June 13, 2023

“Murder on the Orient Express” by Agatha Christie is the story of a wealthy tycoon, who gets stabbed twelve times by the passengers on the train, and how Detective Hercule Poirot solves the mystery. Every passenger on the train had an alibi. They all presumably had clean hands, but were happy to see the tycoon dead. In a similar way, I think most Republicans, in and out of office, would like to see Donald Trump depart the party, but no one wants to be seen with “blood” on their hands.

Republicans are lining up to defend Trump in the classified documents scandal. Trump’s actions are indefensible, at least in the opinion of four lawyers, who quit the team. Yet Republicans are more than willing to publicly support thievery, sedition, conspiracy, and obstruction. Behind the scenes, they wish he would just go away, but no one wants to be seen as Brutus. Chris Christie is trying to tell the truth out loud, but no one is listening. Until they figure out how to collectively put an end to him without getting caught, we are stuck with a mystery with no blockbuster ending.

June 12, 2023

Republicans are obsessed with the word “woke,” but famously are having a very difficult time actually defining what it means. They approach woke the same way Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart approached obscenity. He wasn’t sure how to define obscenity, but he knew it when he saw it. I suspect Republicans don’t know what woke is either, but they believe that they know what it is when they see or hear it.

Republicans apologized for the mob that attacked Congress on January 6th. Trump wants to pardon the hundreds that were convicted. Tucker Carlson denied it ever happened. Others blamed it on the FBI and AntiFa. However, the faux tough guys on the right, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, believe they are threatened by the woke mob, which is coming soon for a school or bathroom in their neighborhood.

The anti-woke mob gets riled up by an alphabet soup of social concepts like DEI, ECG, BLM and LGBTQ. If it has initials, they hate it. It’s called acronymophobia. I suspect they are clueless about what is behind the initials. It is a lot easier to hate concepts than to make an effort to understand what they really mean.

June 7, 2023

Silly me. I thought the rift between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf/PIF was all about motherhood and apple pie. I was wrong. As it turns out, it was about, in the immortal words of the O’Jays, “Money, money, money, money, money…money.” Everything has, as Jessie J would say, a “Pricetag,” and the PGA Tour is no exception. Winchester’s own Jay Monahan said “Show me the money,” and the Saudis were more than happy to oblige. I guess all is forgiven. It’s too bad that Monahan wasn’t able to extract some political concessions from the Saudis in the same way that the Saudis extract oil.

Many more details need to emerge, but, as a consumer of TV golf, I suspect I will be asked to watch either more golf and/or different golf. Watching more golf is not physically possible in my case, and I am not looking to watch different golf with 54 hole, no-cut exhibitions, pros wearing shorts, and music blaring in the background. There is some junk golf on the PGA Tour, which has been called the “silly season, and I won’t watch that either. I will watch LIV golfers play in the four majors because I have to, but that is enough.

June 3, 2023

Once upon a time, country clubs were the social center for many families. Men played golf all day, women hung out at the pool with the children, and everyone attended the many social events sponsored by the club. Spring Fling was a must attend, opening event. Players had to stand in line at the pro shop to get into the annual four ball. Opening and closing day events were well-attended.

Then things began to change. E-mail made it easy to arrange foursomes so small groups began to develop, cutting down on socialization. More moms went to work outside the home. Moms and dads had to shuttle children around to various practices and games on the weekends. Heavy drinking was frowned upon. Card games disappeared. No one wanted to dress for formal affairs. The club became a place where you went, did your business, and returned home.

COVID, Zoom and working from home may have put things back to where they were. COVID created a sense of isolation that people were unfamiliar with. Clubs brought people together. Members could recreate with other members in the safety of the out-of-doors. Club membership boomed during COVID, and many clubs still have long waiting lists. Many members like the population at large are working from home on-line, and attending meetings on Zoom. The club gives them a place to go where they can interact with other adults. It has become a home away from home.

Research shows that people who don’t have to commute to the office every day spend more time frequenting local shops and restaurants. This applies to clubs as well. Club life may never be what it once was, but it does seem to be morphing into a new paradigm.

June 1, 2023

I have been on the wall about voting for Donald Trump. I have never voted for him, but I was thinking about giving him a look. After all, Biden is falling down, and can’t get up. His son has a laptop. He leads a crime family. He plagiarized a speech a hundred years ago. He leads the woke mob. He’s a Communist and a Socialist. He doesn’t even know where his son died.

On the other hand, Trump has been flexing his legal muscles, which have been well-toned by thousands of lawsuits over the years. He has been aggressively dealing with rape charges, election-rigging charges, stolen document charges, tax-evasion charges, and insurrection charges. It takes a tough man to deal with all of that, and that is my kind of guy. 71 million voters can’t be wrong.

While Trump has been fighting the prosecutors, Biden brought the pandemic under control, passed pandemic relief, passed the CHIPS Act, passed the IRA, and avoided a debt limit disaster. He expanded NATO to Russia’s doorstep, and defended Ukraine. He passed credible gun safety legislation. The economy continues to grow, and unemployment is historically low. What a waste of time and money.

May 28, 2023

Whew…that was close. Word has it that the President and Kevin McCarthy avoided a totally unnecessary financial Armageddon precipitated by Republicans. Kevin McCarthy has to round up the votes from the obnoxious caucus to get this deal done, and what could go wrong there? One of the concessions that Republicans extracted was to tighten and toughen work requirements for Medicaid recipients. With an unemployment rate of 34%, America needs all the able-bodied, deadbeat, fifty-five year olds it can get. Whoops! That’s 3.4%, which is an historically low number, but don’t confuse me with the facts.

Members of Congress get free healthcare with no work requirements. I think there should be work requirements. After all, they are paid with tax dollars just like Medicaid recipients. First, time spent on social media rants is not time spent working. Time spent on fake committees like Jim Jordan’s weaponization committee is not work. Time spent with the donor class is not work that helps Americans. Time spent on manufactured and unnecessary debt negotiations is not work. Congressmen should have to document the time they actually spend on worthwhile work. If they can’t, they should lose their healthcare.

May 25, 2023

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a biblical reference brought to life in a painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. They represent conquest, war, famine and death, and not the famous Notre Dame backfield. Today, the Republican Party has its own version of the four horsemen, McCarthy, Greene, Boebert and Gaetz. This foursome is more than willing to push America into another economic crisis as Republicans did with the Great Recession in 2008 (Bush) and the COVID crisis of 2020 (Trump.) They have had great fun poking the The Squad of AOC, Tlaib, Pressley, and Omar, but The Squad never discussed holding America hostage. Matt Gaetz actually asked why anyone would want to negotiate with hostages, a reference to President Biden and the Democrats.

Hopefully, reasonable people will come to a reasonable solution about paying our debts, and not do it on the backs of the people, who have the least amongst us. I suspect both parties will reach a compromise that will not solve the underlying problem. As a country, we are becoming sclerotic. The concept of the debt ceiling, like the electoral college and lifetime appointments for Supreme Court Justices, are quaint concepts whose times have come and gone. They should be riding off into the sunset with The Four Horsemen.

May 19, 2023

War is hell according to William Tecumseh Sherman. Currently, both political parties are engaged in wars, which could decide the 2024 presidential election. President Biden has been aggressively waging war against the “evil empire” through the courage and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people. Thousands of people have died, and billions of dollars have been spent, but the allied coalition has held, and Putin’s Russia has suffered. Ukraine has become a pivotal point in the fight for democracy and freedom.

On the other hand, Republicans have donned flak jackets and armed themselves with AK-47’s to fight the culture wars. It’s hell out there on the streets of the United States, they say, and it is their job to fight back. They are not fighting despots. They are fighting the happiest place in the world. They are fighting the most vulnerable among us. They are fighting teachers, authors, trans kids, librarians, the LBGQT community and more. They are waging war against ideas. They want to defund the political correctness police. They fight against democracy and freedom. These actions are not exactly profiles in courage.

May 17, 2023

After one of the longest (3 years), costliest ($7 million), and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi found no evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hilary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead. Current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy admitted at the time that the motivation for the hearings was to damage Clinton politically. Today, we have the Durham Report, which was designed to investigate the investigators. It landed with a thud unless you are a right wing pundit or politician.

After four years and millions of dollars, Durham’s investigation yielded one minor conviction, two losses at trial and a probe that fell short of the lofty goals set by the former president. In one strange episode, Attorney General Bill Barr accompanied the presumably independent special counsel to Italy, looking for dirt. All they found was good food, and evidence of possible financial crimes committed Trump. Durham did conclude that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. He had to find something. Everyone else has concluded that Bill Barr and John Durham should never have launched a full investigation of the origins of the Mueller Report.

May 12, 2023

In 2012, Marco Rubio famously wouldn’t acknowledge how old the Earth was, afraid of antagonizing the religious right. The Earth is actually 4.5 billion years old, and not 6,000 years old as claimed by some religious fundamentalists. Recently, Donald Trump said that stars like him have been grabbing women for a million years. Man only evolved into its present form with a fully-developed brain some 130,000 years ago. For some reason, Republicans have a problem with evolution. That is probably why they don’t want it taught in schools.

What Donald Trump is effectively saying is that famous cavemen without fully-developed brains starting grabbing women a million years ago, and their descendants continue to grab women to this day. Donald Trump is, “fortunately or unfortunately,” mimicking the behavior of pre-humans. That explains a lot. As someone once said, “It is what it is.”