I Could Be Wrong.

  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Every day, I’d start my school day by reciting those words. I have heard people say it was no longer done in our schools so I searched the internet and still see that it is the same today. Of course, I knew that because my wife has been a teacher in Florida and Wisconsin. Can you force someone to say the pledge? Since 1943 the Supreme Court ruled that you can’t. I agree with that ruling. Making someone say the Pledge of Allegiance is like making someone pray. If they don’t believe in it then it has no meaning. In a free country, someone should not be made to pledge something they don’t believe in, if they are made to then we are not a free country. When I say the pledge, I don’t say the words “under god” because I don’t believe it to be true and wasn’t part of the real pledge in the first place. Those words were added during the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950s. I do believe in the pledge but part of being a t...

  Is this chaos what the American people voted for last November? I thought the issue was cheaper eggs. I thought Bidenomics, as the Republicans called it, was ruining the country by destroying the economy. Now they are saying the “Bird Flu” makes eggs so expensive. When Biden was President, it was because of Bidenomics but now that the Republicans are in the White House it is because of the “Bird Flu”. Now it appears the economy that the Democrats were ruining was fine after all. Since Trump took office, they have talked about everything but the economy. All of a sudden, we need to have Greenland. All of a sudden, we need to have Canada as our 51st state. All of a sudden, we are going to take back the Panama Canal. The Republicans didn’t run on any of these issues. They ran on the state of the economy. They ran on inflation. From day one they were going to lower prices they blamed the Democrats and Biden for not controlling. Since the election, we have not seen anything being do...

  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...

  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...