That's All I Got

Vivek Ramaswamy posted his own fact check page. And it's pretty good. It rebuts almost all the criticisms Ramaswamy has been getting since his breakout debate performance. I hope his campaign keeps it updated because I'm sure more knives are going to come out.

Vivek Ramaswamy Fact Check Page.

I know people are suspicious of him. So am I. It's disconcerting when someone pops out of nowhere and starts saying all the things you've been saying or thinking about for decades. I also think it's important to realize that we're all human and there will be no candidate that is perfect or that has never done anything wrong or does everything with which you agree. I'm going to stay skeptical while at the same time taking him at his word until I have reason not to. What's the alternative? The rest of these politicians who have made "public service" their career? Those are the people who created the economic and cultural morass we're in today.

Vivek Ramaswamy seems like the most Libertarian candidate to ever make a giant splash. I hope what he's saying is not lip service. He's extremely consistent in his responses and his rebuttals. He's very quick and assertive. He's everything the Millennial stereotype is not.

The reason I'm intrigued with his candidacy is I've been ideologically libertarian for several decades now. I vote Republican most of the time because they align with my economic beliefs... most of time. On cultural issues Republicans want to control you just as much as the Democrats. And don't get me started on the war mongering of both political parties. I don't like or trust either side.

Libertarianism, in my view, is the closest ideology to the U.S. Constitution. My belief goes, the Federal Government is there to represent us internationally, resolve disputes between the states, and enforce the U.S. Constitution as the law of the land. State government is there to represent us to the Federal Government, resolve disputes between local governments and/or between citizens, and enforce each state's Constitution and the laws their legislatures pass. Local governments are there to serve the people directly. This is the closest level to the people and where communities can institute the quality of life they envision with little input from people outside that community.

I know the above paragraph is not where we are. It's not the real world. But, it's my idealized world. It's one where as long as you're not infringing upon the rights of others you're free to live your life as you see fit. It's one where laws are designed to be universally applied. It's one where rights are natural rights and  not something granted by government.

Let's not throw out a candidate that could be the real deal. Let's not take the imperfections that every human has and think this disqualifies him and instead elect a professional politician that is part of the problem.

This is a Podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast. This means if you’re listening to this podcast on a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app you’ll have access to transcripts, chapters, and chapter images that accompany each episode. Please go to podcastapps.com to download and support these independent apps and go to podcastindex.org to support Podcasting 2.0.

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Value4Value streaming payments enables listeners to send Bitcoin micropayments to podcasters as they listen, in real-time. Go to valu4value.info for everything you need to know to begin directly supporting your favorite podcaster.

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The Wall Street Journal had an article discussing the booming business of anxiety treatment and how anxiety diagnoses are rising.

Americans are anxious—and a flurry of old-line companies, upstarts and opportunistic entrepreneurs aim to fill the demand for relief.

Anxiety has come into focus across the country in part due to the stress of the pandemic, increased awareness about mental health and more screening in schools and at doctors’ offices. In a recent federal survey, 27% of respondents reported they had symptoms of an anxiety disorder. That’s up from 8% in 2019, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

This is a Podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast. This means if you’re listening to this podcast on a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app you’ll have access to transcripts, chapters, and chapter images that accompany each episode. Please go to podcastapps.com to download and support these independent apps and go to podcastindex.org to support Podcasting 2.0.

Use the apps below to directly support independent podcasters. It’s easier than you might think to stream fractions of bitcoins to this podcast or any other podcast that is compatible with the Value 4 Value model. This cuts out the need for advertising.

Or go to podcastapps.com to find an app that works for you.

Value4Value streaming payments enables listeners to send Bitcoin micropayments to podcasters as they listen, in real-time. Go to valu4value.info for everything you need to know to begin directly supporting your favorite podcaster.

For questions or comments e-mail me at [email protected]

I was watching the video below of Vivek Ramaswamy at The Richard Nixon Foundation where he laid out his thoughts on China and Taiwan. He's getting hammered a bit from Republicans but I think it's possible his proposal may be smart.

You can watch his speech below or just listen to the parts I clipped while I explain what I'm thinking.

Vivek Ramaswamy at The Richard Nixon Foundation

This is a Podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast. This means if you’re listening to this podcast on a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app you’ll have access to transcripts, chapters, and chapter images that accompany each episode. Please go to newpodcastapps.com to download and support these independent apps and go to podcastindex.org to support Podcasting 2.0.

If you liked anything you heard please consider donating what you think it's worth via PayPal or Bitcoin.

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I'm going to do a little tiny music podcast. Podcast Index and Podcasting 2.0 have developed the technology that allows listeners to pay artists as they listen to their music. This is an end run around the music licensing racket that has ruined music since record companies were founded. The companies make all the money and the artists get screwed.

With this new technology for podcasts and the Value4Value model listeners can pay these artists as they listen and send them a boost if they like the song or want to send the artist a note. The boosts are called Boostagrams and it's a great way to send a thought or sentiment to the artist or a podcaster that supports Value4Value in their podcast. This podcast is one of them.

Here is a list of new podcast apps you should use to listen to this episode. It's important to take the time to check them out, install one you like, and load your wallet with sats.

Here are the songs on today's show. You can find more at Wavlake

Self-Titled National Anthem – FM Rodeo

Music 4 Serge – Ali Mitchell

Medictation – Secret Of The Marlin – Rubber Factory Records

We need to go back to the past in order to save the future

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We need to back to the past a little in order to live the future of decentralization. I’m talking about what’s going on with Twitter, GETTR, and Parler. All the silos. It started off recently with Dr. Malone getting pushed off of Twitter. Then going on the Joe Rogan show where he was able to speak freely about vaccines and our government’s response to the pandemic. Over the weekend Marjorie Taylor Greene was permanently banned from Twitter. It now seems to be a badge of honor to get banned from Twitter, if you’re of that political persuasion. Where did people start going? GETTR. Free speech advocates started signing up for GETTR left and right over the last several days. For the ones that haven’t been kicked off Twitter I guarantee they’re going to keep their accounts because the bulk of people are still there.

GETTR, like Parler, is a Twitter clone. But why bother setting up an account in another siloed platform? It’s still a free service that is more interested in your personal data than protecting your content. Even if they don’t start censoring posts what is the advantage of being there? Few liberals and progressives will be starting accounts in any large numbers. They may create accounts to monitor what is said but I doubt they would interact or debate. When we separate ourselves from people we disagree with we end up bifurcating speech. This is what happened with cable news. Go to one network for your conservative opinions and the other to hear the progressive side. One side is not talking to the other.

There are technologies that are superior to all of social media. In fact, social media runs on top of these technologies. They’re called the World Wide Web and the Internet. It seems stupid to have to say it but it seems with everyone’s fascination with apps and free services it’s forgotten people don’t actually need them to communicate with each other easily. The Internet is the base layer where everything we do online operates. At its core it’s just a bunch of computers connected together.

The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. 

The Web is a layer on top of the Internet using standard protocols that allow anyone to access just about anything on the Internet easily. The technologies of the Web is a user friendly front end. Your favorite web browser is your front end user experience to the Web.

The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs, such as https://example.com/), which may be interlinked by hyperlinks, and are accessible over the Internet. The resources of the Web are transferred via the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), may be accessed by users by a software application called a web browser, and are published by a software application called a web server. The World Wide Web is not synonymous with the Internet, which pre-dated the Web in some form by over two decades and upon the technologies of which the Web is built.

A personal web site should be at the core of your presence online. Everyone should own their own domain name and create their own web sites. It doesn’t require a ton of technical knowledge. And you can use open source software that is mostly free. Yes, you still can be de-platformed. That’s possible no matter what you do. Until the Internet is jacked into your brain there is always a way to remove you.

Using myself as an example, I have my own website and I self-host my podcast files. In between me and my published content is my Internet Service Provider (ISP). Spectrum Cable is my ISP and they can cut me off tomorrow if I violate their terms of service. The next link in the chain is a web host. This is where your content and media files live. The domain name you purchase points to those files. My web host is DreamHost. That’s where my personal web site, kevinbae.com, is located and where I store the mp3 files for my podcast. The hosting service is not free but also not crazy expensive. Being a paying customer also means you’re less likely to get de-platformed. Signing up for any free service means you’re just a data mine for big tech. I run open source WordPress, which is free. And that’s all I truly need to have my voice online. DreamHost can take me down but in my experience web hosting companies are generally content agnostic. As long as you’re not hosting child porn or other illegal content, you should be free to express your opinions or provide your expertise in whatever topic you desire.

But, what is the technology that can mimic social media? It’s a simple text file in a format called Extensible Markup Language (XML). That file is called an RSS file. You may have heard of it. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

Here’s what the file looks like.

But don’t worry about that because WordPress and other content management software create the RSS file automatically. You don’t need to know how to code it. With these existing publishing tools you are your own gatekeeper. There isn’t much between you the content consumer. You don’t have to worry about getting shadow banned, you don’t have to worry about controversial topics, and you can link to the sources you deem credible without fact checks and content flags.

Let’s say you do get de-platformed from your web host. Well, if you own your own domain name, you can move that to another host and take your RSS feed with you. To the consumer there will be no difference. That’s the beauty of using the Web as your platform.

What’s required of the user is nothing more than their smart phone or a computer using their favorite web browser or an RSS reader or podcast app. Many RSS readers already play podcasts because there is no difference in reading the RSS file. The only difference is the content referenced. The reader app does the interpretation and feeds you the content. A good example of this is Feedly.

There used to be a lot of feed readers. But big tech has tried to move away from this in favor of their own apps. Twitter built their entire platform on RSS in the beginning. Feed reading apps can replace Twitter, Facebook, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and any other social media apps or media consumption platform. The only content difficult to host yourself is video. Video takes up a lot of storage space and requires a lot of bandwidth. It requires significant infrastructure not available to your average person.

Podcasting 2.0 and podcastindex.org have extended RSS to make it more useful and modern. For instance, they added the ability to have transcripts, which is basically closed captioning in your in a podcast app, and chapters that allows you to divide your podcast into segments so people can jump around to particular content that they want. There are also images and links that can go with each chapter. What they have done is make RSS more dynamic and interactive. They’re also working on cross-app commenting. This brings more Twitter like function. I think this can be implemented for blogs too. That way, using a reader app, people can create a comment thread for a post that will work no matter what app you’re using to view the content. They implemented streaming Bitcoin micro payments called the value4value model. You can literally pay your favorite podcaster as you listen which can remove the chains of advertising. All of this facilitated by a text-based XML file and created automatically by your content management system.

RSS as extended by podcastindex.org is the future of media and communications over the Internet. If you want true decentralization this is the direction you need to go. When people follow you using RSS they are actually following you.

The bottom line is in order for us to move forward in technology and to protect free expression we need to move backwards just a bit and go with RSS. No one owns it. It can’t be taken down. If you have someone’s RSS feed you have a direct connection to them. And if you have your own domain name and RSS feed you can take your content anywhere.

That’s all I got.

KJB

Twitter Suspends Key mRNA Vaccine Contributor Dr. Robert Malone (ntd.com)

Marjorie Taylor Greene de-Twittered

GETTR

Parler

World Wide Web – Wikipedia

RSS – Wikipedia

Home | Podcastindex.org

RSS Feed Reader

This is a Podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast. This means if you’re listening to this podcast on a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app you’ll have access to transcripts, chapters, and chapter images that accompany each episode. Please go to newpodcastapps.com to download and support these independent apps and go to podcastindex.org to support Podcasting 2.0.

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• Mastodon

I review the top 10 stories on my web site from 2021. All the links to those posts are below. Who ever sent me the 114 sats last week THANKS!

Happy New Year folks.

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• Ivermectin: The COVID-19 treatment you’re not hearing about – Kevin Bae
• Judge orders hospital to administer Ivermectin to COVID-19 patient – Kevin Bae
• Update: Nurije Fype’s health continues to improve – Kevin Bae
• Now we know why there are so many American citizens in Afghanistan – Kevin Bae
• Update: June 19, 2021 – Nurije Fype continues to improve – Kevin Bae
• Dr. Pierre Kory lays the smackdown on the FDA’s lies about Ivermectin – Kevin Bae
• Update: Nurije Fype slowly improving after court ordered Illinois hospital to administer Ivermectin – Kevin Bae
• Update: Nurije Fype is out of the hospital and has returned home – Kevin Bae

This is a Podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast. This means if you’re listening to this podcast on a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app you’ll have access to transcripts, chapters, and chapter images that accompany each episode. Please go to newpodcastapps.com to download and support these independent apps and go to podcastindex.org to support Podcasting 2.0.

For questions or comments e-mail me at [email protected]

• Mastodon

Somehow in all my blogging expertise I deleted my comments here while posting. I have no idea how it happened.

In any case the gist of what I’m saying without listening to the audio of my rambling short podcast is that for all Scott Adams’ fuck you money, as he calls it, he won’t spring for a cheap podcasting rig. My set up is less than $600.00. It’s plugged into a 10 year old desktop computer running Windows 10. Yet, me, one of the worst podcasters out there can route audio into my podcast from other sources in a way that allows the listener to hear it.

Come on Scott!

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This is a Podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast. This means if you’re listening to this podcast on a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app you’ll have access to transcripts, chapters, and chapter images that accompany each episode. Please go to newpodcastapps.com to download and support these independent apps and go to podcastindex.org to support Podcasting 2.0.

For questions or comments e-mail me at [email protected]

• Mastodon

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I was thinking about the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus over the weekend. It smacked us in the face on Friday causing the stock market to plummet a couple percent. It scared the panties off of the world. Lockdowns resumed and flights canceled all because of a variant of SARS-CoV-2 where there doesn’t seem to be anyone being hospitalized for it. It doesn’t seem to be very severe. People are having mild symptoms. Why they even bother reporting on another stupid variant? Because if it’s true, then the Coronavirus or at least SARS-CoV-2 has evolved into the common cold, which should be a good thing. In a normal world, in a normal life, that would be a good thing. People should be saying, “Oh, fantastic! Let’s spread this one around. Let’s let it spread. Let’s not hold it back. If it’s not killing anybody and it’s just making people sick.” This is the path to true heard immunity if we’ll ever have it. It’s totally insane.

I just had a thought this morning. Everybody knows the Pfizer vaccine, or a Pfizer vaccine, received approval from the FDA. Pfizer named it Comirnaty. To date, I haven’t seen anywhere that anybody is receiving the Comirnaty vaccination. You know, the actual vials that are labeled Comirnaty. It’s been months since it was approved. FDA approval occurred on August 23, 2021. It’s been 98 days. A vaccine that’s fully approved no longer needs to be under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its prescribed use. Which means for adults, no one should be receiving the vaccination that is under the EUA. The original excuse for why Comirnaty is not being rolled out is there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of doses of the Pfizer BioNTech version that is not named Comirnaty. They are already in the distribution channel so you wouldn’t be able to get it right away. Well, we’re approaching 100 days now. December 1st, it’ll be 100 days since Comirnaty was approved. I have to think Pfizer didn’t manufacture that many doses of the EUA version where they couldn’t get some of these Comirnaty vaccines in the channel.

The logic used is the EUA version and Comirnaty is the same vaccine. Common sense would tell you, okay, if it is the same vaccine, if everything is the same, then why not approve the one that’s currently being administered? There has to be a reason. Has a reason has ever been given? There is speculation they’re not approving the one that’s being given because it would remove them from the EUA, thereby opening up the opening up Pfizer to liability. But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think they have a ton of liability with any vaccine. There were laws passed a long time ago, that give pharmaceutical companies limited liability for vaccinations.

No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.

I believe this applies to all vaccines. Not just those under an EUA. I don’t buy the liability argument. But try to search this on the internet. You can’t find anything. Nobody’s reporting on it. And if they are, you can’t find it, because everything’s been Google bombed into oblivion. Legacy media and big tech do a disservice to all of us.

I would love for to find information on Comirnaty. Where is it being administered? Anywhere in the world? I tried searching and I haven’t seen a single photograph, or report, on an actual vaccination of the approved FDA COVID-19 vaccine. Why? Because the propaganda is incredible. We need a competitor to Google. We need a search engine that works the way Google used to work. Where information gets featured or pops up to the top of search because the information provided is the most relevant. But now you can’t do that. Google tweaks the algorithm so you can’t find anything other than the official word. Sometimes the official word is wrong.

We’re witnessing the collapse of Western Civilization over this as governments lock down their countries down and force vaccines on people. The United States, at least as far as I can tell, is the only one pushing back against treating citizens like a bunch of criminals and children. I’m currently in Georgia and we’re living relatively free. It might not be as free as it is in Florida. I can move about and do what want to do. I believe a majority of states are pushing back against the nonsense.

If the current vaccines are ineffective against Omicron, and they need to be tweaked, as they’re saying now in the news. Does the EUA still apply and is Comirnaty still an FDA approved vaccine? If not, let’s drop the charade and get on with our lives.

That’s all I got.

KJB

This is a Podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast. This means if you’re listening to this podcast on a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app you’ll have access to transcripts, chapters, and chapter images that accompany each episode. Please go to newpodcastapps.com to download and support these independent apps and go to podcastindex.org to support Podcasting 2.0.

For questions or comments e-mail me at [email protected]

• Mastodon

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An American success story in a small town in Illinois should have been reported as an American success story. But instead, Chicago Tribune writer Bill Ruthhart, used this American success story to foment racism. It was unnecessary and jarring. The town is Arcola, Illinois and the man with the success story is Jesus Garza.

He left Mexico 28 years ago to come to the United States. His story in a nutshell is he worked hard, opened up his own business, and eventually was elected mayor of his town.

What get’s highlighted instead? Here’s the headline. “How a Mexican immigrant became mayor in Illinois’ Trump country. ‘People here just get along.'” Trump has nothing to do with this man’s story. Six paragraphs in we get this gem.

Garza’s rise from immigrant factory worker and car mechanic to mayor is a remarkable story, and his election in a predominantly white and conservative Midwestern town illustrates a level of disconnect between local attitudes on immigration and the national political narrative on the divisive issue.

The disconnect lies in the writer’s head. How can it make sense that a small Midwestern town of mostly white people can elect a Mexican immigrant to be mayor? How is that possible? When I read it I was thinking, “you got to be kidding me!” It gets worse.

Garza, 51, took office in May as a Mexican American political novice in a city filled with supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump, a nativist politician well known for his vitriol toward immigrants, from allowing children to be separated from their parents at the southern border to broadly portraying Mexican immigrants as criminals.

That paragraph right there is just dishonest. It’s misinformation. And it’s a lie. I was no fan of Trump. I didn’t vote for him in the first election in 2016. But I voted for him in 2020 because I thought the job he did was actually pretty good for the country. I always say pay attention to what people do not to what they say. It may be cliché but actions always speak louder than words. I don’t believe Trump is a nativist. He is an Americanist. I have no problem with putting our country before others and I don’t recall any vitriol toward legal immigrants. He definitely had a sharp tongue for illegal immigration and illegal aliens but he did not portray Mexican immigrants as criminals. He portrayed some illegal aliens as criminal and some illegal Mexican immigrants as criminals. Not all but some.

In interviews along the parade route last month, Arcola voters time and again pledged allegiance to Trump’s tough-on-immigration rhetoric while also lavishing praise on Garza. Some had difficulty reconciling the two positions, as if it were OK to support a Mexican immigrant who had done well by their town, but it was a step too far to support policies that would allow others unknown to them to pursue similar American dreams.

The writer again has difficulty reconciling how white people, in a small midwestern town, could be against illegal immigration but yet vote for a Mexican immigrant for mayor. Different citizens of the town express their reverence for Mr. Garza and how he worked to make something of himself and help the town.

Anderson chuckled when he was asked why so many older, white conservative voters like himself embraced Trump’s anti-immigration policies but also voted for an immigrant to become the city’s first Latino mayor.

“Well, I’m not sure I can explain that without scratching my head,” said Anderson, 77. “Way down here in Arcola, you never would have thought of the idea of a Hispanic mayor. For many years, it never would have happened. But Jesus has proven he’s a go-getter, and I’m just tickled pink he got elected.”

Does that sound like an anti immigrant racist to you? It sounds to me like a citizen of a small town who has tremendous respect for a person that came to the United States with next to nothing, made something of himself, and became a pillar of the community. That’s what it sounds like to me. It has nothing to do with illegal immigration. It has nothing to do with being against illegal immigration. It has absolutely nothing to do with Trump.

The article goes on to detail how Mr. Garza’s employer helped him, how he started his own business, how he becomes a U.S. citizen, and how grateful he is to the people that made it possible.

He got a $4.25-an-hour job at Libman packing brooms in boxes. But for someone used to working on cars in the open air in Mexico, the confined spaces and monotonous work of the factory floor weren’t appealing.

“I told my dad, ‘I don’t think I’m a factory guy,’” Garza recalled. “I told him I was going to go back to Mexico.”

Garza’s dad convinced a friend who owned a transmission shop to give his son a part-time job. Garza worked 16-hour days, four hours at the auto shop and a 12-hour overnight shift at Libman.

After six months, the shop’s owner, Jerry Beals, hired Garza full time and paid for him to take English classes and receivevarious mechanic certifications.

In 2000, Garza nervously traveled to Chicago to take the test to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Busy with work, Garza only gave himself the three-hour drive to prepare, but said he impressed the test’s administrator when he recited the original 13 U.S. colonies in the exact order they appeared in the study manual. He passed.

Five years later, Beals moved his shop out of town, and Garza started his own business in Arcola.

The town hates immigrants so much that the population of the town is now about 40% Latino.

In 1990, 243 Latinos made up 9% of Arcola’s population. Recent census data shows that number likely is more than 1,000, or just under 40% of the city’s residents.

The cultures have been merging over the decades as white people marry Latinos. It’s a natural thing to occur. But how is it possible if the people there are so anti-immigrant? Hint… they’re not.

Wagoner, the city administrator who grew up in the town, said some immigrants have married locals, further enriching Arcola’s diversity.

“The first generation or two of Hispanics were pretty insular, but now they’re coaching Little League, they’re running our soccer program and their kids are playing high school football and basketball,” Wagoner said.

“I’m not gonna lie: We still have 5% racist redneck idiots in the area, and you’re never going to fix that,” he said. “But overall, it’s pretty much to the point where no even notices anymore. They’re just part of the community.”

The writer highlights a few life long locals. Most are senior citizens and he tries to pit the lie of them being opposed to immigration against their support of Mr. Garza. When you read the passage below it’s obvious the man doesn’t care where Garza is from. All he cares about is that he’s a decent honest person who takes care of his family, his business, and his town. The bigotry is projected from the Tribune’s writer.

Phil Anderson tended to his neatly manicured lawn and recalled how Garza first worked on his car 16 years ago. He proudly voted for him in April.

“Jesus is a hard worker,” said Anderson, 78, a Republican with a “J.B. Pritzker Sucks” sign planted in his front yard. “He started that business up from nothing, really improved the property down there and works on just about everybody’s car. I really like him.”

Anderson also noted that he has a two-bedroom house down the street that he rents exclusively to immigrants.

“The Mexicans we get in there, they take care of the place,” Anderson explained. “They put pictures on the wall, decorate it real nice and will paint it for you.”

Despite those positive personal experiences, Anderson said he’s a big fan of Trump’s crackdown on immigration. He is among the 66% of Arcola voters who voted for the Republican last year.

Anderson drew a distinction between Garza’s arrival in the early 1990s and the migrant crisis currently unfolding at the border that has led to a record number of illegal crossings. Like Trump, Anderson widely condemned today’s immigrants as having bad intentions.

“I don’t have a problem with all the Spanish coming up here, but they need to do it right,” Anderson said, referring to people of Latino descent. “When Jesus came, we had a good immigration process that worked. Now, everyone is just coming in unchecked.”

Where does Jesus Garza stand on the issue of Trump?

For the record, Garza considers himself an independent voter, and at times a disaffected one. In 2008, he voted for Democrat Barack Obama, but he did not vote in 2012, saying that Obama didn’t deliver on his promises for change and Republican Mitt Romney didn’t instill much confidence.

In 2016, Garza looked past Trump’s frequent condemnation of immigrants to vote for him, citing his status as a political outsider and high-profile business owner. But last year, Garza said he again chose not to vote, pointing to Trump’s corruption and a lack of faith in now-President Joe Biden.

A Latino that voted for both Obama and Trump? Wow. Who would have believed it could be true.

I’m sure everybody in Arcola read this story. We wonder why we’re so divided. With people like this Tribune writer it’s a wonder why we’re not more divided. And this is the problem. We have a media that cannot understand that people can respect legal immigrants, that come here, work hard, become part of the community, and become American citizens, and still be against illegal immigration. The media cannot understand why people are against Illegal immigrants that take resources from legal immigrants, permanent residents, and citizens. Maybe the immigration laws need to be changed. If the problem is in the law then it’s something that can be fixed through legislation. But we should not ignore the laws currently in place.

It really pisses me off that the writer for the Tribune is trying to drive a wedge between the people in this town. I hope they don’t fall into the trap. It’s disgusting. We need better media.

That’s all I got.

KJB

Mexican immigrant becomes mayor in Illinois’ Trump country – Chicago Tribune

This is a Podcasting 2.0 compatible podcast. This means if you’re listening to this podcast on a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app you’ll have access to transcripts, chapters, and chapter images that accompany each episode. Please go to newpodcastapps.com to download and support these independent apps and go to podcastindex.org to support Podcasting 2.0.

For questions or comments e-mail me at [email protected]

• Mastodon

On today’s episode of personal therapy I discuss my need for new traditions.

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So I need some new traditions. All the traditions that I had for the last 30 plus years, maybe 35, are now gone. You see, I got married when I was when I was 19 and I started a family when I was 20. And I really couldn’t remember, even in my 20s what my childhood family traditions were.

I’m not a religious person. So, you know, we had no traditions based on religion. Now, that’s not to say we didn’t celebrate Christmas and stuff like that, but it was just it was a secular celebration. We celebrated Easter but that was also very secular. I remember coloring eggs but not much beyond that. And for Halloween, you know, I don’t remember dressing up in costume either. Or going out trick or treating. I know I did have a costume only because of pictures. But the only pictures I have of me in a costume was from kindergarten when I dressed up as Underdog which was a favorite character of mine back then. I have the entire underdog cartoon collection by the way. Just in case you were wondering.

But I couldn’t remember my family traditions. Not even Thanksgiving or Christmas morning. I have pictures of when I was a kid on Christmas morning. But I don’t actually remember it. I don’t remember getting up early in the morning and opening up gifts. I don’t know what we did for Christmas Eve. I know we had Thanksgiving dinner. But I don’t remember anything other than the cranberry sauce in the can. And we got the gel kind not the not the one that you can actually see cranberries in. We got the one that when you squish it out of the can it keeps the shape of the can and you slice it up into circles. I loved it. I don’t remember the turkey. I know we had turkey. But I don’t remember it.

Maybe all my childhood stuff is blocked out of my memory. My parents separated when I was around four years old. And I think their formal divorce happened when I was about 11. I don’t remember exactly. But, I think that’s the timeline. My father was not in the house regularly, and we would spend the weekends with my father in various places and do various things. I think we also switched off holidays sometimes. I think we did Thanksgiving with one parent and then Christmas with the other.

When I started my own family, I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna start some traditions. Get some traditions going and make them solid. So we had a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner. My traditions were traditional, funny enough. Nothing crazy, nothing outside the box. All I wanted is to cement the memories in my children’s brains. So they could have some good solid memories of what they used to do, because I couldn’t remember. I cooked the Thanksgiving meal. It was a very traditional meal, with turkey, mashed potatoes, and sweet potatoes, blah, blah, blah. It’s one of my favorite meals. I love the combo of coma carbs with a roasted turkey. We made homemade cranberry sauce too. After maybe two or three years of getting cranberry sauce out of the can I switched to making it myself because I figured out it was so stupid easy there’s no reason to get it out if a can. Unless you’re there is some dire emergency and you forgot it. It took me all day to cook the meal. And later on, because my son liked to cook, he would help out.

And so it became a tradition where we would cook the meal and we would goof around and talk. I would chastise him from time to time for losing focus on what he was doing all the while my daughter would complain that the food isn’t ready yet. It was nice. And it was just the four of us. We rarely went to anybody’s house and we rarely had people over. It was just the four of us.

We had a tradition on Christmas Eve where we would go to my father’s house. He would have a hybrid Korean/American Christmas. It was hybrid because all the older Korean women would be in one room talking to each other and preparing some food while all the men would be in a separate room, chatting it up. After dinner the older men would play cards. The younger generation would also be separate. My older brother and I were the oldest out of all the 2nd gens because we’re from my father first marriage. Everyone else was much younger starting with my younger brother. He is 12 years younger than me and my sister is 14 years younger. Included were all their cousins and some side family members. You know, cousins of cousins and the like. There were also some of their family friends. Everybody was Korean except for me, my older brother, my wife, and my kids. My wife is Filipino and my kids, of course, are mixed breed like me. I’m only half Korean. It was kind of fun, especially when my kids were really small. They were the center of attention because there were no kids their age. I was the first one to have children and they were a novelty for everyone because they were the babies of the family.

Christmas morning, back at home, we would open up presents. On Christmas Eve we only put a few presents under the tree. Everything else was already wrapped but we only put a few presents under the tree. Those presents were from me and my wife and we would tell them that. After my kids went to sleep on Christmas Eve we would bring out the other gifts that were hidden and put those under the tree. We would stuff their stockings with small things. That way we kept up the whole Santa Claus façade. When they got up in the morning they saw the tree filled with presents and saw their stockings stuffed. And it was fun. It was like Santa Claus really did come overnight while they were sleeping.

My son was mister super excited all the time. He would get up at like 5am. You’d hear him rustling about waking up my daughter. She was more patient telling him to just relax and wait. We spent the morning opening up gifts and I spent the afternoon putting things together like most dads do on Christmas Day. It was a solid tradition. And I’m pretty sure my kids remembered all Easter, on the other hand was not that was still not much of a tradition.

I almost forgot about our tradition of decorating the tree. After Thanksgiving, the day after, my son and I would go out and get a tree. I grew up with an artificial tree and I used that for a couple of years after I got married. But then, after a while, I was like you know what? I’d like to get a real tree. Every year since then, if I’m home for for Christmas, we would get a real tree. We didn’t cut one down, we would just go to a tree lot but still it was cool. We would spend the next day, after getting the tree, decorating it. We have special ornaments we got every year to represent some new thing that happened in the kids lives. I have a whole box of these.

On Halloween my wife would make different costumes for the kids by hand. Not all the time but most of the time. We would go around our neighborhood trick or treating. For some reason kids stopped trick or treating. I don’t know if it was after 9/11. I just remember the number of kids coming to the house dropped off like a rock. As your kids get older they still dress up or school but it wasn’t so much the little kid thing that it should be and what made it fun.

Some of my other traditions were around food. I was born in Chicago, in the Logan Square neighborhood. I came of age in the mid 70s through the mid 80s. Back then Chicago was still very much Chicago of old. It wasn’t what it is today. For instance, there was literally a hot dog joint on almost every corner on every block. Our block had a hot dog joint called called Nikko’s. It is now defunct. It was at the corner of Elston, Western and Diversey on Chicago’s north side. It’s now some other restaurant. I grew up eating Chicago style hot dogs and Maxwell Street style polish. Nikko’s also had gyros and corn tamales. This was a standard menu at almost any hotdog stand in the city. Some just specialize in burgers and hotdogs but most of the places I went to, at least I’m on my my side of town, had a similar menu.

Traditional pizza in Chicago is a tavern style thin crust pizza that is cut in squares. And you could also get that anywhere. Any tavern corner tavern would have it. It’s cut in squares with a crispy crust to make it easier to eat at a bar with your beer. You only need one had for both and no need to fold. Our neighborhood favorite was Father and Son Pizza. I don’t think they exist anymore. They had a location near our house. And we would order that for delivery a lot of times. And of course, there’s deep dish, which people like to make fun of around the rest of the country. We didn’t go to any chain. pizza places, at the time. There were all kinds of independent little pizza places back then. We frequented a little restaurant up on Elston Avenue called Casa Luna. It was just a little Italian restaurant and they had some fantastic deep dish pizza.

After I got married and moved to the suburbs we kept up the the pizza traditions and the hot dog traditions. Our favorite hot dog joint in the suburbs was Fluky’s, now also defunct. They had a location in Niles we went to every weekend until it closed. Then we transitioned to their last location up in Northbrook and that lasted a while until they closed. Now the only traditional truly Chicago hot dog joint in that area is Superdawg. I don’t count Portillo’s. It wasn’t a thing on my side of town.

I raised two kids in these Chicago type traditions along with our own family traditions that we created ourselves. My kids grew up, went to college, and because I got married so early I became an empty nester around the age 41. So I’ve been an empty nester for over a decade. I didn’t have any problem transitioning to that. That wasn’t a big deal. The kids still came home from college for holidays. When they moved on to different cities after graduation their trips home were less frequent. When they did come we would recreate the traditional Christmas morning or the traditional Thanksgiving meal. Obviously it wasn’t the same as when they were little but it was okay. It was kind of like comfort food.

Fast forward from there to two years ago. I decided to quit working for my family. I didn’t really plan on retiring per se. But that’s what ended up happening. I saved up some money over the years and I felt it was time for me to quit. My wife and I both worked for my family non-stop for over 30 years. I was doing way more than I should have been doing and taking on more responsibility than I should have as well. The two of us just said, it’s time

In retirement I started doing what I felt like. My wife and I were doing some traveling. Starting in 2016 we started going together to Europe. She likes to go to Italy and France. I really never cared much to travel or to travel Europe. But, I’m like, if she wants to go and she wants me to go what do I care I can enjoy it just fine. So we started traveling once a year.

The cost of living in the northern suburbs of Chicago started becoming really expensive. Again, I stopped working so I didn’t have normal income coming in. I thought, there’s nothing tying us here anymore. There’s no reason to stay in Chicago. The property taxes are very high. The cost of living is high. What am I getting for the money anymore? My kids are gone. I have grandchildren but they’re not anywhere near us. I don’t work for the family anymore. So there’s not really anything tying me down to Chicago other than my Chicago roots. I started looking for alternatives. In June of 2020 the pandemic pushed me over the edge. Looking at our finances, and what’s happening with Illinois in general politically, it was not good. The lockdowns that were happening did not make me happy with the people in Illinois and around Chicago. They are becoming insufferable with this COVID lockdown and mask shaming. I’m very much a just live and let live kind of person. You can do whatever the hell you want. Just leave me alone. But people weren’t leaving me alone. And the government was not going to leave me alone. I couldn’t go into a store because I’m not masking up. When they first started masking in Illinois I couldn’t get in the grocery store because I wasn’t allowed in without a mask. We didn’t live far from the Wisconsin border. It was only about a 40 minute drive. I drove up to Wisconsin and went to the grocery stores there. So I’m like, This is This is fucked.

We started talking about moving. That way we would save money and we could do some traveling. I was thinking if we’re gonna do this move now is the time. Before things get too crazy with the lockdowns and all this kind of baloney. I just had a feeling it was time to get out. So we started researching places. And we ended up actually researching places in the Atlanta, Georgia area, because they have a major airport. I was originally looking in North Carolina, but air airlines started pulling back a lot of their flights from smaller airports. I decided not to go there because, if for some reason we need to catch a flight to go anywhere Atlanta would be better because it’s Delta’s headquarters. We’d be able to fly just about any anywhere in the world fairly easily. We found a house in late June and we closed in late July. So I’ve been here in Georgia for about a year and a month now.

It’s not bad, it’s nice. Our house is nice. We have a bigger house for less money and lower taxes. The cost of living here is much better than it is in the Chicago area. But what I find, however, is because I’m so entrenched in the Chicago area I need some new traditions. I don’t have any here. I feel like I’m just living here, which I guess is fine too. But do I need new traditions? I don’t know. It just feels like I need something to cement myself to the place I live in. But I’m not exactly sure what to do yet. I thought our tradition would be travelling once maybe twice a year. But that’s kind of out the window, at least for now. We’re trying to plan something for 2022 but I don’t know if that’s going to happen with all these vaccine mandates and travel restrictions. It’s become a bit of a hassle to even try to plan it. I don’t want to go outside the US and then have some surge of cases someplace and suddenly I’m locked down somewhere and can’t get back. We have our reservations made and won’t cancel just yet. I’m hoping some miracle happens and people come to their senses.

I don’t have any food traditions here, don’t have any holiday traditions here, and don’t have any family traditions here. Now I can get a Chicago style thin crust pizza here. There is a Chicago chain here that makes an identical tavern style pizza which is great. There is no deep dish here to speak of and hotdogs are not a thing here. I mean, they have hotdog stands here but they’re not the same. I think everything is just going to be like comfort food, where you’re just going back to a tradition every once in a while. Perhaps this is a fact of getting older. It’s just me, me and my wife.

We don’t have any family down here. My wife has a friend from her school in the Philippines and she’s made a bunch of friends here, but I’m not. I’m not an outgoing person. I’m introverted. I have one former business colleague here and I’ve seen him a couple of times over the last year. We even went fishing once. Mostly I’m kind of a hermit. I go hiking with my dog, I putter around the house, I garden, and I cook. I blog about shit that pisses me off, and I podcast. I changed up the podcast from covering news of the day to talking about bugs in my brain I feel I need to get out. But everything seems just a little hollow without traditions. And maybe it’s just something I have to get used to. When you live your entire life in one area you get to know it so well and you get so comfortable. So when you move someplace new, it’s like starting all over again. I’m getting used to it.

I wonder if this is just a thing about getting older. Feeling a little empty for the things I used to do. So I have to make something new but I don’t want it to be forced either. It has to be something that kind of happens organically. I doubt it will revolve around holidays because those have specific meanings and feelings associated with them. We’ll see what happens.

That’s all I got.

KJB

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