So sorry to hear this news.

February 7, 2019

Washington - John Dingell, (click here) a gruff Michigan Democrat who entered the U.S. House of Representatives in 1955 to finish his late father’s term and became a legislative heavyweight and longest-serving member of Congress, died on Thursday. He was 92.

“Today the great State of Michigan said farewell to one of our greatest leaders. John Dingell will forever be remembered as ‘The Dean’ of Congress not simply for the length of his service, but for his unparalleled record of legislative accomplishments,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer wrote in a post on Twitter.

He saw a great deal of change in his years in service to the country. He saw the first African American President and the first woman Speaker of the House. He saw the first walk on the moon.

But, the time he spent in the US House of Representative span decades beginning when Dwight Eisenhower was president. They were incredible times.

He never lost interest in the country. He loved it and the people loved him.

Sincerest sympathies to his family, friends and colleagues. He was genuine. He is difficult to forget. He was moral and loved people. He reached for the higher purpose. He made the USA great.

December 4, 2018
By John D. Dingell

...These are not just the grumblings of an angry old man (click here) lamenting the loss of “the good old days.” In December 1958, almost exactly three years after I entered the House of Representatives, the first American National Election Study, initiated by the University of Michigan, found that 73 percent of Americans trusted the federal government “to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.” As of December 2017, the same study, now conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, found that this number had plummeted to just 18 percent....

I want to know if this is an isolated case within the USA media.

Go get them, Jeff Bezos. This is hero stuff. No gossip pictures are going to overshadow the heroics taking place. This is definitely putting pressure on the owner of the "Washington Post" to provide propaganda to the American public.

I find it hard to believe this is an isolated incident. Others just may be waiting in the shadows and will come forward, too.

February 7, 2019
By Dylan Byers

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (click here) accused the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., of “extortion and blackmail” on Thursday for threatening to publish scandalous photos of him and his mistress if he didn’t drop an investigation into how the tabloid obtained text messages exposing his extra-marital affair.

According to the emails that Bezos published, which have not been independently reviewed by NBC News, showed that AMI threatened to publish texts from Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, that included photos of a sexual nature. In exchange for withholding the photos, AMI demanded that Bezos stop the Washington Post, which he owns, from reporting about political motivations behind the National Enquirer's initial reports about his relationship with Sanchez.

"If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?" Bezos wrote on the blogging website Medium of one letter in which an AMI representative detailed embarrassing photos and texts that the tabloid planned to publish revealing his relationship with Sanchez.

David Pecker, CEO of AMI, which owns National Enquirer, and President Donald Trump are known to be friends, and Pecker has been accused of buying controversial stories about Trump to keep them private....

February 7, 2019
By Alexandra Petra

“Good fences make good neighbors.” (click here)

— Mike Pence, defending the need for a wall on the United States’ border with Mexico

This old saying appears in the poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost. However, in the poem, it was ironic. I have taken the liberty of updating the poem so Mike Pence can quote it without embarrassment:

Something there is that wants to build a wall,...

I visited the exact place most folks speak of about when referring to the Robert Frost fence. It isn't all that. The most interesting part of the fence is it's intended use for the Frost family. Frost said of his farm with a fence.

"I might say the core of all my writing was probably the five free years I had there on the farm down the road a mile or two from Derry Village toward Lawrence. The only thing we had was time and seclusion. I couldn't have figured on it in advance. I hadn't that kind of foresight. But it turned out right as a doctor's prescription."

--Thompson, Lawrence, ed. Selected Letters of Robert Frost. New York, Holt, 1964.

Robert Frost was an interesting man. He taught at Pinkerton Academy (click here) in Derry, New Hampshire. He had six children;  Elliot (1896–1900, died of cholera); daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); son Carol (1902–1940, committed suicide); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just three days after her birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father.

He loved his children and his employment was about a mile or so walk from his home. The farm house is a large house and it accommodated all the people it comfortably sheltered from any New Hampshire winter.

But, the children of Robert Frost didn't know the limits of fences. The fence at the farm house is only for the front yard where the children would play while young.

The children were each assigned a constellation in the night sky over their home to study, read about and write about. In addition, they never had a bed to sleep in they could say was only their bed. The children were allowed to sleep anywhere they wanted within the bedrooms assigned to the children. The exception, of course, was that of any infant at the time that was assigned the crib.

Robert Frost believed in liberal views of child rearing and to his way of thinking he wanted his children to feel safe and loved; that included each other as siblings.

The most interesting aspect of the house was the backyard which sprawled for quite a distance and was bordered by forest. There were no walls to speak of in that yard. Just a stone border fence about a foot and a half high. Robert Frost did not believe in keeping people out with a fence. Not at all. He believed in keeping people inside the fence, especially when their view of the world and a street were unsafe.

I am sorry to say Vice President Pence's analogy is grossly wrong. Perhaps he really should do a study of a subject to understand the depth of authorship, before he wrongly uses it for his own purpose.

Absent form the "State of the Union" speech the evening of February 6th.

February 7, 2019
By Marc Orfanos

Tel Orfanos, right, with his father, Marc, center, and his brother Ty at the 2016 Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

Marc Orfanos is a resident of Thousand Oaks, Calif., and member of the Everytown Survivor Network.

Imagine (click here) being called into a room after waiting 10 excruciating hours to learn if your child is alive or dead. You find yourself face to face with a somber police officer. The words “I am sorry, your son did not make it” are barely comprehensible as the room swirls around you. You gasp for air as you feel your heart being ripped out of your chest. Your life, along with the lives of your family, friends and community, is changed in that instant. This is the reality of gun violence in America. This was our reality three months ago today.

Telemachus “Tel” Orfanos was my oldest son. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him, and there is nothing in this world more important to me than my children. He lived his life to help others, and that is he how he died. He was only 27 years old.

Tel survived the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history on Oct. 1, 2017, in Las Vegas. He honorably served our country in the Navy, but never felt the looming presence of death more than at the Route 91 Harvest festival, where 58 people were killed and more than 850 wounded. When he came home, we hugged and cried — we felt so lucky for him to be alive.

None of us ever expected Tel would be at the scene of a second mass shooting just one year later. On Nov. 7, 2018, Tel was at the Borderline Bar & Grill in our hometown of Thousand Oaks, Calif., when someone opened fire. Tel rushed a group of friends out of the bar before returning to try to help more. He was shot multiple times and killed along with 11 others. I will never again be able to hug him, cry with him or be thankful he came home.

Mass shootings have become so routine and commonplace that my son was present at two....

While the State of the Union went on people in the USA were dying at the hand of violence. "Mass Shootings in 2019" (click here) Citizens die everyday in the USA now since the NRA and Russia has had it's way with our elections. Everyday there are mass shooting in the USA and they are not committed by the Undocumented. That fact went completely unrecognized in the State of the Union speech. Trump is not a president for all the people, just the one that improve his image in the way he wants it portrayed.

February 6, 2019

New York — Police say (click here) gunfire inside a Brooklyn building has left one person dead and three others hospitalized.

Detective Adam Navarro reports the shooting happened shortly before 10:30 p.m. Wednesday at a party in the lobby of an apartment building at 1778 Fulton Street.

A 20-year-old man was shot in the head and chest and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Another 20-year-old man was shot in the torso. A 55-year-old woman was shot in abdomen, and a 22-year-old woman was grazed by a bullet; both are expected to survive.

Navarro says it’s unclear how many of the victims were actual targets of the male gunman.

Police have so far made no arrests.

Occurred February 6, but, reported on February 7th.

Cleveland -- Cleveland police (click here) are investigating a shooting that left one person dead and several others injured.

Police were called to Roehl Avenue and West 33rd Street around 10 p.m. Wednesday night.

When they arrived, they found a large crime scene.

According to Cleveland EMS, one man was found dead at the scene. His identity was not released.

Three other men were taken to MetroHealth Medical Center, EMS told Fox 8.

A 33-year-old and 18-year-old were listed in critical condition. A 32-year-old was listed in serious condition.

Cleveland police have not released any information on the shooting or possible suspects.