Author: Diane Griffin

Diane is a writer of Fantasy, an intermittent blogger, and a generator of nonsense.

It’s Election Day in the USA

Today is a day for wise choices.

If you know my writing (and if you are out there reading this, I sure would appreciate a little “hello” in the comments to show me that someone looking at this isn’t a bot of some sort or another) you know that I’m long-term dissatisfied with the direction this country is headed, and have been for a while.

One of the things I’ve started exploring here is New England Secession. I think one of the possible solutions for the deep, deep well of corruption that seems to be fueling this country is to move the capitol, I think it may be the only option we have to return the people of these formerly-united States to some level of compassion, humanity, and fairness. I’m not saying it will get us there, but it will give us a chance at something better.

But that is a long term approach, and admittedly a pipe dream of mine. In the short term, in the VERY short term, what we have to do is eminently clear to me.

We need to vote as many of the corrupt bastards out as we can manage to get to today. If there is a candidate on your ballot who is not beholden to any monied interest, be they foreign or domestic, please make sure you put your mark by their name on the ballot today.

Abdul El-Sayed meeting voters. Photo by Paul Sancya for AP.

I will be voting for Ed Markey, Jim McGovern, and Maura Healey here in Franklin County. Both Markey and McGovern have taken AIPAC money in the past, but have long since sworn off. If you don’t know who you’re going to vote for yet (and you need to make that decision NOW) one place to get information you can use is TrackAIPAC.com. Look for other sources, too. Some of your local press outlets may be able to help.

Good luck to us today. We really need it.

We’re a Week Out From the Thing

Brazil did it. Can we?

For all that I wish to move the capitol by having my region secede from the larger country, the fact is that we’re here in the world as it is. Stinky Don is the president. He is surrounded by goons and sycophants, including some that have a (D) after their name on certain ballots. In general though, it seems that if you’re voting for anyone with an (R) after their name on any ballot, you’re voting for someone who supports Stinky Don. And if you’re voting for a supporter of that guy, you’re voting against a democratic society.

It’s just that simple. You’re voting for cruelty without consequences. You’re voting for someone who supports the idea of no accountability for certain Stinky people. We know this because we’ve been living through this particular Stinky chunk of history.

Stinky Don is offering all sorts of cash prizes, all conditional on a win for the (R)s in this coming election. No changes in policy, no promises to do better. Just spread the corruption to the average voter, for the one act of importance we each have the opportunity to commit every couple of years. It’s all bribes, it’s all corruption. He’s saying, “If you let me continue robbing the country blind, I’ll give you a stinking Werther’s® for your trouble.”

google screenshot page showing various electoral maps of the US
A screenshot I took from Google.

Please remember that his operating budget is your money anyway, and that if you let him have his way, he’s only going to pick up the pace of putting your tax dollars in his own pocket and those of his friends and allies, killing kids, putting the youth of America in harm’s way, and further destroying whatever good will and political capital this country has in the world community. It’s not a good deal. I’d go so far as to say that no deal with Stinky Don is a good deal for anybody but Stinky Don. And not even that, necessarily. Gerrymandering Texas seems not to have done him any actual favors. The five new “safe” districts he had the state legislature create there are not so safe after all.

In fact, for those who have a numbers fetish, here’s a link to Nate Silver’s FLIPR forecast for the midterms. It’s narrowing a little bit, it seems, but it’s still looking pretty good for the Democrats. Polling in the modern era is a bit less than perfect, but it’s still info.

To that end, Brazil had their elections this past Sunday, and against conventional wisdom and the best polling available, Lula da Silva won a fourth term as President of Brazil. That election day was wild. Municipalities closed down their public trans portation to keep people from being able to get to the polls. People came by boat out of the remostest areas to make their way to the polls, against everybody’s expectation. Bolsonaro tried unsuccessfully to get the polls closed early with tons of people still on line to vote. In the end, instead of the predicted loss, Lula won by about 3,000,000 votes.

And of course Flavio Bolsonaro is refusing to concede, and is asking Trump to intervene and hand him the presidency. Time will tell if Trump has the will and resources to do so. It’s worth remembering that Stinky Don has his own troubles, a host of them, all of his own making.

You Can Order This Book From Me

my first book
A little anthology of my writings I put together. Art and cover design by Heather Balchunas

It’s my first book. I’ve had this idea for at least a decade: Writings that straddle the line between fantasy and nonfiction. This is the realization of that notion in glorified chapbook form. Each of these stories has one foot in the “real” world, one foot in… well… some other world. Some stories lead with the real foot, some with the fantastic foot.

Preliminary reaction has been enthusiastic, and to be honest, I’m quite proud of this work. People really seem to like that Heather Balchunas cover, too!

It’s 60 pages of my prose (with a little bit of poetry mixed in) and you can get it for 10 bucks plus 5 more for postage and handling. I have a venmo account, or you can send me a check made out to Diane Griffin and your mailing address to my mailing address, which is:

Broadcast From the Brain Radio
POBox 176
Montague, MA 01351

eMail me at dianenmrk@gmail.com for further details for how to get this via venmo.

I’m also discovering that some people like their copy of the book signed. If you would like me to scrawl upon the title page of your new book in my terrible handwriting, let me know. I’ll be glad to do so. There are only a few copies left of this first printing, so get yours today!

Zeitgeist 10/13/26

It’s too soon to ask me my opinion on the death of a nation that isn’t dead yet.

I looked into it, because I’m so horrified at the state of things down there in Foggy Bottom, but I can’t apply for refugee status in Canada. Canada still considers this a safe country.

I’m thinking about that. Is the US of Assholes still a safe country? And what does it mean that Canada thinks so?

We’re three weeks out from the 2026 midterm election, and Trump is making all kinds of noise about how the Democrats are going to steal the election, while at the same time, he’s trying to gain control of each state’s election process, stationing ICE near polling places, having practice ballot-seizings… and everybody remembers January 6th of 2021, when he tried to coup Congress to stop them certifying Joe Biden as president and in the middle of things maybe eliminate a couple of enemies, like Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC.

But we’re 6 years futher into Stinky Don’s slide into dementia, into a presidency whose approval ratings have gone about as sour as any president’s in recent memory have gone (which is saying something, isn’t it, W?) and whose base is crumbling like stale, stale cookies. Can this crippled old bagadoo muster the wherewithall to actually steal the whole country from us? And here’s the real question: are we all pathetic enough to let it happen?

And is Canada right about us? The answer to those questions and many others might come as soon as three weeks from today.

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Over the weekend, I found my self in an extended go-’round with an English guy who at the beginning of things had seemed somewhat reasonable and worth talking to about various topics where I knew we disagreed. I held out hope for a lot longer than I probably should have. By the end of our “debate” this morning, I was 100% convinced that there was no there there. If you bring up stuff he doesn’t like he starts repeatedly screaming about “the left” and how “the left” is fundamentally delusional and always wrong about everything because “the left.”

It was truly disheartening. The longer it went on, the more vehement he became and the more obviously he strove to find some path to “victory(?).” His one article of faith (and it was faith) is that everything any leftist says is some received false notion and can’t possibly be true. In the end, he resorted to abandoning our”conversation” and started one elsewhere that was meant as character assassination and miscast what I said while still crowing about “the left” and how I’m “a racist.”

So in the end we come to this. Yes, I am on the left, and proudly so, and as to whether I’m a racist… probably? But this dude is definitely a delusional RWNJ. The more we got into it, the more it became clear that the supposed reasonability and willingness to explore ideas was a veneer overlaying a whole lot of postmodern ideology.

I’m still looking for a right-winger I can talk to and consider views I have that might be wrong. Didn’t find that here, and by golly, it seems more and more unlikely that I ever will. The best I’ve found for this so far are Saagar Enjeti and Emily Jashinsky over on Breaking Points, but I’m nobody so I don’t talk to them, I just listen to Krystal Ball and Ryan Grim talk to them.

And yeah, I learn stuff, and sometimes I call shenanigans. But at least they show it’s possible for there to be some kind of continuing discussion.

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We’re a couple of days into the aftermath of the Ukrainian bombing of 3 Russian data centers and the cascading effect of that destruction on the discourse on the internet. Bot activity on the web from Russian servers has gone down to 0.4% of usage prior to the attacks. There’s no clear data on the full effects, but with at least a couple of major Yandex data centers offline, there’s widespread reporting of a marked drop in right wing troll activity online.

I can only see this as a good thing, just a few weeks out from an election.

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Ilhan Omar’s being targeted by HSI (Homeland Security Investigations), who raided her Washington DC residence, looking for any evidence they can find of irregularities in her immigrant status, so that they can revoke her citizenship and deport her ahead of the midterm elections.

My sense is that this is backfiring. One has only to look at Elon Musk, who is the subject of reports that he came to this country with undocumented status and then bought his way in. The same can be said for FLOTUS, who is the subject of similar reports and who, for some reason, got a “genius” visa in the midst of her immigration process. Is Melania Trump really a genius? Perhaps in that crowd she is…

My guess is that they will find no irregularities in Omar’s legal path to naturalized citizenship, but that this will not dissuade Trump from targeting her and trying to remove her from office and from the country.

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