I was surprised to read about the proposed renaming of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
I could not imagine our humble Chief Executive agreeing to such a request.
But the members of the board of the Kennedy Center (recently appointed by President Humble himself) are adamant that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts should be re-christened as the TRUMP-KENNEDY CENTER.
But why stop there? If we really want to make our national properties great again, there are many opportunities to burnish our USA pride with more of the TRUMP brand.
America’s biggest problem right now is we just don’t have enough things named after Donald Trump.
To really honor the greatest statesman in the history of western civilization, may I humbly suggest the following re-brandings for your consideration:
I don’t like Nazis. I don’t like racists. I can’t stand Communists.
But I don’t think we should shoot them.
One of the many wonderful things about the American ideal is that we have a free marketplace of ideas. We all get to speak our minds. If we are persuasive, we can change minds. If we are not, we can be ignored.
But for the last 20-something years, the Left in America has been dragging us down a slippery slope of Cancel Culture.
If I don’t like you; if I disagree with your ideas; if your worldview irritates me – well, I’ll just gather a crowd and we will shout you down at your event.
We’ll harass you while you’re dining at a restaurant. We’ll stage a protest outside your home. We’ll dox you publicly to make it easier for nut-jobs to find you and threaten your family.
What makes a person so arrogant, so convinced of their own infallibility, that they actively hate anyone who disagrees with them?
I’ve lost friendships over politics. I’ve known people who just could not stand the fact that I would not agree with them about X, Y, or Z. The longer the discussion, the more enraged they would become.
And predictably, once they ran out of arguments, the name calling would begin. If you had the nerve to disagree with them, you were a bigot, homophobe, xenophobe, whatever.
And then they end the discussion, end the relationship, and cut you out of their lives. Because you do not agree with them, you must be marginalized.
Charlie Kirk was so hated by the Left that some of them are basically celebrating his assassination. This is so far beyond the pale that it staggers my mind. It is a sickening display of how depraved our politics have become.
Gone are the days when we could respectfully disagree. Gone is our tolerance for dissenting opinions. Cancel Culture has erased all that.
Have we forgotten that aggressive dictators are never satisfied when you try to appease them? That it only encourages them to seek more conquests?
Think Hitler. Think Stalin. Surely we can agree they were bad guys. Do you remember how well appeasing them worked out?
Now let’s think about Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping – two tyrants responsible for the violent deaths of more people than we will ever know. Cut from the same cloth as Hitler and Stalin.
Putin’s Russia and Xi’s Communist China are the two greatest threats to liberty in the world today. And both countries are on the prowl.
Millions of young Americans are upset because they may lose access to the popular Chinese espionage app known as TikTok.
A rap video supporting TikTok and praising Chinese President Xi Jinping recently went viral with more than 8 million views.
Why are so many young Americans oblivious to the dangers we face from an aggressive Chinese cyber-threat?
I know many people who love their TikTok. They don’t understand the fuss. What possible harm could come from viewing and posting videos online?
Plenty, it turns out.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet and technology company. Like all Chinese companies, it is required by law to share its data with the communist government upon demand.
And do not doubt me here – the Chinese government is very demanding.
Her red face twisted into a snarl as she let out another cry. It’s amazing how much volume an 11-week-old child can produce.
As I held her, I looked down into her noisy little face and tried to console her.
“Honey, it won’t be much longer. I promise we will feed you soon.”
I don’t think she was listening. She filled her lungs again and hurled another screeching protest.
The day was young; it was only 9:15. Her mom’s note stated that her bottle was due at 9:30. Now I’m not the sharpest crayon in the grandpa box, but I do know better than to mess with a young mother’s infant feeding schedule.
Even if she is my youngest grandchild. Even if I hate to see her upset. Even if I hate to listen to her screeching.
But all poor little Meredith knew was, I am hungry now!Continue reading →
Why did I just donate $100 to Nikki Haley’s Presidential Campaign?
I have been a Conservative Republican my entire voting life. I have never missed voting in a presidential election.
But it really hit me today … if I have to choose again between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I’m tempted to sit this election out.
They are both so pathetic, so over the hill, so stuck in the past. Surely we can do better!
Then I realized … if a rock-solid lifelong conservative like me feels this way, how many other Republican voters will sit out this election in disgust?
If we really want to defeat Joe Biden, shouldn’t we nominate a candidate with some class and integrity? Maybe someone who hasn’t paid off porn-stars and been indicted for shady real estate deals?
Maybe someone who doesn’t behave like an obnoxious third-grade bully?
I believe the only real chance we have to move forward is with Nikki Haley, a solid conservative with a proven record as South Carolina’s governor.
Was it really just 22 years ago that we were attacked? When 2,977 Americans died in the deadliest act of terrorism in our history?
Have we forgotten the lessons we should have learned?
For a brief period after 9/11, the nation rallied around President Bush. We were ready to fight a War on Terror. We were going after Osama bin Laden and the others responsible.
Within mere months, the Left began sniping at the heels of the Bush Administration, questioning the means and effectiveness of the military efforts.
By 2007, the handling of the war was a major election issue, with candidate Barack Obama promising to end the War in Iraq and “finish the job” in Afghanistan.
Once in the Oval Office, reality slapped President Obama in the face. To his credit, he realized that there was no simple way to withdraw from the region without forfeiting the security gains that had been won at such a great cost of blood and treasure.
Obama back-pedaled on his campaign rhetoric, and heeded much of the advice from his military commanders. He had the good sense not to abandon the Afghans and Iraqis after we had invested so much in driving the terrorist enclaves out of their countries.
Every spring, most of us get the urge to start planting flowers around the house. It’s a great way to celebrate the end of winter.
But those flowers don’t plant themselves. It takes some work and planning to make it happen.
The old soil has to be worked over and prepped properly before any new planting can happen. Before you can enjoy those flowers, you have to yank out the weeds, clear out debris, and loosen the soil.
There is a great life lesson for us in this ritual of springtime gardening.
If you are a Christian, then you are a child of God, the King and Creator of the universe.
As the British say, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.”
Flying back home was supposed to be the easy part.
I enjoyed a road trip recently, helping my son take his sons and their belongings down to Florida. After helping the boys drive down, I would be flying back home.
My son Steve and his wife Andrea had a great plan. He is currently going to school online. She works online from home. They home-school their kids.
There was no reason they couldn’t do all those things in sunny Florida instead of freezing Indianapolis, so they rented an Airbnb near Orlando for the month of February.
Steve and his three sons would drive down, bringing all their stuff in the van. Andrea would fly down two days later with the girls (ages three and five) to avoid having an 18-hour road trip with preschoolers.
Andrea’s flight would arrive late in the morning. About an hour after that, I would be flying back home on her plane’s return trip.
I spent the night with Steve and the boys after we arrived at the Airbnb. The following morning Steve and I grabbed donuts and coffee on the way to the airport. We arrived 90 minutes before departure.
I looked forward to relaxing on the flight home. I was at the airport in plenty of time. What could go wrong?
Nobody really likes getting old, but there are a few priceless perks
“Grandpa, tell methe story about hanging upside-down again!”
Why my grand-daughter Janey is so fond of this story, I really don’t know. She must have a special video in her mind of her young grandpa hanging from his feet and swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
Janey on the go
I enjoyed sharing it with her the first eight or nine times, but it’s getting kind of old for me now.
“Janey, let’s do another story. You’ve heard this one so many times already.”
She cocks her head to one side and looks at me with those big blue eyes. (Somewhere down the road, some young man is going to find those eyes irresistible.)
“Grandpa,” she scolds me like a child, “upside-down story please!”
When you are tucking in the sweetest five-year-old on earth, it’s hard to say “no.”
“Okay, one more time…so I was 11 years old, and I had a job working for a greenhouse gardener near my house. I had just started working there, and I was younger and littler than all the other boys, so they liked to pick on me sometimes.
Off the Top of My Head 