Money & Life, Navigating Medicare, Best Art Museums, Post Election Aftermath Blues

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I am SHOCKED Capital One has kept this 75k Venture X offer for so long, there is no way in hell this will survive in 2025, hurry!

The 75K CAPITAL ONE Venture X card has a minimum spend of $4k in the first three months. If you like simplicity and looking for one (premium) card, I highly recommend this card (and yes, I have it myself!). It has an annual fee of $395 but it comes with an easy $300 statement credit for travel booked on its own travel portal, essentially turning it into a $95 annual fee card. But wait, there is more! On each card anniversary you earn 10,000 points essentially making it FREE! Every dollar of spend earns 2 points and flights booked on the travel portal earn 5 points per dollar. You get access to Capital One and Plaza Premium airport lounges and a Priority Pass Select lounge membership and, this is important, you can add FOUR authorized users FOR FREE who can also have their own Priority Pass Select airline lounge membership and, this is BIG, they can bring in unlimited guests with their FREE Priority Pass card! You can transfer your Capital One points to up to 18 Transfer Partners. No foreign transaction fees. Free Hertz President’s Circle rental car top elite status. Cell phone protection and PRIMARY rental car coverage. Awesome seats at baseball stadiums for just 5k points each. And lots more.

Son managed to burn 50k Air Canada Aeorplan miles to book Honolulu to Singapore and he plans to join us all in Bangkok. I have wife, daughter, son + 1 all landing on the same date in BKK at different times! And I am leaving next week to attend the 2024 Extraordinary Travel Festival. Hope all the flights work out without major interruptions. I still need to book flights from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and have decided to fly out of the second Bangkok airport at Don Mueang for two reasons: I want to add another airport in my list and Air Asia flights are way cheaper there. Looking to book a Bangkok bike tour for five too.

I am close to burning 2 million miles/point this year, actually I am at 1,927,104. What is more insane is that I still have 4.3 million miles/points in the bank. First world problems you guys.

Son requalified for Alaska Airlines MVPGold elite again after the miles flying Korean and JAL posted successfully. Still waiting for the Hawaiian Airlines flight to post. Isn’t it amazing that both foreign airlines managed to do this pretty fast and the American airline that is merging with Alaska still has not figured it out.

I am at 43 World of Hyatt elite night credits. When I crossed 40 I earned another Guest of Honor cert and I need to pick one of: 5,000 World of Hyatt points, Suite Upgrade, $150 FIND Experience Credit. Leaning towards the easy 5k. No need for another suite upgrade award at this time as I do have one that I have not used yet. Need to research more about the FIND experience credit and perhaps add to the one $50 credit I already have #developing.

So there was no excuse this year. We knew all we needed to know, even without the mendacious raging about Ohioans eating pets, the fantasizing about shooting journalists and arresting political opponents as “enemies of the people,” even apart from the evidence presented in courts and the convictions in one that demonstrated his abject criminality. We knew, and have known, for years. Every American knew, or should have known. The man elected president last night is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse. He represents everything we should aspire not to be, and everything we should teach our children not to emulate. The only hope is that he’s utterly incompetent, and even that is a double-edged sword, because his incompetence often can do as much harm as his malevolence. His government will be filled with corrupt grifters, spiteful maniacs, and morally bankrupt sycophants, who will follow in his example and carry his directives out, because that’s who they are and want to be.

My own hope and belief about what would transpire last night was sadly and profoundly wrong—like many, I have the emotional and intellectual flaw, if that’s what it is, of assuming that people are wiser and more decent than they actually turn out to be. I feel chastened—distraught—about my apparently naive view of human nature. [Same]

Let me say a few more things just to clear my system and try to be cathartic and stuff like that.

Obviously, inflation mattered a lot more than I expected. Of course it hurts everyone. But wages kept up with it. You should be in Europe where in Greece my mother has not seen a single euro increase in her pension since 2016 and the post Covid inflation makes ours here look like peanuts. Oh, her pension was cut about 25% back when the country was almost kicked out of the European Union. So please spare me making this the deciding factor to bring back this guy to govern to fix it ok? Let’s see what happens and where you all stand in four years. Can’t wait for Trump to bring inflation down, solve the Russia Ukraine was in less than 24 hours, secure the border (lol), replace Obamacare with a plan that never came and there is now a concept for it, etc. And just wait until brain damaged Robert Kennedy Jr becomes in charge of health care. And so many lunatics to join this circus. Don’t worry about me and most readers of this blog, we’ll be okay. But I am afraid most of the Trump voters will get really hurt. Badly. But hey, as long as they feel good about owning the libs, harassing the trans kids, hunting the illegals to deport them (that will do wonders for inflation!), sticking tariffs to the Chinese (don’t get me started about what that does to inflation ok?)  and I can go on and on and on. I feel so bad for the brave Ukrainians too.

To all the black and Latino voters and all the Arabs near me in Dearborn who voted for Trump: WTF is wrong with you? Well, you will find out. As George above closed his article with:

Let us brace ourselves

I have more to get out of my system. This was not even close, it was a bloodbath for the Democrats. Trump has a mandate. Don’t give me crap about democracy blah blah blah. Democracy spoke and the message is clear, the majority chose Trump. Time to really look within and see what went wrong. Choosing two elitist ladies that just never connected personally with voters was a horrendous idea. Don’t get me wrong, I think both were highly qualified to run this country. And Kamala…where the hell was she while being Vice President? And Biden obviously stuck around too long when he should have come out and said I am not running again, let the primaries take place and unite under a chosen candidate to campaign for the whole season instead of a few months, too late for her to connect with voters. But, I mean, has she ever really connected with voters? The ultimate politician and voters preferred a real candidate who speaks his mind and just says AND believes insane racist shit non stop. But at least he is real…I guess. For the life of me I can never understand that people believe that this guy really cares for their welfare more than any Democrat. But I digress.

The US economy is the envy of the world. Inflation is almost back to the target level of 2%. There are issues with housing, sure, I am sure Trump has a plan to fix that too lol. We are at full employment. I don’t understand how the party in government could not sell that. Inflation never would have happened after Covid if the pandemic was handled the right way from the very beginning instead of its disastrous handling of it (remember someone wanted to inject us with bleach WTF!) and so many dead. Can you imagine another pandemic hitting us? You know, this happened: Monkey mayhem in South Carolina after 43 primates escape research facility. This is how one of my all time favorite movies 28 Days Later started. In a way, I think we are all still working through the traumatic impact Covid had on all of us.

I am taking some steps to keep my sanity for the insanity that we are going to endure over the next four years. Enjoy the last two normal months you guys. I am going to try to avoid keeping up with all the politics fireworks that would be coming out of Washington DC every single day. And I am finally taking the Twitter app off my phone. Over this weekend I am going to post some farewell tweets and then I am killing it, as in never tweeting again. The time has come to put an end to a platform that I loved. Delete Your Account. For Real This Time. I am going to focus on positive things all around me. And my health, especially my mental health. And do more of this:

After You Vote: Unplug

use the stress of this election to be the final push needed to step away from the exhausting digital chatter that’s been dominating your brain

Or I am just going to Thailand and come back in 2028.

Stay positive, be kind, be respectful, improve the community around you, pray for us and humanity, get involved and…brace for impact.