I Could Be Wrong.

  Education they say is the key to solving the world’s problem. I think that is a very true statement but, there has to be a but in there because education has been used to help create many of the world’s problems. Mike Pence was in Virginia at a Christian College railing against the Critical Race Theory which is not even a subject that is taught in any school system that I know of. I do not hear any Democrat out there even talking about Critical Race Theory but here is Mike Pence trying to make an issue out of it. Democrats talk about wanting equal justice and Mike Pence sounded like the Grand Wizard at a KKK rally. What is the KKK doing at a Christian College? Oh I forgot, the KKK was a Christian organization. You know that in the Gospel the only White People were the Roman Soldiers and Pontius Pilot. They were the oppressors, the bad guys but that may be a subject for its own posting. Our education system can be used to teach students facts and how to think and research problems o

  I have written on this subject before and will probably write on it again. That is the subject of freedom. Freedom is a word that has been screamed by many different groups during many different points in history. To every group, the purpose of shouting freedom is a little bit different, but most of the time it comes down to the desire to fight suppression. Today it seems s that the people crying freedom don’t even know the meaning of the word. Is wearing a mask have anything to do with taking away a person’s freedom? If it is in, what way? Does it take away your freedom to practice your religion? Does it take away your freedom of movement? What freedom does it actually take away? Is the freedom to get other people sick a real freedom? We are fighting a pandemic that has killed three quarters of a million people here in the United States alone and many millions worldwide. If anything that is attacking a person’s freedom it is that deadly diseases as most diseases do. When we were f

  There is so much hate in America today. I wonder how we got here or was there always this hate just lying beneath the surface all along? You can say that it is new, but, when you look at World history you begin to think maybe not. There had to have been a lot of hate in Germany to murder 6 million Jews. Since then we have had other genocides like the Bosnian Genocide and the death of over 100,000 people and the Rwandan Genocide that killed some 800,000 people. Americans like to think of themselves above such things but if you really look at our own history you know we are capable of becoming the same. Just look at what we did to the American Indian. There are so many incidents of genocide of the American Indians; to study them all would probably take years.   Instead of studying it we bury it, we don’t want it taught in our schools. On a smaller scale we have situations like Rosewood in Florida where they destroyed an entire Black Community and where up to 150 Black members of the co

  I have an old 17’ powerboat that my wife and I take out to the Intracoastals a couple of times a week. Yesterday we were drifting in Tarpon Bay and I took a picture that I posted on Facebook saying that we need to work to preserve this. Every State has there treasures and our lakes, rivers and oceans have always been part of them. All my life I have lived near water and could not imagine life without them. I grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin right on the shores of Lake Michigan. On a clear day we could see some of the Chicago skyline form our shores. We had a sailboat and we enjoyed the lake as much as we could. Moving to Florida to be near the Gulf just seemed to make sense. I have been down here now for two years and it seems that the Red Tide and the Green Algae are still a problem. I read an editorial from an Orlando newspaper that stated that if you treat your state like a toilet you can’t be surprised when it backs up. We have a beautiful recourse here that we need to do more to pr

  At a High School football game in North Carolina a group of cheerleaders held up a sign that said on White paper  “Privilege”.   Of course,   in North Carolina that would cause a big uproar and in all honesty maybe at a high school football game it should. I don’t know. I have mixed emotions about that. When I was in high school we had the Vietnam War going on and civil rights. There were protest everywhere but I don’t remember any protest at my school. It is not that we were too young to know what was going on because it was in the news every day. We also heard some of the same arguments that we here today about patriotism and the protesters being unpatriotic. Things were said like “America Love It Or Leave it”. In the case of the civil rights protests we always heard   “Go Back To Africa”. Those things were heard every day but just not at school. At least I didn’t. To hold up a privilege sign at a High School football game by the cheerleaders just may not be the most appropriate th

  When I was growing up the big thing was Welfare and Government Assistance. Welfare was different from state to state so you would have people moving   from one state to another state because the Welfare benefits were better in that state. When I was growing up, supposedly, the Welfare benefits were better in Wisconsin than in Illinois so we would have people move to Wisconsin just for the better benefits. I was pretty young back then so I really do not know how true it was or how much of a real problem it was but it was talked about a lot. There was a lot of racism back then and I am not sure how much of a fact it was or how much racist talk it was. When people talked about Welfare back then they always imagined a Black person mooching off the system. That is because racism was a real problem and how we stereo   typed people was just plain wrong. The funny thing is, after 60 years we still are. In this country Welfare has always been frowned upon where corporate welfare isn’t even

  I was asked this morning if we can’t prosecute Trump why do we prosecute anyone. Why don’t we just let all the murderers go. I really didn’t have a comeback for that. The problem is not that we are bringing murderers to justice. The problem is we are not bringing Trump to justice. Why aren’t we?,   is a very good question. Does just the average guy get to avoid their legal problems like Trump has. I don’t think so. So again I ask why? Is he really that powerful? Is justice and prosecution just for the poor? I thought we were better than that but I have been known to be wrong. Our democracy and our government was attacked by domestic terrorist. I believe that those terrorists were sent by the outgoing President of the United States. I believe that their purpose was to put a non-elected person in the White House. In reality their goal was to destroy our democracy. They were supported by too many members of   the Republican Party. In my opinion the insurrection is still going on and o

  Our country seems to have a lot of problems right now. There are backlog of ships offshore waiting to be unloaded. There is a labor shortage. There is the immigration problem and many, many more problems that the conservative press are asking “What is the President going to be doing about this?” I thought that we want smaller government? This is capitalism, why is it the presidents fault? Biden has been in office only 9 months but there are all these problems that are his fault? If you buy that then I want to sell you a bridge in New York or some swamp land in Florida. We seem to want smaller government until things go wrong and then we want the government to fix them. Is it Biden’s fault that we have a backlog of ships? No. I was just reading an article from the Long Beach Post in Jan 21 that stated that it is from an increase of demand not a slowdown at the ports. 2020 they had a record number of ships off loaded. There is an increase of ships because there is an increase in dema

  I am a day late with my update because I was driving back from Wisconsin back home from my 50 th High School reunion. It was a good time and I wish I could have visited more with some of the people hadn’t seen in 30 years but you only have so much time before we all go our separate ways again. Maybe I will do a better job of contacting some of them in the future. While I was in Wisconsin the neighboring state of Iowa was hosting a Donald Trump rally. You know those Hitler style rallies that they used to have in Germany that led to the killing of 6 million Jews and minorities. Those rallies that wanted to return Germany to greatness though the purity of the German blood. Many people have noted the similarities between the Trump rallies and the Nazi rallies. I personally find the similarities scary. The people that opposed Hitler were the enemy of the people. The people that oppose Trump are the enemy of the people. 45% of the people of Iowa voted for Biden. Are they all now enemies

  Law and order. Those are the words we hear whenever a group of Black Lives Matter protestors march. Law and order. White people want law and order and Black protestors want justice. When I was younger I would have thought that was the same thing. As I have grown older I have learned that the two are much different. Law and order sometimes is suppression from justice. Oppressors are not really interested in justice. They are interested in order but not really the law. This is not going to be writing were I blast the police. The police are just a reflection of society itself. There are good people, there are bad people, there are dedicated people and there are lazy people and all kinds of other adjectives to describe all of us. It is the same with the police so let’s just leave that. The first subpoenas have been issued by the January 6 th commission to four of Trump’s top aides. Trumps Lawyers have sent the four a letter telling them to defy the subpoenas. How can we have law and o

  The real reason that I have made the trek to Wisconsin was not only my annual grouse hunt with my sons but also to attend my 50 th class reunion. Yup, I am not a young man anymore but hopefully still young at heart. In those 50 years since High School I have seen 10 different Presidents in the White House and lived through countless scandals. It has kind of been a wild ride for America. When I graduated Nixon was in the White House and he was still in his first term. The Vietnam War was still going strong and I was going to have to register for the draft. Life was very different back then. In the early 70s it seemed that political parties did not polarize the country, events did. The most polarizing event was of course the Vietnam War. The Watergate scandal was the first real political scandal that I remember that really shook the nation. Nixon was forced to resign and in my opinion it was because both political parties put the country above the party. We did have the Tax Scandal

  I was up in northern Wisconsin this weekend and here it is the beginning of October and the temperature was around 80 degrees. It is hard for me to fathom the temperature being that warm this time of year. Shorts and t-shirts were in order and I did not pack enough shorts. Normally you expect the temperature to be in the 50s this time of years with lows in the high 30s. Perfect bird hunting weather. Temperatures in the 80s and walking in the woods bird hunting is beach weather, not hunting weather. The fall colors were at their peak and it was beautiful. The weather was better for shooting a camera than shooting a gun. That was ok for me because I am not the world’s greatest hunter. I do love the bonding with my sons and grandson which is the most important part of our annual hunt. This is what the NRA used to be about and what they promoted the most. Not this anti government crap that they are selling now. I have stated many times that the second amendment is the most twisted sent

  Everything right now in the press is about the infrastructure bill. This legislation is long overdue and the whole country will benefit from it. As much as I would like to see the legislation pass I really do think that there is a more pressing issue than the Infrastructure bill. That issue would be voter suppression. There is not a single law that can’t be undone with a stroke of a pen by a Republican controlled Legislature and Executive branches of the government. They already own the Supreme Court so it would be a clean sweep. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act right now seems to be taking a back seat to a lot of other stuff. My personal feeling is it takes priority over everything else. I have constantly stated that I believe that the 2021 election may be the most important election in the history of our democracy. Everyone seems to think that 2024 election for the President is the most important but I disagree. Just look how many Republicans did not vote to certify this last ele