...stating that when HE took office as the new Grand Wizard of the United States, America was going to say "Merry Christmas" again.

SO, in keeping with the proper level of respect which is due him, as well as reflecting the grace and decorum displayed by the Republican/teabagger party these past eight years, please allow me to wish you all...

...HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

PEACE!

...Grand Wizard of the US. I will NEVER call him the President!

I resolve to do something EVERY SINGLE DAY to show my disapproval and objection and opposition to the Putin/Donald Rump/Pence mis administration until they are GONE!

I will NOT just "get over it" or support Donald Rump just because he "won." Any Rump supporter who pontificates to me that I should do so after their 8 year temper tantrums over both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama can plant a big juice kiss on my big puffy Irish ass.

He may not yet be the worst chief executive this country has ever had, but he is certainly already the worst person to ever be installed into the White House. He is already the most corrupt "president" ever.

Yes, as a long time supporter of Hillary Clinton, I was very saddened by her loss, but my reaction is not going to be sorrow. It is going to be a purple RAGE that will not go away until Donald Rump is sent the hell back to Moscow in 2020.

I don't know whom our nominee will be. I like Cuomo, Gillebrand, Klobushar, McCaskill, Duckworth and many others whom I've heard mentioned. I know that the answer is NOT a non-Democrat who will be 79 on Election day. I will, however, support our Democratic nominee and work my aforementioned big puffy Irish ass off to get him or her elected and end the Donald Rump nightmare in a hopeful landslide!

Anybody else here with me?

That's my 2 cents, and quite possibly over priced at that!

PEACE!

As of this morning, I'm down to 303 pounds. I want to drop about another 30, which is about 30% of my starting weight.

Why? Because at 61 years old, I've been married Tony wonderful wife for a mere 18 years. I've been the father of my son for a mere 16 years. By any standard that I have, that isn't nearly enough time with either of them. I want to be an old geezer with my wife. I want to be a grandfather with her, too. There are MANY things that I (and we) want to do in my remaining years. None of these things is compatible with. Committing suicide with a fork!

How am I doing this? Eating better and getting some more exercise. No fad diets, gastric bypass or stomach stapling or other surgical intervention. A good deal of stubbornness and determination helps, too! In a few days I expect to be out of the 300s and once there I'm determined to never go back in again.

This is something I rarely say, but I'm proud of myself, but I'll be prouder when I get to where I'm determined to be!

Thanks for reading, and as always...

PEACE!

We, of course, voted the straight Democratic ticket and a big YES on all of the referendum questions that our "glorious" governor, Paul LePage, opposes fervently!

This is the 11th Presidential election in which I've voted since my first in 1976. It is the vote that I'm most excited to cast. Four weeks from tonight, HRC will make history while Donald Rump will simply "make" in his pants. I can barely wait!

PEACE!

Please make no mistake about it, the calls from some Republicans/teabaggers for Donald Rump to drop out, or their pulling their endorsements, or their refusals to campaign with him are NOT signs of their being honorable. They are signs of their cowardice.

Weather they admit it or not, it is THEY who nurtured a Donald Rump style of nominee ever since the worst days of the 2008 McCain/Palin rallies. It was THEY who embraced with joy and enthusiasm the 2009 germination of the teabagger movement. It was THEY who conducted meetings on the night pot President Obama's inauguration to deliberately sabotage anything that was attempted by a young President who had the temerity to be BLACK!

THEY were the ones who became the party of NO. THEY were the ones who thought it to be OK to bring assault rifles to Presidential appearances, and for Christ's sake, THEY were the ones who had temper tantrums over that same black President wearing a sweater in the Oval Office on a Saturday as well as asking for mustard on a burger.

Before Donald Rump ever engaged in his birthed insanity, THEY did. Before Donald Rump ever embraced the white supremacist alt right, THEY did. Before Dona?d Rump was ever caught on tape talking about just grabbing women by their p*****s, well, you remember the ongoing war on women.

The Republicans/teabaggers whom are running away from Donald Rump now are NOT being honorable, they are being cowards. In my lifetime, there have been some of the biggest blowout/landslide presidential elections in 1964, 1972 & 1984. In EVERY one of those elections, party members did distance themselves from the nominee, but there was NEVER any suggestions that the nominee withdraw a month before the general election.

The Republican/teabaggers officials advocating for Donald Rump's withdrawal today don't give a hang about the well being of America, they want to do all they can to save their equally corrupt, racist and sexist asses.

As Tony Beretta used to say, "and you can take that to the bank!"

That's my 2 cents, and quite possibly overpriced at that!

PEACE!

One of Donald Rump's many excuses for his pathetic and catastrophic debate performance last Monday has been the "unfairness" of the "news" media. In a very perverse way, he's right.

However, he's right in the wrong way.

Since he announced his candidacy last year, the news media has engaged in a frenzy of unquestioning and nauseating fawning that makes their coverage of Dubya look like microscopic scrutiny.

Donald Rump has gotten over a year of being allowed to get away with the most outrageous lies, blatant racism and sexism, warmongering, stupidity and opponent smearing with NO challenge from the learned "journalists" of the American news media. They've issued him a blanket free pass which he well redeem fully in the third debate when he is permitted to say any line of bullpuckey by the inexplicably selected Chris Wallace of Fox "News.".

While this has gone on, Hillary Clinton has endured over a quarter of a century of never ending investigations, witch hunts and downright smears by a Republican/teabagger party Hell bent on her destruction. She has been more investigated than her husband and more vilified than Ted Kennedy by the right. If it were to come out that in 1965, Hillary mailed a letter with $.01 postage due, than there will be unending stories about her " lack of integrity" and "un trustworthiness."

Ridiculous, Ridiculous, RIDICULOUS!!!

When it came time to answer questions by a moderator who did NOT allow him to get away with his usual shenanigans, on stage with an opponent whom not only had the audacity to be a WOMAN, but intelligent, accomplished and prepared, he had NO IDEA what to do and he folded faster than a cardboard outhouse in the middle of Hurricane Katrina.

Yes, Donald Rump is right. The media HAS been unfair this election cycle. Where he is, as usual, wrong, is in his likely cocaine addled pea brained belief, it is not Donald Rump to whom they've been unfair. The news media has been unfair to America and the world. In doing so they've risked installing into the White House a man so dangerously incompetent that he makes George Dubya Moron look like an elder statesman.

I didn't think that THAT was even REMOTELY possible. For that alone, the America news media has earned at least our scorn.

As my mother would have said, "screw'em!". WE have to be the media.

That's my 2 cents, and quite possibly overpriced at that!

PEACE!

Hi everybody. About 20 minutes ago, our family just welcomed 2 new members into our home. For the last three years we've been a family of six, with my wife, son, 2 kitties, 1 doggie and me. Just minutes ago, we welcomed two brand new six week old kittens. The human family members and the doggie are all very excited and welcoming. Our white Kitty is cautiously curious. Out black Kitty however, is crouched outside of the door to the room hissing like a Cat chorus, which he did when we brought our doggie home 3 years ago. Hopefully, he'll learn to accept his new little feline siblings, too. He'd better!

We think that the black one is female and the gray one is male, so we think their names will be Fred & Wilma. If they were 2 males they would have been Moe & Larry since our doggie is named Curly. If they'd been 2 females, they'd have been Laverne & Shirley.

We are VERY excited to welcome our new family members. Now, however, the animals outnumber the humans 5 to 3... YIKES!

Wish us luck!!!

PEACE!

...AND as a big tennis fan, I'd like to give a well deserved shout out to Monica Puig, the 2016 Olympic Gold Medalist in Women's Singles in Tennis. She played WAY above her world ranking this week and beat many players who are ranked higher than she, including #2 Angelique Kerber in yesterday's Gold Medal match, to join the ranks of Steffi Graf and both of the Williams sisters as an Olympic champion.

Even if she never wins another title, she will now and forever be a Gold Medalist.

BTW, I've long expected her to have a NICE tennis future!

Boricua power!!!

PEACE!

...my heart is FULL!

I remember back in September of 2001, just about a week before the 9/11 attacks, I was teaching 8th grade in a small Catholic school in Southwest Philadelphia. It Was one of the first couple of days back to school and I was establishing my bona fides as a Social Studies/History teacher to my kids. The way I did this was by having the students clear their desks except for the kid who was physically most far away from me with their book open to the appendix listing all of the presidents. I sat in the front of the room on a stool with empty hands and went through each president in order and the years they served. When I finished and the kid with the book told me I was correct, the kids asked questions about the presidents.

One child asked if I thought that there'd ever be an African American president and, in those days 3 years before anyone ever heard of Obama, I said that I thought that I'd live to see a woman president but not a black president, but that I thought that THEY would.

Given what we were offered by the Republicans in 2008/12, THANK GOD I was wrong.

In 2008 my wife and I supported Hillary in the primaries then, when Obama won fair and square, my wife and I supported him with NO hesitation.

This year, I was with Hillary from the word go. Tonight, I am very emotional and joyous to know that on January 20 of next year, I will have seen both a woman and a black president.

There is a part of me that believes, while we know that Hillary has always had big goals and ambitions, that some of the credit should go back to a September night in 1973 and to Billie Jean King, who opened the door to the dreams and ambitions of so many young women when she handed Bobby Riggs's ass to him in the "battle of the sexes" tennis match and made tens of thousands of young girls and women ask "why not?" about their own dreams.

Tonight the reality of a woman PRESIDENT is one step closer. While we still have to break our asses to make it happen, I know that this country will NEVER elect something like Donald Rump to be our president.

"Madam President"...it has a pretty nice ring to it, doesn't it?

PEACE!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent 17 long and awful days in the hospital this past February with a BASTARD of a case of Cellulites. Speaking as a 28 year cancer survivor and a recovering alcoholic of 26+ years, I can honestly say that I'd never felt sicker than those 27 horrendous days.

The day I went into the hospital, I weighed 378 pounds. I was put on a special diet and after 4 days I weighed 391 pounds. That was the closest that I came to signing out AMA because I remember snapping to the nutritionist that I could fail on a diet all by myself! F course, if I HAD signed out AMA, my wife would have kicked my ass until my nose bled!

The long and short of this is that while I was told that I had Cellulites, I looked at it as a case of "scare the hell out of Jackites", and knew that it was time to stop playing with myself and get serious about my weight. I've made the adjustments that I've known that I needed to make for years and got determined to make a permanent change.

As of this morning, I weigh 314 pounds. I know that I still have a long way to go to reach my initial goals, but I now see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. 77 pounds is a big deal and I'm determined to reach 100 pounds off and decide where to go from there. Once I get OUT of the 300s, I'm determined to never be back IN them again

Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you. Thank you for reading!

PEACE!