I Could Be Wrong.

  What a screwed up country we have become or have we always been this way. My last blog was how a School Administrator in Florida was asked to resign because of a complaint of the teaching of Michelangelo’s sculpture of David. Three parents complained, Three! Three seems to be a minority to me. A minority of parents got an Administrator fired and change the direction of education for an entire school. This is the way that parental control of a school will ruin education. We have another school in Tennessee where 3 students and 3 adult workers are killed by and lone gunman that had two assault rifles and a pistol. The majority of our population wants common sense gun control. Here again a minority are controlling the gun situation in America and Children are dying. A School Administrator has to resign but a Congressman and his entire family posing with assault rifle for all things, a Christmas card, which in my opinion is promoting violence, does not. Are we screwed up or what? The...

  Michelangelo may just be one of the greatest sculptors in the history of the world. He was contracted to create, in 1501, a huge male figure for the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. He chose to create a young David from the Old Testament that was literally larger than life at 17 feet tall. The Sculpture is by scholars is stated to be technically perfect. The work was intended for the Cathedral but Michelangelo’s work was so magnificent that a commission of his contemporaries was formed to find a more prominent place for the piece of art to viewed. It was decided to be placed in front of the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of the Florence Republic. Do you know what this perfect Piece of Art is considered in Florida? Pornography! Principal Hope Carrasaquilla of the Tallahassee Classical School was given the Ultimatum of the Schools Board to resign or be fired. Carrasaquilla was not told the reason she was asked to resigned but believed it was related to the complai...

  In 2015 the Republican Party was put to the test and, it is a test that over time is has failed over and over again. It was after the 2016 election that I swore that I would never vote for another Republican again. Why? In my opinion, that is really when they lost sight of what America was and they would win at all cost. That was when the Republicans started to condemn any member that tried to think for themselves or have an opinion different than their leader. That was when the Party began to be more important than the Nation.  Every once in a while it is good to reflect what members of the Republican Party said when Donald J. Trump entered the picture. In March of 2016, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House said, “If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people’s prejudices.” This was after Trump’s refusal to denounce the KKK. ...

  I have been in Wisconsin attending a memorial service and spent time catching up with family and friends. The aunt that passed away had lived a full life so it was more like a celebration than anything else. It is still cold in Wisconsin this time of year with only a high of 25 degrees and when you are use to the 80s,  25 is cold. A few snowflakes are in the air and I am glad that I will be driving South in a couple of days. I found that conversations in gatherings like that are different than they were in years past. I had a relative that I really like pull me aside to tell me that she really loved my blog which I really appreciated. What I found interesting was that today is so polarizing that what I write about couldn’t be discussed as openly as it could have been in years past. Politics have been such a polarizing issue that entire families can’t discuss it without fights breaking out. I did not hear Trump’s name once. I didn’t hear DeSantis’s name mentioned at all. I ...

  There is a lot of talk about the border and security. We had Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about a current investigation that is being conducted about the Border Patrol that is still considered being confidential but, she didn’t seem to care. She stated that the people had a right to know. I think there is a lot of truth to that. I have always been of that thought. The people are the United States, the people have a right to know and our government and system hides a lot from us. It is interesting that they found bombs along the border. Yes, it is but does it affect our national security? Is Texas or Arizona at risk of being invaded by the Cartels? What we need is a rational assessment of the danger that is poised on the citizens. What we don’t need is some irrational Congress person running around like Chicken Little yelling, “The Sky is Falling”. It was later reported in the Huffington Post that the so called “explosive” was a duct taped ball of sand that was deemed as no thre...

  I normally do not use Facebook to push out my political posts. Facebook to me is where I mostly share my pictures of what I am doing, grandchildren and things like that. I used to post a lot of political post on Facebook but I think it got to be too divisive and there are better platforms for that than Facebook anyway. Sometimes though it is hard to resist.  I do like to post a link of anything new that I write for my blog on Facebook so people can read it. I am proud of what I write and the research and effort I put into it. I also enjoy some of the positive and sometimes not so positive but constructive conversations I have with people. Not many people on Facebook a week read my blog but that is ok and I don’t get as much feedback as I do with the other platforms. The statistics for the blog lets me know what platforms are accessing it the most and also what countries access the most. That is actually pretty cool. Two posting ago I wrote about January 6 th 2021 and what I...

  Personal Responsibly, all my life I have heard people talking about Personal Responsibility. That is always a great topic to talk about when you are talking about someone else. That is such a great phrase, personal responsibility. Do you know what I think is wrong with that phrase? The person that is saying it, is always talking about someone else or another group of people and never themselves. My parents always wanted me to take personal responsibly for my mistakes as I was growing up. They wanted me to “face the music”. Today everyone seems to be tap dancing around personal responsibility. When I was growing up and almost the first 40 years of my life I never felt that I had to take any responsibility toward race relations   in this country. I am a descendent of Scandinavian immigrants who came during the late 1800s and early 1900s. They didn’t enslave anyone. They settled in Iowa and Wisconsin that had a very small minority population. They were just hard working peopl...

  January 6 th 2021. It was about 80 degrees and I was floating in the pool on a beautiful Florida Winter day. The only people at the pool was myself and my friend from Kentucky, Larry. Larry was sitting poolside reading a book when he got a phone call from his daughter back in Kentucky. When the call ends he stands up and says “They’re storming the Capitol”. I immediately went home and turned on the TV. On every major channel it was being broadcast. People fighting with the Capitol Police. People breaking windows to get in the Capitol. People breaking through barricades which were meant to keep them back and using those same barricades as a weapon to force the Police to retreat. I witnessed on live TV our American Flag being used as a weapon against the very people that had  sworn to help protect it, our Police. There were even the Thin Blue Line flags flying, the unofficial flag of the people that back our Police. Some of the people that claim to back the police were actual...

  Sometimes I feel like I am listening to a stuck record playing the same thing over and over again. I am almost 70 years old and I am still seeing many of the issues that we had back in the 50s and 60s. Voter suppression and the communist scare. Big government verse little government. Even government sticking it’s nose in our healthcare happened back then. Why have we not moved on from all these issues? I was born during the polio epidemic. In fact I was hospitalized when I was two because they thought that I had Polio. I was walking, then I wasn’t. It was thought that I had a mild case of polio which over 70 percent of the cases were, though many have   felt the effects of Polio later in life with symptoms like weakening mussels. People were dying back then. The problem was serious enough for the world to search for a vaccine. I remember standing in line at the gymnasium at Lincoln Junior High so I could get the vaccine that was given to us in the form of a sugar cube. Pre...

  Smoke screens. That is what I see today, just smoke screens. I sit and read about how they are going to make dressing in drag illegal. I have never seen a person dress in drag shoot up a school full of children. I have never read about any child being traumatized by a man dressing up as a women. Not one. When I go to the grocery store or the shopping mall I have never seen anyone dressed in drag. I do not know a single person that dresses in drag. I have seen many comedians dress in drag and some of the world’s best actors dressed in drag and I have loved their performances. When Shakespeare was writing plays the women parts were all men dressed as women because women were not allowed to perform on stage. Men dressing as women has been going on for centuries and guess what, we have made it to the 21 st century without feeling the wrath of god. In fact, it was the fear of the wrath of god during Shakespeare’s time meant that men had to dress as women in stage plays. Women had no ...

  Yesterday morning my wife and I along with our beautiful  Springer Spaniel were sitting at my favorite spot right along the Intracoastal Waterway having a cup of coffee. As I was sitting there my eyes began to burn, I knew right away what it was that was bothering me. It was something that is bothering a lot of Southwest Florida today. The Red Tide! Just out in the water there was a salvage crew working to refloat a boat that had sunk during the hurricane. I couldn’t imagine what it is like for those guys to be working in that environment every day. The hurricane was five months ago and I would estimate that the cleanup is less than fifty percent complete. We still have sunken boat that have to be refloated, lifted and disposed of. The fuel and oil from these vessels are still seeping into our waterways. In some ways it is an ecological disaster that is going to take a long time to fix its self. Once this stuff gets into our oceans and waterways there isn’t a fast way to fil...

  DeSantis is on the news everywhere. Well let’s say everywhere but NBC and MSNCBC. Why would I say that? Well, I guess DeSantis is boycotting the two. DeSantis is protesting  because of a question that Andrea Mitchell asked Vice President Harris about his attack on Black Education. The question was “What does Governor DeSantis not know about Black History and the Black experience when he says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery not be taught to Florida schoolchildren”. DeSantis’s statement through his press secretary was “There will be no consideration of anything related to NBC Universal or its affiliates until and at least Andrea Mitchell corrects the blatant lie she made about the Governor”. The press secretary went on to say that NBC must “display a consistent track record of truthful reporting before he agrees to future appearances”. I look at the question and I wonder what lie? It was a question that deserved an answer. Why are not all the other News networks as...