First Post of 2025: Happy New Year! 1/3/2025

Happy New Year, friends. I hope Santa was good to all of you. He was good to me. I'm still breathing, walking and opining, so I'm going to say I'm doing better than some. I had some thoughts about politics and current events when I logged in here, but decided instead to talk about non-political, non-controversial stuff.

Sending best wishes to all who see this for a blessed and healthy 2025!

Did any of you make any resolutions? I made two.

The first is be healthier. That means I have to eat better (yup, more yucky fruits and vegetables), walk and exercise more, and in the process lose 15 or so pounds.

The second is to read more. When I started studying Italian, my reading went to shit. I'm still working on Italian, more on that in a minute, but the obsessions are mutually incompatible. So, I'm going to try a bit of toning down on both, and see if I can make them coexist in my day to day life. With these two activities, I tend to be either all in, or not at all. I think I can find healthy coexistence.

I'm studying Italian with a program called Italiano con Amore. It's a guided self study, more or less. That, plus I listen to and read podcast transcripts. I need a bit of a change, so I am going to try a new teacher, too. In addition, not instead of.

We've got some travels planned, the highlight is a Viking River Cruise this April with a bunch of my MCATA/Marine Corps buddies. We also hope to swing through the southwest in conjunction with the October MCATA Reunion in San Diego. Those plans are tentative and vague. Plenty of time for that. I have my 50th High School Reunion in New York in June, and a wedding in May. We'll work in Louisville a couple of times, at least, too. We sold the condo. It made good sense financially. There's a hotel near the kids, so that's our standing future travel plan.

I stepped down as Vice President of MCATA. The bylaws call for a three year term. I might not have minded staying on as long as Dave Harshbarger remains President, but the rules are the rules, and we've got a great new Vice President now. If one were to act as MCATA's VP for three years, I got the best three you can get. I was there and active during the entirety of the VMGR Memorial Monument project. I got to meet lots of important and awesome people, especially our Gold Star Families, and I got to work with the awesome members of the MCATA VMGR Monument Committee. I couldn't be prouder.

My wife and I have toyed with selling our Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda home and moving a little further south, but in the last 2-3 years, the housing market we'd be selling out of has kind of gone to shit.

Since my stepfather got sick and then passed about 2-1/2 years ago, I haven't gone fishing as much. Not as much as I'd like, anyway. I'm going to work on that. I really am.

My Mets got Juan Soto. Who knows who else comes along, but they're paying him. He better produce. My Giants suck suck suck suck. Something has to change there. Something? Anything. The Knicks are decent. My Cards had a pretty good year in football, and the basketball team got rid os useless and inept Kenny Payne. Kinda like our country is doing with Biden. But enough, no politics today.

I'll get back to politics and world events next time around. We've got a new President coming in, terrorists, there are no shortage of things to rant about. But not today.

Let me sign off by wishing you all the best 2025 you could possibly have. Even you assholes. I hope all your dreams come true, your year is healthy and prosperous. I hope all your family and friends prosper, too, and if you don't, that they share their wealth and good fortune with you. I hope your old friends reconnect, and your estranged families or family members find forgiveness and can let bygones be bygones. Some of them won't or can't. They're stubborn and proud, candidly, they're kind of dicks. Even a dick can see the light, they might just need someone to rip their blinders off. I give you permission: rip the blinders off the dicks in your family. And for God's sake, don't be one. That's the last word: Don't be a dick.

Happy New Year everybody.

Daniel Penny: Vigilante? - 12/10/2024

I'm going to try and keep this short and sweet today.

I remember in high school, we discussed the famous and tragic New York story of a woman named Kitty Genovese. She was supposedly raped and murdered in Queens in the 1960's. All kinds of people were said to have hear her screams and cries, but nobody had the decency to intervene. If anything would inspire a vigilante, it's stories like the tragic Kitty Genovese story. Not to digress...

Charles Bronson in "Death Wish".

Remember Charles Bronson in Death Wish? No there was a vigilante. He went looking for bad guys and meted out violent, permanent justice in ways that the police and justice system wouldn't, didn't, or couldn't. He took the law into his own hands.

I don't believe that has much resemblance to what Daniel Penny did. If there is resemblance, it is in that the justice system failed to remove a menace, Jordan Neely, from endangering society. Neely had reportedly been arrested 42 times. In one incident I read about, he broke a woman's eye socket in a literal random act of violence. The police and the courts failed to remove a menace from society, and he continued menacing, right up until his own behavior brought about his own avoidable death.

Daniel Penny innocent. The jury did the right thing...

Daniel Penny didn't go out looking for trouble. He intervened when a menace was engaged in menacing. Jordan Neely was aggressive and threatening, people were scared, Penny stepped up. He didn't look for a violent, serial threat, but he found one. He's a hero, but the way Alvin Bragg and New York have treated him, I'll be shocked if anyone ever steps up again.

...unlike this political activist disguised as a prosecutor.

Black Lives Matter is trying to incite violence and destruction by making this a racial issue. Never mind that two Black guys helped Penny restrain Neely. Never mind that a mixed race jury found him innocent UNANIMOUSLY.

The message from Alvin Bragg, AOC, BLM? Somple: Give us more Kitty Genovese, less Daniel Perry.

Where We Go From Here - Republicans (fourth and last in a series) - 12/4/2024

Hey, you dysfunctional Republicans: get your shit together!

So you won. Now comes the hard part. What are you going to do to make even more Americans than the ones who voted for and supported Trump and the Republicans this past November think the election benefited them? Was better for our country? If they had it to do over, they'd have voted Trump/ Republican, too? Winning is hard, but it is a beginning. The really hard stuff comes after the winning.

1) I see lots of talk of jettisoning non-MAGA incumbent Republicans in Primaries. It seems like a great idea, right up until the person you replace them with has to win in that state or congressional district. If those incumbents are RINOs, is it because the state is purple and the only path to election there is a more moderate, Democrat-lite kind of Republican. If so, the outcome is liable to be a Democrat-heavy candidate winning against your chosen replacement. Maybe you were better off with the RINO? I think the GOP need to put more effort into expanding the reach of the Republican party, not to shrink it through purification.

2) Keep promises. This begins with deportation. Be methodical and systematic with our deportation strategy. Deportation of millions will take years, maybe a decade. And it will cost a lot of money. Put ALL the effort into deporting all illegal immigrants who already have been screened and for whom deportations orders are already in place. Add in those who commit violent, drug, and other serious crimes, gang members, or serial criminals since they got here. Lastly, all the known criminals for crimes in their country of origin. Put 100% of the effort into these groups for the foreseeable future before even considering deporting anyone else.

3) Give Scott Presler an important role in organizing the GOP ground game for 2026 and 2028 on a national scale. Many of the existing local GOP organizations are a bunch of old farts who want to win future elections with past strategies. Voter registration, voter turnout, and ballot harvesting better than the Democrats is what it will take to beat the Democrats. Scott Presler can train the GOP ground army. Let him. Find 49 or more additional Scott Preslers, so there's at least one in every state.

4) Find ways to make minorities know the GOP is THEIR PARTY and is there for them. This means engaging minorities. Listening to them. Working WITH them to address the issues that matter to them. Don't be like damned Democrats who presume to know better and to know what's best for minorities, then keep them on a treadmill that goes nowhere, election cycle, after election cycle, after election cycle. You may find some of the concerns and issues minorities have are different for yours or traditional GOP constituent issues. Those issues and concerns are as important, or perhaps even more so, than your own are. If the engagement is sincere and productive, some of the minorities may find they have more in common with us than they would otherwise have thought, but were told by Democrats and the Democrat propaganda media it wasn't so. Prove those Democrats and propagandists wrong by our deeds, not just by us using the kind of empty words Democrats have placated and pacified them with for decades. Actions speak louder.

5) Continue to use and expand on non-traditional media: podcasts, live streams, social media, X-spaces, etc. Legacy media is a dishonest, government and Democrat propaganda operation and will bring NO new voters to the GOP. Let the Democrats have it. They can circle-jerk on CNN and in the lying NY Times all day and all night, telling each other how fabulous they are and singing Kumbaya, each with their hands busy in their nearest neighbor's pants. We've already abandoned trust in legacy print, broadcast, and cable sources, why throw them a lifeline?

6) Focus on enabling business to create jobs and to create an environment where hard workers from all walks of life can amass substantial wealth. People with good jobs making good money will remember who enabled them.

Where Do We Go From Here - Democrats (third in a series) - 12/3/2024

Here's some unsolicited advice for the Democratic Party and Democrat leadership in the wake of Trump's stunning return to the White House:

1) Stop letting Trump and Trumpism define your party's identity. "Who are you?" "We're not Trump! We're not like Trump! We resist Trump!" What I hear is you're nobody. You're nothingness. You're emptiness. Resistance ain't existence. "Whatever he's for, we're against, and what he's against, we're for." That's meaningless, empty nonsense.

2) Intersectionality has driven you further and further left, so much so that you're calling what used to be the center "extreme" and "far right." Get a goddamned moral compass instead of throwing your compass away every time some small faction within your ranks shrieks that where your compass points makes them sad, or makes them feel or look bad. Move rightward toward the center or prepare for eternal obscurity.

3) Identity politics, DEI, and really stupid economic policies lost you the working class. You probably disagree because some douchebag propagandist on TV told you it ain't so, but it is.

Edison Police evicted this lawyer from an Edison City Council Meeting. He had the audacity to defy their new rule banning the display of the U.S. flag. Put another way: Tell me you're un-American pieces of shit without telling me you're un-American pieces of shit. Thank you. Yes, you are un-American pieces of shit.

4) I know "America First" belongs to that other guy who you hate, but the shit your leaders say and do says y'all hate America, hate what it was and hate what it is. Find a way to be sincere and love our country. You realize what an indictment it is of your party that when we see a flag flying proudly and instantly know it's one of us and not one of you. You disagree? The fucking city of Edison, NJ has banned display of the U.S. flag at city council meetings. Do you know how fucked up that is to have elected Democrats think that banning the American flag is the right thing to do.

5) Find leaders who want my vote and the votes of people like me. Quit with the vilification of all of us who disagree with you guys, and listen to us and our concerns. You need new leaders. Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jefferies, the squad, Pelosi, Swalwell, and Schiff from California will keep us divided and at each other's throats.

6) Quit with the un-American bullshit of stacking the Supreme Court, eliminating the Electoral College, and all the rest.

7) To the rank and file Democrats who may see this, the one thing I advise more than any other thing? Change the fucking channel. The lying propagandists you salivate over daily are in large measure what got us here. Change the fucking channel. Please. The shit you're watching and listening to is the problem.

I know you won't listen to any of this, but somebody had to say it.

Top Reasons Why Harris Lost (second in a series) - 11/29/2024

Of course, Trump doesn't win if Harris doesn't lose. Looking at the loss in isolation, as much as possible, why did she lose? Could she have won? I don't know. Why she lost though:

1) The Democratic Party's policies have gotten to be whack-job left over the last few years. The economy and immigration are the practical issues they needed to adjust course on, but on social issues, they've gone kucoo kucoo. Un-correctable. I won't recount them here, but they have gone too far left on every damned issue. They disconnected themselves from everyday, average American people (of every race and every ethnicity).

2) The Democratic Party's nominee was, is, and will always be a far left politician. She demonstrated an inability to articulate and sell a more moderate agenda. Why? Because it's not who she is. Kamala Harris is looney left.

3) The Democratic Party's nominee, Kamala Harris, is NOT intellectually up to the job of President. She hasn't got the work ethic required, either. She's not articulate enough. She can't think on her feet well enough. At no point in her lifetime was there, or will there ever be a time when she's got what it takes to be a President of the United States.

4) Joe Biden should have dropped out sooner, sometime in 2023, setting the stage for a genuine Democratic Party Primary. He didn't.

5) Kamala ran a horrifically bad campaign. What were they good at? Pissing away a billion plus in donor money. Pretty much nothing else. As a bit of an aside, it sounded to me like she was drunk... a lot. She was a historically bad candidate and she ran an equally bad campaign.

"Tee minny tee-queelas?"

6) Lawfare. Democrats bet the house on destroying Trump, running a bunch of absurdly convoluted scams to break him criminally, legally, financially, and politically. They failed. There was a backlash in the form of support for Trump.

7) The left's echo chamber lied to all Democrats: Democrats in office and Democrats watching at home on TV. They lie day after day, after day, ad nauseam. CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NY Times, Axios, Vox, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. They lie. So much so that Democrats who live in their echo chamber of lies believed what they were told. Like all of it, even polls that intentionally misled them about the state of the race.

7a) The echo chamber that is legacy media is dying. Along with the government bureaucracy at the federal, state, and local level, and most of leftist infested academia at every level, but especially in our universities, there a a nearly complete disconnect with the rest of us (who are not on the left). Rather than engage us to understand why, we are dismissed as uninformed, misinformed, misguided, uneducated fools.

8) They played ONLY to their base. Picking up on the dismissal and disengagement in the preceding (7a), it is worth noting that it never dawned on me, not even once, that Biden or Harris wanted my vote or the votes of people like me. Instead, they tried to conjure opposition votes by vilifying us. What was our reaction? "Fuck me? NO. Fuck you!" I guarantee you, I am not the only one who was repulsed by the way we were carried on about, nor was I the only one who responded that way. Point me to even one appeal by either Biden or Harris in 2023 or 2024 to enlist my interest in their candidacy or agenda. Didn't happen. Instead, I was given fascist treatment. Yeah, I was. "Fuck me? NO. Fuck you!"

9) A bullet grazed Trump's ear, and Trump jumped up bleeding, pumped his fist and said, "Fight, fight, fight!" Democrats, Biden, Harris... they had NOTHING to answer that. Hoping we would forget it was never going to work.

Top Reasons Trump Won (first in a series) - 11/29/2024

The election is several weeks past now. Except in Commie-fornia, of course, where the counting of mail in ballots will continue until the maximum number of election results are overturned. But, Commie-fornia's cheating aside, it's time to look at the election and reflect on why Trump won and Harris lost.

In case you hadn't heard, Donald Trump won the 2024 Presidential Election.

Trump won because:

1) Despite every Democrat and press attempt at demonization, vilification, and demagoguery, people knew we were better off under Trump than under Biden, and a Harris presidency promised to be a continuation of the Biden presidency. Simply put: people were better off under Trump, knew it, and voted for a return to better times.

2) Backlash against the lawfare and dirty tricks of the establishment, the Deep State, the Biden Administration. Crossfire Hurricane, Mueller, two bogus and frivolous impeachments, and then the Jean Carroll, Leticia James, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, and Jack Smith cases all pointed to one thing: political hit jobs. I realize New York Times readers, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN viewers, and NPR people think those things were all legit, but for many, many people like me, it was a weak hand that Democrats overplayed. They overplayed the hand by a mile. Let's not forget the scumbags, oops, I mean the "51 former intelligence officials" who said the Hunter Biden laptop had "all the earmarks of Russian disinformation."

3) Trump supporters have been unwavering in their loyalty. All the aforementioned in 1 and 2 did was galvanize support. I think what they didn't get is we did not and do not see the Deep State (I do not give a fuck that Democrats call this a conspiracy theory. Tell it to the 51 former intelligence officials and Peter Strzok) as honest, fair, or impartial. Trump support was strong. They can't understand it, because they live in an echo chamber that not only mischaracterizes Trump, but also Trump supporters.

4) Backlash against all the name calling and insults levied at Trump supporters. From Hillary's deplorables to Biden's garbage, and all the nasty points in between, people are smart enough (well some are, some of you really are stupid motherfuckers) to realize half of Americans aren't Nazi and fascist. I think the name calling didn't just turn some people off, it turned some people around.

5) Better policies. Period. I'm not even going to elaborate. His opponent in the end doesn't even seem to have had policies. That makes it pretty easy for Trump's policies to be better. And they are.

6) Two assassination attempts. "Fight, fight, fight!"

7) Trump work ethic. He outworked Biden, then Harris, and both by huge margins. He went anywhere and everywhere. He was on TV, podcasts, in barber shops, and he rallied his ass off. Even when Harris finally started to campaign, he was doing easily more than twice the work that she was.

8) McDaniel ousted. Republicans / Trump replaced worthless, establishment RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, and unlike 2020, were prepared and proactive against Democrat attempts at dishonesty in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, etc.

9) J.D. Vance. The U.S. Marine and U.S. Senator was a home run of a running mate choice.

Next up: Some reasons Kamala Harris lost.

It's Hard to Put Into Words - 11/25/2024

It's hard to put into words how angry I am at the left:

The politicians, from Biden and Harris on down to the activists in 'blue' city and state governments.

The un-elected bureaucrats - in D.C. and everywhere else. The establishment. The Deep State. "51 former intelligence officials." All manner and sort of (Lt Col to you) Alexander Vindhman, etc., etc., etc., types in every agency we have.

Weaponized government agencies, turned loose on Trump, his inner circle, and supporters. Four absolute BULLSHIT cases, not to mention a joke of a civil suit in New York. The Trump-deranged prosecutor Alvon Bragg in New York wants to hang his misdemeanors farcically conjured into felonies, bending the law like a pretzel to achieve a desired end, over Trump's head until he's an 82 year old ex-President.

The press: print, online, broadcast: the weaponized propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

Let's not forget the leftist, activist scumbags at big tech: Facebook, Google, what was formerly Twitter.

Last, but not least: rank and file Democrats, especially the brainwashed, Trump-deranged fools, and they are everywhere. Completely lacking in judgement, or any type of measure or balance, these idiots belive everything their propagandists tell them, and call everything that contradicts it 'misinformation.' When the misinformation turns out to have been accurate, they NEVER, NOT EVER, admit they were duped. Instead, they scream and yell and call us names. "BUUUUUUUT TRUUUUUUUMP!!!!!!!!"

I'm feeling no fondness, kindness, kinship, or desire for unity. These pieces of shit have since Hillary in 2016 called me deplorable and irredeemable. I've been called a racist, a homophobe, and every kind of bigot. I've been called a threat to democracy. A fascist. A Nazi. "Say no to hate." Hate who? I don't hate nobody. At least I didn't used to. After the last 9-10 years, I'm not so sure anymore.

Now Trump is re-elected, and guess what? If you're any one of the above, it's your fault he was. It's on you. Own it. And when Trump goes to war with all of the above, and I hope like hell he does, a whole bunch of you had it coming. YOU HAVE IT COMING.