Tony Brewer

Thank goodness the year’s elections are over!  I was getting tired of all of the automated phone calls coming in promoting one candidate or the other!  I may not be happy with the results of who won and who lost, but at least I can hit the sack early if I want to and not be awakened by the phone just to hear a pre-recorded message to vote for so-and-so!  I wish there was some way we could opt-out from receiving those calls!  All they do is annoy me!

On this special day, the anniversary of the twin towers bombing, I was surprised to notice as I was driving around how many businesses were flying their American flags at full staff.  Yes, there were a lot of businesses that were flying their flags at half-staff, but it seemed that just as many were flying at full staff.  I don’t remember hearing an official proclamation that flags were supposed to fly at half-staff, but the post offices and government buildings were definitely at half staff, so I’m guessing that the proper protocol for the day would be for half-staff.  I wondered if the the full staff businesses were simply ignorant or just plain arrogant in some way.  Were these people proclaiming their “gee, we’re Americans and can’t be taken down” or were they “gee, we don’t think that the victims of the terrorist attack deserve the respect of a half-staff flag?”  I guess I’ll never know!

I’ve never been able to swat a fly with my bare hand, have you? Well, our President has shown his ninja skills in his fly-swatting success! And of course, PETA is unhappy about it and has sent him a humane fly trap for future nuisance bugs! What a riot!

I understand that President Obama has made a television appearance directed at telling Iran that the US would like to change its relationship with Iran for the better. I don’t know how exactly President Obama plans to do that, and I think it will be interesting to see what happens. I was just reading that Iran’s response was essentially that in order to create a more harmonious relationship that the US will have to change some policies, and so far they have seen no hard evidence of those policies being changed. One of the policies in question is the US backing Israel; Iran would like for the US to stop backing Israel. Frankly, I don’t see that happening, and if that is the deal breaker than I suspect that a better relationship is not going to happen.

I was reading a very interesting article on the Time.com website where the story was talking about the idea of taking the government out of marriage, and putting the marriage back into the churches.  The article was suggesting that the government could issue civil unions certificates that would define a legal family (whether straight or gay) and that those people who want the church’s blessings could then go have their wedding ceremony at their church.  I think that is a very interesting idea, and it might just solve the gay-straight marriage issue because the civil union certificate would give the holders all of the legal rights of family members.  I think it is an idea worth exploring!