Just Sayin

  ATTENTION!!! All FB friends and foes far and wide, The Supreme Court of the United States has made a ruling that affects you and me. I know crazy huh! Anyhoo, the SCOTUS has ruled that local government officials can block the public from their social media pages and NOT be in violation of the 1 st Amendment. In the unanimous opinion in Lidke v. Freed (2023), Justice Amy Coney Barrett set guidelines for when public officials' accounts could be viewed as state action. Barrett said public officials’ social media accounts can only be considered part of their government duties if the official has the authority to speak on the state’s behalf and claims to use that authority when posting on social media.  The court found that while public officials’ actions might look official, it is not the state acting unless there is a direct connection to that power or authority. Determining whether or not the official is exercising state power is nuanced, but Barrett said this authority h...

  I am not necessarily putting them on the same level in character. As much as I am not a Biden fan, he is not as bad as Trump. One can't be in politics for 48 years and not be political, and not to have done something shady. That is the nature of politics. Biden doesn't walk on water, and he is not as pristine as he comes off. Just like Trump is not the courageous fighter he purports to be, or comes off as. Both are political animals, and as such are guided by appearance. Both are old men who are playing a young mans game in a young man's arena. Remember, politics is all about perception, and in politics, perception is reality, not truth. That is what I meant to articulate. That while they both are different, they both are the same.

   have always maintained that a time would come when our Constitutional rights will collide with technology and our freedoms. That time has come with TikTok. Tik Tok by its ties to the Chinese government is a threat to our personal, and national security. That is why the government has the Constitutional authority to restrict or outright ban the app in the United States. The restriction or ban of Tik Tok is some say a violation if the First Amendment, as it is   It is a restriction of free speech. The government can restrict free speech if it has a compelling interest to do so, which it does because of security both personal and national security. If the restriction is content-neutral, which it is, because the government wishes not to ban the content, but the app. The government offers an alternative which again it does with Facebook, Instagram. and other social media platforms. Those who say they are against it because it is important to their business, have other soc...

 I know enough to know when I don't know enough. I try to know something at the end of the day, that I didn't know at the beginning of that day. I try to learn something new every day. Learning is a lifetime endeavor.

 I had been prepping all my life for the death of my parents. When one day the hospital called and said come see your father if you want to see him alive again. So I did. I got to see him. I told him that I was ok now, and would be ok later. We had made peace about 10 years before that. We were in a good spot, Which was funny, we were never really in a bad place, we just didn't see eye to eye. I got a call a week later from my mother that he had passed. So I drove 4 hours through the early morning hours, crying and mourning my father. All that prepping that I had thought I did, turned out to be a lie. Because I wasn't prepared at all. My father and I were tight. We were both truck drivers, worked outside at manual labor. We both had an appreciation for classic cars. My father was a a hot rodder and a gearhead from the 1950's. We went to car shows together. The last one we went to was the Barrett-Jackson Auction in Scottsdale AZ in 2007. We had the best time, as we always ha...