020, gameshow fans the world over were saddened to hear of the death of Alex Trebek, host of “Jeopardy!”, after an 18-month battle with pancreatic cancer.  Described as “the thinking man’s game show”, “Jeopardy!” inverted the traditional format by providing the answers to trivia questions, requiring contestants to phrase their replies in the form of a question.

The third longest-running gameshow on TV (after “The Price Is Right” and “Wheel of Fortune”), “Jeopardy!” has had several daytime and evening incarnations, but Alex Trebek has helmed the show for 37 years, since its latest version premiered in 1984.  Its iconic final round theme is one of the most-recognized musical selections in the world, and the series has spawned several foreign-language versions in 32 countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Japan, Spain, Australia, Turkey and Israel.  Trebek continued working throughout his cancer treatment, until the bitter end, appearing in the studio to film episodes just 11 days before his passing. 

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Coronavirus Update: We’re Number One!

Donald J. Trump’s “America first!” policies take on a whole new meaning in light of the COVID-19 pandemic: the US is now the global leader in infections and deaths from the virus. With almost a million known to be infected and more than 50,000 deaths, the US now accounts for nearly a third of infections worldwide, and a quarter of the fatalities. We’re lightyears ahead of our leading competitor in COVID-19 incompetence, with four times as many cases as Spain. No one can catch us! The Trump administration can be justly proud of the new records it’s setting. Hey, no such thing as bad publicity, right?

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2020 Election Preview: A Stolen Democracy?

The date of posting this article marks six months exactly until the General Election which will decide Donald Trump’s (and the nation’s) fate. Typically I don’t comment this early on a fall election, particularly when the official Democratic candidate has yet to be named (though Joe Biden’s nomination appears to be just a formality, in the age of coronavirus, nothing can be taken for granted), but the popular acclaim for advanced analysis has been deafening of late. So here we go.

In this article, I’ll be focusing on peripheral factors unrelated directly to the candidates; we’ll save that for closer to the event itself. But there are several unalterable factors that independently impact the day. And an alarming number of them point to electoral fraud. So we’ll just be looking at the day itself in isolation, irrespective of the individuals’ winning potential (though we will discuss how the candidates’ PNAs factor into the patterns of the day).

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Happy Presidents Day!

Today is the day in the US when we celebrate all those crazy kids who brought us here, the men who grabbed the reins of American power and guided, propelled or dragged the country along with them, for a span of time. Some were giants, some could have been Munchkin extras in “The Wizard of Oz”.

 

Mostly, being a capitalist country, we honor their service and sacrifice with reduced prices on cars and large appliances, a chilly mid-February day off to break the monotony of work or school, and possibly their own category on “Jeopardy!

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Impeachment Update, “Christianity Today”, and That Four-flusher, Trump

Well, we all know the country is going to shit, but for some reason, as impeachment loomed large on the horizon and his evangelical allies began to desert him, Donald Trump felt the need to call attention to the nation’s true crisis – the need to flush toilets 10 or 15 times to gain the desired result. Far from the four-flusher we already knew him to be, Trump has revealed himself as the much more elusive ten-flusher. And so let’s go down this cosmic rabbit hole, from the sublime impeachment to the ridiculous toilet tantrums, and see where it takes us…

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