I write southern historical fiction, local history, and I've written a devotional book. The two novels I'm writing are set in Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1760s. My weekly blog started out to follow my journey as a writer and a reader, but in 2025 it has been greatly expanded to include current events and politics in the United States as I see our democracy under attack from within. The political science major in me cannot sit idly by and remain silent.
I had never heard of the “Bonus Army” or this incident until I stumbled across it while looking for blog topics I could write about on or near — their anniversary dates. This one belonged on yesterday’s blog but got crowded out by the 157th anniversary of the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Since the “Bonus Army” needed its own day on my blog, that’s today’s topic.
Why the name “Bonus Army”
As the federal government is prone to do, it came up with a plan to reward individuals who served in the military during World War I but there was a catch. They couldn’t receive their “bonus” payment until 1945 – nearly 30 years after their combat service.
Established by Congress in 1924, the so-called “Tombstone Bonus” would be paid to World War I veterans in 1945 to thank them for their service.
It brings to mind the case of soldiers who were in the American Revolution in the 1770s but were not eligible for a pension until 1832 when most of them were dead.
There seems to be a pattern here.
But then came The Great Depression
The stock market crashed in 1929, and by 1932 things were not getting any better.
Desperate for financial relief, 400 World War I veterans gathered in Portland, Oregon. Led by veteran Walter M. Waters, on May 17, 1932, they left Portland on a donated train and traveled to Iowa, from where they had to walk and hitchhike the remaining 900 miles to Washington, D.C. to make politicians acknowledge their dire straits.
“Bonus Army” participants demonstrating in front of an empty U.S. Capitol in summer of 1932. (Photo from Library of Congress; taken by Underwood & Underwood)
Other veterans learned of the movement and headed to Washington, D.C. By June 1, 1932, there were 1,500 veterans in the nation’s capital to plead with Congress and President Herbert Hoover to find a way to give them their bonus checks early.
The veterans camped out in various locations across Washington, D.C. The Anacostia Flats site was the largest of their shanty towns at 30 acres. It gained the name “Camp Bartlett” because it was John H. Bartlett, the former Assistant Postmaster General and former Governor of New Hampshire who owned the land and let the veterans camp there.
Anacostia Flats encampment in Washington, D.C. in 1932. (Photo from Library of Congress, from the Harris & Ewing Collection)
On June 1, D.C. Police Superintendent Brigadier General Pelham D. Glassford asked Congress for $75,000 to feed the veterans, but the request was denied.
In mid-June, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the immediate payment of the bonus, but the U.S. Senate rejected it. President Hoover had said he would veto the bill if it passed in both chambers.
Photo taken in 1932 at one of the Bonus Army encampments in Washington, DC. (Photo from Library of Congress; taken by Harris & Ewing, photographer)
Veterans kept coming to Washington to plead their case. By the end of July, 1932, it was estimated that up to 20,000 of them had arrived.
It did not end well
In an action that rattles one’s nerves even to read about it 93 years later, on July 28, 1932, President Hoover ordered the U.S. Army and local police to remove all the protesting veterans from Washington.
General Douglas MacArthur led the mission. George S. Patton, whose name we all know from World War II, also participated. In an ironic turn of events, one of the veterans expelled from the nation’s capital by Patton was Joe Angelo, the soldier who saved Patton’s life in World War I.
Some 3,500 U.S. Army infantry and cavalry troops were called up to rid the city of the marchers. Of that number, 800 were actively used in the mission while the other 2,700 were held in reserve.
Violence ensued as the marchers resisted, but they were no match for the fire power of the U.S. Army. Five tanks manned by soldiers with machine guns, troops using tear gas and bayonets, and troops with torches setting fire to the encampments was more than the unarmed veterans could overcome.
Some of them thought they would be safe at Camp Bartlett, since it was on private land and the order to evacuate had only mentioned federal lands. They soon learned that Camp Bartlett was to be cleared also.
General MacArthur threatened to have a civilian bystander arrested for shouting, “The American flag means nothing to me after this!” at the troops.
One of the marchers, William Hashka of Chicago, was shot and killed near the U.S. Capitol.
Excuses and reactions
In a statement that sounds all too familiar to us in 2025, President Hoover claimed that many of the marchers were not veterans. He said they were Communists and criminals.
Falling in line with Hoover, MacArthur said only ten percent of the marchers were veterans.
Vice President Charles Curtis was heckled about the incident while making a speech in Las Vegas on July 29. He responded with, “You cowards, I’m not afraid of any of you.”
Police Superintendent Glassford said on July 29 that the use of federal troops had caused the trouble and that it could have been handled peacefully.
Does any of this sound familiar to you in 2025?
Some newspapers across the nation endorsed Hoover’s actions, while others called it “sheer stupidity.”
In 1936, the World War I veterans received their bonus, but it took Congress overriding President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s veto to accomplish it.
During World War II, in 1944, Congress passed the G.I. Bill to assist veterans.
Until my next blog post
I hope you have a good book to read.
Don’t forget the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina – or the starving children in Gaza.
Today is the anniversary date for two events that warrant our attention. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on July 28, 1868 – 157 years ago today.
And on July 28, 1932, U.S. President Herbert Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to remove the protesting World War I veterans from Washington, D.C.
To give each of those events their due attention, I will blog about the 14th Amendment today, and I will blog about the “Bonus Army” tomorrow.
The 14th Amendment
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
Until the recent past, we never heard much about the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and many of us would have been hard pressed to have told you what it was about without looking it up.
Now it is front and center and will be a major issue before the U.S. Supreme Court when they reconvene this fall.
The 14th Amendment is known as “The Birthright Amendment.” It came about immediately after the Civil War to extend citizenship to formerly enslaved individuals; however, the words “formerly enslaved,” “slave,” “slavery,” “Africa,” “African” or any other such qualifiers do not appear in the document.
The Trump Administration wants to abolish the 14th Amendment. Trump claims that it only applies to the people who were slaves prior to the Civil War. If successful in proving that before the U.S. Supreme Court, it will mean that the children of undocumented immigrants will no longer be awarded U.S. citizenship.
That is a major political and legal issue, so it will be incumbent upon the U.S. Supreme Court Justices to weigh all aspects of the matter carefully. Regardless of the Court’s ruling, a lot of people are going to be angry.
People who do not want citizenship to be automatically granted to a baby born on U.S. soil argue that other countries have no such law.
It’s not just Section 1 of the 14th Amendment that makes Trump uneasy. I imagine Section 3 makes him and some politicians nervous in light of the January 6, 2021, attempted coup.
The text of the 14th Amendment
AMENDMENT XIV
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Hurricane Helene Update
Barricade on Blue Ridge Parkway beside entrance to Folk Art Center at Asheville, June 10, 2025
12 more miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina have reopened from Milepost 305.2 near Beacon Heights and U.S. 221 to Milepost 317.5 at U.S. 221 near the Linville Falls community!
The Linville Falls spur road, campground, picnic area, and visitor center remain closed, due to hurricane damage.
There were at least 57 landslides across almost 200 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Recovery has been broken down into three phases. The 12-mile opening last week is one of 12 projects included in Phase 1. When that phase is completed this fall, some 48 miles of the Parkway will have been restored.
Phase 2 includes the repair of 21 landslides in eight areas which are mostly located between Milepost 318.2 and Milepost 323.4, south of Linville Falls. It is hoped that Phase 2 will be completed by the fall of 2026.
Phase 3 is in the planning stage. During that phase, repairs will be made to 23 sites between Milepost 336.7 and 351.9, which lies between Little Switzerland and Mount Mitchell. There is no published timeline for the work to begin or be completed in Phase 3.
I have driven the entire 252 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina many times and its 207 miles in Virginia at least once, but I doubt I will live to see it fully rebuilt.
As of Friday, of the 1,457 roads that were closed in western North Carolina last September due to Hurricane Helene, all but 34 are now completely open, which is the same as the prior week’s report. The NC DOT reports 42 roads have partial access.
I-40 at the Tennessee line is still lust opened with a total of two lanes and a 35-m.p.h. speed limit. A report I heard on TV last week said it will take years to fully reconstruct the interstate highway.
Until my next blog post
Keep reading everything you want to read – and some things you don’t want to read but need to read.
Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina and the children in Gaza who are starving to death through no fault of their own.
If you don’t have time to read the complete list, here are 70 of them:
(I guess it goes without saying that many books on the list were obviously about gender identity, but the following are books that don’t all into that assumed category.)
A History of Racism in America, by Craig E. Blohm;
A Smart Girl’s Guide to Racism & Inclusion: Standing Up to Racism and Building a Better World, by Deana Singh and Shellene Rodney;
Ab(solutely) normal: short stories that smash mental health Stereotypes, by Nora Carpenter and Ricky Callen;
All You Need is Love: Celebrating Families of All Shapes and Sizes, by Shanni Collins;
Anti-Racism: Powerful Voices, Inspiring Ideas, by Kenrya Rankin;
Be Your True Self: Social Justice and You, by Maribel Valdez Gonzalez;
Better Than We Found It: Conversations to Help Save the World, by Frederick Joseph, Porsche Joseph, and Taylor Denise Richarson;
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Thinks, and Do, by Jennifer L. Eberhardt;
Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person, by Frederick Joseph;
Black Lives Matter, by Marty Gitlin;
Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir, by Walela Nehanda;
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson;
Confronting Racism, by Scientific American Editors;
Critical Perspectives on Social Justice, by Jennifer Peters;
Discrimination, by Jacqueline Langwith;
Equality and Diversity, by Charlie Ogden;
Equality, Social Justice, and Our Future, by Sabrina Adams;
Gender Inequality in Sports: From Title IX to World Titles, by Kirstin Cronn-Mills;
Heads Up Sociology, by Chris Yuill and Christopher Thorpe;
How to Be a (Young) Antiracist and How to Be An Antiracist, by Ibram W. Kendi;
I Am An Antiracist Superhero, by Jennifer Nicole Bacon and Leticia Moreno;
It Doesn’t Have to Be Awkward: Dealing with Relationships, Consent, and Other Hard-To-Talk About Stuff, by Drew Pinsky and Paulina Pinsky;
Male Privilege, by Duchess Harris and Heidi Deal;
Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad;
Racial Bias: Is Change Possible? by Barbara Diggs;
Racial Discrimination, by Peggy J. Parks;
Racial Justice in America: Topics for Change, by Hedreich, Leigh Ann Erickson, and Kelisa Wing;
Racism in America: A Long History of Hate, by Meghan Green;
Say the Right Thing: How to Talk about Identity, Diversity, and Justice, by Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow;
So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo;
Symptoms of Being Human, by Jeff Garvin;
The Antiracism Handbook: Practical Tools to Shift Your Mindset and Uproot Racism in Your Life and Community, by Thema Brayant-Davis and Edith Arrington;
The Antiracist Kid: A Book about Identity, Justice, and Activism, by Tiffany Jewell and Nicole Miles;
The Book of Radical Answers: Real Questions from Real Kids Just Like You, by Sonya Renee Taylor;
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt Taibbi and Molly Crabapple;
The Dog Knight, by Jeremy Whitley and Bre Indigo;
The Feeling of Falling in Love, by Mason Deaver;
The Feminism Book, by Georgie Carroll and Hannah McCann;
The Greatest Superpower, by Alex Sanchez;
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander;
The Other Talk: Reckoning With Our White Privilege, by Brendan Kiely;
The Ship We Built, by Lexie Bean and Noah Grigni;
The Sociology Book, by Christopher Thorpe, Chris Yuill, Mitchel Hobbs, Megan Todd, Sarah Temley, and Marcus Weeks;
The Sum of Us: How Racism Hurts Everyone: Adapted for Young Readers, by Heather C. McGhee;
This Book is Anti-Racist, by Tiffany Jewell and Aurelia Durand;
Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, by Lind Villarosa;
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, by Ta-Nehisi Coates;
What is Anti-Racism? by Hendreich Nichols and Kelisa Wing;
What is the Black Lives Matter Movement? by Hendreich Nicols and Kelisa Wing;
What is White Privilege? by Leigh Ann Erickson and Kelisa Wing;
When Women Stood: The Untold Story of Females Who Changed Sports and the World, by Alexandra Powe Allred;
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, by Robin J. DiAngelo;
White Privilege, by M.T. Blakemore;
White Privilege Unmasked: How to Be Part of the Solution, by Judy Ryde;
J is for Justice! by Veronica Arreola;
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race, by Beverly Daniel Tatum;
How Can I Be an Ally? by El-Mekki Fatima;
Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America, by Michael Dyson;
How to Fight Racism: A Guide to Standing Up for Racial Justice, by Jemar Tisby;
Racial Justice, by Virginia Loh-hagan;
An ABC of Equality, by Chana Ewing;
Coping with Hate and Intolerance, by Avery Elizabeth Hurt;
Confronting Racism, by Maryellen Lo Bosco;
Respecting Diversity, by Anastasia Suen;
Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, and Identity, by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi;
What is Diversity, by David Anthony;
When a Bully is President: Truth and Creativity for Oppressive Times, by Maya Christina Gonzalez;
This is Your Brain on Stereotypes: How Science is Tackling Unconscious Bias, by Tanya Lloyd Kyi and Drew Shannon;
Prejudice, by Izzi Howell;
You Call This Democracy?: How to Fix Our Government and Deliver Power to the People, by Elizabeth Rusch;
There were also seven AP Psychology books on the list.
In conclusion
There is a definite pattern here.
The very topics that are tearing our country apart are being banned from Defense Department schools, grades kindergarten through 12th grade.
Ignoring that racism, diversity, gender inequality, and gender identity exist will not make them go away, no matter how much the white supremacists, misogynists, history deniers, and evangelicals want them to.
If we as citizens of the United States cannot read about our problems and differences, face them, acknowledge them, and have an honest conversation about them, how will we ever overcome them?
Until my next blog post
Find a book on this list and read it!
Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.
I was flabbergasted a couple of weeks ago to learn that a law had passed in Texas that will turn public school library book selection on its head.
Photo by Vrînceanu Iulia on Unsplash
As of September 1, 2025, school boards in Texas will select all books for public school libraries instead of professional librarians. I’ll bet the Texas state legislators thought it would be easy-peazy, so let’s just let the local school board members do it.
Local school board members tend to be just regular people. Most of them do not have college degrees in library science. Dare I go out on a limb and say that none of them do? How many course hours have they studied library collection development?
Why is it that humans assume their job takes a high degree of training and skill, but no one else’s job carries any requirements?
Since I live with a retired public school librarian, I have a ton of questions.
Can all the local school board members in Texas read on a 12th grade level?
What do they know about reading levels?
What do they know about age appropriateness?
Do they know how time-consuming the book selection process is?
Do they know anything about book selection, such as where to even get a list of books available for school libraries?
Do they know how to balance book selection against a budget?
Do they know who the award-winning authors and illustrators are?
Do they know what books are already on the shelves in all the schools in their district so they can avoid duplication and maintain a balance of subject matter?
Do they know everything that is taught on every grade level so they can be sure to order books that will supplement or enhance what is being taught in every classroom?
Does a school board have to be unanimous and vote on each book?
I could list more questions. Those 10 are just the ones that came to me immediately when I read the news report.
What are they thinking in Monroe County, Tennessee?
I read on Sunday that in a report from PEN America that book banners are going after books about cats. No one seems to know why book banners have a vendetta against our little feline friends, but it is happening in Iowa, Florida, and in Monroe County, Tennessee.
Monroe County has banned almost 600 books from its public schools. The Complete Book of Cats and The New Encyclopedia of the Cat are just two of the cat-related titles being pulled from the school library shelves.
I don’t even know what to say about that. I love dogs. I don’t like cats very much (aside from being fascinated by the beauty of tigers), but I would never want books about cats to disappear from libraries.
But wait! On Monday, I learned that one of the books banned from schools in Monroe County is The Complete Book of Dogs, by Rosie Pilbeam! Now they have gone too far!
You can’t go around banning books about dogs! You just can’t! That’s un-American. Dogs are love universally. Every library in the world should have books about dogs – and even cats.
Why in the name of everything reasonable is Monroe County, Tennessee banning cat and dog “encyclopedias” from school libraries? What if that 8th grader or 12th grader aspires to be a veterinarian? Is that student not supposed to learn about animals until they get to college? How ridiculous!
In what universe does it make sense to ban books about cats and dog?
In what world does it make sense to ban ANY books?
Digging deeper into this on the internet, I found that this is the result of Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act, which went into effect this summer.
In addition to apparently any book about cats or dogs, the usual book banners’ target are on the list: To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, Grapes of Wrath, Hidden Figures, Brave New World, Animal Farm; and Aztec, Inca, and Maya.
In my opinion the book above all others that should not be on anyone’s banned books list is Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterley. Heaven forbid a young black girl (or brown girl, or white girl) reads that book and is inspired to be a mathematician!
All kidding aside about dogs and cats, how dare they take Hidden Figures off the public school library shelves! How dare they!
There is such a thing as age appropriateness, but books should not be banned anywhere.
What are they afraid of?
Fortunately, Monroe County, Tennessee, only has a population of 46,250 as of the 2020 U.S. Census, so it’s book banning decisions won’t affect a huge number of children. But, since the Tennessee Age-Appropriate Materials Act applies to the entire state, will other county school systems follow Monroe County’s lead and ban the same 574 books?
North Carolina has some faults, but I’m so glad I don’t live in Texas or Monroe County, Tennessee! How embarrassing for the people there.
A bit of good news out of Washington, DC!
North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced on Monday that the U.S. Department of Education decided to unfreeze the money it froze a week or two ago that was earmarked for after-school programs. This means North Carolina will get $36 million of the $165 million the Department of Education originally said it was freezing.
Jackson vowed he will see the U.S. Department of Education in court to try to recover the other $130 million.
Until my next blog post
Read anything and everything you can get your hands on.
Don’t let anyone tell you what you should not read.
Look for my blog post tomorrow about the 596 books the U.S Department of Defense has banned this month from the schools it operates for the children of our military personnel.
Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.
In the old days, if a king didn’t like the court jester’s jokes, he could have him executed. In some countries, that might still be the case.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
But in America, we have First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution… or so we thought until last Thursday.
That was when CBS announced the May 2026 end of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Colbert will not be replaced. The show will cease to exist.
CBS says it was purely a financial decision, but it seemed more than coincidental for it to happen to a show whose host keeps us laughing five nights-a-week as he masterfully puts a humorous spin on that day’s latest pronouncements and blunders made by Donald Trump.
There is nothing coincidental about it, and we all know it – no matter how many of Trump’s minions get on TV and try to convince us that it was.
Here’s the background, as reported by The Washington Post on July 18:
“On July 1, the announcement came that the network’s parent company, Paramount Global — which needs Donald Trump’s administration to approve the pending sale of the company to Skydance Media — was settling (rather than fighting) the president’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview of then-candidate Kamala Harris. They will be paying the president $16 million. Before the settlement, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens both left (or were made to) after registering their disapproval. Those who remain are clearly shaken. “Can you hold power to account after paying it millions?” John Dickerson, the anchor for “CBS Evening News,” said while reporting on the deal the day the settlement was announced. “Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust?”
Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash
Trump’s cult members go on CNN and try to convince us that Stephen Colbert “isn’t even funny.” The Republicans have lost any sense of humor they ever had. Colbert is hilarious, and he’s been known to poke fun at politicians of all stripes.
Stephen Colbert, from everything I’ve heard, read, and seen is a descent guy. He does not hide his Roman Catholic faith, nor does he use it to shame or beat someone over the head with it. It is just part of his being and he is not ashamed to mention it on occasion when doing so seems appropriate.
He is never mean-spirited in his jokes. He is a consummate professional who goes out in front of a live audience five nights-a-week to offer them a release from the stresses of every day life.
Mr. Colbert’s father and two of his brothers died in a plane crash in 1974 when Colbert was just 10 years old, so he knows loss and grief on a very personal level. It gives him a heartfelt empathy for others. He demonstrates that empathy by sometimes including in the show ways to encourage others to show their empathy and open their wallets to help people in times of a natural disaster.
If you don’t like Stephen Colbert’s jokes, you don’t have to watch his show. As we used to say, “It’s a free country.”
Trump’s track record on humor
Trump proved on live TV in 2016 that he cannot take a joke. When then U.S. President Barack Obama made a light-hearted joke about Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump never cracked a smile. If Trump had had even a tiny understanding of the White House Correspondents Dinner, he would have known that (1) it was a huge fundraiser for journalism and related internships and (2) it was an annual dinner dominated by good-hearted political jokes.
There was nothing mean-spirited by Obama’s remarks. He mainly poked fun at himself. That’s what people who have good mental health do. But Trump took it as a serious affront, and he will go to his grave still angry about Obana’s words.
U.S. President Barack Obama. Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash
A transcript of President Obama’s remarks, along with parenthetical inclusions of when the audience laughed) can be found at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/01/remarks-president-white-house-correspondents-dinner. The live television broadcast of the Obama’s remarks that night can also we found on YouTube. You can judge for yourself if President Obama’s remarks were mean-spirited. Here is the joke read by President Obama that made Trump so angry:
“Sitting at the same table, I see Mike Bloomberg. (Applause.) Mike, a combative, controversial New York billionaire is leading the GOP primary and it is not you. (Laughter.) That has to sting a little bit. (Laughter.) Although it’s not an entirely fair comparison between you and the Donald. After all, Mike was a big-city mayor. He knows policy in depth. And he’s actually worth the amount of money that he says he is. (Laughter and applause.)”
Trump sat stone-faced while the audience laughed at the joke. Trump couldn’t find the humor in it, I guess because he knew it was true.
Political humor is as old as mankind. It is unbelievable that someone as old as Donald Trump would not have known that. He clearly didn’t know it in 2016, and he hasn’t learned it yet in 2025.
Back to CBS and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” … Trump went on social media within hours of Thursday’s announcement by CBS. He berated Stephen Colbert and belittled his comedic talents. He celebrated Colbert’s “firing,” and announced that Jimmy Kimmel of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on ABC will be next.
The bigger picture
This is much bigger than the cancellation of a television show. This is much bigger than the attempt to silence one comedian.
This, my friends, is an attack on our First Amendment right to free speech.
Photo by Brian Wangenheim on Unsplash
It puts that ounce of fear in every decision a commercial television network makes, so they will constantly second guess themselves. It makes television producers think twice before they have a certain guest on a show.
It puts that little bit of intimidation in the mind of a comedian who has built a 40-year career poking fun at every United States President because that’s what we do in America. We make fun of our elected leaders.
One-by-one, Trump plans to rid television in America of comedians who dare to make jokes about him. He as much as said so on his social media platform.
It has come to that.
Here in the United States, we now have a President who thinks he has the authority to run roughshod over anyone and everyone.
He even attacked his own supporters last week when some of them dared to ask for the release of the Epstein files. He immediately called them “stupid.” These are the people who have voted for him three times and would happily vote for him again, but he has turned on them and called them names.
You cross Donald Trump, and you pay the price.
He believes he has the right to dictate every facet of our lives – the polluted air we breathe, the medical care we get or don’t get, and now – the television shows we can’t watch.
He has defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because it received federal funds. Now, he has strong-armed CBS into ending a late-night talk show that has been on the air for decades because the host tells political jokes. CBS claims the decision was strictly financial, but we all know the real reason.
On Monday night, Colbert made a joke about CBS paying Donald Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit. Three days later, Colbert’s show gets cancelled. You do the math.
Shame on Trump, but the lion’s share of the shame sits on the shoulders of CBS. First, you let him bully you about “60 Minutes” and now you’ve let him dictate your late-night programming.
Where do you think this will end, CBS? You have given in to a bully!
It is sad when an adult not only cannot laugh at himself but only finds humor in the suffering or misfortune of others. It is tragic when that adult is President of the United States.
Many days, 11:30-11:40 p.m. is the only time during the entire day that I find something to laugh about. I might not know or have an interest in his celebrity guests, but I’m tuning in for the show’s opening monologue.
I will continue to watch “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” every weekday night until May 2026. I’m not sure how I will cope with the Trump regime after that.
Until my next blog post
Keep laughing at politicians.
Keep reading whatever you want to read.
Keep watching whatever you want to watch on TV.
The day may come when you cannot do those things, so don’t take them for granted.
Remember the people of Ukraine. They were living their lives in a democracy one day and the next day Russia started dropping bombs on them.
Remember the people of western North Carolina where people are still recovering from a hurricane and massive flooding that hit ten months ago this week.
I couldn’t say all I wanted to say in yesterday’s blog post. Ready or not, here comes more….
Photo by Metin Ozer on Unsplash
Immigration was not handled well during the first Trump Administration (i.e. people put in cages and children separated from their parents without a means of identification). Immigration was mishandled by the Biden Administration (i.e. too lax about enforcing border security). But immigration is a disaster during the second Trump Administration.
Where is the voice of reason? Where is common sense?
Deployment of California National Guard
A full month after the major protests against ICE in a Los Angeles neighborhood, Trump decided it was finally time to let thousands of California National Guard members return to their families and their jobs. Some of them have started speaking out about that experience.
The New York Times is reporting that some of the National Guard personnel have voiced serious concern over being deployed by President Trump. They are calling it a “fake mission.”
The New York Times reported, “Six member of the Guard – including infantrymen, officers and two officials in leadership roles – spoke of low morale and deep concern that the deployment may hurt recruitment for the state-based military force for years to come.”
There are reports of some members of the California National Guard voicing misgivings from the beginning about the deployment.
For Trump to keep them in warehouses in Los Angeles for a full four weeks after all threat of civil violence was over, is the icing on the cake.
It is still beside the point that Trump did not have the authority to deploy a state’s National Guard under the existing circumstances. That authority rests with the state’s governor.
“The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring. This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all,” one member of the Guard told The Times.”
The piece reported that National Guard personnel of Hispanic heritage were especially uncomfortable being deployed to assist ICE in rounding up illegal aliens.
Just one more instance of the chipping away of our democracy and rule of law.
“Take the rest of ‘those people,’ but don’t take my neighbor”
The situation he wrote about is a case-in-point of how people voted for Trump because he promised to get the violent immigrants out of the United States. They claim now that they didn’t think he meant ALL immigrants.
(My question to them is, “Why did you believe anything he said?”)
Kristof lives in a farming community in Oregon where the majority of people voted for Trump for president all three times. But now that community is upset because Trump is deporting immigrants they know. He wasn’t supposed to deport local immigrants like Moises Sotelo.
Mr. Sotelo has lived in the community for 31 years, established a vineyard, and employed 10 people. He is a pillar in his church. He is a respected businessman.
But ICE picked up Mr. Sotelo and deported him to Mexico. Kristof says the community is now up in arms. They have raised $150,000 to help with Mr. Soleto’s legal expenses. Good luck with that.
Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash
The way I see it, many people voted for Trump because he voiced a hatred for immigrants and that appealed to his base. They hate immigrants, too, so Trump is their man. Trump called immigrants names, and that appealed to his base.
Trump said immigrants were a drain on our economy, that they didn’t pay taxes, and – worst of all – they are all violent criminals. He convinced his base that those things were true, even though they are all false.
Trump’s base refuses to accept the fact that immigrants – illegal as well as legal — pay income and sales tax. If they get a paycheck, income and Social Security taxes are deducted from that paycheck. When they purchase anything, they pay state and local sales tax — just like Americans. Who knew?
After Trump and his ICE thugs remove all the immigrants from the United States, the people in Trump’s base are going to be surprised that most crimes in America are committed by Americans. Many of them have white skin, and that’s going to be the biggest surprise of all for them.
The Case of George Retes, U.S. citizen, U.S. Army Veteran
George Retes is a United States citizen and a veteran of the United States Army. When he drove up to the Glass House Farms in Camarillo, California, to report for work, his car was approached by ICE agents. They broke a car window, sprayed him with pepper spray, and dragged him out of his car – all while he was telling them that he was a U.S. citizen and veteran just reporting for work.
ICE detained him for three days.
Photo by Oleg Ivanov on Unsplash
I saw Mr. Retes interviewed on TV, and this is what the Associated Press reported:
“Retes was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where he said he was put in a special cell on suicide watch and checked on each day after he became emotionally distraught over his ordeal and missing his 3-year-old daughter’s birthday party Saturday.
“He said federal agents never told him why he was arrested or allowed him to contact a lawyer or his family during his three-day detention. Authorities never let him shower or change clothes despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, Retes said, adding that his hands burned throughout the first night he spent in custody.”
I am embarrassed for the United States of America. Such federal police action is not “Making America Great Again.”
This is even worse
Eighty-two-year-old Luis Leon from Allentown, Pennsylvania had been in the United States LEGALLY for 38 years since being granted asylum from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chili in 1987. He was a victim of torture by the Pinochet regime.
Unfortunately, in June Mr. Leon lost his wallet which contained his green card.
Thinking all he had to do was request a replacement green card, Mr. Leon and his wife made an appointment to get that taken care of.
But when he arrived for his appointment, Mr. Leon was handcuffed and taken away. His wife was held for 10 hours until a granddaughter could pick her up.
For a month, Mr. Leon’s family had no idea where he was. His name never showed up on the immigration tracker list. ICE had no answers for them. The family looked for him in local prisons, hospitals, and morgues, but they could not find him.
A relative in Chile found him in a hospital in Guatemala and called his family in Pennsylvania on Friday. Mr. Leon had never been to Guatemala before the United States Government decided to disappear him to that country. ICE still won’t confirm their thugs had anything to do with this. ICE claims they are “investigating” the case.
Photo by Annabel Podevyn on Unsplash
In conclusion
I am at a loss for words to describe how angry I am and how embarrassed I am today to be an American – even though I did not vote for Trump.
Trump campaigned on the promise to deport illegal aliens who were criminals, but now Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) snatches people off the street, from their homes, from their places of employment, and occasionally (what seems like daily) they make egregious mistakes and kidnap the wrong person.
ICE agents are under pressure to arrest 3,000 immigrates every day. So what if they nab a few legal citizens or immigrants who are guilty of nothing more than a traffic ticket?
It is un-American for ICE agents to cover their faces, wear no badges, and not identify themselves. The excuse that they have to cover their faces because they are scared of retribution doesn’t hold water. Local police officers might fear retribution, too, but they don’t wear face masks.
If you voted for Trump, you voted for this. You knew he was a horrible man and you voted for him anyway. I don’t know how you sleep at night.
At least I don’t have to live with the shame of having voted for any of this.
Until my next blog post
Keep up with reliable news reports
Keep reading good fiction and nonfiction books.
Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.
On Friday, July 18, I started gathering bits of news to share in a blog post on Friday, July 25, but by Saturday morning I had accumulated more than enough for a blog post. Therefore, this Friday’s post became today’s post.
With legislation, Executive Orders, Executive Proclamations, and changes to the U.S. Tax Code coming down the pike daily, it is difficult to tell whether some of the items are MAGA (Make America Great Again) or MAHA (Make America Healthy Again).
Air Pollution
Bloomberg reported that Trump signed a proclamation last Thursday night “allowing chemical makers, coal-fired power plants and other facilities to bypass a range of environmental regulations on grounds that the waivers are needed for national security purposes.”
It is amazing what falls into the “national security” category in 2025!
The facilities have been given a two-year waiver from adhering to Environmental Protection Agency rules.
Included in the waiver are certain facilities of United States Steel Corp., Cleveland-Cliffs, Inc., Dow, Inc., BASF SE, Phillips 66, and Citgo Petroleum Corp. Also, coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Illinois, and Colorado were exempted from air pollution mandates that limit emission of mercury and other toxins.
It seems Trump is determined to take us back to the “good old days” of choking air pollution that his followers younger than 60 years old don’t understand because they are too young to remember them.
Photo by Nick van den Berg on Unsplash
I’m confused. Is this MAGA (Make America Great Again) or MAHA (Make American Healthy Again)?
Personal Medical Debt
I thought Trump didn’t like for one judge to have the power to make a ruling that affects the whole country, but I guess it depends on the ruling and how it fits into Trump’s desires.
A Trump-appointed judge has overturned a Biden-era rule that removed medical debt from individuals’ credit reports.
So now, if you’ve had a catastrophic illness or accident, that medical debt will now show up on your credit report. It’s one more way for Trump to kick people when they’re down.
Is this Making American Great Again or Making America Healthy Again?
Environmental Protection Agency Firings
The New York Times reported, “The EPA said that it would eliminate its scientific research arm and begin firing hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, after denying for months that it intended to do so.”
Someone tell me: Is this Making America Great Again or Making America Healthy Again? I’m at a loss to know how this fits into either one of those grandiose Trump slogans.
New $250 “Visa Integrity Fee”
As if people in other countries already didn’t want to visit the United States under the current political climate, it just came to light that Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” which Congress adopted slaps a new $250 “visa integrity fee’ on visitors to the United States.
After September 30, 2025, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem can increase the fee at her discretion.
Trump and Professional Sports Mascots
Trump is demanding that the Washington Commanders of the National Football League and the Cleveland Guardians of the Major League Baseball change their mascots back, respectively, to the Redskins and Indians. He claims Native Americans are “clamoring” for the name changes.
As usual, it is a case of blackmail. The Washington Redskins now play at a stadium in Landover, Maryland. But in April the franchise started working on a deal to move the team back to the District of Columbia if a new stadium can be built on the site of the old Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.
Now, Trump is threatening to put the skids on the stadium deal if the franchise owners do not change the team’s name back to the Washington Redskins.
I’m not sure what his beef is with Cleveland, but his new slogan yesterday was MIGA (Make Indians Great Again.) The Cleveland Indians changed their name to the Cleveland Guardians in 2021 after Native Americans had called for them to drop “Indians” as their mascot for decades.
Hurricane Helene Update
North Carolina Governor Josh Stein and his wife, North Carolina First Lady Anna Stein, spent last week in western North Carolina to take advantage of the beauty and recreational opportunities the region offers and to draw attention to the fact that most of the area is reopened now and in need of the economic support that tourists bring.
As of Friday, of the 1,457 roads that were closed in western North Carolina last September due to Hurricane Helene, all but 34 are now completely open! That’s the full opening of 10 roads just last week. Forty-three roads have partial access.
I-40 at the Tennessee line is still just opened with a total of two lanes and a 35 m.p.h. speed limit, and most of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is still closed.
Until my next blog post
Support the First Amendment rights that comedians have… or had until last Thursday. The First Amendment might not always be there.
Support your local public library system. It might not always be there.
Read whatever you want to read. The day may come when you cannot do that.
Pay attention to current events as reported by reputable news media. (By the way, the orange narcissist’s propaganda outlets do not fall into that category.)
Don’t be too distracted by the political chaos and dismantling of our democracy that you forget the people of Ukraine, western North Carolina, and the Hill Country of Texas.
It continues to feel like news items are coming out of Washington, DC like water from a fire hose. I can’t keep up. For my mental health, that’s a good thing.
Some things get more coverage by the media than others, so I try to include some things in my blog posts that might have missed your attention.
I thought about listing the following items in order of outrageousness or evilness, but I gave up. Here they are in random order.
I believe God is weeping
The Trump Administration Regime has ordered nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food that was intended for distribution in Africa and the Middle East through USAID to be burned. Let that sink in.
Photo by Caleb Kim on Unsplash
The $800,000 (You read that right: that’s $800 thousand) worth of food was specifically intended for children under five years old in war-torn and disaster-stricken countries. It would have fed 1.5 million children for a week. By the way, it will cost $130,000 to incinerate the food.
Since the Trump Regime shut down USAID, there was apparently no one in the Trump Government that had the authority, capability, or the moral courage to get the food distributed to anyone – not even here in the United States.
Another 60 metric tons of food already paid for by the American taxpayer sits in warehouses around the world. Without USAID workers, it is doubtful any of it will be distributed. Therefore, it will eventually have to be destroyed.
It seems to me on the political level alone this is a slap in the face of the American farmer. You know – that American farmer that Trump and MAGA folks claim to love so much. That farmer grew that food.
How dare Donald Trump accuse USAID or any current or former U.S. Government agency of being wasteful!
More deportations to third-world countries
CBS News reports that the Trump Regime admitted on Tuesday that a group of violent criminals had been deported to Eswatini. Eswatini used to be known as Swaziland. It is a tiny country in Africa.
Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash
The deportees were not from Eswatini. They were from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen.
The Trump Regime says they were deported to Eswatini because they were such violent people that their home countries refused to take them.
It has not been disclosed what Eswatini gets out of the deal. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims that the countries accepting our deportees promise not to persecute or torture them.
I suppose we can take them at their word on that. (By “them” I mean the United States and the countries accepting our deportees.)
The irony is that Trump has maintained for years that other countries were sending us their criminals and the worst scumbags of society. It appears he has learned from those countries, and now the United States is doing it. We’re just proudly announcing that we’re doing it. Somehow, this is supposedly making America great again.
Corn farmers will have to take one on the chin for Trump
Trump has decided he’d rather his Coca-Cola be sweetened with cane sugar (mostly imported, by the way) than from corn syrup made from corn grown in Iowa. I understand that’s the difference between the Coca-Cola recipe in Mexico and the one used in the U.S. Who knew Trump preferred Mexican Coca-Cola to American Coca-Cola?
Photo by Katherine Volkovski on Unsplash
The American Medical Association says there’s not much difference in the “nutritional” value of a Coke sweetened with corn syrup and a Coke sweetened with cane sugar. When you’re dealing with a beverage that has no nutritional redeeming value….
Anyway, Coca-Cola appears to be just the latest private corporation that Trump wants to strong-arm into submission to his whims. Some of us remember the last time Coca-Cola tried to tinker with its recipe in America things did not go well.
FICA Club World Cup Trophy
It was embarrassing enough that President Trump refused to get off the stage so the Chelsea 2025 FIFA Club World Cup tournament champions could celebrate their win on July 13, but he didn’t stop there. The 24-carat gold trophy designed by Tiffany and Company and valued at $230,000 is now in the Oval Office. The Chelsea team got to take home a replica.
You simply cannot make this stuff up. I thought it couldn’t be true – not even for Trump – but I verified it on snopes.com.
I saw online that the Chelsea team photoshopped Trump out of the picture of them receiving the trophy and celebrating on stage.
I shudder to think how much gold Trump will take from the 2028 Summer Olympics!
Covid-19
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has dropped a case against a doctor in Utah who was accused of falsifying Covid-19 vaccination certificates and destroying $28,000 worth of government-provided Covid-19 vaccines.
Decrease in workforce at State Department
More than 1,300 employees of the U.S. State Department were let go last week. Waste, I guess?
Don’t you just hate it when diplomacy, time-honored relationship, goodwill, and mutual understanding get in the way of hate and war?
Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship threatened
President Trump threatened to take Rosie O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship away from her because she spoke out against his policies.
I had no idea the President of the United States could take away someone’s citizenship. (I’m being facetious… He can’t.)
The Federal Reserve
Trump continues to be critical of Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve. One day he’s going to fire him. The next day he isn’t going to fire him. On Wednesday he said he was surprised that Powell was appointed to the position.
Well, duh! Trump appointed him in 2017. Now he says Powell is a terrible person and claims that he was appointed by President Biden.
Firings at Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired 20 employees of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The 20 people worked on investigations into Donald Trump and his first administration while Joe Biden was U.S. President. In Trump’s 2024 campaign and in Bondi’s confirmation hearings, they both vowed to get rid of everyone at the DOJ who participated in investigations against Trump. The political firings at DOJ last week were made to get rid of the weaponization of the Justice Department. (You can’t make this stuff up.)
Photo on Unsplash
She also fired Joseph Tirrell, the Justice Department’s senior ethics attorney. He is a military veteran and has served his country in one way or another for nearly 20 years.
It is a sad day when the U.S. Department of Justice fires the top person looking out for ethics.
The IRS and the Johnson Amendment
The IRS announced on Monday that churches can now endorse politicians and not lose their tax-free status as a religious organization. My Baptist preacher Congressman sees this as a tremendous victory for our First Amendment rights of free speech.
Photo by Sean Lee on Unsplash
I don’t see it as a victory for anyone except pastors and churches that want to dictate how their congregants vote. It’s a shame their church members cannot be trusted to think for themselves.
I heard a audio clip of President Trump saying he didn’t see anything wrong with it if there is a candidate they like whose beliefs align with theirs. That shows how little he knows about religious organizations or Christianity. This is a slippery slope.
The Johnson Amendment was named for then U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. It became part of the U.S. Tax Code in 1954. It prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organization from endorsing or opposing political candidates.
I’m a little puzzled over how the Internal Revenue Service can just wipe part of the U.S. Tax Code off the books, but apparently in the land of Trump it can.
Recission Bill– Cuts to Public Broadcasting Corporation & USAID
The U.S. Senate gave Trump a huge gift yesterday morning when they voted 51-48 (one Senator was in the hospital and missed the vote) to cut $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $8 billion from foreign aid programs, including what little was left of USAID.
Although Senators Collins and Murkowski voted with the Democrats, Thom Tillis of North Carolina chose to vote for the cuts while at the same time making a speech on the Senate floor in which he said passing the bill was a mistake that the Senate would have to fix later.
What?
The bill was then sent back to the House of Representatives for that Republican-dominated body to rubber stamp it by today.
I am going to miss “NOVA,” “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates,” “Nature,” “BBC News America,” “Amanpour and Company,” “BBC News,” “PBS News Hour,” “North Carolina Weekend,” “Cook’s Country,” “Antiques Roadshow,” “Burt Wolf: Travels & Traditions,” “Rick Steves’ Europe,” “Doc Martin,” “My Music With Rhiannon Giddens,” every one of the Ken Burns documentaries, “Somewhere South,” “America’s Test Kitchen,” and “Lidia’s Kitchen.”
My sister will miss “Midsomer Murders” and “Death in Paradise.”
I’m sure others will miss “Sesame Street” and other children’s programming.
Photo by Meg von Haartman on Unsplash
Others will miss “This Old House,” “Woodwright Shop,” “Austin City Limits,” “Grantchester on Masterpiece,” “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries,” and “Sit and Be Fit.”
I could go on, but you get the picture. I hope you took time to let your Senators and Representatives know that you did not want the federal government to end its support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I did. It just fell on their six deaf ears.
Hearing U.S. Representative Randy Fine, a Republican from Florida, interviewed yesterday, it became clear that some of the members of Congress don’t know what they are voting on. Fine justified the elimination of money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Corporation (CPB) from the federal budget because “we have broadband and streaming now.”
First of all, if the public television stations don’t have the money to produce programming, no amount of broadband internet service or streaming capabilities will make non-existent programming available to people with broadband and/or streaming. In order to stream a TV program, it is my understanding that the program has to exist. However, I’m just a citizen, so what do I know?
Second of all, Mr. Fine, everyone does not have broadband internet service and everyone does not have internet service that is strong enough to enable streaming. I know that, because I’m one of them. I don’t live in a remote area; however, I do live on a road that does not have a high enough population for Windstream to upgrade our service. I can barely get so-called high-speed internet. Streaming? Forget about it.
Trump doesn’t like the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) – “public TV” or National Public Radio (NPR). Therefore, Republicans in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate cannot like them. Congressman Fine repeated the Republican Party line yesterday about PBS and NPR: They are “woke left-wing radical propaganda.”
That’s what this week’s email from my Congressman, Mark Harris, said, too. I guess Trump, Fine, and Harris nailed it. After all, when I watch “Antiques Roadshow” or “This Old House,” all I see is “woke left-wing radical propaganda.”
Margaret Taylor Green’s new concern
I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that U.S. Representative Margaret Taylor Green of Georgia is afraid that passage of the GENIUS Act – a crypto currency bill pushed by Trump – could be a sign of the “End Times” referenced in the Book of Revelation in the Bible (Revelation 13:16-17).
Photo by Traxer on Unsplash
She fears it will be “the sign of the beast.”
That’s hilarious! I thought the red MAGA baseball caps might already serve that purpose as “a mark on their foreheads.”
Just a few things we’ve lost since January 20, 2025
We won’t fully grasp what we’ve lost due to Executive Orders and legislation in the United States since January 20 until next year and the years thereafter.
We’ve lost the sanctity of our national parks to name just one.
We’ve lost an estimated 90,000 children in Third World countries who have died of starvation or disease since January 20 because the Trump Administration halted food and medical aid programs.
We’ve lost medical insurance coverage for millions of our fellow citizens.
We’ve lost after-school literacy programs for millions of our children.
We’re rapidly losing the separation of church and state that was so very important to the people who fought in the American Revolutionary War.
We’ve lost much of our civility and respect for our fellow Americans.
We’ve lost the simple elegance of the Oval Office and seen it turned into a gaudy gold frame shop.
We’ve lost the beauty of the White House Rose Garden.
We’ve lost our position of diplomatic influence in the world and replaced it with a stance of bullying, intimidation, black-mailing, and strong-arming.
Just a few things we’ve gained since January 20, 2025
Oh… but we’ve gained the disrespect of the rest of the world.
We’ve gained a para-military masked national police force.
We’ve gained a concentration camp in the Everglades.
We’ve gained an ability to disappear people.
We’ve gained an ability to deport immigrants to remote war-torn countries of questionable motives.
We’ve gained two obscenely gigantic U.S. flags on the White House lawn. They block the view of the beautiful White House, but Trump says they are the most beautiful flag poles in the world. Those new flags at the White House remind me of the one at a huge RV park near the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
By cutting $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that $1 billion saved can be used to start renovating the dilapidated prison on Alcatraz Island off the coast of California. To use Trump’s favorite adjective, what a beautiful use of that $1 billion instead of using it to support educational TV and non-commercial radio and the national and local emergency alerts those PBS and NPR stations send out – especially in the rural areas of the country!
We’ve gained the realization that our American democracy was as fragile as the paper the U.S. Constitution was written on almost 250 years ago.
Until my next blog post
Keep reading that book you checked out from the public library or purchased from an independent bookstore!
Remember the people of Ukraine, western North Carolina, and the Hill Country of Texas.
When a bill in the U.S. Congress is nearly 1,000 pages long, most of the details never get reported to the American taxpayers. After all, they are just footing the bill.
A few members of Congress even accidentally admitted they did not read the entire bill.
Over time… no doubt, over a very long time… more details of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will come to light. One such detail popped up on my computer screen last Friday. Since it has not received much attention, I will share it with you today.
Included in the OBBBA is $85 million to relocate the retired NASA space shutter Discovery. It belongs to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and is housed in the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar The Udvar-Hazy Center is an annex at Dulles International Airport.
Discovery weighs 161,325 pounds and measures 78 feet by 57 feet by 122 feet. It looks a little worse for the wear in the photographs on the Smithsonian’s Air and Space website, so one has to wonder what moving it would do to it. It flew nearly 150 million miles in its 28 years in service.
Photo by Jay Labe on Unsplash
U.S. Senator John Cornyn, a Republican representing Texas, wrote the provision in the OBBBA which would relocate Discovery to Houston, Texas. Cornyn maintains that moving the space shuttle to Texas would right “this egregious wrong” because Texas has played such a big part in NASA’s space program.
U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat representing Virginia, stated, “This ridiculous transfer would make Americans pay a $30 fee to view a shuttle that they can see for free right now in Chantilly.”
Kaine questions the message the relocation of the shuttle would send to Americans for them to pay $85 million to move the shuttle halfway across the country while Medicaid and nutrition assistance funding is being slashed by the same piece of legislation.
I agree with Senator Kaine. $85 million would pay a lot of medical bills for low-income Americans.
It seems to me that Texas could be given the next big piece of NASA equipment to be retired.
Until my next blog post
I hope you get to see Discovery for free before it is moved to Texas.
I hope you have a good book to read.
Remember the people of Ukraine, western North Carolina, and the Hill Country of Texas.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the rage now. It is the latest shiny object. All kinds of businesses want to jump on the bandwagon and use it to either make more money or replace employees with it. Either way, it promises to increase their profits.
Proponents tell us that AI will streamline our lives. We will accomplish more by doing less work.
Opponents tell us that AI will eventually be so much smarter than humans that it will have the ability to kill us.
My hunch is that there is some truth at both ends of the AI spectrum.
AI has the potential to organize certain aspects of our lives. It has the potential of making medical breakthroughs happen faster than would otherwise be possible.
AI in the hands of the wrong people has the potential of turning into a technology Frankenstein.
What about AI and literature?
I have noticed over the last month my inbox has been bombarded with emails about webinars promising to make my life as a writer oh so simple. The ads promise that the webinars and courses will teach me how to save time. Some of them promise that AI can write my blogs for me. AI can plot a novel for me. AI can write the novel for me. AI will free up all my time and load up my bank account with money.
The best part? I won’t have to write any more. No, actually, that’s the worst part. I won’t get to write any more.
I read the first couple of those emails, just to see what they were claiming. Now, I just hit the “delete” button. If it is from a formerly-reputable source, I then hit the “unsubscribe” button.
These people and companies that used to offer webinars and courses — some of them for free – have helped me become a better writer. Some of them have made me aware of practices or software that I have benefitted from. But now they have crossed over to “the dark side” and lost my respect.
There is a problem with the promise made by many of these emails I have received. The sources of those emails have lost sight of the heart of creativity. I am a writer. I want to write. I don’t want AI to write my blog posts. I don’t want AI to write my historical novel or short stories.
Going a step further, I don’t want AI taking the words I have painstakingly written after I did tedious research. As I said in my opening sentence today, “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
The stress of last week leading up to my AI experience on Friday
Last week was busy and stressful. I finished the final proofread of the 188-page devotional book I have written, I Need The Light! 26 Weekly Devotionals to Help You Through Winter.
It has taken more than a year to write it, format it for publication by IngramSpark and Amazon, create the cover on Bookbrush.io, and complete countless proofreads and edits. But last week, I downloaded the manuscript and the cover and hit the “submit” button on the IngramSpark website. Hitting the “submit” button was a freeing exercise. A weight was lifted off my shoulders!
By the way, I had to state to IngramSpark that I had not used AI or any AI content in the writing of my devotional book.
A bleed problem was identified on the first cover I submitted, which created 48 hours of panic in me. The second time I submitted it, it passed muster. Whew! I approved the e-proof I received two days later, and I ordered a paperback copy to inspect before I move forward seeking Advanced Review Copy readers.
That’s just a little of what I dealt with last Monday through Thursday.
Then, I opened my email inbox on Friday…. But first here’s a little background.
My publishing experience with Arcadia Publishing
In 2014, Arcadia Publishing published my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina as part of the company’s Postcard History Series. Writing that book was a labor of love and a crash course in dealing with a publishing company.
Arcadia Publishing has strict guidelines governing word count and character count for every postcard the author chooses to include in the book. I did a great amount of research so I could write the best caption possible for each postcard. You wouldn’t believe how tedious it is to rewrite a paragraph umpteen times to try to decrease the character count by one or two or twenty-five.
The history buff in me tried to pack as much history into the book as possible. When I asked for a little leeway, I was sternly informed that it was a postcard book and not a history book. Lesson learned. My vision for the book did not quite line up with Arcadia’s vision.
My postcard book is still available from Arcadia Publishing and on Amazon in paperback and e-book. Occasionally, it can be found at an independent bookstore. Every year or two I receive a small royalty check. I am proud of the book.
Then, I opened my email inbox on Friday….
The email I received from Arcadia Publishing last Friday
With my devotional book manuscript submitted to IngramSpark and my galley proof ordered, I looked forward to having a day on Friday to catch up on some things and turning my energy to marketing I Need The Light!
But then I opened my inbox and found an email from Arcadia Publishing. The subject line, “Royalty Opportunity” immediately grabbed my attention, but the first sentence took the smile off my face.
“Arcadia has been presented with an opportunity to provide content to a major technology company involved in AI development. The request is to use the content of your title(s) for AI training purposes.”
I did not like the sound of that. The next sentence was in bold font and tried to entice me with a $205 royalty at the end of 2025. I live on a tight budget, so $205 was tempting. It will take me upwards of ten years to receive $205 in royalties from Arcadia from the sales of my book.
I read on as the letter indicated that such “opportunities could be very limited in the future. Recently, two courts ruled that AI training is ‘fair use’ of copyrighted content, for which tech firms need not compensate authors. If future cases result in similar rulings, it will be increasingly difficult to secure payment for content.”
The letter went on to say that Arcadia has the right to let this undisclosed technology company have access to my copyrighted words under the contract I signed in 2014, but out of the goodness of their hearts they are giving me the chance to opt out of this one arrangement.
I opted out and then I wrote Arcadia Publishing an email
I was tempted to take the $205 at the end of the year. I could really use that money, so I had to take some time to decide what to do.
I thought about some of the well-known authors who have stood up against their publishers and nefarious AI schemes. They had more to lose than I do. What difference would it make, especially if the next time a tech company makes a deal with Arcadia Publishing the company doesn’t bother to let me opt out?
That little voice in the back of my head kept saying, “Don’t take the money,” and that little voice prevailed. I opted out.
I did not leave it at that. This is the letter I sent to Arcadia Publishing:
“I am disappointed in Arcadia Publishing for cooperating with an undisclosed company to assist in their AI training. Your decision was, no doubt, made solely on money and how Arcadia Publishing can benefit financially from such a scheme.
“The fact that you did not disclose the name of the AI company you have made a deal with indicates a lack of transparency.
“Your decision shows a lack of respect for the creative work of the writers who have entrusted you with their intellectual property. I appreciate the fact that you did the ethical thing by asking for my permission.
“I would have much preferred to have received a letter from you informing me that you had been approached about such a business arrangement but you had declined to participate. Such a communication from you would have made me proud to be an Arcadia Publishing author.”
That was my first brush with AI wanting to use my intellectual property for “training purposes” and it is just the beginning.
I thought my work was safe. After all, I own the copyright to each of the books and short stories I have published. That copyright is in effect for 70 years after my death.
The email I received on Friday served as a stark reminder that just because I own the copyright, my work is still vulnerable to unscrupulous tech companies that want to use my hard work to their advantage and profit.
As if we did not have enough to worry about in 2025, along comes AI.
Until my next blog post
I hope you have a good book to read. If it is a good book, it was written by a human being and not by a computer.
Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.
Janet's Writing Blog 