I Could Be Wrong.

  Many of us that voted for Biden were voting for decency returning to our government. We had heard all the insults against minorities, women and even the handicap that had helped make us more divided than any point probably since the Civil War. Many of us thought if we elected a decent man to the Presidency that we could as a nation start healing. Were we ever wrong! I had so much hope in November for America after the election. Biden would not have been my first choice but I knew he was a good man and he knew his way around Washington. I knew that he would try and unite the country. He was from the Obama administration and Obama worked very hard not to divide the nation to the point that I thought domestically he looked weak. Don’t get me wrong I really liked Obama. He was a good family man that lived his religion and as a country our reputation around the world flourished. At home, the right was mobilizing at the end of his term to drastically shake up our nation. I feel that ...

  I am one of those people that do not understand why conservatives hate liberals.   I read the article that tries to explain it but I still don’t understand. I am sure I have benefited by the fact that I am white, but, should I want that to continue? Should I want to feel like I am superior to someone that is not white? Maybe superior is not the right word. Maybe the word is better, that I am better than a person of color. White privileged is a real thing and you don’t have to remind me that I have benefited from it. Growing up in the times of Dr. King and how he preached that we were all bothers is a message that has stuck with me my whole life. In the 60s and the 70s it was easier to have Black brothers or Hispanic brothers. We all had jobs that we worked together. They were factory jobs in the metal fabrication or automobiles or many of the other factories that were all over this country. We had a strong manufacturing base that required that we all worked together under ...

  I am going to start this out by saying Merry Christmas. I love this time of year. I love the lights and the happiness that they bring to so many. I love the Christmas music from the old Christmas Carols to the new things being performed by our popular artist. I do not consider myself a typical Christian. I don’t believe in the Church and many of its teachings. I do believe in the love and the kindness that this time of year is suppose to bring. I also know the heartache that it can bring. I have not spent a Christmas with my children for over 20 years. They are from my first marriage so their holidays are divided with my ex-wife and their in-laws. We used to celebrate Christmas the week before but to be truthful with you it made Christmas just more depressing for me. I wanted to be with my children but understood what the pressures that they had on their lives so quietly, I backed away.   I had to find other ways to make the day special. What are we celebrating really at C...

  I was reading a headline that said that we were closer to a civil war than most people want to believe. Things like that scare me and it should be scaring everyone. Have you seen anything good come out of any civil war? I haven’t. One thing that a civil war will do is not make us a superpower anymore. It will strengthen China and Russia and we will less respected in the world than we are. It has happened fast too. With Obama as our President the world loved him and respected us. I really think that is why Putin and the Russians interfered in our 2016 election. What is happening to America is exactly what Putin wants. By making us weaker he makes himself stronger. Donald Trump and the Republicans played right into his hand. It was almost like it was planned that way. Maybe we were changing things too fast. Our very racist and religious people were dead set against any rights for the gay community. I was ready for the change but maybe the prejudices within the church were too gre...

  I write about Freedom a lot on these postings. Freedom is just one of those words that just gets twisted and twisted so it no longer has any real meaning when it is shouted by someone like Ted Cruz. A person screaming many times freedom is really screaming Oppression. Do you really think that Ted Cruz wants to free women? Do you really think that Ted Cruz cares are about a person of color’s ability to vote? Do you really think a person like Ted Cruz cares about freedom of religion or freedom from religion? The only thing that Republicans like Ted Cruz cares about it power and that is not freedom for you, me, the people of Texas or the people of this nation. Freedom has become just a hollow word that no longer has any real meaning. How can you scream freedom while taking a woman’s freedom away? How can you scream freedom while making it harder for minorities to vote? How can you scream freedom when you are redrawing districts to make people’s vote meaningless. These are not thin...

  Freedom. It should always come down to freedom. The problem is what is real freedom? Is it not having to wear a mask? I really don’t think our fore fathers fought so you wouldn’t have to wear a mask during a pandemic? Could it be so motor cyclist don’t have to wear a helmet? No I don’t think that they would have fought for that either. How about that seatbelt you have to wear? I don’t think that they fought for that either. Is our education system so poor that people no longer know why we fought our revolution? When I was in school I learned the phrase “No Taxation Without Representation”. We had to know about the Stamp Act and the Townsend Act. We had to know what led up to the Boston Tea Party. England wanted to exert its power over the Colonies and how they were taxed and the Colonies wanted a say in how they were going to be taxed. I wonder if they still teach that in school? If they do, it does not seem that too many Republicans have remembered their lessons. Our revolutio...

  As it should be January 6 th is dominating the news. The documents that have been turned over to the committee by Mark Meadows are explosive. This was a planned coup and the plan ran deep into the Republican Party. Another question is how much did Fox News know and when did they know it. Was the conservative news group part of the plot to overturn the election? It looks like the more the committee digs the darker things become. Did any of the other News Outlets know what was going on because it appears Fox sure did. Having the news to spin the story correctly would be paramount to the success of the coup. There have been text messages released of Fox News personalities pleading with Trump to tell his supporters to leave the Capital. They knew whose supporters they were. Then go on the news trying to spin the story away from Trump. All the garbage that we heard about these people was Antifa were just lies. That is Lies with a big capital L. Other conservative news outlets tried...

  I have always wondered why so many so called sane people follow a morally corrupt ideology like Nazism or many of the old corrupt monarchies that have dotted the world. I have never been one to follow anyone let alone someone that is corrupt morally. I don’t follow anyone now and the only reason I vote for a person is because of the direction that I want the country to go. I do not like the direction that the Republicans want the country to go so I will not vote for a Republican. I don’t have to be some flag waving fake American. I show my love for America by how I vote. History is consumed by the people that what I call would be suppressors. I never understood how people could just sit silent during historical events like the witch hunts from 1450AD to 1750AD. Were witch hunts really about people performing magic? They were more for what people would call heresy, people that believed differently than the church and the government. It was more of a tool to suppress independent ...

  Yesterday it was a travel day. I was traveling from Florida to Wisconsin. Because we were only going to be there for four days we flew. Covid is still around of course, in fact, in many areas of the country it is making it back with a vengeance. This new variant looks to be more transmittable but less deadly. To me that is both good and bad news. The good news is that the vaccines seem to work against it. The bad is the fact that because it is not as deadly that some people will not take it as seriously as they should. On the plane after all this time you still see people, young healthy people, still not covering their noses. I have a preexisting condition.   I have noncancerous scarring on my lungs from exposure to asbestos. Wearing a mask is hard for me and I get out of breath easily. Many times I have to stop and catch my breath walking through an airport because of the mask but I know it is even more important for me to wear one than most so I just take it slow and keep ...

  As some of you know I live in the beautiful state of Florida. If you are a person that loves the water and hates the snow this is a place for you. I love the water and as a kid growing up in Wisconsin I used to love snow, as an old man not as much so we packed up everything and   moved. I have been too many beautiful places in this country from Acadia to Yellowstone but my favorite sight is from the top of the Sanibel Causeway bridge looking out over San Carlos Bay toward Pine Island Sound. I just find it an amazing sight that I never get tired of. Is that sight going to last forever?   If you research climate change the future of states like Florida may be in for some dark days that it may not be able to recover from. Climate change is going to be a serious problem for the whole world but Florida will be a disaster as will other coastal communities. More powerful storms will just bring more damage. Yes, we can rebuild but if insurance companies won’t insure you, can ...

  Here we are sitting around waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on an issue that should not have even made it to the Supreme Court. Of course that issue is what is called abortion. I call it suppression of women. I don’t know how they will decide the issue but from all reports it does not look good. I will never understand how a person can take a vow to protect and uphold the Constitution and then totally become a partisan hack. The Court is suppose to be above that so I thought when I was younger. As I have grown older I have realized that they may be the most partisan branch of our government. I have posted on Twitter many times that freedom is a hollow word until all women are free. This issue of choice is really a lot bigger than abortion. The issue is as old as the beginning of time. Men suppressing women. Too many have that caveman mentality that all you need to have is a big club to make a women submit. Those comics have long gone but the mentality still exists. It is...

  Yesterday I was sitting on my little 17’ boat in the middle of Tarpon Bay enjoying the sunshine and the beauty that was all around me. We like to go over there and just turn the engine off and just drift. Sometimes we see a dolphin or two and can even see a manatee every now and then. There is always a ton of birds like pelicans, egrets and cormorants. Very peaceful but yet still very much alive. As I was sitting there I was wondering what my next subject should be for my blog so I sent out a tweet asking for suggestions. I am so widely read that only one person replied back but the suggestion fit what I was doing that day. The suggestion was that I should write about clean water. I have written about the environment and clean water before but I am pretty sure that I will write many times about the environment that surrounds me. I grew up on the Great Lakes in the 50s and 60s. I swam, fished and just enjoyed the beauty that Lake Michigan had to offer for our daily lives. As an ...

  Covid 19 will just not go away. Of course it has had a lot of help for sticking around. We didn’t react fast enough when it was first discovered and it mutated. Again we don’t react fast enough and it has mutated again. People are still dying and there are just too many people out there that don’t care. When did we become such an uncompassionate country? When is being able to go and have our beer at the corner bar more important than protecting the lives of your loved ones? Is it just because it is easier to believe the lies than to search for the truth and then do something to help. Real heroes save lives. The people that have been vaccinated and have been wearing masks have saved many lives. I am vaccinated and I still mask up. I save lives. There is a new variant now call Omicron. This strain was first identified in South Africa. The World Health Organization is concerned that it may be more resistant to the vaccines that some of us have already taken. If you read some of th...