Day VI

Henri curtailed NYC concert, not spirit.

Day V

Tropical Storm Henri veers east.

Day IV

107th lifetime blood donation.

A New Blog Format.

I have an idea. I will change the format of my blog posts, and post just one word each day on my blog. I will see how this goes. My blog posts will be different. But each day I will increase the length of my posts by one single word. It will not be a “cryptic message,” of some type of “puzzle” to solve. Nor will the post be tied to a message of several days postsing put together. Each day will be a separate, self contained blog post. Each day’s post will be a different posting, separate and unique from the last day’s posting. I don’t know how long this “experiment” will last. Let’s see.

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Writer’s 🧱

As a beginning blogger I have struggled to give my blog an identity.   I normally write about things in the news.  Items that catch my interest tend to be “national,” or “global” in nature, such as my antipathy of Donald Trump, the raging COVID-19, which has turned into a “COVID-21,” and  environmental, civil rights, and our current democratic crisis.   But I have much more than this to write about, such as sports, psychology, even “sports psychology,”  and cultural ideas and matters, such as books, movies, religion, art, science, theater, literature, music, and “trivia and other stuff.”

I have written in the past that I am not a novelist.  In other words, I have never written a book a fiction (at least not intentionally), nor do I have manuscripts hidden away in any vault or in my flat or self-storage space “waiting to be published.”  It’s not that I have anything against writing works of fiction.  But writing fictional accounts requires an author to have a grand plan, or over arching design of a general plot, and then an idea of characters and a design.  A story that includes more than one character is essential for the general plot, the exploration of relationships, a running dialog, and chatacter growth and development.   Not saying that it can’t be done, and there is no telling if I have one of these stories “in the caverns of my creative mind.”

Moreover, my blog is sort of like the “classic personal blog” of sorts.  This is a blog that covers thoughts of mine throughout the day.  It is a various mix of news, personal opinions, with an assortment of facts, ideas, hopes, dreams, and trivia and such.  So a personal blog could be about anything.

I’ve noticed many bloggers want to stay away from controversial topics such as politics, religion, and sex.  Alternatively,  many of these folks may want to wright about the pleasures of a destressing mineral bath, or give affordable vegan recipes for breakfast lunch or dinner, or settle the age old debate about what viewing order you should binge watch the entire Star Wars saga.  Or maybe the writer wants to give relationship advice, or just write about anything other than politics, religion, or sex (PRS).

I say, if you are reticent in the least to write about the “taboo” subjects of PRS, then maybe you should “dip your toe in the water” slowly, gradually so that you can get a sense of what you reading public can take as far as contoversal topics are concerned.

Finally, I will just encourage everyone to read and write each and every day.  I don’t know if there are scientific studies that show that reading and writing help keep connections in the brain to help ward off dementia or Alzheimers Disease.  So this may even be a subject that I may delve into, for another blog post.  See how easy it is to get ideas?  All you have to do is pick up your phone, or laptop, or keyboard,  and “whalla❗”  you can get ideas to write.  In fact, as I write this I am seeing a press conference with LaTisha James announcing Governor Andrew Cuomo has been indicted on charges that he sexually harassed a number of women on his executive and campaign staff.  So if you ever want to get any sort of a smattering of ideas to write about.  Just turn on the news.  But turn OFF the news at least 45 minutes before you go to bed at night….  You want to get plenty of sleep for the next day, which I am sure you will have plenty of stuff to write about then.

TRUMP DESPERATE to REGAIN POWER as Debts Pile Up

Former United States President Donald J. Trump is feeling the walls of justice inching closer and closer to him.  He is desperately trying to regain the power that he lost in the the November 2020 election, that he will do or scheme literally any prop or device to make him regain the power that he lost, because TRUMP LOST THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

One of the benefits of being United States President that Donald Trump coveted so much was the power of being immune to any type of potential prosecution that he may have had.  Trump was impeached twice for various abuses of power, but he was never convicted by a Republican controlled United States Senate.  Even though Democrats picked up two seats in the Senate in 2020, bringing the total number of reliable Democratic votes in the US Senate to a total of 48*, this is still is still not enough votes to convict Trump for any wrongdoing.  A United States President needs two-thirds, or sixty six votes in the United States Senate  to be convicted, or unseated after being impeached in the United States House of Representatives. Trump also had US Attorney General, the head of the US Department  of Justice Bill Barr protect him from wrongdoing, by citing an Office of Legal Counsel opinion that stated that the United States ehief executive (President of the United States ) can not be convicted with any crime while the President is in office.  The rational was that any charge would distract the president from performing his official duties.  This was crucial in the Trump Russian investigation where Trump was not found to be guilty of any wrongdoing. 
(*- Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are Democrats “in name only,” voting for the Republican minority almost as much as voting for the Democrats.  These two senators are not helping Democratic cause at this point.)

This “nondecision” was quickly spun by Trump as “total and complete exoneration,” when in fact Trump was not found “guilty,” or “not guilty” by the Mueller investigative team.

Similarly, Trump was not convincted on the two impeachment trials that he faced while he was the president.  Despite the mountains of evidence that Donald Trump was guilty of trying to make a foriegn foreign president investigate his political opponent Trump was not covicted by the United States Senate for any wrongdoing.  Similarly, Trump was not covicted in 2021, after the United States House of Representatives charged Mr. Trump with inciting his supporters to charge the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021 while Congress was certifying the 2020 presidential election results and declaring Joe Biden as the winner of the  presidential election.

Now that Mr. Trump is out of office, he has been acquitted of two impeachment trials.  While no president in American History has been convicted during impeachment hearings, no other president in American History has endured two impeachment trials.  Still, Trump was found not guilty in both trials.  Moreover,  Congress did not bar Trump from either running for public office, or holding public office in the future as well.  Former President Donald Trump, persistant and determined, is once again planning and scheming to assume the office of chief executive in less than a month.

The reason why Mr. Trump wants to regain the office of president of the United States is clear: He wants to regain office to give him the immunity that he so much enjoyed while he was the president.   The first impeachment Trump was caught using his influence (infuence peddling) to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Trump’s main political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.  Trump promised the Ukraine could recieve military aid from the United States to fight against Russia only if the Ukrainian president investigated Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who served on the board of Barisma, a Ukrainian energy company.

In the second impeachment trial Trump accused of “incitement of insurrection” at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.  While the Democrats in Congress issued compelling evidence that Trump did in fact incite many people to storm the US Capitol building,  Trump was once again protected by the Republican members of the United States Senate, and did not recieve the sixty six votes to convict him of actually inciting an insurrection.

Now Mr. Trump faces yet another legal dilemma.   Now, Donald Trump has returned to civilian life, and his company, “The Trump Organization” is facing numerous counts of bank, insurance, and state, New York City and federal tax evasion charges. Mr. Trump is hoping, by some miracle, that he will somehow get reinstated as President of the United States, so he can enjoy the same immunity from prosecution that he faced when he served as United States President from 2017 until 2020.

There is a bit of a “good news” “bad news” story here.  The “bad news,” and the Trump family certainly has more bad news tgan good, is that  that Donald Trump has a much better chance he could win the jackpots of the bi-weekly Powerball or Megabucks grand prizes than he could become reinstated as the country’s chief executive.  In other words, there is no “Constitutional” way that Donald Trump will be reinstated as the United States’ Commander In Chief any time before 2025.  In order for Trump to regain the White House he would have to run for president again in the 2024 presidential race and win a majority of votes in the “electoral college,” which right now stands at 270 votes. Trump could even win in the electoral college and lose the “popular vote,” just like he did in the November 2016 presidential election, and get reinstated in the White House. In 2016 Hillary Clinton recieved three million more “popular votes” (votes from individual voters) than Donald Trump recieved.  But Clinton lost in the electoral college, which is counted in “winner take all”  fashion in blocks, state by state, to Trump, who won certain key states in the narrowest of margins, which made in win the presidency.   Again, the bad news for Mr. Trump is that there is no other way for Mr. Trump to regain the presidency that is delineated in the United States Constitution,  which is the “owner’s manual” of how the United States federal government works. 

Donald Trump is facing more bad news on the horizon, to be sure, including a series of law suits covering a wide variety of subjects, and investigations of the Trump Organization’s efforts to evade state, federal, and local taxes, other financial wrongdoings involving the Trump inaugural committee, and Trump’s involvement of the attacks on the US Capitol on January 6, 2020.

With all this “bad news” on the horizon for Mr. Trump, is there any good news for the firmer Commander In Chief of the United States?  If there is any sliver of any hope that the president may have, it is that Trump will not be heading for prison.  Trump, being a former United States president  will not see the walls of any “maximum security” penitentiaries such as Sing Sing, or Leavenworth, or even a medium security prison, such as the one in Butner North Carolina where the late Bernie Madoff was housed in.  There are many reasons, too many to mention here to list to discuss why it is not pheasable to house a former United States President in a traditional prison environment, but it is suffice to say that former Presidents Donald J. Trump will not be heading for prison any time soon.  As for his children,  I would venture to hypothesize that they will not be heading for prison either.

The biggest worry Donald Trump may have right now is the fate of the Trump Organization.  The Trump Organization is the Trump family’s business entity.   The organization owns many residential and commercial buildings, properties, and golf courses.  The Trump Organization is being investigated by United States federal and New York State authorities that the Organization did not report various incomes and property values to evade payment of taxes.  In lieu of prison sentences,  The Trump Organization may have to pay millions of dollars in uncollected taxes and penalties to government authorities.

Donald Trump is now engaged in a scheme where if he can get back to becoming United States president he will not only avoid prison time, which is unlikely, but also avoid having to pay masdive fines and taxes that will most likely bankrupt the Trump Organization,  the Trump Family,  and Donald Trump personally. This scheme will not work, and I advise Mr. Trump to relax, settle down, and start working with the government and private bill collectors to arrange a payment plan where he can make regular, reasonable, affordable, modest monthly payments to chip away at his growing business debts, overdue taxes, and fines for avoiding taxes for so long.

I wish Donald Trump nothing but the best, and hope that Mr. Trump enjoys a quite constructive,  reflective, active retirement.  Donald Trump has worked hard his entire life.  He deserves a well needed break, so he can improve his golf game, and take in a few operas and symphonies, and begin writing his memoirs.   I look forward to reading them when he completes them.  I also know quite a few folks who have taken a RV from coast to coast enjoying the beauty of this spectacular continent, North America.   I do wish Mr. President: “Bon Voyage❗”  In a way I do envy your freedom and chance to explore all the treasures that America has to offer.  Mr. Trump, thank you for your service.  Now it’s time for serious “ME TIME❗

The Next Hemingway ❓

For many readers you may have noticed that my blog has been erratic in terms of the timing and the frequency of my posts.  I post a blog entry every now and then, writing blog entries whenever I feel like it, and posting even less consistently.   So what would seem like a “noble effort,” or “good intent” on my part, actually turned out to be a product with an erratic output of various posts on various subjects.   Not to toot my horn, but I consider myself a “good writer.”  Not on the level of Hemingway, Clemens, or Fitzgerald, but one who is conversant, readable, and interesting.  A writer who communicates clearly; someone who brings thought provoking content to the screen regularly.   My aim is to continue my quest for writing, and offer some constructive thought provoking content to an Internet sea of convoluted, confusing, conspiracy theories that are so much of the blogosphere today. 

Since I mentioned “Hemingway,  Fitzgerald, and Clemens,” let me say from the outset, that I am NOT a writer of fiction.  At least, not a writer of fiction on this blog.  Of course, I could be.  I quite frankly have never attempted to write a work of fiction.  And, while I certainly have nothing against writing fictional accounts, such as novels, novella, or “short stories,” that does not mean I won’t attempt to write works of fiction.  I certainly could give it a try.  In fact, you never know.  I could write a best selling novel and recieve a Pulitzer Prize for my efforts.  But, let’s just say BEFORE I attempt to write a book of magnificent fiction, I would be better served by READING more works of fiction, just to see what other authors have to offer, so I can get an idea of how to write such fictional works.

I have never been a reader of quantity through my life, but I do read from time to time.  But if you asked me to list all the authors I have attempted to read, the list is not too long.  I just finished reading F. Scotts Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” for the first time in my life.  The Great Gatsby is undoubtably on many readers’ and writers’ lists of “favorite novels” that they have read in their lifetimes.  The Great Gatsby has repeatedly been assigned to high school and college freshmen in all schools since Fitzgerald’s classic was rediscovered after the Second World War after it was included in a reading series designed to entertain American GIs abroad to ease the bordem and home sickness they faced fighting an enemy on a foreign shore.  I was never assigned it, but it is one of those classic books, along “Moby Dick,” “A Farewell To Arms,” and even works such as “Crime and Punishment,” and “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” that I have never read but heard about my entire life.  I have participated in Moby Dick marathon readings for about a dozen years in Mystic Seaport in Connecticut,  so I did “read” that book or large portions of it, and I did try to get through portions of Crime and Punishment, and other works of classic fiction.  So on second thought, I have read a few works of classic fiction.  But reading is not exactly something I do ON A DAILY BASIS.  So I tell myself, there is still time to catch up on my reading of classic works.  I have heard that the more I read, the better my writing may improve.   I am willing to test my hypothesis on this matter.

So for now, let me close by saying that I am NOT NECESSARILY a writer of fictional accounts in the form of a novel, or a written story or narrative.  But, just as someone who starts a workout regime for the first time, there is always that first time of climbing on that excercise bike or diving in the pool for the first time.  So you never know.  I may be the next “Hemingway” waiting to be discovered.  I just have to wait to be “discovered” for the first time, by none other than the fiercest literary critic I know….MYSELF.