A Day of Remembrance

My heart warmed today actually seeing an American Flag at half-staff in remembrance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 70 years ago. Recently, there is a move to erase the memory of that horrific event, lest we promote “racism.” Let's not forget the militarization of Japan during the early 1900's. The Japanese naval victory over the Russian fleet in 1905. The treaties in 1921 and 1922 with Japan, as the world slowly acknowledged the growing military monster. The Rape of Nanking in the 1930's would be forgotten if it had not been filmed by Germans. The government of Japan still denies it happened. Let's not forget that Japanese naval forces were already launched and steaming towards Pearl Harbor, while their diplomatic delegation in Washington DC was assuring our President, to the last hour, that they would not attack. Throughout the war they were an excessively cruel enemy, and required the nuclear equivalent of a silver bullet to end the carnage. After spending 20 years defending our nation and living in Japan for a year, it galls me to hear on the news today that our President's children ate Japanese food at their school today. Somebody in the school should be fired. Any other day is fine. Let's remember history as it actually happened and make common sense decisions to deal with it. We have a growing militaristic menace in Asia right now, called China. As a people can we not even stand up to the passive-aggressive misfits in our midst that get their jollies by feeding school kids Japanese food on Pearl Harbor Day? With that kind of thinking, the American Dream will be erased from our memory also, as we sit in our Japanese cars, obeying Shariah Law, and paying taxes to the Chinese Communist government.  Are there any men left in our society?  --Ben Kuykendall

Homeless Families in Florida

With foreclosures still climbing and jobs still shrinking, more families are finding themselves homeless.  A recent  14-minute video documentary by CBS looked at the growing problem of homeless families forced to live in their cars.  Interesting is the fact that one third of the homeless families in America live in Florida.  Day-to-day it is hard to notice because so many of the families work hard to hide their situation to prevent the State from taking away their kids.  The video is posted at:  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7389750n&tag=pop;videos

The Saddest Place

Why would St. Petersburg, Florida, top the list of saddest places to live?  It has beautiful beaches and holds the record for once having 768 straight days of sunshine.  Three days ago, Men's Health magazine posted an article named "Frown Towns" that lists St. Petersburg as the saddest place to live in America.  They calculated suicide rates and unemployment rates, along with statistics on the percentage of households that use antidepressants and the number of people who report feeling blue.  Sounds like good science, but the result is crazy.  This place is surrounded by warm water, plenty of vegetation, miles of white sand beaches, sunshine almost everyday, and many of the people were successful enough to allow them retirement here.  To go one step further, the article listed Fargo, North Dakota, as the third happiest place to live.  Definitely, common sense was lacking.  Right now I am sitting in shorts and a t-shirt, with the heat off and the windows open, feeling the fresh breeze, and looking at sunshine on green vegetation and blue water.  People in Fargo are worrying about the coming winter, occasionally thinking that it would be nice to escape and sit on a beach in Florida.  But people here are not sitting around wishing they were in Fargo.  The article is at:  http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/frown-towns  In the meantime, I will be reporting live from the saddest place in America.

Snell Isle Apartments

Where is a good place to live?  Decided to spend the winter in St Petersburg, Florida.  A few years ago, kindness swept over the city council and they started feeding the homeless.  Untold numbers of bums moved here for the free food, the warm weather, and the sympathy.  Downtown areas degenerated and crime skyrocketed, while decent people and businesses fled for safety. A new city council has spent the past year kicking out bums and generally making it a great place for working people and new businesses.  Was fortunate to find a short-term sublease in a luxury apartment complex by the water, in a part of town that has the lowest crime rate in the Tampa Bay area.  Will it be too sleepy?  Here are a few pictures:

Dominican Republic versus Puerto Rico

Thirty years ago the President of the Dominican Republic visited Haiti and remarked that he hoped that one day his country would have a city as nice as the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.  Over little more than a generation, the relative position of the two countries changed dramatically.  Today, Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic, is a developing city of 3 million people with a growing economy and a strong leadership position in the culture and economy of the entire Caribbean basin.  While Port-au-Prince has sunk so low in its own sloth and filth that the filth is literally killing it with a raging Cholera epidemic that no amount of foreign aid or bleeding hearts can lift it out of.  What is the difference?  In a simple sense, Haiti receives an incredible amount of direct foreign aid and the Dominican Republic is forced to only accept loans targeted for specific development projects.  One country has drowned in welfare, the other has had to endure tough love.  Tough love is winning by a mile.  Can we predict the future with the Dominican Republic's other neighbor, Puerto Rico?  The numbers are tricky to dig out, but Puerto Ricans as a defined group probably receive larger U.S. handouts per person than even inner-city blacks living in the States.  The figures are hidden in subsidized businesses, tax credits, and a myriad of other governmental smoke and mirror budgeting tricks, but the effect is that the Puerto Rican economy is only floating on the largesse of the U.S. taxpayer.  It takes so long to check out at the grocery store because of all the different welfare cards that are used to pay for items.  Two overloaded shopping carts can come to a grand total of less than $20 actual cash.  Of course it takes a nice new SUV to carry everything home.  The next time you hear that Puerto Rico is poor and needs help go see for yourself before you waste your money.  Puerto Rico is drowning in welfare and there exists no real, productive economy.  This cannot last much longer, once the American taxpayers start demanding more value for their hard-earned dollars. In thirty more years, I predict that the Dominican Republic will be far ahead of neighboring Puerto Rico.  In the past year alone, the noticeable increase in small business investment is amazing and heartwarming.  Tough love and financial  reality, building a better future.

Picking up Police Hitchhikers

Peter Loenning and I drove to Luperon to see a boat he has been working on.  It was sunk in the harbor and he raised it.  On the way, we saw a policeman with the National Police hitchhiking alongside the road.  He was going to Luperon also, so we gave him a ride.  What a contrast to American policemen.  The cops in America all seem to drive nice new cars and most are not physically capable of walking any great distance.  In fact the only time I see them out of the car is to get something more to eat.  But, then again American taxpayers are too nice to really protest.  It is easier to write another check than to take a stand.  In the Dominican Republic, the people actually resist the government noose.  Because of that they have slim, trim, good looking cops that are grateful for a ride to work.  

Return to the Domincan Republic

Yesterday started with a car ride across Puerto Rico for a quick walking tour of Old San Juan and then jumping out at the Airport for a flight to Santo Domingo, in the Domincan Republic.  The long awaited, highly publicized ferry from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic is still not operational for passengers, regardless of what their website says.  A last minute purchase of a airline ticket with my name misspelled made things harder than they had to be with security.  Landing in an unfamiliar city after dark, without a firm grasp of the language, kept the day challenging.  I finally got a hotel room for $16 right next to the cross-country bus station.  This morning was a 4-hour bus ride and then a short motorcycle ride to Sosua.  The pictures show the beach at Sosua and the Dive shop where I became a PADI Divemaster.