November 13, 2016

What a difference a week makes. Last Sunday, I was updating my laptop computer at the McCreless Library for what I thought would be the last time as an American. Now, I'm debating on what to do with all that money I saved for an international move that thanks to Trump's victory won't happen this year.

I spent most of the last few hours updating my laptop at the library again. I updated and remastered 4 tracks from previous years on Soundcloud. It helps my still minuscule music career if I have professionally mastered tracks on my Soundcloud page. It would be great if there were a terrestrial radio station in San Antonio that actually played EDM or Dubstep or Trance. And I still don't know how to contribute to Channel 5's "Breakfast Tracks", bumper music they play during their morning newscast.

San Antonio seems to be politically divided, although not as violently divided as many other major US cities. Yesterday, the city's downtown was full of life, with the normal tourist hordes, a Veteran's Parade, the city's official car show, a Notre Dame/Army college football game at the Alamodome, and an anti-Trump rally that compared to most of the others disgracing this land was rather peaceful. Most of these other rallies are at the very least destructive, hateful and at worse, bystanders have been shot and police have gotten attacked. The DNC and liberal media have been unable to tell these protestors that the election is over, they lost, and they need to go home (or better yet, to Canada). Most of the protestors are leftist millennials. If these unruly youths are truly the future of this country and they want the same leftist anti-Catholic, anti-life, anti-economic-common-sense crap that the Democrats thrust upon the populace before this months election, then I may have to leave if they ever do take power again.

Between this broken country, my still messed up personal life, and my seriously ill uncle, maybe I need to pray more.

I did go to the evening Mass at the Cathedral last night. San Fernando Cathedral is one of the most welcoming Catholic churches I've ever been to. If a 300 year old church with a predominately Hispanic congregation can be so welcome to international and English speaking tourists, then maybe there is hope for this society.

November 9, 2016

Up until about 2:30AM this moring, I was expecting to have to contact the US embassy in either Toronto, Dublin, or Belfast this afternoon to make an appointment in early December to renounce my citizenship. I was expecting to fire up a GoFundMe page to come up with the thousands of dollars necessary to rid me of ties to a pending government that would be openly hostile to my existence. I was expecting to hear the media elites gloat about how the intelligentsia defeated the deplorables. I was expecting to hear how lower class whites, pro lifers, and conservatives in general would never have power or influence in America ever again.

Not being able to sleep (due to having to leave for work in about 2 hours), I turned on Channel 5, San Antonio's local CBS station. The graphics were pretty damn clear, Donald J Trump elected 45th President. Apparently Trump won my current home state of Texas (so much for this being a swing state), battleground states Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and North Carolina, and shockingly, he won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. At last count, he has 278 electoral votes and a popular vote advatage over the Hildabeest. I guess my prayers were answered.

From what I saw of his acceptance speech, Trump seemed pretty generous towards the Hildabeest. Hillary, for her part, didn't attend her own election party at the Javits Center. She had her anti-Catholic lackey John Podesta tell the crowd at Javits to go home after the networks called it for Trump.

Depite the crushing victory of Trump and the Republicans over the liberal establishment, the changes necessary for this country will not happen overnight, or even within a week of Trump's inauguration. The dreaded Obamacare will be gone by January, but there will still need to be an overhaul of what is left of the healthcare system. Trade deals will need to be renegotiated. A new Supreme Court justice will need to be appointed and voted upon. Planned Parenthood and other left wing leeches on the Federal Treasury will need to be de-funded. And a broken nation where half of America thinks the new power will destroy them needs to be healed. Too many have bought into the liberal lies about minority disenfranchisement when the only ones who have been deliberately disenfranchised over the last 24 years have been the idealogical opponents of the elites.

Will Trump be able to create much needed change for this country? Will his odious aspects surface and cause a national crisis? Who knows? But the imperfect candidate who campaigned on the right issues won last night, and the worst possible candidate who represented everything I loathe about America lost. And because everything I hated about American politics and government will be out of commission come late January, I no longer have a reason to renounce my US citizenship. But if I ever get a decent job offer or win the lottery, I'd still move to Ireland. I just now don't have to move there next month to save my physical and mental well-being.

November 5, 2016

This might be my last blog for a long while. 25 years ago today, my mother died. She had been suffering from lymphoma for about 3 years by that point. She was at the (since-shuttered) Baptist Downtown Hospital in Memphis, TN, for an (at-the-time) experimental stem-cell treatment. She died about 12 hours before she was scheduled to get out of the hospital. My mother's death destroyed what was left of my family. My father and grandmother died 4 years later, and my mother's family in Chambersburg rarely communicated with my father after that.

For about the next 80 hours, the country I currently call home faces the most divisive Presidential campaign in the last 156 years. The votes should be counted by late evening of Tuesday the 8th. By the following morning, the world should know if the next so-called leader of the free world is a billionaire idiot with some good ideas on fixing corruption and replacing Obamacare- or a corrupt leftist female canine who is anti-male, anti-Catholic, and under FBI investigation. Regardless of who wins, I see a lot more civil unrest in America's future. This election has caused deep rifts in America. Democrats blame it on Trump's caustic personality. Conservatives blame it on the corruption of the establishment. Some people believe in and advocate racial divisions (i.e. minorities against "Whitey"). Many believe in affirmative action, a deliberate form of racism. Some believe law enforcement is evil. Many believe infanticide should remain legal and be expanded. Most Democrats support government funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation's biggest infanticide provider and an organization created to prevent inferior (i.e. minority or disabled) people from reproducing. Some people believe racial diversity is a bad thing. Some think thoughts should be controlled. Some think the government should control everything and punish those who defy or oppose government regulations. Some think male nature has to be changed. Some think women are too uppity for their own good. Some think women should be beaten or killed for defying a man. Some people think guns should be banned. Many disagree, and the vast majority of those aren't criminals. Many of both parties think people of my faith (Catholicism) don't belong in the public sphere. Indeed, some of Hillary Clinton's allies (including John Podesta) advocated "infiltrating" the Church to make it more left-wing American, while others (including Andrew Cuomo) have advocated their relocation outside their political jurisdictions.

The last time such differing and incompatible ideologies competed in the national sphere, the result was the Civil War from 1861-65. For obvious reasons, unless the elements of American politics that are openly hostile to my beliefs and existence are dealt with defeat and permanent obsolescence, I don't see a future for myself in this country. I don't believe in government over-regulation. I don't believe in legalized infanticide. I don't believe in discrimination against people of different races, and I don't believe in government sponsored discrimination in legal or hiring or immigration or educational practices. I don't believe in the government telling me I have to pay more for health care than what I presently pay in rent, and that I have to pay a huge percentage of my income in government fines if I don't get their mandated insurance. I don't believe in stifling competition. I don't believe in throwing people out on to the street and denying them shelter (partially because that has happened to me before, most recently in January 2015). I don't believe in being branded a traitor or worse because I can't support or defend a country that is at best hypocritical and at worse a growing threat to the world and trying to become as much a part of the Axis of Evil as the mad mullahs of Iran, North Korea, Putin's Russia, the Chinese Communists, and Daesh/ISIS already are.


For probably the last time, here are my election endorsements for this Tuesday:

President:

I ended up voting for Trump, not because I agree with his stands on Immigration or trade or celebrity treatment of women, but because unlike McMullin or Gary Johnson, he actually stands a chance of defeating the one candidate who will make me defect somewhere else (Hillary Hildabeest Clinton). Anyone idiotic and stupid enough to vote for Clinton should contribute to the GoFundMe page I plan on activating November 9 (if Clinton wins) to pay for my international relocation, Obamacare fee, and renunciation of American citizenship fees (approximately $2-10K, $1-2K, and $2-4K, respectively).

Congress:

District 35: Susan Narvaiz over liberal Lloyd Doggett. What idiots in Austin thought it was a good idea to put SE Austin and the east side of San Antonio in the same district?

District 23: Will Hurd over Pete Gallego. At least Hurd has campaigned against both Trump and Clinton, while Gallego spews the DNC anti-Trump line.


And I would recommend Canada, Ireland, and the UK for potential expatriates regardless of ideology. Ireland and the UK are a bit more conservative than the US, while the current Canadian government is more liberal. But all 3 are far less likely to explode into civil war than the US is right now, and all 3 are freer than America.

October 9, 2016

2016 has been a hectic year so far. But as the year draws to a close, things seem to be getting a lot worse. I got laid off from my high paying warehouse job in Austin and ended up with a lower paying paratransit driver job in San Antonio. I've released more music, and gotten more writings published in this year's Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Writers' Workshop Anthology (all submitted before I moved to Texas). A hurricane recently killed over 1000 people in Haiti and damaged my late father's final resting place (the rebuilt Jacksonville Beach pier). Rent is significantly lower in San Antonio than in Austin or NYC, but my future in Texas (and the US in general) is in jeopardy due to the election next month.

Donald Trump has managed to keep things close against the unacceptable alternative of Hillary Rodham Clinton. But he is his own worse enemy when it comes to speaking or preparing. He focused too much time after the first debate attacking on of his former beauty pageant winners instead of debating Hillary's failed policies. Trump knew more than a decade ago about his recorded conversation that went into Clintonian vulgarity on how to pick up women. And yet, he was unprepared for the fallout when it was released, and now most of the Republican establishment wants him to quit.

But nothing Trump has done or said is anywhere near as bad as the actions of Hillary "Hildabeest" Rodham Clinton- Benghazi, Lewinsky, her rapist husband, her left wing politics, her mishandling of ISIS/Daesh that allowed them to grow into the cancer that now terrorizes the Middle East and Europe, her support of the expansion and taxpayer funding of legalized infanticide, her dismissal of her opponents as deplorables, and her hatred of men in general.

If this female canine becomes President (and most of the media and political establishment wants this to happen), then I can no longer consider myself a loyal or willing citizen of this country. Things have gotten so bad here that both sides are encouraging self-deportation of their opponents. It will be governmentally-sanctioned open season on conservatives if Hillary wins. There will be a lot of violence and civil unrest if Trump wins. Indeed, China is using this election as an excuse to explain to its people why democracy doesn't work.

I'll try posting another blog post around the election, but after November, I don't know where I'll be living or working. If Hillary wins, I'll probably start a gofundme page for an international work/residence visa and tell all the people who threatened me online about my political views to put their money where their mouth is....

April 30, 2016

Another year, another job, another residence. For at least the next 7 months, I'm still in Texas. I don't know yet how permanent my new job is. I'm not sure what country I'm going to be living in by December, since this country is hopelessly divided.

Most Americans want the election to be over with, but right now it seems to be a race between a madman, evil incarnate, a socialist, and a Canadian Texan. In a normal election year, someone with the criminal baggage of Hillary Rodham Clinton would not be a factor. Her allies in New York are ruining that state and city on their way to jail- see Sheldon Silver, Alan Hevesi, Malcolm Smith, Larry Seabrook, and (hopefully soon) Bill DeBlasio. But the media seem hellbent on propping her up to President, even though her opponent has far fewer ethical lapses.

The Republicans have a unity problem. Sure, none of them want Hillary to be President, but they seem to think their best shots to face Hillary are character assassinations of their primary rivals in a level not seen since the 19th Century. The mainstream and electable candidates don't have a shot, leaving a radical Cuban-Canadian who happens to be my current Senator, and a billionaire flip-flopper who's almost as unacceptable as the Hildabeest. And there's the strong possibility that the Republican Convention could be contested.

I'm sure my ancestors who fought for this country (and in at least 1 case, actually died for it) are turning over in their graves to see how badly this land has devolved. Riots are now commonplace at Trump rallies, and the most dangerous candidate out there is portrayed as honest and trustworthy while she bashes anyone to the right of her in a way that should prompt riots.

No offense to my ancestors, but this country is not worth fighting for anymore. 40+ years ago, it gave up on respecting life. 7-8 years ago, it gave up on fairness and liberty. And for the last decade, what was the world's freest democracy and economy is now behind Canada, Ireland, the UK, and parts of Scandinavia.

I have enough to pray for, between an uncle with stage 4 cancer, a nephew who turns 18 in 6 weeks who will soon be on his own with no preparation, and asking God for a bigger miracle in getting settled outside the US in 7-8 months than what happened when I relocated back to Austin 2 months ago.

March 12, 2016

So far, this year has had a lot of unexpected surprises. The first would have been my one day of jury duty in Brooklyn last month. The second would have been letting a few complaints against my supervisor result in the end of my courier job on February 16. Another surprise was being able to attend 2 writer's workshops at Holy Apostles (and having one of my recently submitted works make their live blog). The most recent surprise was not that I had to move out of Rockaway (and New York) after losing my job, but that I was able to relocate back to Austin, Texas, and get a job and a non-shelter residence within 5 days of relocating here. The job and residence are about 2 miles from each other in SE Austin. So for 3 of the last 4 months of March, I am back in Texas. Unlike the previous times, I never had to stay at Shelter Alley, or worry about storage back in New York (all my stuff got shipped to storage here by UPS for less than what it cost me to move stuff from Denver to New York in 2011). I got to go to the Texas Independence Day Parade last Saturday (after schlepping from the drug testing to my new job in North Austin by bus). And now I get to go to South by Southwest- and not have to worry about curfews.