Oct
20
When and Why Did We Turn Against Our Fellow Americans?

It’s distressing how closed-minded and hateful people have become.

Specifically, my people.

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of our president. I recognized decades ago that he was a media-hyped jerk while assigned to read his book “The Art of the Deal” by a conservative-leaning history teacher my junior year in high school. I didn’t see the point in reading an entire book by some real estate guy bragging about his own genius the whole time.

It’s clear to me now that I was just one of many fertile minds sitting in that classroom being groomed for a new Republican rule. While the worship of Trumpism did not take root in my ideological belief system, it clearly did in some of my small town Alabama classmates, who would go on to watch “The Apprentice” weekly on the TV — a thought growing in the back of their heads that, yeah, we should let this successful businessman have a crack at fixing what’s broken in America so we can all get rich too.

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Sep
30
Raging Against the Dying of the Light

“Every time when I look in the mirror,
All these lines on my face getting clearer.
The past is gone.
It went by, like dusk to dawn.”
– Aerosmith

I don’t want to grow old. I refuse to “go gentle into that good night” and will “rage against the dying of the light,” as Dylan Thomas put it.

I  define “oldness” as a crescendo of blandness, diminished enthusiasm for life, less arousal/passion, and heightened fatigue. So set in our ways that we can no longer open our minds to accept we don’t know it all.

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Aug
14
Sorry, But I Told You So

It’s official. I can finally say “I told you so,” on a couple of critical points that I got into arguments with people about a few years ago.

Two recent studies illustrate the impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the invasion of Iraq – both of which were heralded by the GOP as highlights of its leadership but turned out quite disastrously.

Bottom Line: the tax cuts didn’t come remotely close to “paying for themselves by turbocharging the economy” as President Trump repeatedly promised. They did substantially lower effective corporate tax rates and generate a flood of stock buybacks and dividends for shareholders.

Jane Gravelle and Donald Marples, who studied the tax cuts, are a lot like those who looked so hard to find Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. They searched but found almost nothing.

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Aug
06
How to Beat Donald Trump (and Save Your Sanity)

The political left and right in America today have sharp differences of opinions, but we share a couple of things. First, we love the country and want to improve upon it. Secondly, we are operating out of fear and anxiousness that the opposite will happen unless we say something.

We argue on social media about current policy debates, such as whether to launch a national effort to deport all unauthorized immigrants and whether to place new restrictions on gun ownership and abortion. I’m trying to remove myself from those often unpleasant back-and-forth conversations where we are pretty much talking AT each other instead of TO each other.

I think I can be most productive producing content the rest of you can use to win hearts and minds instead of arguing with someone on Facebook who doesn’t care what I think.

Another thing we seem to agree on is that social media amplifies these voices as people on competing sides of the political spectrum seek to win the hearts and minds of the moderates in the center, those folks who have not yet made up their minds, do not follow the news closely and simply want to make a living with a minimal amount of fuss.

The debate of the moment within the Democratic Party concerns which strategy is best for denying Donald Trump a second term. Should the Dems choose a “safe,” moderate candidate to win back voters who rejected Hillary Clinton in 2016? Or did they lose that last election because Clinton was too much of an establishment candidate who lacked the charisma to close the deal?

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Jul
31
Things I Want To Tell My Daughter On Her 18th Birthday

It has finally happened. That little baby who totally changed my life 18 years ago today is an official adult.

It’s cliché to say the time went so fast. In some ways, the changes came on too fast, but I felt every last one of those diapers I changed.

I was 33 years old when I became a father. My child lived in the pre-9/11 world for 42 days. She arrived before we had iPods, iPhones, and iPads.

She’s now old enough to buy a lottery ticket, enlist in the Army, get a tattoo or piercing, serve jury duty, drink alcohol in most European countries and Canada, go to jail, and vote for president.

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Jul
27
Invasion of the Political Pod People?

Did you ever see the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” made in 1956?

In that classic science fiction horror film, an extraterrestrial invasion begins when Alien plant spores fall from space and grow into large seed pods, each one capable of reproducing a duplicate replacement copy of each human. As each pod reaches full development, it assimilates the physical characteristics, memories, and personalities of each sleeping person placed near it; these duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion.

via GIPHY

After seeing a transport truck bound for San Francisco and Los Angeles filled with the pods, the small town doctor frantically screams at the passing motorists, “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!”

The subtext of the movie was, of course, a reaction to the spread of communism. The actor playing the lead in the movie was named Kevin McCarthy.

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Jul
22
Economic Anxieties Based on Changes in Market Fundamentals

My gut tells me that hard times are ahead. I called my financial advisor this morning and asked him to scale back the risk level on my investments. I may be wrong (I honestly hope I am), but I have a bad feeling about the near future of the US economy. You don’t have to be an economist to see danger coming.

Let me explain…

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May
04
A Most Significant Week

Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth Be With You…

I’m relaxing at home in Fort Payne after a week that included having surgery and closing a chapter in my own story.

I guess you could say I am a bit like Luke Skywalker collapsed in the snow of Hoth. I’ve removed myself from a dire situation after listening to my intuition, now I’m physically strained as my body mends from a stressful event. That voice is guiding me about what to do next, same as Obi Wan appeared to Luke as an apparition in the blizzard with instructions to incite the challenges that will propel our heroes on their next adventure and lead to sacrifice and growth.

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Apr
02
Time Travel and Other Tricks I Can Do

“I’m a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been…”
– Led Zeppelin, “Kashmir”

Well, sort of a “time traveler”. My job is a straight 45-minute drive from my house in Alabama on a good day with no traffic issues and driving the speed limit. I leave at 6:30 am and usually arrive just before 8:30.

No, I’m not that slow poke you curse as you pass me on the Interstate. Like a lot of people living in North Alabama, I have to drive a bit to get to work, which means passing through the top Northwest corner of Georgia and into the city of Chattanooga, which is located in South Central Tennessee.

It sounds more impressive when I tell people my commute takes me through 3 states.

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Dec
31
2019 Goals and Predictions

It’s time to put 2018 to bed and look ahead to the goals we can set in the new year. The chronological line is completely arbitrary, of course, but it’s fascinating to look at blocks of time to reflect on who we were and what mattered to us. Yesterday, I watched a marathon on CNN about “the 2000s” and the events of that decade. We are now in the final year of the following decade. How will historians look back on the events of the final year before our world entered “the twenties.” That sounds weird.

Transitioning to a new year is a healthy “reset button” for the mind, a chance to remind ourselves that time is slipping by, and we have a limited number of days remaining to get stuff done before they lower us into the ground. It’s also fun to guess what lies in store for us and review in 12 months to see how wrong we were.
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