My Daddy was the kind of man who believed being Daddy to 4 little girls was a really good job. He took it very seriously. He taught us to do lots of things for ourselves. We hunted and fished, camped and hiked, cooked over a fire and slept under the stars. We also went to high tea, wore dresses and frilly socks, took dance lessons and read about etiquette and learned what a gentleman looked like.

One of the things that my Daddy did that meant so much is give us all of him when he was with us or when we needed him. Even at work or when he was busy, he told his secretary to put his girls through if we called because we were a priority. He put down the newspaper or book and talked to us one on one when we asked a question or needed correction or attention. While smart phones and tablets were not a part of my childhood, Daddy did have a voice pager that more than once interrupted a board meeting with a little voice asking him to bring home milk or come home early because Sugar the dog was out again. He did not ‘turn us off or tune us out’ for his convenience. He put us before the board members, the phone call or anyone else. Boy did that make an impression.

So, in this age of digital and electronic everything, maybe Daddies need a lesson page from my Daddy’s book this Fathers Day. Your children are not an interruption or a distraction or even a post. They are little people who will be little for a very little bit of time. Take time, take a break, make sure they get all of you for the moment they need or want you and your attention. They will be big sooner than you think, and they may not need or want you then. If you make time and take time when they are little, they will certainly remember it when they are big. I know I do. I miss my Daddy every single day. I sure am glad he stored up all that time with me when we had it.

Happy Fathers Day! Don’t miss the moment…

“The Way I See It” is an attempt by the columnist to enlighten readers on a subject as he views it, and does not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.

Trump’s First 500 Days

Election Day 2016 the Dow was $19,123 and after Trump was declared the winner it began the greatest run-up ever to a high of $26,616 on 1/26/18. There was a correction, much exacerbated by media attacks and the phony Russia Collusion Investigation, but it’s rising again to $24,635 as of this writing.  The Federal Debt is still growing, but the GDP growth has increased to over $20 Trillion so the ratio of Debt to GDP has been reduced slightly. Even with the much needed Tax Cuts, Federal tax revenues have increased due to more jobs, more people paying taxes, and increased economic activity. The Budget Deficit/GDP ratio has been reduced from 9.3% in 2010 to 3.8%, still way too high, but at least headed in the right direction. The Fe(de)ral Debt has actually gone DOWN $36 Billion in the last 2 months! Even with greater spending to rebuild and up-date our military, the Deficit Ratio is less than under Obama. Also the Fed Interest has gone up 1% since the election or about $200 Billion added to the Debt. (The Swamp kept it very low for 8 years of Obama. The GDP growth is expected to reach 4.8% in the Second Quarter. It was about 1.5% average for the Obama Administration, and the Media Pundits said it would never reach 3% again. Certainly not under Hillary or any Liberal Democrat.

Jobs are being created in record numbers. Unemployment is at record lows for Blacks, Hispanics, Women, & Teens, and overall less than 4%, a low rate only reached 7 times since the 1970s. This is creating records for Federal Tax Revenue collections, even with the Tax Cuts. Some 24,000 Federal jobs have been eliminated since President Trump took office, so the new jobs are Tax Payers, not Tax-consumers. Many business-strangling and anti-Property Rights Federal Regulations have been eliminated. The Keystone & Dakota pipelines were finally approved. US oil production is booming and we have become a Petroleum Exporter, instead of a hostage to our enemies. Consumer confidence is at a 17 year high as our economy rebounds from a decade of stagnation.

ISIS has been defeated in Syria and Iraq, less than 1000 fighters remain. We have withdrawn from the foolishness of the Paris Accords, and the Global Warming hysteria is abating as the “hot-cycle” of cyclical ‘Climate Change’ winds down into a moderate cooling phase. We are trying to control illegal immigration and the flood of “refugees” from countries that have people who hate us. Many Muslim countries are cracking down on violent radicals. Our President is rebuilding our industry by protecting necessary industries, bringing investment back here, and slowing terrible Trade Deficit agreements. This is causing great backlash from those that profit from cheap imports and cheap labor, but in the long run are necessary for our industry, wages, and economic security. North Korea is talking about nuclear disarmament and peace after almost 70 years of hostile secrecy. The farce of the Iran Nuclear Deal has been exposed and is over. Putin wants talks about peace and trade. If the Media and Democrats will shut up about “Russia, Russia, Russia”, it may be possible to normalize relations with them, we have similar goals in the War on Islamofascist Terror, and it is time to start cooperating on that.

Can you imagine how much real Progress could be made if the “Lib Progressives” cared enough about America and Americans to just listen to what is happening instead of “resisting” out of hand? Their “Agenda” failed, and they had a very poor candidate, so they lost. Get over it! Trump is trying to re-build America after the failure of all the International Socialist Theory failures.

The investigation by Congress is proving there was unlawful interference in the Trump Campaign by the Obama Administration. Unredacted Emails between Strzok and Lisa Page, “You get all our oconus lures approved? ;)”- ‘OConUS’ meaning “Outside Continental US” and ‘lures’ meaning “Spies and Agents Provocateurs”. This was in December 2015! They were already infiltrating the Trump Campaign to create some appearance of wrong doing, and had to get it “approved” at the highest levels! While their Propaganda Media was ridiculing Trump’s chances to even gain the GOP Nomination.  From ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ to the GPS Fusion phony ‘Dossier’ to the lying FISA Warrant applications, and the $17 Million (so far) Mueller Investigation, this has been the worst illegal unConstitutional “Black-bag & False Flag Operation” political scandal in American history. Watergate was an amateurish joke compared to this continued attack by politicized Federal bureaucracies on an opposition candidate, and even a duly elected President! There was no “collusion” by the Trump Campaign, only by criminal Democrats, and the whole “Op” has accomplished nothing but to feed the “Assassination by Accusation and Innuendo Campaign” by the Lib/Prog Media Propaganda Machine. Hopefully, by the time this newspaper is distributed the DoJ Inspector General’s first report will be out and the indictments, arrests, and real investigations into the real criminals can commence.

Check the Website,  (www.thedolphintalk.com) for updates and comments.

Occasionally, as some long time readers will know, I touch on aspects of weather in this column and this past month an article was published on the KrisTV website out of Corpus Christi that besides being a interesting bit of scientific data, also has direct impact on the areas this newspaper is published: Hurricanes.

And the issue?

They are slowing down.

James Kossin, a scientist working on climate and weather based research for the United States government, claims that Atlantic storms on landfall are now moving six percent slower over the basin and a whopping twenty percent slower once the storm reaches the shore. That would mean a hurricane that is moving almost three miles-per-hour slower than hurricanes prior to 2016, and last years hurricane season provided some data to back his claims, such as Hurricane Harvey, who set records in terms of rainfall.

A slower moving hurricane would do this as obviously the more it stays in an area, the more wind and rain that area will experience until the hurricane passes that area. It would also raise the severity of the storm surge experienced in such a scenario as well.

Although Kossin has been taken to task by those in his field on the validity of these claims, the logical reason he might have used such a ‘short window’ in his research was the fact that another computer based study into this slowdown, used a much large chunk of data from hurricanes much further in the past and as even Kossin himself admits, the data from the nineteen-seventies and prior is not all that reliable.

One issue is that Kossin’s data, even from a layman’s view, seems to narrow in scope to accurately be able to extrapolate such an idea, although the sixty inches of rain Harvey dropped seems to be haunting such a statement, as the hurricane and it’s ‘nature’ is a undisputed fact and there are lives at stake whenever a hurricane makes landfall.

At the heart of the issue may be the perceived culprit of such a change in the behavior of hurricanes, and that would be climate change, which you may well know to be a debate of major importance and inflammation in the United States and other parts of the world.

To place my opinion in what was to me a ‘straight report’ of information I had found intriguing (and indeed by this paper’s circulation area, important), whenever I think of the climate change issue I have an image in my mind of some elementary school science class in the eighties, long lost to history, but I recall being fascinated by the fact that if you introduce a new factor into any habitat, that factor could make huge changes and repercussion to that same habitat, especially if it was in large numbers or quantity.

Now, as a thinking person, not a Republican or Democrat, not a environmentalist nor an industrialist (who let’s face it, would be the opposing sides if you were to turn climate debate into a boxing match), I cannot help but wonder if every byproduct man has produced from the steam train to the petrol run car has not had some effect on the planet we live on.

Again, this is food for thought, not cemented in fact, especially when studied through a two year window of data as said. To me, with the amount of life changing destruction and poverty hurricanes can bring to a populated area, would dismissing the idea be just as dangerous as accepting it without question?

After all, when we strip away our modern political parties and get right down to it, free thinking and questioning the known status quo is definitively American since this great nation was founded.