A Socio-Political Blog
When I was very young my cousin, Becky, moved to California. To this day, over 60 years later, I remember my awe at where she was going. California. Land of sun, beaches, oranges, golden opportunities and Disneyland. It seemed so magical and so far away. I dreamt of visiting her, imaging what it must be…
A lot has been said (and a lot more will be said) about which party’s environmental safety strategy is correct and which is defined by complete incompetence. Have you already decided which party is which? If you have, that’s the problem. The fight to prevail; to win; to annihilate the opposition, is the war that…
The Los Angeles fires hadn’t been raging for even a day before Donald Trump issued blame on Truth Social. “Governor Newscum (sic) refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many…
It’s a conundrum to be sure. I don’t want America to fail no matter who is at the helm. I want America to be prosperous and strong regardless of what party leads. The problem is, I don’t agree with what Trump and a majority of Republicans believe to be the measurements of strength. I am…
The Des Moines Register reports: “Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds says she is ready to use ‘every tool at our disposal,’ including deploying the state’s National Guard and law enforcement, to carry out President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations of illegal immigrants, according to a joint statement by Republican governors.” Reynolds and 25 other Republican…
Here are a few things I am thankful for on my 67th celebration of Thanksgiving. First and foremost, I am thankful for the health of my children and for the opportunities they are creating for themselves. Every day I am thankful that I became a father (and a stepfather) and am still, occasionally, called into…
In my hometown of Waterloo, our city’s Human Rights Commission “held a press conference Tuesday responding to flyers distributed in Waterloo and Evansdale earlier this month asking people to join a neo-Nazi group” according to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. “Papers from the Aryan Freedom Network were placed on doorsteps by disguised individuals around 1 a.m.…
This article is very personal, perhaps uncomfortably so. It’s a subject where there are no happy stories. It is about suicide. Suicide is on the rise. Globally there are now a million suicide deaths annually. National statistics show a 125 percent rise in the past decade, and locally we have seen an increase. According to…
I’ve been working at Tropical Smoothie for two months now and the joy I find in the experience has not faded one bit. Granted I spent 3 weeks of those 8 in Scotland with my wife, and I only work in the morning before the consistently crazy lunch rush, but going in at 6:00 am…
The most insidious, long-term, result of this Republican sweep through our legislative waters will not be the dismantling or reduced funding of public institutions designed to protect the average American, like the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy and the Department of Health and Human Resources,…