JOE -- REST IN PEACE

[Liberty Belle]

47. I'm glad you were able to take your neighbor in and care for him,

And that he passed in peace with no suffering; sounds like a heart attack took him swiftly.

His story is also inspiring that hearts and minds CAN be changed, even in someone elderly who has been probably a life-long conservative.

The Republican party has left so many people behind. An old gentleman like this probably was a Republican in the days of Eisenhower, when the party was still led by honorable people. Nixon was a crook but then Gerald Ford, other than pardoning Nixon, didn't seem like such a bad guy.

Reagan was likeable personally but was the beginning of the disastrous Republican policies that hurt so many people.

By the time the Bushes came along, the party had become very corrupted, and then with Trump it became overtly racist, hateful toward anyone who isn't rich, white and male, blatantly corrupt and conspiring with a foreign power and led by a raving lunatic.

I believe we may be on the verge of seeing the wholesale collapse of the Republican party, which stands for basically nothing good anymore. Unless someone s a die-hard single issue voter such as a gun rights or anti-abortion fanatic, there is simply nothing left to support. Trump is now even mucking up the economy with disastrous trade deals -- the one thing even those who didn't vote for him might have hoped he'd manage to get right, but proved too incompetent even at that.

Let's hope there are many more Joes out there.

Sorry for the loss of your friend, but glad he had you in his old age to care for him.