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  Monday, February 17 th , was a National Day of Protest. All across the country, people gathered to protest what the Trump administration is doing to America. I was one of those people. My wife and I showed up downtown Fort Myers by the courthouse about 10 minutes before noon and the rally was supposed to start at noon. At first, about 50 people were standing there with us but I would say by 12:30 there were maybe 200 people. I was a little disappointed with the turnout but this is Southwest Florida which is very red. As I was standing with the crowd, I took note of the people that were standing with us, most were White senior citizens such as myself. There were a handful of Blacks and a few Hispanics. Considering that it was President’s Day and the schools were closed there were very few young people. That disappointed me because it is their future and the young people have so much to lose. Growing up in the middle of the Vietnam War and seeing the protest back then, maybe we w...
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  I will tell you that I am no Christian, but I will tell you that I was raised in a Christian household. I was baptized, went to Sunday School, was Confirmed, and attended church into adulthood. Because of that upbringing, I still think about the morals I learned from that religious upbringing. To this day, I judge right and wrong by what I learned in that church. There has been a little bit of a dispute between The Pope of the Catholic Church, the Trump administration, the deportations, and Catholic convert Vance and his use of the concept from the medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as “Ordo Amoris”. I guess Vance has said the concept delineates a hierarchy of care – to family first, followed by neighbor, community, fellow citizen, and lastly those elsewhere. Being raised a Protestant I had never heard of it but then the Lutheran Church has no medieval saint.   I searched on the web and asked if “Ordo Amoris” was in the Bible and the short answer would be “no”. It i...
  MAGA called Biden a dictator, a Tyrant, a Nazi, a Communist, and the head of the Biden Crime Family. Biden was, of course, none of those things. Biden was a good Christian man who believed in God and the American system. When Biden said “God Bless America”, he meant it, whereas many politicians say, “God Bless America” only because they want your vote. Many people will say that Biden was weak. I don’t say that he was weak but I understand why some would say that. He believed in the system and he believed in the American people. It was our voice that was supposed to be important. It was not just his responsibility for our Democratic Republic to survive and flourish it was our responsibility too. Have we, as a country, lost our faith in our Democratic Republic? Have we lost the vision that was our Forefathers? Do today's Americans even understand what their vision was? What is a government by the People, of the People for the People?   Is that even close to what we have toda...
  So, the United States is going into the resort business using taxpayers' money. Trump, with Israel’s Prime Minister at his side, laid out a plan for the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip and build resorts. Trump stated, “I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy, but – the Riviera of the Middle East. This would be so magnificent.” There are some Trump loyalists that are jumping on the bandwagon. Nancy Mace of North Carolina stated, “Let's turn Gaza into Mar-a-logo”. Richard Hudson of North Carolina wrote, “President Trump will never stop working to ensure historic and lasting PEACE”. House Speaker Johnson stated, “We’re trying to get the details of it, but I think this is a good development.” Of course, all Republicans were not enthused. Ron Paul wrote, “The pursuit for peace should be that of the Israelis and the Palestinians. I thought we voted for America First”. Lindsey Graham stated, “Let’s see what our Arab friends have to say about that.” Do we as a natio...
  Things are moving fast. We are deporting immigrants. We are threatening allies and enemies alike with tariffs. We have Allies threatening retaliation tariffs in return.   We are going to build temporary housing for immigrant detainees that Trump calls “criminal aliens” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Those are just a few of the things that are happening in the chaos that we call the Trump administration. We knew it was going to be a mess but I didn’t think it would start at the pace that it would. As of Tuesday, Trump said he would enact a 25 percent tariff against Mexico and Canada. Canada is one of the largest importers of American goods. The best data I could find is that Canada 2023 exported $439.6 billion to the United States and imported $427.7 billion. Yes, there is a slight trade imbalance but, really it is pretty small. Not this huge deficit that we have been led to believe. If you look at what we import from Canada we really do not have a deficit at all. We are the lead...
  An American Airlines plane crashed with a military helicopter as the airplane was on approach to Ronald Reagan National Airport. All sixty-four lives on the airplane have been lost along with three from the helicopter. Before Wednesday there had not been a Commercial aircraft crash in the US for 13 years. On the plane were a group of teenage figure skaters returning from a meet and developmental camp with their families and, a group of steamfitter union members. The nation morns but not the entire nation. Some are treating this as another way to promote a racist agenda. At 10:51 pm the night of the crash the White House released a very appropriate press release that read “I have been fully briefed on the terrible accident that took place at Reagan National Airport. May God Bless their souls. Thank you for the incredible work being done by our first responders. I am monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise.” This is a very well-written and very presid...
  Anyone can comment on my blog, but I always hope the comments are civil and well thought out. I am also on various social media outlets. The comments on one of those outlets got so bad that I restricted it to people I follow. It is very rare to have a civil political conversation with people because most of the time it just isn’t based on the truth. Too many times, people try to kidnap the conversation just to push their own agenda of racism, bigotry, and hate. It is really hard to have a conversation with a person who tries to use logic to justify their racism, bigotry, and hate. My last blog was about the executive orders Trump had written on his first day of office. I got a response that I found very interesting. This anonymous poster wrote, “Are we looking at stupidity or something even more sinister, sabotage on behalf of the Deep State?” I don’t have any idea what the guy is talking about. Was he insinuating that I was part of the “Deep State”? I had to look up what the D...
   The Trump administration has begun and just like the last time I was hoping that he would calm down all the vibrato and become an actual leader. It is too early to tell but it isn’t looking good to me so far. An inauguration is an event that is supposed to be a celebration of the continuation of our democracy. A celebration of our greatest document that has endured our Constitution.  The Constitution is the document that established our government which is sworn to be protected by the incoming administration. The document ensures we have a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It is a day that in the past was used to ensure the incoming administration would work for all the citizens of this great country. It is supposed to be a day of unification. From what I have read so far I don't think it is off to a good start.  One of the first things Trump did was to pardon 1600 of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol. He said he was going to do...
  When disasters occur, we often see the best of people but we often also see the worst of people. The catastrophe in California caused by the wildfires is no different. We see the best in people and we see the worst in people. We see neighbors helping neighbors and we see people looting. We see people stepping up to the plate and doing extraordinary things and some people are just talking trash. We see a lot of love but we also see a lot of hate. The whole process just amazes me. I love seeing people doing what they can. I love people doing things with no strings attached. I hate bitter-controlling people trying to tell everyone what others should be doing to support these victims when they are not stepping up to the plate themselves. Venessa Bryant the widow of Kobe Bryant the great Los Angeles basketball player is one of those people who stepped up to the plate. She was at Dodger Stadium giving away free Nike Basketball shoes and other items. The first thing that came to my mi...
  I spend a lot of time researching what I write about. I often write about the problems that I feel the country is going through. I am always trying to figure out how we got here in the first place. Looking backward often helps to move forward. I can look back over the past seven decades and compare what I see today. I can see the great advances we have made and where we have been stagnant or even gone backward as a society. When it comes to informing people what is happening, we are going backward. We have a 24-hour news channel that is just a propaganda channel of the Conservative Republican Party owned by a Billionaire and the channel's purpose is to impose the conservative will upon the American people. We have had Billionaires buy some of the biggest newspapers in the country like the Wahington Post and the Los Angeles Times and then censor what the papers can print. What that is, is Billionaires making a mockery of the 1 st Amendment. We have Billionaires controlling our so...