No matter what or who you worship, no matter if you do not worship, (but my liberal leanings do draw the line at Satanists) I wish you the happiest of days. 

If your family gathers at this time of the year, I wish you no wars with siblings. 

If your household is cooking this year, I hope the visitors will wash up afterward.

 If there's a ball game on and dishes to be done, I hope with all my heart that it's not just the women in the kitchen nor the men in the living room but a bit more a gender mix. 

And if there must be alcohol, I do sincerely hope for the sanity of the women, that the men do not bawl from the living room, Hey!  Bring me a beer! but rather stand, walk to the kitchen, and get their own.

I wish you the joy of the new year, faced with fortitude, work ethic, faith in human resilience and a commitment to do and be our best this year.  I hope that each and every one of us face this new year, and each other, with hearts true and strong in acceptance of one another and in a new resolve to respect a bit more those who are different from us.  Whether their difference is marked in skin color, native language, faith, lack of faith, disdain for faith, disability, disadvantage or loss of all hope, I do so hope that we as a nation more diverse in its population than any other nation in the world, will come at last to a true respect.

What?  No bashing on boards?  No all caps accusations of mental inadequacy pointed at that blithering fool who has the temerity to disagree with you?  No bashing, period?  No hate?  Just simple acceptance?

YES!  That is what I hope will somehow magically occur on January 1, 2018, all across the nation.

You will think me a fool and a dreamer.  I am neither.  I am a believer in the incredibly vast reservoir of strength that is humanity.  I am a believer in a better way for America.  And that isn't going to happen from the White House or the Governor's office.  It's going to happen to you and me.  We are going to remember to be polite.  We are going to remember to be open, and honest, and warm.  We are going to remember what it means to be an American again.

We have to.  We are going to fall apart and lose our cohesiveness as a society that stands together if we don't start shuffling our feet in the direction of our own salvation.

I met a woman who told me that the Atheists' sign offended her and though it was not right to tear it down, he should not have put it up, essentially peeing on her holiday!  I suggested that her creche might affect him exactly the same way and pee on his belief system.  To her credit, she said no more.  But I wonder who she's telling her tales to now.  Like the atheists bully me!  Atheists are violent men and women who want to silence the voice of Christianity!

Frankly, I don't think ten thousand flames could even singe the massive, pervasive message of Christianity.  Be like us or go to hell.

Atheists don't believe in hell, by the way.  I'm not sure where they believe they go, but it surely is not to the Christian Hell.  So it's silly to tell them to go to hell.  It's out of context.  It has no point of reference. 

You'll think I'm redundant, but

Where the hell did America go?

It was here. I remember.  I remember America. It was where the right to free speech was practically sacred. It was where a free press was simply a given. It was where children of all races played together at the city park and no one on the park grounds had evil words to pass to other children. Parents did not hustle their children away from those ... other children. And if gays and lesbians were discussed at all, it was with a half-embarrassed but tolerant voice that said, well, I don't really know any, but I can't see what harm they could do.

Yes, there were white picket fences. Families went to church on Sunday and had brunch when they got home. It was the only day Dad put on a suit, and though Mom wore dresses every day, her church dress was much better. The kids changed into play clothes and after a much welcomed late breakfast (called brunch by adults) went outside to play albeit not as loudly or roughly as they had played during the week.

Though it was on one of those Sundays that I heard an argument that was getting old. My oldest brother wanted to marry the daughter of one my father's brothers. My mother said absolutely not; she's your first cousin and it's not done. Even then, into the morass of emotion, I thought, but he's my father's stepson. They're not related at all, so he's not related to his uncle's daughter because he's not related to his uncle so why can't he marry her? I wonder about these things. Is that what changed him? Or was it something dark and evil that changed him?

But I digress. I miss my America. I even miss the later America, the one I raised my son in. We didn't go to church on Sundays or have brunches. We usually camped when the weather allowed, or slept in and did not much on weekends, gearing up for the weeks ahead.

But that wasn't bad. His "big brother" was actually two gay men who taught my son much and more about what matters in a man -- and no, it isn't size. What matters is love, compassion, respect, and patience. I am quite proud to say that my son possesses all of those, but I hold no claim to them. His gay big brothers did that and dispensed with a boatload of male baggage in the process.

But do you see? Big Brothers/Big Sisters made that match and my son saw nothing strange in it. Nor did I. He had male influence and that mattered to me.

He also had a best friend about whom he talked often. Months after I first heard about his new friend, I said, "There I was, waiting for my final accounting grade, and there she was, your friend's mother. Why didn't you ever tell me that your best friend is a girl and black? He looked at me blankly and said, "What possible difference could that have ever made?"

I daresay I swagger when I think about that. Because I did do that part. I rejected utterly the message of hate and racism that my mother and brothers shoved at him and reminded him regularly that he is no better or worse than any other human being in existence. I guess he heard me.

It was a quieter world then. Gay couples were not beaten to death in the streets. Demonstrators for peace were not run down by Nazi's driving pick-up trucks. Eight-year-old boys were not being hung for the crime of being bi-racial.

America was great. In the days before Donald Trump, America was great. Now it is consumed in hatred, violence, racism, misogyny, and violence. I thought we had outgrown those. I thought we knew better. But then, I didn't know Donald Trump. He is the living, breathing poster child for hate. He has no place in the White House, not even picking up trash off the lawns. Impeach hi9m. Arrest him. Do something. Get that monster out of the White House.

OK, I have to say it

Yes, I've been away for a while but I'm back. And to half of you, I'll have nothing positive to say and to the rest of you, I'll be on spot entirely. This is the way of being a stupid liberal who knows nothing about the real world.

Hah! I know plenty about the real world, and I'm not by any means stupid, nor am I a Libtard nor am I a Democrap. I do wish Mr. Trump's followers would get new vocabularies. I call them conservatives or the right. I, on the other hand, am vilified with such names as libtard and democrap. Really. Grow up.

And that's what I want to say to Donald Trump. Grow up. Quit with the Twitter tantrums. Quit with creating new drama every week. Grow up. Get a job you can do. Businessman apparently isn't it. Is it three bankruptcies or four.

Is it four trophy wives or three? I lose track of all the ridiculous ups and downs of an old man's vanished life.

I don't care if he's impeached, imprisoned, or quits. I just care that the mindless, heartless wannabe in the White House get out and take with him his witless vice president and his purely evil Speaker of the House. In fact, let's just fire all the Republicans and restore sanity to this country.

Our outstanding representatives from Wyoming are delighted to have worked closely with Mr. Trump in divesting 23,900 Wyoming citizens of their health insurance. I have been delighted with myself from time to time in my life. I have never, however, had occasion to celebrate my own ability to destroy human life. Because that's what they've done.

The poor will vanish. They will die. The disabled will vanish. They will die. The middle class will become the poor. The rich will become richer. By the time that maniac in the White House is done, there will be one class in America -- ancient fat rich guys.

But who will work in their hotels? Who will serve in their restaurants? Oh! Silly me. Call it insourcing. Mr. Trump will bring in slave labor from Africa. And he'll be sure to lock them up at night because they're monsters.

Let me tell you who the monsters were. They were immigrants. They came with drugs and weapons to take our jobs, rape our women, take our children from us, and even take our language, to say nothing of our homes, our lands, and our means of doing things as basic as eating. They came in hordes to destroy.

They were the white men who came from England and Spain to take over the new continent. They brought guns to shoot Indians who had tomahawks to respond with. They gave welcome blankets against the cold and infected tribes with smallpox. They raided villages while the warriors were gone fighting other groups meant to draw them from the villages, and they raped the women and broke open the children's heads on rocks. They rode away laughing.

They rode away laughing at Standing Rock, too. They broke hips and sent babies flying through the air with cold water high-pressure hoses.  Why? Because the Indians of that reservation don't want that line going through their reservation. The primary reason is that if it does, it will cut off all water sources to the reservation. The second reason, which should be the more important, is that the reservation is their land. It's the paltry leavings that the white men gave them into perpetuity. It's theirs. No one has the right to enter that reservation or invade in any way without the permission of the residents. This pipeline is not authorized. Does Mr. Trump care that he's violating a treaty? Of course not. He's Donald Trump. The law doesn't apply to him.

If you voted for Donald Trump you should know that he doesn't care. If one of his plans gets in your road, too bad. He doesn't care about you. You got him into office. He will see you to your grave. He will cancel your insurance. He will raise the mortgage rates above levels ever seen before and render you homeless. But homelessness is about to become illegal so the police will be able to shoot you if you're homeless. So you die along with all the people who didn't vote for him. And all we're left with is ancient fat rich guys.

Or maybe it will be faster than that. Maybe that ancient rich fat guy in Washington will shoot off his mouth a few more times and someone will push a button and someone else will push a button and the human race will go into its own extinction with only one consolation -- Donald Trump can't survive nuclear war, either. 

Get that man out of office. Get him gone. Before he puts an end to the very race that allegedly spawned him.