Why results matter

People hate Trump because he’s not an idealist, he’s a realist. The thing that matters most to the Donald is results. He’s also not a statesman, a healer, a bring-us-together guy, or much of a nice guy. He’s a sonavabitch. He probably secretly wants to be liked but he seems to be oblivious to constant, withering criticism levelled at him not just from true conservatives, all liberals, most mainstream media and a lot of the rest of the world. From the moment he announced he was running for President he was the target of attacks from just about every corner of the establishment. The attacks continued unabated up to and through the election process. The week before November 8th, 2016, the New York Times gave him about a 10% chance of winning. He was a clown. A pretender.  A homophobe. A racist. A xenophobe. It would be a disaster. A catastrophe. This was true by rule. It was an a’ priori truth. Nothing else mattered. He was wrong. He was opposed. He couldn’t win. In fact, even though he won, it’s still likely the Times would have not changed their prediction. In their opinion, he couldn’t win because he shouldn’t win. Hell, I believed it. I’ve shared before and I’ll share again, I voted for Hillary Clinton for lots of reasons. Part of it was reading columns written by people I trusted who considered him dangerous and well, he was. Then, I was amused beyond-what’s-proper when the clown won. Why? Part of the reason is it’s always fun to watch a pin jabbed into the big, over-inflated, self-righteous balloon called bi-coastal liberalism. The idea that a candidate can label “fly overs” as “deplorable” for their beliefs in God and guns is part of that bi-coastal prejudice. A prejudice for which they are proud. Seeing mainstream media look sick was kinda fun. They also can’t be wrong, (by rule of course) so watching them rationalise the whole thing was a scream. Because the left believes in “whatever means necessary.” I get it. They’re righteous. The far right is no less crazy, believe me. But something came out the day of the election. The New York Times printing that Trump had no better than a 10% chance of winning on the eve of the election he won, showed they were oblivious to results and reality. They knew, or should have known, it was a lot closer than 90/10. It just didn’t matter. They would oppose him on principle. The 4th estate was driven to distraction by a reality distortion field. It may not be fake news but it is distorted news. It is distorted by that reality distortion field which says "it doesn't matter what results may come, we believe in our principles and that's more important than any reality." Don't be surprised if fly over deplorables take notice but then the Times isn't aimed there, is it?

The main reason I get nervous over a’ priori (true by definition) “truths” is large bureaucracies are run by process. Government is a large bureaucracy. Process is it’s most important product. Results aren’t the issue. If the rule says lunatics will be released into society to reek havoc, it will be done. Right wing politicians believe in less government. Laissez faire capitalism rules. Standard Oil drives everybody else out of business. That’s not important. Less government is better. If African Americans are denied the vote in the south, or access to schools, well that’s okay because less government says, stand back and let it be. If welfare (ADC) over decades leads to generations of illegitimate children and absentee fathers and rampant crime, so be it. It’s the right thing to do. If the war in Vietnam costs millions of lives and is virtually unwinnable, so what? It’s what we do. Let’s keep it up. Process based decisions made by rule alone aren’t dangerous to the deciders. But they are still right by rule and wrong by result. Those who die or denied their rights by the result do kinda' notice however.

So?

Trump’s not interested in right or left rules? He wants to the know the bottom line? Yeah, I get that feeling. Pisses off the establishment? Yeah. Refuses to apologise for seeking economic independence? I got a kick out of Clinton when he was President because he knew what poverty was all about. A knowledge the Kennedys could never really assimilate because they were theoretical liberals. Bill knew what beanie-weenie tasted like. The results of policies of welfare, like ADC, just didn’t matter to theoretical liberals. It would be done forever because it was a’ priori truth. Bill knew what the RESULTS of long term welfare relief were. Bill was also a results oriented politician when it came to the economy and he made necessary changes not based on theory but on results. Obama was a a social idealist. Militarily he was results oriented. He served two terms.

The conservative establishment is rules based. The liberal establishment is rules based. The majority of the citizens of the United States are more interested in results than rules. You want to know who people are going to vote for in the next election? Some will lock step to the polls and vote for liberals or conservatives, no thought needed. By any means necessary. But most will wait and see and vote what they think is going to work for them. Not everything Trump will author will be the advantage of liberals or conservatives but if he authors enough policies that are to the advantage of most of the voters in the United States don’t be surprised if principles are less important than results. That shouldn’t surprise the New York Times but believe me it scares them to death.

Welome to Paris

Flew in on Aer Lingus through Dublin. Big hit was being 20 yards from a couple of cows who were checking me out sitting on the runway, looking out my plane window at them, awaiting take-off to Paris. They were standing in mud behind a old wooden fence. I got us window seats on the right hand side so we could see the Eiffel Tower as we approached the city and we did.

Wanted to ride their version of the Airport Downtown Express (hello Johnny Wilson, Norman Naquin and Leonard “Shadow” Parfait) to town. The people at the airport thought we were crazy (we are) because it takes forever but we had time to kill before we could check in. The RER B train gets to town in half the time but is no fun.

Actually found the 350 bus after some conversation. Was told it wouldn’t stop at terminal one (international terminal) by the info desk. (Of course after we went to terminal 3 it went back by terminal 1 and stopped) Bought a Carte De Dix (ten ticket T+ paper electronic tickets which is good for two zones - you need three tickets to get to central Paris on the bus) with Euros we purchased/dollar exchanged from our bank back home. The gal at the tourist desk spoke very good English and had a good sense of humor. The ongoing joke is I say something like (written in my Franglish) Es ca vous  comprene l’anglais and the funny answer is no and then watch your reaction as you realize you’re screwed. We both laughed though, it’s a good one. Took the tickets and boarded the shuttle train (CDGVAL)to go to terminal 3 and Roissypole. Asking a few people who work the concessions we figured out how to walk outside and we found the 350 taking a stand at the bus terminal. The driver was pre-occupied and a passenger helped us run the six tickets through the firebox reader. We walked to the back stored our bags under the seats and waited. During the ride to town we got to see the melting pot that greater Paris is. Lots of people from all over the world got on and off. I had to sit with my feet on my bag to make room for all the standees. The disability accessible low floor bus means most of the seats face the aisle or backwards. Better getting on and off but not so good to see the sights. The open wheelchair access areas were taken up with kids in strollers most of the way. Some went up front and paid, some didn’t. The operator was more concerned with traffic, which was considerable. The firebox is behind the driver behind a panel. I’m not sure he can even see it.

We walked along Canal St. Martin (beautiful canal, beautiful day) from Gare d’est (which is a fairly short distance from Gare d’Nord - nobody seems to know why the north and east terminals are so close together) to our hotel (about 3/4 mile) and voila’ our room was ready for us - scare bleu!

I went for a walk over to Republique Square and Ruth laid down to recover from the marathon plane ride and massive jet lag.

Then the fun began.

Several times the door opened (while I was there and while I was walking) with people checking into their room, which we already occupied. This went on for hours Ruth was lagged so bad she was only half awake. I finally went down to the desk and the night clerk said we weren’t in 305, even though I had the electronic keys and a folder with 305 on it. Then he said somebody must have made a mistake. It was he that was making the mistakes, nes pa? Eventually he blamed the computer and finally left us alone to sleep. He couldn’t understand why we were sleeping so much. There was quite a lot he didn’t understand.

Anyway, next day I asked the weekend clerk for some help in booking a double decker bus tour. I asked for a two day ride voucher. He (un-be-knownest to both of us, apparently) sold me a one day with a bateau ride, which the driver at BigBus pointed out to me in writing (French of course) and I just argued for a few minutes and went with the flow. We rode the red route, got off to board the blue route and it started to rain. Then the Blue bus (which is Red, of course) refused to show up. Then the police showed up, Somebody claimed to have planted a bomb down the street and everything was halted. In Republique, the day before we watched a dozen police vehicles with swat show up to respond to a bomb threat. The people at BigBus walked us down three blocks in the driving rain and when we got down there he walked us back three blocks to wait for Godot. Ruth decided to shop. Later the bus showed  up and Ruth showed up and we rode around in the rain.

We had ridden the #9 to the #7 Metro from Oberkampf to l’Opera and was going to reverse the process to go back. We took a close by elevator down to the Metro, found the entrance to the 7. We had purchased another carte de dix the day before and had ridden down to the Seine and walked around and went from Gare de Austerlitz to Champ du Mars. Funny thing is, the best way to go was the RER C. We went to the boarding area for the C and a bunch of people in red suits explained to us the there was no RER C. Of course there are signs everywhere. It’s on the map. It has a station but we were told no, there is no RER C. I later learned that the people who operate the RER C were having a picnic in a park. They were on strike that day. Nobody seemed to want to acknowledge it. We went around on the Metro and took a few Metro lines and walked a quarter mile as an alternative.

Anyway this day, going back from l’Opera, I got out two tickets we fed them into the turnstile, the turnstile flipped and we walked forward an opening and closing barrier which immediately closed. The turnstile released and let us through but we were trapped between the turnstile and the barrier. A local gal saw our predicament and used her pass to free us. We walked up two flights of stairs and was met with a cordon or blue jump suited transit police? (They had name tags and little hand held machines but didn’t identify themselves) doing a spot check and and asking for tickets. A guy scanned Ruth’s and said, okay, go ahead, then another gal got my ticket and said it was expired. I showed her the ten tickets we had recently purchased. She looked at the writing and said they were for next week but the one I used was from last week. At that point it just got weird like something out of Clockwork Orange. They told us the machine wrote letters on the tickets (it doesn’t),

 [note: actually it does...I was wrong]

 the tickets were for timed periods (they aren’t). Anyway, long story short they mugged (officially) us for 75 Euros apiece for not having a valid tickets on the platform. Ruth was livid but what are you going to do? We were processed by their bureaucracy and found wanting. It is true  saw numerous people jumping the turnstiles and that is what they were trying to catch. It is also true they didn’t seem to fully understand much about the tickets or the situation, nor did they care. Approach the people coming up the stairs, electronically swipe their ticket and see if it said valid or not. What might have happened or what intent or any human concerns were irrelevant. But hey, this wasn’t Disney Paris, where is you’re a paying customer and show your tickets they try to figure out what happened this was a system run by people who are guaranteed employment for life and who are not really concerned about “customers” only about following orders and collecting fines. Like I said, we were mugged by the system.

Also.

There is a high fence all the way around the Eiffel Tower and security braces everyone who has pre-purchased a ticket and goes through turnstiles and glass walls. You no longer can walk anywhere close to it. The city is almost under siege. The transit workers are staging a protest most days with open fires and smoke, etc. The labor government has promised them everything they want which includes a laundry list of guaranteed everything. Now they recognize they don’t have the funds to fulfill the promises as employees grow older and expect to be paid for life with benefits. I will say the Metro trains pretty much ran like they were supposed to. The 350 bus had electronic signage to show where you were enroute.

Transit buses have side windows that pop out in case of fire or if they lay over. They are a pain in the rump. The M.A.N. bus (German) we rode in had little red sharp pointed hammers mounted between all the windows. Each window has a decal showing a hand breaking the window with the little red hammer. So you save on needing pop out windows but you arm the populace with little red hammers with sharp little steel points. Amazing.

Anyway. Paris is big. Old. Ornate. Gilded. Napoleon still stands as a statue with a wreath of laurel on his head pretending to be a Roman Emperor. Hubris abounds. Many people are nice and accommodating and most wear tight black clothes, frown and act like insufferable a**holes while they power walk over you. Big city people? Maybe. At some point you do what you can to enjoy yourself and try to deal with the incompetence, which I guess is epidemic, not just in France. I came to see and take photographs. I have accomplished that and will be posting photos soon. That has been fun for me. I drag Ruth along but she has enjoyed seeing the city from the top of the double decker

Anyway Bon Jour from Paris. We shall overcome it. The best revenge is forgiveness and generosity. Welcome to Paris.

Post Script
Tried to ride back to Republique from Hotel de Ville on the 11 and none of the turnstiles worked. Tried to find a bus stop to no avail and went back down and went through the turnstiles that weren't functioning with hundreds of others. Normally if the thing quits working it lets people in. I tried to contact them on the intercom and no one answered. Modern problems. We did ride the bus this morning and it was a great ride on an IVECO.

Your car has to learn how to idle

I don’t miss the old days when you pushed on the accelerator (my grandfather called it the exhilarator, you get a rush from jumping on the gas, I guess) and there was a mechanical connection between how hard you pushed the pedal down with your foot and how far the butterfly valve opened and the slide moved down inside your carburetor to let in more air and fuel to match the fuel pump’s faster pumps to provide more gas to be sucked in using the Venturi effect from the float bowl. Then the points advanced (assuming they were gapped right and locked down a certain number of degrees from top dead center, read with a timing light) and the car ran faster. You set the idle speed through a screw setting and adjusted the air flow through another screw. In 1968 they put a plastic shunt over the idle mixture screw but you could overcome that. You pulled a lever under the dash to close the top of the carburetor when it was cold to “choke” (literally) it until it started. Of course in Model T days you advanced the spark as you advanced the throttle on the steering column, unless, like Mr. Magoo, you had a faulty magneto. You stood there with a screwdriver and adjusted the idle.

Basic, it was... Long term reliable... it wasn’t.

Everything wore. The distributor cap points wore down. The points themselves wore down over time and had to be re-adjusted. Carburetors have a mean hours to failure, like a hard drive. I may miss the simplicity but I don’t miss the result. Older cars aren’t near as reliable as today’s cars. The fact is you don’t need to be a shade tree mechanic to keep a car running in 2018. It just runs. Until it doesn’t.

A thing is a thing until it isn’t any more. When asked, a rich man said, “hey, I had all the money I’d ever need right up to the point I was bankrupt.” 

Recently after a long cold snap the two older cars we let live in our driveway and garage failed to start. The ’99 Jeep, which has been bone reliable since we bought it new, didn’t want to start. Yeah, its battery died but I charged the battery as soon as it got low. I’d done a tune-up recently and I baby it. It only has about 75K miles on it and looks only a couple years old. It’s the one that lives in the garage. I do have a minor problem because I have an Allstate spy device plugged into the diagnostic port so they can watch us drive. I get a rebate check after I pay my premium if we don’t drive like a maniac. The problem is it sucks juice out of the battery. Not a problem in the summer but as it gets colder, the battery don’t like it much and it plays dead. So, charge the battery back up and let modern technology take over again and bang, she starts right up, eh? Well, here’s where logic begins to fail us. The modern car doesn’t need you to do anything to start. You turn the key. No choke. No pumping the gas and flooding it. No flooring it after you pump the gas and flood it. None of that stuff. In fact, there is no mechanical connection between the “exhilarator” pedal and the throttle body carburetor. When you press on the gas you are changing the voltage resistance in a potentiometer located inline leading to an ECM. There is no direct connection. It is all indirect. I knew that? I guess I just never dealt with it much. The reason is cars are so much more reliable now you aren’t out in the driveway with a screwdriver trying to up the idle in the winter time. A computer takes care of that. Until it doesn’t.

Here’s another weird thing. Since you don’t need to do anything to start your modern car, you don’t need to press on the gas pedal to start it, right? In fact you shouldn’t. So when the Jeep and later the Yukon wouldn’t start and I recharged the batteries, they just wouldn’t start. So while I’m cogitating on what’s wrong, Ruth gets in it and gives it more throttle and it starts, runs badly, chokes but then starts to actually run. Won’t idle, but hey, it started. She don’t know not to press on the gas pedal to start it, right? She’s just used to doing it from 1970. I know not to press on the pedal to start it and I’m right. Most of the time. This is after I remove and clean the IAC valve and she still won’t start or idle. This is after I learned that you need a constant 14 volts routed through the battery from the alternator so the ECM can feed enough power to the electric fuel pump in the gas tank to supply an adequate fuel flow to the injector rail. But we had that 14V, measured, and more, after the battery was fully charged and the car was being cranked. If your battery has a bad cell, you’re in trouble but we didn’t.

So?

The car forgot how to idle. Its brain had to relearn it. And no I didn’t change the pentil length when I cleaned the IAC valve. I left it exactly as it had been. Then the same exact thing happened with the Yukon. Its battery got low, got recharged and then wouldn’t start or idle until we manually advanced the throttle (pushing down on the accelerator pedal) then left it run at 2K rpm for a while until the computer relearned how to idle the car at under 1K rpm. Other stuff was happening. Probably also fuel separation between the alcohol and gasoline from sitting for too long? But hey. Your car has to learn how to idle all over again and you have to teach it by applying an adequate amount of throttle for a few minutes. 

The moral: Let it sit idle and your car will forget how to idle.

Ken Burn's Documentary on the Vietnam War Pleases Almost No One and That's a Good Thing

Headlines Read:

"Ken Burn's Documentary on the Vietnam War Glosses Over Devastating Civilian Toll"

"Ken Burns Never Knew How Wrong He Was About the Vietnam War"

"Veterans Frustrated with Ken Burn's documentary on the Vietnam War"

"Ken Burns and Lynn Novik Don't Understand anti-Vietnam War"

Just beginning to watch Ken Burn’s PBS documentary on the Vietnam War. Pretty much covered two episodes, so far. Stopped after an hour into the second episode. The reason we stopped after an hour is the evening was late but also because the series is exhausting to watch. Interesting. Enlightening. Extremely well done. But yeah, exhausting, emotionally. There’s no comic relief. Of course that’s on purpose. War is hell. Why should watching it be fun? It’s also true that I tend not to watch recordings of games that my team lost because of the sadness effect. Mr. Burns has been quoted as saying that we didn’t lose the war, to wit: "It wasn’t a defeat; nobody took over the United States. It was not surrender. We failed."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/ken-burns-the-vietnam-war-lynn-novick-documentary/

Still, we did lose. We lost a lot. A lot of lives. Nearly 60,000 US military lives lost. Other’s lives shattered. Other countries, like South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand’s armies lost lives. Of course the biggest loser in terms of deaths was Vietnam. The north lost over a million killed in action. Millions more civilians, a quarter of a million South Vietnamese regulars killed, over 3,000,000 in total. Much of the country was laid to waste by the war. So it should be difficult for me to talk about what we lost when the country of Vietnam lost so many and so much. But there it is. All politics is local.
 
The documentary quotes survivors, North Vietnamese regulars: "nobody wins in war." People who weren’t directly involved in the fighting get to declare winners and losers. The scorekeepers have little or no skin in the fight. Those fighting the war don’t have that luxury. They live or die or are maimed in chaos with little or no chance to look for a scoreboard. The people of Vietnam suffered beyond what most people in the United States can even imagine. The Communist collective won, only the people lost. So the deaths of millions achieved a goal. Millions more would subsequently die to purge any thought of dissent. The Colonial French, gone for good. The US taught a lesson. The US may or may not have slowed a communist takeover of the far east. You’d have to have us pull out of Vietnam when Kennedy was President to know for sure. But it’s certain there’s little positive that came out of our experience in Vietnam. The 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead are silent. Burns seems to be saying, maybe we (collectively) should have learned something here. Let’s document it and make sure it is not easily forgotten. Experience is the best teacher only when it's remembered.

Anyway, besides not being a good way to relax, the show is pretty balanced and therefore enlightening. Politics being what it is, I get sick of a priori attitudes. You already know before you see or read what somebody has to say, what they will say. it’s true by rule, not observation (a posteriori ). Subjectivity outweighs objectivity. There’s also a lot of screaming going on. ALL CAPS. Like you must be deaf, so they have to SAY IT LOUDER. What’s the point? Well, I guess for people who can only bobble their head (Limbaugh’s ditto heads?) they want to be fed the same dog food they’re used to. Comfort food and comfort zones are nice. The Washington Post and New York Times on the one side and Breitbart and Limbaugh on the other. The good news is you don’t have to listen or read either of these because you already know what they’re going to say. They have an opinion and they’re RIGHT (uh, correct for the lefties) and they just want you to know it. The Washington Post stays up at night figuring out ways to attack the President of the United States. It’s just what they do. They hated Nixon. They hated Reagan. They hate Trump. Go figure. The alt-rights hated Obama. They hated Clinton and they hated Carter. Go figure. So anything that happens will be spun accordingly. I make it a point to try to read both, when I can, then try to put them into a mental blender and spin. Once homogenized there's often a grain of truth. Consensus is golden because it's so darned rare.

After watching and reading about Mr. Burns decade-long-to-produce opus, I feel he’s accomplished something he can be proud of. He didn't set out to make a particular point. It’s all about letting the experiences of those who witnessed the events speak for themselves. Mr. Burns is noted for being a bit of a liberal (his background) but he is an historian and he is quite smart. He wanted to achieve a sense of balance. Polemics are seldom educational because they are so divisive. I read a number of reviews before approaching the documentary. Ironically, many from the right and many from the left don’t like it. The left thinks he’s telling the story wrong and vice versa. That’s a really good sign. It made me eager to see it, not only from a current perspective but also a historical one.
 
I was 19 in 1967 and very much draft bait. Enrolled in college for a couple years by then, I had a deferral. After four years of college, that deferral was pretty much up. My draft lottery number in 1970, the year I was exposed, was 123, which made me prime around May. I had my physical in April and had to make a quick decision. Getting drafted meant two years of active obligation and living in Greater New Orleans meant Fort Polk (Fort Puke as my Army Vet friends call it) and Tigertown, as it was called then, likely meant a 13 month unaccompanied tour of Southeast Asia. Believe me, politics aside, by 1970 anybody my age who wanted to be an 11 Bravo walking rice paddies carrying a M16 in Vietnam had room temperature IQ. I knew and we all knew friends, relatives, acquaintances and others who let you know that whatever was going on overseas at that time was a cluster-f*ck. Maybe before 1970 you could have made another case. But not by then. A guy I had PE with in high school died guarding the embassy in Saigon during Tet. Safe MP duty. Never saw it coming. I knew friend’s relatives who had gone missing. Was at a going away party with them and within a few months they were gone forever. I also knew and talked with numerous people who understood our leadership didn’t want to lose a war but had no clue on how to do anything other than expand it. Look at how many enemy were dying. That seemed to be the plan. Keeping score of the dead was the only strategy I could perceive. That worked both ways. Dying for your country can be a meaningful thing. Dying for your country for no achievable purpose other than to not look bad, is a travesty. I didn’t protest because the people I saw protesting were even more clueless than the people who got drafted or joined up. They had no particular plan, they just were against war. To just cut and run was a ridiculous idea. I knew it would get straightened out, eventually. The people in charge were smarter than the protestors. It didn’t take a genius to see that. By the time Nixon won the election he saw the handwriting on the wall and was reducing troop strength and trying to get the South to defend itself and get us home, gradually. In the meantime, I had to survive. So I took a couple tests and joined the Air Force. Investing four years over two, with the promise of further education. I was lucky. My Dad dropped out of high school to sell cigarettes on the street corner during the depression. He later regretting not finishing high school. So he saw to it that I got an education, including a chance to attend college. I owe him that. That education allowed me to test well enough to qualify for the Air Force. It also got me four years of deferment to attend college and grow up a bit before carrying a gun in a rice paddy. Like I said, fortunate, very fortunate. The Air Force was good to me and for me. We fought both the cold and the hot wars at SAC HQ where I worked underground for nearly four years. I met Ruth and got married. Uncle Sam made a man out of me. My parents allowed that to happen.

Today I feel honored and privileged to be able to watch Ken Burn’s documentary on Vietnam. I think it’s well made and is fairly balanced. It won’t please either the right or the left and that’s a good thing. For those who served their country for what they believed in, whether that’s American, Vietnamese, Australian, New Zealander, South Korean, Thailander, or who those who died as an innocent civilian caught in the cross fire, or even those who honestly protested the war as an act of conscience, let’s hope it resonates as a truthful document.

During a meeting a few years ago between Ken Burns and the President:
 
"That (This) will be your most controversial work," Obama told him.

"Yes, but only among those who don't watch it," Burns replied.

I'd better go watch.

Survivor, "Game Changers"

Survivor, "Game Changers" ended last Wednesday evening. We were on the road but I recorded the episode and we watched Saturday night after returning from Florida. Sarah Lacina won. She was the most effective liar, back-stabber and "strategic player." She'd been on the show before and conducted herself with honor while playing. She lost.

Background here:

http://glidersruminations.blogspot.co.id/2014/05/the-lessons-of-survivor-cagayan-and-why.html

Going home after that show, Sarah, having lost to the morality-free fellow police officer, Tony, decided to throw her integrity out the window for 39 days. She said she used her professional contact with thieves, prostitutes and addicts to better understand how to "go under cover" and become somebody she despised (i.e.: Tony, from Survivor, Cagayan) to "win." Once she swore never to talk to Tony again. She'd bonded with him and then got back-stabbed. Morally unacceptable, right? Then apparently she had an epiphany. But not from Saul to Paul. Just the opposite, from Paul to Saul. Bad is the new Good. But only for money on TV, right? Only a game. Say it again, ONLY A GAME. Worth a million dollars, cash, of course. Fame and Fortune. Certainly worth selling your integrity for, right? At least that's what she learned from playing Survivor. Let's hope it's only something people learn from playing Survivor, not watching it.

The good thing for Sarah was she still had something to sell. One thing this season of former players knew was who was genuine and who was creepy dishonest. They knew not to trust Tony. He established that he would lie on his mother's grave for money. That's good, of course, and should be rewarded, as Survivor has taught us, but only when it's done al fresco. We wants our lies told fresh from the garden. So he was voted out early, this season. Boring. His soul selling act was rotten stale. His ability to lie with a straight face, laudable but a re-run. It won him the respect of his fellow players, once. Now it's funny. Juries on Survivor, apparently love budding soul sellers. Somebody who comes on board with integrity but then throws down, sells out and convinces others they can be trusted and then, pow, screw you buddy. The Sole Survivor, is not a Soul Survivor, it seems. It's the opposite. Somebody with established integrity, like a police officer who is willing to be morally compromised for money and fame. This is a good thing. A Survivor jury previously rewarded his two-faced, lying persona with a million dollars. It seems Tony already sold his soul and well, you can't do it twice. At least not on Survivor. But they also knew Sara was genuine. Until she wasn't. Now they know she isn't. For that they rewarded her 50 pieces of Survivor-Silver (million bananas). Now, she's a winner! Huzzah...

I get it. The folks who compete on Survivor can't all be ex-professional athletes like Brad Culpepper. He won more actual Survivor competitions and kept his integrity intact. Easy (relatively) for him, they reason. They were trying to cut his throat every vote but he kept winning challenges. He was obviously a better survivor, but he wasn't a Survivor survivor. You can't keep your soul intact. No way. The only way to counteract such physical prowess is with guile and politics (being a sneaky liar). And oh yeah, Brad's a bully. Hard to know who to pull for. The liar or the bully? I guess selling your integrity wins out. It seems more about whose willing to give up the most to win. Brad ground it out physically but who cares? The bulk of the jury clearly identified with the sneak over the bully. After watching, I took a shower. And like a damaged moth, I can't wait for the flame, that is Survivor, to be re-lit in a few months.

Why whoever is elected President should be your President / Followed by a poem by Robert Frost

This is a diverse country. Our outlooks and philosophies are mostly defined by our family roots, our environments and our personal experiences. Different shouldn't be equated with wrong, at least not by definition. It’s only a varying definition caused by dissimilar experiences.

Where, how and to whom you were born. How you were treated. What you managed to learn.

This equals diversity. That entails differences. Some of those differences can be dramatic. We are comfortable with what we are familiar. We fear what we don’t know or understand. We envy the comfortable when we’re not comfortable ourselves. When comfortable we fear someone taking it from us. Nobody likes to be afraid. Fear often germinates into distrust and dislike. Who likes being different when you’re singled out? Fear then leads to strong dislike or hatred. It can get emotional. You can learn how to hate from your own people. You can be taught to hate by those who seem to hate you. Ignorance of others often breeds hatred born of distrust.

Knowledge, on the other hand can illuminate. Experience and education teaches you to equivocate your position. Equivocation precedes understanding. Understanding precedes empathy. If you can’t walk a mile in the other man/woman’s moccasins, you must try to imagine it. Try to understand it. Why? Why not just close your mind and believe your opinion is the only opinion and that you are intrinsically right and those that disagree are plain wrong? That those of another kind or community must hate us and so we must hate them?

The answer is quite simple. Knowledge is power. Empathy is liberating. To begin to understand, know and ultimately trust people who are different from you, makes you bigger, stronger, smarter and more powerful. To hate others on sight and to close your mind makes you smaller, weaker, dumber and forever limited.

So why can’t we just learn to get along? One reason is it doesn’t profit all policy makers, news generators, opinion wonks, career politicians (not all but some) and media mavens if we all get along. Playing one side against the other can be profitable. Conflict is exciting. Peace is boring. Besides, everyone loves a circus.

We see and read every day about how bad the world is. We are taught fear by our exposure to “news.” Candidates for both sides are shown at their worst, not their best.

The recent election cycle revealed that our country is split down the middle by rural and urban, highly educated and hard working, those that want to accelerate change and those who want to honor tradition.

It’s my contention that the country course corrects every eight years or so. We steer left, then we steer right. It keeps the vehicle in the middle of the road, which seems to not please anybody but tends to give everybody a few years to feel comfortable.

Can we go with that flow? Steer left, then right and wobble in and out of the middle? Nobody keeps power forever? We turn the reigns over to one side for a while and the other takes them back every so often? I say, “why not?”

Newspapers must sell to survive. When you see the election results you might think that the New York Times and the Washington Post swayed the electorate to vote very heavily for Hillary. But the paper survives by feeding back to the locals what they already believe. Otherwise nobody would buy it. Fox news caters to conservatives. That’s why they turn it on. The networks appeal to heavily populated regions. That density appeals to advertisers.

Politicians must draw distinctions, not heal fractions. The first job of a career politician is to be elected. The second, and thereafter, cyclical job is to be re-elected. If not, they are not career politicians, by definition. I would tell you that the Clinton’s machine’s first priority upon election would be to reward their supporters, consolidate their power base, begin the process of collecting donations from those who weren’t sure she would win and preparing for 2020. We'll soon see if Trump wants to be a career politician or really do something to renew our country's industrial base. That's one good reason to give him some latitude. Has he said stupid things? Yes. Did I vote for him? No. Will I be skeptical? Yes. Do I hope he moderates and is successful at creating a better US economy. You bet. Is that universal? Not close.

My take on the “I’m right and you’re wrong and I’m not going to listen to you, ever.” school of thought is now germinating with “we know who you are and what you’re going to do.” The WORST thing (for the opposition) that can happen is for Trump to moderate his rhetoric, work toward actually doing something positive for the country and being a mildly successful national administrator.

This isn’t unique with this election. The first time Barry O. got elected, it was the same “He’s not my President.” He’s not even a natural born citizen. Yeah, Trump said that too. So why give him the benefit of the doubt when he didn’t give it to the last administration? The short answer is, it helps everybody.

I don’t expect equivocation from the Hollywood Elite, the New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. etc., to hope that our country will succeed no matter who is in charge. There is a vested interest in seeing those you disagree with fail.

I voted for Hillary Clinton and would again. I am also going to work my tail off to make this country as successful as it can be. I will remain positive about what we can accomplish together the next four years. I don’t hope Trump goes radical and harms people even though that would profit Democrats. He is in a unique position to question and work toward making our country more economically successful. I read progressives say that the Democratic party will now reconstitute to begin to listen to workers who lost jobs and careers because of policies that have been promulgated by the Clinton administration which benefits the world economy but left our people forever under-employed. So be it. Good. There’s another election in four years. Get off the streets whining and begin to work toward better understanding why Trump got elected.

So what’s my point? Easy. Empathize with and learn not to fear the other side. Work toward making this country work. Stop hating those that disagree with you and with whom you disagree. Move the right to the left and the left to the right. Moderate your beliefs a bit. Breathe. Listen. Meditate. Calm your fears. The profit from that will accrue to the holder and to our country.

Here’s a poem by Robert Frost, from whom I learned the power of equivocation:

On the Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind

Something I saw or thought I saw
In the desert at midnight in Utah,
Looking out of my lower berth
At moonlit sky and moonlit earth.
The sky had here and there a star;
The earth had a single light afar,
A flickering, human pathetic light,
That was maintained against the night,
It seemed to me, by the people there,
With a Godforsaken brute despair.
It would flutter and fall in half an hour
Like the last petal off a flower.
But my heart was beginning to cloud my mind.
I knew a tale of a better kind.
That far light flickers because of trees.
The people can burn it as long as they please;
And when their interests in it end,
They can leave it to someone else to tend.
Come back that way a summer hence,
I should find it no more no less intense.
I pass, but scarcely pass no doubt,
When one will say, "Let's put it out."
The other without demur agrees.
They can keep it burning as long as they please;
They can put it out whenever they please.
One looks out last from the darkened room
At the shiny desert with spots of gloom
That might be people and are but cedar,
Have no purpose, have no leader,
Have never made the first move to assemble,
And so are nothing to make her tremble.
She can think of places that are not thus
Without indulging a "Not for us!"
Life is not so sinister-grave.
Matter of fact has made them brave.
He is husband, she is wife.
She fears him not, they fear not life.
They know where another light has been,
And more than one, to theirs akin,
But earlier out for bed tonight,
So lost on me in my surface flight.

This I saw when waking late,
Going by at a railroad rate,
Looking through wreaths of engine smoke
Far into the lives of other folk.

--Robert Frost

Hail Caesar & Full speed ahead

Hail Caesar and full speed ahead

I am a contrarian. Maybe by design. I entered school early and was smaller and more immature throughout school. I also got sick as a kid and missed a lot of school. Never being the football hero and marching with the band will make you cynical. Anyway I saw the news a couple nights ago and they showed Obama’s final correspondent’s dinner and a couple jokes he told and at the end he dropped the mike, put two fingers to his lips and said “Obama out.” Didn’t get it. Then I read he was kinda’ lampooning Kobe Bryant’s last game where he did the same thing but with Mamba out. Get it? Mamba out, Obama out? In that context it was cool. Without the context it was strange. I’m going to miss Barry. He’s a cool guy. Smart. Educated. Cool under fire. He’s done a representative job. I didn’t vote for him because I guess I’m older and white and identify with people like John McCain. Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate President Obama and I do. Are we better off after eight years? Some are. Government sponsors health care for a lot more Americans. That’s good for those Americans. Everybody else? We’ll see. I made an allusion that I didn’t vote for Obama because I’m white but that’s not really the case. I know Obama’s a hybrid. Raised by his mother and grandparents. Wrote the Harvard law review. The black guy in him makes him special. I kinda like that. But being white gives me privilege, right? I can’t empathize with minorities because I’m flawed by race. The white/black thing is weird though. I pulled for the Lakers throughout the 60s when the Celtics were dominant because I got tired of Red Auerbach’s white guys and cigar lighting. The black guys on the Lakers were the underdogs and I liked that. Black guys seem more relaxed, have better physical skills, play the blues better, and so on. All generalizations are false, of course but we all do it, you can’t help it. You generalize. I don’t think I dislike anybody based on race. If it’s true, I’m a clueless individual but I don’t think so because hey, I am a contrarian. Who is more the underdog than people who are working to overcome being a racial minority? I also have a bit of a problem with black people hating white people because of race, isn’t "racist." It’s justified. But I give Obama credit. He’s pretty logical. Besides, he’s a hybrid.

So where’s this going? Obama’s moving on to the speaking circuit, writing his memoirs and biography, building his Presidential library in Chicago and playing about the same amount of golf, eh? That leaves the office open for either Hillary or Donald. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Trump is a bit of a bigot, a narcissist (most politicians are), an over-privileged braggart, a misogynist, a truth stretcher (most politicians are), with no track record as a statesman. He is not and would not be my first choice for President. He is probably more than a little dangerous. But he is one of two who has qualified to be a major candidate for President and he has been woefully underestimated so far.

The other candidate:

Ms. Clinton. Hillary reminds me of a reptile. She probably sheds skin. Her tongue is lizard like and can say amazingly smooth, calculated and rehearsed things. She is mistake free. Just ask her. Like a chameleon she can change color when adaptation benefits her. She seems asexual, reproducing through parthenogenesis, but then a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Like a reptile she is cold. Stays married to a serial cheater but then he is now her eunuch, why not use him? A rather cold and calculated plan but it fits. Has a plan for everything and can change it to suit the latest poll. Is indebted to big banks, big pharma, unions, lawyers and anybody with a big check book. She knows how the game is played. She and Bill have been playing it for forty years. Power. Money. Revenge. Say anything, do anything to grasp the big goal. She dropped the feminist Hillary Rodham stuff to appeal to a broader audience but can change it back if it has a benefit. It’s not about principle, its about advantage. She set up her own personal server as Secretary of State for her convenience and control. Advantage Hillary. It was almost immediately compromised. No, no it wasn’t. Right? Just ask her. She doesn’t make mistakes. She is used to political power and privilege and her struggles to be locally relevant during her campaign are hilarious. What will she bring to office? A political agenda that will similar to Obama’s. How exciting. Eight more years of apologizing and making things more “correct.”

So how has the political status quo worked for the average American the past eight years? The country’s middle class is worse off. The rich and powerful are more rich and more powerful. We manufacture and export next to nothing any more. Steel? No. We import nearly everything. We are a service economy. An intellectual property country. Blue collar workers are out of work. Kids get degrees and work at Starbucks. We are nation on the decline. Most believe it is inevitable. Go with the flow. Free trade our way to oblivion and enjoy how productive our entertainment industry is. Can’t blame Democrats for this. This is bi-partisan. Besides, we deserve it. What we get for all our past transgressions.

Everybody agrees it’s a global economy now. We have to adapt. Lower our expectations. Export jobs, export manufacturing, This generation and the next will have to adapt to the new reality. They can have jobs, but they will struggle to pay their bills for decades. Debt will grow to be unsustainable but hey, that’s okay and I’m not talking about federal debt, I’m talking about individual debt the middle class is taking on. That’s what leadership agrees. Both the left and the right don’t want to get in the way of global progress. We take on debt. We protect the rest of the world. We export jobs, manufacturing, industry and leave behind french fry pushers.

Again, where I am going?

Perhaps with bad analogy but it comes from deep inside. Andrew Jackson, who they are taking off the 20, turned the white house over to common people for a while. Teddy Roosevelt, who posed with bears and sent gunboats around the world and Ronald Reagan, who was too dumb to know what he couldn’t accomplish. And yeah, that other serial cheater and other misogynist, JFK when he dealt with Khrushchev and threatened nuclear midnight over missiles to Cuba. These guys had vision and they were doers. Not planners. Not politicians. Egg breakers. Omelet makers. Once in a while we need a leader who can’t see the reasons why we can’t. Doesn’t understand all the nuances, isn’t interest in the “other side of the coin.” When Reagan stood at the Berlin wall and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” He should have known it was provocative and threatening and we don’t control what other countries do. We don’t have the power to dictate global policy. We are but one country with a sordid past of slavery, civil war, illegal expansion into the west, native American disgrace, unfair labor practices, unequal pay, monopolies, homeless people, drug addiction and the shame of Vietnam. Right Hillary? Let’s focus on our shame and do better politically. Meanwhile the average American needs to lower their expectations and realize what we’re doing is only right for Mexico, China, Central America, Japan and so on. Obama’s done a good job of making us look better to Europe. Less cowboy. More chess player. Excellent. Keep it up.

Except it isn’t selling well locally. People want to see their leaders pushing the edge of the envelope for them, not Mexico, not China, not Japan. They want to hear somebody say, “Let’s manufacture here.” Let’s grow our economy and lower our debt. Renegotiate debt percentages. Let’s stop apologizing and start being proud again. Simplistic? Maybe. Timely. We’ll soon see. I don’t like Trump. He’s an ass. And let’s be honest. Arkansas is a red state. How I vote will essentially be meaningless. There will be a handful of blue states that went for Obama that will need to flip if Trump, the asshole, can have four years to reverse some of the conservative/liberal/progressive political posturing and ideology which has gotten us where we are. Trump is an asshole but he is not a conservative or progressive ideologue, he is a bullheaded businessman who wants to do something about regressive taxation, unsustainable debt, insurance industry collusion, big pharma advantage to the detriment of the middle class, and loss of jobs, manufacturing and our essential industrial base. Our country is moving in the wrong direction and our “leaders” are frankly, clueless about it. They work hardest at one thing. Getting re-elected. It’s what they work on from the minute they’re elected to the next time the polls open. Raising money for ads and political war chests. The people who give them money want favoritism and patronage. Trump’s already rich. He already has a plane to ride around in. Living in the White House won’t be much of an upgrade. He doesn’t need to cow-tow to anybody. Both parties both fear and hate him. The press hate him. There will be more character assassination in the next six months than ever before. But like Jackson, Roosevelt and Reagan, the average Joe considers Trump something more than just a politician. Because well, he obviously isn’t a politician. He doesn’t act like a politician. He doesn’t speak like a politician. He says what he thinks. That’s so rare it’s scary. They think he is an iconoclast because he is. An egg breaker. The turd in the punch bowl. If nothing else, it’s at least not “more of the same.”

Will I vote for him? Hard to say. Like I said, won’t matter one way or another. Arkansas is red and will stay red no matter what I do. But let’s make it theoretical.  Hillary is the safe bet. Short term, of course. Because long term, enough of her type of pol who work for their party and their contributors and work hard at more and more legislation that benefits their constituency to the detriment to our overall economy and the decline of our country is assured. The Romans liked their bread and circuses. Trump has the big shoes and the big top. Clown-like but hey, it’s going to be interesting… Hail Caesar and full speed ahead. I for one can’t wait for the next circus performance, it’s even better than the bread.