Category: Opinions of an Old Virginian

Simply an opinion, based primarily on fact, experience, and observations. Extracts from reports, news media and professional interactions with knowledgeable folks,.

Reagan Rolling over in his Grave?

All should understand that this old curmudgeon has never been a fan of Ronald Reagan, not as a grade B actor, as Governor of the state where I was a resident for several years, and as his terms as President of these United States. He was, in my opinion, an actor playing a role as President. Although he did some good things, he also did some very horrible things as well. Like firing all of the Air Traffic Controllers, harming the social security annuity pension payments to seniors. HE did also some good things like speaking truth to the Soviet Union/Russia dictators regarding the Berlin Wall. The one thing that Reagan would be horrified to witness was the two bullies in the White House who attacked and slurred the President of the nation of Ukraine. Reagan would have been totally embarrassed and angered at Trump, Vance and of course the wimpy Republican fascists in the Congress by the way President Zelensky was treated by this nation’s top two elected officials.

Trump has always been known as a bully, a con man, a man of no integrity in his business dealings, and his assaults on women and disabled persons. Truly a horrid example to be the front facing person for our United States of America and her people.

While Reagan was not exactly the supreme example of presidential actions or image, he did play his part pretty well, especially considering that he was always staring in grade B movies. He at least shown our nation in a positive light in comparison to the rest of the civilized nations, Russia and China excluded of course. Trump on the other hand, for quite a while prior to his crazy decision to go down his golden escalator in his Trump Tower building to start his campaign of bully statements, rabid rally speeches with no cognitive structure to his speeches, and of course his rampant plethora of lies, mis-statements, and outright indicative leaning toward Putin, Jung, and the rest of the dictatorial filth that polluted our world he was even then of the mindset (and I use that term very loosely) that he was born to be King! So when one steps back to compare the two individuals, Trump falls into the cesspool or more appropriately in the outhouse trench, in comparison to Reagan, and boys and girls, I have little to no respect for Reagan as an individual or as a President.

During his first miserable term in office, Trump made this nation a laughingstock of countries, a country not to be trusted with intelligence information, a country not to be trusted as an ally, and one to use as an image of what not to select as a chief executive of their nations. During his first term, Trump pissed off the British people so much, with his rude treatment of the Queen, that they seriously considered banning him from the England, Scotland, and other British Isles nations. In one very rude instance, Trump shoved himself forward to walk in front of the Queen. This is NEVER done and is considered the epitome of rude, crass, and simply not polite and for a nation head of state, it was shocking. But Trump was so totally stupid and egomaniacal that he never even considered what the did was wrong. Of course as one looks at the entire Trump family reaching back to his great grands, one can see where the ignorance came from, it is bred into these Trump male turds and several of the female ones.

And now, we see Trump’s second term starting out with more bully tactics, attacks on our foundational structures, and the inclusion of a rabid foreign white non-citizen being allowed to access our federal computer databases, citizen’s personal and private information, and the firing of thousands of federal civil service employees. Musk is from South Africa and he is in this country on that abomination of a program by the Republicans to sell citizen/residency documentation to rich jerks who promise to bring increased revenue through expanded jobs. Which so far has been nothing but another big fat rich jerk lie. Musk is not allowed to run for any key office in this country because of this status, yet that crooked con man Trump allows him to violate every regulation that the Congress has established to create a stable federal workforce.

His little DOGE thugs have invaded the treasury, and other repositories of Federal databases, accessing US citizens personal information, a violation of every single privacy law this nation has ever established. These young asshats have never been vetted as to their acceptability as persons of trust to access any of this data, yet under the ChristoFascist regime of Trump/Musk and their Republican enablers, they are destroying the security of our information and exposing it to all sorts of foreign criminal entities, such as Russian hackers, the African Prince’s email cons, and every crooked, criminal slimeball in this nation and last but certainly not least, the Chinese computer center invasions.

The Musk/DOGE Firing Civil Servants in their goals to enviserate these government agencies and then shut them down because they no longer function, gutting and privatizing the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs, for their billionaire buddies. Musk has continued his attacks on our American foundations with his latest assault on the AMTRAK passenger rail system. He has been espousing that the entire system is a failure, totally unprofitable and costing the taxpayers unnecessary million on taxpayer funds. Which is of course, a damn lie. His focus is simply to move AMTRAK into the position of having it sold into private hands to be “run more efficiently”. Which as any true historian will attest was the opposite, when the passenger rail system was in private hands, it was being eliminated by these private companies because it was not profitable enough for them and they were shutting down the only access to mass transit that many towns and rural areas had. The Federal Government was obligated to assume responsibility for all of the Passenger Rail systems from these private companies and keep this transit access available. They have done a splendid job, with the AMTRAK system carrying passengers from all sorts of locales, across this great nation and doing it within the bounds of their focus toward being self sustaining. Again, this is another instance where a non-American is making infrastructure decisions for our country and our elected officials are simply looking the other way, and applauding the great Republican MAGA world.

Finally one of our federal judiciary judges has the cajones to step to the plate and do their damn jobs by blocking the Musk/Trump dictator wannabe acts and made one department rehire all of their previously Musk fired employees, with back pay. The once Supreme Court majority (Republican fascist appointed), sat on their hands and did nothing to impede the unconstitutional acts of the Musk/Trump regime heads and the Congressional Republican Fascists stood, applauding and enabled these violations of our once great, but in the process of failing, nation.

Old Saint Ronnie Reagan would have been in cardiac arrest where he still alive with the illegal acts of this fat SOB from New York and his chief henchman, a Goebbels pretender South African. Roberts, and the three Democrats on the Supreme Court should put forth a paper condemning the acts of Trump, Musk the DOGE turds, and those members of the Republican Congress who allow these infractions. But, Roberts has been almost neutered by the other Republican Fascist Supreme Justices whose only focus is to allow Trump, Musk, and the Project 2025 fascists to continue the assaults on our democracy.

Think I’m kidding, oh God I hope I am, but then I will be long dead when considering my very advanced age at this point.

Damn their souls to the eternal Satanic hellfires. Were if only Karma were real.

And so our nation begins to Die

When I read the article regarding the horrible, crass treatment by the President and Vice President towards the President of Ukraine, I was mortally ashamed of this nation and what we have become in just the first few days of the Trump Regime. If one were to ever wonder about the relationship of Trump’s regime and the regime of Putin’s Russia, the events of the past few days have given credence to any and every idea of such a relationship.

Trump and his ChristoFascist administration have shown themselves to be hellbent on turning this once proud American democracy into an authoritarian oligarchy. The actions of his ill qualified cabinet ministers, and his co-president, that bigot scumbag from South Africa, Elon Musk, prove unequivocally that their intent is to eradicate the democratic republic established by the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence they wrote and the Constitution that was established by these early founders. From gutting the Department of Education, to their invasion and theft of private data of all US Citizens using their invasion of the Treasury, the Social Security and other department’s computer/data systems these Trump fascist BrownShirts, led by Musk are compromising the integrity of our nation’s private information!

Trump’s relationship with Putin is placing our nation, and our security at a horrible level of risk. Russia is NOT our friend, but this everyone with an ounce of intelligence knows this totally. Trump with his backstabbing the nation of Ukraine, to the helping hand for Russia and the war mongering, Putin, is one more piece of evidence that he has no desire to be the President of the United States of America! And frankly neither does any of the current Republican Party politicians.

The nations who once counted themselves as allies and friends of the USA, no longer has that mindset nor do they trust this nation’s integrity, honor, or honesty. They all now consider us a pariah among nations and deal with us from a perspective of that they hold with nations like North Korea, China, Iran, Russia, and several others whose national integrity is severely lacking.

I have had several queries yesterday and this morning, about whether I will be watching the State of the Union rant by Trump. My response was a loud, vehement NO. I would rather someone put sharp needles in my ears than to pollute my hearing with more lies and bullshit from this fat incoherent traitor! Cannot imagine the mind damage that those will actually do attend or watch this dictator wannabe spew his disconnected sentences, his total lies, his Hitlerian accusations toward anyone not in his sphere of rabid right wing fascist theocracy dictatorship. Of course I have no doubt that the unelected co-president Musk will be at his right hand, grinning his bigoted smirk and stealing more billions of taxpayer dollars at the same time. No thank you.

Several of my friends have already departed these shores for places where freedom is still active, four left last week for British Columbia, one of the most beautiful spots on this continent. Two friends left the middle of February for residency in Costa Rica, where the climate is wonderful, the beaches are fabulous and the cost of living is such that a senior on retirement pension can live just fine and not have to put up with the Trump ChristoFascist regime’s Blackshirt Gestapo (not yet organized but coming), invading their homes and dragging them off to the concentration camps (still in planning stage). And lastly another couple of friends have taken and passed the test for citizenship as Britain citizens with an eye of migrating to Great Britain in the near future. They will sell their house, attempt to sell their two Tesla cars (but that will be difficult because people are no longer wanting those Musk mobile crap cars), then hie themselves off to the British Isles. Wish we could join them, but our financial situation is nowhere near as strong as theirs.

As some of you may know, I spent my younger years as a military kid, my dad was in the US Air Force. It was said that I was born with khaki diapers. I was able to tour and witness the horror that pervaded the concentration camps where millions were murdered by the Hitler regime, in those early days following the War’s ending when several of us kids grabbed tour tickets for those WWII sites. Our dads and moms were heavily involved in ridding the world of these truly evil scum.

I truly hope that such horrors do not come about in our country, but I most assuredly do not hold a blind eye and thought that “it would never happen here”. I know that the regular German citizen felt the same way, when Hitler took over the German legislative organization, burned the Reichstag (blamed it on “those people”) and initiated violence such as the Kristallnacht where thousands of Jewish businesses and homes were attacked by the Brownshirts, Jews were beaten, some killed, and their homes raided with valuables stolen. All in one night initiated by Hitler’s best buddy Hermann Goering. Goering was the architect of the SS, the Concentration Camps, the Gas Chambers and the mass graves.

None of Hitler’s inner circle were at all to be considered blameless. They were all complicit in the damage to the world and Europe for certainty. The damage and deaths that occured that night was propagandized as a result of the violations of law and public security and the average citizen believed the lies. As the NAZI mantras went, tell the lie big, tell it often and even the most doubtful will begin to believe.

As so it went, the German government was suborned by Hitler and his unelected thugs, their legislature was destroyed and rebuilt as Hitler’s rubber stampers. Of course once he made himself Chancellor, he no longer consulted with those men ever again, becoming in fact a full dictator. If one were to carefully look at the actions being taken by the current Trump regime, his Hermann Goebbels (Musk) and the evolving Brownshirts/Gestapo groups, the complacency of the Congress and the Supreme Court, one can envision the potential for an evolutionary process into a Hitlerian style autocratic regime with Trump as the dictator for life.

But hey, what the hell, surely that couldn’t happen here. No way could we have a government that uses force on the citizens (especially those of color), and to fulfill the dreams of total partnering with Putin and his Russian government. Nah, can’t be happening here.

Yeah? Tell that to the Ukrainians, to the Kurds, they have seen the dangers of Trump’s alliance with fascist and theocratic states up close. Remember the Kurds who were our staunch allies in the Middle East dangers? Remember how the Turkish Government and Trump’s first regime allowed the slaughter of these men, women, children, and elderly? I do! Ukraine is probably even now considering that evidence of Trump’s kowtowing to the governments that is determined to eradicate their nation!

This old Vietnam Vet worries and is saddened at the lack of honor that is about in our nation. Where once we had neighbor working with neighbor to the betterment of our country, our states, cities, and neighborhoods, today we have a full on we/them attitude that rips our nation asunder, and allowing full on anti-democracy autocrats to gain authority positions and begin the dismantling of our once honorable nation. I am old enough to remember when our country, the United States of America was looked upon by the world as a integrity based, honorable and honest nation. When our people were counted on to give our word, extend our hand, and stand by our honor. No longer, the European nations now look at how our President and Vice President bullied the President of Ukraine. How the next act by these two faces of America then stopped the flow of support from our country to the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their very nation and it freedoms. Support that has been given in an honorable pact by one administration and then dishonorably stopped the next administration’s dishonest leadership.

One has to simply look upon the hillside at Arlington House/National Cemetery and feel the sadness as the lives given to protect our democracy, our personal freedoms and our very way of life, only to have that be placed in severe harm by political ideologues’ who have but one goal, destroy the very foundation of our democracy. We veterans weep in our hearts and minds at the dangers facing us, our families and our future family.

Lord Help Us, we face unforeseeable dangers ahead.

Does No one Care?

Today, 02/18/2025 comes word of another catastrophic action by Trump’s Gestapo, Elon Musk and his DOGE brownshirts. The director of the Social Security Administration resigned over a clash with Musk’s teeny bopper thugs formerly (in 30’s Germany )known as Brownshirts. They were demanding access to the SSA database where all of our private information/data is stored, some for retired folks, others for near retired folks and the rest (tens of millions) of those who have yet to reach the age of retirement. Folks, this database contains private and personal information on just about every single person in the United States of America and now Musk and his thuggish DOGE Brownshirts will gain unfettered access to the information on every person in the USA, to do with as they wish.

This invasion follows the previous accesses to the data files of the United States Treasury and other major American information repositories. Included in these invasions are the databases from the Department of Energy which contains information about the USA’s Nuclear Repositories. How’s that for access by a South African pretend citizen gaining access to the most important information this country and it’s people?

As a veteran who once held a Top Secret SCI classification, I still recall the extensive processes, investigations and questioning over a period of months, I went through by members of our security system representatives including the FBI. And I was a natural born citizen, with ancestry going back in this nation to 1620 when my ancestors first landed at what is now known as Hampton, Virginia (then Kecoughtan). So I beg the question why has the various security members allowed this racist South African citizen, who paid for his green card and later a naturalized citizen, along with other rabid bigots like Rupert Murdoch to gain access to our nation’s highly confidential information repositories, thus access the private data on every citizen of this country?

How much of our nation’s classified information has this group of fascists sold off to our nation’s enemies? China, Russia, Iran, etc are all reaping the benefit of the Trump ChristoFascist Regime and the raping of our nation’s most private of information.

Why has not the DOJ issued arrest warrants? Oh sorry, forgot, the DOJ now works for Trump and his fascists including the former conservatives in the Republican Fascist Cult formerly the Republican Party.

Somehow, someway, we as a nation need to rise up and gain the protection of our information, though I fear it is already too late, Musk and his henchmen/women have already downloaded thousands of terrabytes of our most private data. This is what we reaped when allowing the Trump cabal to be allowed access to the levers of power. Our congress is no longer a house of representation for the citizens of this country, they are simply the handmaidens of the Trump ChristoFascist Regime minions.

Even more horrible, Google, the go to map maker has knuckled under to the Christofascist Trump and on it’s maps show the body of water off our southern coast as the Gulf of America!!! What a crock of crap. The Mexican President is threatening to sue Google if they do not remove the name Gulf of America from their mapping software and return it to the name it held for over 300 years! Trump is a blithering knuckle dragging fool, he tarnishes the image of our great United States of American every damn day he breathes the air. He has unleashed the greatest rape and pillage of our nation’s most dear confidential information allowing his co-president, the bigot from South Africa, Elon Musk to invade our governmental computer systems containing personal and confidential information of every person and all of our nation’s secrets, including the nuclear data repository. Traitor is too kind of a word for Trump, his cabinet, Musk and his DOGE Brownshirts, and the entire Congressional Republican political class. This also includes the potential of some democrats who are not just DINO’s but also join as traitors along with the rest of the Trump ChristoFascist Regime.

Oh and just a parting item of concern, the Vice President met with the German AfD and castigated the current German government for hammering on this new group of NAZI criminals. Vance of course berated the German Government for not allowing the AfD to grow, and in doing so, showed his and Trump’s NAZI leanings!! Oh yeah, that weasel Rubio, Trump’s newly appointed Secretary of State applauded Vance’s stand, and of course he did, Rubio has never had a spine or a pair during his entire political career. Yet the right wingers in Florida kept on putting his smarmy ass back in Congress time after time, until Trump the Mafia Fascist Don elevated him to the Cabinet position and the fascists in the Republican Senate rolled over and allowed the dirtbag to gain that important facing cabinet position. Now our nation will be truly screwed on the world stage!

Lord Help us, our nation is in a nightmare and my fear is that we will not see the end for decades.

Dumping the “News” media?

Seems that our nation has, over the past year or so, lost it’s way when it comes to actual news media. From the Gray Lady (New York Times) to the Washington Post, it would appear clearly that the once viable news media (newspapers, major TV news, etc) has simply become a propaganda mill for the right winger ChristoFascist GOP cult and their dear leader Trump the new Fuhrer for Amerikka.

The image of Trump’s co-president buddy Musk showing his South African bigotry with his Hitlerian Salute simply confirms what many of us have feared with the ascension of the convicted felon Trump to the White House Oval Office once again.

With barely 10 days in office, Trump, his fascist inner group, the ChristoFascist Republican Congress, and the once supreme but no longer supreme court of the USA movement toward blunting our national democracy, destruction of our democratic republic and installing the white ChristoFascist authority, has shown many of us that our USA is in deep doodoo.

Several of our acquaintances and friends have made actual preparations to debark from our nation to weather out the destructive actions in a country more attuned to freedom, health, and happy lives. One couple of our friends group has actually completed the testing for British citizenship, lucky for them. As for the Bride and I, not having the financial wherewithal to escape for the coming four years of travail, will simply hunker down, pray mightily for respite from the fascism and elimination of our democracy and hope for a better country in four years.

So the rest of us, who have no opportunity to apply for asylum in a better governed place, will simply have to show our resistance in small, but hopefully effective ways. For instance, dropping from the major news media, like the Washington Post, and other newspapers who have shown themselves to be simply “Corporate Media” rather than newspapers. One acquaintance of mine was adamant that the acquisition of the Post by Jeff Bezos would make no difference in it’s content focus. I laughed silently at his rose colored lens of life. As as we have seen, not just the Post, but a plethora of former true news venues have been corporatized and no longer provide true unbiased news reporting.

We have been subscribers to the Washington Post for more than 45 years, but no more. My subscription comes up for renewal in another month and I will not be doing the renewal. I will have access for online news media from other sources, so none of the corporate media in the USA will get my subscription money.

I will no longer be an active member of the Meta corporate Trump supporting mediums of the Zuck. Zuckerberg can play kissy face with that fat tub of lard asshat Trump and I am sure that my singular removal from participation with his newly established rabid right wing Trump ChristoFascist suckup attitude of his multiple Meta venues.

A shame, because the Facebook was a good means to communicate with my old friends from our SCC web site days as well as some members of my distant family members. But alas, perhaps I can restart that old SCC web presence, at least hoping against hope that some will return and participate as we did long before. That old Senior Citizen Consortium web site was a lot of fun and enabled us to share experiences and information without the interference of right wing trolls and media Censors. We censored ourselves, and we ensured our membership was kind to each other. Not to say we didn’t have disagreements, oh no, we were after all seniors from wide lives and experiences. But we were polite and did not call our web mates names or cast aspersions on them.

One has to wonder if there is any renewed interest in restarting the senior discussion forum web site? The old virginian still has several web entities just sitting empty at this time. Would be happy to consider restarting it there were sufficient interest from folks Ah well, perhaps it is more to their liking on the Meta and X platforms. But one never knows, do one?

Onward

Can the Democrats/Independents Recover?

This week, (Jan 20-Jan 25) is one fraught with anxiety, depression, anger, shock, and fear. It began on Monday, the 20th of January with the swearing in of Donald Trump for a second go around of his desire to convert our democratic republic into an authoritarian ChristoFascist regime with him as the Dictator for life. Of course from all indicators, looking at his physical appearance, that for life thingy might not be very long! Yet there is much that he and the rabid Republican Congressional majorities along with the loyalist brownshirts he is replacing our normal federal officials with, could accomplish to either delay or blunt totally a return in four years with a normal, set of humans to the federal powers.

Let’s face it, the Democrats and left/centrist independents dropped the ball horribly during the 2024 election year. Tens of millions (I have seen counts of well over 80 million) of voters for Biden in the 2020 election stayed on their couches, saying they weren’t going to vote because they didn’t like the Democratic Candidates. Wow, what hubris, no what anti-American lazy-assed bunch of slugs. Because of their pissy, childish, and irresponsible attitudes, Trump was allowed to slither into the White House with a 1.7% margin of voters. 75 to well over 80 MILLION voters who cast their ballots to fire Trump in 2020, sat on their fat butts, watching daytime soap operas feeling oh so entitled by stating their dislike of the Democratic Party’s candidates.

So, in actuality, those lazy-assed jerks in fact, really voted for Trump and his fascist storm troopers. As a result, the rest of the regular citizenry will have to keep their hopes alive that the Republican Fascist Cult and their Dear Convicted Felon in chief will not be able to do too much damage to our governance, our way of life and our very livelihoods. So now instead of a POTUS, we have a FOTUS. Never in my wildest nightmares had I ever dreamed that we would be stupid enough to elect a Convicted Felon to the highest elected office in our nation.

The Bride and I have made a decision to keep our own counsel, stay the hell away from the wimpy pretend news media, and try to survive the next four years. We’ve done okay so far in surviving the horrible jackass who was given the Governor’s mansion in Richmond. One more year of this scumbag’s regime and we can hope and pray for a better world in our Old Dominion, Virginia.

As a very senior person (well past 82), my abject fear is that the South American Nazi Musk anointed by Trump as the head of that committee of DOGE and whose primary target out the starting gate is with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in his gunsights will get his wish. Not legally, because that rich, bigoted white boy jerk from South Africa has no legal authority, except he had the Ear of his fanboy Trump so he can exert undue and frankly illegal influence on our national government.

The Trump regime’s push already is toward reversing the actions by President Biden of relief for seniors on pharmaceutical prescription medications through Medicare. I just yesterday paid a copay of 2000 dollars for a prescription of chemo therapy medications, only to discover when we got home that the prescription is for a 30 day spread. But, under the Biden action, that co pay of 2000 dollars would be the last of my out of pocket copays for the year. Even for my ongoing chemo prescriptions. If Trump is successful in removing the prescription ceiling for health care, most seniors including me will not be able to afford our medicines. For darn sure I couldn’t afford 2000 dollars every month for that one chemo medication, or the cost of the other chemo infusion treatment every three months. Basically, if the Trump regime does follow through and reverses the Biden action of prescription medications, especially for seniors, this old Vet will slowly or perhaps not so slowly have this cancer grow exponentially thus hastening my departure from this world because I would not have the financial capacity to pay for the chemo to keep my cancers at bay.

Thankfully, I have prepared a will (not that I have any true estate but I do specify my wishes for the actions for my final days and the disposition of my body after I die), and a certified declaration of medical directives, so at least my family will not be bothered with the tribulations of dealing with the necessary actions, decisions and legalities of my passing. Seniors, far and wide, I would also strongly advise that you look now at getting your affairs in order as well. At minimum, have a medical directive established.

So, if Musk Trump and the ChristoFascist Republican cabal have their way, the new relief from the Biden Administration, for those of us with a need for continuing health care and medication use will be eliminated and the pharmaceutical companies with have a green light to raise their prices out of the reach of millions of older Americans. Sort of murder by legislation.

Ahh what the hell, I had a pretty good 83 years in this life, and hope that I earned enough capital to move on to the better place rather than that hot place.

New Year, Here we Come Warts and All

Well, here we are, 9 days into the year 2025! Got past the holidays without an alcohol buzz, saw a first snowfall in our new Williamsburg senior home and had a great Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday visit with our kids and grandkids, yes even the grand Dogs.

The bride and I entered this new year of 2025 with some trepidation and disgust. We saw our nation vote for a person that had been fired by the people only four years prior, become President again. WTF???

We also saw our Congress overturned with the election of a majority of Republicans in both the House and Senate, granted the majority is very small, but it is still there. What the hell was our electorate thinking?

We discovered after the election that millions more of Americans decided to sit on their asses this year and not vote. Why? Well for the mostly stated reason that they “didn’t like Kamala”! Good GOD, seriously?? So instead they wound up with a convicted felon who had shown himself to be one of the most corrupt asshats to ever hold an elected position. Hells bells, even the Tammany Hall crooks would have been in awe of the corruption, lies, and criminality of Donald Trump. Yet, these lazy assholes sat on their couches, watched TV, sipped wine, because they didn’t like the woman candidate in the Democratic Party. A bunch of people who take advantage of this country’s bounty and refuse to perform their responsibility as citizens to VOTE. These people make this old curmudgeon sick of their anti-American action by refusing to get off their fat asses to go to the voting locations, and do their citizen responsibility by VOTING. A bunch of lazy assholes frankly.

This political status now is coupled with the previous installation of a majority of corrupt/ChristoFascist Justices in our once supreme Court, alas it is no longer a true Supreme institution. So where does that leave us? The three sections of our federal government are all in the rabid right wing sector of our nation.

This actual convicted felon as President elect has already shown us his intent to destroy our democracy by appointing people to executive positions in the Federal offices who are not only outlandishly unqualified, but have shown themselves to be in opposition to the operational charges assigned to the departments and offices they are being positioned for, including an avowed anti-vaccine misanthrope RJK, Jr, whose own family disavows him as a kook with this strange and totally wrong positions.

The Department of Education is already identified as one of their prime targets for elimination in the coming year or so. Look for the Department of Defense to become horribly mismanaged by a drunken slot and who will try to pressure our military to follow Trump’s possible (yes he as indicated so), military action against the US citizens who may have the temerity to actually protest.

Of course, sadly, Robert Kennedy, Jr. is not the only vastly unqualified candidate put forward by the incoming President. Not satisfied with playing havoc with the established organizations of our government, the returning convicted felon is establishing a new “Department” that will be headed up by two super RICH guys, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are to be charged with making the government more cost efficient/effective through the felonious Trump’s forthcoming Department of Government Efficiency. That is Republican speech for slash and burn for our government agencies who are focused for the most part on providing benefits and service to the CITIZEN!

One of these two identified by the fat felon President-elect is a South African bigoted paid green card resident super billionaire, Elon Musk. Yeah, can you can Conflict of Interest? You bet your bippy that old Elon will be filling his bank accounts with tax dollars, bitcoin and any other currency he can squeeze from his official links into our federal government. The other “partner/co-director” in this new Trump Organization is Vivek Ramaswamy, who counts as one of his friends and business associates the jail bird scumbag, Martin Shkreli who was found guilty in two separate court actions and fined millions with a substantial multiple million dollar judgement going to the victims of Shkreli’s horrendous manipulation of medical products. Oh yeah, Martin is banned from ever being involved businesses like those he screwed over. Nice going Vivek, good folks in your cast of buddy’s

Evidently the Republican Party only cares about conflict of interest, insider trading, and corporate malfeasance when it is not one of their friends and Party members. By the way, these two rich slimeballs have already indicated targets such as education, seniors social security, medicare and a host of other programs oriented toward service to the citizens. And they haven’t been sworn in yet!!!

Oh well, hold on to your safety belts folks, it’s get bumpy from here.

ONWARD

Our Approaching New Ages

Here we have the month of January in the new year of 2025! The Bride and I will soon celebrate another birth anniversary, the Bride this month and I four months hence. She will become 66 and I will turn over the clock to 84. So both of us are senior citizens in the truest sense of the words.

The best advantage of being a senior is that we were both qualified for the purchase of a home in the 55+ senior citizen communities and we took advantage of that opportunity almost a year ago when we purchased a very nice home in Williamsburg, VA in the Colonial Heritage Community. Great comfortable homes, golf course, activities galore, a Clubhouse with a fine dining restaurant, a casual dining pub with great food, and two swimming pools. What’s not to like? Like a lot of senior citizens, we are very happy with the close proximity of health care facilities, including two close-by hospitals. While the Old Curmudgeon is not ambulatory enough to truly take advantage of many of these very nice facilities, it is really nice to know that they are there for the Bride and hopefully ever so often for this old guy.

As one who is a great fan of history, especially our nation’s history, I love being in this area, there are historical sites everywhere one might look, From the restored area of Jamestown (1607) to Hampton (1610), Williamsburg itself, and of course Yorktown where our nation gained it’s freedom with the Surrender of Cornwallis to George Washington. The Bride and I plan on revisiting the historical sites in this area, (all within an hour’s or less by car), as often as we can. Of course we have to be judicious in our visits, considering the inability of the Old Curmudgeon to be ambulatory. However, many of these sites can be covered by car, or rental cart, and of course in some, by tour bus.

We hope to be able to start visitations of the local sites once winter has departed. At my advanced age, the old body temperature doesn’t do well with cold temps. The old curmudgeon also is planning a set of road trips about our area, from the upper Eastern Shore to the Carolina Barrier Islands and I will be posting some of these online as I can, perhaps even a travel oriented book? Oh will wonders never cease!

The one good outlook I have for 2025 is that this is the final year of governance by Glenn Youngkin. Hopefully when election day rolls around for a new administration the great folks in the Old Dominion will recall that their vote for the Carlyle Vulture Capitalist executive Glenn Youngkin was not a good thing for Virginia and Virginians. It is my hope, that when the election ballots are counted this year, that we as a state will have regained a measure of logic and intelligence to ensure that our new administration is far more interested in the actual benefits for the Old Dominion citizenry rather than the corporatocracy and right wing political party. This current one certainly didn’t!

But enough about politics, the current state of that activity leaves one with the urge to upchuck.

In addition to the many historical locations, the Virginia Tidewater area is also home to many military establishments, army posts, air force bases, naval ports, and of course the home to the largest Naval Base in Norfolk and of the original NASA facility located in Hampton. Many of these facilities offer tours or museums at times and if available, are certainly worth the visit. Being a Vietnam veteran, I so enjoy the opportunity of visiting any of the military sights that come available. Though being rather ambulatory impacted, these visits are rare now, I do take advantage whenever I am able.

However, if there are actually any readers of this blog out there, I would encourage a visit to my home area and take advantage of any of these tours. Especially the Fortress Monroe, which until the stupidity of the Congress and their BRAC abomination, was the oldest continuous military post in the United States. BRAC closed Fort Monroe as a military base but thankfully the President was able to declare the Fortress a National Monument, thus saving a wonderful site for visitors for times to come. The fort is surrounded by a moat (only one that this old guy has ever known), inside the fortress, is the cell where Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States was incarcerated following the end of the Civil War.

Nearby to the Fortress lies the former Chamberlin Hotel (now repurposed as a senior citizens home). This once gracious hotel served tea in the afternoons for guests and they were able to look at the waters of the Hampton Roads.

So, in this new year, potentially fraught with dire consequences from our misbegotten election in November last, it might be well worth a visit to Virginia’s Tidewater area to view the beginning of our nation, and our military historical sites.

So, to get back on track, the Bride and I are grateful to the good fates that have given us the opportunity to reach these advanced ages and celebrate these anniversary dates. We both look forward hopefully to enjoying more time to come together.

Therefore, ONWARD!

The New Congress – 2025

Today marks the supposed formation of the new Congress, both House and Senate will be majority Republican, extremely narrow in the House and somewhat better in the Senate. These new status levels in both sections of our Congress does not bode well for any realistic legislative activity. Expect conflicts beginning today when the House is supposed to elect the Speaker and Johnson of Louisiana hopes he will continue in that job. From all indicators, he probably will not keep the position. Rumors abound from the right side of the Houses of several Republicans saying they will not vote to keep Johnson. He can really only lose two votes and since Massie has already stated that he will not support a vote for Johnson, only one vote left to lose for Johnson. Speakers in the past have been saved by votes from the opposing party, but all indications today are that not a single Democrat is willing to cast a vote in favor of Johnson, so he lives or dies by the members of his party.

As for realistic legislation, there is a very slight chance that over the coming two years that anything of value for Americans will be forthcoming. Oh there will be many attempts at slash and burn actions coming from the Trump Administration. Especially from his rabid right wing and fascist advisors and department heads. The Co-President, the fascist rich boy from South Africa, Elon, will take mighty swings at our government institutions, especially at things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and of course anything to do with immigration, unless it is the increase in the number of H1B visas.

Also, look for more looting of the American Treasury by the Trump as he pushes his rich buddies into large government contracts with huge profit margins for those CEO pals. Of course, the fat boy Prez will claim his skim for all those government pig trough millions.

I also expect that Trump, Musk and the rest of the Fascist Regime to make strong moves to privatize our US Mail Service. Trump’s appointed scumbag Postmaster General will continue his actions in gutting the Post Office, preparing it for purchase by companies like FedEx, UPS, etc. Expect that they will try mightily to eliminate domestic mail routes, and force people to subscribe for MailBox access in their facilities if folks want to continue receiving mail. Also watch the cost of mailing a letter to rise astronomically.

Now understand, I don’t wish to position myself as an all knowing seer about the coming years, but these are my thoughts, based on the previous Trump Regime actions and the words and deeds of those he is surrounding himself with this time around. Also, back in the 80s, when the microcomputer (PC) rage started, I was privileged to make a presentation at a computer conference in Nevada. In this presentation, I stated that it was my belief that if we continue the move toward microcomputers at the expense of our mainframe and mini computers, we would see the loss of our individual security, our personal and financial information would be at risk and the cost of computing would not be that better off. Today, I sadly see that my fears for the computer/information world are coming true.

I do hope that my fears for our nation and its people, our freedoms and our rights as citizens, will be unfounded, but sadly I do not think so!

Onward

Politics in America Today

The current state of political discourse in our nation is one of chaos with a refusal to be adults by meeting and discussing what is BEST for the Nation and it’s citizenry. We have dismissed the true political mission of developing legislative actions that is of BENEFIT to the American public, replacing it with singular focus on what is best for the large dollar donors, and people who provide strong supportive capability for your ideological ideas or your political party persuasion.

For clarity sake, I consider myself a yellow dog Democrat, meaning I would vote for a yellow dog before I would vote for a Republican of any stripe. Having said that, I came to this ideological stance over the years. My first political allegiance was that I was an Eisenhower Republican, but then the Republicans became something else entirely. So, I truly didn’t leave the Party, the Republican Party left me, and frankly their actions as a party have done absolutely nothing to cause me to readdress my departure. For a time I wandered in the forest of the independent voter, and finally became a Democrat during the Carter and Clinton terms. That decision was cemented completely when Barack Obama was elected. Of course followed by the nightmare of the rise of the ChristoFascist Trump Regime. Nothing cemented my personal political belief than the entry of Trump and his anti-democracy political hacks. His regime caused our nation to lose face among the world nations.

Why would I and thousands of folks just like me, make this political change? Quite frankly, I believe that we all became tired of seeing our nation become a corporatocracy bordering on Nationalism/Fascism. And as we students of history compared the 1930s Germany to what we were seeing in our nation following the rise of political bomb throwers across the Republican Party, clarified by the GOP’s “Contract with America” which was nothing that related to the majority in this nation. Over the years following the end of Eisenhower’s Administration (and frankly the end of the GOP as a true party of the people), the Republican political class threw out the planks of that GOP under Eisenhower and began to forge the Nationalistic/ChistoFascist regime like party we see before us today.

But the Democrats also dropped the ball regarding their stand and construct as a political party. Where the Republican Party has moved consistently to the far right, sadly the Democratic Party seems to be every moving toward that far left. Almost unrecognizable as the political party both the Republican and Democratic as what they once were lauded for by the American Public.

In the recent past, I worked for a company in a position that required my travel between New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. AMTRAK was my transport of choice and during those trips, I came to be introduced to a gentleman who boarded the train in Delaware. His name was Senator Joe Biden and a more grounded train mate I have ever met. We chatted in short stands during that train ride, but didn’t get into great depth of political discussion. However, I found him to appear to be a friendly, astute, and all around decent human. I was pleased to have the opportunity of meeting a true Democratic politician, in fact an actual working Senator. Of course that was several decades ago, prior to his election as Vice President with Obama and then as President in 2020. I also was privileged to have met Republican Congressional Representatives who were representing my residential districts. In personal contact, each of them appeared to be personable and interested in my opinions. Sadly in the majority of instances their posture when in the House and during TV interviews was quite different. I found that to be true also with some of my Democrat representatives, so I do believe that the political class from either party is simply attentive to the loudest and strongest voice.

So, boys and girls what does that say to us about our political class and our major political parties, Republican and Democrat? Frankly, in my humble opinion, the powers that be in these political parties have no reason to listen to the general public. Why do you suppose that might be? Well, the old curmudgeon believes it is mainly because we have gotten to the stage of apathy where we are views as simply not giving two shits what those in political power do. So they do whatever the hell they want!

Well, hell, folks, this old man believes that is it time we got off our collective asses and started making these political dipshits to pay attention to the American folks again. It is our taxes that allow them to line their pockets, live the high life, drive fancy cars, and eat nightly meals in the Old Ebbits Grill. We need to form action groups who are loud and proud, who make the kind of noise that the Party bosses are going to be forced to listen to.

Onward!

Days till Nightmares Start

As of today, Wednesday, December 18th, 2024 we have exactly 33 days until our national nightmare begins. Planning and set up for this period of horrible times has already begun and we will face at least 4 years of the attempted decimation of our social structure, our individual rights and our over 200 years of democracy.

On January 20th, 2025 the Chief Justice of the once actual but no longer, Supreme Court, will administer the oath of office to Donald John Trump and at that point, will usher in our times of ongoing nightmares. One has to simply pay attention to what he and his merry band of clown car occupants have to say to understand that this Heritage Foundation manifesto for the Republic Fascist Party will truly be utilized in the decimation of our once proud and compassionate nation.

Now I am not attempting to do a Chicken little “the sky is falling” routine, trust in the actions and attempted actions from the convicted Felon Trump and his then government flukies were involved with during that previous nightmare of Der Fuhrer’s regime. Frankly, back in the early part of this final year of democracy, when i obtained a soft copy of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto for the destruction of liberty and justice for all in the good old United States, I was highly concerned, but nothing like what happened this past November when people lost their damn minds, or sat their fat ass on the couch rather than go vote and a declared national danger was elected by one of the smallest margins in the history of presidential elections.

Then I noted that several of my friends, seniors and other retiree folk were making plans to embark to other countries to spend the next four years with head down escapism. One couple I know were already shipping out to Costa Rica and planning to spend the next four years on their motor yacht cruising the Gulf and living in San Jose and Quepos. Others have indicated their preference for Great Britain, and Canada. But the old Captain is not going anywhere, both he and the Admiral are going to stay in our little retirement community with our heads down and pray that that fat slob and his fascist minions don’t screw us over too badly.

So, dear friends and not so dear friends, readers and not so actual readers, until 2029, may we all survive with at least a modicum of our humanity, our democracy, and of course our pension/social security.

As my favorite former SIL says “Onward”