It is not a tidy anniversary this year. Seven years between that awful day and this Sept. 11, the terrorist attacks linger somewhere between the immediate, a conscious part of our days, and the comfortable remove of the distant past. No longer yesterday and not yet history. ...more

September 6, 2008

Super Tuesday, Super Bowl, anything for our great pleasure, is stated "Super." The final Democratic debate on Thursday night before Super Tuesday, had that kind of ambiance to it. I thought I might have the wrong channel; I expected Oprah to appear to host the show. It truly was a "Super" setting for the Democrats in their final debate before Tuesday, when many states will have their primaries including the state of California. So, since CNN was the sponsor and the Kodak Theater the place, why not have the best showing for the viewing audience. After all, this is for Hillary and Obama and this is Hollywood. CNN planned this to the "T". Wow, what a show! The rival candidates were so lovely-dovey I expected them to kiss. The audience almost looked like Oscar night was taking place and open applause was granted; something usually frowned upon during political debates. The questions? Well, we sure got the candidates' views on health care while other questions were debated quickly. By now, one knew which party CNN was promoting. I'll bet that the candidates had a review as to their past performances cutting each other to the bone to get votes. Hey, who am I to judge. We all have the right to change, except Romney. ...more

February 3, 2008

Republican candidates are always depicted by Democrats and the media as racists, sexists, homophobes and bigots. They must have forgotten their talking papers, because Sen. Hillary Clinton and her staff are attacking Sen. Barack Obama, and Sen. Obama is responding. Both parties have agreed to a cease-fire, but we will see how long it lasts. ...more

January 17, 2008

Republican candidates are always depicted by Democrats and the media as racists, sexists, homophobes and bigots. ...more

January 17, 2008

Well, we had a few really cold days there last week. Even my leather jacket got a workout, and that's a rarity. Naturally, this all happened days after my brother and his wife left to go back to Virginia. They complained about how hot it was here in Florida. If only they could have stayed a few more days. While I was in Boca Raton, I took somewhere in the neighborhood of 260 photographs with my digital camera. It's a nice Fujifilm camera that I got last year. I don't claim to know what I'm doing with a camera...I have no idea about things like shutter speed or F Stops, but I'm fairly OK at composing a photo. And when you take 260 photos, you're bound to get at least a few good shots. So I was in Wal-Mart at the Kodak kiosk, getting some photos printed, and everything went just fine. Until I got to the counter, that is. The clerk at the photo lab took one look at a photo of my niece, Bella, and said, "Sir, you can't have these. These were taken by a professional photographer." ...more

January 7, 2008

On a day when campaign advisers hoped the final debate before the Iowa caucuses would help re-establish her as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton instead offered a formal apology to Sen. Barack Obama and accepted the resignation of a prominent campaign organizer who had raised questions about her rival's use of drugs. ...more

December 14, 2007

Where will the debate take place? At the Mahaffey Theater in downtown St. Petersburg. ...more

November 28, 2007

How illegal immigration was stopped in 1954 Many of our citizens believe that we cannot get rid of the millions of illegal immigrants we now have in our country and eliminate the cost and problems they cause. Fortunately, President Eisenhower showed us how to do it in 1954 and it worked for many years. ...more

November 28, 2007

• People who are absolutely upset are the folks in the State Department. They want to send them to Iraq. There's a lot of empty positions that need to be filled over there. But the people at the State Department are revolting about this because they say it's dangerous over there. I haven't heard that. ... President Bush is furious. He said, "If you didn't want to go to a war zone, you shouldn't have joined the State Department. You should have joined the Texas Air National Guard." ...more

November 9, 2007

After searching for ways to rattle Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and stem her momentum in the Democratic presidential race, her chief rivals believe they have found an opening: what they cast as her evasiveness on several key issues. ...more

November 1, 2007