In case you have  family or co-workers who believe various conservative accounts about how President Obama is responsible for ebola or how ISIS terrorists are streaming across the border, I have included a picture here of nice flowers so you can just let go and look at something pleasant.

We can fight back and we can make progress. But we can't fix it all. So sometimes you just have to let go.

Please read all of NeilAquino.com

One thing that has long interested me is how the American South strongly supported Franklin Roosevelt of New York in all four of his Presidential races. 

On the top left you see Roosevelt's big win over Herbert Hoover in 1932. The South was solid for Roosevelt. 

You could say that voters in 1932 were voting in reaction to the Great Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression.

But then we see that Roosevelt also swept the South in 1936, 40 & 44.   

1936 is the top right map. 1940 is bottom left. 1944 is bottom right.

You'd think the region of states rights would have rejected and resisted a New Yorker who led the way to an expansion of federal government power such as the New Deal.  

Voters in the South were happy to take the benefits and relief offered by the New Deal and by the expansion of federal power in the Roosevelt years.

What really seemed to sour white voters in the South about so-called big government were the Civil Rights advances of the 1960's.

Nest time you here about states rights and a grasping federal government and all that, consider how voters in the Jim Crow South were perfectly happy with Franklin Roosevelt and New Deal and ask yourself what the real issue in 2014 in the time of President Barack Obama.  

Please read all of NeilAquino.com 

Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas does not really live in Kansas. 

This recalls the fact that in 2012 that Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana did not live in Indiana any more.

How can at least two of just 100 U.S. Senators not live in the states they claim to represent?  

I don't support term limits, but some of these folks sure are distant from the folks they claim to represent.  

This and the fact that most of them are bought off by big money.

The work of asking for and working for something better is up to each of us.  

You are just going to have to decide that you have had enough.  

Please read all of NeilAquino.com

Above are the things that you will need to show to vote in Texas in 2014.

The so-called Texas Voter I.D. law is about keeping minority turnout down and helping make sure that the young and the poor do not vote. 

But while voter fraud is almost non-existent, the fact remains is that you'll need to present one of the above documents at the polls to vote in Texas in 2014. 

Please read all of NeilAquino.com

There are a lot of dumb things we talk about in American politics. 

One of the dumbest subjects is Presidential vacations. 

Do you really want somebody in charge of the military and in control of nuclear weapons to skip vacations and be always at work? 

Isn't it often better for Presidents to be on vacation in order to mitigate the harm they are able to do? 

We all would have been better off if Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had spent all 8 years in office on vacation. 

(Picture is of Gerald Ford skiing and on vacation.)    

Please read all of NeilAquino.com