Grandma P and I were fortunate in completing a 15-day Alaska cruise in August. The scenery in the 49th state is phenomenal. It is the cruise everyone should take. Our cruise aboard a Princess ship was exceptional, as always, except for one issue. We were still required to wear masks in public areas. And anyone who tested for covid was isolated in a deck 12 balcony suite. (This was not a perk as they could not leave their rooms for the entire cruise!) There were some cases, but the number was very low. Maybe 17 cases with 2200 people on board. I will not go into the draconian measures the cruise lines have to perform if the rate exceeds 1% of the total number of people on board. You have heard of some of them, cruise ships returning to port, cruise lines canceling cruises, cruise ships being sanitized.

Of course, all these draconian measures were to assure the public safety. In the past two years, the CDC and the US government could not do enough to sledgehammer the cruise lines into governmental compliance. So, with this little story as an introduction, here is my question. If for the past two years the government is so concerned about Covid, why are we letting illegal immigrants across our southern border with an estimated positive Covid rate of 18%. 18 frickin’ percent! If the government was so concerned about Covid and its effect on the citizenry, would they not have stopped a mass introduction of the disease via illegal immigrants? Does that display common sense?

College Tuition Proposal

Don’t you just love it when your government makes you feel like an idiot? What I am referring to is the proposal for $10,000 in student loan forgiveness. Was I an idiot or what! I worked parttime during my college years, oftentimes holding two parttime jobs. When summer break occurred, or any break between semesters occurred, I went full time. I ran out of money after my first year of college, and even though my parents could have contributed some, I did not want to ask. Call it pride. Call it stupidity. Call it parenting that taught me to be independent, but I paid for myself and completed by college experience without a loan. During my college career, no one went to Florida, Mexico or the Bahamas for spring break. After all, if you were a male and flunked out of school, you could visit Viet Nam for free for at least one year, all courtesy of the U.S. military.

I am not totally opposed to providing $10,000 in loan forgiveness. As a matter of fact, I would encourage it under the following conditions:

1. The money is granted for income earning degrees. Teachers, nurses, doctors, dentists, business majors, etc. If your degree is Greek Mythology, Basket weaving or underwater bird calls, you don’t get it. Talk to your parents about bad choices.
2. Colleges reduce tuition. Yup. Quit overpaying professors that teach three hours a week and quit building buildings that look like chrome donuts. Put the money inside the building and not in the building.
3. Double the cost of obtaining a law degree. We have to many damn attorneys and many of them become bad politicians. Just look at our Congress.

But what provision is made for those attending vocational schools, where every program is an income earning profession? Have you hired an electrician, plumber or carpenter lately. I hold my breath that nothing happens to one of my vehicles for fear of what it would cost to repair, with such a huge shortage of auto mechanics. Not everyone is cut out for college or wants to go to college. And, as mentioned, many college degrees are a big waste of money. Here again, just look at Congress. How many members of Congress can you name as the ‘best and the brightest’ in the land? Maybe a handful, but there are 535 members!

It is about time that the younger generations that think everything should be handed to them should learn two things: 1. Your parents are paying for it. 2. The working public is paying for it while politicians are attempting to buy your vote with these ludicrous proposals! Don’t you find it interesting that high school and college students are predominately liberal, but once they get a good paying job and pay taxes, they become conservative? The chickens come to roost, but unfortunately a large segment of our population has figured how to get another chicken’s eggs for free. Common sense. Nothing is free!

Illegal Immigration

Apparently, all those attorneys that are now in Congress never read the chapter about the ‘definition of the word illegal.’ If you smile and smirk every time you hear about another group of illegal immigrants being transported by the governors of Texas and Florida to a blue state, I know you are a Republican. But here is the irony. The federal government and some blue state attorney generals are attempting to find a way to stop the governors from transporting those illegals. Okay. I have a sure-fire solution to this problem…. STOP THE ILLEGALS FROM CROSSING THE BORDER! Much like the gunfighters at the OK corral who ran out of ammunition, the governors would not have illegal immigrants to transport if they were not there. Case closed. Common Sense. But yet, not enough common sense to protect our borders. Wow.

Civil Liberties

By now, everyone is familiar with Derek Chauvin. Derek Chauvin was the 19-year veteran Minneapolis police officer that was sentenced to 22 1/2 years for violating George Floyd’s civil liberties. Chauvin was an experienced policeman that knew George Floyd and knew of Floyd’s physical capabilities. So, I would love to hear a response to this question, “If someone is deliberately breaking the law, are they not relinquishing their civil liberties?” After all, isn’t a crime, regardless of what it is: robbery, murder, rape, passing counterfeit money, all uncivil acts? I think Chauvin should have been punished, but not by a kangaroo court, televised, in an extremely biased location. And, did not George Floyd perform an uncivil act by passing counterfeit money? He broke the law. The shop owner thought so and called the police. He did not call a politician, or a lawyer, or a Minneapolis city councilman…he called the police. And the police, as is their job, responded. What kind of society would we have if the police did not respond. What kind of court system do we have that blew off the fact that Floyd had two illegal substances in his body and did not die by suffocation, as determined by the Hennepin County Coroner. But the die (pardon the pun) was cast, and Chauvin had to pay, and the Federal court had to step in to assure he received the maximum punishment by charging Chauvin with the violation of George Floyd’s civil liberties. Common sense tells me that George Floyd surrendered his civil liberties when he performed a crime and he killed himself by being drug addled.

It has been a bad year for the police in Minnesota. Do you remember Kim Potter? You will when I tell you that she is the suburban Minneapolis police officer who was reaching for her taser during a traffic stop and instead pulled her gun and killed a young black man. She is serving two years in prison after being charged with first- and second- degree manslaughter. In the heat of the moment, she made a fatal mistake.

But is justice always equal? If justice were truly equal, why is Alec Baldwin footloose and fancy free after making the fatal mistake of shooting and killing an actress on a movie set. He made a mistake. He is free and no one has gone to jail for the death of Halyna Hutchins.

I hate to draw comparisons on these three crimes, but here it is. Both of the victims in the Minnesota crimes were black. Both officers involved were white and are in prison. Both crimes received national attention. Alec Baldwin is white as was his victim. After a large media bomb, it has gone away, and no one has been punished for the crime. Why is that? Did the two police officers receive disproportionate sentences because the victims were black? Common sense fails to answer that question. But common sense tells me that because of the staffing issues with police departments everywhere, the caliber of the people applying to be police will be lowered. Did you know that police from the suburbs surrounding Minneapolis will not pursue law breakers into the City of Minneapolis for fear of being arrested themselves.? That reality provides society with a demented type of law protection. Egads!

Common sense tells me that these major cities better pull their collective heads out of their asses, and support the police, arrest, prosecute and incarcerate criminals and protect society. Isn’t that the principal purpose of government?

PS. My blog site was offline for over four months. My Houston nephew finally broke the code to get it operable. This blog is dedicated to Al from Hutch who convinced me to get off my Polish ‘dupa’ and write a blog. Good reading, Al.