I Could Be Wrong.

 The law is the law. I am pretty sure almost all of us have heard that saying. We have been told that the foundation of our Republic is equal justice under the law. That just doesn’t seem to be working today. John Adams, our second President believed in that principle when he defended the British Soldiers against murder charges arising from the Boston Massacre. Here is one of the leaders of our independence movement defending the very people that he wished to leave. Why would he do that? Could it be that he believed in the principles of “Right to Counsel” and that all people are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law? Those are a couple of the grand ideals that this country was founded on. Today it seems that our courts are more like a rich mans competition than what John Adams envisioned. In today’s court a case against the soldiers would have been pleaded down and never gone to trial. Why? For the simple reason that I no longer think that the goal of our justice system is...

  Can a person have a debate with a Trumpster? From my experiences to that question the answer is “no”. For the most part I try to remember that but every once in a while I mess up and try. Whether it is on my blog or on any of the social media platforms I use I learned a long time ago to not get into arguments with a Trump supporter because they just quote the already debunked conservative talking points. In most cases they don’t even look at what I have researched and written about. In some cases, their in your face stupidity just shines through, in other cases you know you are talking to smart people that for whatever reason they don’t want to look for the truth. Those are the people I will have trouble looking at in the same way ever again.   Not that they really care what I think of them because I am sure most don’t.   Some of them were people I really kind of idolized and thought they were some of the smartest people in the room. What saddens me the most is where I ...

  Another Super Bowl and another controversy, are you surprised? What would be Monday after the Super Bowl without some made up controversy that has to dominate the air waves. This time it is a political and racial divide that has created the controversy. That, and the fact people have no sense of a history or appreciation of history is what will always amaze me. During the pregame ceremony they had a performer sing what many call the Black National Anthem . Being White I never paid attention to the fact that there was anything that was considered the Black National Anthem . Being who I am I decided to look it up. The so called Black National Anthem is actually a hymn that was first was poem written by James Weldon Johnson, chairman of the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida around 1900. The poem was supposed to be written to commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Instead it was written about the ongoing Civil Rights movement and the struggles of African Americans ...

  DeSantis wants to have a law making it illegal to camp in public parks. To some this is just another attack on the homeless. I have mixed emotions on that. I don’t like the fact that we have people sleeping in our parks because it makes me feel unsafe while in the park. The reason that I have a problem with a law like what DeSantis is suggesting - it doesn’t solve the problem of homelessness. What is being proposed is that counties would be required to ban homeless from sleeping in public places, and instead have all of them to stay in designated camps with security, sanitation and access to behavioral health services. To some this may sound great but to some this may sound scary. Putting people into camps should always sound scary to all of us. We have had camps in the past and they were disastrous. In a statement that was released by DeSantis he said “We cannot allow any city in Florida to become like San Francisco, where homeless, drugs, and crime have disseminated the quali...

  We were taking a little tour around Charleston, South Carolina before we started heading home to Florida. We were told to see Battery Park on our way out of town. I thought that Charleston was a beautiful town with a great shoreline with beautiful old homes overlooking the harbor. Battery Park was built in 1670 is a defensive seawall and promenade along the lower end of the peninsula. Large caliber guns were placed here to protect the town from the British during the War of 1812. Cannons were placed during the Civil War to protect the City from a Union assault which never happened. The whole area is beautiful and I can see why it would be a historical tourist attraction. While we were there, there appeared to be a protest going on. We had two men with a big pickup truck with a big flag pole attached to the bed of the truck. Being Charleston, South Carolina you can already imagine what the flag they were flying was. The battle flag of the Confederacy of course. Right across from t...

  My wife and I just drove up from Fort Myers to Savanna Georgia for a U.S. Sailing conference at the DeSoto. Great place and such a beautiful setting. It’s a 7 hour drive but because the Interstate was shut down by Ocala because of an accident it took us an extra hour. Because having to detour off Interstate 75 and come up through Florida we got to see a side of Florida that isn’t what the normal tourist sees. As we drove along U.S. 301 we notice a lot of businesses that were closed and all boarded up. It is easy to see where U.S 301 was at one time the major road through the area similar to U.S 231 in Georgia. The interstates changed all that but you do get a sense of history when driving what now are the “back roads”. These roads were at one time the roads that kept the nation tied together. The old U.S. Highway system connecting towns and states together. I saw areas that were at one time very prosperous are now what I would call run down and depressed. I kinda think of them as...

  I for one am sorry that Governor Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Presidential race. Why you might ask knowing that I would think that he would make a terrible President? While he was running around the country, trying to promote his disastrous anti-wake agenda, Florida was getting at least a break from his bullying ways. With his chance of becoming President and basically ridiculed by much of the rest of the country I feared he would come back here with his anti-woke agenda and make it even stronger to try and show the rest of the country that he is right. I fear for our State. The “Free State of Florida” is not as free as when DeSantis took office. I think that the next couple of years are going to be hard ones. Our real issues like the highest inflation in the Country and our escalating insurance costs are not being addressed by his anti-woke agenda.   Instead, this is what is being addressed. As much of the nation knows that much of Florida is a State that is in lov...

  Sometimes you just have to vent. Today may just be one of those days. I was reading how the Republicans in the Florida State Legislature introduced a bill to give Donald Trump five million dollars of Florida’s taxpayers’ money to pay for his defense. DeSantis, our dear Governor, who has been insulted over and over again by Trump but was so big of a coward he was afraid not to endorse Trump, at least had the guts to say he would veto it. Even though it won’t become law it shows the problem with the Republican Party and the Florida Republicans in general. Florida is a State that many of its citizens are suffering from the fury of Mother Nature but, they want to give a billionaire money for his court problems?   I will repeat, our Republican Legislature wanted to give five million dollars to a billionaire for his legal problems. We have a ton of problems here in Florida and none of them have to do with Trump’s legal problems. I would call this putting the needs of the one befor...

  Our courtrooms should be about the law. It is in our courtrooms that a person should be tried and not in the paper or on TV talk shows. The courtroom for public opinion is not a real courtroom and many times is just being fed smokescreens and lies that are meant to hide the truth. Public Opinion may count at the ballot box but it doesn’t count in a court of law. Facts that are presented to a jury are what is important. What the public thinks is not fact. We have always had our Court of Public Opinion but with today’s “Social Media” it is just more amplified. It is what makes it harder to search for the truth if that is what you are searching for. Too many times people want to spread the lies in hopes that they don’t search for the truth. Never before in my lifetime have I seen defendants like Trump, Giuliani, and others using their social media accounts thinking that they can influence the courts. It is one thing to use social media to try and influence the public but it is ano...

  Yesterday my wife and I took a drive down Ft. Myers Beach to see how it was doing. We try to check on how the beach community is recovering.   It has been just about 16 months since Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on the whole area but one of the worst hit was Ft. Myers Beach. Most mornings the local news stations carry stories about the positive things that have happened in the area during its recovery. The New Margaretville is now open and taking bookings which is positive.   The Pink Shell is open and the Lanai Kai’s beach bar is open from 10 to 5. Yes, there is progress but most of the Island looks like a war zone. All the recovery stories are great but what is lost is all the people that recovery is still a long ways off or will never happen. We had the Red Coconut RV Park that sold for 54 million dollar. That is a huge profit for the owners that bought it for 700,000 dollars back in the 1980s. The stories that you don’t hear about are the people that occupied that par...