November 3, 2020

We all know that Donald Trump has an affinity for professional wrestling, appointing Vince McMahon’s wife to run the Small Business Administration. Trump once tweeted out a fake picture of himself fighting a CNN reporter. We all know that professional wrestling is totally fake. It is not being a great athlete. It is about being loud and brash. It is not about being tough. It is about acting tough. We are now in the last round of what we have all been watching for four years. We have been watching a wrestling match between Trump and everyone else, and, in the end, Joe Biden. Trump is the villain. When he enters the ring, he is accompanied by cheers and boos. He is the fat guy in an undersized wrestling singlet, who will grab the microphone from the announcer, scream bloody murder, get his fans riled up, and then beat the announcer with his own microphone. He will slip through the ropes, take off his robe, and reveal a Superman logo.

Trump will do anything to win. He is not confined by the ring. He will grab a chair from a spectator, and pummel his opponent with it. He will enlist the crowd to help him out. He will use illegal choke holds like kneeling on an opponents neck. He will defy all admonitions from the referee. If pushed, he will grab the referee, and throw him out of the ring. Joe Biden, on the other hand, will play rope-a-dope, waiting for this latter day version of Haystack Calhoun to tire himself out. When he has nothing left, Biden will pin his shoulders to the mat, and win the match. Trump will leave the ring bloodied and bowed, being booed all the way.

November 2, 2020

Definition of a loser: an individual who shaves his head, grows a beard, covers his arms with tattoos, wears camouflage, buys an automatic weapon, and stands outside a polling area for the explicit purpose of intimidating seniors, women, and others, thinking he is keeping America safe.

Definition of a sucker: an individual who shaves his head, grows a beard, covers his arms with tattoos, wears camouflage, buys an automatic weapon, and stands outside a polling area for the explicit purpose of intimidating seniors, women, and others, thinking that Donald Trump actually cares about him.

These “poll watchers” have no idea what they are looking for. Are they looking for voters wearing Biden hats? Are they waiting for AntiFa to show up? Maybe they will apprehend a pedophile looking to solicit underage voters. They join the tiki torch lovers, the militia who show up at protests with AK-47’s, and the truck-wielding Texans who try to drive Democrats off the road. These are people, who feel threatened by where America is going. They are afraid of being left behind as America moves forward. More accurately, these are people who espouse freedom unless freedom means that someone who is smarter, works harder, and is non-white is allowed to get ahead. These people deserve assistance, but not sympathy.

November 2, 2020

“The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion.… When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanor—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the” “General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”

October 29, 2020

Jack Nicklaus is arguably the greatest golfer of all time. He certainly has won the most professional majors. He seems to be an admirable husband, father, and grandfather. He has a successful golf design business, and has raised millions of dollars for his children’s hospital. I was never a real fan, but I admired all of his golfing accomplishments. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was a Gary Player fan because Jack was a little too boring for my likes and I didn’t think Arnie needed anymore soldiers in his army. Regardless, Jack was a great golfer.

However, I found it not too surprising and a little upsetting that Jack would publicly endorse Donald Trump. They have a lot in common. They are both old, white, German, and Florida men. They are both in the golf business. But how could Jack endorse the guy about whom the book, “Commander in Cheat” was written? Trump runs his golf life the same way he runs the government. He lies, and cheats. Jack is a stickler for the rules, and is a man of great integrity on and off the golf course. Golf is a game of honor where players call penalties on themselves. There is a plaque at Worcester Country Club commemorating the place where Bobby Jones called on penalty on himself for unintentionally moving his ball in the 1925 US Open even though no one else saw it.

Biden is actually a pretty good golfer, carrying a single digit handicap. Trump has “won” many club championships at his own clubs. I think Nicklaus should endorse the winner of a head-to-head golf match, 18 holes, no strokes between Trump and Biden as along as a rules official is present to monitor the great Bull Cheater.

October 28, 2020

The number of cases of coronavirus are rising all over the country. I just learned that if I travel to Connecticut from Massachusetts, I have to either quarantine or get tested. Trump says that the only reason cases are going up is that we are testing more. There is a droplet of truth in that. As we test more, we do discover more people, who have the virus. This doesn’t account for the increase in hospitalizations and deaths, but don’t confuse Trump with the facts.

As anyone with half a frontal lobe understands, Trump’s “logic” makes no sense. As we test more, we find more cases. The only logical conclusion, therefore, is that there are many more thousands of people out there, who have the virus, but haven’t been tested yet. Because of his slow and inept start to testing, it is taking us an inordinate amount of time to get around to everyone. Once we do, we will probably see that the pandemic is actually worse than we thought. Some estimates put it at five times the number of documented cases.

Trump accused medical professionals on the frontlines of doctoring results to show more deaths due to COVID because they were financially incentivized to do so. If someone was terminally ill with cancer, contracted the virus, and died, they were put in the coronavirus column, not the cancer column, in order for the hospital to get reimbursed. This level of cynicism is epic. This would actually require a conspiracy between doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators. If I were conspiracy advocate, I would say that the government, as directed by Trump, is purposely undercounting the number of cases and deaths in order to make themselves look better. In the face of almost 230,000 deaths, both arguments are shameful…unless you have proof.

The only thing right around the corner now is the election. We need to get Trump and his loyalists, who are loyal to him and not to US, out of the way so that we can attack the coronavirus with all of the resources we have available.

October 26, 2020

Halloween is on a ventilator. Children will not be going door-to-door this year. What a tragedy? Halloween has been ebbing for years as parents weigh the risks and rewards of ringing doorbells and trick or treating for candy. The reality is we don’t know our neighbors as well as we used to, and, as a result, we don’t trust each other as much. A few bad actors have made it difficult for everyone else. Parents have been organizing Halloween parties, but they are not the same. There is nothing like the thrill of putting on a mask, and getting bags full of candy even though nobody gives out regular size bars anymore. My father would help himself to the good stuff, but that is another story.

Children, and everyone else, will be wearing masks on Halloween, but there won’t be any candy. There will be small, backyard gatherings where children will have to wear masks under their masks. This is Donald Trump’s America as he and Pence continue to flout CDC guidelines, running their maskless events and spreading the coronavirus as they go. There won’t be goblins on Halloween. Just hemoglobins. No more ghosts. Just gasps. No harlequins. Just hydroxychloroquines. No Halloween spreads. Just super spreaders. No balloons. Just buffoons. No clowns. Just Trump.

October 23, 2020

In my previous life, I experienced how difficult it is for investors to sell a stock once it starts going down. No one wants to admit they made a mistake. In many cases, you are holding a stock at a profit and you don’t want to pay capital gains taxes. I saw many bad investment decisions made in order to avoid the capital gains tax. Once the bad news comes out, the stock price adjusts and you tell yourself that’s it. Unfortunately, bad news comes in threes. You convince yourself that you are right, and everyone else is wrong. If your stock is down 50%, you tell yourself that you would have to find something else that would go up 100% to get back to even. Whatever the reason, you resist selling until your holding is a total loss, which makes your decision easy. The reality is you never had a strategy for cutting your losses.

The economy is Trump’s stock. He inherited it as the price and relative strength was going up. He bought more on margin as he pushed through tax cuts, leveraging his investment. Then, the pandemic hit. He discounted the data. He ignored what the research said, believing he knew more than the experts. As the economy tanked, he assured us happier days were just around the corner. He was unable to take appropriate actions to cut his losses. Rather than sell, he dollar-cost averaged on the way down as he forced businesses to reopen. He cannot admit that he made a mistake. As the pandemic reaches record levels, Trump is locked into driving the economy to zero. At that point, the decision on what to do will be out of his hands. It will be on ours. We will vote him out of office, and declare him a total loss, a strategy he is all too familiar with.

October 22, 2020

“The average voter is a forty-seven-year-old Catholic housewife from Dayton, Ohio, married to a machinist; “she has a mixed view about blacks and civil rights because before moving to the suburbs she lived in a neighborhood that became all black.” “We should aim our strategy primarily at disaffected Democrats, at blue-collar workers, and at working-class white ethnics” and “set out to capture the vote of the forty-seven-year-old Dayton housewife.” This could be right out of the Trump campaign playbook, but, as you have probably guessed, it is not. This is an excerpt from historian Jill LePore’s recent book, “If Then.” This was Richard Nixon talking to Bob Haldeman in 1968. That was over fifty years ago.

Trump’s strategy is to solidify his base, and hope for a Hail Mary in Pennsylvania. He has no interest in uniting the country. We are as divided today as we were back then, but at least then we could blame it on a deeply divisive war. Today, we have only one reason for our divisiveness, and it’s Donald Trump. Divide and conquer is his strategy, and it’s not even original, and certainly not effective. He wants it to be 1968 again. We have seen this show before, and it is going to end in the same way with a disgraced former President waving from Marine One as he flies off into the sunset.

October 20, 2020

They say the election won’t be over until the fat guy sings, and he has not said whether he will sing or not. However, for all intents and purposes, it is over, and through his hateful rhetoric, he is already singing. People have already started voting by the millions in record numbers. Democrats worry about an October surprise, and getting Hillaried again, but it won’t happen this time.

I interview outstanding high school seniors for my alma mater. The interviews last for about an hour. I always start the interview by saying that a one hour interview with an old alumnus like me is not going to undo four years of hard work and accomplishments. I can say the same thing about the last two weeks of the campaign. Despite what happens in the last debate and any October “surprises” manufactured by Giuliani and Barr, Donald Trump cannot undo four years of minimal effort and disastrous results. His application is complete. He has no recommendations. Some of us knew four years ago who Donald Trump was. Now everyone knows who he is. You got fooled once, and that is on Trump, but, if you vote for him again, shame on you.