Purgatory is hope

 

I know I am not a Saint, theologian, or anyone special at any level, yet I do know people need to hear the truth. And if it ticks you off to hear that Purgatory offers hope then you may need to rethink some things.

Purgatory is hope because it still offers the knowledge that eventually you will spend eternity with God’s love.

Hell is death and I am not the first to say that, yet once you spend eternity without God’s love you have died. You may live in eternity in constant angst and everything else, but you live without love and joy forever.

I may spend a higher percentage of eternity in purgatory than heaven, but I will still have hope.

And for people who understand percentages and who know there can never be a measurable 100% with the concept of eternity, then you know how much I am saying.

Cheers on this Monday morning

The Texas GOP may have given us the crack in the door we need. Time to get creative

 

And when I say we, I mean independents, third parties, fringe candidates, you name it. The problem remains that the duopoly does not want other people successfully running a campaign. Both parties for years created a détente so they could retain power. They acted like they were fighting for you by not being the other side, but nothing was actually done on a regular basis that proved they represented the people anymore.

And over the last couple of decades it just got worse. The divide of incivility grows daily with finger pointing and denigration of our whole body politic. Now the Republicans in Texas are going for an all out nuclear option and tearing up the unspoken détente between the duopoly.

If I were wealthy I would hire the attorneys myself and file all manner of injunctions and motions in regards to the redistricting in Texas. The plan is to say all independents (and there are just as many independents as Republicans and Democrats combined) are not represented in the current format, much less any changes that do not allow for independent representation.

I am not an attorney so the language filed in these documents would need to be parsed to show how both parties have disenfranchised independents and third parties and hence cannot change redistricting without more representation in the process.

The Constitution does not spell out we have only Democrats and Republicans so you argue on multiple fronts the current system is unconstitutional.

It is harder for an independent to get on the ballot than a Republican or Democrat is one argument. Since there are more independents than either of the duopoly then districts that do not divide up the populace to allow for independent or third party representation means my rights to one person one vote is invalidated. These are just a couple of examples. A well versed constitutional attorney knows more.

The plan then begins with the third parties and any independent candidates in the past to file a motion together to oppose the suit the Republicans filed. The grounds takes work since the redistricting isn’t completed. Yet the argument states the Republicans create future harm by their actions if a vote comes to fruition along with the other arguments about prior districting by the two parties favors the duopoly and has never allowed a truly representative government.

I am a bit angry with the whole situation so trying to keep my head on while I type. As you know I constantly lobby for new parties with you the reader and in other social media platforms so I see this as an opportunity I wish to take advantage. Yet resources are not my strong suit.

If the Libertarians, Green party, Texas Solidarity Party and any others, that might want to join, meet to go over the specifics that is step one for all of us.

I argue that if you know leadership in any of the non duopoly groups to suggest they look into this and meet with their counterparts to plan a strategy. These parties possess some legal representation to muster a well thought out plan. They need to act fast though while the Courts are still waiting on action to happen from the Republicans.

Or any independents that join are welcome also. If anyone knows a good attorney not doing anything on a Thursday morning their help means wonders. Any way you shake it, the Republicans have opened a door and we need to stick our heads in and see what we can do.

 

In some ways this is a continuation of a previous post, now I see it move forward. Share the heck out of this.

Texas GOP continues the failure of the duopoly.

 

So the Texas GOP wants to change the electoral map in Texas so they can win more seats. They are not doing this to better represent the people. They are doing this to continue the partisan divide that is killing this country.

Democrats will surely retaliate and again not to better represent the people.

Every day the duopoly show it’s true colors that retaining power is the only goal.

People do not want this partisan divide anymore or at least a majority of this country. They haven’t gotten to the point where they are shouting it from the rooftops, but the disillusionment of both parties in the polls show we might be close.

There are just as many independents if not more than Republicans and Democrats combined. Yet why don’t we have more independent candidates? We don’t have them because the duopoly has been for decades been making it more difficult to run as an independent than as a member of either party or gerrymandered districts to favor themselves. Now they are just making it worse.

The duopoly sells they are the only solution and prevented anyone from being able to offer an alternative. There are wonderful options. I know because in my little mad self I come up with them all the time. Are the best out there? Who knows, yet alternate ideas from what is offered from the duopoly are possible. 

People don’t want to hate as much as the extremes on either side, but to claw our way back into the fold politically we need new parties or at least equitable avenues to power. And right now this is more important for our country than anything the duopoly gives us.

If more different voices were elected into state and national offices the current power structure would crumble and they will tell you so in no uncertain terms. What is funny is that crumbling power structure would be a good event. It doesn’t mean our country would crumble, it would just mean the current life long politicians and crooks would have to change their tune or they would lose in dramatic fashion. In fact they would have to do more than change their tune, they would have to change their actions, the policies they support.

And right now unfortunately we may need quite a bit of splintering of the political power and then consolidate to what works for this country to continue to thrive. It can be a massive amount of independents, third parties etc until new major parties begin to form from the fall out.

Some of the duopoly will scream that would wreck this country. I say really?! We have survived the last ten years of the duopoly losing control of the country. They point fingers at each other, scream at each other, threaten each other, yet we survive. Now it may not last forever and that is why we need to change now.

The Texas GOP is just giving us more proof it is time for the duopoly to be broken up.

Can this Epstein bomb drop?

 

We definitely need a real reckoning with the Epstein situation, yet how will we know when it happens.

I am not sure how the right wing echo chamber is still addressing Epstein since they have been fed so many conspiracies to distract them you wonder if it worked or if they are just in limbo.

They spent years waiting for someone to tell all on the Epstein saga, delivering all sorts of theories to their audiences only to have the rug pulled out from under them by the man who promised them the world. Actually he wasn’t as vocal as others, but he never quelched the desire.

The left wing echo chamber has jumped into the fray and so we are now six years (plus previous history) into this so what will people accept.

When Bondi and Patel said there was nothing to the Epstein saga, no client list, no covered up murder I was ready to believe them because I have spent years hearing stories that couldn’t be corroborated. Every left wing elite was on the list and so much more. Now it is all Trump. So who do we believe?

Currently the evidence doesn’t look good for Trump. There always were some stories of their friendship and even some shenanigans chasing around models and beauty pageants. And now more and more of those stories are surfacing with more details.

The problem is two fold. When will it end? And more importantly when will it end for all the victims. It is sad for the, is it hundreds of girls, reliving their horror every time a new story hits the airwaves. Do they cringe every day? Can they hide from social media, the news, the podcasts, the constant barrage of headlines?

That is the saddest part of this unfolding nightmare. There is no place to hide. No one in Trump’s world acknowledges they even exist and in left wing echo chamber madness it is all about Trump with a tad of recognition by some podcasters and news casters, but not near enough to remind all those people that wanted the story in the first place, that this is what it was all about; monsters abusing children. To way too many this has become the back story, not the main story. 

The whole point of finding out about Epstein was to find out who abused these children. Now the abused children are like all victims in our society, forgotten until it is convenient to drag their abuse through the mud to achieve larger audiences. I am glad we do not know all the names and it should be up to them to let us know they were a victim if they choose, yet at times I wish we did know the names so we could reconcile with the fact they exist, they were children, they have lives now that must cope with this perpetual madness.

I want this saga to end, but in the right way with real truth. It is not pretty. And if you dig you fear it is much uglier than even the first people who screamed we need to expose the people with Epstein. We still do, but now will we ever know?

I didn’t follow the conspiracy. Now I don’t want to hear about this daily, yet I do watch to hopefully see a break through that resolves the whole tragedy. There are certain people who definitely need this to be put to rest. I am not one of them, yet it has come to the point where our whole country needs to know and I am part of that group.

It would be nice to say it is no longer important to know what happened, it is the past, but we cannot let it go. Too much has been said, too many accusations have been made for even disinterested people to ignore.

I hope we see a final bomb so to speak so we can move on, yet what must it contain to allow us to move on. This may be with us way too long going forward. And that is a horrible reality on top of a previous horrible reality for the victims.

Two topics: 1) Hillary Clinton destroyed this country 2) Corporate greed and DOGE has destroyed customer service, more specifically customer service on 800 #’s

 Yes half this country is going to scream what am I talking about, how can I say that with Donald Trump as President, the other half will think they can come on here and scream we told you so. And both are wrong. The next few paragraphs ain’t going to make anyone happy.

Long before Hillary Clinton stuck her foot in the American people the Democrats had been on a long slow decapitation of the support of the working class in this country. Many decades ago people would complain about the elites in the Ivory Towers telling us what to do. And since those people were country club Republicans no one gave it much mine because of anyone on planet Earth country club Republicans had it the best. They were all well off, lived in great neighborhoods, had job security and the list goes on. They may not have been wealthy, but they were well off.

The Democrats though continued to lecture this country and over time more and more people became well that is all and good, but what are you doing for us. Supporting the working class was dwindling by the 1980’s and so we had Reagan coming along and pulling democrat votes. Why, because he said words that made them think he was thinking of them. He wasn’t of course, but the verbiage was there and the Democrats continued to lecture and underperform for the working class.

The 1990’s were an anomaly. No one seems to remember on both sides of the coin, our country boomed because the internet came into its own. Scores of new businesses developed, the tech industry emerged, computer industries like Dell and IBM took off. The economy was rocking so much so we actually managed to balance the government’s budget. ( And please do not think this is support of trickle down economics. This wasn’t about tax reductions, this growth was solely based on a brand new economic world developing.) Eventually we had the dot com bust, but that was because people got ahead of themselves in the market. It eventually straightened out and went back to being it’s usual greed based entity.

And all this time, jobs were going overseas, the rich were getting richer and the poor were watching all this happen while constantly being told by both sides we have your back. No one did and so the working class frustration and anger grew. Add in two decades of Fox News germinating hate for the Democrats as a whole and by 2015 the world was ripe for Trump.

The problem was the Democrats in their ongoing cluelessness still hadn’t seen the writing on the wall. Trump should have been a slap in the face. Instead it was the exposure of years of clueless elitism. So Ms. Clinton instead of saying the Trump supporters were deplorables she should have acknowledged I understand why you think Trump is great, yet let’s talk about it. Nope she kept doubling down on insulting half this country and drove them unabashedly straight into Trump’s arms. He ate it up.

Sure Trump is a fraud, a conman, etc, but even a halfwit knows you don’t insult people you need to help you. Yet the clueless Democrats didn’t have the brain of a halfwit in 2016.

And what is worse, they still haven’t figured out the half wit is still correct. So the majority of this country is engulfed by MAGA, Trumpism, greed, lies, a whole administration of grifters and sycophants tearing down our country one institution at a time. As you know I have been yelling and screaming for decades now we need new outside leadership so you would have thought that Trump would be an option for me. Sorry Trump supporters, I just wish you would realize he just isn’t what he says he is and it isn’t you that are deplorables, just Trump.

And all this because Hillary Clinton is so self centered, so base, so ignorant that she never realized it wasn’t the” deplorables” destroying this country, it was her cluelessness.

 

And now a quick note on 800 numbers. They have now become a bane of American existence. The people can be wonderful, some go out of their way to help, but the overall system, corporate instructions to these people, the lack of being able to talk to someone, and now with DOGE removing half the people helping us, we cannot get help.

Corporations have dumbed down the system so bad it is insulting to call. Again it is not the people. It seems their hands are tied behind their backs. Sometimes you can hear the verbiage you know they have to say just to get a passing grade on the call. Actually helping someone and acknowledging the caller is human is laughable. Corporations don’t care. 

Both for corporations and government services now it takes hours for you to reach someone. It is so bad some corporations have built in call you back features.  And when you reach someone, they have to get help from another source just to answer your question. Or you can barely understand them because the call center is in another country.

Now they have apps they want you to use. The people on the line apparently are being told to get a good call score teach the caller how to use the app. Apps don’t solve problems. They make be great for a few functional items, but when you need to know something of importance they are useless.

And for me apps are just another tool to be exploited like companies’ websites. We still hear in the news how some company was hacked and all your information is now on the dark web or some such madness. Once Apps start getting hacked what are we supposed to do? And because they are on our phones hackers will be able to track you down, much less steal your info.

Yet corporations will not be held accountable for all the malfeasance that lands upon you. They never have and never will, even though according to our Supreme Court they are persons, but persons not responsible for any of the crap they do.

And don’t say you can sue them, heck they have built in responses in their business models for class action suits. So much so there is a cottage industry of attorney firms that specialize in class action suits. They make a fortune and the people harmed get $1.17 or something nowhere near the damage incurred.  And the corporation raises prices to pay for their insurance premiums going up and paying their attorneys. When you make billions it becomes necessary to treat your customers like crap to please Wall Street and the share holders. Forget about the only reason you make this money is because you have customers. Yet the customers must be treated like serfs so we can exploit our riches.

So plan way ahead if you need to call an 800 number. Take a vacation day or something if you have to call a government agency nowadays because it is that bad.

And you may think I am a socialist or something after this rant, but lo and behold I am not, I just know true market economies make sure the market works for all so it can survive long term.

 

So two rants you have heard before, but until we decide to do better across the board, we got to keep slapping ourselves upside the head so maybe we do something about it.  

Yes it is crazy and very true, the Republicans have a good chance of winning in 2028 in multiple different paths.

 

Unfortunately one is a very dark path so let’s talk about two probable ones instead real quick.

The first one is real easy, Trump doesn’t run (and yes I know he can’t, but who is to say he doesn’t try to save his back end), or has passed away and some semblance of order comes about and the Democrats go too far left. And this is highly possible.

Another path is for the Republicans to ditch Trump, Vance and Johnson before 2026 and find some way to move a bit to the center with centrist right Republicans and “neocons” retaking the party. They won’t win in 2026, but their loses will be mitigated and the Democrats in their unfailing cluelessness will get to far onto to that high horse and also move too far to the left or maybe even just a tad bit to the left of where they were in 2024. The Democrats nominate a feel good candidate and the Republicans nominate someone respectable and win again.

Democrats to this day do not seem to understand they need to reconnect to the working class, come up with rational economic policies that don’t scare people away and run from an eye to eye perspective not their usual talk down to people elitist know it all attitude. I am not seeing they understand this yet. It might appear maybe they are realizing this with some of their Epstein bi partisan work with a few sane Republicans, but I wouldn’t bet on them having a full blown epiphany.

I still don’t trust either party so I will continue to scream we need a new center right party to right our country’s ship.

 

And on a completely separate note I am getting tired of corporate America sucking up to Trump.

 

Cheers

The problem with Trump’s mortality

 

Let’s begin by saying I am not a fan of Trump, his ideas, his policies, his administration and just him. I never was a fan.

I didn’t like the Apprentice. I thought it was a weak show. I saw it a few times. Also though I should state I am not a fan of reality shows in general. On occasion I will see one, but I avoid them as much as possible.

I wasn’t a fan of him in the 80’s and 90’s, yet not being a New Yorker I didn’t know much about him. It struck me odd that so many people talked about him, yet every other article about him showed him as a failure or a person not of high moral standing so to speak. Bankruptcies, affairs and failed marriages seemed to dominate the headlines about him. This post isn’t about all that, just wanted to lead into a different take.

I wrote a few days ago about Trump being a test for Christians. You can read that if you like.  Yet as a Christian we are charged with keeping people out of hell. It is our responsibility to save souls. So, it also amazes me all these Evangelicals spend more time praising him than trying to save him. Seems like that test needs to be graded on a curve. And based on what I know I think it might be. At least for us Catholics we get reconciliation as a chance to find that curve. Who knows though.

If as a Christian you need to worry about his soul then we should also worry about his health. And I am worried, however some of my concerns are based more on what happens after he passes away than him passing away. Well I need to at least say I hope he finds God before he passes away. The current crop around him doesn’t seem to be helping save him.

I read about his health being somewhat benign. I doubt it. Those pinata size ankles do not look good. I posted on “X” that he may be sleep deprived. I am confounded by the fact that isn’t spoken about more.

It is always a concern when a President passes away. It really hasn’t happened in our country very often. Yet the turmoil that will surround his death will be tumultuous.

There is a procedure to swear in Vance as President and will be set up rather quickly. The technical succession transition is established. And that is about it when it comes to sanity.

My fears revolve around the turmoil and what certain people will try to get away with in the interim and soon thereafter of Trump’s passing. I fear Andrew Vought, Stephen Miller and especially J.D. Vance for starters.

And interestingly enough Lawrence O’Donnell from MSNBC gave a brief story about J. D Vance positioning himself to take over. I won’t get into the details. You can watch it yourself, but he references a social media post Vance made that sounded to O’Donnell that he is starting to force some hands and if those hands are forced it might lead to Trump’s downfall. That is one story developing now. Let’s see how far that goes.

A more deeper and troubling concern about J. D. Vance is something liberal and conservative commentators and writers are espousing. And that is the notion of whether this is a country of an idea or a nation state. Jonah Goldberg of the Dispatch and Dr. Heather Cox Richardson (she actually was on a video I saw and said she may write a piece) have articles out discussing what are we as a country that does a much better job of describing the problem in Vance’s ideology than I would be able to detail in my mild ramblings. The gist of their arguments goes back to who we are as a country. Vance’s version of the argument brings up the worst version of this country, stating that citizenship resides more in how long you have lived here versus what you believe about who we are. Please look for both discussions. Again they do a much better job of laying out what this is all about than I can. I also believe this is a country of “idea” and ideals more so than if you came here in 1600 or not. You can be a pilgrim descendant yet if you fight against the Constitution are you truly a citizen of this country. Some scary thoughts being promoted by Vance question the legitimacy of our fundamental values and puts some very nasty values above our Constitution.

And then there is Vought, one of the authors of Project 2025, the ultimate bogeyman item of the Democrats and more importantly should be all Americans. I am a conservative and I know some don’t think so, but if you are a conservative you desire conserving our values. Those values come from the Constitution first. Any policies, programs or actions that go against the values and ideas of the Constitution are not conservative values in my worldview.

And of course another favorite bogeyman is Stephen Miller.  I need to go to confession for my thoughts on Mr. Miller. Personally I feel he is a soulless husk of a human. His soul has already gone to hell and his body and actions just fulfill what put his soul in hell in the first place. So let me admit I am being judgmental, but hey until he changes his ways, that is the way I feel.

And there are many others that will take advantage of the resulting chaos that will ensue when President Trump passes away. Some will be grifters, others will try and claim the mantle of the head of MAGA, who knows how the MAGA faithful will react, others will try and rush their agendas (Vance or Speaker Johnson for examples) through Congress before the dust settles and more rational people begin to climb back into the picture.

Let’s face reality. President Trump is old and depending on you who follow his health might be questionable. Personally I worry it is not good. He has never been known to be a health nut, has bad health habits, to me is dangerously sleep deprived and the possibility of a stroke concerns me. And maybe a stroke is more dangerous because it would put the Presidency in some sort of limbo until it was determined if a succession should be put in place. The resulting chaos from the confusion or the resulting power plays would be horrendous to our country.

Again I am not a fan of Trump, tariffs, his immigration policy, his big beautiful bill, DOGE or anything else his name is attached to in this administration. I am a fan of stronger immigration policy, reduced and effective government spending, reducing the debt, changing the tax code to better benefit the vast majority of this country, improving Social Security and more. I doubt any of my ideas would come to fruition in the resulting chaos, yet that is another story and another time, hopefully extremely much sooner than what it looks like now. Yet all what Trump supports would look like child’s play if the worst impulses of his administration were to take hold if he passes away while President.

The Democrats are clueless and there are no other political entities or parties to usher in something more pragmatic when he passes so we not only stare Trump’s mortality in the face we may be staring our country’s mortality in the face if many other forces in this country don’t prepare themselves for this eventuality.