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.

Why the capitalists of the United States are failing the United States

 

I cannot even begin to state how crazy and backwards we have become. When the biggest dreamer in the United States is a psychotic South African that should tell you right there we are missing the boat in making America great again.

What made America great especially when you talk about market growth was projects like the St. Lawrence seaway, the railroads in the 19^th century and then the interstate highway system of the 20^th century. Folks it is 2025 in the 21^st century and we are arguing about who is to blame because our infrastructure is crumbling.

The Democrats and Republicans have made us hate each other so much we can’t do the basics in government anymore, yet that isn’t what this post is about.

Let’s talk about what we can do instead. I once wrote a rambling three glass of wine post that talked about what Elon Musk wants to do by going to Mars, but on an even grander scale, but that is another story.

I once wrote a post about an inter continental waterway to help alleviate some of the problems of global warming and climate change. We still need to work on that not like yesterday, but like last century. That is one project we need to consider and the benefits of that are astronomical.

We need an electric cross country high speed rail system. And as far as I am concerned the airlines should invest in it for their own growth. And that is one example of the problem. Companies and industries are stuck. They are not thinking ahead. They are spending tens of millions of dollars to save one percent on their taxes. That is flat out counter productive to growth.

To continue the example the airlines are already in the business of moving people about, but are dealing with multiple problems not the least of which is air traffic control.  Maybe we have too many planes in the air. Or maybe air travel should be more tailored to long haul travel. And if they invested in a rail system that used green energy you now create multiple industries that bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States ie, new rails, new trains, more green infrastructure and the list goes on. All that development spurs more development as people need services to go along with the growth.

Are American capitalists thinking like this? No! just flat out no. They spend more time convincing Congress to give them breaks instead of thinking what could they do with the hundreds of billions they are investing in wealth management companies hoping to create more wealth, that just sits there. Waste of money, waste of resources waste of our country appears to be the goal instead of investing in this country to grow it.

Congress should only give tax breaks to companies that create new growth and tax the hell out of the rest of them to pay for their waste of our country. 

Look at Dubai, look at China, they are investing in their future dramatically more than our capitalists even care about. We still have the greatest wealth on the country and it is rotting in hedge funds. We should tax the heck out of hedge funds so our capitalists move the money back into the country and grow it.

So if this crazy old fart can dream just as crazily as some psychotic billionaire why can’t the wealthy amongst us figure out that they will make more money not by sitting on it, but by putting it to work.

Again a canal system to move water around and help with hydroelectric power that runs along our current highway system so we can upgrade it while we are building the canals. And did you know that if you drive the major highways in Europe their rest areas or service areas are top of the line. You can eat at restaurants, fill up your car, shop, let the kids play at a small park and they even have umpteen amounts of charging stations for electric cars. And yes they charge to charge. Can you envision what a whole new waterway added along the highways could do for us. Also secondary bonuses are floods can be managed better, areas with water can share excess water and rain with areas with drought, you can build desalination plants to add to fresh water as needed. And what is that doing, adding to the ability to use the desert southwest for agriculture, giving us necessary water to fight wildfires, and since we can see hurricanes coming we can open the canals to move water quickly out of rising rivers to alleviate flood damage. Heck the hydroelectric power created by moving water powers the pumps to move the water if you do it right.

Folks Mexico is looking to build a cross country rail system to transport freight to help their economy. They are planning for this to compete with the Panama Canal. If they can think ahead why can’t we?

And you add more wind and solar energy along with the hydroelectric power to fuel electric high speed trains. Musk is building a small system in Las Vegas, imagine it working in and to and from various cities at a larger scale.

For example the Dallas Ft. Worth area has grown so much driving around is suicide. We need to build out our rapid transit system to look more like what they are planning to do in Dubai instead of this piecemeal once every ten years add a line madness.

And what does all this do? It adds new industries, add jobs and adds to the economy with real growth, not destroying our country with greed induced wealth building.

Our capitalists are failing us.

And some of the first steps to start doing this is to get money out of politics, rewrite the tax code to encourage growth and not reward greed, flesh out public private partnerships that uses private capital to invest to earn money and public input to make sure it benefits the country as a whole. An example is insurance companies should be required to invest in flood control as part of this canal growth. It helps them lower the cost of claims which helps to keep premiums in line, and they get their tax break for the money they invest so their bottom line can be improved based on positive investment, not tax breaks alone.

And with just an iota of amount of thought there are hundreds of small and large projects that can be developed. Again the airlines should invest in the short haul high speed trains, use airports for long haul and maybe add to the airport as train stations so no one loses out and more benefit. Why fill the air with plane trips from Dallas to Houston or Austin when you could drive closer to your house jump on one train station to go to the main train station and get their almost as fast as waiting two hours in an airport. They do some version of this in Europe all the time.

And people wonder why I say we need new parties; it isn’t because I hate Democrats or Republicans. I could care less. What I see is no vision by anyone in power in our country. That is why we need change. 

Again our capitalists are failing us so if we really want to make America great again, remove the stagnant aging morass in power and start building our future.

Are the Evangelicals right? ….. well sort of …. Maybe

 

There is great hulaboo amongst certain Evangelical groups that Trump was sent by God to save America or some such thinking.

Maybe he was sent by God, however maybe it is to test us.

Everything Trump does or says is antithetical to what Jesus Christ taught. Everything. What if we, as Christians, are to recognize what is our test and double down on what Jesus taught? We are to put God first, follow God’s will, supposed to help the marginalized, love our neighbor, think of the story of the good Samaritan for example, visit prisons, not judge others, are just a few of the points Jesus taught. When does Trump do any of this? I am not going to spew a bunch of comments about Trump since one of the items is not to judge others so I will attempt to follow.

And yes no one is perfect, but when you look at everything Trump does and says and then read what Jesus says, how can anyone say Trump was sent by God. Unless you step back and think  about it for a moment. Would it not be a test of faith to let someone completely the opposite of what was taught become a leader? Would it not be a test of are you listening to me instead of the ways of the world to put someone so diametrically opposed to the teachings of God in charge?

Just a thought since there is this group in America who for some reason think Trump is some sort of savior. And if you really let those words sink in, could you not see God is testing us.

And another topic some Evangelicals keep trying to push is the end times. Really???????

Isn’t the end times God’s choice, not anyone else’s? Why would you try to push the end of the world just to force God’s hand. Again are you following God’s word?  Let’s say you get the world to end so to speak, create a disaster or something, but it wasn’t God’s choice. You create unnecessary suffering for billions just because you think it will get you to Heaven if the world ends.

The world won’t end until God decides, life will go on, it will just be miserable. 

So maybe a few Evangelicals need to go back and read the Bible a bit more in depth. It might help them realize they are not in control and to quit trying so the rest of us can sleep better at night.

And one more quick note, I love when people say the Catholic Church needs to update their thinking to the modern world or some such nonsense. Really, you are asking the Church to change what Jesus taught to make you feel better.  No, the teachings of Jesus will always be the teachings of Jesus. You cannot change what God wants from us to please you. Listen to the word, follow it as best you can, (we are human) and learn that God is love, just not always the way you want it to be.

For humor I will say this, if you want to update the teaching maybe you can say in God’s wheelhouse instead of God’s will, but in the long run it is still the same.

Cheers

The trip; the disaster and of course the reminder everything is still beautiful and last post on the trip

 

There is so much I still want to talk about from our trip, but now it is been a few weeks since we got back and the world is moving on, so must I.

Let’s recap; our trip we flew to Lisbon then drove to Rome and back. We went through a northern path through Portugal.  We wanted to at least stop by Porto or see some of the silver coast, yet we left Lisbon late, then realized we forgot something right about the fork in the road to choose to head straight to Spain or go to Porto, so we drove back to the hotel in Lisbon and then it was really late so we went on to Spain. We spend the first night in Salamanca. Since we spent the entirety of the day in Salamanca we didn’t even leave Spain for the next night.

We drove across France and stumbled into Lourdes. And I mean we stumbled into Lourdes. Diving down the highway I saw a sign that said Lourdes one Kilometer and since we were going about 125 kilometers per hour we didn’t have time to realize where we were. The better half did check the internet and lo and behold it was Lourdes so we doubled back and spend the afternoon there. Of course this slowed us down some more. We actually had prepaid hotel in Rome so we needed to get there in a couple of days. We rushed to Montpellier and this was one of the few disappointing moments of the trip. The hotel just didn’t do it for us and we left early.

Only problem was I made a wrong turn and we ended up in very rural France desperately needing to fill up the car. We barely solved that problem timely, yet by now we were well off the beaten path and more specifically a highway to get going.

After about a hour or so we are back on track and at this point we could still make Rome about 7 or 8 if memory serves.

No no no, we hit multiple sections of the highway with road construction including times when the highway was completely stopped. This was from the last few cities of southern France, all through northern Italy. We did not get to Rome until 3 in the morning and we had a prebooked tour at ten thirty. We ran late everywhere in Rome, again really Vatican City. I have told our tales to so many people that I lose track of who knows what.

Okay I think I talked enough about Rome up until when we left. We finally got in the car and were headed out. We really wanted to go to Florence, but it was already late and we wanted to go one more place so we booked a hotel in Assisi. We went to the Basilica of Paul outside the wall. It was a bit of a drive from central Rome and we got there close to 6. We parked the car on the side of the road across from a park and near a couple of restaurants. The Basilica closed at 6:30 so we stayed no more than forty minutes.

We got back to the car and it was broken into. Someone had broken the back window, pulled down the back seat and stole all our luggage and a backpack and yes just about everything we had with us was packed inside. I want bore you with the litany of stuff we lost, but this was a three week trip and we had packed quite a bit. The only saving grace was we didn’t take clothes for three weeks and did laundry a couple of times along the way. The night before we had gone to a laundry service near our hotel so we had a small bag of clean clothes done after we packed up on the floor of the car. They didn’t take that, nor a bag of souvenirs, a box of cookies and a bottle of wine that was under the clothes. So that was it.

We filed a police report, contacted the rental car company and let them know we had reservations in Assisi and they said they would pick up the car once we got to the hotel and get us a replacement the next day. Sounded good to us.

By the time we left Rome it was dark, so we were doubly glad we were only going to Assisi since only about two plus hours away. And finding our hotel out in the middle of to us nowhere was a bit of a challenge, yet we did. Tired, angry, frustrated because we drove on some very country roads that was barely wide enough for one car, much less two.

First the hotel was outside of the actual town which ended up being quite a treat, yet that night coming in at midnight in pitch darkness on roads where we kept missing turns didn’t help  our mood one bit. We got checked in, called the customer service to let them know we arrived and a tow track came about a hour later. We went to bed.

Like the title says, now the beauty. We woke up and just about everywhere we looked, every window we opened, or looked through walking through the hotel the scenario was serene looking and I mean picture perfect serene looking. We were looking across a wide valley overlooking small houses, fields all green, the horizon had large hills that blended into the blue sky. And I mean blended in, since the hills were somewhat different heights, the top of the hills would kind of fade into the sky. It was eight in the morning so the sun was up.

The grounds of the hotel were also very nice, flowers, greenery everywhere. Well everywhere may not describe it well since overall this was a small hotel. I don’t think they had 100 rooms if that. They did have breakfast which was really good. They had a pool area that we just stared at since we no longer had bathing suits. Imagine just walking among outdoor tables here and there set in peaceful little not gardens per se, but grass, flowers, shrubbery that meandered throughout the grounds.

Yet we had to take care of business. We finished breakfast and called customer service. They arranged a ride to a local airport because they had a rental counter there. We checked with the hotel and they were fully booked for the night, yet the manager or owner, never knew which made arrangements and we were able to keep the same room we had the night before. At that moment we were grateful, but we didn’t know how grateful we were to become.

After spending the day arguing with the rental car employees, saying they didn’t have a car since we didn’t have a reservation, nor a car that could cross borders and we kept telling them we were told they would have one. Finally someone figured out corporate customer sent them an email around ten in the morning. They had pretty much ignored it apparently so at five o’clock or so customer service hires another service to come pick us up at the airport and take us back to the hotel. If the person in the morning had not made special arrangements for us, we would have been standing  in a hotel parking lot with our stuff and no where to go since the arranged ride was only to go back to the hotel. We were beyond mad. Now we would have to wait until customer service found us another car. I asked for them to arrange something in Florence since we wanted to go there. Nope somebody at the counter in Rome said they could get us a car. So the next day the rental car company arranged a driver to take us to Rome. Two plus hours back where we had come from two days ago.

Now the aside is sunset at this hotel was just beautiful. We sat on a balcony drinking that botte of wine that survived and didn’t move for well over an hour. It was only when we realized the restaurant was about to close and we were hungry did we move. The sun actually set behind the building from where we were sitting, but we watched the light fade over the valley and the moon rise while the sky was dusk. There was a bit of a haze over the valley that reached the hills so they magically disappeared into the sky. So after five to six hours of pure anger we now had two to three hours if you include sitting there again after dinner of a pure peace. We didn’t talk, we didn’t move, we just became part of the scenery on that balcony until we just couldn’t stay awake and went to bed.

Next morning we get up, received confirmation when the driver would pick us up to take us to Rome, was able to get the room for that night since we weren’t sure what time we would be back to get what was left of our things, and went for breakfast.

Folks it is a small world. At another table in this remote and very beautiful hotel was someone my wife knew. My wife had been posting on facebook our plight and so they knew about our situation. What neither knew until breakfast was that we were at the same hotel.

Again the hotel is very special and apparently this other couple who travel frequently knew of it so they choose it on their way, I cannot remember which direction they were headed, but they were there just for the previous night, had a few of their adult children in tow and after breakfast the family was going into a couple of different directions. Yet to be stranded in heaven on Earth, and run into someone my wife knew, just made added to the entire surrealness.\

They were very kind and offered to help in any way they could. Yet we were headed out so the lady and my wife spoke for a bit about things in general until we left for Rome.

The rental counter at Rome was another disaster. After being told we would have a car at one in the afternoon, it wasn’t there. They insisted they could only give us this one car and we had to wait until it was returned and cleaned up. So close to five we get our “replacement”. It was not equal to what we paid for, it was smaller and it was wrecked. Seriously, there was a big scrape dent running down the side covering both doors up to the back tire, the underside was scraped also. And they expected us to be happy with this car. Problem was we had no choice. We wanted to get going again. We still had to drive back to Assisi. We wanted to go to Church since it was Sunday. Which was another crazy story. I dropped my wife off and went to look for parking. I never found it and spent over a hour driving around the neighborhood getting lost a couple of times, using GPS on my phone which isn’t the same app as my wife’s so struggling to get back to her and we finally left Rome around 6:30 or 7 in the evening.

Tired and angry we get back to the hotel, yet again, pure serenity atmosphere and we settle in for the night. Now one thing that worried me was we were not required to pay until we left. I kept offering and the manager/owner kept saying do not worry about it, you can pay when you leave. Now I am a bit paranoid sometimes and all of a sudden I started to worry how much this was going to cost since they knew we were stranded. Nope paradise is paradise, the overall cost was no more than my original night prepayment and I breathed that momentary sigh of relief at check out and at this point we were two to three days behind where we wanted to be so we had to skip going to Florence and Tuscany and decided to go to Pisa.

First though we went to town and spend a wonderful good five or so hours in Assisi at the Cathedral, walking through the streets afterwards, the better half did some shopping for souvenirs, not for us yet, and we had a quaint lunch somewhere in town. Around 3 or 4 we headed to Pisa. We spend the night near Pisa, went clothes and toiletry shopping the next morning for ourselves, saw the tower and the surrounding area and drove on.

The rest of the trip flew by. We didn’t get to see half as much as we wanted and were always running behind. We saw Monaco at night which was absolutely beautiful staring at the moon headed west over the harbor.

We drove to a hotel near Nice, arrived late, but they took care of us. Woke up had coffee on the balcony overlooking a small park. Had breakfast then left, drove on to I forget where, but strange but true we had chosen a family type resort hotel in a small resort town. It was a crazy evening. We were tired now, which was pretty much how we felt since Rome, but there was a trivia contest going on in the bar/restaurant area to win a bottle of champagne. We played while drinking frozen cocktails. We didn’t win. My wife wanted to shop since we had seen street vendors while driving up, yet by the time we got out, they were closed up. We wandered for a short bit, then headed back to the hotel.

Left the next morning, tried to see the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, yet you needed to reserve tickets like two weeks in advance so we took pictures of the outside, bought some souvenirs and headed out.

We drove to Valencia and along the way we stopped at one of the small beach/marina towns for lunch. Had a simple lunch and some fun conversations with the local wait staff.

At Valencia we managed to get there early enough so we could walk around. We were not in the main tourist areas, but there was enough going on that we had a good time at a local restaurant. There was about thirty people at one table so it was keeping the wait staff super busy, but we were watching what was going to their table and copied catted them somewhat with our orders, especially the drink orders. I guess business was good or they felt bad about how busy they were since they could tell we were tourists and brought us some free drinks which were a local specialty. It was some type of creamy rice liquor drink with cinnamon on top and was very good.

Next day was going to be brutal and we did manage to get out of there somewhat quickly after having a pretty good breakfast buffet. I prepaid just a few of our hotels so we could be like the wind and see where it took us for much of the trip, but now we were headed back so the last few nights of the trip I prebooked us in the south of Portugal before we drove to Lisbon to fly home.

Yet we were in Valencia so we had to drive hard throughout the day to get to our hotel before dark. We did make it by early evening, got situated and was able to walk along a street that was just shops, street artists, restaurants and bars. It was quite an enjoyable evening and we finally got to relax. This was the beach part of the trip. Finally

We got up, had breakfast and spent the day at the beach in two parts. First part was laying out, catching some rays and playing in the water. Eventually as the tide was coming it the waves washed out our blankets and stuff so we headed to one of the walkway along the beach restaurants, had lunch and drinks. Thought we would go back to the hotel pool, but now it was getting late afternoon so we decided to shower and get ready for dinner.

We went back down to the beach area since it was early evening and headed across a pretty good stretch of beach or where it ran into rock formations. And this was fun.

We walked through the rock formation or under it like a small cave and walked into a whole new beach area. Now this area had more rock formations along the beach that water was going through, you can stand in one and look up to see the sky, quite unique. And all this was part of the beach the resort town we were in was attached. We crossed a good stretch of this beach and it started getting late so we finally found some stairs that was a monstrous climb back to the town. We made it and we realized we were now at the far end of the road we had explored the night before and I do mean the far end. We strolled along and eventually settled on another restaurant, had dinner and went back to the hotel. My wife bought some items for the grandkids here also from a street artist. Basically she was buying souvenirs here and there a bit throughout the trip.

We got up the next morning, headed to Lisbon, stayed the night there and flew off in the morning. We did manage to see more of Lisbon that night and go to church so a successful last night. And just one more fun strange thing happened, we accidentally found a tex mex restaurant in Lisbon so we had a great time, reacclimating ourselves to home before we went home.

The flight home went well. Returning the car was a bit of a chore since we wanted to start asking for money back etc, we are still working on that, but we have our ammunition filed and are expecting credit back to our card we used.

The only hiccup coming home was TSA in Boston. I don’t know what we did, but we set them off, and before it was all over, we lost some of the items we bought in Europe to them, not customs mind you TSA getting on our plane to Dallas. Since we lost our luggage, we did buy one to replace it since we had so little, but because we only had one suitcase we carried on some of our bags. Well that didn’t go well with TSA and so a couple of souvenirs and something else ended up in their care so to speak. I have no idea what they did with our stuff.

We made it home late that night and as they say the rest is history.

The Democrats have created a loop that they cannot get out of nor get out of their own way.

 

As many of you know I claim to be a conservative so take this with a grain of salt if you want. And I will get back to posting about the trip, but the Democrats drive me mad so I try to give them constructive advice, but they never listen. And if you are wondering, yes the Republicans frustrate me also mainly because they are not a conservative party right now, not sure exactly what they are, but true conservative, no not that.

And I am much more conservative than I let on, I would love to take Musk’s infamous chainsaw to our budget, but I would do it much more constructively if given the chance. He just did what he did for political show and wrecked it up and did more harm than good. And I am also a realist, which is why I propose more center right policies than hard core conservative policies. If you want to get something done, you have to propose something more people can get behind, which leads me to my criticisms of the Democrat party.

Yes, I still think they are clueless, but to give positive criticism here goes.

The Democrats are losing the political battle in both policy and messaging. If they are not careful, they are going to hand the Republicans the 2026 midterms. I truly believe that is a real possibility with the current path they travel. First the entrenched party leadership and elitists still haven’t figured out why they lost to Donald Trump twice. And it wasn’t because they ran two women, well Hillary Clinton was going to lose no matter what, but her campaign was an absolute nightmare of incompetence. Not only is Ms. Clinton not liked to hated by the majority of this country, her pandering nonsense didn’t help. Ms. Harris just blew it with policy and messaging. And maybe it was too late for her to develop her own messaging, but it was the policy and messaging that killed her campaign, not necessarily her. Well the tone of her voice didn’t help, but it wasn’t because she is a woman that hurt.

The Democrats lost the blue collar worker decades ago when they quit fighting for unions with any energy and let corporations and Republicans run roughshod over the working class. After giving faint hearted lip service for years the workers got tired of being treated like step children and moved on. Unfortunately they moved on to our country’s worst instincts with Trump.

This is one of the Democrat’s major mistakes and that even took a few years to develop. Trump picked up on that and messaged the hell out of it. I think the Democrats weren’t paying attention to why Trump was garnering millions of followers on Twitter around 2010 and onward.

Second reason and I am going to give two examples about policy ideas that are killing them.

The first is the unions and the working class and education. Over ten years ago I started posting in this blog that we need to change the way we look at education and to encourage some people going to trade schools. Looking back I think that post was already over ten years too late. Apparently some countries in Europe had already been working with this thinking and have a better handle on improving their working class because of it. They may need to do more work, but they are definitely way ahead of us. Not only did the Democrats fail to realize college isn’t for everyone, they looked down on people who didn’t attend college. So, they ignored a problem then exacerbated it.

And the irony now is careers that involve trade school such as auto mechanic, plumbing, HVAC installation and repair, electricians, even installing solar panels (I do think we need to move forward with energy), construction, and more are not as affected by AI as some other careers are now. And these industries or careers aren’t hyped by the Democrat party and yet these jobs if given proper due and proper economic importance would have benefited this country greatly. So instead of forcing college on everyone and yes it is good, but the student debt problem, the lack of employable college graduates and AI suggests the Democrats missed the boat to help out the working class years ago. And then in 2024 they still missed it. Do you hear the Democrats talk about making the trades a great way to earn a living and also fight for these same trades to earn good money. Just like when the Democrats worked with the unions, they should work with these industries and the unions to rebuild the working class into a viable economic force. Maybe it is me, but I am not hearing this too loud.

And also much to everyone’s ignorance in 2025 apparently the Republicans have forgotten the working and middle class do more to improve the markets than billionaires. Billionaires tend to hoard wealth, not put it back in the economy. Our country is strong when we have a viable working and middle class. And the ignorance lies in the Republicans forgetting that in a market driven economy, you need people participating in the markets for it to grow. You start excluding people and eventually your economy collapses. So the Republicans may call themselves champions of the free market, but currently that is just a hyperbolic farse.

The second example is in regards to social programs, benefits and actually helping the people that need help. Right wing echo chambers love to say, why do we give people food stamps, they are abusing the system and they are all fat. They argue why do fat people need free food. Don’t believe me, then go out and read their posts etc. They love saying this to argue why we should get rid of food stamps. And I may lose some of you here, but work your way through this. Sec of HHS Robert Kennedy Jr is addressing this problem. And no he isn’t solving food stamps, but indirectly the failure of food stamps.

The reason many food stamp recipients are overweight is because they eat processed foods with no nutritional value. Why, because it is less expensive. So RFK, Jr saying we need to look at what we eat is correct. We, as a society, need to eat better or healthy. Democrats in their clueless ivory towers try to say something similar, yet they look down at everyone for not eating correctly and do nothing to rid us of the agricorporations that profit from this country eating crap. So to go back to food stamps, we should trim the bureaucracy around it, increase the actual amount given to food stamp recipients and say you can only buy certain foods with food stamps. Basically put more money in people’s hands and require them to use it wisely. You save money in the long run because we have less obesity in the country, which saves on medical costs including Medicaid without taking either benefit from people. Also as part of many of my posts to reduce the deficit, trimming the actual bureaucracy can more than make up for the up tick in benefits given.

Do you hear this messaging from the Democrats? Is it loud enough? No they currently think they should move more to the left and in doing so continue to lecture us on why we fail. We aren’t failing. They are because they cannot see the writing on the wall. Socialism does not work. Do we have a problem with the wealth gap in this country and is it hurting us? Yes, but their answers are only lectures and socialism. Again a strong working and middle class will do more for our economy than billionaires, but that takes making the them stronger, not taking it away with pie in the sky economic engineering.

You hear so much in the last week how the Democrats need to listen to the mayoral candidate that won the Democratic primary in New York City. They follow that path, they doom themselves to the history books. And if they do that there may not be any history books of consequences if the current Republicans get their way.

We need a strong two or multi party system. Both current major parties are failing the country by refusing to understand what made this country great in the first place. For now I am giving my advice to the Democrats and I am giving it to them is because we desperately need to balance out the power structure in 2026 or we may be in trouble. What bothers me though is they keep touting the same message or even worse moving further to the left that has doomed them politically for the last ten or fifteen years. They don’t want to listen. I talk to various people all the time and the madness of the Democratic faithful is just as bad a problem as the MAGA madness, just a different direction.

So when I talk about a new center right party and would definitely prefer that over the current Democrats, I hope you see why, but for now there is no traction on a new party, I would at least hope the Democrats for political survival would see the writing on the wall and rethink their policies and messaging to attract more people.

Or everyone, lets get to work on a new party and getting some practical public policy passed that benefits the vast majority of this country.  

Cheers

Back to that long strange trip part 4

 

I was thinking about writing a quick recap on the Dallas sports scene yet the only real item to talk about is the NBA draft and that horse has been beat to death for the moment. Honestly I don’t know anything about how the Cowboys will do; I am a casual fan of the Rangers and the Stars-, keep wanting to follow FC Dallas, but don’t so not much else to discuss for the moment so let’s get back into that drivers seat and discuss driving in Europe some more.

 

I have not been following the direct timeline and will try and get back onto some path here now. Mainly because the next part of the trip once we drove through France and northern Italy was Rome or more specifically Vatican City.

We wanted to see Rome more, yet due to some missed and rescheduled tours we definitely wanted to take we lost about a full day of other sight seeing. I regret and don’t regret not seeing Rome because in some ways we did see a good chunk of what Rome may be like on a daily basis just didn’t see the important tourist attractions.

Like I mentioned in a previous post we booked a hotel within walking distance of the Vatican because that was important to us. And we just couldn’t get our acts together to enjoy what we booked in advance for tours, yet we did see everything we scheduled, not just at the originally scheduled time.

First we were tour the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel and were late. Actually we were not late, we were walking up the street to get to the meeting point and my wife got a call from the tour guide. We told her we were walking yet she acted like she couldn’t hear us and by the time we climbed the steps that tour was gone. I called and they said they weren’t going to give us a refund, but I am still going to fight it. Like I said we were walking up the street so with a few minutes to spare, yet apparently the tours have to start on time. We would have made it if she had given us directions to the starting point, but she “couldn’t hear us” and hung up.

We arrived at the meeting spot and there were about ten or more tour guides waiting on their groups, so you truly have to be there a few minutes early yet she should have guided us. And once we realized none of the groups waiting were ours we were late.

So I threw a fit with someone on the phone and they were adamant about us having to pay again to reschedule and it would be a few days. No refunds, seriously though that is a racket, maybe a rebooking fee or something, but when you pay $300 plus they should help you out.

Anyway apparently this must happen quite often since there were tour companies that could book a similar tour right there on the spot. I spent a couple hundred more and took the tour about two hours later. In the interim the better half and I sat down and had our first Rome meal. We ate at a restaurant about two blocks away from the tour entrance area, well had snacks and a glass of wine. We were able to calm down and gather ourselves which was good since it helped us to better enjoy the tour we did take. It was a 2 and a half hour tour so no where near enough time to really enjoy the museum, however we took enormous amounts of pictures and did spend some time in the Sistine Chapel which is as impressive as you have heard if you have not seen.

Our tour guide had shown us some of the info about the Sistine Chapel at the beginning of the tour so we were able to really breakdown what we were looking at while we were there.

And that was the end of that tour. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the Vatican area or basically St Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s square. The Square is just what you see on TV basically. The Basilica, well just like the museum and the Sistine Chapel, you need to go to believe.

We spent three hours in the Basilica, first touring the entire breadth of the building, going from one chapel to the other, looking at the paintings and the sculptures, just marveling at everything we saw. It was one of the main reasons we went to Rome and no disappoint.

Occasionally I touch on the fact I am Catholic and here I am going to say I am a practicing Catholic and nowadays you have to make that distinction sometimes. And the reason I say that is because I have confession stories, which on the surface may not sound good.

Anyway confession is offered in the Basilica so my wife and I decided we would go. We had missed Mass in our travels, (Salamanca was early on Saturday so daily Mass) and what ever indiscretions we needed to get off our chests we decided to take the opportunity and go to confession. They offer confession in multiple languages so it is easy for many to go while there.

We wait for our turn and I go into the confessional. I am speaking to the Priest as I confess and he asks about my daily prayer life so I touch on it a bit and mentioned my wife and I try to say a rosary most nights before going to bed. He gets excited and says come with me. So here I am coming out of the confessional with a Priest and I have to be honest if he was five feet tall I would have to check it. I am just over 6 feet. So the Priest is marching me across the Basilica floor and cuts me through some staunches so I can get to where they are about to pray the rosary for the day. And then there is Mass. This happens every day yet I do not think you see to many times Priests perp walking someone from the Confessional. I let the Priest know I needed to get my wife since she was in confession also. So we walked back together and he goes back to the confessional. And yes there was a line all staring at us when we left and when we came back. I found my wife and we wandered over to where the Rosary and the Mass were to be held. For some reason the Rosary didn’t happen, yet we did get to attend Mass. And yes as a Catholic I feel special for it. And I know pride is a sin you need to go to confession.

After Mass we had been at the Vatican for close to ten hours so we were ready to go back. We stopped on the way back to the hotel for dinner. And felt like we were in Rome, walking along the streets, looking at menus on the sidewalk, looking in the shops, and finally picked a place and had an enjoyable meal. Got back to the hotel and needed to get to bed since the next day was going to be busy.

So now it is Wednesday. We have tickets to the Papal Audience. And we are very excited. It is already hot and there is a long line to enter. We finally get to the entrance, have our bags checked, we had to give up a water bottle since it was metal which my wife misses. They said we could come back at the end of the day to pick up, yet by the time we got back it was 7 in the evening and all the items that were being put aside while we entered were long gone.

We enter the Square and try to find seats hopefully along the route Popes take through the crowd before the audience begins. My wife starts looking around and saying we should move up closer. I am loath to start changing seats because it is crowded and the crowd is growing by the minute. I finally give in and walk up to the front of our section and try to get a guard’s attention. He ignores me. I am a bit frustrated as helps woman after woman. Finally I get him to come to me and I ask if my tickets can get us in the section in front of us. He demeanor changed some when he saw our tickets. He pointed over to the front yet to one specific side. I do not speak Italian (I played like I spoke four languages on our trip lol) so I wasn’t sure exactly what he was trying to tell me to do. So I go to another guard and this time it was a Swiss Guard and there is a difference in who is who at the Vatican and the Swiss Guard have more authority than pretty much everyone else. And what is amazing is they are the nicest in general with dealing with the public that I saw. Very polite and helpful compared to just about every other guard, police,  employee etc… but they are also the ones you don’t get into with it either.

The Swiss Guard at the section entrance I spoke to was immediately telling me to go to the front so I could be on time. I told him I needed to get my wife . I got her we went back to him and at this point, he opened the rope and let us through pointing down the way to the other side. We got there and were immediately ushered to the front so we thought we were going to the front section, another guard then another Swiss guard lets us through each section. We were starting to feel somewhat taken aback. As soon as I showed my ticket they let us go by their gate or rope and pointed to go further up. Before we could catch our bearings we were walking up the steps to the I guess you call it the stage area or basically the level the Pope sits on and we were just off to his side. Needless to say my wife and I sat there for a few minutes just trying to figure out how we got from more than half way back in the square to a stone’s throw to the Pope. We weren’t right next to him those seats were reserved, yet we were close enough where you could make out the details on his face pretty much.

It was hot, it was a bit humid maybe, yet it was wonderful to be able to sit up close and watch and listen to the Pope on this Wednesday morning. We were there for a few hours, and the last one was waiting and hoping he would walk by. He spent most of his time after the audience blessing a whole of host of recently married couples that were on the other side, so by the time he was done and spoken to a few others he walked by our section and waived. Many of the remaining people like us were trying to get him to stop by, yet he had been out there for hours now so he waved at everyone while walking to the vehicle and left. Still it was exhilarating and we felt very blessed to be seated so close.

The stories continue yet this post is going a bit long again. I will pick up in Wednesday afternoon and it was frustrating and we missed another tour because we could never find the meeting spot at all. Finally though and the Swiss Guards are involved again and this story just reinforces they are spectacular in their interactions when you work with them.  We managed to find where we needed to be and by some miracle we get this tour rescheduled which apparently is no easy feat. We toured the area around the Square, shopped, ate ice cream, stood in a long line for the Jubilee information at the office there and wasted some time trying to figure out where we messed up in finding the tour info. Also another great dinner on the streets of Rome walking back to the hotel.

Next up Thursday morning, more lateness, more weirdness, more helpful Swiss Guards, and a strange meeting.

Cheers

Quick break from the Europe trip discussion to resolve the AI issues

If it was easy to solve the AI issues, yet I have an idea and am curious as to what others think, or is this something already proposed or out there or do I just watch too much “Last Week Tonight”

Actually there are a few AI issues yet this one only may solve some.  The main problem is can people tell it is AI. There are even tests people take for fun or whatever. And with AI getting better this will only become harder. And this is all common knowledge.

So what if we required AI to be built only on one platform, one system, or one technology that cannot be copied into other software people use.

I will make a quick example and this is somewhat like having basic PDF and you cannot change anything on it. It is read only.

And this is not keeping anyone from creating on AI. Only making it harder to hide that it is AI. And I know this sounds simple and there will probably major technological hurdles to overcome, yet with the world that way it is, something needs to be done so people know they are viewing a fake reality. You can apply the truth in advertising principle to this idea.

So if AI is on something like basic PDF (and I know that is overly simplistic) where people can only view it and it cannot be copied onto anything else then that might help people realize what they are seeing. Now I say it cannot be copied on anything else, yet it can be incorporated into other platforms, but even then it would be tagged as AI with a technical marker or something.

I am tech adverse so I do not know all the terms I mean need to use to make my point well, yet I think there is a picture here. For example a person could create a story on AI and people could read the story, but if it was developed only on an AI platform then people would know it was an AI story. And there is nothing wrong with that. The key is it could not be copied onto a word document and a person tries to sell it as their own work to publishers or other media. It helps to prevent people from cheating people who still write stories or screenplays etc.

And if AI was on one platform then publishers or even professors could run a few pages through the AI system to see if it was developed there and avoid having to worry about authenticity or be able to grade a paper correctly. Of course if done correctly that one person would have to hand copy the AI story or paper onto another software, yet they still shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

And again I do not know if platform is the correct technical verbiage to use to identify one system for AI to be located. There could be a range of technical outlets used. I do not know, my goal though is to put out an idea to be discussed or played around with or updated with the correct verbiage to move us out of this AI fake world.

I do not have a problem with AI if used correctly. For example I said AI could be incorporated into other works. If I try to self publish a short story, I would want people to know it is my work, yet to publish I may need some dazzling artwork for the cover. I could write and publish the story, yet request an AI drawing for the cover. My work would show I did it, but acknowledge I used AI for the cover.

Or I could still use an artist and acknowledge the artist’s work. Either way the general public when browsing the internet would know for sure that I wrote the piece and the cover art is verifiable also as to where it came from.

This protects artists, media companies, publishers, and probably a whole host of other industries or related work while still allowing the development of AI to use as desired or necessary.

What scares me is this may take an act of Congress to get it done. As a conservative I do not want too much government intrusion in our lives, but sometimes it is government’s job to protect people. This may be somewhat of a scenario where the government is protecting people and business’ rights to their own work.

I could go on about how I feel the government should get involved since I want as minimum intrusion as possible so if people are interested in the concept when can discuss details later.

Finally this may also help the development of AI. There would be businesses built to house all the AI content and even allow current businesses to have their work acknowledged correctly. This might create greater investment in the hardware to build AI, expand it, have it’s work sold, and so much more. In some ways this would be like the FCC controlling the airwaves, but hopefully we could do a better job of creating these laws so creativity still thrives, businesses make money and more importantly the work of individuals is protected and they receive their proper due (and money).

And if I am not clear enough let me know. I would love to get this discussion into the main stream so we can find answers and solutions.

“What a long strange trip it’s been”…. and amazing, wonderful, frustrating, maddening, beautiful, too short, tiring, fantastic, surreal, and so much more…. More….more

 

(Thanks to the Grateful Dead for the title of this post and this is part three of ?)

 

I seem to be all over the map with any order of this trip (bad pun intended), yet I do not care. I do want to talk about hotels. Before we left I booked some hotels and left some to be booked as we drove. One of the main reasons for this trip (actually there were a few reasons or goals) was to see Europe, not just the large cities, but the small ones too. I hoped to meet a few people and talk to them. Unfortunately the time rush made the meeting of locals not as plentiful as I liked, however we did stop at places along the way based on how things went.

I booked hotels in Lisbon, Rome, the last night in Lisbon and the Algarve region in Portugal which was a last minute before we left decision because I wanted to make sure we spent at least one day on the beach. I thought we were going to spend a few days  on beaches throughout the trip, but that didn’t happen so I am glad I booked one for a couple of nights in south Portugal. Overall we stayed 21 nights in Europe with 11 being prebooked. This still left us quite a few random stop opportunities.

And we used a booking site as we went and yes deciding where to stay 200 or 300 kilometers up the road at some random service area can be a bit frustrating, yet overall we did well.

Only one hotel we regretted, one was forgettable, one was almost forgettable, yet it was in Salamanca and we had such a great time there that even the hotel was okay. There is an internal family joke about why the better half choose that one while driving. It was nice, not rememberable yet again since it was close to the Cathedral and the night life near the University it worked out fine.

Of the prebooked hotels the one in Lisbon was good and suited our purposes well. It had parking so I could leave the car and located near a metro stop. The hotel in Rome had two of my requirements, parking and was within walking distance, just barely, of the Vatican. It wasn’t fancy at all, had good breakfasts which most came close to having good breakfasts, and as I had mentioned in another post all very similar. We weren’t staying in resorts or high dollar hotels since we are on a budget in our daily lives so our vacations have that need also. So yes we knew hotels were going to be a crap shoot. Yet as I said above only a couple didn’t make the grade. We stopped in Montpellier France and we didn’t choose well there. We couldn’t find the entrance even with GPS, parking was a nightmare, shared with a mall, and old and dirty. Unfortunately while trying to find our hotel we ran across a really nice one nearby, but who knew. We had prepaid while driving since we needed a place to stay for the night.

We got up and left the next morning, didn’t even try the breakfast there if I remember correctly.

Again overall the hotels turned out well considering everything. As regular readers know I keep talking about writing fiction. I send in stories and get rejected all the time. And one of the reasons why I am learning is because I do not enhance my stories. I do not want to say embellish because as a writer you shouldn’t embellish, you need to enhance or dive deep into what you are writing so a reader can relate. One area is I do not engage readers with the various senses we have as humans. I am learning and rewriting some stories to try and work on adding more in depth descriptions of what a person encounters or needs to encounter in the story to really put them where I want them to be. I love telling stories, yet writing has a couple of those four letter words that needs to be accomplished, work and effort (yes 6 letters, but you get the drift).

The reason I bring this up is because some of the hotels need some enhancements. The first is the one we stayed in Assisi Italy. This one is where we got stranded and that story will come later, but we were stranded and because of that it made some of the stay very frustrating, yet the early mornings and evenings when we could just stop and smell the roses so to speak were beyond my ability to describe well. And when I say smell the roses, you could smell the flowers in the morning. The hotel was not exactly in the town, just a short drive away. It was so peaceful in the morning, just sitting at a table near their pool, the smell of the flowers, the quiet, the bee that made you change tables, even the sound of the workers somewhere in the building either cleaning or picking up plates didn’t interfere with the peace you felt. One morning we sat at a table under neath an overhang or extension of a roof, so it was in the shade looking over the front walkway, that had other scattered tables in the sun. The pool was to our right with some pool loungers around it, yet very still. And it was green all around the hotel, shrubs, other vegetation along with the flowers encircled quite a bit of the hotel. This was somewhat of a small property, just a few floors and one building, but not a rectangle so it avoided the standard hotel vibe.

And then in the evenings, forget it. We could sit on a somewhat large balcony, had three or four tables just to sit. One evening we opened a bottle of wine we had bought in Portugal, and just watched the moon rise. The sun was setting behind the building so we really didn’t see a sunset, but we could look out over a large valley with a small town in the center, the moon rising in front of us, nice large hills all green surrounding the valley. Our anger and frustration melting away as we sat there trying to make sense of what was happening all in this strangely peaceful paradise. We really needed this place at this time.

Finally after two full days we got our situation partially resolved, (still waiting on the rest) and on the third day we took off again. Yet first we went and visited the Cathedral in Assisi and the town. We probably spent five or six hours there overall. As always we enjoyed the peace and the art that fill Cathedrals in Europe (another one of our goals was to just stop and see various Cathedrals throughout our journey and we saw a few). Assisi was great, there were quite a few tourists for such a small town, yet we enjoyed it immensely. The better half picked up some presents for the family there and then we headed into the town. We did some more shopping and had lunch. All in all it was late (as always) when we left and now we had to make some decisions on what we wanted to do next. We had to choose between Tuscany or moving on. We decided to go to Pisa since I had always wanted to see the tower since I first heard about it as a elementary age child. Wine or tourism, sometimes the choices are hard.

So we headed to Pisa and for some strange reason we picked a hotel to stay outside of Pisa and when a person says it is off the beaten path this one was off the beaten path, yet it was a great choice. No it wasn’t super fancy, nice, but not a resort, maybe close to being one. It wasn’t a large property, but not small. There were two aspects well three when you consider it’s local is beautiful. One was the smell. I have been to the Arboretum here in Dallas and other similar type environments, yet the smell of flowers at this hotel was I don’t want to say overpowering because it wasn’t, but it was very pervasive throughout the property and it was wonderful. My wife said they were gardenias. I don’t know, but it was wonderful. Like many out side of town hotels in Europe you can open the windows and breath in the atmosphere and here the smell of the flowers was intoxicating for whatever that means, yet it was.

We use to live in a apartment right next to downtown Dallas and they had a honeysuckle type plant that ran up the railings as you climbed the steps to your floor. In the spring, the smell of the flowers reverberated throughout the stair area and up and down the hallways. We use to love it. Here at this hotel it was the same, yet it was everywhere you walked.

And that was the other reason this hotel unknown to us was popular. It had the most eclectic walkway and grounds. It had a real nice pool area, somewhat large, the usual loungers and tables around it. Yet just on the other side was a large lawn area with quite a few tables and lighting where you could hold an outdoor reception, and beyond that or next to it that wandered away and back to the hotel was this wide variety of pop sculptures. I say pop sculptures for lack of a better word. This wasn’t Italian art like in the Cathedrals, but it was some locally made (?) or they had someone put together various pieces made of wood, not really stone, but something of course they were painted. There is no theme here. Some were animals, one was I think a statue of Andy Warhol, some other items, sorry, can’t remember off the top of my head at the moment.

We got there early enough for a change to enjoy dinner and it was great. I eventually looked up what the name of the meal in English was that we ate. It was great. It was Italian and the whole environment was as I mentioned one of the reasons for the trip. We were deep in the Italian country side seeing Italy.

Okay this is getting long so more about the other hotels and the rest of the trip to come. And I am going to make a separate post with a few pictures. I don’t think I am going to go into descriptions, just post, maybe a couple of posts as I write.

Cheers

“What a long strange trip it’s been”…. and amazing, wonderful, frustrating, maddening, beautiful, too short, tiring, fantastic, surreal, and so much more…. more

 

(Thanks to the Grateful Dead for the title of this post and this is part two of ?)

 

So yesterday I started this recap of our wild three week journey through part of Europe, specifically Portugal, Spain France, Italy and then back. So let’s back up a bit and go back to the beginning.

Lisbon is great. We arrived and got settled in jet lag and all. We asked the desk clerk at the hotel for some local restaurants nearby. She pointed out three within a couple of blocks. I do not want to say recommended, but just pointed out some places nearby.

We choose one and it was somewhat of a disappointment. I ordered the tuna steak and it seemed like it was old and not cooked well. Other than that everything we did in Lisbon was great. After dinner we went back to the hotel and sat at the bar. Turns out the hotel had a dessert of the day and we decided to try it. It was some type of cheesecake, yet apparently a local take. We enjoyed it immensely yet at this point it has been almost a month and I cannot remember exactly what it was, but that we enjoyed it.

The next day we started our journey exploring the city. We took the Metro and just made some random stops based on what was available at that stop. The first one there was a huge statue, and again I didn’t journal so I don’t remember who, but someone from a few centuries back that had a major impact on the city. There was a QR code to listen and you can even choose your language. It was fun. Also this was a very major roundabout intersection so navigating it was interesting. We ended up in a park named after a King. Eventually we wound our way around the park and found a small café and this is where we tried the national treat, Pastel de Nata for the first time. Worth it. Yes, it may be somewhat simple, but sprinkled with some cinnamon and with a cup of coffee, and I do not mean the American restaurant type of cup of coffee it is worth enjoying.

Coffee is another endeavor all together in Europe. And most of Europe or at least the areas we travelled treat it about the same. You can have an expresso, cappuccino, café Americano, or café with milk, ordered in whatever language of the country you are visiting. Obviously café Americano is the closest to what we usually order here, but it many cases a bit stronger.

So much more to go in Lisbon and will get back to it.

Another point in general I am going to talk about quickly is driving. We drove well over 5000 kilometers on highways and in cities and towns. GPS is very helpful, but you still have to pay very close attention especially in the towns and cities. The GPS will say make the next left and as you turn you will realize there are two choices staring at you and sometimes the choices run side by side as far as you can see. So all of a sudden you are driving in heavy traffic, watching out for bikes, motor scooters, other cars and you have one tenth of a second to choose which path to take. If you look close at the GPS you can sort of pick out which one is the left you are to follow, but you just don’t have the time to double check. If you make the right one on you go. If you make the wrong one, you may spend ten minutes or more being rerouted all over the place. The towns are old and were never designed for modern traffic. It can be a nightmare.

It is good to have the passenger paying attention to the little screen on your car or phone while the driver pays attention to what is going on around you. Believe me scooters are all over the place and will cut you off in a heartbeat. Yet surprisingly with all our travels we only saw one wreck involving a motor scooter that was hit.

The other fun is when the passenger says that one and you go the other one. Yes you spend the next ten minutes being re routed and told you need to listen. Other times it is a crap shoot and you thank God you were right at that moment.

Before I end for the day, in Lisbon there is a museum dedicated to their history of exploration of the world.  We spent one of our afternoons in that museum on a random choice of where to go. Well worth the visit. Four hundred years of seafaring exploration unfolds before you. As with any large European city there are so many museums to choose from it is hard to pick. We were glad we picked that one, maybe not over others, but as one to have seen.

There is so much more to Lisbon, yet like I said we will move on. One fact though that I found interesting is how well English is spoken in Portugal. Some spoke very well, yet most had a working grasp of the language. We asked a few how they learned English. Some said just through their work and others from school. One young lady said she started learning it in first grade. I think more people knew English than Spanish and Spain is right next door. It is the tourists from England though that have created the need for so much English. Honestly it made being there so much easier than when we were off the beaten paths of the other countries. I pulled into one stop for gas somewhere in another country and as soon as I started speaking the clerk held up her finger and pulled out three charts. One for the pump I wanted, one for the type of gas and one for the amount. They still make do for the tourists one way or another.

Cheers

“What a long strange trip it’s been”…. and amazing, wonderful, frustrating, maddening, beautiful, too short, tiring, fantastic, surreal, and so much more

 

(Thanks to the Grateful Dead for the title of this post and this is part one of ?)

If you read this blog regularly you know I do not post personal info or talk about my life very much, yet this time I guess I need to share.

The better half and I just got back from the wildest and probably overly ambitious trip we have ever taken.

Originally and if we could have stuck to the original dream we should have, but life doesn’t always work out the way you want. And yes going back to originally I wanted to drive from Lisbon Portugal to Rome (one way) and take a month or two. That would have been an ambitious trip, but compared to what we did time wise would have been much better. Due to all the constraints of life we went from Lisbon to Rome and back in three weeks. Just not enough time to even begin to do all we wanted.

So where do I start. Well first a piece of advice, because as you all know us old people need to give advice all the time.

If you do drive around Europe, park your car at the hotel when staying in major cities and use the public transportation system. Just do it. We did and except for thirty minutes worked out well for us. Yes it takes some getting use to the system in each town, but trying to drive in cities that are hundreds if not thousands of years old, their roads are just not up to American drivers.

Just getting out of one hotel in one city was impossible the way the GPS system we were using asked us to do. Literally I got to one turn and the car couldn’t make the turn. It was just too narrow. The system kept saying take the turn and go so many meters to the next turn. And no, we even had a smaller car and still it was not happening. I had to back up hundreds of meters to get back to an intersection I could turn. Of course the GPS system we were using was having a heart attack until it figured out how to re route us.

So if you drive plan ahead and make sure your hotel has parking and leave the car. Do the rest on foot and Metros.  I promise you will be better off. And if us “old people” can walk 20,000 plus steps some days so can you.

So what happened, well everything. We had great tours. We were late for tours and lost the money. We got lucky and rescheduled tours. And we just walked around the cities or the small towns we visited. One of the reasons I wanted to drive was to see small towns along the way. And we did, but not as much as I would have liked.

Lisbon is wonderful, the people are nice and there is way too much to do for staying three days. Especially since we took a day trip to Fatima from Lisbon. Our driver was outstanding. He took us to the places you are supposed to go, plus a few other out of the way or not the main area sights. We spent the entire day and could go back. We attended a Mass and almost a second one, but it was time to go back to Lisbon since it was getting late. On the way back our tour guide was so great he even stopped off at a grocery store for us so we could get some items for our travels to come.

And then the first hiccup happened which caused all the rest. We left something at the hotel in Lisbon and didn’t realize it until we were a couple of hours down the road. So by the time we got back to the hotel in Lisbon and then back on the road we were 3-4 hours behind our schedule.

This caused us to have to stop earlier than planned. Which hurt our timing, but also turned out to be one of the best let’s stop here and see what is going on moments of the trip. We got to Salamanca Spain around 8 or 9 at night. And by the time we settled in it was dark, yet we decided to at least go get a drink of wine or something. We found out we were near the University there. We walked and ate snacks at a local restaurant. We had a great time and went to bed real late. In the morning we went to a daily Mass at the Cathedral and it was a joy. We explored the Cathedral for hours after Mass and while we were doing that a Wedding Mass was taking place. It was wonderful to walk through and look at all the art work while hearing, even though in Spanish, someone getting married. We toured the city some more afterwards, bought three boxes of cookies from the Nuns nearby that lasted us the whole trip. (each box was a different variety and also very good)

And here we were leaving Salamanca at five so now we are really behind, but enjoyed every minute while there.

Stayed somewhere on the road, can’t even remember the town, but were still in Spain and needed to get going since we needed to be in Rome in two days.

So we get to France and then I hadn’t realized it but the route to get to Rome had us passing near Lourdes. So yes we made the stop and spend two or so hours there. Which of course is not enough, people are mad at me because I didn’t get Holy Water from there, but it was already late and we were way behind schedule now. So we left after lunch there at around 4-5pm. We barely made Montpellier which we only saw the hotel since we know had to drive 1000 kilometers in one day.

We got to Rome at four in the morning due to extensive construction delays in France and Italy. Wasn’t good look because the lobby lights looked turned off and there was a homeless person hanging out front. The better half was a bit worried. We called from our car and luckily they answered right away and got us squared away.

Okay I need to stop for a minute. First driving through the various countries and landscapes cannot be described by a few words, but it must be said we covered driving through some dry areas, hills with extensive amounts of greenery, even the Pyrenees and more. We touch vistas off and on of the Mediterranean Sea as we got close to Italy and through the northern part of Italy. The roads were crazy and unfortunately this was where the traffic was the worse.

Yet at times we could glance outward and look down the valleys and hillsides and see the deep blue of the water and on the other side were the tops of the hills covered with deep green vegetation. All dotted with houses, villages, towns and cities up and down the hills to the sea.

Surprisingly I do not journal and probably should to enhance my writing. I could have used this to give you a better picture of the drive all throughout our journey. The views were breathtaking almost everywhere we went, but going from South France to Italy was definitely amazing. The hills just raced down to the Sea and buildings etc were magnificently placed in some quite precarious looking situations in some areas. Of course there was agriculture in some of this, but mainly it was the hills and the drop offs to the Sea that caught your attention.

And I haven’t even begun to talk about the food yet. I need to take a break at this point  so I am going to make this part one of a few posts about our trip. I know reading blogs aren’t meant for long diatribes on anything without losing your audience.

I will say this and I do not know why, but there are an inordinate amount of pizzerias in Portugal than I would have imagined beforehand. I do not if it is because of tourism or the Portuguese just love pizza and Italian food, either way I was surprised at how many I saw. This includes Pizzerias in Lisbon, some in Fatima and in the Algarve region. We ate at a few since we were in Portugal twice and all were good. One of them and apparently a chain or something was off the main plaza in Lisbon that overlooks the river there and was wonderful. I cannot remember anything right now, but if you are by the Plaza look to the left side when facing the river, you should find it. And yes we also ate Portuguese food. We tried very hard to eat local, always asking the hotel people or store clerks etc what were good local spots. Some turned out well, some left us thinking twice about what we ate. And one more point about the food that I will get back to is we ate breakfast pretty much at all the hotels we stayed. Yes they all had some type of breakfast buffet that was very similar in all four countries. Some minor differences due to region, but very minor. More to come.

Okay, will continue to work on this. I still have my normal madness I want to blog about, yet being away from the Trump administration for a few weeks was wonderful. We are too mad in this country right now and to go somewhere where people are living normal lives for awhile was a wonderful break. Also a day at the beach didn’t hurt either, but that is for later.

Cheers

The duopoly is old, let it die a natural death.

 

As a true pro life believer which means I believe in the sanctity and respect of life from conception to natural death, I feel it is time for the duopoly to pass.

And I know it is hard to determine if I am consistent and probably takes reading ten thousand posts to see any consistencies. I have never said I am against the two party system. I am not. I say the Democrats and Republicans are no longer useful. Their partisanship finger pointing, hate speak towards each other, ineffective public policy that is only good for their partisan echo chambers yet not effective for our country represent some of the examples of why I say both parties are dying and them as the two party system is a failure.

If we create two new parties, that would be great. If we create more, then we create more. I know historically I said we need new parties and probably led people to believe that I wanted more than two. If we create more than two fine, but I am not married to it. I write we need new parties as if addition of two parties is the solution. It might be, but it is not a complete repudiation of a two party system.

The Democrats and Republicans are no longer useful as they stand now. They have overstayed their welcome and their usefulness. They rely on the system they have built to stay in power. Yet it is this same system that is destroying the country. When I originally started thinking about this topic I thought they are a cancer eating at our innards. Unfortunately Joe Biden announced his real cancer this past weekend so I had to sit on my analogy for a moment. And of course we pray for a recovery for the previous President. I really do think cancer is not a natural death because it appears to be caused by agents we create that infect or contaminate our cells.

Yet the Democrats and Republicans are a cancer that eats away at our values, our morals, our ability to thrive as a people in our country. The noise coming out of their mouths is just unholy noise now. It is not productive for anyone.

There are real solutions to our problems. We need to implement them yesterday. Time is running out, but with work we can turn the hourglass over and buy a bit more time or we can rebuild it and allow new sand to enter to increase our lifespan as humans on this planet.

It is up to us. And real change begins with us realizing that certain mechanisms get old, become useless and must be put out to pasture to die and become fertilizer for the new.

The duopoly is old, really old. It is time to move on.

New Podcast live

 My Representative from the House held a phone-in Townhall. This is a clipped and edited version from me. 

Please also read the show notes on Youtube and thanks for listening.

https://youtu.be/9LV5vFQJEG8

Why the two party system works best when treated like the temperature of your shower

 Most people do not turn their shower onto the hottest or coldest possible setting. Some do and they are quite happy. Others may like a hot or cold shower, but they moderate the temperature some. The allow for factors such as how they feel, what the outside temperature may be, if they need to conserve hot water for others.

In our current body politic the two parties only pander to the people who only want the hottest or coldest temperature. The majority of the country doesn’t want these extremes.

It is like the Federal Reserve Bank, sometimes to cool off inflation they raise interest rates. Other times to promote growth they lower rates. They have to adjust the knob of how much water is coming out of the shower to affect the price of goods.

Our system works better when the two parties realize a litany of items effect what is best for the country. One party may need to put more pressure on their legislative agenda because that is what the people need at the moment. Over time though things change so should the turn of the knob to the hotter or colder temperature.

Time, outside influences, internal and external needs affect what needs to be done. This play is why when done right a two party system can be effective. A more conservative party can push for budget restraint, value orientation, or a pro business model if growth is needed. A more liberal party can push the boundaries when the economy is doing well, when people are flush with expansiveness and charity, taking education to the next level. Yet in either case you cannot do both simultaneously because the resources won’t allow it. The times may not allow it.

So the people by choosing which party they want in power for two, four, six or eight years are turning the knob to make the water hotter or colder. This way all the people can take a comfortable shower over time.

If you let the parties become so extreme that they only want the hottest or coldest temperature they leave the vast majority of us out of the shower which hurts all the people. No one group has all the answers, so no one group should have control of the shower knobs.

The two party system fails us when the extremes are in control. Right now the extremes on both sides are in control and you can tell this by the vitriol, denigration, hate aimed at each other. Neither is thinking about the country only what they believe is right. Now they may say all the right words to convince their base they are in the right, but in reality year over year, primary after primary, certain party elites control the system, turning the knob hard in their direction and making the rest of us uncomfortable to be in the shower. This has been going on for so long, no one remembers what a moderate temperature feels like and now the right has turned on the let’s say cold water so hard they are freezing the vast majority of the country out. Add in Trump and his crew are just screwing us royally things are ice cold to this country. We didn’t get here because one party turned the knob all the way, both have, we are here just because one party turned the knob harder and working hard to make sure it cannot be turned back.

We need new parties to fight through the impasse that was created in the past that left us with a completely corrupt regime. And these two new parties will need to fight hard to get control of the temperature again, but definitely worth the fight once our country starts seeing a moderate well oiled knob directing the flow of temperature again to the people of this country. And yes at times it will need to be somewhat warmer or cooler to address the circumstances of the times.

Still no cheers, the times are a killin’ us

The 21st century “Kitchen Cabinet”

 

People may vaguely remember the term kitchen cabinet from history class. It may bring up some discontent among people who remember the Andrew Jackson presidency so they may not view hearing the term as a positive, yet let’s look at a new kitchen cabinet.

As a quick reminder the term came up when Andrew Jackson would sometimes meet with various outside interests to discuss policy. The term is still in use, but for today’s purpose let’s focus on an actual Presidential Cabinet made up of people who handle issues most Americans talk about around the kitchen table.

So many times you hear about the White House hosting meetings and events for investment groups, business leaders, CEOs, bankers, think tanks etc…, yet when does the American family get a seat at the table. Sure all these groups say if we know what is going on we can support better business decisions, growth of the economy, yet these policies still benefit the wealthy more than the American family.

People complain to me about me saying we need new political parties. Depending if they are Democrat or Republican they will tout the successes of their party. What neither side discusses is where they failed or fell flat. And more often than not they fall flat. The same promises are made by each party each election cycle because they never did what they promised in the first place. Sure at times they pass legislation that meets their parties campaign promises, but in reality it only benefits a small group of people. Republicans cut taxes mainly for the wealthy and Democrats pass more and more benefits for the poor. There ends up being a large group in the middle that gets squeezed and I know that is not the first time you have heard that along with feeling it every day.

I now promote a new center right party for this new kitchen cabinet. Lately on social media I still hammer away with the need for new parties, yet I am specifically stating we need a new center right party. You can create a new Democrat Party or remake it and same for the Republicans. Yet if you really want to get something done that benefits the majority of this country especially families, you need someone representing their interests. And since most Americans are generally center to slightly center right in their mindsets, this new party can focus on their needs.

And I know one reason the two parties do not want to hear this is because they know they are campaigning to their bases and extremes in their primaries and a center right party would pull everyone who might vote just in the general election away from them. The more you talk about change they more they dig in and try to prevent another party being successful. It is all about getting re-elected nowadays and not about representing you.

What does a new Kitchen Cabinet look like? Well it would need some people not from Wall Street, not from think tanks, not from either political party to align policy with the needs of most Americans. One great aspect of our Constitutional Republic is supposed to be rule by the majority with minorities protected. Sure an oversimplified statement, yet that is the gist of how our government should operate.

I don’t know if you could just pull a random person from the street to be on the cabinet. There is still need for expertise, yet you probably can find throughout the country well educated people who have a more bedrock understanding of basic household issues starting with healthcare, education, family support, retirement specifically social security and Medicare. Many Democrats will say we already do this and I say then why do we still need major help in these areas? More issues include tax reform and cuts, better 401k rules, small business help, job promotion and Republicans will say we already do these and I say then why is the wealth gap growing and why can’t tax cuts be for the people not the wealthy.

Most economists know, but won’t say in Republican circles that if you strengthen the middle and working class then businesses will do well. Yet they rely on tax cuts and other government incentives (handouts) to increase their profits. That is not strengthening businesses it is only exacerbating the wealth gap divide. If businesses relied on actual commerce to make money they would know to pay their employees, cut less during recessions and other factors that may cut into their profits some, yet would maintain a strong economic outlook going forward. As long as Wall Street calls the shots for businesses then the middle and working class will struggle since Wall Street lobbies for all the government tax cuts and other incentives that only benefit them.

For too long Republicans and Democrats rely on the same mindset and people they always have and act like something is different when the name of the President changes. To effect real change we need a change of people from entirely different groups and organizations than the ones that permeate Washington year after year.

We need a Kitchen Cabinet that understands what people talk about in their kitchens at night.