Below is the text (with the tour guide's name redacted and pronouns non-gendered) of an email I sent to the D-Day Memorial folks on Wednesday. They haven't answered, so I'm guessing the tour I got is sanctioned by the organization.

I am writing regarding my visit to the Memorial on Sunday, June 5, 2022. My wife and I joined the 1 PM tour led by (redacted). Although their knowledge of the Memorial and the stories of the heroes memorialized there are unimpeachable, their constant anti-government editorializing throughout the tour was distracting, inappropriate, and outright factually incorrect.

At the first stop, they made several snide references to the anti-Christian attitude of the National Park Service, going so far as to state we should be happy that the D-Day Memorial is run by the foundation and not the NPS, as they would erase all mention of God or the bible in the Memorial. Denigrating an entire agency of Federal employees, at a site dedicated to remembering over 3000 Federal employees that were killed in war, is outright offensive. It’s also factually incorrect. I have personally seen bibles, chaplains kits, and other religious artifacts displayed at NPS sites related to the Civil War. Almost every letter home from a Civil War participant displayed by the NPS references God. Those letters have not been censored.

At the plaque memorializing General Eisenhower’s Order of the Day for June 5, they stated that the NPS had removed the final sentence referencing God from the WWII Memorial in DC. That is technically correct, since the designer of the Memorial reduced that entire 90 second speech down to 2 sentences. However, that wasn’t the point they were making. They very clearly implied the NPS removed the reference to God and only the reference to God.

Further, they also stated the NPS removed all references to God from the MLK Memorial. It’s an almost 200 feet high Granite Memorial to an ordained minister, and the website identifies him as a minister in the 2nd sentence of the biography page (https://www.nps.gov/mlkm/learn/historyculture/people.htm). I’m not sure what else they are supposed to do. The inscription, “We are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream,” on the North wall of the Memorial references an actual bible verse. If we are hiding Dr. King’s Christian influences, we are apparently hiding them in plain sight.

Their presentation of the events and facts of D-Day were peppered with bible and Christian references, as though they considers D-Day a religious crusade, and not a meticulously planned military operation that went wrong in many ways, except for the actual results.

I don’t know if (redacted) was editorializing out of turn, or if that is the presentation that we would have seen from any other tour guide. However, to be safe if anybody asks, I’ll advise them to skip the tour.

The title is a lie. I didn’t spend the day with the President. I did spend an hour in the same room with him yesterday though.

On Wednesday afternoon, I got a call from a DC area code. I ignored it, as I don’t need to extend my car’s warranty. However, the call was from the health care policy analyst with Congressional Representative Abigail Spanberger’s office. I had talked to him last summer when I found a flaw in the laws related to high deductible health plans. (If you change jobs mid-year, you start over at zero on a new plan, meaning your out-of-pocket for the year can exceed the federally mandated maximum for out-of-pocket expenses for high deductible plans.) Remembering me (or maybe I just came up in a database search of constituents interested in health care policy) he was calling to invite us to the Biden event in Culpepper the next day. I didn’t have any client meetings on Thursday and Michelle was into it, so I took the day off, and we made a date-day of a Presidential policy speech.

Never let it be said that I don’t know how to romance a girl. I did at least dress for the occasion. First time I've put a sport coat and dress shoes on since late 2019.

I had no idea what to expect. They told me to bring ID, proof-of-vaccination, and to expect an onsite COVID-19 test also. Michelle was concerned that her insulin pump and CGM might cause an issue, but having been through Secret Service security a couple of times in the past I knew it would not be an issue. Passing through White House security is way less of a hassle than getting to your plane. I guess it helps that they’ve already done a thorough background check before you even get invited. So anyway, we got up Thursday AM and headed north to Culpepper, arriving around 1030 AM. It took about 20 minutes to get through first level security, a search of your vehicle and a visit from the explosives detecting dog. Then we parked and wandered into the building at Germanna Community College, where security consisted of a simple ID check and a Secret Service agent with a metal detecting wand. As predicted - it was easier than airport security. Maybe what we need is well paid professionals running airport security. They didn’t check our vaccine cards, and nobody tried to stuff a swab up our nose. I did notice our names were coded green on the guest roster, so maybe Secret Service has access to the Virginia vaccine database and knew we were vaccinated?

The event was scheduled to start around 12:30 PM, and we were inside around 11 AM. There were no more than about 25 or 30 guests there. The press outnumbered us. When dealing with very important people, you get to do a lot of very important waiting. The press appeared to have been there for quite a while by the time we got there. It was Biden standing at a podium talking, I’m not sure 30+ photographers were really needed to get the perfect picture of Biden standing at a podium, but what do I know?

The event was, I think, basically a campaign event for Representative Spanberger. She was bounced out of her district after all the arguing about redistricting, so she will have to seek re-election in a more conservative district. Meanwhile, I lose her as a Representative and pick up a Trumplican.

The first speaker was HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, who spoke for about 5 minutes and mostly praised Spanberger and Biden.

Representative Spanberger was 2nd, talking about high healthcare costs and its impact on her constituents. She also touted her accomplishments on other healthcare cost issues. The Republicans repeated attempts to kill the Healthcare Reform Act was her motivation to run for office.

She also introduced the real star of the day, 12-year-old Joshua Davis and his mom Shannon. Shannon spoke about life with a diabetic son and husband, and then Joshua took over the podium and spoke like he was completely unaware that President Biden was standing off to his right. Joshua ended his speech by introducing the President.

Raise your hand if you could have pulled off when you were 12. Or this week.

Then Biden took the podium and talked for about 20 minutes about Build Back Better and specifically the need to limit costs of life-saving medications like insulin or various cancer drugs. Build Back Better contains a provision to limit out-of-pocket costs for insulin to $35/month, but Joe Manchin doesn’t give a damn, so people can die. Is this a great country or what?

After Biden made his exit, stage right, people lined up to take a picture with Representative Spanberger, which I thought was kind of weird. We went over and chatted with Joshua and his family, as Michelle and Joshua obviously have something in common. It turned out that Michelle and Joshua’s mom are also sorority sisters. After lunch at McDonalds we headed home.

So now I can check, “get invited to a Presidential event” off my bucket list. Maybe next year I’ll take Michelle to a Tim Kaine event.

Unemployment is still low, and wages are creeping up. GDP is growing too. By all normal factors the stock market should not be tanking like it is.

However, these are hardly normal times.

Maybe, just maybe, this market correction is a sign that reality is starting to emerge from its two year slumber. People are looking around, realizing the United States government is a shit show run by a grifter, and reacting as you would expect them to react. They are hunkering down and preparing for the worst.

Some of us just saw it coming two years ago. Buckle up friends, 2019 could be Mr. Toad's~ Trump's Wild Ride.

This is entry #21 in my attempt at 31 days of blogging for December 2018. I've haven't posted here daily since about 2007, so this should be interesting.

This article about current government expenditures to maintain monuments to racism is remarkable. At a time when basic government functions such as education and public safety are underfunded coast to coast, US government entities are spending millions maintaining pro-Confederate memorials and monuments to racism.

Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library - Mississippi

Actual quote from an interpreter there.

Sometimes children ask about it, she said. “I want to tell them the honest truth, that slavery was good and bad.” While there were some “hateful slave owners,” she said, “it was good for the people that didn’t know how to take care of themselves, and they needed a job, and you had good slave owners like Jefferson Davis, who took care of his slaves and treated them like family. He loved them.

Also,

The Mississippi legislature earmarks $100,000 a year for preservation of Beauvoir. In 2014, the organization received a $48,475 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for “protective measures.” As of May 2010, Beauvoir had received $17.2 million in federal and state aid related to damages caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005."

This is Mississippi, the poorest state in the country. Katrina tried to do us a favor. We should have let the place rot after the storm.

For more on Jefferson Davis, check out my son's Facebook post last week on the anniversary of his death.

Confederate Memorial Park - Alabama

Though Alabama state parks often face budget cuts—one park had to close all its campsites in 2016 Confederate Memorial Park received some $600,000 that year. In the past decade, the state has allocated more than $5.6 million to the site. The park, which in 2016 served fewer than 40,000 visitors, recently expanded, with replica Civil War barracks completed in 2017."

The park tells the story of the war through the experiences of the common soldier. It's tragic that so many young men died fighting for an evil cause, but that is the choice they made. They weren't heroes. They chose to be on the wrong side of history, and humanity. Residents of the south that helped the Union were the heroes.

Jefferson Davis led a government that declared war on the US, and he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Put another way, he killed far more Americans in war than Osama Bin Laden, and we use tax money to honor his legacy? WTF?

Here at home in Virginia.

In the past decade, Virginia has spent $174,000 to maintain the Lee statue, which has become a lightning rod for the larger controversy. In 2017, Richmond police spent some $500,000 to guard the monument and keep the peace during a neo-Confederate protest there.

Meanwhile Virginia has spent over $9 million (inflation adjusted) maintaining Confederate cemeteries. It has spent less than $1000 total on the burial places of enslaved people.

The statues of Monument Avenue might be a little bit unique as they are not obscure parks in out of the way places that would only be missed by racists if they were gone. For better or worse, they are part of the landscape here in Richmond. I might be okay with the statues remaining, as long as they are interpreted correctly. Something along the lines of what W.E.B. Du Bois suggested many years ago would work.

The plain truth of the matter,” Du Bois wrote, “would be an inscription something like this: ‘sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.’”

This is entry #11 in my attempt at 31 days of blogging for December 2018. I've haven't posted here daily since about 2007, so this should be interesting.

Eh. One of out three or four isn't bad I guess. We are going to the Flying Squirrels baseball game tonight, to be followed by fireworks. We own three Toyotas, and although I like apple pie, it's not on the menu today. I don't remember the hot dog being part of that jingle but it seems to be in most of the images, so ¯ _(?)_/¯.

When I stepped out on the porch this AM I noticed that I did not see a single American flag flying. Granted my sample size is about 10 houses in view from the porch, so I probably should not make any sweeping generalizations, however I am the minority in this neighborhood and I certainly would not blame any minority for being less than proud of America these days. I'm certainly not feeling particularly proud.

I was actually composing a very different blog post this AM when I stumbled into this from Popehat. Go read that post. Now. I'm not kidding, it's important.

First, I was not aware that of that particular stain in America's history. We seem to have a lot of stains in our past when it comes to dealing with non-white people. it's almost like racism is as American as baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Second, and more importantly, that post sapped my will to write the scathing declaration of independence* from Trumpistan that I had been mentally composing all morning. Fuck it, Trump and his merry band of racist fascists are not worth the effort. It will not change anything, and it probably won't even make me feel better.

The Founding Fathers were all here because their families had to leave England to make a better life for themselves. They did a lot wrong in founding this country, but they did a lot right too. We can still make a better life for all Americans by engaging in our communities and working to elect responsible leaders in November that will be the check and in our check and balance system.

The most patriotic thing you can do on this 4th of July is to commit to working to elect a Democratic majority to Congress in November. Get to it.

*Spelled independance if you are the USAF.