I Could Be Wrong.

  There is so much going on today that figuring out what to write about is hard. Do I write about Musk and DOGE? Do I write about Musk and our military plans? Do I write about Trump and his deportations? I think I will write about Trump wanting to shutter the Department of Education. Trump has now signed an executive order to close the Department of Education, according to NBC News. Trump has been promising that and now he has done it.   I am sure there are going to be a lot of lawsuits questioning whether Trump has the constitutional authority to shutter it.     The Department of Education was created by an Act of Congress during the Carter administration. The Republican President, Ronald Reagan ran on closing it but was never able to do it. George H. W. Bush wanted to be known as the Education President so it went pretty much untouched during his administration. In the 90s with the Republican-controlled Congress, stating they opposed the Department of Education, ...

  I once wrote the alternative to DEI was the return of racism, bigotry, and segregation. That comment is not 100 percent accurate. It is inaccurate because I don’t think racism and bigotry never really left us and segregation has always been the goal of the White Christian Nationalists. Republicans have tried to make us feel DEI is no longer needed because we have moved on from Racism and Bigotry. They will try and tell you that DEI today is reverse discrimination. They will tell you it forces unqualified minorities to be hired and promoted ahead of White People. If we had a wall with all the pictures of the Presidents on it, bigotry is what you would see in America. You will see 45 White guys and one African American, no Hispanics, no Asians, and no Women. You would look at that wall and know that equity is not a part of the American story. In fact, that story is very much about inequity. Why do we need a Black History Month? Isn’t Black History part of American History? It sho...

  There is more division in this country than ever in my lifetime. The country is now divided over the new funding bill in the Senate. The funding bill was put together without any input from the minority party, the Democrats. Now if you look at the last election both the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate got 49 percent of the vote. Yes, the Republicans won but does that mean that 49 percent of the country has no representation? That is what is happening. Is that what representative government is supposed to look like? If half the country doesn’t have representation, we don’t have a democracy. That is the problem that party politics has caused in America. In fact, party politics are what is killing democracy. We do not have a government that represents the people anymore. Our government is now controlled by money and not by the people. Yes, we do have elections but most candidates are sold to us like a box of laundry detergent. We are increasingly being told who t...

  American exceptionalism, we have always heard about American exceptionalism. To be honest with you I never understood what that meant. What are we exceptional at? Sports? Are we exceptional because we produce the greatest athletes? Music? Are we exceptional because we produce the greatest musicians? Because we have the greatest Army in the world? Does that make us exceptional? I was told American exceptionalism is now based on Freedom, not truth and justice. Freedom of speech except for groups we don’t like. Freedom of religion except for those religions we don’t like. Freedom of love except only certain kinds. Is it only what we will accept, that is American exceptionalism now? Time magazine published an article stating the United States has been added to the Global Human Rights Watchlist due to the decline of civil liberties. We are on the same watch list that those third-world countries are on that Trump called shithole countries.   I thought I would never see that in m...

  Every day when I wake up in the morning, I ask the question to my wife “Is he dead yet”. She never asks me who because just like much of the world she knows who I am asking about. I am willing to bet there are many people in this country and much of the world asking the same question every morning when they get out of bed.   I remember the first time Trump was running for office a woman on the dock where I kept my sailboat told me how she liked Trump. Here Trump had been accused, even back then, of sexual assault, bragging about going into the dressing room for the Miss Teenage Pageant, and was recorded saying that he would grab women by their pussies. Trump even stated he could shoot a guy right on 5 th Avenue and not lose a single vote.   I asked her how she could like him and she said that she felt that he really “talked to her” . For nine years I have remembered that. She didn’t care about the lies, she didn’t care about the assaults, what she cared about was what ...

  Did Trump learn his diplomacy skills from Stalin or did he learn them from Hitler? Diplomacy through bullying is the only diplomacy I think that Trump knows. Stalin ruled lesser nations with an iron fist.   Trump likes to rule as a tough guy but who he is being tough to is our friends and not our enemies. As I write this Trump is installing 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods. What it shows to the world is that the promises the United States makes and the treaties the United States negotiates are not worth the paper on which they are written. We have had a North American trade agreement of some kind in place since 1994. It was negotiated by President George H. W. Bush in 1992, ratified by Congress in 1993, and went into effect in 1994. It was called the North American Free Trade Agreement commonly known as NAFTA.   The treaty was not the booming success its proponents wanted or the disaster that its opponents said it would be. Nevertheless, in 2005 then Presiden...

  Is America for sale? It sure looks like it to me. I saw a picture of Trump holding a 5-million-dollar gold card that would act as a type of green card that would let people migrate to the United States and could act as a gateway to citizenship for the rich. Trump was asked if people like Russian Oligarchs could purchase the card. Trump's answer was “Yeah, possibly. Hey. I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.” I would have asked if the Trump administration cared where the money came from. There are a lot of criminals that are worth a whole lot more than 5 million dollars. Could this be just a way to give foreign crime cartels an easier path to come to the United States? With just about everything for sale in America, including our government.   It is unsurprising that China and Russia control a big chunk of it. China and Russia have found their way into the lives of pretty much every American. With ownership comes influence, and with influence comes power....

  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...