At this point, I think I can speak for a lot of people who are just plain old worn out from the daily drama surrounding Donald Trump. We’ve tuned out watching most news channels. Not completely, but just enough to get the gist of what the next scandal is.

I’ve resorted to a fair amount of MeTV shows like All in the Family, Mash, and Hogan’s Heroes. He’s just not worth the energy. The constant need for attention, the overt racism, the blatant lies, are just too much to take.

You can count me among those who never recognized him as my President. It’s clear to me from the Mueller report that the 2016 Election is tainted from payoffs and Russian interference. The election was decided by a small margin of votes across 4 swing states. Had he not cheated, the outcome very likely would have been different. He’s looking for every avenue to cheat this election too.

He didn’t win. He’s not up to the job. He screwed up the response to Covid-19 and even talks about it in past tense.

I also agree with Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion that Biden should not waste any cycles debating Trump. Trump is behind in the polls. Let him stay behind in the polls. Don’t give him any avenue to claim victory.

68 days seems a long time to give republicans the shellacking they so richly deserve. It is interesting to see the drama queen melt down on Twitter from time to time. At least that part is entertaining.

But perhaps what I’m most looking forward to, only because it gives Republicans an immediate aneurism, is gun reform. 51 votes in the Senate + the executive branch is all it’s going to take. Can’t wait for the Duck Dynasty crowd to lose their cookies while whining on Fox News.

Like a lot of people I think I’m exhausted from the Trump presidency. I’ve been a news junkie for decades but I’m finding it harder to justify spending my time listening to conservatives parrot right wing talking points in their defense of Trump.

The fact that he is an ignoramus like no other is not up for debate. It’s frustrating to see them filibuster the questioning and get away with it. I find myself switching over the Andy Griffith reruns or concerts on AXS TV in support of better personal mental health.

Fortunately it looks like the shit-show is about to enter its closing act similar to Macbeth. I plan to stay inside and order a lot of popcorn.

One thing that has been hardest to deal with is knowing that there are friends and family have supported the cult of Trump or at a minimum turned a blind eye to the damage to the office of the presidency and the country. In the age of Trump we are no longer talking about simple policy disagreements. It’s about the soul of the country. Who we are as a people. Right from wrong.

There have been some who threw caution to the wind and supported Trump because they just couldn’t get into Hillary. I’m thinking the choice was painfully obvious but okay, if that’s how you felt at the time I get it. But what about now? There’s no denying that the Trump family is running a criminal enterprise for personal gain. There’s no denying he doesn’t have any idea what he is doing, ignores the advice of professionals at the cost of thousands of lives. We’re over 2,000 deaths a day now from Coronavirus. Other countries have figured it out. Trump only cares about the economy and trying to get re-elected. So please tell me that you made a mistake and are moving on. Please don’t ask me what’s the big deal about Trump, he’s just like my crazy uncle but he gets stuff done. Please don’t change the subject because it makes you uncomfortable in the moment. Please do acknowledge the disaster these last 4 years have been. We don’t have to dwell on it. I just want to hear some honesty.

There’s a contingent of high school classmates that have been brainwashed by a steady diet of Fox News. I feel bad for them, I really do. It’s way more people than I ever predicted. I’m going to sound elitist for saying this but it must be really painful to be that dumb. I can assure we’re done debating about it on Facebook because I’ve left the platform. I don’t want any part of supporting Zuckerberg. My hope is that Facebook becomes the next MySpace, and that Bloomberg buys Fox News and rids it of its cancer. But alas this may be a pipe dream. Maybe it’s just life unfolding as life does.

Onward with Hogan’s Heroes and Gomer Pyle reruns.

Let’s dream a little. Why not?

People choosing to be a part of the country is a choice. A group of immigrants made that choice and started the 13 colonies. 240 years later we have 50 states and the District of Columbia.

It’s been quite a ride through good times and bad. But what if it’s permanently broken?

There hasn’t been serious talk about secession since the Civil War, but I can make the argument that it’s time to put the topic on the table.

There are many analogies between being a part of a country and marriage. I don’t like to think of myself as a quitter, but I was married for 27 years and reached a point where I had to conclude that what was broken just wasn’t going to get any better. Try as I might.

When that’s the case, one can only conclude that it’s best to part ways.

So let’s talk about the so-called ‘Left’ coast. We don’t fit in with the rest of America. Most of what we witness on TV is cringe-worthy behavior from our fellow Americans in red states. It’s no secret we’re divided. They can’t stand liberals and we liberals and moderates can’t stand the MAGA crowd. Maybe it’s time for a divorce?

Think about it. It’s been like talking to a rock for over 20 years. They just don’t get the notion of a progressive country. It’s back to the 1950’s ‘Merica or you ain’t a true American. Stand for the anthem no matter how disgusting the brutality is. Be quiet and stand. Kick the immigrants out even though this country was built by and has always had robust immigration policies and we would not be where we are today without them. Drink the Kool-aid on trickle down economics. It’s just too big of a divide to fix.

So what if the entire West Coast considered seceding from the union in order to form our own Country? We should at least be talking about it. 47 states would be like, wut? They would have to figure out how to survive without California’s enormous economy. The West Coast dominates in high tech between Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Portland. We would lay claim to ownership of every single social media account in the world. Now that’s power!

It’s akin to telling your spouse you’re thinking of leaving. You’re what? Yes, we’re thinking of leaving. Let’s give it some thought. I haven’t thought through all of the repercussions for sure, but I want to put it out on the table so that the rest of the country can understand over here we’re pretty sure this isn’t working very well and would like to consider a long-term change.

Every year when June 23rd comes around I’m reminded of my first day on the job at The Boeing Company in Everett, Washington, June 23, 1980.

I was 20, had been married for a little over a year, had a 3 month old daughter and would have loved to have been able to find a job in my home town of Portland, Oregon, but jobs were extremely scarce. Fortunately Boeing was still ramping up the 757/767 programs before first flight n 1980 and gave me an opportunity I have never regretted taking.

So we moved young family up to Marysville, Washington and started a new life. The job itself was anything but exciting. Having recently been credentialed with an impressive AE degree in Electronic Engineering Technology, I felt I was ready to be done with school and start life. I soon found out that $7.50/hour wasn’t much to live on for a family of 3, soon to be 4. I spent my days combing over 11×17 printouts of paper that represented the point to point connections of …. wire bundles. The title was Tech Aide Level II, Wiring Design. But there wasn’t really anything to design. A new airplane would get ordered and a configuration would start to take place. The systems engineers would lay out the basic wire bundles needed to accomplish the configuration, and our job was to fill in the details of what wires were to go where. Pretty big yawn but it was a step up from my previous employer, The Centennial School District where I held the title of “Night Custodian.”

I have mostly fond memories of my time at Boeing. Made a lot of great friends there. Participated in their golf league, had some regular running partners, finished my degree while there and got promoted to an Engineer. I transferred to a few different departments during my 12 years there. I spent a couple of years in an Instrumentation Lab running tests with transducers and measuring equipment on what they called the Iron Bird which was.a mock-up of a 767.

After my time in the labs I got lucky and found a window into a software engineering role, but it came with the caveat that I had to travel to Boeing Field which was 44 miles each way. A brutal commute. I did that for 2 years and got some valuable software experience (mostly assembly language) on DEC PDP machines before transferring back up to Everett to join the Flight Controls Avionics group. Finally, some work that was super interesting.

I won’t go into specific projects but suffice it to say that it was a superb learning experience. I loved learning what the black boxes did and why. Every time I fly on a plane I gaze out at the wing surfaces and ponder which black boxes are controlling their surfaces and wonder if any of the software I had written might be still in use. They worked us hard at times. For one period we had 15 months straight of 56 hour weeks minimum. That was with a young family, so not easy on anyone.

In 1992 I made the decision, along with my wife, that it was time to try to move back to Oregon. I found a job in a 10 person engineering group in Beaverton working on a clone of the Adobe PostScript Level II interpreter. I learned a ton from those guys. Yes indeed, life is different outside of aerospace. More was expected to be sure.

After a very brief stint at a complier company (Verdix), I landed at Tektronix. Tektronix seemed like the story of the three bears. Boeing was too big. Oce’ too small. Tektronix was just right. A medium size company that could pay a living wage and provide interesting work.

I had to crack the shrink wrap off of some documents for a very early version of ClearCase (v1.2) and found myself in the role of “Software Tools Guy” to a few development teams. That was a lot of fun actually. I really enjoyed helping people with their tools issues.

Tektronix kept growing and the workload along with it and the next thing I knew I was managing a team of 6 people for Software Tools. Managing at Tektronix was great. They had a culture that very much empowered 1st level managers to make decisions and run with them. Very little bureaucracy. Then Xerox took over and that was the end of that.

On the plus side, Xerox had the budget to fund the build-up of an A3 solid ink printer, which Tektronix did not have. To their credit (or blame if you want to look at it economically), they pumped about 500M into the build up of the first printer over a 6 year period. It kept the finances going which was great. Xerox was a little unlucky however in that the iPads came out and suddenly nobody was printing anymore. There were some lean years in printing after that, but overall, an 18 year run where I learned a ton of stuff both personally and professionally.

Next stop was Cambia Health Solutions where I had to learn about supporting Java development teams. Totally different than anything else I had done before but luckily enough of my skills transferred over and I was able to make myself pretty useful there. After a few years I got drafted into the DevOps team (again, starting over on skill-set), but it was great people and fun technology so all good.

As I was getting close to the end of my career I decided I could take more risks, so I made the leap to work at ComScore with a colleague from the Xerox days. At ComScore I probably had too much responsibility. I was one of 2 people who had root on all 28 AWS accounts. The Company had fallen on hard times though and I didn’t realize what a hot mess it was until I got there. Morale was very low and the environment was more toxic than I wanted to be in.

Last stop Venmo? I found a gig contracting at Venmo with a bunch of unbelievably talented engineers. The one year contract ends September 28th, 2020, but there’s always the chance of getting extended out to 18 months. After that however, I may take the first break longer than 2 weeks in 40 years. I don’t think I’ll be totally done in 2021. I’d like to keep working at this for a while, but more than likely I’ll be contracting.

This is the first attempt by Donna and I to record a song together. I guess it took Covid-19 for us to think of it.

Dorado is a piano tune by David Lanz. Donna’s piano part was recorded in our living room against a drum track which proved to be a challenge for Donna to play along with in the beginning but she quickly got the hang of it. She recorded the piano part is surprisingly few takes. The count in is 8, here we go! That’s me on guitar and bass. That’s it, 3 tracks.

It’s been difficult to come up with a thimble’s worth of policy agreement with Republicans ever since the Reagan era and trickle down predictably widened the gap between rich and poor. But back then the debates (though sometimes heated), centered around tax policy and war mongering. The MAGA movement is different. Now we’re talking about basic human decency, or the lack thereof.

In the Reagan and Bush eras I frequently debated tax policy and war escalation with friends sitting around a summer bbq. When they arrived they were friends. We discussed. When they left they were friends.

In 2016 we were warned that Trump had a history of racism, bankruptcies, money laundering, cheating his contractors and wives, and an inexplicable disdain for immigrants – many of whom he depended on to keep his hotels running. He got elected anyway. Then came the cries for “just give him a chance.” His disdain for the constitution, dismantling of the criminal justice system, narcissism, propensity to lie, and neurotic behavior are far worse than we feared. And it’s in plain site 365 days a year, 24/7 with every tweet.

Politics can be an uncomfortable subject in social situations. People often stay clear of it so as to not offend. Totally understandable in most situations, but this is different. With Trump it’s not sufficient to just say “Hey, I don’t have any feelings for Donald Trump.” I need nothing short of a denouncement. Anything less is contributing to normalizing a whack job.

Imagine being so uninformed, so unable to observe the world around you, so isolated in your Fox News cocoon without any reasonable person to challenge your conspiracy theories that you say yeah, I want four more years of this shit.

I’m happy to hear about a group of people who are concerned enough to form an Anti-fascism group, but no, the ends do not justify the means. Violence gets a hard no every time. No exceptions.

Consider you’re a white house staffer. Maybe even Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. You’ve got a global pandemic happening on your watch, uncertainty in the markets and now levels of racial tension not seen since the 1960’s. What to advise oh dear leader?

Well, obviously the right thing to do is to address the nation with a message of calm and try to get everyone to settle down. Assure everyone that justice will run its course in due time and urge people to hold fire. But he can’t do that.

Because every time he opens his mouth he steps in it. So the best advice they can offer is to say nothing at all, which in itself is a message isn’t it? It appears they convinced Trump to hold his tweets because he held off for 11 hours or so after the “LAW AND ORDER” tweet. But man, he’s taking a beating today on Twitter with the various #Bunker hash-tags calling him out for hiding out in his bunker while our cities burn.

That is indeed a choice between bad and terrible. Thoughts and prayers for KellyAnne and Mark.