In a letter that is bound to raise some questions and a few eyebrows, Ed Harris, a San Diego Lifeguard Sergeant and union leader, has apologized to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and the citizens of Houston, that he and his nationally recognized river rescue team, have been told to stand down and not travel to Texas by the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.

If you're looking for reasons as to how and why the country is so divided, and who is responsible for that division, look no further than the latest Gallup poll.

In a survey of 1,810 US adults, respondents were asked if they believed the news media reported accurate information:

Party politics is killing America and Illinois. It is not enough to just elect different people into a bad system. We have to fundamentally change politics, and that starts with real open primaries.

The 2016 presidential election has opened the eyes of Americans who are more aware than ever of a rigged political system working against the voters.

Americans are fed up with a political party establishment more interested in their side “winning” than in what is best for the country.

HURRICANE HARVEY 

The pictures and stories disseminiating from Texas following Hurricane Harvey are both terrifying and remarkable. From families being separated from rising flood waters, to alligators showing up on the front doors of residences, to complete washouts of roads and communities, the devastation from Harvey has been called "catastrophic."

Remorse of a Troubled Youth

In 1971, at 19, William Powell wrote The Anarchist Cookbook. The book has been found at bombings, and school shootings, ever since.

It is hard to believe that the author of this infamous book left the country almost immediately afterward, to be a school teacher. He forgot about his book to the best of his ability.

“I haven’t read it since I wrote it,” he said, in a documentary film that came out in late 2016.

Earlier this month Reuters reported the results of a study at Georgia State University, in which researchers found that smoking marijuana can result in higher blood pressure.

The alarmist headline emphasized the study's purported link between smoking marijuana and dying from high blood pressure related causes:

Halfway through watching the president’s rally in Phoenix Tuesday night, I had the almost uncontrollable urge to jump on social media and blast off a post expressing my anger. Blaming the mainstream media, democrat’s, disloyal Republican senators and left-wing protesters for legislative failures and bad press doesn’t sit well with me.