Another 4 Years

I'm probably a little too close to this, but I feel like I have to put these whirlwind thoughts into some kind of order.  

Drug Costs

 I got this random email the other day from my pharmacy.  I use a mail pharmacy so that I don't actually have to go and get my drugs from a physical location each month.  It helps that they deliver meds in 3 month supplies.  Anyway, I got an email from them that directed me to look at my claim details.  I've always been a little curious as to what things 'cost' medically.  OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!

Filibustering

 I don't think it should come as a surprise to anybody that I'm politically liberal.  That's how most of my friends describe me, but then again they're liberals too.  The general population?  I'm super liberal.  Liberal Freak.  Libtard.  This isn't something, however, that I choose or have chosen in the past and just go with.  Instead, I look at every new issue and gauge its merits and practically always end up on the far left of the spectrum.  

So, I kind of want to cover several political issues.  Filibusters, student loan forgiveness, green new deal... but let's start with the most obvious thing.  Conservatism.  

Voting 2020

I posted a cap on my other blog and in the comments couldn't resist a call to go out and vote.  And once I stated down that path, I also let out that I'd be voting for Biden/Harris.  I should have left politics out of it as I'd like my other blog to be a friendly loving place for those wanting to see the wretched transformation and feminization of unwilling men into sex slaved women.  :)  But seriously, politics is it's own thing and doesn't belong as a tag on for another post.  The perfect example is a comment I got over there that I want to respond to, but who is going to read it and maybe even respond to it when its attached to a post about a guy getting transformed unwillingly then willingly into a woman to the tones of "OMG What's Happening" by Ava Max and "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor.  So, instead of responding there, I'll write up my post here as a fully political post.  

Voting Time!

 I guess this will be just a bunch of mini updates as I have a lot of things to talk about, but not a lot to say about any of them. 

Love/Hate

I started writing this with no idea what all I was going to talk about.   I normally have an idea when I start a post and even have an idea of what I'm going to title the post plus what kind of image I want to use.  But as I started writing I knew I wanted to update you on my brother B's situation, let you know about my trip to Dallas and San Fran, tell you about talking to my friends A and E about my Queerness, and even talk about Nina on the road.  I just didn't realize that almost everything I was going to touch on would involve Love and Hate.  I Love my brother and hate his situation.  I Love my other brother while at the same time Hating him.  I Love driving and Hate that Nina isn't as comfortable.  I Love San Fran's liberal status, but Hate that they can't take care of their problems.  I Love flying.  So... let's go with Love/Hate.

Happy Labor Day!

I’m probably a bad manager.  Not because I don’t strive to make my nurses happy and not because I don’t honestly listen to them and try to either educate them on issues or improve their situations as I do both of those things.  But man, I’m a fan of unions. 

Decisions Decisions

There are so many decisions that sometimes I obsess over them, even though they're not all that important and don't really effect anything.  Sometimes my eyes cross when I look at all the options and realize that no decision is right and waiting is the best answer.  Sometimes I completely gloss over them, even though they're important and impact more than just me.  Sometimes I try to just get it over with and still get sucked down into a soul sucking void full of nothing but wrong turns and hurtful choices.  Yup... cars (colors), friends (romance?),  politics (early front-runners),  and work (screwing over my co-workers).  A normal day of decision making in the strange and wonderful world of my head.

President Trump

As I start writing this post President Trump has been in office for 1 year, 197 days, 2 hours, and 27 minutes.  I can honestly say he is almost exactly what I expected him to be as President.  A political neophyte who had no idea what he was going to do once in office and therefore hasn't done much of anything beyond make a bunch of noise.

Borders

On Independence Day I wrote up an Obscura on the other blog called Crossing the Border.  It was an odd moment for me as I both wanted to write 'as Caitlyn' but I also wanted to vent about the situation going on at the border.  Now, days later, I actually regret putting that there on the blog.  Sure, its a fairly good obscura and it works as a straightforward tg story, but I spent hours researching the asylum, refugee, and citizenship process while writing it.  I put a lot of information into a cap that could be boiled down to 'guy gets transformed into girl and has to go through the lengthy naturalization process to get his body back'.

Can't it be Ideas?

At the end of this post I have a conversation about the whole 'Us vs Them' thing (hence the graphic!), but to start, I have a bunch of issues to catch up on.  First, the job issue.  Yes, I'm continuing on the job search and yes, it is now a job search.  I have been in contact with my former supervisor and hopefully future HUM but her position is not yet available.  BUT as my current supervisor and HUM are now aware of my intent to move on and are both supportive of my intent to move on, they've pointed out that a position nearby has come open. Not only did they point it out but they've made introductions between the HUM there and me but got me a tour of their facility.  And on top of all that, the position DID come open.

Hodgepodge

A couple things I want to 'muse' on.  President Trump, New Phone, Lack O Cash, Moving, Mom's Health, Weight V Size.  Really just a grab bag of topics, none really worthy of their own individual post.



President Trump

I don't like him.  I don't like him as a person or a politician.  But I don't think I can say I like or dislike his policies because I don't get the feeling that he has any real policies beyond Making America Great Again.  And no... I don't know what he means by that.  Let's cover all of that piece by piece.

Him as a person.  He's a twit.  He has a five year old's mentality.  If you insult him, he'll insult you back.  What ever he does is 'great' and probably the 'greatest' ever.  He cares about reviews.  Now I didn't like George W Bush as a person either.  I felt that he was honestly against intelligent discourse, but even with all the 'Wanted Dead Or Alive' stuff, he still came across as Presidential most of the time.  I don't remember him striking out against the press, individual press outlets, and certainly not against individual journalists.  I imagined him railing against all of these things in private, but he didn't let that seep into his public persona.  President Trump does and it seems to be getting us into trouble.  A perfect example of that is North Korea.  Can anybody honestly say his bombastic attempt at handling North Korea has caused them to step back their efforts at all?  Has it caused them to ratchet up their nuclear and missile tests? In that way, hasn't it also brought us closer to actual war?  I mean, at this point are we more or less likely for one of their tests to go horribly wrong and land a missile on Japan? Are we more or less likely for one of their jets to attack one of our jets?

Unpatriotic Protest?

I guess it started with Colin Kirkpatrick.  Maybe it started earlier, but this is what brought it to my attention as well as the attention of most people I know.  You see, he wanted to protest.  He wanted to bring attention to something and he knew one of the best ways to get his message out to the most people was to do something shocking.  So he sat down during the national anthem.  After that game he said "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder".

Later he switched from sitting to kneeling during the national anthem.  As he put it, he did this to show respect to show more respect to former and current U.S. military members while still protesting during the anthem.  At the time that this was going on, I couldn't have really cared less.  I caught it on the news, and saw a reaction of protesting his protest, but I figured it would blow over soon enough.  But my God... this has become an epidemic.  People seem to be losing their minds at the mere act of protesting during the national anthem and even more athletes are joining in.  People are crying because he can't seem to get hired on as a quarterback and say it's because of his protest, but it's also spreading to fans and even students in school.

And I'm left over here wondering what all the fuss is over.

Hate Trumped Love

I'll just start out by saying that I voted for Clinton.  To say I'm disappointed in the election results is to not really understand my state of being right now.  You see, I didn't really want Hillary Clinton as president.  Sure, she's a fine stand in for a fairly conservative democrat, but she's far to moderate/conservative for my tastes.  I didn't think that Bernie would have done well in a general election, but maybe he would have done just fine.  Maybe this was the year that the liberal call for social and economic justice would have found that broader audience.

Or maybe President Trump was inevitable.

You see, I voted for Clinton not to elevate her to the Presidency but to keep Trump out of it.  I'm not going to go through the list of  disgusting and/or bigoted and/or stupid things he's said.  Instead I want to try to lay out how I think of him as a man.  Because deep down, that's who won.  Not the person they voted for, not the candidate, not the nominee.... the man.

In my view, Donald J Trump... er.... President Elect Donald J Trump wants to 'Win'.  Now you and I can't decide what winning is to this man.  But at his core, he wants to win.  He has the 'best'.... his things are 'huge'.... he's the 'smartest'... over and over and over.  He compares himself to others and declares that he's better.  They're terrible, terrible, people.  He's a good guy.   They lie, he tells the truth.  They cheat, he strives to be true and honest.  They commit crimes, he is the pillar of legality. On and on and on.  There is no comparison that he can't make because he doesn't seem to pull anything from factual objective evidence.

So what's five months between friends?

So yeah... sorry.

I know, more or less, what happens when I stop feeling like Caitlyn and lose interest in making caps and playing at D+X.  But I'm not sure why I lost interest in posting here.  I mean since I made this into 'Calvins Musings' and started posting more personal things, this has more or less become my journal.  My diary.  I don't post daily as that just wouldn't make sense.  I'm not one of those people that post a photo of every meal to instagram or post everything funny I see to facebook.

But I DO get something out of putting up ideas here and working through them.  Even if I'm just working through whether to buy an iPad, or getting excited about another trip.

Anywho... I don't know why I stopped having interest in posting here.  It's not as though nothing happened, and it's not as though I haven't struggled to get my thoughts together on certain subjects.  So I'm not exactly going to go through everything that's happened to me in the five months since I posted.  But I will catch up on some things that were in motion and mention a few things that have come up since.  If I want to go into any real detail about things (I might with the whole car thing), I'll make another post later for that.

My thoughts on the candidates

Fair warning... this is political.

Before I give my thoughts on the current group of presidential candidates running, lemme give a 'broad strokes' summary of my political stance.

I am not a Democrat.  I am not a Republican.  I don't particularly like either political party and believe that both are far to big and unwieldy to ever really bring me into their fold.  I most often vote Democrat because more often than not they are on the liberal side of any social issue and that's where I tend to sit.

I'm pro-choice.  I believe that allowing gay marriage is a step forward to our country.  I believe we spend way to much on our military and not nearly enough on our people.  I think education should be a priority and that the people deserve protection from businesses and not the other way around.  I believe that there are many other views than mine and that 'my' views will never be our country's views.  That the best I can hope for in government is a lean toward what I want and like and good compromises be made so that neither 'side' goes away empty handed or angry.  Going backwards in presidential elections I have voted for:

Constitutional Questions

Happy Independence Day!

Yeah Yeah... I'm posting this on the 5th, but I was doing the whole 'family' thing on the 4th and this is the first opportunity to post.

Before I get into constitutional or political quandaries, lemme go over the holiday.  It was a rare holiday as both of my brothers and I had the day off.  R gets every weekend off, I get every other weekend off, but B normally works on Saturdays.  So having a Saturday holiday with all of us is quite rare.

We spent the day and grilled at my Aunt's house.  I'm sure I've said before, but my Mother and my Aunt always make too much food for the holiday meals.  I don't think they can quite come to terms that they make a LOT of great food and that it's just not reasonable for them to make everybody's favorite dishes.  Nor can they come to the conclusion that they aren't feeding the 15 people that we had before.  This year was large... 10 of us... but they still cooked as if feeding a small army.  We had burgers and dogs on the grill (this included my brother's chicken burgers), corn fresh off the cob, fried potatoes, baked beans, potato salad, taco salad, and tortilla chips and queso.  They really reigned it in for desert as we 'only' had strawberry cake, preacher's cake, and blueberry desert (more or less blueberry and whipped topping no-bake cheesecake).

Support the Troops

I can't imagine this post will make me popular, but it's something that's been floating around my head, and I want to get it out before I say something inappropriate at an inappropriate time.

I'm sick and tired of 'Thanking Our Troops'.  Or blessing them, or worshiping them.... anything really beyond 'Supporting Our Troops'.  But then again I do that through paying taxes and voting in politicians who say they are going to support them (or voting out those who don't support them).

I have a lot of respect for anybody that joins our military service.  It's a vital service for our country, and it's a job that I don't believe I could personally do.  But that same sentiment is true for teachers (I'd go stark raving mad trying to teach a room full of young children).  The same is true for policemen.  The same is true for garbage men.  The same can be said for any number of jobs.

I have a lot of family history in the military.  My grandfather trained pilots and flew bombers during World War II.  My father served in a submarine during the Vietnam conflict.  Two cousins fought in the first Iraq war.  Several other cousins, uncles, aunts, and various relations served in the military.  I love them all, and respect them for making that choice.

Road Funding II

So I wrote about our stupid ass legislature and how they were shirking their responsibility about a month ago.

A quick recap;  our road are crap.  Our roads need repair.  The legislature's only way to do so was by a complex shell game that included raising the state's sales tax by 1% and sending it out for a statewide vote.

Well the vote was the day before I went on vacation... and it failed by a 4 to 1 ratio.

I heard all kinds of arguments as to why someone wasn't going to vote for it.   But the worst one has to be this:

"I'm not going to vote for it because this is the wrong way to fix the roads.  If we vote this down the legislature will have to try again and do it right this time.  Voting no will teach them a lesson."

I'm fairly good at arguing a point.  I can often change people's minds to my way of thinking... but I couldn't change a single mind.  And this wasn't just a purely partisan problem.  Both the democrats and republicans were all for it.  They brought out unions and business leagues, former democrat and republican governors, the current republican governor and the recent democrat senator (who served for like 25 years).

Road Funding

So it seems my state government isn't even good at their job.  They need something done, can't figure out how to do it while keeping up their 'No New Taxes' rant, so they're turning to the people of Michigan.

I talked a bit about this in December.  Our roads are bad, and we need more money to fix them.  At the time, the two houses of the legislature had different ideas.  One was to raise more taxes by raising the gas tax.  One was to NOT raise more money and take some from the education fund.

They couldn't agree on how to do it.  Understand, we're 90 yards down the field.  We know the problem (road are bad and have been underfunded for years), we know how to fix them (fund them properly).  We just can't agree on HOW to fund them properly.

We in Michigan know about road problems.  We have some of the worst circumstances.  There are a lot of cars in Michigan (both a big population and a lot of car ownership for that population).  We use our roads a lot, both for personal travel and for hauling goods.  Personal travel as we often live far away from where we work, and hauling as we manufacture a lot of goods and haul a lot of goods out of Canada and out of the state.  We're in the cold enough region that our extended freeze/thaw seasons get water into the cracks in the road and open those cracks up to the point that the roads fail.   All of that adds up to this...we have a lot of roads that are more expensive to build and more expensive to maintain.