Blue Bronc

— comes new strength and new thoughts. Eleanor Roosevelt

The First Day

While we are forced to live in a weak and crippled America for the next nine months, until Biden is sworn in as president, we can hold hope of a rapid restart.  Knowing that the political appointees will be submitting their resignations, and that a competent new administration will accept those, gives hopes to a cleansing post haste.   As there is a lack of appointments now, a deliberate act by the person in the White House and the far right group hoping to establish a dictatorship. We should expect Biden will be able to prepare a thousand new names, ready to fill the empty positions the minute he is sworn in. 

As this week begins there is a slight peek past election day that the Dems will have the Senate majority.  There is also hope that one Moscow Mitch will be out too.  That will make investigating him and his wife easier.  Having the Senate in Dems hands will make it easier to install the Biden picks.

I also look at restarting American science with a plan installed to take on the coronavirus COVID-19.  Yes, that nasty killer will still be with us.  It will be combined with the flu strains to attack and kill Americans in numbers which are still unknown.  The United States used to be the lead for finding solutions to previous health crises, but not now.  There is no federal plan from this failed administration.  Leave to the for-profit companies to find something is not a plan.

Although this may be wishful thinking, I hope that Biden and his team are already starting the transition plan to replace this disgraced administration.

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.  Julius Caesar (Act II, Scene II, Line 31)  Shakespeare

Death is the driving hell behind this novel Coronavirus, COVID-19.  Somewhere between ten percent and two percent of those who are infected die.  It has wiped out families and those without. It has killed celebrities and those who sweep floors.  It has no care about making some people without symptoms and those whose body can no longer breathe.

What a pandemic or epidemic does is bring death to the door.  Not a pleasant leaving this mortal coil (Shakespeare) as often is the blessing of dying in one’s sleep.  Not a violent end from a automobile crash.  It is a disease that makes one ill or horribly ill and a death with a tube in your lungs.  Or your neighbor’s lungs.  Or your children’s teacher.

Some live, some die.  You cannot know who will live, who will not.  That is what happens with a disease like a virus.

This afternoon I was watching MSNBC Nicolle Wallace when one of the panelists said he has lost ten friends to COVID-19. I started having flashbacks (yes, real horrible flashbacks) to the mid-1990’s when I was fighting for my life against a virus, Hepatitis C.  Death was a constant for us.

I was on Prodigy, AOL and CompuServe various boards related to HepC.  Starting in 1995 we realized the death rate was nothing like the governments were telling us.  By 1997 we were losing at least one person, a Hepper (I made up the name Leper and Hepatitis) every day.  I started a website as a memorial website of those who died. It had many hundreds of memorials.  I ended it when a friend committed suicide.

We lost thousands of Heppers.  Some showed up for a few visits on the boards, a few were regulars.  What made all of us the same was being infected with HCV and not knowing if we were going to die.  Death with HCV is terrible, just as death with COVID-19 is.

The experience hardened me.  When you have hundreds of people you know by name and have shared lives and hopes, and they die it does something to you.  My psychologists have helped.  They understand what mass death means.  This pandemic is doing the same.  You see life differently, you feel life differently.  And for those who survive you are changed.  You are changed in ways others may never understand.

My sympathy goes to all those affected by this virus.  I fought mine to a draw.  It took me almost fifteen years to recover most of my strength.  I hope these people do not face that life.

Disney song, movie title, your imagination of other uses

January 3, 2021 – the date Mitch McConnell is no longer a threat to America.  The end of the 116^th Congress of the United States which ends his career.  The Democratic Party members control the Congress and the White House. 

The question is will the Dems investigate the conduct of the republicans?  Will the FBI investigate and the DOJ prosecute those republicans who may have been under Kremlin control?  Will the state and other local police and prosecutors look into election law violations.

Can (not will) Americans begin to once again trust their governments?  Aside from the idiots who comprise anti-American values cults, the rest of our nation and the world deserves to know they can trust these United States to return to a world where we support and help others.  Americans have helped others with food and support, unfortunately that often meant weapons.

No more Cheney trying to fight Vietnam to a win, albeit in Iraq and Afghanistan. To which we are still fighting. No more tearing up treaties and agreements because of hate of skin color or religion.  No more blocking refugees from having their lives saved and improved.

Because of this current president the white supremacists and other hate groups have felt enamored to try to destroy our country. These people feel free to use their hate to hurt others and to break American values. They openly oppose authority, and have attacked religious locations. Can they be disarmed?

Will this pandemic change America and the world? I think these United States and many other countries have already been changed in the last ten weeks.

Some will argue this is too early to look at the possibility that this election will cause a change in the administration and Congress.  Some will say do not jinx this election.  Some will say that it cannot happen because the republicans will cancel the November elections.  And, a lot will say we must win, we have to win – we will win back America from Putin.

When you go to a restaurant the menu often gives you a choice between two or more items. The vegetables, the bread, the starch even how the protein is handled, braised, fried or blackened .  Choices go to buying a car, it comes in ninety-nine colors or your custom color.  Well, it seems there is a diversion brewing, in Republican minds at least, that the Congress can censure the orange guy instead of impeachment.

What does censuring do?  Nothing really.  It is like have a teacher in an elementary school writing a note saying you wrote on the restroom wall.  And, the school is in some state you never have visited.  It is a footnote to your life that no one sees or bothers with.

What does impeachment do?  A lot.  Your name is forever forced to live next to BJ Clinton. Even if you are one who has sex with a pro while your wife is feeding a baby.  Impeachment is the Grand grand jury of the House. People with serious thought and questions who will decide if you get to go to trial in the Senate. 

Just being considered for impeachment adds your name to the list of people like Nixon.  But, in this case Nixon is being rehabilitated because the lout in the White House is so much worse.  Yet, the very same people pushing censure are defending self-admitted crimes.  The guy admits to criminal activity and the greedy old perverts are prostrating themselves to do some serious boot licking. 

Give me impeachment AND censure!

— William T Sherman

I have been trying to think of what our issues are by age bracket. Having done a bit of reading about the generations and how we interact or fail to interact left me thinking about the current mess America is in. I don’t have the perfect answer, in fact my thinking may be so far out of reality it may only be good for causing a discussion about how weird my brain is.

Probably the most important division between my generation and that of the dictator wannabe, Biden and Warren, is that we are steeped in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, with Western Asia (Iraq and Afghanistan) to top it off. We grew up with tales of WWI and II. Many of us with varying degrees of other countries. For instance, my relatives fought the Soviets in Finland 1939 through 1944. Other relatives fought the Germans in WWI and WWII. Other cousins of mine are Vietnam veterans.

We fought the Cold War in many ways. Some of us up close and personal, others taught how to duck and cover. It affects us to this day whether we want to admit it or not.

All of this influences my thinking about global conflict. Harris and Kobluchar are the children of Vietnam era parents. The younger candidates of only the Bush Wars.

All know of the attacks on America that occurred eighteen years ago, the anniversary we just observed (one which the idiot made into his own fantasy world). They understand the global conditions of intertwined commerce. Not the America makes what the world eats and drives commerce fifty and sixty years ago.

In a way I would have preferred to not have a possible Russian agent running our country. I do have the feeling that Putin may not have influence in the strange world that stupid lives in.

How does this influence our preferences of candidates? I think we have poll results which show my generation more than the younger generations. My children are approaching middle aged. My grandchildren are almost of voting age. They only know a world of chaos and hate by the current president. How do we teach them that there used to be more rational representation in the Congress and the White House? I say we teach them starting now by not installing grandmother or grandfather (great-grandmother or great-grandfather) in either institution.