I Could Be Wrong.

  It was 10:30 am Sunday morning and Hurricane IDA was bearing down on Louisiana so I turned on the TV so I could watch the news on its progress. I turned on CNN and all the news was Afghanistan. I turned on MSNBC and all the news was on Afghanistan. I turned on ABC news and all the news was on Afghanistan. I never watch Fox News but I thought I would just check out that too. You guessed it, Afghanistan. I finally turned on CBS News and they were actually covering IDA. Here we have a hurricane that is bearing down on the mainland of the United States most of the news outlets were covering Afghanistan. You would think that a storm that will affect the lives of millions of American people would be more important than interviewing the talking head that just want to embarrass our President. I have always been a news freak. Why? Because I like following history and reading the news is how I can follow history. I just love the internet because I can follow the news without having to wa...

  Florida is an interesting state. We are a playground for the rich and famous and also the people that think they are rich and want to be famous. We also have a lot of poor and homeless. The differences of the haves and the have-nots are astounding. Also there is a huge gap in ages and that may be were a lot of Florida’s problems lie. We have a lot of old retires that live here that do not have the emotional ties. They will tell you that they are from Michigan or Indiana or Wisconsin plus almost all the other northern states. I come right out and say that I am from Wisconsin because that is where I grew up and worked and retired from. That is the place where a piece of my heart will always be. We all look at Florida and want a piece of it to be like back home. That also creates a large group of people that are not working for what is best for Florida because they do not have a big emotional stake in the success of the state. We are here just to escape the cold. Also the elderly ar...

  Living in Florida is like living in Covid Capital of the world. Of all the places that you would think, with its older population, which is more vulnerable it would be just the opposite? You would think that a State with a reputation of being a religious state would be looking out for the welfare of their children. Well, our Republican State Government is doing neither. DeSantis at every turn has done nothing but help the spread of this deadly virus. It is like he is paid by the virus and not by the people that he is suppose to protect. Is he getting a kickback from the funeral homes? The Republicans seem to do things for two reasons, money and power so he must be getting something for just letting people die. I know he wants to be president but letting your supporters die does not seem to be a good way of accomplishing that. Two things that I keep hearing is freedom of choice and personal responsibility. The freedom of choice is an interesting argument. I am a freedom of choic...

  The news has been consumed with Afghanistan. I don’t want to belittle the problem but believe it or not we have do have bigger problems. Some of the problems are so big that the news is casually bored somewhat with the stories. The Covid pandemic will not go away because of the political stupidity in this country. Then there is climate change and the environment. We also have all the gun violence and the fact that we have a part of our population that want to turn our government into a fascist style of government. These are much bigger problems than Afghanistan is but hey, they won’t sell as many newspapers so the press will always go with the hot stories and push back the real problems that won’t go away to the back page. It is always easier to keep the people’s attention when the hot story is always changing. As I have stated before that I live in Florida. All of the long term problems seem to affect Florida more than some states. When I moved here 2 years ago the big story w...

  A couple of days have gone by and I am still pissed. We have embarrassed ourselves in the eyes of the world again. What in the hell did people think would happen when you negotiated with terrorist? Whether you are a Trump supporter or a Biden supporter, whether you are a Republican or Democrat what you are seeing is what you should have expected. That is what makes me the most angry is the fact the people that are running the government are suppose to smarter than I am. Trump negotiated with the Taliban which is an organization that has a history of suppressing women. So in reality we had a President that sexually assaults women negotiating with an organization that suppresses women and you think there is going to be different results. That is what pisses me off the most. We should have known. The press should have been calling that to the attention of the American People when the negotiations were going on. Now it is too late. Yes, Biden’s administration should have figured it...

  It has not been a good week to be an American in the eyes of the world I think. Of course in the eyes of the world I do not think it has been a good 4 ½ years to be an American. There are those that would say screw the world but is that really productive? I have said before and I will say again you have to have people willing to follow you if you are going to be a world leader. America first is not a good look for someone that wants to be a so called leader. Bullying someone is not a way to make them want to follow you. Talking boldly with no action is not a way to get people to follow you. Will they ever want to follow us again? I have seen us lose two wars in my lifetime. One was Vietnam and the other was Afghanistan. Both times we did not understand the culture and resolve of the people we were fighting. We assume that everyone wants what we have and that is a bad assumption. Of course one thing that they all want and that we have is power and they cannot have that being sub...

  A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at table outside writing while my granddaughter took sailing lessons. It was a beautiful day and a great atmosphere to write. The water looked great and the sound of the kids running around just added to the great atmosphere. As I was sitting there a lady that I knew from Illinois came as sat with us. I have always thought of this lady as a little bit of an intellectual type. We were not in a very political discussion when this lady says that she is glad she is not from Michigan with their crazy governor. I was a little bit surprised by what came out of my mouth next. I said to her “Do you know why we have never had a Women President? It is because you guys eat your own”. The woman got up and left which was alright with me because I could go back to my writing. True as my statement was I probably should not have said it. Now women have been treated like second class citizens since the beginning of time. This has not been a race thing. Just ab...

  As I am writing this today is Friday August 13 th but it won’t be posted until tomorrow. The first thing I asked my wife when I got up this morning was “Did it Happen?” then I laughed. Today is Friday the 13 th , National Kool-Aid Day and the pillow guy says the Supreme Court is going to reinstate the former guy as President. That is what I call a trifecta. You just can’t make this stuff up. Steven King or Douglas Preston could not do a better job of spinning a tale.   When this novel is over there is going to be a lot of disappointed Trump supporters out there. I have been saying for some time that the lying has to stop. The pillow guy Mike Lindell is just off the wall. He has produced no evidence that the election was corrupt and there is no indication that any of his so called election fraud evidence is even being showed to a lower court let alone making it all the way to the Supreme Court. You just cannot walk up to the door of the Supreme Court with a box of evidence...

  I am a big Twitter user. I will make a confession here and now and that is I get most of my writing ideas from Twitter. I do not use Twitter to research my subjects but I use it to measure the pulse of what is going on. I use it to express my feelings and the follow back that I get. Most of it is good but it is the bad responses that send me off doing my research. In fact I wish I reached more people with opposing views so I would know what to learn about. As I write and try to show a different point of view I am also learning myself. It is definitely a interesting journey that I have started myself on. One subject that I always seem to come back to week after week is the subject of freedom. The journey to discover what freedom is one of the most important journey an American can make. It is also a word that has evolved over the last 250 years. What was the freedom that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson fighting for? They were fighting for the freedom of self rule. The fre...

  The other night I was watching the Football Hall of Fame Inductions being broadcast from Canton and was glad for the distraction. Peyton Manning gave a very entertaining acceptance speech. He talks about all the issues that football has had to take on and one issue he brought up was the political issue. In all due respect to Peyton the political issue has ripped the nation more than it has ripped apart football. It is great that Peyton wants to be the gatekeeper of the great game but I wish he would be more of a uniter for our nation. He does a lot of great and funny commercials. What if he would do a public service announcement asking all his fans to get vaccinated, that getting vaccinated would save lives. He would not only be a great steward for football but also the nation. Great men step up and do great things when needed. As football approaches I fear that we will have the same old they are disrespecting the flag argument. Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the playing o...

  We are in the middle of a pandemic that in my opinion we should have already defeated. As our knowledge of the virus grew so should have our actions to fight the virus and make us safe. Here lies the   problem. Many of our neighbor’s attitude has not changed since day one. Too many of our neighbors have fought tooth and nail to do anything that would enable anyone to fight this virus. Instead of all of us fighting together to defeat this virus many in our government has made it an issue that divides us even more. Now I will say that they are in the minority but it is a large and active minority that is very hard to ignore. This is the minority that wants all the voter suppression. Minority rule always leads to the discrimination of the majority. There is a voting rights bill in the Senate right now that would help end voter suppression. It is facing fierce resistance from the Republicans that want minority rule. I live in Florida now but used to live in Wisconsin. Gerryman...

  I have just returned home from 5 weeks in Wisconsin visiting friends and family. Wisconsin is such a great place to be in the summer especially if you are along Lake Michigan. The sunrises along the lake are some of the best in my opinion. Being on the west coast of Florida I don’t get the sunrises like I did in Wisconsin but then I didn’t get the sunsets like I do in Florida. I have always like sunrises because it always made me feel reborn with every new day. There are always trade-offs wherever you live. Being back home were the Delta variant of the virus seems to be running rampant is a little scary. We in Florida, it seems to me, is back at a level where people should really start protecting themselves. To have the numbers we are having even with half the population vaccinated is scary. It is almost like we have been doing nothing here. With the track record of out Governor of suppressing numbers   I am pretty sure it is even worse than what they are saying. I never s...

  When we vote for someone do we carry some of the responsibility for what that elected official did? When we are a supporter of a political party do we carry some of the responsibility of what that party does? I have wrestled with that question for some time. I voted for Reagan because I was a fan of smaller government and less intrusive government. Reagan said that government was the problem, even though I did not believe that, I still voted for him. If you were a fan of smaller government you voted Republican. What about all the other stuff Reagan did? He was anti-welfare and so was I, but in the process he was starting the racial divide that we have today in the Republican Party. He was very anti-union which I wasn’t. Looking back if I had to do it all over again I would not have voted for Reagan. He was the one that courted the religious right that so dominates the Republican Party now. He spoke of this lady in Chicago that was getting multiple welfare checks and was basical...