March 19, 2019

Democrats are having a debate about whether to nominate the most progressive candidate or the candidate with the best chance of beating Donald Trump. There is much trepidation that, once Trump unleashes his Twitter account and starts his name calling, all candidates are vulnerable. Biden is dumb, Beto waves his hands, and Elizabeth is Pocahontas. Here is a speech that I offer to all candidates once this starts. Hopefully, it will do for Trump what a stake in the heart does for Dracula.

“Mr. President, and I use that term out of respect for the office you hold and with total contempt for the person that holds it, you are a coward. You disgrace an office that has been held by true war heroes like George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and George H. W. Bush. You criticize a naval officer, John McCain, who spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison. When your country called, your father found a doctor, who would fabricate bone spurs for you. The bone spurs did not prevent you from playing tennis and whoring around New York City. When it came time to honor the men and women who gave there lives in WW II, you relented because you were afraid that a light mist might ruin your hair. Under a constant barrage of media criticism, you finally made a quick and unimpactful trip to Iraq to visit the troops, your first and only trip to a war zone. When you had the chance to look Vladimir Putin in the eye and call him out for meddling in the 2016 election, you folded like a cheap suit. You could not stand up to neo-Nazis and white nationalists. You want to deploy the military to Pennsylvania Avenue for a parade and to the border to protect us from women and children, thinking that these actions will showcase your military mettle. Mr. President, we don’t need a wall. We need you on the wall. Until you are ready to stand up, stand down.”

Match 18, 2019

Despite being an avid golfer, I will be the first to criticize Trump for all of his golfing trips to Mar-a-Lago and his other properties at taxpayer expense. He criticized his predecessor for playing golf, but his time out of the White House and on the golf course dwarfs anything that President Obama ever thought of. However, after his recent weekend consumed with sending out 50 unhinged Tweets about John McCain, Fox News, Mueller, Russia, and more, I would like to suggest that Trump should spend more time in Florida playing golf and less time pretending to be President.

I do not Tweet, but I am guessing it would be difficult to play golf while you are raging online. As Rory McIlroy proved over the weekend, good golf depends on perspective, poise, and persistence. These are qualities devoid in Trump. I think he should work out his issues on the golf course rather than continually torturing the rest of us with his inadequacies. By the way, my foursome is all set.

March 16, 2019

Beware the Ides of March. It is beyond ironic that the New Zealand massacre happened on March 15th. And here is a crazy theory. It’s not a conspiracy theory, but is it possible New Zealand and the college admission scandal in the United States are related, or at least have some similarities? I am in no way equating fraud with mass murder, but hear me out.

When I entered college in 1967, diversity meant public school versus private school. I was in my college’s first ever class to have more public school than private school students. Four years later, black enrollment had increased dramatically, and the Houses had been integrated by women. These were stunning and historic changes for the times. Since then, I have interviewed prospective college students from Massachusetts to Florida. Every year, they become more diverse and more qualified. Every year, it becomes more difficult to get into the school of your choice for everyone, including white students. At the heart of the student fraud case are white parents who probably feel that their children are being deprived of a quality education by some anonymous black, brown or yellow person. Cheating is their way of righting a system that is wrongly depriving their white, privileged children of what they are entitled to.

Similarly, the massacre in New Zealand was perpetrated by a white nationalist against brown people. He felt that these people were taking something from him that he was entitled to. Maybe it was a job? Maybe it was respect? Maybe it was his cultural identity? Maybe he was just afraid? Whatever the insane reason, he played the victim, and his actions were justified by his sense of victimization by the “others.”

In both cases, the perpetrators, all of whom live in democratic and free societies, are saying that they are afraid of the increased competition that diversity brings. Competition in the marketplace and free market capitalism is what these people worship unless they lose. Then they claim foul. Unfortunately, they are sore losers, and someone has to pay.

March 14, 2019

I am not ready to jump on the Beto Bandwagon. As a non-millennial, I would like to see someone with a few more scars on his political torso. I will sit back like many Americans and see how things develop. When does Joe jump in? When do some of the other Democratic candidates jump out? Regardless of what happens, what we will be seeing is a debate about what we want our future to look like versus a trip down fake memory lane.

Trump still harps on Make America Great Again. He has had two years to fix the “carnage” created by Obama, but he is still trying to make us safe for “Leave it to Beaver” and “Howdy Doody.” He wants to roll back environment regulations because he thinks the polar glaciers will refreeze. Nazis are in vogue again. He wants fewer people to have healthcare. He wants simpler airplanes because he doesn’t understand them. He wants a whiter America. He wants women to once again find solutions in back alleys. He is going backwards when the rest of the world and the country is moving forward.

That brings us back back to Beto and the rest of the candidates. Listen to what they are saying, and not what Trump says they are saying. More importantly, look at who is listening. The listeners are the future.

March 11, 2019

The sound you just heard is the other shoe dropping as President Trump prepares to send his budget to Congress. The $8.6B for the border wall, and $750B for the military are the least of it. Complaining about the budget deficits that they created with the latest tax cut, Republicans now find it necessary to cover the shortfall by cutting domestic spending by 5%. David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote, “The 2017 Trump tax law…is a dreadful piece of economic policy — essentially a giant effort to aggravate income inequality. Tax cuts that benefit the wealthy most are huge and permanent. Tax cuts focused on everyone else are smaller and temporary.” He goes on, “….Republican leaders favor cuts that fall disproportionately on the middle class and poor.” This is right out of the Republican playbook. Cut taxes, create a fiscal crisis, and then balance the budget on the backs of the neediest among us. It is pretty cynical stuff. And where is the spending for infrastructure going to fit in? We need to have a mature and responsible discussion that includes budget cuts, tax increases, and infrastructure spending. If the shoe fits….

March 3, 2019

Before getting a tattoo, do yourself a favor and go to a museum to see what real art looks like.

March 2, 2019

While Trump and his cronies are dominating the news, Democrats are controlling the conversation. We will be bombarded daily with stories about non-disclosure agreements, guilty pleas, indictments, charitable foundation fraud, security clearance abuses, money laundering, asset inflation, grade inflation, Wikileaks, Russia, the Moscow Tower, and kowtowing to autocrats. While these issues and more take their course both in Washington and New York City, the Democratic Party is having a vigorous debate about where it wants the country to go.

Whether you agree with all of its proposals or not, the Green New Deal is forcing Republicans to debate the issue. The conversation has moved from global warming being a hoax to what are we going to do about it. Repeal and replace is no longer a Republican talking point. We are now talking about the best ways to provide more coverage to a greater number of people. Reasonable people can disagree on the best ways to proceed, but at least Democrats are controlling the conversation. Democrats clearly have the home field advantage. Just ask Bill Belichick how important that is.