It’s early May, and our 2023 RV road trip will be upon us in another couple of weeks!
Preparations are being made.
We’ve got new tires on the rig and it is up in Hurricane, Utah this week undergoing its annual service at the Freightliner big rig shop. Hopefully, there will be no big surprises.
One unfortunate thing that we’re dealing with right now is a serious injury to one of our Boston Terriers. “Baby” came up lame a week ago after a strenuous game of ball fetch in the house. I had to take her to an emergency vet in St. George the next day. Nothing broken, said the vet, but she probably pulled or tore some muscle or tendon in her right hind leg. A follow-up with our local vet a few days ago revealed that she probably has an ACL tear and a subluxed knee cap. We will talk again with the vet on Monday, when he will likely schedule Baby for surgery.
No bueno, particularly since Baby likes those beautiful Oregon beaches.
I am probably spending my last few weeks with my good friend Lloyd Chartrand. He is one of my hiking buddies, an occasional golf partner, and a regular card and dice player with Charlie and I. We’ve had a home-and-home dinner/game night for a long time with Lloyd (and, sometimes, his girlfriend Juanita). She recently flew home to South Africa and Lloyd is planning to join her there (permanently) in mid-June. So, these are our last few weeks with Lloyd, as we will be heading north on May 27th.
Speaking of good friends, Charlie and I will be visited by our old Bear Creek buddy, Marilynn Robinson, tomorrow. She and her significant other “Vern” will be driving up from Las Vegas in the morning following a wedding that they’re attending. We’ve known Marilynn for around 35 years, as she and husband Robbie were some of the first friends that we met in the new Jack Nicklaus golf and country club development back in the late 1980’s. Robbie was a very rich guy (owner of the Waltco truck lift international corporation) and a good guy, too. We had a lot of good times with Marilynn and Robbie over the decades. Robbie died maybe ten years ago. We’re happy that Marilynn finally found a new man; it will be interesting to see how they are clicking together.
Tax season is finally done, so Charlie is taking it easy now, reading a lot of books. Her bookkeeping business is being capably handled by our son Jonathan from his “headquarters” in Lexington, Kentucky. Charlie will be phasing out her tax business this coming year, teaching Jonathan the ropes. He is a smart guy, is very good with numbers and details, and should take to the new tasks like a duck to water.
Our grandson Dakota’s “judgment day” is the day after tomorrow in Banning, California. There he will find out what the State of California thinks about his 4 D.U.I.s, failure to appear, evading police, assaulting a police officer, and probably some other offenses that we haven’t been told about. I don’t wish my 31-year-old grandson ill, but he needs a severe spanking by the Judge to get his mind right. Hopefully, spending a decent amount of time in jail/prison will scare him straight. It’s not too late to turn around his life, but he has dug himself a deep hole to climb out of.
Speaking of criminal justice, ex-Prez Donald Trump had a bad week, losing a civil trial regarding an incident of sexual assault many years ago that he compounded by publicly calling the victim a liar. Trump is one of the greatest practitioners of lying to ever live, so he knows a bit about the subject. Unfortunately, after publicly badmouthing the plaintiff/victim, the district attorney, and the judge, and putting up no defense in court, the jury found for the plaintiff. Supposedly, Trump will have to pay this victim $5 million for the defamation. However, he will undoubtedly file appeal after appeal to stretch out “justice” until he or his victim croaks. But, at least, one of the scumbag’s shenanigans has been publicized and adjudicated.
This case was probably the least threatening of the several that face Mr. Trump in the coming months and years.
The ex-President of the United States is still in the crosshairs of the Fulton County, Georgia justice system for attempting to extort the Georgia Secretary of State and the Governor to change the 2020 election results just enough to make him the winner. The extortion attempt was tape recorded by Georgia officials, so Mr. Trump will face an uphill battle in court when/if the matter finally gets before a judge and jury. Extortion of this type and seriousness is a felony, under the law, so Trump and his battalion of lawyers is fighting tooth and nail to make this case disappear.
Of course, Donald Trump is no stranger to extortion. In fact, he was impeached, while President, for attempting to extort the President of Ukraine during the 2020 election.
Trump, a declared candidate for President in 2024, also faces other legal perils. He is being investigated by the Justice Department for keeping, after his Presidency, a large trove of Top Secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida… despite being asked, several times by the Library of Congress, to return them. His actions are felonious, under the law. However, the most legal peril that Trump faces is a possible indictment over his role in the January 20, 2020 Capitol Riot. Everyone in America saw him on TV that day, inciting the crowd of pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” fanatics to attack Congress and keep it from certifying the election. Somewhere between 600 and 1,000 participants in the riot have been tried and convicted already, with punishments ranging from several months up to ten years in prison. It is yet to be seen if the Justice Department has the cojones to actually charge the ringleaders of the shameful debacle (Rudy Giulani, Mark Meadows, Roger Stone, and Donald Trump).
Donald Trump once bragged that he could “shoot someone dead in Times Square” and get away with it. Several people died in the Capitol Riot and every American with a TV set saw their President incite the violence. Will Trump get away with it… again?
It shouldn’t happen, but this is America in the 2020’s… a bizarre place, for sure.
This past week saw a half a dozen mass murders at the hands of nutjobs with automatic weapons and scores to settle. There have been over 200 of these heinous atrocities over the past year, and… nobody in Congress (or, seemingly, in statehouses all over the Nation) seems to care. It is as if The Most Powerful Nation on Earth is powerless to control craziness within/against its population. We landed a human being on the Moon, for God’s sake! Anything is possible when great minds work together… at least that is what I was taught in school.
Anarchy… that is what our future is, at the rate we’re going. Doesn’t anyone care?
In the midst of this shitstorm, the Republican-led Congress has decided to “play chicken” with President Joe Biden over the so-called Federal debt ceiling. Basically, every year Congress must authorize the government to borrow money to keep the enterprise afloat. Whenever Republicans are the “out” Party (i.e. don’t control the White House), they like to play brinksmanship with the debt ceiling tool, trying to hamstring the Oval Office and get concessions. Not surprisingly, the same Republicans had no problem lifting the debt ceiling cap when Donald Trump was in office. Back then, borrowing and spending was a Good Thing. Of course, now with a Democrat in the Oval Office, it’s a bad thing.
I’ve got an idea: how about we solve the budget deficit problem by cutting the Defense Department budget by half? Our defense budget is currently more than China’s, India’s, and Russia’s combined. We have six hundred military bases scattered all over the world. Do we really need this much military overkill? Giving the Defense Department budget a haircut is long overdue, in my opinion.
It is not out of the question that the foolish brinksmanship by Congress could backfire on the Nation… if the debt ceiling is not raised and the government goes into default on its debts. It would be a catastrophe in our own country and, since we are the most powerful country in the world and our dollar is the reserve currency of the world, it could lead to a worldwide economic collapse of biblical proportions.
Hopefully, this stupid non-issue will be brought to conclusion in the next few weeks… before we all suffer.
In the meanwhile, the countdown to kickoff is down to a couple of weeks before we head up to the Oregon coast.
I can almost feel that cool, coastal air and the gorgeous forests and wild berry vines bordering every highway.
Sweet.