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Theft of an Election

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

“A well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” Molly Ball -Time Magazine February 4, 2021

For anyone doubting the legitimacy of the 2020 election, you don’t have to go any further to find the truth. In this recent Time magazine article, the cocky liberal media is not only admitting in tampering with the election but rigging it for their own desired outcome. How far this goes after November 4 we don’t know, but if we wait long enough someone will start bragging about vote tampering.

One should not be surprised that the confession of this crime would be hidden behind the title “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” once you read the text you learn that the title is false unless your ideology justifies treating an election like a Russian presidential campaign.

Suspicion arose when a dislike candidate along with a hated running mate was leading in the polls while not campaigning and being hostile towards voters they didn’t agree with. The campaign strategy was nothing like had been seen before. Bailing out rioters who committed arson and assault. Visiting a known rape and kidnapping suspect after being shot by the police. Stating they were going to kill jobs in key industries across the country. Backing lockdowns that killed small businesses. Stating they would raise taxes while sending out checks to tax payers. The list goes on and on. Then there was the Hunter Biden laptop which held videos of Hunter raping underage Chinese girls while smoking crack. And still, somehow in this country, Biden became president of the United States. State governments claim that Biden received 80 million votes while Trump had 72 million. Trump received more votes during the second campaign than he did the first election meaning he grew in favor with the American public. Biden lost votes with black and Hispanic Americans. By every measurable statistic there is no way that Biden could have reached the numbers claimed in the end.

Continuing on, we have Ted Cruz who has an objection to the votes with evidence of voter fraud and election tampering. When the objection is to be heard the session is halted due to breech at the capital building. The few people organizing the raid that were arrested later turned out to be Antifa activists with prior arrest records at BLM riots in 2020. The objection was taken back and the evidence of voter fraud was never heard or investigated.

Like any other government that came into power legitimately, the Biden administration immediately continued on with an impeachment trial for a former president claiming he incited violence at the Capitol building by saying “Peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” There is a continued presence of 5000 national guard troops in Washington DC. The head of the ARMY announced on February 4, 2021 that the military was on a stand down order for 60 days to find and remove any racist, white supremist, radicals, and trump supporters from their ranks. From the previous background checks done around the time of the inauguration a soldier fails the loyalty test by posting a Gadsden flag on social media, voting or supporting Trump during 2020, or being a member of the NRA.

Rep. Marjorie Greene has been removed from her committee assignments for posting conspiracy theories before she was elected in the House. Meanwhile, AOC was caught lying about the events of the Capitol building raid and where she was during the event. None of her assignments have been changed.

As time goes on more changes have come up concerning a Reality Czar to regulate media. A new branch for domestic surveillance. The expansion of the CIA and FBI to operate in the United States to catch domestic extremists. The purging of the military. The removal of social media accounts who do not agree with the new administration. The list goes on and on.

Now is the time for conspiracy theorists to admit to themselves they were right. All the things that were said about the 2020 election turned out to be true. All of the repercussions of the election are coming true. So now what? Where do we go from here?

The election was stolen. “Ya we did it. What are you going to do about it?” Maybe they didn’t say that but let’s admit it, this is what they are now saying.

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2020, The Long Slow Goodbye

A few days ago, I learned that John Le Carre, a veteran of the cold war and seasoned writer of high-quality spy novels, died at the age of 89. The comment had to be added to the official announcement that he did not die from COVID-19. This is a good bye for two reasons, the author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy would never writer another ground breaking novel again, and we can’t hear about anyone dying without having COVID-19 added to it one way or another.

A year ago, at this time we were living free from lock downs, wearing mask, and election drama. I still called myself a liberal. While I was starting to see a change in the city, I always lived I still had a love for it and what it could be. There was the cushy job that paid too much money with little work and responsibility. The house that I still owned since 2004 that I had already dished out $78,000 for and I still owed $43,000 on a $65,000 mortgage. Don’t ask me how the math on that works out. Life was cruising along and then news started to come out of China.

In the last year we lost Sean Connery, John Le Carre, Kirk Douglas, Kelly Preston, Jerry Stiller, and Eddie Van Halen. The list is longer and people would be pissed if I didn’t mention RBG, but to be honest with you I think that one had been living on borrowed time for a few years already. The year doesn’t compare to 2016 when we heard about a new celebrity death every couple of days but that was the good old days. When all you have to look forward to on the news is who died now maybe life isn’t that bad, for you that is, sucks for the dead guy. What was different was how every death this year was over shadowed by COVID-19. Except for Kobe Bryant there was always the question if the person they were talking about had died from COVID-19, or if they died of something else but had COVID-19. The story was never about the life of the person who had died but instead played second fiddle to a disease.

Celebrities aren’t the only thing dying this year. The country appears to be on life support as businesses shut down and lives are destroyed. Several places I loved going to no longer exist. Restaurants, breweries, and small shops have closed their doors for good. For many, the sense of having a future to look forward to has disappeared. The media continues to ignore the record number of suicides that states have been seeing while they continue to keep people isolated for no good reason at all. The American dream has been reserved for a select few, and unless you are prospering from the current economic conditions then this does not include you. The constitution has been under fire these days and like the bible thumpers I grew up with people have started to take a selective approach to the bill of rights. BLM is allowed to protest because it is their first amendment right. People are not allowed to protest the lockdowns because the government says so. Statues were torn down, building set on fire, people killed in the streets in the name of… something and nobody appeared to be arrested or held accountable. Meanwhile if you open your business to make money, while following CDC guidelines so that you can feed your family and keep a roof over your head you will go to jail. COVID-19 didn’t do this, we did this to ourselves. The government over reacted and continued policies more dangerous than a disease and we as a people let it happen and continue. Vaccines have been administered this week and even if the majority of the country has been stuck in the arm with a needle the government is saying we will still have to continue with our current policies. Democracy, the constitution, and the bill or rights also died this year.

Four states changed election rules without going through their state legislature in accordance to the constitution of the united states. When 20 other states tried to sue over this the supreme court declined to hear the case. Voting machines that had been purchased through Canada have been shown to alter votes, and while people like John Oliver stated a year ago that this was a problem. Now we are supposed to believe that there was nothing wrong with these machines.

Race relations have never been worse. A constant barrage of stories about racism and defining people by the color of their skin has alienated the country from itself.

A job that I thought was secure turned into a SJW cesspool, or maybe it always had been and I just didn’t want to see it. Emails went out to POCs (people of color) to have meeting with only them, segregating the employees. Over a span of two years several highly regarded famous authors died with no presentation, display, or mention of the event on the library website. Jim Harrison, Anthony Bourdain, Philip Roth, Elie Wiesel, Sam Shepard, and Harlan Ellison died during the time I work for the library and out of the list Anthony Bourdain had a display, only because I put one together on a cart and wheeled it out into the lobby. There it stayed for a week before it was taken down and the materials returned to the shelves. I had requested a display for Tony, even suggesting a link to suicide prevention, but I was told that “If we did a display for every author who died we would always have a display up.” Somewhere along the way the library had lost its way as to what a library is. Without writers a library would not exist. Somewhere along the way libraries had forgotten where they started and why they existed. And we wonder why people don’t read anymore?

My city started to implode. It was socially acceptable and encouraged to say that white people were evil. Riots happened downtown with windows smashed, and stores looted. The public sided with the rioters while the store owners cleaned up the mess and had to cover the cost. A year before a few members of the Proud Boys went to Bells Brewing for a beer. An out spoken member of the community refused to let them in the brewery saying they were not welcome here and harassed them until they left, while taking photos of their vehicles and license plates to post them online. These are the “open minded” and “socially understanding” people that had started to take over the city. A year later, nobody spoke up against BLM when they trashed the city while screaming about police brutality. The cops used tear gas when they refused to go home and all hell broke loose. The police were under fire for doing their jobs. The Proud boys came back to hold a rally. I watched the entire 1 hour 45-minute uncut video of their march through the city with the poorly narrated dialogue of a man who insisted on telling the camera the exact opposite of everything that happened. The proud boys marched to Bronson park, said some words, and went back to their cars. Meanwhile counter protesters threatened to hit the marchers with sticks and rocks. Flags were stolen and pepper spray used. The local media pushed the idea that the proud boys instigated the violence by showing up. The BLM protesters were arrested for assault and the chief of police was forced to resign for what the public viewed as a poorly handled situation. Later a memorial to a fallen officer was removed from the downtown mall because of public complaint and constant vandalism. My city, the one that I loved, no longer existed.

A brewery that I had gone to since 2013 closed its doors months before their 7th anniversary. The last day was filled with speeches of gratitude and memories that would live on forever. We tried to remain upbeat but by the end of the night men were hugging and crying at the loss of such a great place.

The union closed their doors after we had moved out of town. A place that I wrote about several times, for their live jazz shows, upscale beer selection, and comfortable atmosphere it had a special place in my heart with good food to add to the list. Reasons for staying were disappearing.

2020 has been a long slow good bye to everything that made this country great. From the small businesses that make up the majority of jobs in this country, to the Bill of Rights that has been under attack by the same people who freely use it while arguing you cannot. In a year we have entered some kind of upside-down world where nothing makes sense and to try to live the way you did a year ago is now illegal and you will be punished several ways for it.

People have talked about the new normal and I will admit that everything is changing all the time. There are some things that we need to hold onto. Change can be good but when you do too much you lose a part of yourself or your culture. The country is divided and as I write this there is talk of dividing the country physically. The west coast wants to be liberal democratic states and they can have it. The Midwest from the Rockies to the Appalachian Mountains want to be conservative republican “leave us the F*ck alone” states. Then there is the east coast that is a little more complicated. While I live in Michigan which somehow went from Trump country to Biden wasteland, I can tell you that if you are not in a larger city you are in Trump country. This land is the opposite of where I left. I have seen BLM bumper stickers on the backs of cars and wondered if anyone was going to say something. But there is a simple philosophy here. You don’t bother us; we don’t bother you. I don’t know why that was so hard in Kalamazoo. The country is tolerant, but remember, when you start crap here, these people will finish it. Burn your own cities. March in your streets. Tear yourselves apart. But don’t bring that shit here.

2020 has been a long slow good bye to a lot of things. I left my job. I left my city. I left the Democratic party. I sold a house that I owned for 16 years. I lost my favorite bar. I lost faith in people. I lost trust in government. The list goes on and on. 2020 has been perpetual loss and saying goodbye is something we are all good at now.

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The Insanity of the left

 

There is an experiment taking place. One that everyone is a part of and the end result will appear at the end of the year. A free democracy is being tested and the rights that we enjoy are being pushed to the limit during an election year. The people who use free speech the most promote the limitation of free speech to anyone they declare are using hate speech. A minority group is demanding the defunding/ abolishment of the police departments across the country. Armed black men took to the street, with a police escort, demanding reparations from motorist that had to wait for the group to pass by. As of today, a Muslim congress woman stated that not only did we need to get rid of the police but we also needed to abolish our political and economic system. I am hoping that she was only elected to one term and we never have to hear her speak her non-sense ever again.

This has happened before, and like most insane movements, these people look back at history and say to themselves “They never got it right. This time it will be different.”  The communist revolutions of old killed over 100 million people during the last century and it is currently repeating itself in Venezuela as I write this. Even the mini experiments that we have seen in this country are turning out the same way. CHAZ lasted almost a month before the police were finally sent back in to do their job. Five people were killed and the last one was a 16-year-old kid who was shot at in a SUV with over 300 rounds put through the vehicle during a ten-minute time span. A 14-year-old survived. The kids were not armed.

BLM and our current justice system are engaging in a strange double standard that they don’t quite understand. In Indiana, a black man accompanied with a handful of friends went to a private party, on private property to protest the fourth of July. When he was attacked, he called the police, the same people he was protesting against. BLM has been using this tactic on several occasions to try to appear as a victim while being the instigator. A woman in Michigan pulled a pistol in self defense after a woman and her two teenage daughters followed her to her car and refused to let her leave, going as far as to jump behind the minivan while it was backing up. The woman and her husband were charged with assault and the husband lost his job. Meanwhile the police are no longer doing their jobs. Consider it a justice strike. As of July 7, 2020, not a single person has been arrested for the looting and riots that happened in my home town of Kalamazoo Michigan. The event was captured on cell phone video from a balcony above the downtown mall and yet nobody has been arrested. A few weeks later, a mural was painted in the street reading Black Lives Matter in full view of my place of employment. The same group that was responsible for the destruction my city saw was allowed to tag their work for everyone to see. The cowardly acts of our political leaders are adding to the carnage. At this moment autonomous zones are set up in New York city and Atlanta Georgia. CHAZ Atlanta is responsible for the death of five people so far including an 8-year-old girl. The governor finally called in the National Guard.

If it wasn’t for the fact that communism has never worked, I would say that we should let these psychos try their stupid ideas out for five minutes and see how well they do. This doesn’t need to happen since we already have their own autonomous zones to look at. People are dying at higher rates than with the alleged police brutality and when things do happen, they still call the police. I read today that the average college graduate is found to have a fifth-grade reading level and with the actions of these protesters we can see they have the maturity of a third grader. Our current national system is a mixture of Lord of the Flies, 1984, Animal Farm, and Fight Club. His name is Robert Paulson, get it right.

I find myself doing the most American thing I can think of, retreating. Not for the sake of saving my own ass but in order to fight another day. The city I have called my home all of my life has become a huge disappointment; it always has been but as of lately it has truly shown how weak and infantile it has become. There are two Michigans. The lower portion of the state where most of the population lives and north of Grand Rapids. On any political map you will see blue dots in Detroit, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. In the north is a sea of red and you won’t find any of the bullshit that the cities have to put up with. When Covid hit I kept telling myself that I should have bought that cabin in Cheboygan or in the U.P. and now I think it’s time to pack up and find a new place to call home. I know how the companies work in this town. They will cater to the biggest piece of shit on the planet for the sake of not being called racist and any white man is on the alter to be sacrificed to the lame ass god of anti-racism. I already walk on egg shells worrying that somehow some way I will offend someone and I will have to turn in my keys and ID and be escorted to the door. Let’s face it, the first amendment, with all of the fake news and alleged “peaceful” protest is dead. People can walk onto your property, threaten you, and you are not allowed to do anything about it. When your place of employment says that they want to allow people to have open discussions in a safe place at work, that doesn’t include your opinion. The media currently doesn’t cover the deaths caused by BLM instead twisting headlines with assumptions and false accusations. The country is in ruins and it is time to run for the hills. If you are from a small town move back there. If you live in the city, cash in that small house or condo and find a piece of land in the middle of nowhere. Unemployed college students and biracial Marxist baristas can’t afford the gas to drive into rural Nebraska to continue their march to equality. The cities depend on food. They need supplies. To have a piece of land that supports so much more than the family that lives on it is to have power. When the trucks stop, when the police no longer answer 911, when the power goes out and the water spots to flow, that will be the oh fuck moment when these whiney little shits realize they don’t know as much as they thought they did.

 

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Voting Republican for the first time

 

It’s not hard to remember the first election I ever voted in. Most people who voted in 2000 can recall the law suits, confusion, and eventual decision by the supreme court, not the people, the put George W. Bush in office. Sometimes I look back and wonder what life might have looked like if Al Gore had become president and 9-11 still happened. Of course, there is no way to know.

I didn’t vote for Al or George that first time. I voted for Ralph Nader. I didn’t care for Gore’s policy on censorship and Bush I took to be a racist and idiot. Turns out Bush wasn’t a racist but was an idiot. As for Gore, I’m still waiting for the world to end. Since then I voted for every Democrat that had been on the ballet from John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton (Barf), Andrew Yang, and Tulsi Gabbard. This election, the game that the Democrats have been playing this year with the country was the last straw.

For twenty years I followed a progressive path and while I hold some conservative ideas I learned mostly left on topics. After seeing where the democratic party has gone in a desperate attempt to remove a man from the oval office I can only say “they have lost their minds.” Four years ago, the democratic party was reluctant to go full crazy. This year they decided to stop taking their meds and dived head first into a swimming pool filled with shit.

In 2016, I remember when Black Lives Matter took the stage from Bernie Sanders and he was forced to say he supported their cause. They had acted like bullies and he folded under pressure when he shouldn’t have. To me, that was the end of the Bernie campaign. Later on, Hillary would invite BLM onto her stage in full support not knowing who these people are. This has become the new party policy. Bend the knee to anyone that has clout in the moment and hope everyone else follows. Welcome to 2020.

For the last year I have tried to make a change in the democratic party. Since I was a child, I had heard to fix the system from the inside to make the world a better place. I decided to put my money where my mouth was. I heard Andrew Yang on the Joe Rogan podcast and liked the majority of his policies. He wasn’t a carrier politician and if there was one person, I could see beating Donald Trump in 2020 it was him. although he ran on a universal basic income platform it was his other policies listed on his website that attracted me. Over several months I donated a good portion of money to his campaign and like Bernie in 2016 the Democratic party, pardon my language, fucked him out of the debates. Before I could blink Yang had dropped out and eventually supported Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate.

Then there was Tulsi. Here we have a woman who is everything that the Democratic party says they want as their presidential candidate. Young, a person of color, war vet, current military enlisted, and currently serving in congress. She wanted to invest in the country instead of foreign countries and end the wars that did us no good in the long run. In her first debate Tulsi decimated the party favorite at the time by calling out Kamala Harris for putting single moms in jail if their kids didn’t go to school and putting more black men in prison than any other Attorney General in California. Kamala continued to play the race card and it didn’t work. she was one of the first candidates to drop out of the race. So, we have badass, minority, congressional war vet taking out her opponents and the media refused to cover her. Tulsi was the only option on the primary ballet in the state of Michigan that was left besides Joe Biden. My vote went to Tulsi. Later, she would drop a slander law suit against Hillary Clinton which only told me how far the corruption in the party had gone. Everyone I put my faith in disappointed me in the end. Then came the riots.

Covid-19 came onto the radar at the beginning of the year and before we knew it people had it in Washington state and New York and it was spreading across the map. Lock downs were put into place and the people of Michigan had three months off from work. I followed the Governor’s orders and kept my risk of contracting the disease low. Protest erupted when the lockdown was extended and the media along with the Governor scolded the unpatriotic swine that descended onto the capital building in Lansing. I thought these people were idiots and were acting like children. Then Stupid had a new definition a month later.

George Floyd was allegedly killed by a police officer in Minneapolis and all hell broke loose. Black Lives Matter, an organization that had disappeared after 2017, re-emerged with protest and some new plays in their book for causing havoc across the country. In 2018 the book called White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo was released and it became the new bible for insecure white women everywhere. Antifa and a new army of poorly educated, indebted, college graduates took to the streets and started riots, looting, and started destroying public property across the country. When 104 black people were shot in Chicago on Father’s Day weekend BLM was nowhere to be found. Private businesses pooled money together as a bounty for the person responsible in the death of a one-year-old child. At the same time my Governor was marching in the streets with protesters when a month before she was degrading the previous protesters far doing the same thing. My county declared Racism a public health crisis, not Covid-19. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and every left-wing newspaper refused to discuss the riots and looting that was taking place and always referred to these events as “Peaceful protest.” Nancy Pelosi, wore a scarf in DC from a tribe in Africa that sold slaves to European merchants, and took a knee in solidarity with BLM. This is the level of stupid that we are dealing with now. Companies left and right are siding with BLM without knowing who they really are. When people say they don’t support them they are fired from their jobs.

Today is the fourth of July and protest, riots, and looting are still going strong. While the Dems are busy kissing the ass of an organization, they know nothing about Trump has made sure that arrests are being made and many of these fools are looking at ten-year prison sentences. Something is finally being done.

I never cared for the Social Justice Warrior phenomenon and their cancel culture, taking due process out of the hands of the courts and legal system, instead choosing to have people fired and soil their name so they can’t make a living anymore. This isn’t the American way. This isn’t how I want to live. We have the first amendment in this country and at the moment the only group who thinks they are allowed to use it are a bunch of crazy leftists that haven’t moved out of their parent’s basement. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that people have the right NOT to be offended. Everyone has the right to say what they believe without the state stepping in but some people want to change that. Now they are going after the second amendment. “Ken and Karen” made the news for defending their home after an iron gate was destroyed and hundreds of armed protesters entered their property threatening to kill them, burn their house down, and kill their dog. Nobody could blame them if they went full John Wick on these assholes except for the media. The local DA is also trying to charge them for defending their property while not firing a single shot. Did I mention the DA is a Democrat?

When I look at the state of affairs across the country every city that became a war zone during these riots are run by Democrats. CHAZ was allowed to prosper in Seattle because of the Democratic Mayor. Chicago, currently being run by a Democrat, is seeing record numbers in shooting while it is a gun free zone. New York is folding under pressure and is cutting over a billion dollars from the NYPD budget only to see an immediate rise in crime. People in my home state were given tickets and fines for not following the stay at home order while the Governor was marching in the streets with protesters who were breaking the same laws, she signed in.

This year was the last straw. I tried. I really did. I supported the best options the democrats had running. I participated in the process. I followed the rules. Then this shit happens. These people with all of their phony policies and lack of spines are pushing the country into a civil war because they can’t handle the fact they are not in charge. As Will McAvoy once said on Newsroom “If Liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?” The Dems will lose again. The polls say Biden is winning but we haven’t seen the man in three months. Plus, these are the same polls that said Hillary was going to be in office. I’m not the only one out there. I’m not the only historically voting democrat that will be voting for Trump in November. There are a few other Democrats that I will be voting out of office at the same time. Their time of dividing the country through Identity politics are over. No more of this white shaming and anti-male bullshit. I’ tired of being called a piece of shit because of the color of my skin and having a big pair of balls between my legs. They can shove their policies up their ass from now on. Come November they will join the ranks of the unemployed they created this year and hopefully we can get back on track with improving the country instead of trying to turn it into Orwell’s Animal Farm. I can not be the only one out there that feels this way. We are the silent majority and I’m here to say “You’re fired!”

 

 

 

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The search for perfection (in an election year)

I couldn’t tell you where it started, the notion that a candidate running for office has to meet ALL the criteria you put on them. I have seen this especially with presidential candidates and now that I think about it the search for perfection goes back further than these recent years.
Unfortunately, we have a two-party system, something many of the founding fathers never wanted for the country, and with a two-party system you end up with opposing views and these two sides trying to make sure they are as far away from their opponents as they can be. Until recently we didn’t now how far people were willing to go in either direction, the Republicans created the Tea Party (or tea baggers as I like to call them) and on the left there is a socialist movement that has been growing since Occupy Wallstreet. Occasionally you hear somebody referring to themselves as a centrist but the media can’t make money on a person who is agreeable, while most of the nation’s voters ride the line in the center.
I had issues with this perfect candidate idea over the years, disliking John Kerry because he sounded like Dubya Bush but wearing a different suit and tie. John McCain could have had my vote if he had not lost his mind with the poor choice of his running mate. Dean had his scream. Gore’s wife couldn’t keep her hands off my record collection. Dubya was caught on tape saying he didn’t care about black churches. And the list goes on and on.
These days I support Andrew Yang, no this post isn’t about Yang I’m just using this to make a point. I had people say “I want to like him but….” Then out of the 76 policies posted on Yang’s website they will pick one or two and say “I can’t support this.” So, I would have to assume you are in favor of the other 74 polices? This is where I lose my mind. After an election with the two worst candidates ever to have run for office people are still nit picking over stupid polices that in all odds will never see the light of day even if Yang, or Gabbard, or Bernie made it into office. How many policies did Obama get through before his administration was tied down in patrician bullshit? One.
There are things I like about the other candidates. Warren wants to break up the big tech companies and after a hellish six months of trying to cancel my Sprint service I would prefer she burned them to the ground and brought back oil lamps. Gabbard wants us to stay out of foreign wars and stop making money for companies who profit on war, right on man. Bernie, well Bernie, ugh Bernie is old and I don’t know what he wants to do anymore or what he could accomplish in the five minutes he would live after getting into office. Beto has been playing the wallflower at the high school class presidential election kegger, refusing to piss anybody off.
These people will be in my face non-stop for the coming year until they start dropping like flies. Even Joe Biden is having a hard time managing his sexual harassment charges. I have to say if a picture is a thousand words, then the videos I watched of Biden recently are thousands of creepy words.
With all these things I liked I still had to choose one. How did I manage to narrow it down? I picked the guy that spoke with the least amount of bullshit. I don’t agree with everything that Yang says. There are policies that I am not sure about or agree with. While Yang is not perfect he is the best candidate I have found for me. Some people may call this “selling out” or “settling” which makes it sound like we are dating these people. I don’t believe I am in some kind of puppy love state of mind. I would like to think this is a rational choice that I have made and free from some partisan crap. Hell, Yang isn’t even a politician.
I’m going to stay away from the “lesser of two evils” cop out that we often hear. This is more about being an adult and making adult choices. Most people don’t pay attention until there are only two options. Maybe it’s the stress of having too many options like shopping in a super market with fifty different choices of tomato soup. Or maybe it’s the fatigue of constantly being lied to over the years and no longer wanting to participate. Or maybe its because they can’t find anybody who is perfect.
Plato once talked about the idea of perfection, the apple you see in your mind that you will never find because the apple you imagine is flawless, and yet when you find an apple, regardless of all its flaws you still bite into it and enjoy it.
You will never find a perfect candidate. It’s like shopping on Match.com and when you do find that special someone there are things they either lied about or completely left out, bad credit, mental illness, crazy ex-boyfriend that might kill you. In any case, people have closets and they tend to hide things in them from their guests.
When I visit a person’s place for the first time, I tend to glance at the book shelf or DVD collection. Harder to do these days with people reading on kindles and subscribing to Netflix. There is a lot to learn about a person by seeing what they decide to put into their heads. Trump doesn’t read. That is all I needed to know.
Recently there was a discussion about Yang not making a statement on transgender something something day. I have no idea what day this is, whether or not it’s a real holiday, or if it was made up for people to become angry about when it’s not talked about. Personally, I don’t care. You won’t find me shoving Black History Month in everyone’s face or crying about Valentine’s Day. Supporters of Yang brought this up and there was a positive uproar in response. Positive because there was a backlash of people asking “what is really important?” I couldn’t agree more. Yang didn’t send out a tweet or make an announcement on television saying “yay, it’s chicks with dicks day!” most likely he was on the road traveling to his next interview or rally. Maybe he was sleeping because he has been on the road since last year. The social justice calendar might have been lost among all the other things he has been dealing with. I was happy to see that most supporters of Yang either didn’t care he missed a fake holiday or supported him not talking about it. The person who posted the question said they were concerned about if he really cared about the LGBTQLMNOP community or if it was made up. I think those people have more to be concerned about than if someone said “hi” on TV.
Yang isn’t perfect and if people are trying to point out his flaws by missing a day that most people didn’t know about than I am glad to keep him as my guy. I’m waiting for the next version of 50 Shades of Grey (Biden’s Bondage) to be released and be forced to hear all the juicy details of his sexual misconduct. Gabbard is too relaxed to not have a medical card for some “herbs.” Bernie might slip in the tub a few more times. Yang isn’t perfect, but I haven’t found anything that I can’t accept.

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Yang Gang Party in the Greenhouse Loft

I wasn’t familiar with the Greenhouse loft, a wedding venue that was being used for the rally in Chicago. From the outside it looked like a small place but had enough parking for the people coming from out of town. I assumed from the people who were attending the rally that most of them used public transportation, uber, or walked. As I pulled into the garage, I could see a long line of people being checked in, using their cell phones to show the ticket issued to them while I had my tree killing piece of paper.
Being the odd ball at events like these I stuck out like a sore thumb. Wearing a long beard for the purpose of hunting as opposed to the well-groomed hipster crowd I appeared to be the low-class outsider with a cowboy hat on. My North Face Jacket had seen better days and my leather shoes were covered in mud, something the people of Chicago had not seen in a long time.
As the event hall filled up, I kept looking at my clock wondering why it was already running an hour late. Then I was reminded that Chicago is an hour behind and my phone had not adjusted for the time change. A staffer came over and told me the restaurant next door was serving food and drinks for the event. A person could buy a beer at a Yang Rally. Bernie was never this cool. For $5 I picked up a small IPA and slowly sipped the hoppy beverage wondering if it was a good idea if I was driving afterwards. Still time was on my side and I waited.
In the lobby a table was set up where they sold Yang merchandise. Shirts, posters and books were on display and although I had already read Yang’s book the sign said “have Yang sign your book.” I knew one of two things would happen. I would be face to face with hang with nothing for him to sign or I would buy the book and wouldn’t be able to get close to him. On the off chance of a third option I bought a copy and considered it a donation to his campaign.
The crowd waited. The room was packed. The body heat from the crowd hovered over the room and pulsed down on us like a heat lamp in an incubator. Impatience like an egg was about to crack when a girl took the stage asking us to be patient. More people were still coming into the building and the overflow rooms were filling up fast. The man in charge of the Chicago Yang Gang could have passed at a Chicago version of Zach De La Roche with bushy hair and having the crowd chant Yang’s name gearing us up for the main event.
A local teacher took the stage to talk about Yang’s policies, hands shaking and voice stumbling over words I could tell he wasn’t used to such a large crowd of adults paying attention to him. Then came the head of Yang’s campaign, a young man who had been in charge of his schedule from the beginning. He was stalling. The unprepared gibberish lasted long enough for Yang to come out on stage and the crowd forgot about the waiting that had taken place for two and a half hours.
“Andrew Yang, Andrew Yang, Andrew Yang!!!” the crowd hollered as the man took stage. Yang gave high fives to the crowd before saying “Andrew Yang, Chant my name.” It was at this point Yang had the full attention of the crowd. He moved through his talking points like a professional while cracking jokes along the way. At one point, Yang said “I was told I had to go outside of DC to make this issue big enough for politicians to pay attention to. It sounded like a challenge to me so you know what I said, I accept your fucking challenge.” It was this kind of honesty that had drawn me to Yang from the beginning. His no bullshit stance on what was happening across the country and not lying about how to fix it. I finally learned that day what MATH stands for now, Make America Think Harder. I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. If there is one thing that I know about blue collar America its that the last thing they want to do is think more about anything. Put a television in front of them, have a talking head tell them what they want to know, and make sure their bills are paid. That is all they want while people stay off their lawns, anything else is too much for them to bare.
Yang left the stage and disappeared for a bit. The crowd wasn’t sure where to go as we were promised the opportunity to meet Yang, shake hands, and have our books signed. For twenty minutes we hung around the entryway and waited, then the crowd broke and flooded into the overflow room where Yang was standing against the wall surrounded by bodyguards, large black bodybuilding linebackers who could crush a watermelon with their bare hands. I stood to the side hoping to weave my way inside but the crowd was too dense. Phones flashed, books flew through the air, Yang’s MATH hat disappeared and reappeared in the crowd as the minutes passed. Then like, a Kardashian leaving an abortion clinic, Yang was ushered through the crowd, the bodyguards creating a plow tossing people aside and moving Yang to the back door for the fund-raising dinner organized immediately afterwards. I waved my book around, tried to catch his eye but it was a lost cause. Time and luck had run out and my chance was gone. Yang disappeared and the only option I had was to go to my car, find the Old Town Ale House and wallow in my pity about an over-priced book and never being able to shake his hand. Alas, there was still more to enjoy.
To be continued…

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Yang Gang Driving

Chicago is currently an hour behind Michigan due to daylight savings time. This comes in handy when there are traffic backups and other issues that may occur. I don’t remember the last time I went on a road trip like this. I know people who do these trips all the time. Ann Arbor, Detroit, Chicago, hell I know one guy that drove to California and spent time in Big Sur. As for me, I am the Bilbo Baggins of Kalamazoo, I don’t seek adventure and stay home where I am comfortable. Somehow, I was pulled to Chicago and on a whim decided to make the trip.
I had three goals for this trip, go to the Yang Rally, visit the Old Town Ale House, and meet YouTube star Ziggynumnums, also known as Jake. The Yang rally was a given, the closest location Yang was coming to Kalamazoo it was too good to pass up and see if this man was really the no bullshit candidate, I heard him to be. The ale house is one of the last places Bourdain visited for his show Parts Unknown in the United States. A friend of mine had gone there a few months ago and as he put it “you could feel him there.” As for Jake, both of us have YouTube channels and comments on each other’s videos. We have traded things in the past, sent gifts, and he won my contest on my channel where he received a pipe, book, and several tobacco samples. I was hoping to meet the man on the trip.
I filled my gas tank on Westnedge Avenue which cost me $2.95 a gallon and I have yet to figure out why the price jumped by almost a dollar in a day. I cleaned my car the day before and made sure that the fluids were topped off, the tire pressure was correct, and all the lights worked. My vehicle was ready to go.
Driving west, I passed by my old stomping grounds of the vineyards on the south west Michigan wine trail and at some point, past Bridgeman, my car felt like it was off roading. The constant thumping and vibrating in the front end had me thinking a tire was low. Maybe I had run over a nail or something lese was going on. I switched lanes and the road smoothed out. The roads in Michigan are shit.
Indiana sucks too. This has been a point of conversation lately and while I would like to think our neighbors to the south are civil, they did vote in Mike Pence and have really strict laws when it comes to visiting their breweries. Indiana is the eastern version of Christian Sharia Law, to the west we have Utah. In many places people under the age of 21 are not allowed inside the building, even if they serve food. When my wife and I went to a brewery in Goshen a woman flipped out when my daughter crawled under the brass bars separating the restaurant portion of the place from the bar. When a state is run by children, they will treat the adults like children.
If it is your first time driving to Chicago from Michigan there is something you should be prepared for. In Indiana there is a toll road. The price is $1 and while you think to yourself it isn’t much one should wonder what they do with that money. Upon leaving the toll booth one must dodge pot holes, fox holes, fissures, fault lines, and craters. Indiana takes your money and who knows where it goes after that. I guess they are too busy being concerned about gays and people walking into buildings with other adults.
The price goes up from there. $2.40 at the next toll road and once you cross the bridge into Chicago its $5.30. Besides gas it cost almost $10 one way to go to Chicago.
There is one species of driver that should be feared among all others. The Chicago drivers is an aggressive animal that thinks speed limits are a suggestion, turn signals are optional, and knows the four corners of their cars like the back of their hand. I watched minivans, Porsche, diesel pickup tricks drive through traffic coming inches away from causing massive traffic accidents. I kept my car at 70 on cruise control and watched people pass by going anywhere from 90 to 100+ mph and having been here before I didn’t think too much of it. while in the city people tested out their cars ability to go from 0-60 in a few seconds at every intersection. Being stuck at an intersection with traffic flowing nonstop I had to try this level of insanity on my own and successfully pulled out into traffic without a honking horn that I would have heard in Kalamazoo. What is rude in Michigan is normal in Chicago and the people behind me were likely happy I discovered my inner asshole.
On the highway, with the sears tower straight ahead and the skyline wrapped around me traffic came to a halt. There was an accident up ahead and five minutes later I would drive by the semitruck that had exploded, no joke, exploded to the point where the cab was gone, the frame was all that was left with melted tires and the trailer half melted and the back half covered in carbon. I had never seen anything like it.
The rest of the trip was stop and go traffic. The Greenhouse Loft was right off the highway and free parking was available in the basement. When I pulled up to the entrance a security guard came to the door and asked “are you here for the rally?” I pointed to my Yang pin and answered yes. He put a piece of paper on the windshield and I drove inside. I had survived Michigan roads, mad max drivers, exploding trucks, and highway bandits. Hot damn I made it.
To be continued…

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Getting on the Yang Train

Today I head to Chicago where I will be observing a Yang rally in the Green House Loft in Old Town. It’s a two hour drive one way and while I would like to turn this into some kind of windy city fear and loathing style adventure, I am going on this trip alone. There is no lawyer coming along. The trunk won’t have anything besides a spare tire and an emergency bag incase some shit goes down. No, this will be a professional series where I will share what happened, what was shared, and finish the day with a beer at the Old Town Ale House across the street from the Second City Comedy Club.
Yang has made some headway since the first time I talked about him or heard him on the Joe Rogan podcast. Major news media outlets are starting to mention him. There has been talk about Bernie considering him as VP if he receives the nomination. Personally, I think the VP slot is a pipe dream that others are pushing for the hope that Bernie might have it pass by his ears, but we can still have hope.
The first debate will make or break Yang. He’s busy these days, driving, speaking, and sleeping non-stop as he constantly moves through the country passing his message along. I don’t know how he does it. How hasn’t he put on trucker style weight? Where are the bags under his eyes? Why is he always chipper? The man who is fighting the robot horde could in fact be a robot, the trojan horse of the coming economic overhaul we all fear. Maybe we have already received clues as to the robots walking among us. There was the “Dancish” contestant who performed gravity defying stunts on stage for America’s Got Talent. Sex bots are on the market. Robo calls sound like humans. The list goes on and on with no end in sight.
Yang is a man with a drive. If you listen to his story, he has been doing this kind of thing since he graduated from college. It takes a certain skill, a talent to keep going under these circumstances. Like an Asian Batman Yang is proving to not be the candidate we want, but the candidate we deserve.
More to come…

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The Usual Suspects

2020 is coming, too soon if you ask me. It’s not the year itself I have a problem with, it’s the barrage of political B.S. we will have to put up with by people running for office. Before I stopped watching/ listening to the news I noticed there were almost twenty people fighting to be the person to run against Trump. Out of everyone there was only one that I could see having a chance and he is not the guy that the media is pushing. This post isn’t about Andrew Yang, instead it’s about our weird marriage between news media and politics.
The Berning question you might have, see what I did there, is why not support Bernie? He was the guy that would have beat Trump back in 2016, the guy that should have received the nomination over Hillary Clinton but was bent over and plowed by his own party. Why can’t I back Bernie? He didn’t have the balls to stand up to his own party. His loyalty is in the wrong place and while loyalty can be a great trait to possess, to continue to engage in a relationship with a group that stabs you in the back, bends you over, and humiliates you in front of the world, if you are unable to learn what the true nature of a group is after experiencing such a betrayal then how the hell are you going to stand up against another party or another country? Bernie was my guy but he bitched out in the end.
When I heard Kamala Harris was running I rolled my eyes and shook my head. A professional liar, I mean lawyer, was the last thing we needed. She has changed her position on policies more than the number of people she sexually harassed while working as prosecuting attorney in the state of California. You don’t pay out 3 million in settlements when you are innocent.
Cory Booker is running and the only thing I know about him is that he is having sex with Rosario Dawson. Dude, I think you have better things to do than run for president. Enjoy your life.
Elizabeth Warren is an embaressment to herself. She took a DNA test to prove that she is part Native American and fail that test. When Trump became president she was formidable with his appointments to his cabinet but in the end she approved unqualified people and played along with his perverted agenda. Another betrayal.
Surfer babe, Tulsi Gabbard has not impressed anyone with a poorly stated message and coming off as “too chill” in my book. Tulsi is the stereotypical hot babe who is easy to look at but hard to listen to. A veteran of the middle east wars I have respect for her when it comes to serving the country but I have to say maybe it should stop there.
The rest of the group is a bunch of white men and women who already have weird scandals that I’m m starting to believe were fabricated to bring attention to their dying campaigns. The whole thing is a joke.
I found my guy early on and people love pointing out that it is the longest of long shots and I am fine with that. When I point out that Obama came out of nowhere, I receive weird rebuttals that border on racist without crossing the line. From one white person to another, I know what you’re really saying.
This time around I’m going to follow my guy, Andrew Yang and enjoy the ride as long as it last. If he gets a shot at the white house I’ll tune in and see what happens. When he is out of the race, so am I. I want something different, I want to have something real in this country. While we still have ancient turtles like Bitch McConnell keeping the country in a constant spiral down a toilet poop chute I have little hope of any change in this country. We need a plague and it can have the initial outbreak in the capital building. Nature may abhor a vacuum but an artist cannot create a masterpiece without a blank canvas.
I want to be excited. I want to wake up and hear what new breakthrough has happened. What has changed for the better. Instead, what we get is a flaccid, stagnant, impotent government that is too lazy to do anything but jerk each other off. The weather outside today is how the last couple of years have been, a dark dreary cool wet day with a lack of sunlight to have things grow and too cold to enjoy and one has no ambition to venture outside because of the dogshit on the lawn. We are all stuck in a bubble of our own making and until we build up the courage to go outside and face the fake boogiemen of our days that we will never end up having a better place to live.

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Why I’m Voting for Andrew Yang

I have to admit that I rolled my eyes when I read the Joe Rogan episode description with another Democrat running for president. Out of curiosity I decided to spend two hours at work listening to Andrew Yang. For those two hours I waiting to hear something that didn’t make sense, something that would make me hit the stop button and go back to my audiobook, and it didn’t happen. Andrew Yang is the one person who knows what they are talking about, and isn’t a fossil. If there is someone who could point out to the public that Trump hasn’t done what he said he would do it is this man.
Who is Andrew Yang? Born to immigrant parents from Taiwan, Andrew went to law school and quit his profession after five months to explore becoming an entrepreneur. Later he would start a company that helps young people out of college start their own companies in areas that had seen massive job losses over the years such as Detroit.
Years ago, Andrew noticed the rise in automation and went to congressmen to asked what they were planning to do about massive job loss. The response was, “We can’t talk about that.” If government isn’t willing to do anything about it, and if silicone valley is speeding up the creation of self-driving vehicles and warehouses that work on their own then who was going to step up and figure out solutions to these problems? Andrew Yang.
I have a daughter who will be two years old in May. I look at where we are as a society, economy, and where we might be heading. Ten years from now when Zoey comes to me and ask what she should be when she grows up, I will have no idea what to tell her. When I was starting college the question was, what is the job market lacking? I heard many things from nurse, graphic designer, and police officer. While I was in school these jobs were flooded with people who had already graduated leaving people with a degree in their hands and a huge pile of debt to repay. An overabundance of graphic designers led to people working cheap to have jobs and work long insane hours with little to show at the end.
Where does Andrew Yang fit into this? He has two sons that he doesn’t have answers for. When he described the future economy and not knowing what the world will look like for them it was like he had taken the words right out of my head. This was a guy who had the same concerns that I had, the only difference, he could possibly do something about it.
I’m not going to talk about the Freedom Dividend or healthcare for all. When it comes to his policies I would suggest listen to his interviews on Joe Rogan or Sam Harris. Hell, he even makes the Fox news host perk up when he responds with answers they can’t refute. I thought one of them was about to have a panic attack when his only response was “this is socialism” and Yang countered the argument only to hear “that’s wrong.” The old white man had no response, he had been bested by Yang.
The last time that I donated to a political party was the first time Obama ran for office. I was tired of war and wanted something to change. This time around I have to say I’m tired of feeling like there is no future for myself or my daughter. Everyday is the same, life does not get any better. In the words of Jack Nicholson “What if it doesn’t get any better than this. What if this is as good as it gets?” I can’t accept that answer and nobody should settle on that. But hey, we are all different and maybe you like where you are at in your life. Personally, I could do with less bullets flying by my house, cops kicking in the neighbor’s doors, and schools that constantly fail the simplest of test. I’m not saying that Yang has answers for everything, although sometimes it appears that way. What I’m saying is that we can at least put somebody in office who would make a legitimate effort to improve peoples lives and when we see the backlash of a party or certain people who get in his way, vote them the fuck out. I’m tired of old people who grew up with Walter Cronkite on the news and have no idea what life is like today. From my understanding some of these people do not understand what the internet is. There is time for a change. If you want the opposite of Donald Trump or the rest of the republican party and main stream democrats than there really isn’t any other choice, pick the Asian American guy who is good at math, looks at the facts, and makes money in business instead of filing for bankruptcy. Ask yourself, what the hell do we have to lose? Then ask yourself, what is it that we have to gain?

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