I realize I am not telling you anything new. We've been told this since the beginning of time, be kind to others. Generally I think we all strive to do this, to be kind to others. However, when it comes to politics, it seems more difficult than ever to meet people half way. Why is that? Why is it, that "the other side" must be defeated at all costs? Why even, are they "the other side"? In a recent episode of Hidden Brain, one of my favorite podcasts,...

Earlier this month, I posted my opinion on how the Media is the issue and a catalyst to the current political climate in which we are now. It is the media that has provided our politicians with a platform to spread their propaganda; either by competing against each other and providing more unnecessary coverage, or by competing against social platforms, and in turn providing unnecessary additional coverage. I realize this has become common nowadays, but Twitter was never created as a way to spread serious ideas. Serious ideas,...

#muellerreport #trump #election2020 Today, Robert Mueller finally testified in front of the US Congress. This is one of the only times I have ever heard him speak. The first time was when he held a press conference to talk about his non-appearance of this very appearance. The testimony progressed both, as I had expected, and with a few surprises. First, the democrats and the republicans both played their game. The game of the democrats was to point out each one of the facts in the report Mueller provided...

Recently I have been listening to the latest season of Embedded. Embedded is a podcast series that initially began by digging deep on a single news story. It has since evolved into following a subject closely and doing an entire season based on that. For example, prior to this season, they did an entire season on Trump Stories. Most recently, the season was based on Mitch McConnell. There were five episodes and in each one they told one aspect of McConnell that when done left me angered. For...

#era #politics #wartactics The Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, was first introduced close to 100 years ago, in 1923. As the name states, its goal is to provide equal rights for everyone and therefore eliminate any "legal" distinction between a man and a woman. At present, there are such legal distinctions in issues such as divorce, property and marriage. In a recent episode of This Week Tonight, John Oliver discussed the Amendment and the struggle it has been to ratify it. I am all for equal rights, the...

#trump #npd #2020election This past Sunday, ABC news released an exclusive interview with Trump which spanned over 30 hours. During the interview, George Stephanopoulos, talked to the President about his taxes. As of yet, Trump has not released his tax returns as he'd promised to do during the campaign. One of the suspicions for this lack of transparency is that Trump, who ran under the pretense of being a great businessman, may not be as successful as he boasted. This aspect has been reasonably documented elsewhere, so I'll...

#trump #impeachment #2020 The talk of impeachment is heating up in congress and with some Presidential candidates (all democratic at the time of this writing). Most folks think once Trump is impeached, he'll be removed from office. What most fail to realize is that impeachment is only the first step in a long and political minefield. In the late 90s, President Clinton was impeached, yet he finished his term. Prior to the impeachment of Clinton, the only other President to have been successfully impeached was President Andrew Johnson....

We have all been at the requisite Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner where we get into a discussion with someone about a topic we disagree on. The topic can be as mundane as a cooking recipe, to something as polarizing as our elected officials. And time after time, we are there, facing the other person, in disbelief of their divergent view(s). And we seldom come to an agreement. More often than not, we push each other farther and farther away from agreement, compromise or even understanding. One of the...

There is a very funny scene in Game of Thrones, where Arya, the youngest of the Starks, is stuck on avenging her family. One of the people on her list is the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Queen Cersei. As Arya is wondering through Westeros in her journey to kill the Queen, she encounters a bunch of the Queen's soldiers. She is hungry and tired, and decides to stop and make conversation. I'm going to kill the Queen Everything is going well until they ask her where it...

The possibility of going to war with Iran is looming and it has become a stronger possibility as days have progressed. Trump came into office with many promises, and one of them was no more wars. Since Trump took office, he's most definitely limited our confrontations with other nations. In Syria, he began to pull US troops from the conflict earlier this year. With North Korea, whether I agree with his approach in dealing with Kim Jong-un or not, he managed to de-escalate the conflict with the Asian...