January 7, 2022

On January 17, 1961, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the following warning in his farewell address: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Today, more than sixty years later, we are encountering something even more pernicious. It is not the military-industrial complex we need to be concerned about. It’s the militia-industrial complex. We need to be on guard against the toy soldiers parading around as the saviors of democracy. In their quest for a not more perfect union but a more pure union, they are abetted by right wing industrialists like Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and more who know no shame. These grifters on the right are willing to sell democracy down the Potomac River for a buck. Watch my network, subscribe to my Podcast, buy my paraphernalia, buy my products, send me money. The gun manufacturers are more than willing to look the other way as parts of white America engage in an arms race. We may need the military to save us from the militias. What would Ike think?

January 6, 2022

The horrific traffic jam on I-95 in Virginia was an allegory for our times. The line of stalled traffic extended forty miles. Thousands of travelers were inconvenienced, but fortunately no one was seriously hurt. It could have been a lot worse. You can’t blame a freak storm like that on climate change, but it makes you wonder. Lines are the story of the times we live in. While some Americans were stranded in snow bound cars, other Americans were sitting in long lines waiting to get tested for COVID. In many parts of the country, patients are waiting in line to get admitted to hospitals for elective procedures because hospitals are overcrowded with the unvaccinated. Over the holidays, we saw thousands of travelers waiting in lines to get rebooked because flights were canceled. The deliveries of many goods from overseas have been delayed as container ships sit in long lines off shore waiting to unload. Supply shortages have created their own long lines. If you need anything with a microchip, get in line. If you need a new car, get in line. Students wait in line outside of schools because they need to be tested before they can be admitted. This would be a lot more fun if it was a game show hosted by John Charles Daly, and we were watching Arlene Francis, Bennet Cerf, and Dorothy Kilgallen asking, “What’s My Line?”

January 4, 2021

In 2008, we experienced an epic financial meltdown that threatened to change life as we knew it. It was called the Great Recession. For many people, it did change their lives irrevocably. Millions of people lost their homes, millions of people saw their savings vanish, and millions of people lost their jobs. However, after all of the destruction done to corporate and personal balance sheets, not one person went to jail. Okay, maybe one lower level person did, but that was the exception. None of the investment bankers who developed highly toxic investment products did time. None of the institutional salesmen who sold those products went to jail. None of the corporate executives overseeing those people were inconvenienced. None of the lawmakers who failed to understand or regulate these products were held responsible. Mortgage company executives who underwrote risky mortgages were held faultless. Ratings agency employees slipped through the cracks. Auditors were absolved of any wrong doing. All of these individuals may have been guilty of benign neglect or willful ignorance, or claimed plausible deniability, but no one was charged with a crime. As it turned out, incompetence was not a crime. Everyone’s defense was essentially “Who knew?”

In a similar vein, I suspect that no one of importance being investigated by the January 6th commission will do any time. Even though many individuals are guilty of lying about a stolen election, pressuring election officials to fabricate vote counts, and fomenting a rebellion designed to halt the peaceful transfer of power, we will discover that attempting to destroy democracy is not a crime. A few misguided and ignorant followers will suffer, but they are small potatoes. The perpetrators of the Big Lie and the Stop the Steal campaigns that led to January 6th will claim that incompetence is not a crime, and “Who knew?” Donald Trump knew.

December 31, 2021

Now is the time when many of us go through the tortuous and often repetitive process of making resolutions for the new year. Health club memberships swell, and health club activity increases…for a month at least. This is the year we are going to lose that pesky ten pounds, learn a new language, take that trip you have been putting off, or write the next great novel. The following is an excerpt from a piece a friend of mine sent me. It may help you think about your New Year’s resolutions, and put them in perspective.

Ancient Hindu teaches us about the stages of life, or ashramas. The first is Brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning. The second is Grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and creates a family. In this second stage, philosophers find one of life’s most common traps. People become attached to earthly rewards—money, power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime.

The antidote to these worldly temptations is Vanaprastha, the third ashrama, whose name comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the stage, usually starting around age 50, in which we purposefully focus less on professional ambition, and become more and more devoted to spirituality, service, and wisdom. This doesn’t mean that you need to stop working when you turn 50. It’s only that your life goals should adjust.

Vanaprastha is a time for study and training for the last stage of life, Sannyasa, which should be totally dedicated to the fruits of enlightenment. As we age, we should resist the conventional lures of success in order to concentrate on more transcendentally important things.

December 29, 2021

NASA recently launched the James Webb Space Telescope, a truly monumental scientific achievement. It’s objective will not be to provide support for the Space Force. Rather, with its powerful lens, it’s focus will be to look back in time to possibly the origins of the universe. The universe is 13.8 billion years old (sorry Marco Rubio), and theoretically started with the Big Bang. The telescope will come closer than we have ever before to witnessing the creation.

Who knows what we will see as we look deeper into history? Maybe we will see a time when voting rights were protected by the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court? That was a long time ago. Maybe we will see a time when climate change and the degradation of the environment were accepted facts, and they were addressed by the Environmental Protection Act. There was a time when a women’s reproductive rights were protected by the Supreme Court. The telescope may witness the creation of Roe vs. Wade. Maybe the telescope can see back to a time when the Second Amendment literally referred to a musket-wielding militia.

Maybe if we can look back far enough, we can make America great again.

December 28, 2021

Porretta Terme, in central Italy, is passionate about basketball, and is pressing the Vatican to officially recognize its local saint as Italy’s patron of the sport. On a table in a small chapel in this small town, a notebook contains pages of devotionals, including gratitude for a healed meniscus and prayers to “win the championship in the next few years.” The back wall bears a bas-relief of a dying basketball player, palming a ball in his left hand as the Virgin Mary watches his earthly clock run down. The residents and local officials want to make the Madonna of the Bridge the patron saint of basketball.

If basketball can have a patron saint, why not golf? Who would qualify as a legitimate maker of miracles on the golf course? We all bring up the names of spiritual figures while playing, especially after poor shots, but who has actually performed a miracle. We know miracles exist. We have all experienced the miracle of the found ball, which we thought was lost in the depths of hell. What about the miracle of the golf ball that walks on water as it makes its way safely to the other side? I have personally seen the turning of a great shot into whine as my golf ball plunges into a watery grave. Being five down with five to go, I have seen golfers rise from the dead like Lazarus to win in a playoff. I know golfers who have fed thousands with their vanity handicaps. I have had partners play like someone with paralysis only to find a cure on the 18th hole. One has to be a believer of miracles after watching a fellow player pray to God that incoming storm clouds don’t interrupt his round, only to watch the clouds dissipate.

Many golfers consider the golf course a holy place, all 18 of them. It is the church of perpetual frustration. Golfers often pray to a higher authority, and will take that name in vain. For now, the patron saint of golf shall remain nameless. I am open to suggestions.

December 24, 2021

Dinosaurs once roamed the earth. They were incapable of adapting to a new environment, and were wiped out by a meteor and subsequent climate change. In a similar vein, companies that don’t adapt, die. The corporate landscape is littered with the ruins of companies that were unable to embrace creative destruction. According to economist Joseph Schumpeter, the “gale of creative destruction” describes the “process of industrial mutation that continuously revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.

Adapting involves change, and most people resist change as if it were a plague. They engage in denial, and refuse to accept a harsh reality. The belief that all will be well if you just give it time is a sure sign of denial. Another sure sign is the belief that conditions have not changed, or at least have not changed enough to matter. Denial is a necessary stage in grieving the loss of a loved one. It has no place in the running of an enterprise.

The progressive left believes that we need to adapt to new realities, and engage in creative destruction. The most obvious example are the challenges presented by climate change, and the right’s abject denial of its very existence. The left believes we we need to develop clean alternatives to fossil fuels. We need to rethink the energy paradigm. Republicans, the corporations that rely on fossil fuels, and Joe Manchin are holding up much needed climate change mitigation legislation and funds in the mistaken belief that everything is fine, and they are not part of the problem. Ask Tyrannosaurus Rex and his friends how that turned out for them.

December 22, 2021

Sadly, 2021 was another staggering year in the U.S. for mass shootings. While the nearly 50 percent jump in mass shootings in 2020 was appalling, this year will notch a further increase. And the rise in gun violence in America has gone well beyond mass shootings (defined as four people shot or killed, not including the shooter). Homicides, which rose by about 30 percent in 2020, recorded another rise in 2021. And at least 12 major American cities set homicide records. This comes from an op-ed by Steve Ratner in the New York Times.

The left will focus on mass shootings. The right will focus on crime. This doesn’t even include the Kyle Rittenhouse’s of the world, who was shamefully lauded and applauded recently at a conservative convention. Politicians glorify guns, and gun culture. Right wing pundits use gun imagery to attack health experts. Regardless, the one thing that these twin crises have in common is guns. The United States is apparently incapable of controlling situations that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. We are, in fact, number one. We can propose all the gun safety measures we want. We can defund the police, or we can refund the police. It will make no difference. Until we disarm, our only defense is to either buy more guns or more flak jackets.

December 22, 2021

308 is the number of rounds of golf Trump played while in office.

2 is the number of vaccine shots Trump received, 1 is the number of booster shots, and 0 is the number he admitted to while in office.

10 is the number of civil cases pending against Trump. The lawsuits, involving allegations that his security guards roughed up protesters outside Trump Tower in New York and allegations of defamation by former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos, respectively, are just 2 cases in the mass of civil litigation Trump faces post-presidency.

3 is the number of times Trump has been married, and 5 is the number of children children he has, 3 with Ivana, 1 by Marla, and 1 by Melania. If things hadn’t worked out, he could have been an NBA basketball player.

0 is the number of books Trump reportedly read while in office, which is the same number he reportedly has read in the last 50 years.

5 is Trump’s reported handicap, which everyone knows is fake news.

244 pounds is what the President claimed to weigh according to the results of a physical performed in June 2020. This means the President is considered clinically obese and has a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30.3.

December 18, 2021

Random Gleanings

I was struck by a series of short news stories in today’s (Saturday) Springfield Republican on page A8, and how they encapsulated the times we are living in.

State picks both bidders for offshore wind project. Looks promising. Utilities are trying to secure 1600 megawatts of clean energy.

Shrimp fishery to stay shuttered. Looks disappointing. New England commercial shrimp fishery will remain shuttered…amid warming temperatures.

Regulators: Financial threats remain elevated. Looks scary. The Financial Stability Oversight Council listed climate change as an emerging risk because of such factors as potential loan losses from floods and forest fires.

Melania Trump announces NFT venture: Looks like a grift. Trump will be selling non-fungible tokens that must be paid for with Solan cryptocurrency. An undisclosed portion of the proceeds will go to foster children.