Well, it is good to know that Obama was not the only one to avoid using the term “radical Islamic terrorist.” Wasn’t that one of the big things you had against him? You were so happy to find a guy who was going to call a radical Islamic terrorist a radical Islamic terrorist.  That’s what he was about — you’re type of man. A man who would speak truth to power. No pussy footing around for him.

He stood talk behind the dias shouting out those valliant words you longed to hear.  Ah, you thought that his middle initial “I” stood for intrepidness. Boldness to confront those who would lessen America’s standing in the world or who threatened us you knew was coming. He was the type, you really believed this in your heart, who would stand up to people — mano a mano — face to face. If he did not think someone was doing right he would tell them and not send another to do his dirty work.

I’m not sure of the purpose of an article I read recently. The headline read: “Want healthy food?  In much of Mass., it’s hard to get.”  That word “Mass” is an abbreviation for the state of Massachusetts.  Having lived there I don’t recall  ever having faced that problem. It is not the Catholic Church Mass. If it were the latter it would make sense because it is rare to find healthy food at a Mass.

The article starts off about a woman who lives two miles from “the  nearest full service grocery store” which appears to be another name for supermarkets.  It takes her two hours to get there by public transportation on three buses. What is supposed to be done about this? Are we to build supermarkets at the corner of every street or within 1,000 feet of every home?

The article then makes the really brilliant observation: “But most of northern Berkshire County and nearly all of Hampden County are also low-access spots. In rural areas, people can drive miles before they find a grocery store. . . . ”  Obviously if you live out in the country then you’re not going to find many supermarkets there. Berkshire County has about 134 people for every square mile; Norfolk has 1575, and Suffolk has 6500. You cannot build a supermarket if there is no one to come.

Well knock my socks off! I’ve suffered a rude awakening this last week or so. I though we were living in a nirvana of racial harmony until the lid was lifted off of it when the people from South Boston showed up to protest busing. Haven’t a million local and copy-cat national media articles blamed South Boston for racism pointing back to the ill-conceived court order in 1974 which required the busing of children to achieve racial balance and which resulted in more racial imbalance.

How was I to know it existed long before 1974 and long after the idea that busing could accomplish racial balance in school was flushed down the toilet. It’s not that South Boston did not have among its protesters to busing some people who were racist, it did. It had one of the foremost racists in the area in the person who when running for office stood in front of buses as people were getting on handing out her card and saying: “you know where I stand.”  

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein was boxed. Having participated in the firing of James Comey the FBI Director he was then the one responsible for overseeing the investigation into what President Trump called the fake Russian investigation. I am sure he believed that he could have done it fairly and with integrity. Perhaps he could have done it. But what he initially failed to realize is that his involvement with the Comey firing would always taint any decision he made.

He hung tough. Earlier this week he let it know he was going to handle the investigation but then something changed. Did his friends and associates tell him no matter how upstanding he is that any conclusion he reached would not be accepted by the public? He was seen too close to Sessions; he was seen as a Trump fall guy.

Perhaps he believed that the investigation was “fake” as the president proclaimed. Perhaps he had other reasons to think he could handle it. But he changed his mind. He did so without so much as a “how do you do” to Trump. Well, that’s not true, he did give him an hour’s lead on his decision which he knew was not enough time for him to get him shut down.

One thing that I did not like about Obama was that he did his best to keep us out of war. Oh, I know some  blame him for Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and god knows what other places but the incursions into those places was minor or was necessitated by decisions made by a prior president.

Iraq and Afghanistan started under Bush who was in office 2001 to 2008 and continued by Obama from 2009 to 2016. In Iraq during Bush years American military suffered 3908 fatalities while under Obama 290; in Afghanistan under Bush 630 and Obama 1732. For the most part we pulled out of Iraq which gave rise to ISIS and put more troops into Afghanistan to continue the ever losing fight against the Taliban.

The ball has now been tossed into Trump’s hands and he has pretty much continued on the Obama policies in Afghanistan by putting more troops into the fire. Things are a mess in those two countries and for now, at least in Afghanistan, there is no exit.

We know it happened. Trump admitted it. He said he had the right to do it.

He did have that right. Just like he had the right to fire Comey for investigating him. But no other president would have done it. You are not supposed to give out this type of information called “code-word information” which is most highly classified without clearing it first with intelligence agencies and going to the party that gave it to you to ask permission to do this. Trump failed to do that.

Despite clever half denials from McMasters and Tillerson it is clear it happened. How do we know that. The Administration asked the Washington Post not to publish the information that Trump gave to Russians Lazrov and Kislyak, to quote: “The Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.”

Reading that left me a little bewildered. If the Russians can be given the secrets why is it the American people cannot also be given them. The secret is out. Trump trying to ingratiate himself with the Russians handed it over to them. If they know all our enemies will know it but we Americans cannot. It makes no sense other than we are living in Trump’s America.

On my way back from Florida I stopped in Garden City, New York. It was getting late in the day. We checked into a local motel. My wife was exhausted since it had been a long day of traveling with a ton of traffic. She had no interest in going back out for another twenty mile round trip that I proposed.

I wanted to see the tomb of Teddy Roosevelt which is located in Oyster Bay in the Youngs Memorial Cemetary which was about ten miles away. So off I went and soon found myself walking up the twenty-six steps to the top of a hill, the twenty-six representing that he was the twenty-sixth president of the United States. Standing at the gate to a ten foot high wrought iron fence that enclosed his burial area I could see that his headstone was relatively simple bearing only his and his wife’s name.

The so-called artistic director Burgess Clark at the Boston Children’s Museum apparently not happy with producing plays and productions for children wants to push the envelope. In his recent production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest he decided to add a nude scene to the show. The theater goers watching the cast consisting of children between 15 and 25 years-old were treated to a man of 21 years of age walking around nude.

A column about the show tells how the artistic director wants to push the limits of what is shown to children. I suggested previously that if he is bored with producing productions for children he should get another job in a non-children’s theater where he can treat himself and the audience with as much nudity as he wishes. I believed a theater that called itself the Children’s theater should stick to performances appropriate for children.

According to a recent report five trustees who believed that the Children’s Theater should be an appropriate place for children have resigned as they too apparently thought that theater should let children be children. The theater management oblivious to the idea that it is advertising itself as a place for children and has an artistic director that apparently is bored came out with a statement. It said: “When an organization is expanding as quickly as we are — growing its audience and its following — sometimes not everyone is on the same page with the pace of change.’’