Day 54

What ever happened to Jeff Sessions?  His track record as the Attorney General was a two year self-inflicted humiliation.  That is how he will be remembered, a plant by the Democratic and Republican conspiracy to get President Trump.  All his 2016 campaign shenanigans in support of President Trump were a ploy to be a turncoat in a possible Trump administration, should that become necessary.  Thankfully it did.

Sessions was a get Trumper from the get go, double minded, enjoy your retirement, Mr. Sessions.  Most of us have forgotten you already, history will not!

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Day 53

John Mc Cain was an American military hero as were the thousands of young American men drafted by our politicians to die in the jungles of Viet Nam. You be the judge, who best deserves the central place of honor?  My opinion is that those who lost their lives in service to their country should be honored as the best of America.  The surviving war fighters receiving continuing honors do so mostly because they are alive and able to collect.  This may be more about the short attention span of we the judges than the honors due John McCain.

Post war, the political career of John McCain was marked by the same personal quality that preserved him through many years of captivity, a dogged individualism.  He was not a team player.  My best guess is that he relished to a greater degree the pivotal podium than to be a team player.  As a team player, the one becomes one of the many.  

John bucked heads with every president and ducked between the Democratic and Republican teams, seemingly fancying himself as a bridge builder.  You be the judge, what were the motives of his political life?  I would like an audit of his personal finances surrounding his pivotal vote in defeating the Republican Healthcare bill just before his death.  Why did he dish out that defeat?  Was he motivated by the never Trump establishment or was it money to set up his family after his death.  

There is nothing heroic about either scenario. 

Goslaw

Landers, CA  

Day 52

Looking back from my recliner, how could I have been so young and dumb?  The big issues are water under the bridge but it is the little youthful dumb moves that nag at me.  For instance, my first flight in a small plane.  I have never been good at accepting advice but when my Navy pilot training buddies advised, take a barf bag up on your first flight, I consciously or not, refused to listen.  A barf bag is for sissies!

Wrong oh, bobo, is the reality I soon experienced.  The instructors took advantage of the first familiarization flight to do a little dog fighting with other instructors in the T-34.  We newbies would be just sitting passively in the front seat taking the g’s and this newbie was getting dog sick.  That feeling of being on the edge of barfdom was and is the worst feeling known to man or woman.

The feeling reminded me of our childhood cross country trips to see relatives in California.  The family Buick was the pastor’s Cadillac and my father and mother put a lot of miles on a succession of Buicks.  We kids were contained in the back seat but after a succession of accidents, Mom went to the back seat and I got to think about something other than being sick from the front seat. It seemed to work for the most part.

Back to the T-34, everything was in my throat.  In desperation at the last split second, without thinking and with sweat running down my forehead, I unzipped my flight jacket and relieved myself, immediately zipping the zipper back up.  My instructor must have smelled the situation, expecting a mess in his plane.  He could then have fun at the expense of this newbie by ordering a cleanup.  I am sure that was the plan but I fooled him, we shook hands and I thanked him for the flight, admitting nothing.

I look back on this experience with almost a sense of pride but now have accepted the fact that most of my decisions in my youth were sadly deficient.  I seemed to be floating through life letting others be in control of my future without a passionate goal to which I could order and give myself too.  

Would that someone, at a critical moment, had sat me down and tried at least to wake me up.  No telling if I would have listened but my life would have been more pleasant, had I.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Day 51

A talking head on the tube said that the idea of a transaction fee on stock market trades has been around for fifty years.  Who knew?  Thank you for the info, Fox Business News.  I have been around for fifty years and the idea somehow slipped through my brain matter, so what gives?

 

I shall readily admit that my gray matter has holes but would not a serious proposal have been public info?  A proposal, that if enacted, would have solved at least one national issue or crisis, be it medical coverage or the national debt. Such a transaction $1 fee, per share purchased, seems like a no brainer.  The fee would be easy to collect and deductible on your federal IRS return.  To the long-term investor, such a fee would not even be noticed but the revenue gained to the country would be very significant.

 

So, where’s the rub?  You guessed it, the Wall Street political lobby that dishes out campaign contributions to our political leaders in Washington. The fee would have a negative effect on the big trading houses when they buy millions of stocks every day but why is that a negative for the working American?  The big traders will have to adjust their business model.

A rational solution to so much of our national angst has been buried by our politicians on the dole!  Why should the American stock market get a free pass when government has become so costly?  

Please ask your politicians about a stock market transaction fee.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA 

Day 50

Every religion is imperfect and different.  Some are mere snapshots of the relationship of God to man, while others may be a sitcom or a drama of one hour.  Another may be a documentary, a drama series or a late-night gab session.  Any religion that claims to have won the religion game by having all the marbles, has drunk the Jonestown cool aide.

The issue before every religion is, are we willing to look ourselves in the mirror?  And then we must question ourselves, is what we are doing working?  Is getting hostile in the face of criticism building our understanding of the God man dynamic?  Some believe there is no room or need for such self-inspection in a religion that may have been around for thousands of years.  Surely such a religion would have dealt with all the questions.  Well, answers have been given but the more likely scenario is that they have been buried and ignored.

It doesn’t take a genius to state the obvious.  In the twenty first century, the decision that matters the most is not which religion will be embraced but does modern man need any religion?  Every culture on earth is becoming increasingly secular, making decisions in our personal and group lives, devoid of any divine consideration.  The enemy of every religion is no religion at all, believers of every stripe must join arms to address our common enemy, secularism.

The question that bothers me the most is whether religion is a sugar high for the poor uneducated masses?  That one is being buried very deep in the face of secularism.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Day 49

Religion and the words of Jesus get all mixed up.  All my books are packed away because my grandson is borrowing the study for a few more months but even if they were available I am not sure I could adequately document a solution to the mix up.  The confusion is so entrenched in religious group think that clarity is extremely difficult.  Finding a thread of thought within religion that provides a way forward may be out there but it is buried by layers of acceptable dogma.

Jesus is searching for other voices who will trumpet the good news that we humans are, indeed, spiritual beings with a profound spiritual mission.  A mission that will not be exercised without voices shouting at us from beyond the land of the religiously correct.  Religion did everything to stifle the words of Jesus and the religion of Christianity is too often complicit with those same efforts.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA 

    

Day 48

An America that celebrates our differences is a strange new land. There was a time not long ago when we celebrated that which unites us as a people and a country.  That day is gone for many of us.  There is a stain on the ceramic tile floor at my bathroom throne and that stain gets worse with every dribble.  This slacker does have a poor aim coupled with poor housekeeping skills but is it not also true that we all pee?  All of we human beings ingests nutrients and have the same way to expel waste so why can’t we celebrate our sameness.  Instead, we choose to celebrate all that other stuff, like race, religion, relative wealth and all that supposed free stuff.

Bottom line, we are all brothers and sisters.  As Americans, we can share a national identity, we can share a history choosing freedom above all other interests.  Four hundred years ago when the people were birthing our unique new nation, freedom was celebrated above personal security and economic interests.  What is the difference, why is America leaning to be different, then and now?  The answer to this question is simple and obvious, the gift of freedom means that we are willing to live within a competitive life situation, it means that we are willing to earn our respective life situation.

Healthy competition has become unpopular in our new America.  Our politicians have no stomach for telling it like it is, in the short term their future depends upon their relative expertise at lying.  The promotion of a mommy society that gives out personal security according to its own priorities is the end of freedom.  Such a top down society is to promise everything and deliver only what is necessary to maintain control over the people.  Can any reasonable American call any such system freedom?

The competitively squeamish scream, competition isn’t fair!  Grow up, life in this world has never been fair, fairness, what is that?  Why do millions of American gets so worked up over a football or baseball competition?  We do so because we are competitive beings, for millions of years we humans have had to compete for our next meal, it is who we are as humans.

Competition means that there are those who appear to be winners and those who appear to be losers.   Appearance are deceiving, none of us wins at all times and in all areas of life, we win some and we lose some.   I was a truck owner operator most of my life and the only win I can claim was that I loved what I was doing and I managed to financially stay afloat.  There was no big payday at the end of that rainbow but as the saying goes, it is better for me to have loved (tried) and lost than never to have loved (tried) at all.  I am blessed to be an American with the freedom to try whatever I may choose.  The rest of the world knows only some form of top down government control. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA