Will DOGE Actually Work?

 

DOGE Saves the Country, Or the Fiscal Floor Caves In

I’ve wanted to write something about DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) for a while. There is an underlying sense that I shouldn’t get too excited about it. I tell myself not to fall for it. You’re never going to watch the government cut its waste or spending by a significant amount. The spending rot is too deep. Best to wait for the floor to fall out from under you and rebuild the house. The termites have eaten through too much of it. Yes, it's a pessimistic view. I have a twinge of guilt every time I think about it. But remember, the staggering amount graft that is uncovered on a daily basis props up someone. Actually it’s propping up a whole lot of someone’s.

DOGE is what it looks like to attack the corruption in spending from the outside. It can’t happen from inside.

Inside Baseball

Back in 2010, Senators Alan Simpson (Wyoming) and Erskine Bowles (North Carolina) put together a committee to “study” how to reduce the debt. They correctly evaluated the problems and presented a plan. The plans were sensible but the political will wasn’t there. These commissions only ever serve to provide travel opportunities and a nice pay day for fortunate bureaucrats. Nothing actually gets cut. No one needs to do a year long study to figure this out. Blue ribbon commissions find information we already know and find a way to get paid from the process. It's a neat trick.

It’s impossibly hard from a political standpoint, much easier to pay everyone off with projects for their communities and sign off on another bloated budget. It’s why my ‘wait for the floor to cave in’ is an understandable response.

Outside Baseball

But if Trump is different and Elon is different, maybe there is hope. If nothing else, DOGE is a true outsider approach. No insiders were ever going to fix it. Mafia members occasionally rat on each other, but they also take on new identities, move to the heartland and take up farming. Exposing corruption is dangerous. Make no mistake, this is corruption. And to have such a serious group of men sharing the responsibility of taking it to the deep state is very encouraging. If you haven’t seen the interview on Fox News with Brett Bair I suggest you watch it. All of these men are accomplished in the private sector. They’ve all volunteered to help reorganize federal spending and show where the fraud and waste is. No surprises yet, it’s overwhelmingly fraud so far.

Defining Leadership

At no point during the interview did I think any of these guys were press hounds. They’re sober about the future of the country and patriotic enough to do something about it. Musk put a target on his back by supporting Trump after the Pennsylvania assassination attempt. That gave others the courage to do likewise and share some of the burden of being called Nazis or Fascist's or whatever. I’m much more confident after hearing from the team. It’s easy to be cynical about motives, but they seem to care deeply about the future of the country and how much has been stolen from future generations.

Musk recognized that this administration is serious about putting the country on a track to fiscal sanity again. No businessman wants to give voice to an untrustworthy president or give support where it won’t be reciprocated. It’s risky. It’s especially risky for Republican administrations because the press can ruin you. We’re seeing some of that with the bombing of his Tesla dealers and desecration of cars in parking lots. I’m sure he knew this kind of thing was possible. But he can rely on an administration that actually punishes crime and backs American business. 

The Twitter Takeover

Buying Twitter was a watershed moment for Elon Musk. He entered the political fray and if he had any illusions about an American left that just wanted free speech, he was quickly disabused of that notion.

He let a handful of journalists (Taibbi, Shellenberger) comb through Twitter’s databases. Matt Taibbi in particular showed how the federal government was silencing conservative voices through implicit threats. Twitter was basically the communication arm of the FBI. In a lot of ways, DODGE feels like a much larger version of the same idea. Expose fraud in the federal government and show how corruption works at scale. And what a scale it is? Twitter prepared him for this. But if Twitter was an on base single to right field, DOGE is a grand slam to win the game.

Discovering wasteful spending at the federal level isn’t a tough thing to do. The late Senator Coburn, Oklahoma’s own, used to release a Wastebook every few years on government waste. We knew about the bridges to nowhere and the silly research grants for video games studies. But no one was specifically targeted or held to account. The sense you get from reading them is irritation at the lack of oversight. You can almost hear the zany Benny Hill music playing in the background as the list of dumb spending is read aloud. The tone of the report though is ‘common guys, we can do better'. But Senators have to get reelected. They can scratch the surface and point in a direction, but they can’t name names. 

Nothing against Coburn, he was an honest man. But where he grabbed the low hanging fruit of waste, Musk is going for the jugular. 

Like Simpson and Bowles, real change happens from outside because it has to. 2025 is going to be a rocky year with a lot of naming of names if DOGE is anything like what it needs to be. It will all be for naught though if guilty parties aren’t charged and we don’t have a sensible plan for budgeting. Grifters that feed off the public teat should be punished severely, or America will be overrun with them.

Conclusion

I’m usually pessimistic about the attempt to reign in a federal system. But I’m optimistic for at least some big moves going forward. What does that look like? Can we actually reduce the fraud by a significant margin and half the budget? Will known fraudsters be held to account and serve as avatars for other, would be-con artists who would fleece the taxpayers? The relentless exposure is good news so far. Had Elon Musk done enough work to allow DOGE to function with a manager once he is gone? That day might come sooner than the May deadline.

Every political fight like this comes down to willpower. If not, we wait for the floor to give way and work on a rebuild plan. 

 

Go Cubs Go: 2025 Opening Day

 

Baseball's Opening Day and the New Cubs

Yesterday was Opening Day for the 2025 season. I won’t pretend I’ve been following baseball closely for the last 5 years because I haven’t. Clicking through some of my old journals, I stumbled across one from last year with “baseball” in the title. My first thought was, “What’s this? I hardly watched any baseball last year”. But it was a preseason explainer to myself about why my interest had waned. Covid was the culprit, no surprise. Still, that was 4 seasons ago. Why bring it up? Because it’s just about the time I checked out. The George Floyd riots and the Black Lives Matter craziness, forced me to ignore sports for a while. I’ve probably mentioned this a lot in other places where I’ve written, but using sports as a platform to divide the country was unforgiveable to me.

The MLB allowed and promoted that.

While not unforgivable, it forced me ignore it for a few seasons. I remember seeing a preview of the Chicago Cubs doing long toss at Wrigley right before a game. Most of the players adorned with Black Lives Matter t-shirts and smiling like they were at the lake on a Sunday afternoon. I think I was at the gym looking up at the TV which was tuned to ESPN. Similar events happened all year like that. Athletes gave bland statements of support for the violence happening all over the country; to me it looked insincere. I’ll avoid going into that morass too deeply. Nothing was real, certainly not the genuflecting to left wing activism that these athletes participated in.

Whatever…I’m glad it’s over.

This spring I started listening to a couple of Cubs podcasts again. Mostly, the idea was to familiarize myself with a team I don’t know anything about. I used to call myself a fan but the title just doesn’t fit anymore. Would I like the Cubs to win? Absolutely. Are the Cubs my team, as much as any baseball team can be said to be “my team”? For sure. But true baseball fans follow their team much closer. I’m more of an interested party in the team’s success. Frankly, I don’t want to watch even 100 games during the season. The regular season is 162 games. Baseball isn’t conducive to the modern attention span. It’s too slow. Soccer is slow too but there is always action around the ball.

Major League Baseball has tightened up a few rules to make the game a little more fan friendly. They’ve put a clock on the pitcher so he can’t shake off the catcher 3 or 4 times and keep going to the rosin bag. It’s 20 seconds. That seems about right. The national league is now using the designated hitter rule. Not sure if this speeds the game up, but it does likely add more scoring opportunities. Another rule change is adding a runner to second base in every extra inning. This was made permanent 2 seasons ago. The idea is pretty simple, increase the chances of scoring and getting out of the game. Some of these 13 and 14 inning games destroy your pitching staff. A lot of guys have to pitch more innings than they should.

Remember it’s 162 games during the season. Burning up your pitching staff for one win is costly for the next series of games. I imagine everybody was for this rule. It seems like an easy one. As for reducing the time between pitching changes, every pitcher has to face at least 3 batters or go to the end of a half inning. If you realize how much time gets eaten up bringing in a specialist to deal with a good hitter, it makes sense. I’ve seen games where the team puts in a reliever just to face one batter. Then, he exits the game and a second reliever is brought up to finish the slate of hitters. Every change requires a new pitch and catch warm up routine with the catcher until the new guy is ready to go. I think advertisers are the only ones that like it. They can jam in a few extra commercials with every change.

Opening Day is this baseball thing that football doesn’t have. In football it’s just the first game of the season. I have friends that treat Opening Day like a holiday. They take off from work and spend the day watching multiple games. One of my buddies posted a picture of him and his son, with Royals hats and sunglasses just outside Kaufman stadium. What a cool tradition for them. Why is Opening Day such a big deal? I googled it just now. I guess it has something to do with hope and optimism for the season. Everyone still has a perfect record and all of that. It’s spring too, which does feel like an awakening from winter. Warmer weather is on the way, even in Chicago.  

I said that everyone team has a perfect record just before opening day. That’s True for all but one team. Can you guess which one? Right, it’s the Cubs. Technically their season opened in Tokyo this year against the World Series Champion Dodgers. So everyone but the Cubs are perfect. No worries, spring is here and baseball is in the air. Go Cubs!

The French Connection: Review

Gene Hackman Owes His Career to Popeye Doyle

If The French Connection were made today, we’d have more detail about the heroin enterprise run out of Marseilles by the smugglers. Writers would create more backstory on the Roy Scheider character, Cloudy Russo and the beleaguered captain. We’d certainly have a compelling story arc about the black bartender, who feeds information to the police when they rough up the patrons. But writers can do too much with a movie and make a mess of the whole thing.

Simple Stories

Sometimes simple is best. Focus on one character…amoral, racist, vitriolic, determined. Don’t even bother to give him a family or a pet or an interest outside of kicking in doors and roughing up junkies.  

 Thankfully it was made in 1971. If you want an antihero with a singular focus on winning, Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) is your guy. There were a few detective movies at the time with rule breaking cops and evil criminals without an ounce of humanity. Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry (also 1971) comes to mind, as does Death Wish (1974). Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey didn’t carry a badge, but in a lot of ways he’s a more sympathetic character than Hackman’s Doyle.

 I’m not sure what it was about this time period, maybe the urban crime rate was high in big cities. New York, as the largest American city, was notorious for muggings, murders and all purpose felonies. The mafia ruled the city’s underworld and drug use and crime soared.

The Breakdown

William Friedkin’s The French Connection begins with 2 narcotics detectives chasing down a black heroin addict in a foot chase. Popeye Doyle is undercover as a street Santa Claus while Cloudy Russo serves hot dogs from a vendor’s cart. It’s clear that most of their time is spent roughing up junkies while hoping for larger scores. Both men go out to a disco club one night and tail an Italian café owner who they assume is a big-time dealer. Their hunch pays off, but only after they convince their captain to get the necessary warrants to wire tap the café. The heroin is coming from Marseilles on a ship, with a famous French businessman and his entourage.

The rest of the film is a chase. Either on foot or in a car, it’s cops against criminals. There isn’t a lot of detail to the plot, it’s very focused in the person of Popeye Doyle. The film is known for its riveting car chase. Doyle steals a car from a random passenger and follows the elevated train to the next stop. A sniper who tried to shoot him just minutes ago evaded him and hoped onto the train as the doors were closing. Doyle barks at the attendant for directions and tries to outrun the train to the next stop. After countless near misses and swerving onto the incoming lane he gets to the station only to see the train blow past the stop.

The Chase

The sniper held the train conductor gunpoint, forcing him to keep moving. Doyle jumps back in the car and continues his high speed, frenetic pace below the tracks. Eventually the French assassin runs out of space and Doyle shoots him. Filmed mostly from the viewpoint of the driver, it’s nerve wracking to see cars miss and oncoming traffic peal off just in time. He gets sideswiped at one point and keeps going.

The second great scene shows the wealthy drug kingpin Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) trying to evade Doyle at the subway station. Charnier is slick where Doyle is clumsy. Realizing the police are on to him from very early on, he tricks them into following and then dumps the tail. Charnier is relaxed and stylish throughout. He dines with the wealthy in exquisite restaurants and stays in 4 star hotels. He is charming and evasive.

Popeye Doyle is messy and violent. He drinks until he falls asleep on the bar. He wears an old porkpie hat and looks as if he’s slept in his clothing. If we could smell him, he’d smell like day old bourbon. His quick and dirty nature is a perfect contrast to the sophisticated man he chases.

The French Connection doesn’t have time to develop a lot of characters around Gene Hackman’s Doyle. That makes it very similar to Dirty Harry. But what we get is a very crisp movie about a man on a mission. It doesn’t leave us with a sense of pride in the police force, but we accept his behavior because he gets results. One of the detectives complains that Doyle’s assumptions lead to good cops getting killed. Doyle takes a swing at him in a later scene. It’s a way to explain his recklessness and reinforce the image of an emotional detective who goes hard and doesn’t explain himself.

The Classics

I watched this movie for the first time probably 20 years ago. Like classic novels, I like to find out for myself what the big deal was. I’m not one who loves everything that won an Oscar (this one did) or was selected for some literary prize. But The French Connection is a fantastic movie for people who like cop movies. I like the straightforward portrayal of New York in the seventies. I like what one reviewer said, “This is a story about ugly things and awful people”. And I would add, told with excellent pacing and energy.

There is a scene that catches my eye every time. As someone with almost no flair for the camera, I don’t generally pick up on cool shots. But I love the image of Doyle leaving the bar when the sun comes up. It’s framed beautifully with the bar in the lower left corner of the screen while the Manhattan Bridge runs overhead and parallel while an opposite highway runs perpendicular. It looks like dawn. The only real light is from the electric red and green horizontal images on the tavern. The rest of the shot has a blueish grey hue suggesting another cloudy day is in store. It seems like a perfect image for the film somehow.

Living in the New Covenant: Thoughts on Healing

 

Learning of God's Goodness in Pain and Sickness

I’ve had a painful abscess on my back for a about a week now. At first I thought it was a pimple or ingrown hair. I was careful not to roll over on it while sleeping. But after a few days it started to become more painful; I went to a local clinic for some antibiotics. The doctor gave me a prescription and a phone number for a surgery center that, I guess, specializes in this kind of thing. What does that mean exactly? I’m not sure yet, but I think it’s a simple procedure to cut open the infection and drain it. The word surgeon sounds like “surgery” though. I hesitated to call, hoping the antibiotics would take care of it. They still might knock out the virus enough to cancel the procedure. The doctor was concerned that it hadn’t drained up to this point.

Clinic Trip

I set up an appointment with the surgery center for this Monday afternoon. Hopefully I’ll get there and they’ll say “It’s not necessary”. But we’ll see. I missed a lot of workouts this week. Partly because of missed sleep and partly because of the pain of moving around too much, I stayed in bed an extra hour. Today is supposed to be my big run day. I think we were slated for 12 or 14 miles. That’s not the kind of distance I can make up easy. Most people miss at least a few weeks during the training session, so I’m not too broken up about it. I won’t miss more than that though. After two consistent weeks of sleeping late, the gains you’ve made from weights and cardio start to fall off precipitously. At least it’s what I’ve been told.

A week is like a vacation, 2 weeks is a slide back to laziness. I can’t have that. Even it hurts to get up and jog I’m going to muscle up and make it happen.

Texas Trip

After going to Texas last week I picked up a cold from my brother. He was hacking and wheezing all weekend. In addition to the back pain, I’m congested and coughing. I Demand Your Pity!!! All things considered it’s not the worst cold I’ve ever had. Still, being even a little sick makes you appreciate health and fitness all the more. Maybe it takes getting older and realizing that your body isn’t going to recover like it did when you were 25. As Americans we’re more educated than ever about the food and weight loss and healthy living. But it still takes doing the unsexy thing and beefing up nutrition and some exercise.

But even the term “healthy eating” elicits groans and mental images of inedible plant food. Or maybe you imagine that ‘crunchy’ neighbor who shakes their head, disparagingly, when you fire up the grill. No one wants to be lectured about eating, or anything else. 

There has never been a country with such an amazing variety of food and drink. Prosperity is why. That’s not a criticism either, but it must be countered with personal restraint. What’s tough is not having a short cut to weight loss. I know about Ozempic and other weight loss drugs, but it’s likely that some awful side-effects are in store for long term users. If we learned nothing else about drug companies during Covid, we should’ve learned that they have no problem lying to the public about their studies.  

Garden of Eden Trip

This beautiful earth we live in is both life giving and life taking. Created by God for humans, turned over to Satan by the same humans. We have been given back authority because of the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ. It means that sickness and disease are cursed from our bodies (Isaiah 53:5-6). We still have to contend with illness. The time of Satan’s reign is not yet up, but his power was taken away in the resurrection (Colossians 2:15).

For followers of Christ, it’s up to us to understand and reclaim our authority under the New Covenant. That means cursing illness and avoiding behavior that makes illness likely. There are countless diseases that have nothing to do with poor eating or a risky lifestyle of course. There are too many to list. But it’s within our ability to develop healthy habits and avoid much of the excesses of a prosperous society.   

 Part of life is trusting in God’s promise of healing and restoration. We must remember too that faith is built when we hear the Scripture (Romans 10:17). In the same way that Adam and Eve had responsibility for the Garden of Eden, we have a similar responsibility for our bodies. It’s important to understand that God’s will is perfect healthy bodies and sound minds for His children. But the fight to see God’s will come to pass takes faith. This is the First Principles part of Christianity and the New Covenant.

Conclusion

When you understand the nature of God of and His free gifts, you won’t blame Him for your troubles. This took years for me to understand. But “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10). And so it is with healing, we learn and grow.

 

Cowtown 25

 

The Cowtown Half Marathon, or Getting Robbed by a Towing Company?

The half marathon in Fort Worth was a success.

My tentative goal was to run in just under 2 minutes. Not having run a half marathon in a few years, I didn’t know what to expect. My training this year has been all about slow running and fat adaption. I’ve written about it a few times. The gains in heart rate have been minimal, so far I’m not impressed with this zone 2 heart rate stuff. But that’s a topic for another day.

I signed up with roughly a month to train. In my experience, the 13.1 distance is very doable for most people. They might walk on the hills and struggle with the last couple of miles, but unless they’re injured they aren’t going to walk for long stretches. Training meant running at least 1 day per week at a below 9 minute pace. The trick is to stay below 9 minutes for the entirety of the race. I lost time going uphill and gained time going downhill. But the average was a cool 8:57. Talk about close.

My overall time was 1:58:44.

I’ve had too many let downs on the full marathon. I needed a successful half. I like going to Texas. My brother and his family live near Fort Worth. Every run feels like a mini vacation. It’s why I’ll probably run the Cowtown again. It’s a cold weather race in a state that’s not that cold. But even Texas, like the rest of the country, was hit by the artic blast that pushed its way down the middle part of the map. It started to lift on Friday afternoon when I drove down there with my mom. We still had snow in Tulsa when I left. On race day (Sunday) it was sunny and in the high thirties. Great jogging weather. We were fortunate. Cowtown has been canceled before because of snow. It’s a risk to start so early in the year, even in Texas.

There were close to 12,000 participants between the half and full marathons. A large race but far from the nearly 20,000 that show up for the Oklahoma City Marathon. I enjoy these big races more than the little ones. There is something about being surrounded by people in pursuit of the same goal. At least I think that’s it.

My brother Phillip and my nephew Christian came with me. I couldn’t get to my starting gate at first. The throng of people standing between the convention center and the corals, where the runners wait for the gun, was too thick to move. The committee put the port-a-johns along the convention center wall which meant lines of people waiting to use the toilet were in the way of people trying to cross them going both ways. I had to push through by inching across the mass of humanity. Finally I got close enough to the coral to hop over. Definitely not the way the organizers drew it up. I wonder how many people didn’t make their start time?

The second event of note wasn’t related to running at all. My brother had taken the car to a midway point of the race so they could get a video of me coming up the hill. I was grateful for that. It adds motivation like you can’t believe. But afterwards he found a parking spot near the finish. Unfortunately, it was in the lot of a CVS. They had a sign for towing. We walked to the lot after the race to an empty slot. Standing close to us were another pair of people that were in the same unfortunate situation. We split an Uber, over to the towing yard, with another guy who’d run the half. The bill for the trouble, a whopping $321 just to get my SUV out.

Clearly these guys were running a racket. They have a right to have cars towed from their lot of course, but the prices were absurd. It felt like they waited for these race days and large events for big paydays. They attract people from out of town who don’t know the layout of the city very well. The towing yard was tucked into a tough looking residential neighborhood. It was a just a dumpy junkyard surrounded by high sheet metal barriers and barbed wire at the top. This was sketch city. What’s more the people who worked there knew it. The pay window had iron bars and a tinted glass window with one of those bank slots for sliding cash underneath. You couldn’t see anyone behind the glass but you could hear them as they asked for ID and credit card info.

God blesses me when I trust in Him. I’m trusting that my money will come back to me in some form, because I was wronged for sure. I didn’t let that ruin my day though. I hit my target pace and had a great run. As usual after the race, my brother grilled ribeye steaks for everyone. It’s become a tradition for me, the after race dinner. I’m just glad he’s doing the grilling.  

Blogging About Snow Days Past and Future

 

Snow Day: Thoughts on Cold Weather and Education

Oklahoma, like the rest of the nation is experiencing some winter weather this week. 

Yesterday the temperature dropped, and it snowed all day. The wind increased, pushing the wind chill into the minus category. The roads became slick, snow covered and treacherous. The plows couldn’t keep up. I left work at 2 in the afternoon, as did everyone else. Today is likely a full day off for everyone. You can’t expect people to come in and work after lunch and work till 5:00. Once you’ve said don’t come in, employees assume it means all day. There was only talk of taking today off. I don’t expect to come in until tomorrow.

Northern Exposure

There may be a zoom call later with the people from work. I’ve never gotten comfortable with zoom. It’s a poor substitute for the in person work group. But in this case it’s a fitting alternative to sliding into the parking lot and putting in an hour.

It reminds me a little bit of the snow days we used to get in Illinois. The snow would drift up and cover large portions of the road. Our school was just country enough. Surrounded by empty lots and undeveloped spaces, it was in the city but with the density much closer to farmland. The school was private and small. We canceled more than most but not nearly as much as the schools here in Oklahoma. It’s understandable as the plows don’t put in as much work. I’m not sure how many they run in the city, but it’s a lot less than a northern climate city would have. Most snow is usually gone the next day after an inevitable warming. The difference is when the whole country experiences a kind of artic blast that lasts a few days or a week.

Southern Exposure

Currently we’re in the middle of such a blast. Without looking it up, I’m fairly certain the last 10 years or so have seen colder days on average. We seem to be in a cycle of these artic blasts or “vortexes” that didn’t occur when I first moved here. I’ve seen more single digit cold days in Oklahoma than I thought possible.

That didn’t happen much my first 5 years here. On one other occasion we had a massive blizzard that shut down the city for a whole week. That was 2011, February. A freakish one off as I remember. I had been living in my current home for just over a year. It’s the first time I’d experienced cabin fever. My brother was here too. There’s only so many movies you can watch. We made a few trips to the grocery store by walking through knee deep snow. That was real work. We grabbed a few DVDs at the Redbox and chalked it up to needed exercise. We were bored enough where it felt necessary. And the grocery store stayed open which was the biggest surprise.

One major difference between the upper Midwest and Oklahoma is the lack of plowing that happens of the neighborhood roads. I don’t mean the suburban areas. I live in the city; I’ve never had my roads plowed. But it’s a short 200 yards or so to the main city street. It’s not a complaint, there just aren’t the resources available to send large plows through the neighborhoods. It’s not usually necessary anyway. Schools cancel at the very suggestion of snow, ice or extreme cold. We always laugh about how little school these kids attend. Distance learning is the culprit. Most of them have zoom classes if the district cancels. The Covid years changed a lot of this and I’ll think we’ll regret how damaging it was for learning.

National Exposure

Nearly all measures on education show a dismal picture of learning. Test scores are a disaster. Previous benchmarks of literacy are collapsing in all age groups. This is a blog topic for another day, but our reliance on distance learning is largely to blame in my opinion. Covid shows the learning falling off a cliff. Most states did away with the SAT requirements, in 2020, for entrance into college. When the kids suffer we all suffer.

I’m far from an expert on education, but we’re in a time of tearing down old systems and exposing tax funded failures. I’m optimistic that the exposure of federal waste (DOGE) will inspire reformers to restart critical thinking across this country. Ideas that redirect money away from government schools in the form of vouchers are a good start. Much of the education establishment exists to feed the teacher unions and by extension, support damaging philosophies like DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion).

I’m optimistic about the future. There is an Iron will, for once, to show all the corruption we’ve just assumed is part of doing business in Washington DC. Real reform should follow real exposure. Maybe in 10 years we won’t worry as much about a few snow days that shut down the school. The principles of education will be sound enough to withstand a rough winter.

Conclusion

I’m OK with missing a few days here and there of work or church or whichever social event gets canceled because of the weather. We all need a break in the routine once in a while. A quite morning with nothing on the agenda and a full pot of coffee is a bit like heaven on earth. When the off-day comes as a surprise, it’s even better. I can think of a few ways to spend it that don’t include sleeping 12 hours. Catching up on my blog posts, now there’s a thought.

 

The Upcoming Cowtown Race

 

Final Prep Week Before the Half Marathon: Cowtown in February

I ran an extra 4 miles yesterday morning. 

The regular route called for 10 miles. Ever since my slower running trend, 10 miles has started to much easier. I’ve learned that if I feel good after the initial run, it’s best to try for extra. Some weeks you aren’t able to get all your miles in. Adding extra on Saturday is a good way to bulk up the totals on a slow week. Not to mention, I run at around 11 minutes and want to feel what a harder pace is like. I normally run at a harder pace on at least one day. I’m used to it. But I’ve never run hard after a slow start.

I did 4 miles at around 9:35 per mile. It’s useful for dealing with exhaustion at the half marathon distance.

My reasoning being, I have a race next weekend. I’m going to run in the Cowtown Marathon in Fort Worth, Texas. I haven’t trained for that race for at least 3 years. It was basically my introduction to big races. I’d never seen a race on that scale. I’d done a few 5K races and even a small half marathon in Missouri. Those were useful for the experience and distance, but the size made them feel more amateurish. My brother, who lives in Fort Worth, drove me to the Will Rogers Memorial Center on that blustery Sunday morning. The temperature was in the low 30s. That’s not as cold as it seemed at the time. I’ve run in much colder temps since then, but at the time it felt impossible. 

We started in groups to avoid tripping over others along the way. The organizers set up race stalls based on either your time or when you signed up. Each stall is released every few minutes. One of the unique things about the Oklahoma City Memorial race is the All Start. That’s not an official phrase but it sounds good. I’ve heard that elite runners hate it. 20,000 people all taking off at the same time can be a disaster unless you’re near the front. The fast guys usually are, so it’s kind of a moot point. Also, you’d think a marathon in February would be risky in every U.S. city except Miami. Texas is certainly a better option than Michigan, but cold and snow still threaten to shut it down.

 A woman in my group signed up for this very race a few years ago. It was canceled because of a snow storm. It does happen.

Half marathons don’t require the same kind of training as the full. For one thing you run much faster for the half. Maintaining a pace is tough for all the usual reasons, exhaustion and cramping. Not to mention, if you don’t run fast often enough you won’t know when to slow down. Calories don’t come into play like they do for the marathon either. I don’t need to cram in a lot of food or GU gels for the half. One is enough. You could almost get the impression that a half marathon is an easy challenge. It’s not, but it’s also not the grueling exercise of that a whole 26.2 miles can be.

Finally, I remember how much fun I had at Cowtown. It’s on a Sunday. The route goes past a few churches which have a band outside playing as you zip past. Neighborhood communities line the streets as people hold funny signs and high five you as you run by. The old Stockyards area is full of music too. Bar tenders hold trays of whisky shots for those who prefer an eye opener to a Gatorade. And no, I’m not one of them. On second thought, it does get chilly in the morning. Maybe a whisky fireball isn’t the worst idea.

But the biggest difference between the two types of distances is the fun. The half is doable for most people and manages to be fun without being too exhausting. I’m glad I started with this distance. I’ll have a follow up blog after the race too. I’d like to finish in 2 hours. I won’t be broken up if I’m a little slower than that. I’ve been running closer to 11:00 minutes per mile these days anyway. But I’m shooting for 2 hours or just under this time. Having family there to cheer me on is the real win. For now I'm praying for good weather. 

 

 

 

 

Trump 2.0 and the Blitzkrieg Campaign

 

The Trump Administration's Quick Moving Attack is Keeping the Press Off Balance

The word Blitzkrieg, lightning war, describes the attack from the Trump administration on the media. By moving fast and throwing a lot of information at them, they can’t focus their artillery. Not only is the administration moving fast and tearing down corrupt institutions like USAID, they’re doing it on multiple fronts.

 I recognize the connection of the word to the German military from World War II, and I’m careful with applying it. But as a tactic of warfare it’s genius. The Trump administration knows its enemies are largely in media. Remember the ‘kids in cages’ nonsense from the first administration? You have to separate children from adults at the border. It’s necessary to protect the kids. Until you can verify that the child is related to the adult, it’s irresponsible not to. Trump and co were blindsided by the media attack. It didn’t matter that the Obama administration used the same ‘cages’.

On Trump 2.0

In too many ways, Trump 1.0 wasn’t ready for the onslaught. I believe he really expected to change the minds of people of the Left by growing the economy and keeping the country safe. I’m not making excuses for his lack of success at the border. He accomplished far more by making it a priority, but he was hampered by a powerful deep state. His Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was openly hostile. His AG, Jeff Sessions, checked out once the Russian collusion scam began. The useless Jim Mattis was more aligned with the swamp than the American people. He didn’t even want to keep transgender soldiers out of the Army. General Milly was even worse. He publicly apologized for the president’s photo op with a Bible, after the church was nearly set alight by rioters.

On The Team

The ones that stayed with him through the lean years have learned a few tricks. Move fast and don’t explain. Trump 2.0 was thwarted by a fraudulent election. Their plans for the second term would have to wait. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro spend time in prison for a few months because they wouldn’t testify before congress. President’s can classify documents about their time in office. Trump had classified some papers (Executive Privilege) related to January 6^th. Both men would’ve broken the law by revealing that information to congress. Stephen Miller is back, as is Dan Scavino and Charlie Kirk. It was obvious on day 1 that this was going to be a fast moving attack. After the flurry of Executive Orders, he started talking up Panama and the canal. Not to mention Greenland and the Gaza strip, both of which he’s threatened to take.

On Foreign Policy

In all of these cases, Trump’s goals are probably more muted. He wants China out of Latin America and Russia out of Greenland. Is he prepared to take back the canal and buy Greenland? Possibly, but if all he gets is a new deal where the US essentially manages the canal it might be enough. Talking like this puts people on the defensive and softens them up to make deals. Marco Rubio is pushing Trump’s agenda through the Secretary of State’s office. That’s huge. The State Department is usually the first to tell the president why he can’t do something.  

Greenland isn’t for sale but the Danes, the official owners, have sent additional troops there for security. And they're rounding up support from the European countries to resist Trump. Both Greenland and Panama are perfect examples of areas that weren’t even mentioned in the campaign. But right after he is elected, it’s a race to get these items in the news and propose takeovers. After taking his oath, it’s like someone fired a starter pistol and the race to take back America was on.

On Immigration

Border Czar Tom Homan is on TV practically everyday. He’s become a play by play announcer on immigration raids and deportations. This is strategic as well. Let people know directly from the Czar what’s going on with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Show criminals being cuffed and tossed into a van. Detail their crimes and talk about where they’ve been hiding out. Let everyone know the Democrats are responsible for this because they don’t care. Do it every single day and the press won’t be able to keep up with the amount of information. Instead of trying to explain away ‘kids in cages’ they’re creating their own news and speaking directly to the American people.

On Tariffs

I never thought the threat of tariffs on Canada and Mexico were real. Not that he wouldn’t do it, but that Trump was more concerned with protecting the borders. He wanted a concrete commitment from them to put the military and law enforcement at the borders and shut down illegal traffic. It’s not just illegal aliens, but fentanyl from China. Thankfully that’s what happened. Canada and Mexico remain are biggest trading partners. I’m hopeful that this will put a massive dent in the cartels as well.

Conclusion

In keeping with the Blitzkrieg tactic, the administration isn’t wasting time explaining much either. Elon Musk’s DODGE rehired Marko Elez after some of his racist social media posts came to light. He tried to resign but the Vice President supported rehiring him and basically said, we all make mistakes. The press would love to take a week on this but they can’t. The administration has already moved on to something else. I expect to see a lot more of this tactic on the media. Move fast, create flash news and speak directly to the American people.

Michael Connelly "The Waiting": book review

 

"The Waiting" Introduces New Characters and Solves Historic Murders

I read the Michael Connelly’s most recent book “The Waiting” over the last week.

It features Renee Ballard, the surfer detective with an unfinished backstory about her life in Hawaii. This is the 6th addition with this character if my counting is right. If you’re new to the series, Renee was a tough detective that worked the overnight shift until she came across Harry Bosch while researching a case. In the first book she sued a high ranking official for sexual harassment. Her relationship with the department is frosty to say the least. Harry’s primary role in these new books is researcher and undercover investigator. He knows a lot of old cop tricks and finds a way to keep her away from any departmental blowback. Not to mention, showing her how to maneuver around legal roadblocks.

They’ve both settled into a comfortable arrangement. Ballard heads up the Open Unsolved Unit and uses Bosch when she thinks the department may not approve of her decisions. Think of the Open Unsolved Unit as a library of cold case files that Renee’s crew works from. She has a handful of volunteers that dig up old addresses and social security numbers to connect murderers to deaths. “The Waiting” gets its name from the Tom Petty song of the same title. As the lyric goes, “The waiting is the hardest part”. It sums up police work. Whether waiting for the results of an autopsy or a stakeout, it’s both tense and boring at the same time.

Renee goes surfing and has her badge and gun stolen from her car while in the water. She can’t report it missing or she’ll lose the ability to run the cold case unit. She’s made a lot of enemies since leaving the LAPD. Some of the higher ups would love to kill the unit altogether. She calls Harry for help. The trick is to get her badge back from the thieves while keeping the loss a secret until they can locate it. Another new piece to this story is the addition of Maddie Bosch, Harry’s daughter. She needs access to the Open Unsolved Unit because of some information she ran across on one of her cases. It just happens to be one of Los Angeles's most notorious homicides, the Black Dahlia murder.

I’m not sure if this is the first book that has Maddie as a cop. It feels like she was written in a few books ago, but I must have missed it. To me she’s always Harry’s kid, away at college or visiting her mom. But she knows Renee Ballard from all the times spent working with Harry finding a murderer. It makes me think she’s going to be another regular character with her own case load and missing person’s. Most of the fan reviews about this book were positive. But across the board, people want more Harry Bosch out of these stories. Readers complained that he didn’t have a large part to play. Although true, it’s not a Bosch novel. It does make me wonder if author Michael Connelly wants to write Renee Ballard as a stand alone character with only occasional references to Harry Bosch. Bosch is still the reader’s choice though.

I think we can expect to see Renee’s mother make an appearance in the series as well. She is alluded to a few times via Renee’s visits with her therapist. So there’s another possible link to Hawaii and her past. Connelly’s a wonderful writer who could probably be a detective himself. The city must give him a lot of access to records and police files in order to put such compelling stories together. I don’t mean they’re all true, but the process and politics feel very real. He had to stop writing his latest book in order to incorporate the recent fires into the narrative. I feel like I know Los Angeles a little better every time I read a Michael Connelly book.

Bears Hire New Coach from Division Rival

 

Bears Hire a Coach and Try to Put 2024 Behind Them

The Chicago Bears just hired Ben Johnson as their head coach for the 2025 season. He was the offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions for the last 3 years. Their season ended this last weekend. Both of their coordinators found head coaching spots around the league.

I started paying attention to the NFL just this year again. Since Covid and George Floyd, professional sports had become another wedge for left wing groups to divide the country over. It was a good time to tune out. I won’t recount my personal animosity towards the league here. I’ve written about it before enough times. But I did start miss it. My dad had the Lions and Bears game on when I went over there for Thanksgiving this year and it reignited my fandom just enough.

As is typical of the Bears however, they blew a big chance to win in the last couple of minutes. Poor clock management doomed their 2 minute drill at the end. Chalk up another loss. Their rookie quarterback, Caleb Williams, put together a decent second half but fell apart at the end. The coach (Matt Eberflus) sounded circumspect about the whole thing during the post game wrap up. The Chicago media was apoplectic over the loss and blamed the coach. I’m not one for blaming the coach, but he didn’t inspire confidence either. But does it really matter? There are a lot of inspiring, take-no-prisoners types of coaches that don’t win too. Rod Marinelli was like this. Great defensive coordinator, poor head coach.

I think fans get too caught up on optics. We get irritated with the way the loosing coach answers questions. The sports radio guys analyze interviews hoping to dig up some unknown piece of information. They assume the organization is always hiding something. A lot of times they are, but it’s never an issue when the team wins. It's loosing that invites carping. After the Thanksgiving Day loss, the Bears canned Coach Eberflus after an unceremonious Q&A with the press. The decision to send him out and get grilled was either a parting shot from the organization or miscommunication from management to staff.

You don’t send a guy out there to field questions if you’ve decided to fire him.

That was my reentry into the season. I’d been loosely following the pick of Caleb Williams in the offseason. He was clearly the best available in 2024 and the Bears, having yet another first pick, grabbed him up. I’m not a great evaluator of college talent, but the Bears haven’t been able to get quarterback right in years. Just the opposite is true. For whatever reason the team can’t coach the position. I’m not even sure whose fault it is. But it’s noticeable and embarrassing. My attitude on draft night was “I guess we’ll wait and see”. 

Like most fans, I just want a team that looks promising. Optimism among the Chicago media and fans was stratospheric. A ‘savior’ had arrived.

I never fall into that trap. I talked to a guy who came into my store the other day. He had played college football and rooted for the Bears as well. We talked at length about the upcoming season and the future quarterback. He had the same reservation about the team as I did. Not because Caleb Williams didn’t show promise. But if it rains on your annual family picnic every year, you start to look for secondary places to meet. If every quarterback the Bears pick gets traded in their 3^rd year, you start to cautiously evaluate their chances. 

I heard a few TV people pick the team to go to the playoffs in the first year. I never trusted that opinion. After the midseason firing of the coach, the team seemed to spiral. They’d already fired the offensive coordinator (Shane Waldron) weeks prior to that. After the head coach was shown the door, they elevated the newly named offensive coordinator to the top slot. This was a team without a rudder. It’s clear they expected to win more at this point in the season. When they didn’t, the organization scapegoated whoever they could, to appease the gods for the time. I watched them on a few occasions recently. They played a game at home on a Thursday right after Christmas. They lost. I had the sense that despite all the sacks and missed opportunities, this team was emotionally done for the year. They weren’t talentless, just effortless. The air had gone out of the balloon.

I guess we’ll see if Ben Johnson can pull this group out of the trash heap and demand better than they’ve given. Like usual I’m hopeful but not expectant. I’ve been to this picnic too many times. The chance of rain is always strong.

2025 A Year of Optimism for Americans

 

A Sense of Optimism About America’s Future is Back: 2025

New Year’s Day again. This time it’s 2025 and I’m looking forward to a better year.

Optimism on Tap

It’s easy to think of the political turmoil of the last year and be grateful that Joe Biden is out of office. Not that politics is everything, but it does set the tone for a lot of people. When we feel better about ourselves and our country, a sense of optimism pervades. When Trump asked Tom Homan to come back and be his Homeland security chief, he came out of retirement. In an interview with Tucker, Tom said that so many retired border patrol officers offered to come back once he was selected. The reason is obvious. We know instinctively that patriots are going to run key positions in DC. They love the country and want to help. It’s knowing that your leadership is for you. That’s inspiring.

Presidents Matter

I don’t buy anymore that the economy isn’t really affected by the president’s policies. The Wall Street Journal and others would always run these snotty articles about how it doesn’t make a huge difference. They think the ‘rubes’ need an education on how unimportant the president is to the economy. I wish it were true, but anti-business moves, flooding the country with illegals and canceling drilling leases for oil companies have trickle down effects.

There may have been a time when policies were similar enough from Republicans to Democrats. In the 90s and even early 00s, the economic policies weren’t that different. Candidates talked like they were. Democrats always sounded like FDR and Republicans like Reagan, but in reality, the big budget stuff was always signed off on. No one was going to seriously threaten social security or defense spending or Medicare. Even today, those programs are fully funded without a lot of fuss. The difference is what the democrats restrict, the climate mullahs have attacked oil and gas by shutting down new leases for drilling. President Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline that’s been hanging by a thread since Obama’s term.

Climate Hysteria and Insurance Fraud

In the same vein, Uncle Sam subsidizes electric vehicles and forces CAFÉ standards on automakers. EV’s come with a discount ($7,500) for the buyer and upwards of $10,000 with the state subsidy. This is an industry that shouldn’t need the boost anymore. But taxpayers still have to shell out for plug ins that are getting less popular by the year.

 Since President Obama’s two terms, the separation of a private and public sector in medical insurance is a joke. Most of the big insurers are owned by the federal government after Obamacare. You may hate insurance companies but they’re hardly even making their own decisions anymore. They signed on to impossible rules that govern their businesses, like covering pre-existing conditions. They also signed up to limit their own profits. Costs continue to go up for the ACA (Affordable Care Act) while Insurers denied more claims than ever last year. They took something complicated, insurance, and wrapped in more red tape. They wanted windfall profits and didn’t care about the future. Obamacare is probably the biggest single reason that the president does make a difference on the economy. It ruined what was at least marginally a private industry.

Somewhere in those Obama years I stopped being a libertarian. It’s laughable to think there exists a sharp distinction between federal and private business anymore.

Rising Pride Lifts all Boats

If investor exuberance can hold the stock market afloat, then so can pride in country boost the mood in future ventures. People need leadership and it doesn’t even have to be perfect. It does however, need to be genuine. Joe Biden was never the duly elected president and he knew it, everyone knew it. Most didn’t admit it. The sense of hopefulness after the Trump win is about the future and progress. It’s difficult to describe a sense of optimism but you know it when you see it.

It’s like when the substitute teacher, who’d been filling in for the sick teacher finally leaves. This particular substitute was teaching Marxism and letting the bullies pick on the other kids. He was deconstructing the whole idea of education and telling lies about the country, God and gender norms. He did real damage. But now the regular teacher is back and a sense of optimism has returned.

Conclusion

Not that it won’t be an uphill struggle. But Trump won a mandate and if he doesn’t root out the poisonous corruptocrats it will be for naught. He has a much better sense of what needs to happen in this term. Hopefully, he won’t trust the swamp dwellers in the Republican party this time. I mostly like his cabinet picks. I’m not completely sold on Kennedy (RFK Jr), but there’s time.

 

General Flynn's Vision for America: Peace Through Strength

What Does General Flynn Think is the Key to Bring America Back Under Trump?

General Flynn was on Though Leaders with Jan Jekielek recently.

More of an overview of his vision for America, it avoided specifics about what Flynn’s role will be in the new administration. He paid a heavy price for his support, and ultimate role in Trump’s first term. As National Security Advisor, he was sidelined immediately by Obama’s outgoing apparatchiks. They had the FBI run him through the same lawfare trap that Trump went through. Flynn had less money to fight the charges and was ruined. He never even got started in the critical role. He was gone before the inauguration. Likely he knew too much about how the intelligence agencies work. They had to cancel him.

Borrowing From Reagan

He's miraculously positive about the future of the country, but aware of the inherent problems of an oversized bureaucracy. He talked about the strength of the country as a means of projecting to the world. This is familiar language to anyone who grew up in America during the Reagan years. The president thought “Peace Through Strength” a critical strategy for stability.  It probably sounds like an aggressive doctrine to those who didn’t.

 Over the last 20 years the idea of “Peace Through Strength” has been bastardized. It used to mean that a strong military was the key to economic growth and freedom in the United States. Reagan used it on the world’s stage to counter the debilitating effect of socialism on a country. In essence, we are better than the Soviet Union because we’re free and secure. But after the long experiment in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East, it’s taken on a different meaning.

Agreement With Russia

We are less secure and less free but still manage to send our military all over the globe despite its significant depleted strength. Whether this was intentional or just the result of bad policies, it has hurt our capabilities to defend the homeland. In that spirit, the general highlighted a few core principles for the country to get back to stability. Stop pretending Russia is the same big bad country from the post World War II days. They’re a regional power but a diminished one, China is the bigger threat. We can and should come to an agreement with Russia to avoid nuclear war. He didn’t give details, but it’s clear the Biden administration set diplomacy back to dangerous levels. We’re on the brink of war with a nuclear power and no one is talking.

Country First Leaders

Flynn mentioned leadership multiple times. I never got the sense that he thought the world could be a peaceful utopia, free of wars. But he’s also against poking the bear, especially when our military isn’t ready for another conflict. That part is my own editorializing. He didn’t say we couldn’t fight a big war. I’m confident he believes it though. Leadership means cooler heads. It means trying to be diplomatic despite the inherent frustration it brings. It means service to country and not self. Too many of the leaders in positions of authority are corrupt to the core and as a result, think only of themselves. This is particularly true of the intelligence community. They use blackmail and intimidation to get their way. Or, to stave off attacks against their pet projects.

Organizing American Principles

 Our federal system works like a cartel. Multiple agencies and multiple interests all looking out for their special projects, corners, power centers. Effective leadership cuts through the graft. When you hold a few powerful people accountable, the rest will fall into line without a lot of fuss.

Lastly, he mentioned the importance of understanding the “organizing principles” around which the country is arranged. No details were given. I think he means that leaders should understand the core values that made us great. Government is necessary but far from the reason we have a prosperous country. The founders recognized a God given right of individual freedom and enshrined it into the Constitution as a protection against the state. Leaders that act to thwart free people are the problem. The word “freedom” has also been bastardized by those hoping to legalize drugs or avoid taxes. It was always about speech, religion and commerce and what the government could compel.

Conclusion

The influence of communism on the United States since World War II has changed the culture enough that capitalism is a dirty word for many. We must get back to local control and local leadership and that starts with schools and city councils. I’ve summed up most of Flynn’s answers as I remember the interview. I’m sure he’ll have a position with the administration in some capacity. I thought he might have had enough of the legal stuff the last time around, however. He may want to be an informal advisor and nothing else.

No one would blame him for that, certainly not Trump. General Flynn is still a giant in the MAGA movement.   

Camino Ghosts: Book Review

 

John Grisham’s Latest Camino Installment is Dull and Anticlimactic

I just finished reading Camino Ghosts from John Grisham. It’s the third version of this plucky group of literary nerds who summer on an island (Camino) off the Atlantic side of Florida. Grisham doesn’t do a lot of serial type books. He doesn’t have a hero the way Lee Child (Jack Reacher) or Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch) do. But the subject matter is as different as the pacing. Jake Brigance from A Time To Kill would be his closest serial. He’s done 3 stories that I’m aware of. But Brigance isn’t exactly racing around the globe rescuing hostages or fomenting revolution in a South American country.

He’s basically a pro bono lawyer in a country town in Southern Mississippi. Not exactly riveting stuff. It’s great story telling though. I enjoyed the small-town politics and legal wrangling. We learn how the system works and how it doesn’t. We root for the accused.

The Camino stories don’t have the same rich texture. It feels like I should care more about the people in it, but I don’t.

Breakdown and Criticism

Camino Ghosts would have been better as a short story. The first 1/3 felt like an interesting yarn, so I kept going. It flattened out and settled to the bottom like week old Coca Cola after that. The last third was rushed through and summarized like a made for TV movie stuffing in an ending right before a commercial break. It’s almost like he got halfway done doing research and decided it wasn’t worth his time and handed it off to a junior writer to finish by the deadline.

The most compelling thing about the Camino Island crew is how fun it would be to live there and go to their parties. Telling stories about a small group of boozy eccentrics is what holds this series together. The eager book seller (Bruce Cable) with the big contacts and the young author/professor Mercer Mann and her new husband Thomas. A crew of fellow writers and retired busybodies fills out the rest of the island set. Written in an easy, breezy style, their life on the island is focused on books and causes.

Outline Summary

In the early 17^th century, an unknown village in West Africa is raided and the people are sold as slaves by another tribe. Both slave traders and raiding party’s treat the villagers horribly. The women are raped and beaten. The men are either killed outright or separated from the women on the march to the sea. The conditions on the ships are even worse. Stiflingly hot and disease ridden, many die in the tight airless spaces before the ship arrives with its slaves. One particular ship crashes near Florida in a storm. The captured Africans revolt against their captors and escape to a tiny island, Dark Isle. The White slavers are executed in a voodoo ceremony by a captured woman named Nalla. The curse, White men can never set foot on the island and live to tell about it.

Lovely Jackson is the last descendent of the people from Dark Isle. She moved to Camino Island when she was just 15. No one has lived there since. The island is hers. A big developer wants to set up condos on the island but needs permission from the state of Florida. Lovely claims ownership. Tidal Breeze, the developer, needs to disprove her theory of ownership. They have a lot of money and powerful friends. Lovely has the crew from Camino and their vast eclectic mix of writers and environmental lawyers designed to stop corporate development. She needs to prove she owns it to stop the builders.

Any description of the slave trade and its barbarity should force a kind of revulsion in the reader. This description is no different. It’s partly what made me think the story would take rough ride like the crossing that the slave ship endured. Mostly it devolved into a dull summation of the legal questions and Lovely’s memory. The stakes were very low. I kept thinking that the worst case scenario was the developers win the case to build on the island and Lovely dies a few years later. She was in her 80s. It’s not exactly a disaster.

Conservation Angle

For all the camaraderie of the liberal writing crew and their desire to keep the greedy bastards out, someone developed the island they live on. I never fully sympathize with conservationists; most already have their property. The attitude is always, go find your piece of land somewhere else. They love to move in the middle of nowhere and keep everyone else out. I understand the impetus, no one wants a highway or an apartment building near their spread, but it’s not “evil” or “corrupt” to want to develop. In either case, we root for Lovely and the protection of her homeland. Grisham makes a good case legally and emotionally that’s easy for the reader to follow.

I wonder if John Grisham made the connection that Bruce and Mercer and Thomas and the crew were helping themselves more than Lovely. They wouldn't have wanted the development any more than her. For all of their efforts, the real winners would be the ones who live on Camino Island. 

Conclusion

Hoping for a quick end to the story after getting halfway through is a sign your book is too boring. In the end I just didn’t care. It was like being promised an action packed movie with violence and ancient curses and being shown some old photos of the island instead. Not exactly a bait and switch, but it was much flatter than promised.

 

President Trump and the First 100 Days

 

What Will the First 100 Days Look Like for a Newish Administration

The first 100 days of a president’s term are an arbitrary measure of success. But it does give us a glimpse of where the focus will be.

A Victory Lap

Trump and co are going to move fast. They ran a smart, fun campaign in contrast to the Harris camps’ lack of a real message. To be fair, they didn’t have time to prepare given the infighting from the White House. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She was a terrible candidate, and Biden was too old and becoming more senile with every speech and presser. Trump won a clear mandate by sticking to the same issues he’d always talked about. Close the border, punish China with tariffs, promote American industry and stay out of foreign wars.

He pressed hard on the border. It’s gotten demonstrably worse since he left. He said the democrats didn’t care about the country and they went and proved it.

Thanks to Elon Musk, the mainstream media doesn’t have a stranglehold on information anymore. Twitter, or X, is in the free speech camp. Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the “Twitter Files” laid bare the strongarm tactics from the FBI. They treated the social media company like an agency of the government and broke countless surveillance laws in the process. But at least they couldn’t hide critical stories this election year.

Everyone who voted for Trump has a wish list for the first 100 days. Our republic is in serious trouble unless we begin to sort it out. Here are the things I’d like to see get underway right off.

#1 Close the Freaking Border!

The border has been a problem since the Bush 41 days. It’s been a problem for longer than that, but it hit critical mass sometime around the early 00s. The American people were not in agreement with Washing DC on this. American citizens knew were dealing the effects of an open border and resented it. We could be persuaded to go to war in Iraq and spend on Medicare, but we were never persuaded on the border. 

George W Bush desperately wanted a border bill that gave citizenship to millions of illegals, then they'd close the border. But they wouldn’t close the border first. That’s when we knew D.C. wasn’t serious about stopping illegal immigration. It was a “trust me” kind of pledge and we didn’t trust them. Trump saw right through it because he listened to people at his rallies. He listened to Ann Coulter too who said he should make it the signature issue. 

He did run on it, and he never apologized or walked back his stance. It's why we love him so much, for all of his flaws.

An intractable problem with an easy solution shouldn’t be this hard to fix. But if there is an open border we know some constituency benefits. Big business needs the labor, Democrats need the voters and cartels need to move drugs and people to their customers. Sex trafficking is an industry in an of itself. If we’re going to commit soldiers to a war it needs to be on our southern border. A lot of people still think the crossing at the border is about migrants seeking a better life. Ridiculous. But it’s so much more chaotic and evil than people realize. We’ve left an open door to our house at the southern border and thieves are robbing us. It’s time to lock it up and start enforcing the law, like legitimate countries do. 

#2 Clean out the FBI and Department of Justice

The Achilles heel of Trump’s first term was his appointment of too many swamp creatures. From Jeff Sessions (Attorney’s General) and Rex Tillerson (State) to holdovers like James Comey (FBI) they caused irreparable harm. He was learning how to run a government and had to rely on insiders. 2024 Trump is a very different man. There are more loyalists and people of solid character who had front row seats to the inside coup known as the “Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax”. Kash Patel was an investigator in the House of Representatives for Devin Nunes. He has receipts. He litigated the whole sordid affair. Putting Kash in charge of the FBI is like putting Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) in charge of the prison guards at Shawshank. 

He knows it because he’s been victimized by it.

We generally think of the FBI as a professional investigative unit that handles wire fraud and smuggling. They still do that, but they’re mostly a praetorian guard for whichever politicians advance their interests. Blackmail and intimidation is how they gain power. They’re well dressed goons. Time to break them up and rebuild the investigative part of the agency. Rename it if you have to. Did any of the top guys break laws? Throw them in prison. We can’t have these agencies running their own game with endless taxpayer money. Send a strong message or it WILL happen again.

#3 Tighten up Election Laws Across the Country

At least a third of the country thinks the 2020 election was stolen. For a lot of reasons, states either disregarded election laws on the books or got them changed during that year. Remember too, this was the covid year, and the deep state was determined to make mail in ballots part of the process. Why? Because of the Wu Flu and its supposedly never-seen-before-deadliness? Or, maybe they just wanted to overwhelm the swing states with fake ballots. Mark Zuckerberg spend hundreds of millions of dollars on election related issues. You know, just make sure it was completely and totally fair. They got away with it.  

A lot of the election stuff needs to be fixed on the local and state level since the laws vary so much. It’s less clear cut that way but ultimately easier to fix. We don’t need federal laws to change most of it, but we do need accountability for whenever cheating is found. I still hope we can prosecute some of the shenanigans from the 2020 election. But I’m not holding out hope on that.

#4 Fix Efficiency in Spending

It sounds like a contradiction in terms, fix efficiency by using an inefficient system. But efficiency comes in the form of cuts. Cut out redundant agencies, departments, people and offices. Our government is 36 trillion in debt. Clearly we’re spending money we don’t need, for projects and officials we don’t need. There are too many people on the dole. I’m not even talking about people who refuse to work and get free groceries every month. That’s a problem for sure, but waste is everywhere you look. It all goes to a constituency and isn’t easy to take away either.

We ‘solve’ everything with money. Can’t get a vote on your bill, pay off the Senator by adding his pet project to it. Need information from a foreign source on troop movements, bring a suitcase full of money. Want contractors to build bases in a hot zone, break out the checkbook. I’m hopeful about Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s project to cut waste, but I don’t know how much power they have. All spending changes need to go through the House of Representatives, making it tough. But I’m hopeful that they’ll identity massive areas of fraud. There are a lot.

Conclusion

The first 100 days should give us a good idea of how effective Trump’s appointment’s are. This isn’t one of those times in the country where we can keep plodding on, pretending everything is fine. Not to be too negative, but I’m amazed we haven’t had a serious economic crisis yet. We’re top heavy and it’s corruption that’s making us overweight. Argentina seems to have righted their ship for now. This is a time for bold leaders and bold ideas. We can learn a lot from Javier Milei and his bold reforms. 

 

White Christmas is a Must: Holiday Traditions that Won't Die

White Christmas is Love Letter to the World War II Generation

Most people have Christmas or New Year’s traditions. Maybe it’s a shopping trip on black Friday with the whole family, or a night spent playing video games on Christmas Eve. Traditions come and go as new people are added into the mix. Having Christmas in a different city than your own makes people adopt new traditions. Mine is simple. I watch White Christmas every year because it’s the movie I most associate with my childhood. I didn’t like musicals as a kid. I still don’t, but there are always exceptions. As an adult you appreciate things you didn’t as a kid. Dance and music are expressive forms or art. This doesn’t make sense to kids, especially boys. Unless you grew up in a house where music and dance were encouraged, you probably didn’t get it

 I remember fast forwarding through the dance numbers on our overused VCR. As a kid, I thought music got in the way of the story. But with or without the music, it's a movie with a message that a lot of people probably miss.

America the Young

White Christmas is a story rich with gratitude for a generation that fought and died in World War II. Optimism is everywhere. A song and dance team (Wallace and Davis) that met during the war, meet a sister act team (The Haynes Sisters) and head to the mountains in Vermont for some fun. While in Vermont the two men bump into their old general and decide to help him with his struggling bed & breakfast. They transfer the whole show to Vermont for the holidays, hoping to bring some business to the hotel.

I’ve tried to analyze why I like this movie so much. Despite being dated, it’s the optimism of a growing, prospering country that’s so attractive. There is talk of love and marriage and babies throughout. It captures the post war attitude Americans felt toward their future. Because it starts with a scene from Christmas in 1944 at the front, we get to see the contrast between the bleakness of war and the beauty of life away from it. After the bombings and death and misery comes prosperity and life to the full. Broadway shows are a symbol of a prosperous, confident nation.

Kaye the Wonderful

Danny Kaye as Phil Davis is brilliant. Both with his physical mannerism and facial expressions, he steals every scene. One in particular shows him pretending to twist his knee as a ruse to keep the general preoccupied. I read somewhere that Kaye was an accomplished pantomime before performing in musical comedies. It makes perfect sense. Good actors can find the camera even in scenes where their part is secondary. He is surrounded by professional dancers on the “choreography” number, but we look for him. We notice him in every frame because he’s very expressive.

His counterpart is appropriately subdued.

Bing Crosby (Bob Wallace) is in this movie to be the legitimate crooner. The pairing with Danny Kaye is similar to Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Crosby isn’t a great actor but pulls off a solid performance as the career focused leading man. Their counterparts are a sister act (The Haynes Sisters) whose brother served in the same unit as Wallace and Davis during the war. Actress Vera Ellen (Judy Haynes) is the carefree younger sister with dreams of stardom. Rosemary Clooney (Betty Haynes) is the cynical older sibling. Vera was hired for her dancing, she’s clearly a professional. Her IMDB said she was the youngest member of the Rockettes at the time. Everything in the film revolves around these four characters and their connection to each other.

Broadway the Prosperous

White Christmas is an ode to the generation who saved it from totalitarianism. America became a superpower after World War II. Europe recovered eventually, but only after a lot of expensive rebuilding. Japan too, dug itself out and rebuilt its cities after a bombing campaign from the allies that left it a wasteland, a radioactive one at that. American society was poised for a bright future. Its cities weren’t destroyed, Pearl Harbor the only damaged base. But everyone lost a lot of people. Estimates say around 75 million people around the world died. The Soviet Union suffered the most. Between the war itself, starvation and disease they lost close to 30 million. It’s not a surprise that most countries saw a massive boom in growth, both in babies and businesses.

Perhaps because of the heavy losses, military units felt like families.

There is a symbolic phrase that pops up twice between Wallace and Davis and neatly captures the underlying message, “Let’s say we’re doing for a pal in the Army”. Always said after a reluctant decision, like going to see the Haynes Sisters perform out of obligation. It’s a tacit acknowledgement of the value of wartime friendships. It's as concrete as the wall that nearly crushes Phil Davis during the shelling of their camp by the Germans in the first act.

America the Optimistic

You could say this movie is a thank you letter to the men and women who sacrificed during the war. The post war boom is why. No one represents the endless optimism of America in the fifties like a song and dance troupe. Phil Davis saves Bob Wallace from falling debris and injures his arm in the process. Davis uses the injury to guilt Wallace into turning his one-man act into a two-man Broadway juggernaut. It’s a running gag throughout. Whenever Davis wants something he points to his arm as if to say “You owe Me”. It’s played for laughs but contains the core message of the movie to the generation that fought the war--we owe you.  

My favorite scene is at the beginning when both Bob Wallace and Phil Davis are in their dressing room changing after a performance. It’s a scene that feels as rehearsed as one of the many dance numbers. Davis tries unsuccessfully to set Wallace up with a ditzy girl from production. Wallace was unimpressed.

Davis: "Alright they didn't go to college, they didn't go to Smith".

Wallace: "Go to Smith, she couldn't even spell it"

 Their banter and physical timing is perfect. Both men change into different clothes while discarding their shirts and jackets. They toss clothes hangers and shoes to each other, without losing the dialogue’s sharpness. It’s both performance art and witty banter, and it comes off clean like a play.

Conclusion

I think they overdid it just a little at the end. The surprise dinner for the general was a nice touch. But then, the foursome dressed like Santa, brought out the dancing kids and opened the barn door while the snow fell. It’s almost like they saved up all the cheese for the last 2 minutes. In this way it's very much like Hallmark's low budget features of today. It’s also when Bing Crosby sings White Christmas for the second time. Despite the canned finish, it’s a wonderful movie with a powerful message. Post-war America owes its boom to the World War II generation.  I'll keep the tradition alive until I just can't do it anymore.