Author: Blue Bronc

Born in Detroit when Truman was president, survived the rest of them. Early on I learned that FDR was the greatest president, which has withstood all attempts to change that image. Democratic Party, flaming liberal, Progressive, equality for all and a believer in we are all human and deserve respect and understanding. College educated, a couple of degrees, a lot of world experience and tons of fun. US Air Force (pre-MRE days). Oil and gas fields, computer rooms and stuff beyond anything I can talk about. It has been quite a life so far. The future is making my retirement boat my home. Dogs, cats and other critters fill my life with happiness. Retired on Chesapeake Bay.

If Being Gay Is A Choice

By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor

When did you decide to be straight? Did you know?

Sirius Radio and XM Radio were competitors in the early days of satellite radio. Due to cost and only so many people willing to pay to have radio in the middle of nowhere, or a lot of channels of talk and music, they were losing money and merged.  One of the channels was OutQ, the first LGBTQ radio channel that had more reach than local.

OutQ provided listeners with gay broadcasters, gay news and a place for LGBTQ people to have a station which confirmed they existed no matter where in the Northern Hemisphere they lived.  I bought Sirius just to listen, back in 2007.

I remember so many of the extremely few reports in the media of the channel as “Sirius XM is really going out on the ledge to allow them gays to have a radio channel”  That is 2007+.  At least now we have a lot more going for us.

Yeah, sure.  SiriusXM killed OutQ in early 2016.  So much for the gay channel.  Should have heard the excuses when I stopped.

But, to make the world feel better SiriusXM has hired Steve Bannon to bring a bit of the great white supremacist life to radio.  That is quite the trade off.  Open life versus hate and whites only.

So……..

It is time to get rid of SiriusXM completely.  I had already dumped off one radio due to the tossing of the gays overboard.  Now it is time to dump the  other radio for bringing in something that would be scrapped off the feedlot.  I no longer need satellite radio to drive across the country.  Cell phone coverage is getting much better now.

HUFFPOST: Seth Rogen won’t do SiriusXM press tour because of Steve Bannon

More Posts by Blue Bronc

I Didn’t Realize Who I Was

… until I stopped being who I wasn’t. — Unknown

By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor

Each year on November 20 the transgender community around the world comes together to hear the names of transgender people murdered during the last fifty-two weeks.  It is a recognition that we are often targeted to be attacked and killed for just living our lives as we are.  The list is never decreasing, this year the murders reached a new high in the United States, at least twenty-five transgender people killed.

All transgender people know someone who has died.  Some have died by their own hand and others by a murderer.  It is common knowledge that transgender people have an extraordinary rate of suicide. What is not known is how assault and murder rates are higher than the general public. Many police departments do not report the deaths as a transgender person killed, and the crimes are often not reported or charged as a hate crime.

The TDOR events are important for the community, often the only time many transgender people get together with other transgender people during the year.  Each event is unique with only one common act, the reading of the names of the dead. Some Transgender Day of Remembrance events read the names of those who died by suicide, others do not.  We all will die, many of us too early.

Please visit the Transgender Day of Remembrance website for the names of those killed during the last year.  It is always nice if you join us for this important event on November 20.  You will need to do a search for Transgender Day of Remembrance 2017 for your local area, as the list was not created for some reason this year.

Other links:

More Posts by Blue Bronc

“In the end, only three things matter: How much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”

— the Buddha

By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor

What can we do outside of politics? Is everything political?

Sometimes I wonder about those questions. When I was young I thought the answers were always “a lot” and “no”. Now I see and live those are no longer the answers. The real answers are more grey than any other color. In the light world white is the reflection of everything and black is the absorption of it all. Are our political times this binary?

Right now I am building a Linux laptop computer. It started last year when it appears the Russian IC people broke my computer. That is a nice phrase for they hacked it and destroyed it. For many decades the Russians and I have had a less than kissy face life. So I spent a lot of time trying to isolate what happened and finally decided to trash the hard drive and build a new computer system. Out with the crap and in with the replacement.

So I tried rebuilding a Windows 10 machine. Forget that. MS has made it very difficult to recover, even with a backup copy.

Years ago, many decades now, I had IBM OS/2 V 4 WARP running for most of my computers. I also set up a Windows 95 computer for one son, the others were on Red Hat Linux. You might guess I am a computer person. We had the entire house wired for networks and multiple operating systems. No matter where you were in the house, you had Internet access and a computer.

Then Red Hat went enterprise only. IBM OS/2 went only commercial (and broke up with Microsoft) and the only game in town were some Linux systems and Microsoft Windows. Apple was not a player back then.

So by now you are asking “what the hell are you talking about?” Well, you have to understand a lot behind the technology which is in the media. Keep reading.

We are now around 2000ish. The importance of hardware finally catching up with software is finally here. Prior to this date software was always (actually it is always) ahead of the hardware (computers). Right around this time memory technology started to improve, and reach a point where it could support a lot of software. Prices of memory and processors started dropping. Technology was finally approaching what software could do.

This is when the first major “social media” appeared, MySpace. I still have my account. I am not including the AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve as background. Those were created in a limited Internet access a long time ago. Although very important for many of us, those were not on the “internet”.

The use of the Internet to affect actions was known from the beginnings. There is a tremendous body of work out there to explore that. What we want to consider it what the Soviet/Russian FSB/SVR/GRU (KGB) did to American voters. I will look at that over time.

What is important is that the influence of the Internet has changed as the ease of information access changed.  The easier, and faster, the information arrives has changed what we live now.

From the 1980’s on, it was how CNN moved the news cycle to 24/7.  Of course that is BS as it was more of one little piece of info was pulled, pounded and screwed to form “news” for more than an hour.

Next Up: what does this mean to me?

More Posts by Blue Bronc

If some people didn’t tell you, you’d never know they’d been away on a vacation

— Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor

Can you imagine getting hired for the most difficult job on Earth.  A job so difficult that those who take it age decades in four years, and are beyond any hair coloring after eight years.  A job which requires tremendous diplomatic skills.  From Washington to Obama, the man in this job worked hard, and many played hard or drank hard.

Then the little people of America spoke, or rather voted.  Although they were not many, they were in the best districts to flip an election to the loser.  Some day we will know if they had help from the real nasties of the world.

So, a loser ends up being president.  A man so unready that elephants had severe gut bombs hit them.  A man who still does not know he won.

What do we do now?

Follow the twit’s twitter tweets?  No.  You would probably end up blocked because you would mock the idiot and he does not like that.  Best to just follow several people like KO.  Following others who do follow the senile old man lets you see others who probably would throw their waffle iron through the window when they read certain tweets.

Next, we need to write, call, visit our representatives in the Congress to tell them that the nutso has to be stopped and controlled.  Your representative, whether a fruitcake R or a Dem, needs to know you do not approve of someone who thinks people talking to him are talking on the telephone being in office.  It may be that your representative or senator is thinking the same thing.

One of the most important points is whether or not the guy is actually working.  He spends most of his life not working.  He is on “vacation” right now.  The problem is I am not sure if prior to this afternoon we do not know if he was working.

More Posts by Blue Bronc

Active Duty Pride

By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor

“Sargent, Bradley, you are no longer fit for duty.  Turn yourself in to the OD (officer of the day) for dishonorable discharge”

“Sir.  Colonel sir.  What is going on? I was fit for duty yesterday.”

“You are a disgrace to your uniform and must be treated as the degenerate you are.”

“Sir. Colonel sir.  Yesterday I was not a degenerate, I was your best troop.”

“Sargent – do not question me.  Your Commander in Chief is very afraid that if you were near him and he grabbed for your pussy he would grab a dick”

“Sir.  I am not a dick”

“Sargent D, the CiC does not know that.  He just wants to know when he grabs a pussy, there is a pussy there.  He does not want to be turned on by a big penis”

“Yes sir. My first name is Dorothy, not D.”

And, so the military gets used to having their buddies discharged because the Commander in Chief, the President of these United States, is afraid of men and women who were born with a brain that was outfitted with the wrong bodies.

What to do?  As an Air Force veteran who is transgender I must be true to my life.  The man has to be impeached.

Trump has gone so far over the line that a real Congress would have impeached him and tossed him and his mob into jail a long time ago.

While the Republicans figure out that they will not be reelected if they stay with the homophobe (he is too stupid to realize transgender has nothing to do with sexual orientation) the rest of America looks at these fools and laugh.  They need to see that telling the president to go to hell is the best way to keep America strong.

How many Transgender patriots have died protecting America?  That is like counting how many angels have died protecting our country.  It is important to understand that being transgender is a forever issue.  We have been around from the start (Revolutionary War). Research and analysis shows trans and gay is common in all life forms.

I can say many of us have offered our lives to protect America. Many in the Seals and Special Forces are trans or gay.  Many of us have died protecting America.  And, many of us will fight for our country, even when the CiC wants to remove us from our desire to protect America.

It is not our bodies or who we are that is important.  What is important is that we are willing to fight all enemies “foreign or domestic”.  If the president is compromised by the Russians, we have to consider that.

Everyone who joins the military has one thing in common: They must swear-in by repeating the enlisted or officer Oath.

The Oath of enlistment is something that every service member must promise and adhere to for his/her entire military career. From the Oath, you can see that you will be defending the Constitution – not a person. Discipline and accepting orders is sworn to. Finally, you vow to face the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) should any disputes arise.

The Oath of Enlistment (for enlisted):

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

The Oath of Office (for officers):

“I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the _____ (Military Branch) of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.”

Understand that the UCMJ allows for ignoring orders from the president if those are not legal orders!

The United States military is not a “social” experiment.  We are a team.

More Posts by Blue Bronc