It’s A Far Different World From When I Entered It

Things were far simpler in 1936, when I first experienced life. Next January, I turn eighty and each day I seem to understand less and less about the world I am now living in.

THE LEAST INCOMPETENT

We have two snake-oil salesmen leading the race to be the GOP candidate for the Presidency. One is a blustery, loud-mouthed white man, who has yet to propose a workable plan to “Make America Great Again.”  He doesn’t quite tell lies, but has perfected the innuendo style of speaking used by Richard Milhous Nixon.

That style can best be described as, “I’m not saying that my opponent is a (liar, thief, crook, dishonest, incompetent), that’s for you to decide,” statements.

The second is a soft-spoken Black man, who embellishes (or creates) tales of his wayward youth, and how he was resurrected while sitting in the bathroom after one of his misdeeds. He hasn’t exactly told the media, “You are looking for any wrong doings because I am a successful neurosurgeon of color,” and seems to be a bit more subtle in his Nixon-like campaign direction.

THE TRUSTWORTHIEST

On the Democratic side, we have a kindly, honest, fireball of a Jewish grandfather running against William Jefferson Blythe III’s wife Hillary. Some women are supporting her because she is a woman, and they say this country needs a woman President to inspire young girls to have higher goals and rise above the secretarial pool. Isn’t that what Carly did, or said that she had done? There’s a hesitancy to believe anything a politician says.

When Tuesday, November 8, 2016 arrives and I vote for the President, I will once again be forced to decide which candidate from which party, will do the least amount of damage to my country and me over the next four years.

I am fortunate enough to have safe havens to move to if the “wrong” person is elected President, thanks to my wife. She’s not only a citizen of the United States, but also of Canada where she lived for thirty-six years, and of Spain where she was born. We can either move north and be “owt and abowt,” or be “muy contento” in España, as long as there isn’t another Inquisition.

Political cartoonists will also face a difficult adjustment figuring out to incorporate the elected candidate’s ears, hair, facial coloring, pantsuit, or other attire, to incorporate within their renderings.

IS IT NEWS, OR ‘NU?’

When it comes to television news, I have had a great deal of trouble listening to Obama over his two terms as he vacillates when he talks the talk, without walking the walk. If anyone but Bernie is elected, I will have to figure out how to use the time I will gain by not watching any television news over the next four years. If someone spends an average of only thirty-minutes a day watching any and all television news programs, that would total 43,920 minutes over the next President’s four-year term, or 732 hours of time.

If I gave up watching all television news for those four years, I would have ample time to write a novel, or to write more blog posts kvetching about what’s going on in the world, and wondering if anyone is reading what I have to say.

Incidentally, has anyone read this?

THOSE WHO CAN’T 
REMEMBER THE PAST

Would you vote for a candidate for the Presidency, whose political resume included less than eight years serving in his state’s legislature?  What if he had been a U.S. Senator for little more than three years, when he sought his party’s nomination to be their candidate for President? What if he had no real experience as a Governor or another such elected position, to show that he could actually govern and lead the United States during troubled times? What if his Father had been born in another land? 

Feeling Blue

The website for the University of Michigan’s Athletic Department is “MGOBLUE.COM.” The “go blue” part of it was sadly apropos after its October 17^th last-second football game 27-23 loss to in-state rival Michigan State University Spartans.

The U. of Michigan Wolverines were leading 23-21 with ten seconds left in the game. They had the ball on the 47-yard line, and all they needed to do on fourth down was punt the ball deep and let time run out.

The ball was snapped low, the punter fumbled it and a MSU player scooped up the loose ball, and ran it into the end zone for the winning score.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Most of the 111,740 people in the stadium were U. of M. fans (short for “fanatics”) and had paid $95 for one end zone seats, $105 for one Maize and Blue seat, and $115 to sit in the Victors/Valiant section. The revenue for that one game could have been as high as $10 million.

U. of M’s 234-piece performance band stirs up the crowd before and during every game, playing rousing renditions of the university’s “theme” song, “Hail to the victors valiant, hail to the conquering heroes, hail, hail to Michigan, the champions of the west.” A student wrote the song in 1898 after Michigan beat the University of Chicago to win the Western Conference, which became the Big Nine Conference, and now is known as the Big Ten, and naturally has fourteen member schools. (See more on the band members later on)

IT AIN”T OVER UNTIL

The victors weren’t valiant last night, and as the ESPN television camera swept across the stands after the final exciting, game-ending play, one young man's face exemplified what all of the U. of M. faithful had just experienced.

The camera stayed on the be speckled student, adorned in a maize hooded sweater had his hands on top of his head, his eyes wide open, and a distraught look of total disbelief upon his face. 

You can recap the day is several ways.  In 2014, Ann Arbor had an estimated population of 117,770, and they could have all nearly fit into the stadium. More than 111,000 people did fit in, and they had nothing better to do on a fall Saturday. The fumbling punter, a former Australian rugby player, may have lost his scholarship. The Spartan who scored the winning touchdown, also paid a price, for after the score, he was at the bottom of a celebratory pile of players, and his hip was dislocated.

WHAT CAN YOU SAY?

Michigan’s head coach Jim Harbaugh, responded to reporters’ questions with his usual stoic replies. In trying to find something positive about the game’s outcome, Harbaugh said, “They played their guts out,” and followed with, “We have to have resolve, steel in our spine and move forward.”

Michigan State’s coach Mark Dantonio simply summed up the ending by saying,  “Football is a crazy, crazy game.”

I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care who won, but perhaps I did, for my daughter graduated from Michigan State. (See story that follows on Thailand))

Michigan is now at 5-2, and Michigan State improved to 7-0.

Good news for Michigan fans, their next home game is with Rutgers, and the prices for tickets for the public have been reduced to as low as $65 each.

The battle was only a game. Renowned sports writer Grantland Rice put sports in perspective in 1908, when he wrote in his poem Alumnus Football, “For when the One Great Scorer comes, to mark against your name. He writes — not that you won or lost —But how you played the Game.”

I seriously doubt that Jim Harbaugh read that poem to his dejected team after last night’s loss. 

IN THAILAND WITH THE COACHES

In 1985 when I was visiting a friend in Bangkok, Thailand, he shipped me off by bus to visit the ancient capital of Ayutthaya. I came back on a riverboat, and saw Michigan State’s former football coach and Athletic Director Duffy Daugherty playing cards with Tennessee’s Johnny Majors, and two other coaches.

Since I was paying my daughter’s tuition at the time, I asked Duffy what he and the others were doing there. “Oh, we are on recruiting trip.”

With the average Thai male less than 5’8” tall and under 150 pounds, I now knew how some of the tuition money was used. MSU’s basketball coach was probably recruiting players in Central Africa, where pygmies reside. The average height of a pygmy is below 5-feet tall, and anyone taller is described as a pygmoid.

PERFORMANCE BAND MEMBERS

Their high-stepping band has students playing 12 piccolos, 25 clarinets, 12 alto saxophones, 12 tenor saxophones, 48 trumpets, 24 horns, 33 trombones, 3 bass trombone, 12 euphoniums, 24 tubas, and 30 percussionists.

When marching, they round out their array of performers with 24 flags, 3 twirlers, and one drum major.

Moron Post Debate Activity

On Friday, September 18^th, these thoughts were posted about the September 16 debates and the three entities involved in the election process; the politicians, the press, and the public.

Within a few days after, some elements of each entity were once again able to display their ignorance and ineptitude.

POLITICIANS who need to be muzzled.

Fellow Detroiter Benjamin Solomon Carson told host Chuck Todd on today’s Meet the Press, that, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”

Carson’s wise statement tried to play to the Trump card and matched the unbiased intellect of the GOP poll leader. A few days earlier, Trump was confronted at a New Hampshire town hall meeting by a man who said, ‘We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. We know he’s not even an American. Birth certificate, man!”

He continued, “We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?”

Trump again displayed his leadership, responding with a precise, Presidential-like reply,  “We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things. And a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”

With a whiff of innuendo, on Sunday, Trump spoke on NBC and reiterated what Carson had said, stating that a Muslim in the White House is “something that could happen. Some people have said it already happened, frankly.”  That deflection is reminiscent of a former great GOP President’s ways, before Nixon was forced to resign from office.

Not satisfied with trying to lose the Muslim vote, John Kasich wanted to help Trump win the Hispanic electorate over to the GOP, when he spoke at the Shady Canyon Golf Club in Irvine, California. In his awkward way, Kasich made an attempt to show what pobrecitos had contributed to our economy, by blurting out, "A lot of them do jobs that they're willing to do and, uh, that's why in the hotel you leave a little tip,"

Hillary used the GOP verbal missteps to appeal to the Latino community, sending out a tweet in Español, calling Kasich “another product of the Party of Trump.”

THE PRESS should be muffled.                                                                                                                
The same Chuck Todd mentioned earlier, joined many broadcast media professionals  (and their semi-pro cohorts), when he ran to his cliché book and said that after the debate, ‘The air may have been let out of Trump’s balloon.” That balloon has been filled with both Trump’s hot air, as well as the media’s proclivity to Pump Trump up.

Dana Bash, a CNN journalist, joined others of her ilk, by repeatedly describing the GOP opposition likely to be some woman running for the Democratic nomination. She, and others, have an aversion to saying “Bernie Sanders” name, unless they add that he’s a Socialist, emphasizing the “S” word as being his primary qualification.

If you’d like to see more balanced coverage of the candidates during Election 2016, turn to TIME magazine, which not only put Bernie on the cover of its September 28 issue, but also devoted seven pages to an honest story on the man.

SOME PEOPLE should be muzzled and muffled.                                                                                
Take another look at the very negative, anti-Muslim proclamations coming from one of the GOP supporters that went unchallenged by a candidate with a hairy disposition.

Thankfully, that was counter-balanced by the wise observations of a Northern California GOP woman who is a Carly Fiorina supporter. When asked by a reporter, the woman brilliantly responded after watching Carly match her wits against her ten male opponents on the platform.  ”A lot of men seem to like Trump, but when Carly stuck it to The Donald on women — a whoop went up in the crowd.”

She knew the real reason why Carly did so well, “I knew Carly was ready to rock when she appeared wearing a suit of ‘Thatcher blue,’ and she began immediately to channel her inner Maggie.”

Stay tuned to this channel and the mainstream media for more farcical and sometimes misleading comments. Remember, there are less than fourteen months to go before you’ll have to decide which Presidential candidate to vote for. It may likely be the one you believe will do the least amount of harm to our country, while in office.

Winners and Losers, After the CNN Debates

The CNN debates were supposed to show off the qualifications of each candidate, while avoiding disparaging their GOP opponents. This could provide fodder for the Democrats in the general election that is only thirteen-and-one-half months away.

An old English expression befits the high ground to be taken; “Mind your P’s and Q’s.” It essentially means either “mind your manners,” mind your language,” or “be on your best behavior.”

The “P” possibly refers to politicians, the public, and the press. The “Q” factor revolves around the inane questions coming from the press.

If you had nothing better to do on September 16, you might have watched CNN’s self-publicized debates, where all three of those meanings would be violated. According to a countdown timer, which had been on the CNN screen for several days, the first debate will begin in 1 hour, 8 minutes and 36 seconds from now. When it does, I will step away from my computer.

THE POLITICIANS

That first debate featured the lower tier candidates Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki, each garnering less than one percent in the polls, as well as Rick Santorum, having firmly established himself as the potential GOP nominee with a one percent backing. Jim Gilmore didn’t even gain enough of a following to be invited, and Rick Perry nobly withdrew from the race.

I watched intently for fifteen minutes, trying to better understand the candidates and their positions, and then came back to continue writing this piece. Bobby Jindal repeatedly emphasized that the Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders was an avowed Socialist. I hoped that in the second debate, another GOP wannabe would also bring up Bernie Sanders’ name, since the media mainly fail to mention him except to chortle when Hillary’s numbers are declining. Later, Bobby did tie Bernie to Barak, calling Obama another Socialist.

The top tier in the second debate, along with their most recent New Hampshire polling percentages included Trump (27%), Carson (23%), Bush, Rubio, and Huckabee (6% each), Cruz (5%), Fiorina (4%), Kasich and Paul (3% each), Walker (2%) and Christy (1%). At times, they interrupted one another, gnawed at their opponents credentials, and complained that they were portrayed wrong.

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Of the fifteen who participated in the two debates as candidates for the nomination of their GOP political party, for the very political office of President of the United States, the two poll leaders, Trump and Carson, emphasized that they have never been elected to a political office. Carly Fiorina, who many pundits declared as the debate winner, was equally proud of her lack of political experience. She also might be the best person to negotiate with Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. After nearly destroying Hewlett-Packard under her leadership, she negotiated a severance package that included $21 million in cash, and $19 million more in stock and pension benefits.

THE PRESS

The press derived its name during the early days of printing, when type was set one letter (or one line) at a time and placed into a form. Ink was rolled on the type, a sheet of paper was placed on top of it, and it was pressed down to make an impression on the paper. This was done one sheet at a time, a laborious effort, much like last Wednesday’s debates.

The highlight of one CNN news report on Trump’s earlier rally at a Dallas arena was when an anchor interviewed a Trump supporter who wore an outfit she had designed. The supporter proudly displayed the likeness of Trump on her hat, purse, dress and shoes. The CNN anchor’s most probing question concerned whether Hispanic protestors outside of the rally had tried to prevent her from entering the arena. The Trump supporter couldn’t recall, saying that she was too enthralled by being able to hear her man in person.

Other broadcast media professionals also seem to be incapable of bringing up pertinent discussion points, and most of their questions center around Donald, who deftly ducks talking about his policy programs and any topic of substance.

THE PUBLIC

Ah, the public, aka the voters. These people will eventually decide who will be the President after the November 8, 2016 election, unless there is a repeat of 2000. That’s when the U. S. Supreme Court stopped a recount proposed by the Florida Supreme Court, and handed Florida to Bush by 537 votes. At that time, the Florida Governor was John Ellis Bush, J.E.B., and seven of the nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices, were appointed by Republican Presidents.

Before the 2016 election occurs, many Super PACs who are surreptitiously supporting their candidates, will be spending their millions, or billions, to influence the electorate.

The intelligence of the electorate is questionable, since too many voters won’t invest either the time or energy to truly learn about the candidates. The “public” seems to be far more interested in hearing what platitudes each of the candidates profess to support, and what each candidate says that a voter wants to hear.

Many of the voters listen to the candidates espousing generalities, and each candidate, in turn, will alone try to do his or her best to influence the public into believing that they can be the saviors of America.

These two September 16 debates took place in the Ronald Reagan Library.  In that hallowed setting, candidates valiantly tried to connect to Reagan and his ideals, as if that will be the strong tie that binds them to the future of a greater America, and helps get them become the GOP nominee. Oh, how they long for the good olde days of 1980 to 1988 — those glorious Reagan years. 

However, I once heard liberal folk singer Pete Seeger talk about the past, saying, “Those were the good old days that never were.”