I Speak Life!

I want to start this blog with some background which takes us back to February of 2016.  In February of 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died, which left a vacancy on the Supreme Court for President Obama to fill with still 11 Months left in his term.  President Obama at the time nominated Merrick Garland to be the next Supreme Court Justice.  The problem was that the Republicans simply wouldn't allow that to happen.  Mitch McConnell and others in the Republican majority in 2016 signed off that they would withhold consent on any nominee made by President Obama and would not vote on a nominee until after January 20th, 2017.  This was a political move that the Republicans at no point chose to cover up.  They did it right out in the open for all to see.  So that is what ultimately led to a conservative majority on the Supreme Court once Trump took office in 2017 and was able to make his own nomination, and do so with total Republican control of Congress....

Most people weren't very happy with President Xi Jinping of China passing legislation for the ability of the President to rule indefinitely, but Donald Trump seemed to love it.  Donald Trump said, "He's now president for life.  President for life.  No, He's great, and look, he was able to do that.  I think it's great.  Maybe we'll have to give that a show some day." In July of 2016, Trump said of Saddam Hussein about killing terrorists, "He did that so good.  They didn't read them the rights.  They didn't talk.  They were terrorists. Over."  Granted, Trump did label him a bad guy as well, but had more good than bad to say about the former Ruler of Iraq.  Trump also said in 2016 that Libya would be better off, "if Moammar Giddafi were in charge right now."  Trump said that China, when they brutally cracked down on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, "shows you the power of strength,"  He was using that as an e...

Facts are important.  Opinion is also very important, but opinion based on misleading facts or lies is divisive and uncalled for; especially in the age of the Internet, where everything can be fact checked in a matter of seconds or minutes.  Another thing that is bad is to use faulty or false comparisons in order to drive the narrative you are looking to drive.  A very basic example of a false comparison would be to say something like, "Baby Spinach has a drastically lower sugar content than a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup."  Yes, that indeed is a fact, but a fact that doesn't include all of the other factors that should be going into this comparison.  It aims to make Baby Spinach look like the right choice, but doesn't talk about the difference in taste or anything else regarding the two items.  Now, had you compared the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup to a healthier equivalent snack like a 'Kind' brand bar, for instance, that would be a comparison worth disc...

Just when you think things can't get any stranger, they do.  Melania Trump made a personal decision this week to take a trip down to the border to visit detention centers where these children that have been separated from their families have been staying.  That in and of itself is a great gesture considering there haven't been many high profile visits from the Trump Administration to the border since the whole child separation story hit the news.  The problem with Melania's trip is that it was overshadowed by her coat.  Yes, I said her coat.  The green coat that Melania wore on the trip had a very large message on the back in bold white lettering.  the message simply read, "I Really Don't Care.  Do U?" I have a couple of very large issues with this, and the first of which concerns Melania and her personal decision to wear that coat on the trip...or own it at all as the First Lady for that matter.  Looking at the coverage in the news about the ...

The title of this blog is interesting, because if you listen to the current Trump administration and many of his supporters from outside the administration, immigrants are coming over the border to infest our country.  Here is a very telling Tweet from our current President sent out yesterday: Trump Tweeted, "Democrats are the problem.  They don't care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country, like MS-13.  They can't win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters."  Before I break this tweet down, I want to say that as of my writing this blog, there have been 25.9 thousand Retweets of this Trump Tweet and 98.5 thousand people liked the post.  That is greatly concerning to me as an American. Let me unpack Trump's Tweet because it is full of some great material.  First, "Democrats are the problem."  Interesting that Democrats are the problem when they did...

I am going to start this blog with a few comments from the President and members of the Administration, then we will get to the meat and potatoes. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said last Thursday, "Our administration has had the same position since we started on Day 1 that we were going to enforce the law.  We are a country of law and order, and we're enforcing the law and protecting our borders." During an impromptu appearance on the white house lawn last Friday, President Trump said "I hate the children being taken away...The Democrats have to change their law - that's their law." On Saturday morning, President Trump said on Twitter, "Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change!" Ok, that's enough to get the point across that Trump has been doing nothing but blaming the Democrats for the practice of ripping children away from their parents at the border...over 2000 ...

As I have said in previous blogs, Trump and his cronies have been spreading lies and falsehoods on a daily basis in order to discredit the investigations that are going on around the President.  It is to the point where nearly everything that comes out of Giuliani's and Trump's mouths are in your face lies, and it doesn't seem to matter to Trump's base....or Fox and Friends, which has been Trump's media safe haven now for a year and a half.  Trump was on Fox and Friends today, and he told some very clear lies during his short interview to discuss the Inspector General Report that recently was released.  Let me preface what is to come by letting everyone know a high level view of what was in the IG Report in case you haven't all seen it.  It determined that Comey, while FBI Director, did fail to follow proper protocol in certain instances, but that he in no way took any actions due to a political bias.  The report also did not conclude anything about the Russ...

Well, well, well, it looks as though the Trump family may be in for a civil and criminal battle that has the possibility to bleed pretty heavily into the Campaign Finance Violation space.  Not good.  Let's break down the filing that came out today.  It is dozens of pages long, so we will try to hit the high points: President Trump, Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric are being sued by the Attorney General of New York, Barbara Underwood, for violating State and Federal charity laws by using charitable assets as "little more than a checkbook for payments to not-for-profits from Mr. Trump" and his companies.  Assets of the Trump Foundation that were acquired through tax-deductible donations were used to settle legal claims against two of Donald Trump's golf clubs and to buy a painting of Trump for display at a club, as well as other violations. The New York Attorney General is looking for $2.8 Million in restitution and penalties to be paid ...

Let's start with Rudy Giuliani's current wife, Judith.  Rudy recently posted a comment, "It is with great sadness I can confirm that Judith and I are divorcing.  We hope to do this as amicably as possible, and hope that people will respect the privacy of our children at this time.  In these divorce situations, you cannot place blame, It is 50/50, there are problems on both sides." Judith and Rudy were married in 2003 at a wedding now President Donald Trump attended.  Two years later, Rudy attended Trump's wedding to current wife Melania. The interesting part about his current marriage to Judith is that it was born out of an affair.  Giuliani divorced his second wife, Donna Hanover, in 2002, after being separated for 2 years because of Giuliani's extra marital affair with his now wife Judith.  It seems that Judith has requested a divorce from Rudy now for the same reason.  Rudy had an extra marital affair with a married New Hampshire hospital admi...

New and Improved, Scientifically Proven, 25% More, Compare at $100, All Natural...these are just some of the terms you see on product labels that can be quite misleading.  How many of us look at product ingredient labels?  I know my family does because my two children and my wife all have to have Gluten Free foods, and my oldest also has Crones and is Lactose Free.  Labels are important to many people, and more important to many others.  Can companies lie on their ingredients list?  The answer is yes, but not in the way that you may be thinking.  So one of the product labeling requirements in the United States is for the ingredients to be listed in order from most to least by the quantity of each ingredient in the product.  By that I mean that if Rolled Oats is the ingredient that is most prevalent within your product, it must be first on the ingredient list, and the next most prevalent ingredient next, and so on.  That, however, is ...

Rudy Giuliani has been going off the deep end lately with the things he has been verbally vomiting out of his mouth; so much so that it has led to major backlash for comments made about the President's wife and about Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford). Giuliani stated while Israel this week, "Look at his three wives [Donald Trump].  Beautiful women.  Classy women.  Woman of great substance.  Stormy Daniels? I'm sorry I don't respect a porn star the way I respect a career woman or a woman of substance or a woman who has great respect for herself as a woman and as a person and isn't going to sell her body for sexual exploitation." In addition to that Giuliani also talked about the First Lady, Melania Trump, and how she didn't believe that her husband did anything with Stormy Daniels.  Giuliani talked about Melania in a manner that made it seem as though he had discussed it with her.  The interesting thing about that is that The First Lady's spokespe...

Let me start this blog by stating that I am giving credit where credit is due.  Donald Trump accomplished yesterday something that no other President has.  He sat with the Dictator Kim Jung Un in a summit to discuss a go forward plan for North Korea.  The document signed really doesn't lay out any major milestones or interdependencies requiring involvement from other nations, and doesn't lay a framework for the true plan, but it is a start.  The question is, is Donald Trump patient enough to see something through that will likely take years to ultimately accomplish? The things that are most vitally important when dealing with North Korea on a go forward plan are the complete denuclearization of North Korea to be done in a verifiable manner (which is one of the things we have done wrong in the past), and the subject of Human Rights in North Korea.  This is a man who has killed hundreds of people for his benefit.  He is a dictator who has treated the people...

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC.  For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 attempts.  Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it.  Bullying victims are anywhere from 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims, according to studies by Yale University.  A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying.  10 to 14 year old girls may be at even higher risk of suicide.  According to a study done by ABC News, nearly 30 percent of students are either bullies or victims of bullying, and 160,000 students stay home every day from school because of a fear of being bullied. So there you have it.  I wanted to start this blog out with some statistics about bullying and suicide to paint a picture of what this message is going...