As Trump was making his speech, he saw the shooter in the distance pulling the trigger. He saw the bullet exit the barrel of the shooter’s gun and make its way towards him. Now, to us, it reached his head in an instant, but to him, it was travelling in slow motion. He moved his head out of the way and the bullet just flew by his face. The camera clicked and captured that incredible moment when Trump dodged the bullet, literally. The trail of the bullet is just a blurry line, but if you look closely, so is the outline of Trump’s face, because he moved even faster than the passing bullet.

We have always associated “faster than a speeding bullet” with Superman, but it is now obvious that Trump is The Superman. He is quite convincingly faster than a speeding bullet. If you look at the video, where he flinches and reaches with his hand for his ear, he is actually reaching out and catching the other bullet—with his hand. He is that fast. He has that projectile in his souvenir collection for all of us to see—and to believe. I do believe—I believe that we have the real Superman among us, in the flesh, and his name is Donald Trump.
One bullet did graze his ear and his blood was spilled. But that is only to highlight that this Superman is also human. He could have stopped that bullet as well, but he let it happen, on purpose, so as to make a point. He had to spill that blood because he needed his blood to wipeout all the sins that are being attributed to him. There was enough blood spilled to wash his slate clean. To make his character fresh and new. To make us forgive everything wrong that he may have done, and to see him in a new light. As the savior and the chosen one, to lead this nation—somewhere, we don’t know where, maybe into a ditch, if he so chooses.

Within two to three days, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case against him where he was indicted for hoarding our nation’s secrets illegally and he was being accused of risking our national security. Now, that case is no more, and if Trump wins the election—which he will, now that there was an attempt on his life; you know, poor Trump, he deserves to be our president, again—he will be free to hoard as many secret documents as his heart desires. He will be free to declassify all the military plans, all the military capabilities of our armed forces and those of our allies, and all the war plans that we have ever drawn up to engage our enemies; and he will be free to share them with anyone that would give him money, directly through his businesses, or indirectly through his kids.

Next time he leaves the White House, he’ll be able to take everything openly, without any worry about ever being indicted for anything, as the Supreme Court has ruled him immune. Wow, if he was a Superman before, he’ll be a Super-Superman onward, if such a thing is even possible.

Another proof that he possesses superpowers is the current state of the Democratic Party. When Trump was facing ninety plus indictments, his party stood by him. When he incited an insurrection and tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power, his party tried to help him achieve that goal. When he refused to concede the 2020 election and kept on harping that the election was rigged, his party echoed his mantra with total blind faith, worthy of any eligious belief if there ever was one, and without any proof, again just like any religious belief. When he told 30,000 plus lies in his four years of presidency, his party told the samelies and seconded everything he said or did. Now compare this with that other party.

His power is so strong that in one debate, he has turned most of the Democrats into his campaign staff. He was able to turn most of Biden supporters away from supporting Biden. He doesn’t even have to say that Biden is unfit to be our president, the Democratic Party is saying that for him. If Biden had any chance of winning against Trump, the Democratic Party has made sure that he now has no chance left to win. Democrats have selfdestructed to the point that they have pulled their own candidate down, and declared him a loser, even before a single vote is cast. Imagine Trump’s incredible move against Biden, where he pulled all the stops and used every trick at his disposal, where he lied through his teeth, made up alternative facts to diminish Biden’s achievements, insulted Biden about the same things that afflict Trump himself, and showed absolutely zero understanding of any domestic or foreign policy, and made Biden look weak as a candidate.

As a result, Biden has dropped out of the race. He has completely given up, with his political career assassinated by the media and by his so-called friends. The Democratic Party is now in chaos. Where they should have been coalescing behind their nominee, they are now scrambling to find some other sacrificial goat to prop up against Trump. The only candidate that they can even think of, and the one that Biden has endorsed, is Kamala Harris: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” Yes, that Kamala. She has no chance against Trump. Horror of horrors, some people are saying that their best weapon against Trump is Hillary. Imagine how bad their self-inflicted wounds are and how far Trump has demoralized them with just one debate, that they are digging up old graves and bringing their dead back to life.

Trump has shown us in no uncertain terms, that the Democratic Party is too stupid to govern this country. They have no clear vision about the elections, and they are too superficial to even be taken seriously. Not to mention, their sheer arrogance to think that we are just mindless sheep, who only vote for the party, and not for the candidate. I was hoping that Biden will grow a pair and assert himself as the true leader of his party. It is now quite clear that our Superman has lobbed off that pair, and Biden will go into the night, whether he likes it or not. RIP.

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America was front and center on the D-Day, and America was front and center during the commemoration ceremonies. No matter what your politics maybe, President Biden was undeniably our representative on that stage and his words were the words of our nation. When he spoke, it was America that was speaking through him, and what he said in his speech, were the sentiments of each and every one of us. As always, democracy and freedom were the trending concepts.

Along with the President of the United States, were many other leaders who all together showcased the mightiest of the nations on this earth. As spectacular as the gathering of these personalities was, it was significantly overshadowed by the presence of real, actual Veterans of the actual D-Day, who participated in the landing at the beaches of Normandy 8 decades ago. Many have lived for over or close to 100 years. Most of us don’t have any idea as to what these men went through and what their determination accomplished. Most of us can’t even imagine being in their shoes, putting their lives on the line, and walking through that hail of bullets to achieve what must have seemed impossible.

As I watched some of the ceremonies, there were videos of D-Day landing playing on a loop. I was able to feel the shadow of death spread over the entire operation. There was an eerie and ominous filter on the camera that captured, what Hemmingway described as the “…death being issued in small, intimate, accurately administered packages.” As the soldiers disembarked from their boats and made a run to the land, I could see the bullets welcoming their onslaught. A soldier stepped out of the water and fell to the ground, face down onto the wet sand, never to rise again. I couldn’t take my eyes off of that “heavily laden bundle”, as there were thousands more similar bundles falling all around.

I dare not even think of what must have been going through the minds of those that kept charging, fully aware that the next bullet may have their name written on it. They were ready and willing to embrace death, but their mission must be completed. They were young men, same age as my sons who are serving this nation right now, with the same oath to defend this country, as these bravest of the brave men served their county. I dare not imagine what it feels like to know with complete certainty that the next breath you take, will most likely be your last.

But, there they were, those heroes, present during the ceremonies, dwarfing the rest of the world with their larger than life personas, smiling, saluting, and saying words of encouragement to the rest of us little people who take so many things for granted. These men set the course for the United States to become the quintessential superpower of our day. These men defined what it means to be free, because it was their courage that set the line that no enemy of ours has been able to cross and attack us in our own homeland.

As President Biden said in his speech, “These men knew that there are things worth fighting, and dying for.” I was humbled by their strength, even though most were in wheelchairs, pushed by their helpers, feeble as the time has taken its toll on their bodies. Death will eventually come, but on that day, they willingly went looking for death, and in front of their determination, death was hiding from them.

They are the true heroes, the ones that died are bigger heroes, more so than the ones that lived, but heroes nevertheless. Their willingness to give their lives, and in many cases, to actually give their lives, for this nation, is the epitome of patriotism. True patriotism, not just giving lip service to the idea and taking credit for superficial acts that, by any definition, are actually cowardly acts.

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Ugly Side of Snow

Recent weather brought snowcapped mountains as part of our landscape. Look to the north or look to the east, we see white, shining, glorious mountain tops, glistening in the sunlight, holding us in awe of the Almighty, who created such magnificent visual effect. Everyone who sees all that snow, spontaneously exclaims, “Oh, how beautiful!” How beautiful, indeed!

But let me show you the ugly side of this beauty.

This Thanksgiving was marred with rain and snow throughout California. My business was closed, so I decided to enjoy my day with some light travelling, with some leisurely breakfast at a local restaurant, and a quick run to Apple Valley with part of my family to finish some paperwork and then join the rest of the family for a wonderful Turkey dinner.

Newscasters were talking about freeway closures and the need for water, food, and blankets if one were to travel through the snow-covered roads, in case one was caught in such a situation. I scoffed at the suggestion. Who in Southern California needs to take such precautions?! We have everything in control.

As we traveled through the Cajon Pass, we saw heavy snow falling on our car. It was an amazing experience to be in a snowstorm for the first time in our lives. My kids were full of excitement as we marveled at the cotton candy like texture, at the size of snow pieces that were falling, there were no snowflakes like we see in the fairy tale stories. We tried to capture them as we drove up the mountain, grabbed all the snow that collected on the windshield and mirrors, even ate some as a special treat. It tasted like water, to our amazement, and gave a bite to our tongues. People were stopping on the side of the freeway to play with the snow, make snowballs, and run through the piles and piles of snow that were falling from the sky.

Great fun was being had by all!

We even stopped at a Starbucks, bought hot chocolate and coffee, and sat in the snowstorm for a while, just enjoying yards and yards of Global Warming falling down all around us.

After finishing my paperwork, we headed back to Hemet. I swear to you, I heard ominous music playing in the air. There was heavy traffic, as was expected. I mean, traffic is our life. We live in traffic jams, so that was no big deal. We were moving at a slow speed, but we were moving, nevertheless. I knew that as soon as we made our way down the mountain, it will be back to flying speed.

Boy, was I wrong this time! Snow covered so much of the road that they had to use snowplows to clear the lanes. Snowplows meant we had to pause until they were done. There were periods of rain that followed snow, which turned the snow into slush. Roads were obviously slippery, which lead to jackknifing of big rigs and cars running into other cars. As we know, there are some people who don’t have the necessary patience to deal with such situations, so they try to push their way through. Well, you can all guess the result.

(Ugly Side of Snow)

Freeway was completely closed, and we were at a standstill. We couldn’t back out, or exit anywhere, because we were surrounded by the mountains. We had only one way to go and that was closed. Emergency crews, police, firemen, they all worked diligently to clear the freeway, but they weren’t miracle workers. They could only do so much.

We crawled at a glacial speed. We moved 50 feet and then waited 40 minutes. Moved another 40 feet and waited another 30 minutes. We were practically sitting in a parking lot. People would turn their cars off, get outside and walk around, some were even walking their dogs. One guy was playing baseball with the snowballs he was making from ice collected on top of his car. We were practically being buried in the snow; there was so much of it coming down.

What started out a miracle dream, turned into a huge nightmare. Hours and hours passed. I cursed myself for not listening to the advice of those newscasters about having water and food. Kids were getting hungry, then very hungry, then starving—ON THANKSGIVING—while the rest of the family was feasting like there is no tomorrow. Then the inevitable happened: the dreaded call to nature.

With thousands and thousand of cars around us, with lights shining directly on us, with knee deep snow making it impossible to walk even five feet away from the car, we had to go. Other people were in the same dilemma. When we reached a bursting point, we just had no choice but to relent. We used the front of the car in one instance, shielded my son with an umbrella in another instance, and used the two doors of the car as a makeshift outhouse for myself. We marked the territory, we created the legendary yellow snow, but we also broke the ice for other people as well. Soon, we could see others coming out and enjoying the go. Everyone had to go after ten long hours of sitting in that pile of…(the s-word).

The road was so slippery that my car started moving even though my breaks were fully engaged. I had to take drastic measures to keep myself from running into the car in front of me.

Inch by inch, we moved forward. First one lane, then the next one, and so on. We moved slowly, covering one-tenth of a mile every hour. Five lanes became four, four became three, three became two, until there was only one lane. Then we started moving steadily, but we could only drive at a very low speed, with the fear of our car careening out of control.

It took us close to twelve hours to go from one end of Cajon Pass to the other. We made it home only after midnight, when a truly Black Friday had started for us. We missed our Thanksgiving Dinner, missed the whole family gathering, missed any chance to even eating Turkey. We had to settle for the only fast food we found open at that hour, the McDonald’s in Beaumont. I am telling you, a Big Mac has never tasted so good as the one I ate at the end of our ordeal.

I hate snow. There is nothing beautiful about snow. As far as I am concerned, if I never see snow again in my life, I’ll be so happy.

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A Different Point of View

The customer is always right. That was the adage they used to hammer into our brains when I started my first business. That was what they taught us in all the business classes and that’s what the marketing geniuses always preached. I’ve spent most of my business life regurgitating that very same maxim.

But lately, I have to wonder if the truth to this dictum—yes, I have access to a thesaurus and I intend to abuse it to the max—still holds true. The real purpose behind this phrase is to reassure customers that they can expect the best service at your establishment and to make your staff work hard to keep customers happy by providing such service. But in today’s social media savvy (I mean heavy) environment, is the customer always right?!

In my experience, most customers are the silent type. They come to your business expecting good service and if they don’t get it, they simply go somewhere else. They don’t file any complaints, or demand to see the manager, or insist on talking to the owner. They simply take their business to another service provider.

There are, however, a lot of customers these days who fall into the category of “not always being right,” and they all seem to have been made worse by the existence of social media. They have been granted tremendous power—albeit unfair power—over local businesses by Yelp, Google, and other search engine based entities. Always ready at the drop of a hat to give a bad review, whether deserved or not, simply because they didn’t like the way you greeted them, or the way you handed them the money, or even the fact that it took a couple of minutes longer because you had a sudden rush and had to scramble to handle the extra load.

There are many types of these customers, each worst than the other and each determined to make your life, as a business, harder so that they can feel good about themselves and then share their “experience” with a really narrow and limited circle of friends.

The first type is my favorite. Customers that belong to this type are always looking for a refund. “I want my money back,” they would always shout because you missed this or you didn’t do that. Whatever they point to, is not even that significant sometimes. They want to feel superior by nitpicking on some shortcomings, real or otherwise. Sometimes they haven’t even paid for what they claim to be

missing. “Oh, you took too long.” “I had to wait close to an hour.” When you look at their receipt, it is not even twenty minutes, which is actually below the average time it usually takes. They just want their money back. When you explain to them that you have done over ninety-nine percent of the work, they still want their entire payment back because that one percent is all they “really” cared for.

The second type is the one that carries a perpetual chip on their shoulders. They are always playing the victim card and look for prejudice where there may be none to begin with. They justify their bad attitude by saying that you, as the business, don’t like them because they belong to a certain race or ethnicity, and your poor service is the result, even though there may not even be any poor service; they just want to see it that way. Any service is poor to them, no matter how hard you try to please them. They cannot be pleased. They don’t want to be pleased. That’s how they go through life.

The third type is the opposite one. They are the ones with their prejudice entirely on display. They are the ones that believe that you don’t belong in their neighborhood/city/country because you happen to look different from them. You are considered an outsider, even though you may have lived here longer than them. If you have an accent, even if the person with the accent is just an employee and the actual owner is one just like them, they would tell you to go back to where you came from. In my case, that would be West Covina. Horrible commute, but doable, if I must.

Then there are the dishonest ones, the cream of the crop, who try to find some way not to pay you for your service. My favorite line is, “Oh, I already paid.” When you ask to see the receipt, “Oh, I threw it away.” When you say that you are the only one collecting payments, they say, “Oh, I paid it to the other guy.” When you say that there is no other guy, we can check the cameras, then the foul language starts. They start cursing as if you are the one doing something wrong.

The customer is not always right. You must keep this in mind that this world is full of shysters, scammers, and thieves. Most of them end up at my business, and my employees, God bless them, have to deal with them on a daily basis.

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Are You Getting All That You Truly Want in a Relationship?

Relationships are usually a complicated affair—yes, the pun is fully intended—but I know of a surefire way to guarantee the success of any relationship, provided one follows my instructions properly.

Experts would say that you should trust each other, be gentle with each other, spend more time doing intimate things, don’t spend money to be happy, and so on. Older adults used to say that the path to man’s heart is through his stomach; meaning, the wife, should be a good cook. Some would even say that a wife should…well, never mind. The bottom line is that it is usually up to a woman to make the relationship work.

At the risk of sounding sexist, I actually agree with that assessment. It is up to a woman to make sure that a relationship is a success. Before you jump all over me for saying that, first hear me out. You see, typically, men are generally stupid, and women can carry out plans better. All those pointers from so-called experts do make sense in theory, but in real life, there is no place for them. Real-life requires practical solutions and not hypothetical ones.

My solution is very simple. It works, and it does not require too much effort either. You see, I have daughters, and I want them to use my advice so that they can have a successful relationship with their husbands. All they have to do and all that any woman has to do to make a relationship successful is to take his self-esteem away.

A man with no self-esteem will follow his wife everywhere, do exactly as she wishes, and do everything possible to make her happy. He would go to the ends of the earth to prove himself worthy and would bend over backward to win her approval. He will always be putty in her hands, which she can then mold to her liking.

There are many different ways to strip a man of his self-esteem. The best and most successful method is to convince him that you made a mistake when you settled for him. You had much better options. If it weren’t for a moment of weakness when you took pity and said yes to someone so undeserving of you, you could have been with someone much better, more handsome, better built, and maybe even with a better personality. “Look at you, just look at you,” you should repeat often, “And now, look at me. You are so lucky to have me.”

(A Different Point of View)

The second successful method is to make him feel inadequate. This could go in many different ways, but the two most hurtful ways would be that he is not a good provider and that he is not a good lover. The second one really hits below the belt.

Convince him that he has wasted all of his potential and has failed to achieve success. Even if he is a doctor, he could have been a better doctor, or be more like so and so’s doctor husband. If he is a businessman, he could have done a better business and not the failure that he has poured his blood and sweat into; all for nothing.

The lover part is a lot easier. No man alive can be a successful lover if the woman decides never to let him succeed. There is no measure that men know to determine success, so all efforts are open-ended. Goalposts can be moved, as far away as necessary.

Then there is the always popular; he comes from a low-class family. “Look at your sister,” you could point it out to him, “She has no manners, just like you.” Or, “Look at your parents (or brother, or uncles). If it weren’t for me to join your family, you would all still be…” Then leave the sentence incomplete. Let his imagination fill it with all the possible negative nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that his tiny, inferior brain can fathom.

Any one of these methods works all by itself, but you achieve more success when you combine any two of them. Double whammy, that is, or a one-two punch, if you may. Or, you could be like my wife, and use all four.

Man, I love that woman. I’ll do anything to make her happy. I would go to the ends of this earth to show her how much I love her. I would bend over backwards to make sure there’s always a smile on her face. I just can’t live without her.

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