Did anything happen while I was away?

Well, President Trump delivered a State of the Union address to Congress. It seems he has done so much in 13 months it took almost two hours to cover the accomplishments. The speech was so long it required a full page in the New York Times to list the lies and exaggerations.

One line from the speech got a lot of attention, “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Surprisingly, not all American citizens agree, including almost half of Congress.

After I returned from Arizona, our old enemies in Iran, the radical Islamists, were attacked. Yesterday morning, Ayatollah Khomeini and most of their leaders were killed. Israeli Intelligence infiltrated the inner circle and knew that about 40 were together in a meeting. Boom! They were gone!

Any “next-in-line” Islamic leaders in Iran may be reluctant to claim the title; do they want to bet their life against Israel’s spies and technology?

You may remember that in 1979, the people of Iran were living a wonderful, “Western style” life. Then the radicals attacked the US Embassy and held 52 American men hostage for 444 days. Democrats and Republicans were united in condemning this act and the forced transition of Iranians to a Muslim Sharia law lifestyle. The hostages were released the day President Reagan was inaugurated. But that didn’t stop the acts of war. Iran funded radical Muslims who have killed over a thousand Americans, including 241 of our military by Hezbollah, in Lebanon in 1983. And of course, it was Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza who killed 1200 and took 250 hostages in Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. The dead included 31 American citizens.

Today, according to a quick poll, every demographic group in America favors the attack by Israel and the US, except one: white Democrats. While Iranians in the country and around the world are celebrating the liberation (or the beginning of it) from the death and torture of thousands by Khomeini, many Democrats are condemning the military action. I guess they favored allowing Khomeini to continue progress on building nuclear bombs and missiles that could reach our East Coast.

Diplomatic negotiations were going on to the last day. Clearly, Iran had no intention of negotiating away their goal of building nuclear bombs. They acted nice, trying to stretch out the discussions a few more weeks so Iran could put a nuclear bomb on an ICBM and land it on Washington, DC.

Let me give a sincere “Thank you” to my hosts for a week in Arizona, Bryan and Kelly Pavlovic and Jim Waters. Part business, part pleasure. They took me to the Coolidge Dam. (At the dedication in 1930, Calvin Coolidge was there with a hundred guests, including Will Rogers.) Paul Ramirez of Tucson took me to the Border where we met with rancher Dean Fish and inspected the new 30-foot wall. (Looking through the narrow gaps in the wall, I saw the old “barrier,” a 3-strand barbed wire fence.) My Ohio neighbor, Veronica Boysel and her husband, spend the winter in Wickenburg. She took me exploring some high-country desert rangeland on a 4-wheeler. We saw a lot more cactus than cattle. And my record-setting swimmer friend, Deborah Gardner, invited me to watch her and several friends swim in cold Lake Pleasant, then lunch the next day with her parents, Joedy and Ruth Ann Gardner in Peoria. My West Virginia friends will recognize Joedy as a former basketball player and coach at WVU. Memorabilia of Joedy’s time as a Marine fighter jet pilot in Vietnam are displayed at the Mountaineer Military Museum in Weston.