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Adjusting to simplicity

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One of the many adjustments I have made in my life since I lost my bride, Kathy Anne, to cancer more than three years ago involves the issue of simplicity.

My life today — at this moment — is as uncomplicated as it can possibly be. And that is saying something.

Kathy Anne and I were joined at the hip for more than 51 years. I met her in college, we fell in love almost on sight, we married eight months later. I was 21 and she was 19. We embarked on a journey that took us around the world. We managed to set our feet in 48 of the 50 states that make up our great nation. We produced two nearly perfect sons, one of whom got married to a perfect wife and they delivered us a perfect granddaughter.

Much of that great life crashed and burned on Feb. 3, 2023, when glioblastoma finished its dirty work on Kathy Anne.

The adjustment in my own life began the moment my bride drew her final breath. We all cried. We miss her to this very moment.

But … the adjustment was inevitable. The pain began to recede a little at a time. It became manageable. My tears won’t ever stop welling up in my eyes.

The greatest adjustment has been adapting to a simple life. You know what? It’s nice, man! I can go wherever I want whenever I want. My weekly schedule is fairly full these days, as I have joined a marvelous Presbyterian church, where a gang of new friends invites me to this and that event. I joined the Farmersville Rotary Club, which is a small club in number but it packs a bit of a punch in lending its civic-minded membership to various community service tasks that need doing.

I deliver Meals on Wheels in Princeton each Monday, and the clients I meet at each visit are some of the nicest folks I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I will now admit to something I’ve kept to myself for the past three-plus years. Every now and then, someone will ask me for my marital status. For a very long time after I lost my bride, I struggled with saying the word “widowed” or “widower.” I have shaken off that emotional burden, although I do admit to some unease with identifying myself as “single.”

My emotional journey is complete. The better news is that I have learned how to live a simple life.

Uncategorized

Colbert to soar, Trump to crash and burn

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We have gotten through comedian Stephen Colbert’s final show on Late Night, for which I stayed up way past my bedtime to watch just how Colbert was going to sign off.

He didn’t disappoint me.

My favorite part was when Sir Paul McCartney walked out after Colbert was rejected by the “the pope.” Sir Paul offered himself to be Colbert’s final celebrity interview.

OK, I am going to offer only this brief takeaway from last night’s extravaganza. Yes, Colbert got the axe because Donald Trump cannot — in Bruce Springsteen’s words — “can’t take a joke.” Trump put the arm on CBS officials to cut Colbert loose because the comedian wouldn’t stop poking fun at Trump’s feckless, reckless and criminal activity as POTUS.

I am willing to predict — in fact I’ll do so right now — that Stephen Colbert’s star is going to rise into the stratosphere as a result of what happened this week, while Donald Trump will continue his flameout into oblivion.

Trump has the audacity to say that Colbert lacks talent, that no one cares about his comedy or his art. I believe saw a graphic demonstration that Colbert’s status as a comic genius and satirist was on full display … while Trump showed us once more that he is little more than a petulant bully.

military news, national news

Stop this ego project!

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This item popped up on my Facebook feed this afternoon, and I want to share it with you.

Donald Trump is planning to build a 250-foot golden monument to himself right in front of Arlington National Cemetery, blocking the poignant view from the Lincoln Memorial to the graves of our fallen. After dodging the draft five times, he now wants to force our honored dead into his own shadow. Veterans are already suing to stop this vanity project, and we need your help to back them up.

It came from a group called VoteVets, and they have been pillorying Trump whenever the spirit has moved them. I presume they moved frequently to remind us of Trump’s shameful history with regard to war and peace.

I don’t know where this moron’s ego limits can be found. He slaps his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He is building a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House stood for centuries.

Now this. The draft dodger in chief wants to desecrate Arlington National Cemetery with his towering gold image. Good grief! The men and women who are buried at Arlington would spin in their resting places.

Let us recall briefly how Trump has denigrated those who have been wounded in battle, how he refuses to be photographed in their presence. Or how he refused to visit the American military cemetery in Normandy, France, because the rain would have messed up his weirdly coiffed hair. He also declared that those of us who served in Vietnam were “stupid” to do so.

For this clown to erect a statue at Arlington insults the memory of those who had the courage to fight for the nation that Trump seeks to mold into something the heroes wouldn’t recognize.

national news

Yes, on ‘career pols’!

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I am going to stand briefly and speak well of a sub-species of human beings who, in my view, are vilified too often simply because of the profession the choose to pursue.

I am talking about your run-of-the-mill “career politician.”

One of the latest victims of this ill-informed epithet happens to be U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who’s in the fight of his political life trying to fend off a challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who wants the seat Cornyn has occupied on Capitol Hill.

The TV ads Paxton is running refer to Cornyn derisively as a career politician. I am weary of that put-down of men and women who choose a career in public service.

I say this being well aware of the scoundrels among us who take more than they give back. There happen to career pols who are in it for themselves. We also have bankers, lawyers, insurance brokers and any number of private professions full of individuals who don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone other than themselves. Politicians, though, become fair game because they do so while collecting public money, taxpayers’ money, to do their jobs.

Think for a moment of those who forgo private-sector careers — where they could earn many times the salary they collect in public office — and choose instead to pursue less lucrative careeer in public life.

Don’t call me a Pollyanna because I choose to stand for those who serve the public. My eyes are open to what I know exists in the world of politics. I merely am trying to cling what is left of the nobility of a profession where its practitioners mean it when they take an oath to serve the public good.

crime news

Crooked Donald? Stand tall!

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I have been looking for a little while for a name to hang on Donald Trump. It’s kind of a nickname, but hardly a term of endearment or affection.

I now intend to refer to the individual I refuse to acknowledge publicly as my president as Donald the Crook. I might shorten it on occasion to DtheC. It’s the slush fund that Trump has set up that enrages me terribly.

You know the story, but here’s a quick refresher. Trump had sued the United States of America for $10 billion, citing some civil liberty matter involving his tax return, which he vowed to release upon election in 2016. He hasn’t done it … the dipshit! Trump recently dropped the suit,  but got a pretty shady deal out of it in return.

He has set up a $1.776 billion slush fund that he can use to pay off criminals charged and convicted in the 1/6 assault on the government. That was the event aimed at stopping the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to President Joe Biden.

There will be zero oversight on how the funds will be spent. No inspection of its handling. No one to whom Trump and his family will answer.

It’s free and clear money established for Trump and his kin to use at their discretion. Yes, Donald the Crook will be allowed to run amok with taxpayer money. Yep, the dough belongs to you and me. I don’t have much fiscal stake in the cash, as I am an old retiree in North Texas, living a quiet life spending my shrinking disposal income that is being swallowed by raging inflation caused by DtheC’s tariffs and the idiotic war he launched against Iran.

What makes DtheC’s fund so outrageous is the prospect of it going to pay for traitorous criminals who stormed the Capitol on 1/6 and injured police officers who were trying to restore order and protect officials targeted by the raging mob. DtheC says the criminals were treated badly by a government that had weaponized law enforcement.

No … it did nothing of the sort! The entire planet has seen the video of that horrifying event. These traitors deserved what they got prior to Donald the Crook pardoning them!

Now he wants to pay them? What an utter disgrace!

political news, State news

Now the fun really begins

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As if the U.S. Senate runoff between Republicans John Cornyn and Ken Paxton could get more fascinating …

Well, it did with the endorsement today of the Texas attorney general over the incumbent U.S. senator by none other than Donald J. Trump. This is the kind of news that fills me with — oh, I don’t know — a mixture of outrage and cautious optimism.

I now will set the table briefly. I did not vote in the GOP primary in early May. I cast my vote for the winner of the Democratic nomination, Austin state Rep. James Talarico. I am standing foursquare behind this young man.

Trump’s endorsement of Paxton is a statement in favor of the moronic MAGA movement that continues to roil the Republican Party. If you’re a MAGA moron, then Paxton’s your guy. The AG has been snared by scandal after scandal since his election to statewide office in 2014. During his impeachment and subsequent trial over myriad corruption charges, we learned about Paxton’s extramarital affairs. His wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, had enough and filed for divorce on what she called “biblical grounds.” We all know what that means.

The Cornyn campaign already has introduced that aspect of Paxton’s past into the runoff campaign. It’s gotten ugly. It is going to get a whole lot uglier. Believe me!

The runoff is set for a few days from now. Polls across the spectrum show Talarico within spitting distance of Cornyn … and actually leading Paxton.

A part of me is enraged by Trump’s endorsement of a deeply flawed candidate over a principled conservative who on occasion has reached across the aisle to work with Democrats on legislation. That’s a non-starter for your average MAGA dipshit.

However, on the other side we well could have the real prospect of Texas voters getting to decide whether they want a scarred GOP senator or a fresh voice who speaks with crystal clarity. Talarico is the rare Democrat who doesn’t shove his Christian faith to the back of the shelf. He talks about it with pride, but also warns of the dangers of “Christian nationalism” that seeks to turn the United States of America into a theological state … which is something the founders expressly forbade when they wrote the Constitution.

Let us see how this GOP runoff plays out, shall we? I sense we are headed for a wild ride to the finish.

national news

Term limits? We have ’em already!

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Congressional Quarterly used to be known by those who covered Congress as the “Bible of all things related to Capitol Hill.”

Its reporting was so solid it did not require reporters to attribute facts found in CQ to the publication. It once reported that that issue of term limits was in reality a non-starter because the average length of terms for senators and House members didn’t merit much debate.

I saw a survey recently from CQ that put the average term length for House members at less than nine years; senators serve for a little more than 11 years on average.

I want to post this info as my statement that congressional term limits is a non-starter, in my view. We have term limits already. They are contained in the congressional elections we have every two years. The founders established elections every two years for House members. Senators serve for six years and one-third of the Senate is voted on every two years. The founders didn’t set term limits for the president, but they came after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, who succumbed in April 1945 after beginning his fourth term in the White House.

I get that some of the longer-serving members now make for vigorous debate fodder. They are few in number.

Let us look, therefore, at the larger view of Congress. It’s not a cesspool of individuals clinging to public office. Most of them serve their time and and then leave to do something else.

national news

We will survive this madness!

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Allow me to restate what I have stated already, which is that the founding fathers knew what could happen to the nation they created after the American Revolution.

That is why I continue to believe that the U.S. Constitution will hold up under the pressure being applied to it by those who support the Dipshit in Chief who is seeking to undermine the document he has sworn to “defend and protect.”

The founders built a nation they knew would bend, and bend and bend some more. It set aside the three co-equal branches of government that they designed to check each other if any of them reached beyond their grasp. During the current crisis, we see the executive branch as reaching way beyond what the founders ever sought or allowed. The problem lies at the moment in a legislative branch that refuses to act on what many of its members know to be unconstitutional acts. They also are illegal. Yet they continue to allow the leader of the executive branch, the Imbecile in Chief, to get away with crime after crime.

All is far from lost, however. The third branch of government, the federal judiciary, so far has held firm at least at the lower-court level. Dozens have lawsuits have been tossed into the crapper by lower courts, sending a clear and unambiguous message to the POTUS that his legal claims have little or any standing.

The Constitution also allows for Americans to elect a full House of Representative every two years. We elect one-third of our U.S. Senate every two years. This year looks as though we could see a wholeshale change in the makeup of Congress. The House is poised to turn from Republican to Democratic control. Same could occur with the Senate. Right there lies the safeguard against the power grab we are witnessing in the executive branch.

The United States Constitution will do its job. Of that I remain supremely confident … and it is giving me hope that we will survive this madness and hopefully emerge from this cesspool stronger than ever.

International news

Weak POTUS feigns strength

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Donald J. Trump’s gallery of demonstrations of weakness keeps growing, as it did this week at the end of a two-day summit with Chinese strongman Xi Jing Pin.

Honest to goodness, I couldn’t believe I was hearing what poured out of the U.S. president’s trap describing China’s leader. He called him a “strong leader.” He said he was charismatic. He praised Xi’s height. His looks. His demeanor.

He didn’t say a word in public about the millions of civilians who have died under Xi’s rule. Or about the fact that Xi’s re-election victory margins are all but mandated by the government he runs.

Good ever-lovin’ grief. Yumpin’ yiminy, man.

He came back from Beijing with nothing to show for his two-day demonstration of bluster, brvado and boorishness.

I’ll explore very briefly the other matter that’s getting considerable play: Trump’s physical condition. Dude appears to be losing a step with each public appearance. Now, I don’t fault him in any way for that. He is nearly 80 years of age. He’s the oldest man ever to sit in the Oval Office. Hell, I’m losing a step or two myself, as time is creeping on me as well, as it does for every human being on Earth.

No one close to Trump appears prepared to tell him that he’s looking like he’s been rode hard and put up wet.

Then again, such candor wouldn’t work on a man who lives in a world of fake grandeur and delusion.

God help us the rest of the way through this dips***’s presidency.

national news

FBI boss did this?

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FBI Director Kash Patel, who long ago earned this blogger’s designation as the most disgusting Donald Trump appointee has outdone himself.

This idiot decided to go SCUBA diving at the Battleship Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. This memorial happens to be the final resting place for about 1,000 sailors and Marines who died during the Dec. 7, 1941 attack at Pearl Harbor by Japanese warplanes. The attack brought us into World War II. The rest, of course, is history.

But the seriously boorish behavior by the FBI director to go SCUBA diving at the memorial denigrates beyond measure the heroes who are interred in the wreckage of the battleship on which they served.

Kash Patel should be fired immediately by Donald Trump. This behavior is absolutely despicable.

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