Category: Uncategorized

Denison

I was a sophomore at Denison University in the fall of 1975.  That fall wasn’t my best academic semester.  While studying was still important, I found that “social activities” played a much greater role in my life.   I discovered the pleasures of alcohol, and spent a lot of that fall studying it, in its various forms.  In fact, I studied it in such depth, that at the end of that semester I determined  that “only” beer (or occasional wine) would be my choice, a decision that lasted until the next millennium.

So it probably wasn’t the best scheduling choice to take Poli Sci 209, “Introduction to the Theory of Political Science” as my early morning (9:30) class.  But there I was, sitting in the front row of Dr. Steinberg’s lecture hall, listening to theory from ancient Greece and Rome to the Enlightenment, delivered in a heavy New York accent.  I was generally sober, but often still very tired from the “activity” of the previous evening.   Dr. Steinberg, though, was an excellent instructor, and there were two rules in his class:  don’t skip class, and don’t fall asleep.

Somnambulance

It was the 1970’s, and smoking was still allowed in public buildings.  Dr. Steinberg chain-smoked his way through the Greeks and Romans, emphasizing an important point with a particularly large cloud, or creating a dramatic pause as he lit his next cigarette.  One class, after a particularly late evening (more early morning), I was struggling to maintain consciousness as the professor lectured on.  I don’t quite remember when I lost the train of thought – but I definitely recall waking up, desperately choking, as Dr. Steinberg shared his constant tobacco cloud directly into my face. The rest of the class howled in laughter.  I took it philosophically, and NO ONE ever fell asleep in that class again!  

My somnambulance didn’t help my grade, or my retention of Political Philosophy.  I ended up with a “B”, and just this week had to go back and do some real research as I thought about how to write this essay (research in political philosophy, not the other stuff).  

Enlightened Men

The 1700’s were called the age of Enlightenment.  In the current “woke” era, there’s a lot about the Enlightenment we might call less than “enlightened”.  Jefferson and Madison were men of intellect and developed the moral and practical foundations of the United States.  But at the same time, they participated in very real immorality.  They enslaved other human beings, and they did so in full knowledge of the moral wrong they were committing.  

But they were well educated men, and knew well the other great minds of their own era.  John Locke lived nearly a century before Jefferson.  Locke wrote about “natural rights of men”, beyond those granted by sovereign kings and governments.  Locke outlined those rights as “life, health, liberty, or possessions”, not far from Jefferson’s “self-evident truths…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Jefferson recognized that “possessions” opened the door to the great immorality of their own time.  It was better to talk about happiness than property. 

Burke

As the Founding Fathers debated the structures of the United States, other Enlightenment minds were thinking about how governing should work.  One of those was Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament from Ireland.  Burke considered the nature of representation.  Was a representative chosen simply to voice the views of those who elected him?  Or, was he elected to use his own best judgment.  As Burke said in a speech to the voters of Bristol:

“You choose a member (of Parliament) indeed, but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.  If the local constituent should should have an interest, or form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be, as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect.”

Burke viewed his role as an “agent” of his constituents; elected to use his own best judgment as to what was best for them, and for the nation.  If the constituents didn’t agree with him often enough, then they had the ultimate means of persuasion. They could choose not to re-elect him to office.

Cheney

Congressman Liz Cheney of Wyoming dramatically lost the Republican primary this week.  Cheney only received 29% of the vote. Her opponent, backed by the twice-impeached and disgraced former President, received 66%.  Two years before, Cheney received 73% from the same voters.  

Cheney is a conservative.  During the Trump Administration, she voted more than 93% of the time with the former President.  And Cheney comes from a legacy of Republican Conservatism.  Her father is a national conservative force, and has been since the 1970’s.  He served as Congressman from Wyoming, White House Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense, and ultimately eight years as Vice President of the United States.

But Liz Cheney could not abide with the “Stop the Steal” lie. And she would not support the attempts to overturn the election, leading up to the Insurrection on January 6^th. In fact, she made it crystal clear how she felt about those who did support Trump. As the rioters were at the doors of the House Chamber in the Capitol, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio attempted to take Cheney’s arm to try to lead her to safety. She was blunt with him as only a “Cheney” can be. She said: “Get away from me, you F##king did this.”

Cheney voted to impeach Donald Trump for the Insurrection.  For that, she was stripped of her leadership position in the House Republican caucus.  She also volunteered to participate on the January 6^thCommittee, against the wishes of Minority Leader McCarthy.  And she has been the primary “prosecutor” of the case against Trump in the Committee hearings.

Courage

Liz Cheney has the courage of her convictions, and stood for the fundamental structures of the United States against the anti-democratic actions of Trump and his followers.  She was an “agent” of the people of Wyoming, rather than a “delegate” who follows the public sentiment of her state.  She paid the price for that this week in the primary election.

But she isn’t done.  She remains a United States Congressman until January of 2023.  She will continue as the Vice-Chairman of the January 6^th Committee until then.  And she will stand at the center of the “enlightened” Republicans, one that rejects the authoritarianism of Trump.  Someday she will find a whole political party around her.  Madison and Jefferson, Locke and Burke would applaud.   

The Deal

On a “dollar for dollar” basis, the First Energy Corporation made the right move.  They spent $60 million in order to secure $1.3 trillion, a “good” investment in anyone’s books.  The problem:  the $60 million was a bribe to public officials, and the $1.3 trillion was supposed to come from the pockets of the citizens of Ohio.

Not surprisingly, First Energy didn’t think of it as a “bribe”. They considered it a donation to the legislators that backed their financing plan. The sum was managed by one legislator, Republican House Speaker Larry Householder.  And that is an issue in American politics today. Campaign success is absolutely based on how much money a candidate can raise.  To run for the US House of Representatives costs millions, and while state Legislature campaigns are less than that; success requires hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So are campaign donations simply a show of support, or are they a “quid pro quo”, payment for some specific action?  Showing support is perfectly legal. But a quid pro quo payment like the First Energy “pay to play” is the felony of bribery.

The Story

First Energy Corporation ran two nuclear power plants in Ohio, the Davis-Bessie reactor near Toledo and the Perry reactor outside of Cleveland.  Both plants were over thirty years old, and maintenance costs continued to grow. First Energy also had several coal-fired plants in Ohio. But other forms of energy generation were more cost efficient, and the nuclear and coal plants struggled to compete.

In order to operate profitably, First Energy asked the Ohio State Legislature to pass a bill that would give them a $150 million a year subsidy for nuclear and coal fired plants. The bill would also reduce subsidies for other forms of more energy efficient production, raising their costs, to make coal and nuclear energy competitive. All of this was paid for by increasing consumer electric rates in Ohio.  The bill was passed by the Republican controlled legislature, led by Speaker Larry Householder, in July of 2019. The next day Republican Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill into law. 

The Takeover

In order for Householder to gain control of the Ohio House, he accepted $60 million from First Energy through their political action committee, “Generation Now”.  Householder used some of that money to finance twenty-one successful legislative campaigns for those who were willing to vote for his Speakership and the subsidy bill, and won enough seats in the House to get elected as Speaker.  It is against the law for a legislator like Householder to direct an independent political action committee’s funds.

After gaining control of the House, Householder brought the bill, called House Bill 6, up for debate.  The legislation was widely unpopular, as it promised consumers increased electric rates.  Householder then orchestrated a public media campaign with Generation Now money, estimated to cost $9.5 million to get the bill through the House and another $7.3 million to get through the State Senate.  The campaign claimed the rate increase would “save jobs” at the nuclear plants, and improve “green” energy (except at the coal plants).  It served as “cover” for the legislators who voted for the bill.

Response

After the bill passed, an awkward coalition of Democrats, the natural gas industry, renewable energy and consumer advocates tried to put the bill up for statewide referendum in order to repeal it.  “Generation Now”, under the direction of Householder and Republican State Party Chairman Matt Borges, spent another $38 million on an incredibly ugly media campaign to prevent the referendum from even getting the required 6% of voter signatures to get on the ballot.  Their claim was that passage of the referendum would put “Ohio’s energy in Chinese Communist control”, and raised the specter of Chinese “spies” coming to get your signature.  

Ohioans never got to vote on House Bill 6.  And Larry Householder used part of the “Generation Now” funds to buy a $500,000 house in Florida, pay for his own personal campaign expenses, and pay off a personal lawsuit he was involved in.  

The scandal broke in July of 2020, when Householder was arrested by the FBI.  Ultimately the Ohio House and Senate along with Governor DeWine voided the legislation.  Householder is still awaiting trial on charges of accepting bribes and abuse of office.  His trial, in conjunction with the trial of Matt Borges, is expected to begin with jury selection after the election in November of 2022.  First Energy Corporation has already admitted to bribing public officials, and is paying a $230 million fine to avoid further prosecution.  The Chief Executive Officer of First Energy, Chuck Jones, was removed by its board, and the Board demanded that he return his $56 million salary. 

Gone Away

Other leading Republicans in the state, including DeWine and Lieutenant Governor John Husted, have been implicated in parts of the scandal.   First Energy “remade itself” through bankruptcy, and is now called Energy Harbor.  They still own the two nuclear plants, as well as the several coal fired plants.  Federal funds are keeping the company profitable.

And, oddly, the scandal has “gone away”. While Democratic candidates like Nan Whaley raise the general concept of “corruption”, the fact that the entire state Republican Party establishment was complicit in taking bribes and passing laws to protect the profits of First Energy, just doesn’t seem to be a concern to Ohio voters.

It’s hard to imagine a bribe so large.  $60 million:  at least no one can accuse Ohio Republicans of selling out “cheap”. 

First Keys

One of the first lessons I learned as a Boy Scout leader back in high school was that keys represented power. I became the Senior Patrol Leader (SPL) of Troop 819, the “head kid”, and with that leadership role came keys.  One key opened the basement door to the Church where our troop met. A second opened the pad lock to the wooden door in front of our Scout Room, the meeting place in what was the crypt of the main church.

Keys meant a couple things.  It allowed me to have meetings with other Scouts without the formal “permission” of the adult Scout leaders.  It let me do “my job” with the troop Quartermaster (another Scout) as we prepared equipment for our monthly campout. And we had other projects that were part of the Troop annual calendar.  Looking back on that, it was actually a lot of responsibility to put on a sixteen year-old.  And I’m not sure that the Minister of the Church knew what our Scoutmasters were allowing.  

I knew the responsibility I had with “the keys”.  I made sure the door was locked, and that no Scout got left behind. Getting trapped in the Church basement between the Scout room and the storage was scary for a twelve year-old.  When I moved from SPL to become a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, they let me keep my keys. The Scoutmaser made another set for the next SPL.  I remained part of the Troop, through college, and until I moved away from Mom and Dad in Cincinnati.  Somewhere, in a drawer, I still have the keys.

School Keys

So when I went to work at a public high school, having a “key” was a deal.  Getting into the building in the evening, or on the weekend with a team, you had to have some way to open a door.  And soon enough, I had the key to a locker room door, and the key to my classroom.  A mentor of mine taught me an early dubious lesson. If you get access to a key, and don’t make a copy, then it’s your own fault.  Keys meant access for what you needed to do your job. We acquired them like medals on the battlefield.  

We needed keys to tractors to maintain the Cross Country course, keys to the press box and gates to run track meets, keys to storage to access our equipment.  And we always needed keys to get into the building. That was especially back in the day when the only access to a phone was a “hard line” in an office somewhere.  The kids had to call for rides, and, when necessary, we needed to be able to call for an ambulance.

Just like when I was a Scout, having keys meant getting access, responsibility, and “power”.  And the ultimate key to have was the “building master key”, the one key that opened every door.  You know you “made it” when you had the one key to get everywhere.  

Giving Up 

I worked in the school district for forty years.  There were generations of keys. I had keys for buildings that no longer were standing, and keys for obscure locks that were buried deep inside storage areas or closets.  Ther were my “working keys”, the few that went into my pocket every day. And then my “occasional keys”, that I would use once a year during a special event.  

When I finally retired from coaching and managing cross country meets at the school, it was time to turn in the keys, at least most of them.  The ones that no longer opened anything I pitched, and a few were passed onto the next generation.  But the “big ones”; the master keys, gate keys and equipment keys, were on my ring, and on the secretary’s desk.

Giving up my keys was giving up my “power” in the school.  It was the final act, disconnecting from forty years of work and fun. I left behind all of the successes and tragedies, things accomplished, and getting into “good” trouble.  Of all the goodbyes, setting my keys on Barb’s desk (the Athletic Secretary) was the second hardest.  The first, of course, was saying goodbye to the kids.

The President

Donald Trump is a man who gets what he wants.  It’s hard to tell whether he truly believed he won the election of 2020 at the beginning, but at the end, it’s clear that he convinced himself that was true.  But while the President doesn’t have a “master key” to the United States (in fact, he doesn’t have keys at all, someone else always does), he has the “master secrets”.   And in the days between January 6^th, the Insurrection, and January 20^th, the Biden Inauguration, Trump struggled mightily with the idea that he actually had to leave the White House.

Bunches of papers were hurriedly thrust into boxes.  Classified confidential, secret, top secret, top secret compartmented information:  all were stuffed in boxes and shipped to Trump’s home in  Mara Lago, his “winter White House”.  

There’s lots of ways to look at that.  Maybe he was just keeping them to show that he was “still powerful”, like keeping the master key to the building even after you retire.  Or maybe he had confidential information he could use, “kompromat” on others to get them to bend to his will.  Or the worst case scenario:  maybe he saw some financial gain to be made with all of those secrets.  But one thing is for sure:  Donald Trump became President for power, and wasn’t will to give that up, even when the National Archives demanded them, and even when the FBI came for it.

He wanted to keep his keys.

This is another in the Sunday Story series. No politics here, just some stories of Cross Country running teams from “long ago” through today.

Tradition

I went out to my old Cross Country team’s summer camp this week.  As my good friend and their current coach John Jarvis pointed out, the Watkins High School Cross Country team has a forty-eight year history. Over that entire time, there were only three Head Coaches.  Coach Jarvis was my assistant for eleven years before he took over in 2009.  I was John McGowan’s assistant for six years before I tried to follow in his footsteps in 1985.  While the current crop of runners only vaguely know who I am, and know my predecessor by name only, they don’t realize that much of what they do in practice and as a team started before they, and even some of their parents, were born.  

One of those traditions is that all three of us treated kids as individuals, as people, not “just” runners.  We didn’t try to “fit” kids into some pre-conceived mold.  We took them as they were.  They were willing to try, and we did whatever we could to make them better, as runners, but more importantly, as people.  That was and still is the one “true North” of Watkins Cross Country, that John McGowan established, and that we all followed.   

Another principle that has come down through “the generations” is that we, as coaches, must be willing to learn, and to change.  Over forty-eight years the science and art of training runners has grown.  We know so much more about the physiology of athletics, and the psychology of runners.  At the core, kids haven’t changed in their desire to belong, to try, and to succeed.  But the stresses and demands on kids are qualitatively different today, than they were back in “the day”.  As coaches, we recognized those changing influences, and adapted.  

Going to Camp

When we first went to camp in 1997, one of the best parts of the experience was that there was almost no cell phone service there.  We had the kids “in the moment”, with no distraction from the “outside” to break their attention.  Now, twenty-five years later, technology has come even to eastern Licking County.  Everything that kids do now, at camp and in life, is part of a “public record”.   There is lots of good from that, but it means that being “in the moment” is an experience many kids never have.  “The moment” is always shared, always interrupted, always includes others not “in the group”.   It’s no good taking kids on a “snipe hunt” today. Someone will “google” snipes.  Every move is subject to “fact checking” and scrutiny.

The one thing not subject to cell phone interference is the running.  Kids (most) don’t run with their cell phones.  It ultimately is more hassle to carry than it’s worth.  And the secret of “bonding” on a cross country team is the shared “suffering” of long runs on hills and dusty roads.  Hours on the road means hours of conversations, some grunted going uphill, some casual while striding along in the sun.  Want to grow close to someone:  run with them, hours at a time, every day.  You may not grow to “love them”, but you will grow to know them.

Camp Memories

Going to camp is nostalgic for me.  When I was the coach, I treasured the early morning walk from the cabin uphill to the lodge.  The sun was just rising, the crows calling out.  And there was often a small herd of deer culling the tender shoots of dew-soaked grass.  It was quiet, before we “rousted” the kids for morning run.  Time for a cup (or two, or three) of coffee, and a moment to contemplate the day.

I didn’t stay overnight at camp this time, but I was pleased that a lone deer came out into the field as I walked near the lodge.  It reminded me of how loaded camp was with stories.  Here’s where Doug “boobytrapped” the shelter for the “capture the flag” game.  There’s where we all lay on the hillside at midnight, watching the Perseid meteor shower.  That’s the path where I started the team on my “run to get lost, run to get found” morning jaunt.  

In the cabin is the bunk where my dog Paige hid as the raccoon came in looking for snacks in the middle of the night.  And that’s the porch where we had so many conversations; about running, about school, about life.  Camp only lasted four days then (three now in an era when school starts in the middle of summer), but it became the inflection point, the end of last season and the beginning of next.

Family

John’s building a team through hard work and hard fun.  Sure that’s a good thing for being successful:  kids will run harder for their team than they would for just themselves.  But more importantly, John is building a cross country “family”, a “family” that’s been going on since 1974.  Three generations share that bond, with the oldest now in their sixties.  Their team experience is forty or more years behind them.  But they would still recognize the “aura” of Watkins Cross Country.  It’s still family.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22

From the Beginning

The United States has always been a nation-divided.  Even at the Second Continental Congress, the differences between New England, the Atlantic colonies and the South were apparent.  They lived different kinds of lives, with different cultures.  It was a struggle to find any kind of unity, even in the face of British troops threatening on many fronts. 

The decision to declare independence was rife with division.  Eight of the fifty delegates never signed the document.  Three states originally held back; Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted no, and New York abstained from voting.  It wasn’t until the final day of debate, that Pennsylvania and South Carolina joined in.  New York didn’t actually commit until August, more than a month after the “Fourth of July”. 

And tradition has it that, as the delegates left the formal signing at the Pennsylvania State House, the senior statesman Benjamin Franklin said:  “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

Common Cause

The United States has often been a nation of division as much as unity.  There has always been economic divides, between the “haves” and the “have nots”.  What did Thomas Jefferson of Virginia and John Hancock of Massachusetts have in common?  They both were wealthy men, and the wealth of both was impacted by British regulations and restrictions.  They found common cause not just in the intellectual foundation of their new nation, 

“…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  That to secure these rights,  governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

They also agreed on the “complaints”.

• “For cutting off our  trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
•  He (King George III) has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns  And destroyed the lives of our people.”

Great Britain was cutting into their wealth, as well as their liberty.

Citizenship

But the ultimate time of division in American history was the Civil War, when a section of the nation determined that they could no longer remain united as states.  It was a battle for power, based in the determination by the minority South that the foundation of their economy, enslavement, would ultimately be outlawed by the majority North.  

But something to remember.  Not every Southern was in favor of secession, and not every Northerner was in favor of waging war to save the Union.  There were abolitionists in the South, there were Copperheads in the North.  And, not unlike our current climate, there were many who simply wanted to live their own lives in peace, but were forced to take sides.

In eighth grade American History we taught that before the Civil War, we were citizens of Ohio, or Virginia, or Texas; not so much the United States.  In my day (back in the late 1960’s) we were taught of the “agony” of Robert E. Lee, forced to choose between the Nation he swore an oath to serve for thirty-two years, or his native Virginia.  Back then, they taught he made a principled choice based on the ethics of his time.  Today, we would look more closely at the enslaved people that he either personally owned or managed for his father-in-law’s estate.

Eighth grade history taught us that the term, “American”, was a result of the Civil War.  That from then forward, “we” were a nation united, the “savior” of “the world” in World Wars One and Two.  

National Media

And I remember teaching specifically, how national media served to “nationalize” our citizens.  It was the “bad” media – “yellow journalism” that convinced our leaders and citizens to go to war against Spain in the 1890’s. Or it was the “good” media of nationwide radio.  Everyone shared in the adventures of “The Shadow” (“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.  The Shadow knows!!!).  And Americans also heard the voice of their President, Franklin Roosevelt, in Fireside Chats that reassured them that the government and the Nation cared about their privations in the Great Depression.

We shared as a nation the two World Wars, and the economic highs and lows that came before and after. Unity is shared experience, and as a Nation the United States shared all of those calamities and triumphs together.  Newspapers, telegraphs and telephones, radio and ultimately television served the purpose of nationalizing a culture.  Think about this – why do all the “national” news anchors have the same accent, in a nation with so many variations on speech?  It is because we have our “regional” accent for local use, and a “national” accent as well.

But now we have found that the media that served to help make us a nation, is acting to divide us.  We hear our “news” in the same “accents”, but they tell us wildly different stories.  And while we can (as I’m doing now) sit in the sun in our own backyards and access seemingly all of the information of the world on our phones and computers, we pick and choose sources that match our preconceived beliefs.  Our “news” now is slanted to our differences. Rather than serving to unify, it serves to divide.

Lone Wolf

How big a deal is it?  Yesterday a man, polarized and divided, went out and tried to kill FBI agents in order to fulfill the “destiny” he learned through his media.  He succeeded only in killing himself, but who knows what will happen next.  David Hogg, one of the survivors of  the Parkland school shooting and a founder of March for Our Lives, tweeted: “When (the $%#@) will we stop acting like all these “lone wolves” are lone wolves?”  

They are being “sent” through their media, and they could be packed into more than just “lone wolves” as easily.

Yesterday’s  ”lone wolf” was shot in a cornfield near Wilmington, Ohio.  It was just down the road from the “73 Grill”, a restaurant and bar I’ve eaten in a couple times.  I have family living not far away from that cornfield, and that restaurant.  

Choosing Lines

Someone asked me “which side” of the line I’m on.  I had to think about what that meant.  The Mason-Dixon line was a fairly clear demarcation for the Civil War, but the “lines” for our current divide are less certain.  It is more urban and rural, coastal versus central.  Yet the “lone wolf” shooter of yesterday lives nearby here, in Columbus.   I thought Columbus would be on the “other side” of the line, I guess, the urban, “Blue” side.  But he lived there, and I live here, in “Red” suburban Ohio,  with the MAGA flags down the street.  Where are the lines for our possible Civil War??

Like the Abolitionists in the Confederacy, and the Copperheads in the Union; the lines of our demarcation are blurred.  We are divided by news source, more than anything else.  And Franklin’s statement is a correct today as it was on July 2^nd in 1776:

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

America, to survive our current disunion, must find a way to hang together once again.

Go Bucks!

Jenn and I went out to lunch a few days ago, at the Broadway Pub in Granville.  Jenn had to take a phone call, and I was left watching an old football game on the TV over the bar.  It was a replay of the 2003 National Championship game, one near and dear to the hearts of Central Ohio “Buckeye” fans. Ohio State was playing the Miami Hurricanes, and “everyone” knew that Miami was going to win.  Everybody, that is, but the Buckeyes.

Looking back at that game, Miami had the better athletes and the more talented team.  Eight times out of ten, Miami should win that game.  But sometimes good coaches can make a difference.  The coach of Ohio State then was a mild-mannered man in a vest named Jim Tressel.  And he came up with a game plan that upset the Miami “Hurricane”.  He kept Ohio State in the game, “hanging around” into the fourth quarter, then striking to take the lead. Miami lost their best running back to knee injury, but still came back, scoring a game-tying field goal at the end of regulation.

The game went into two overtimes, filled with controversial calls.  But Miami was playing hamstrung, and ultimately Ohio State won the game and the National Championship.

Disaster

Three years later Ohio State was back in the national championship game again, this time against the University of Florida.  As smart as Tressel’s game plan was for the Miami game, it was a disaster against the Gators.  How bad did things go?  Ohio State’s number one receiver, Ted Ginn Jr., ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown.  He injured his ankle in the victory “celebration” and was out for the rest of the game.  So were the Buckeyes. They lost 41 to 14.

The mark of a good coach is to discover the weakness of their opponent, and then exploit it. That’s what Tressel did against Miami.  The great coaches also realize that their pre-planning isn’t working, and transition to a different strategy in mid-game.  Tressel tried to do that against Florida.  But that’s one of the hardest things to do in coaching, and for the athletes.  It takes all of the pre-planned reactions, and alters them in the middle of the competition.  

I was never a football coach, and it’s not often that I use football analogies for politics.  But I think it’s a good way to think about the 2022 mid-term elections from a tactical standpoint. 

Trumpism

Republicans across the nation are “doubling-down” on Trumpism.  Candidates from Ohio to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania to Georgia, Florida to Washington, are 2020 election “deniers”, Build the Wall supporters, Critical Race Theory haters, and Insurrection apologists.  Republican strategists (like football coaches) are well aware that this strategy won’t attract many undecided voters.  But the Republican Party base is dominated by Donald Trump.  In order to get nominated in the Republican Party, fealty to Trumpism is almost an absolute requirement.  Need examples?  Look at the ten Republican Congressmen who voted to impeach Trump.  So far of the ten, only one is re-nominated by the Party to run in 2022 (Wyoming will decide about Liz Cheney on Tuesday).  

With that kind of “entry requirement”, there’s little room to move to the middle and pickup more undecided voters.  So instead, Republicans must depend on a maximum turnout of their voters in November, and a suppressed Democratic turnout.  If everyone shows up, like 2020, the biggest election turnout in US history, then Democrats should win.  Republicans have to work to make sure that doesn’t happen.

And they are doing a lot to get that done.  Twenty-seven states have made voting harder for 2022.  Even in states that didn’t make major election law changes, Republicans are making practical changes that will making voting harder in Democratic districts.  They are slowing the voting process to increase lines at the polling places, and reducing the number of locations.  All of that may suppress Democratic turnout. 

Pick a Side

Democratic strategists have made their own tactical decision.  They “helped” Republicans chose “Trumpists” as their candidates, actually spending hard-won campaign funds in some Republican races to defeat more moderate candidates.  The theory:  if Republicans are going to abandon the “middle”, then Democrats will do all they can to seize the center and tip the scales in 2022.  Democratic strategists will try to overcome Republican suppression efforts both by driving their base to the polls (the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade will certainly help there) and at the same time by trying to sway the middle.

An example of this is the Ohio Senate election between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican JD Vance. Democrats are trying to paint Vance as a Trumper, an extremist of the right.  Vance isn’t helping himself there. He already has made statements that abortion should be totally banned with no exceptions, and that women in abusive relationships should consider “sticking it out”.  Meanwhile Tim Ryan is portraying himself as an “independent” Democrat, willing to take on his own leadership to represent his constituency.  He’s not  making that up; he ran for Speaker of the House against Nancy Pelosi.  All of that is an effort to appeal not only to the Democratic base, but to the “middle” voter.

High Risks

Like Coach Tressel’s Miami National Championship strategy; the Democratic plan has high risks for high rewards. If they manage to maintain control of the Congress after 2022, they would have defied historic precedence. Democratic success would mark a third win over Trumpism in four elections: one loss in 2016, then wins in 2018, 2020, and 2022.

But a failure would be as catastrophic as the Ohio State loss to Florida in 2006.  Perhaps both the House and the Senate would be in Republican hands, and not just “Republicans”, but Trump Republicans.  It will open the door for Trump, or a Trump-like candidate for President in 2024.  

And even if Democrats succeed in November, the Republicans that remain will be even more Trumpist then before.  

Win or lose, America will be more polarized after November, not less.

Watergate

Forty-eight years ago today,  Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, announced his resignation from office.  After two long years of investigations, Congressional hearings, court cases, protests and counter-protests; Nixon finally took the “easy” way out.  He resigned, not saying he did anything wrong, but that he didn’t have support of Congress to continue his fight.  

I was seventeen at the time.  The Watergate crisis had subsumed my life since the first Congressional hearings in the spring and summer of 1973.  I was convinced that Richard Nixon led a conspiracy. He hid the felonies his campaign committed with his full knowledge. I was right.  He disgraced the Presidency, and he had to go.   I fully expected to spend the next six months, my freshman year in college, watching the second impeachment and removal of a President .

Nixon

So his speech on that August night wasn’t a total surprise.  The actual “news” was leaked earlier in the day.  But it was a pleasant acceleration of justice.  The “long national nightmare” of Watergate, as the incoming President Ford called it, was over.  The United States could focus on something else.  I “raised a glass” that night, to the final triumph of American justice. (Yes, I was underaged – it was champagne, and you can consider this a confession). 

A few weeks later, Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he might have committed, from Watergate to income tax evasion.   I was outraged. If we are all equal in the eyes of the law, justice “blind” to status; then Nixon deserved to be “in the dock”. He should suffer the same fate as his Attorney General, his Chief of Staff and his Domestic Affairs Advisor. He should go to jail.  Later on, I better understood Ford’s reasoning. He hoped .to end the focus on Watergate, and avoid the spectacle of a former President  on trial.  

Precedent

That was before Donald Trump.  Looking back over those forty-eight years, my entire adult life, I now see that Ford inadvertently established a precedent. He established that American justice will not be applied to those that reach the highest office in the land.  Of the forty-five men who have held that office (Grover Cleveland counts twice since he served two different terms), there really hasn’t been a concern about their possible criminality.  That is, except for Nixon, who was pardoned.  And now, except for Trump, who has weaponized and transformed the Republican Party to serve as his defense.

Yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at Mara Lago, the home of the former President, Donald Trump.  The warrant was to search for papers improperly removed from the White House, in violation of the Federal Records Act and national security statutes.  At least, that’s what we know so far.  But this unprecedented search, after more than a year of negotiations among Trump’s attorneys, the National Archives and the Department of Justice; can’t  possibly just be about old menus, draft speeches, and a letter from Kim Jong-Un. 

Trump himself wasn’t there.  He was in New York, preparing for a deposition with the New York Attorney General about possible civil law violations and his real estate transactions.  The FBI sent “plain clothes” agents, and notified Trump’s Secret Service detail of the warrant.  But Trump, with his usual hyperbole, claimed that the FBI was “laying siege” to Mara Lago, and illegally exercising a political vendetta.

Investigations

The New York Times reports that there was an index one hundred pages long of unclassified documents improperly removed from the White House. More importantly, there was a second index, three pages long, of classified documents.  Perhaps the value of some of those classified documents is so great, and the former President’s position so intransigent, that the only choice was to go and physically get them.

That we know of, Donald Trump is under investigation by a Federal Grand Jury in Washington regarding the insurrection, another Grand Jury dealing with violations of the Records and National Security Acts, a state Grand Jury in Atlanta for election interference, and a state Grand Jury in New York for fraudulent financial dealings.   And of course, the January 6^th Committee continues to investigate, as well.  Documents legally seized by the FBI in their search aren’t just restricted to any one of those investigations.  If they are relevant, they can be shared.

Proof

Executing a search warrant is not “proof” of anything.  But this warrant, a warrant to search the home of this former President, must have been the most carefully scrutinized document ever produced by the Department of Justice.  It would have been cleared all the way to the Attorney General.  It was signed off by a Federal Judge, who agreed that there was probable cause that evidence of a crime was present at the home.  Every one of those officials involved knew exactly the momentous and unprecedented decision they were making.  They all knew that, as Roger Stone would say, they would have “their time in the barrel” for this.  Whatever they were searching for, they were damn well sure it was there, in Mara Lago.

The defense has already begun.  Kevin McCarthy is threatening Attorney General Garland with Congressional investigation if the Republicans regain power next year.  Even Fox News, who were distancing themselves from Trump, led their website with story after story of Republican outrage.  Only deep down in the list was a sole former FBI Special Agent in Charge, saying that there was no way the entire system was politicized, or corrupted.

So I fully expect another year or more of spectacle, and even the possibility of Donald Trump himself on trial.  Unlike Watergate, there seems to be no other way for our nation to get beyond our “long nightmare” of Trumpism, and focus on something else.  But meanwhile, last night, I raised a glass once again. It was legal, this time, and it was beer.  For this minute, Justice remains blind to status, and we are all equal in the eyes of the law,  even a former President.

Where Are You?

So you’re in a meeting where the average age is over sixty-four years old.  There are six  attendees over eighty, and twenty-eight more over seventy.  Near the “average” are thirty-eight members in their sixties. Everyone else are just “babies”:  twenty-one in their fifties, six in their forties, and one really young one at thirty-five.  

Maybe it’s the group meeting at the nursing home, with some of the staff sitting in.  Or maybe it’s the afternoon weekday Mass at St. Theobald’s Catholic Church.  Or, maybe it’s the Bingo game at the Lion’s Club!!

Well, it did seem like they were playing some kind of lame game.  It’s called “Vote-a-Rama”.  One member staggers up the microphone in the middle of the night and proposes “an amendment”, one of dozens.  That member gives a brief speech about how that “amendment” would make things better.  Then another member staggers up, and says why the “amendment” is a terrible idea.

Then they start a roll call vote, beginning with Tammy Baldwin, and ending one hundred names later with Todd Young.  That takes about fifteen minutes or so.  Each of the members wake up long enough to stagger to the front table and say “Yea” or “Nay”. 

Fifty-Fifty 

The results are announced, and the “game” starts all over again.  I’m a little over the “average” age of the US Senate, so I turned C-Span off at 11:30 and headed for bed.  When the dogs woke me up at six, I flipped it back on. Nothing looked different, except different Senators were coming to the microphone with their proposals.  The “Vote-a-Rama” was still going strong.

What is the “Vote-a-Rama”?  Think of it as penance, a punishment for the sin of avoiding the “hallowed” filibuster rule.  In the United States Senate with one hundred members, it takes just fifty-one votes to pass a piece of legislation.  That’s not the hard part.  The Senate has a tradition of unlimited debate, so while it might only take a simple majority of votes to pass something, it requires sixty votes to end debate (end a filibuster) so that you CAN vote on final passage.  In other terms, to get anything actually passed, sixty Senators have to agree to allow it.

In our fifty-fifty Nation, and Senate, it takes a lot to get ten members of the “other” party to agree.  So not much gets done.

Work Around

But there is a “work around” written into the rules, called “budget reconciliation”.  If a bill is about the budget of the United States, and if the Parliamentarian of the Senate agrees that all parts of the bill are “directly budget related”, then that bill can be brought under “budget reconciliation”.  That kind of bill only requires a simple majority to end debate, as well as passage.  And it’s limited to used three times a year, and there’s a “penance” involved for using it.  

What’s the penance?  First, there’s twenty hours, that’s clock hours, of debate, divided between the two parties.  Then there are twenty more hours when any amendment can be offered to the “bill”, including amendments that aren’t “directly budget related” and must be passed by a sixty vote threshold.  Republicans offered thirty different amendments, each with an introductory speech and an opposition response, and all designed to kill the bill.  Each of those amendments had to be separately voted on; thus the seemingly endless number of roll call votes that droned on through the night and into Sunday.

It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, around 2:30 pm, that the final roll was called for the final vote on the bill, the Inflation Reduction Act  – BINGO!!  It passed with fifty Democrats for, fifty Republicans against, and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

On the Floor

What was left “on the floor”?  A proposal to cap the cost of insulin, the primary drug used by diabetics to control their condition, at $35 a month.  Right now, it can cost from $335 to $1000 a month here in the United States, depending on the kind of insurance.  But regardless of the cost, for folks with diabetes, insulin isn’t a luxury. It’s an absolute necessity of life.

The bill proposed that insulin for Medicare patients have the $35 cap.  The Parliamentarian ruled that since that would create a significant reduction in spending, it fit in the “budget related” category.  But a second portion of the bill would have extended that to all Americans, and since that wasn’t a government “spending” issue, the Parliamentarian said that required sixty, not fifty-one votes to pass.

All fifty Democrats agreed, joined by seven Republicans.  But that wasn’t enough.  Medicare recipients are capped, but Americans with private (or no) insurance are not.

Mo-Jo Lost

Which leads to another question – has Mitch McConnell, the “master tactician” of the Republican Senators, lost his “Mo-Jo”?  Twice in the past two weeks he’s left his Republican colleagues with a political mess.  It started with the PACT Act that would benefit veterans suffering from disease and disabilities caused by inhaling military trash burn pit smoke. Last week the vets gathered in front of the Capitol to celebrate its final passage.  But when Democrat Chuck Schumer announced his “deal” with Senator Manchin for the budget reconciliation bill, McConnell told his Republicans to vote against PACT.

Republican Senators voted against helping veterans, and took a political beating for days.  The criticism didn’t stop until the Senate revisited PACT and with Republicans joining in, passed  it handily.  Picking that fight was a lose-lose for McConnell:  he stood against veterans, and then backed down to their pressure.  Chalk a victory up for Schumer, the Democrats, and Veterans.

And then in the heat of the “Vote-a-Rama”, McConnell and his fellow Republicans could have “fixed” the insulin cost crisis.  As much as they didn’t like the overall “Inflation Reduction Act”, regulating insulin costs would have been a “good” thing for the country.  But instead, the Republicans shot it down, by only three votes.  So now Republicans stand against reasonable drug prices for a century-old drug called insulin.  They voted against diabetics, and for the drug companies. 

Lose-Lose to Win-Win

Again, a lose-lose going into the November elections.  While drug companies have lots of money, they don’t have lots of votes – the people do.  And, overwhelmingly, the American people are in favor of reduced drug costs, particularly maintenance drugs like insulin.

Schumer, of course, took the political win from the awkward Republican stand, and then the actual win when the “Vote-a-Rama” finally ended, and the Inflation Reduction Act was passed.  Good news for most Americans – but bad news for Republicans trying to convince the country that Democrats can’t get anything done.

This is another in the Sunday Story Series.  No politics here, just a story from someone beginning life with a Medicare card in his wallet.

 Red-White and Blue Club

I turned sixty-five last September.  This morning I realized that in five weeks, I’ll be sixty-six – so much older it seems, than just “Medicare age”.  And I’ve spent the last couple of months doing “Medicare” kind of things, using my Red-White and Blue Medicare ID card.  

When you first reach “this age”, you get a free medical appointment.  In fact, you are required to participate in the “free” appointment as a condition of getting Medicare.  Since I had my last physical just a couple weeks before my last birthday, I put off getting my “free” one until the summer (or until my physician started warning me about the “dire” consequences of skipping the “introductory” exam).  

Look, I’ve had enough health conditions that I’m a pretty steady, once a year physical kind of guy.   Getting an annual was long on my calendar before I reached Medicare age.  So I scheduled for early in the morning, as usual.  That way when they wanted to do blood tests, fasting wasn’t an issue. I usually don’t eat much in the AM anyway.  As long as they don’t worry about super-high-insanely-tenacious black coffee, I’m a pretty happy guy.  Without the coffee, I’m a danger on the road, and asleep in the waiting room.

State of Head

But what I wasn’t prepared for was “the quiz”.  You see, when you enter Medicare, the physician is required to evaluate your mental state.   They’re searching for signs of dementia, or Alzheimer’s (even if it takes the spell checker to get that right).  So you have to take the test.  First, there are three words – random words like:  banana, sunrise, chair.  The lady testing  just says them, then moves onto other questions.

“Am I dizzy often, do I fall a lot, do I feel safe at home, do I forget where I’m going?”.  Next, it’s the draw the clock test – where do the hands go if it’s 11:10.  Of course, I try to side-track the test (just like every student I ever taught); “what happens when the generation arrives that doesn’t do analog time?”  The tester stumbles for a second, then comes back with, “Well anyone your age should be able to, so draw the clock”.  I carefully suppress the urge to write 11:10, and  put the short hand where 11 goes, and the long hand at 2.  I hope she can tell the difference.

The Big Question

So it’s been a few minutes, and the focus has been on being dizzy (not often), falling (I don’t), getting lost (not that either), safe. (Well there are five dogs, but other than that. Oh, and I do trip over a dog from time to time, especially if I stand up too fast).  And then the entire clock conversation.  But the “BIG” question comes back up  – what were those three words again.  

I hadn’t thought about them, didn’t create a mnemonic to remember them, like the phases of cell replication that my freshman Biology teacher Mr. Sproul taught us – Pre Med at Texas (prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase – with interphase in the middle).  And maybe that’s a clue to “Medicare” age: I can remember Pre Med at Texas, and the five members of the Rolling Stones (Jagger, Richards, Woods, Watts, and Wyman), but for a brief moment there’s this blank in my head, a pause.  I stall – “do they need to be in order?”   (Here’s your test – don’t look back – what were the words??)   Then it’s there:  xxxxx, xxxxx, and my least favorite food of all, xxxxx.  The tester nods, I am cleared from dementia for my first Medicare year: whew!!

Going Slow

Next, it’s onto the ECG, checking out my frequently confused cardiac system.  Remember, it’s only 8 am, and I didn’t work out before I came here.  And I’ve been sitting around for a while.  I lay back on the table, watch the sticky tabs placed on my chest (why, oh why, do they keep those damn things in the refrigerator?) and relax as she hooks up the wires.  She runs the test, no paper rolls anymore, it’s now all onto a laptop.  Then she frowns, and says let’s do that again.  So I get a little drowsier.

It seems my heart rate is at fifty-one, and it’s confusing the computer program.  Now, given the situation, reclined, early morning, not enough of the super-high-insanely-tenacious black coffee in my system, I’m just glad my heart’s breaking fifty.  I run low, from fifty-five years of workouts and low thyroid, and it kicks up just fine when I need it.  To get back to that dizzy question, the better shape I get in, the more often I’ll get dizzy from a “head rush”, standing up too fast.  That’s because I jump up in between beats and it takes a second for the blood to catch up.  Being in shape means fewer heart beats.

We don’t go into any great explanation, but now there’s a new “term” in my chart – “bradycardia”.  Click on the link – what used to be a goal when I was younger now sounds terrible.  It’s really not; just being me, and the Doc isn’t concerned.  It’s not a thing.  But there’s that word.

What Did You Say?

So my Doc, (he’s about thirty-five, I picked one that I hope will outlive me), does the usual exam, listening to my heart and checking the numbers.  He says I’m fine, and wonders if I have any concerns.  I tell him that I sometimes struggle to hear certain sounds, conversations in crowds, and the nine-year-old kid next door.  So he sets me up for a hearing test.  And that becomes the next Medicare “challenge”.  

The last time I was in an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist’s office, I was fifteen and a wrestler.  Bob Rosenthal kneed me in the face during a wrestle-off , and my nose was definitely closer to the right side of my face than the left.  It took surgery, and a couple of weeks off of the mat, but old Doc Sidney Peerless got my nose back headed in the right general location.

So this week I went to an ENT here in Columbus (Peerless was in Cincinnati, and passed away at eighty-four in 2006) to get my hearing checked.  The first thing I noticed:  all of the staff speak loudly and annunciate carefully, not just to me, but to everyone in the room.  I guess if there’s a place to speak up, the “ear doctor” would be it.

Buzzing my Ear

My first stop was for the “dreaded” hearing test.  You go into a sound proof booth and they seal a pair of tight fitting headphones on.  Then the tester goes outside, and you soon hear her disembodied voice through the headphones, giving instructions.  The first series are words, and your job is repeat them back to the tester.  They come in left, right, or both, at a speaking tone or a whisper.  Sometimes there’s static in one ear and a word in the other.  And then there’s the point where the whisper is so quiet, you’re really not sure if you hear it, or just feel it, or it’s imaginary.   Think how foolish you look, repeating words that aren’t even there.  I try to make sure.

Then we switch to tones.  Some are high, some low, loud to soft, and sometimes, it becomes just an ethereal tinkling that might be a sound, or might be just your head messing with you.  When you hear it – say “yes”.  So it’s hours (or maybe ten minutes) of yes-yes-yes-pause-maybe-yes as the tones go back and forth, like a Jimi Hendrix solo in stereo.  

When I practice meditation (not so often recently, I just fall asleep), I focus on one “spot” in the center of my brain, and quiet every other thought.  So here I was, focused on the center of my brain where the tone was just at the faint edge of my hearing.  Enlightenment and Nirvana (the place, not the musical group) couldn’t have been far away, when a firm voice said – “THAT’S IT”.  

I’m Not Listening

My right ear is just fine.  My left ear is fine in the low to medium range.  Medium to high (the exact range of a nine year-old boy) it falls off, but not enough to require a hearing aid.  Why the left and not the right?  I’m left handed, and when I officiate track meets, I have the starting pistol with a .32 caliber black powder shell about three feet from my left ear.  I usually wear electronic hearing “muffs” that surpress the sound, but sometimes there’s no time to get them on.  A couple of years of fifty shots a night, a couple of times a week, and my left ear is getting it.  Not quite “shot” yet – but in definite need of protection.

He says I’ll have trouble hearing when the water’s running, or in a bar.  Well, I’ve been in trouble in bars before.

The doc says make sure the headgear’s on.  I will.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22

False Narratives

Many Americans buy into the story.  Bumbling, old, Joe Biden; stumbling around the White House, somehow just not able to get anything done.  If you’re politics are “right-er”, you might believe he’s being manipulated by the “Progressive/left”, maybe even the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic Party.  If you’re politics are “left-er”, you know for sure that’s not true.  You see Biden as the proverbial fence sitter, with a leg on each side, incredibly uncomfortable in the middle.

We like to think in generalizations, like the “untouchable” Donald Trump, who is never accountable for anything he did wrong. Or the constantly scheming Hillary Clinton, willing to do anything  to win.  Of course, neither is true.  Trump was the only President of the United States called to task by impeachment not just once, but twice.  He spent four years in office under extreme scrutiny, and now that he’s out, the “heat” is even greater.  

And if Hillary was such a great “schemer”, maybe she should have done exactly what her opponent did.  It wouldn’t take much persuasion to convince her voters that the 2016 election was “rigged”, just as Trump did in 2020.  I’m sure there were people around her that wanted to. And they had to be smarter than the clown-car of lawyers around Trump.  But she didn’t.

Legislation Done

There is an old saying (no – not another one of those essays!) – the proof is in the pudding.  So, with a little less than two years “in the saddle”, what’s the win/loss record for the Biden Administration?

The easiest place to start is in the Congress.  The President signs “bills” into “laws”, but he has a much greater role in passing legislation.  Biden brings one talent to the table that no other President since Lyndon Johnson can claim.  Biden knows how to get things passed through the Senate.

Let’s start with the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, a spending bill that didn’t add to our current inflationary issues.  Remember the “joke of the month” of the Trump Administration – “it’s infrastructure week”?  They said it again and again, but infrastructure never even got onto the floor for debate.   Biden took less than eight months to push it through.  And it wasn’t just roads and bridges. Included were upgrades to our power grids and the essential basics for transitioning to electric-powered cars, and vast improvements in our port capacities.

More Jobs, More Security

And that was after the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package.  We Americans can gripe about inflation costing us our pay raises in an economy with unemployment down to 3%.  It’s easy to forget the 15% unemployment and huge shortages of the Covid pandemic just a few months before.  But the American economy came out of Covid almost as quickly as we went into it. Biden was a big part of that.  Sure gas prices were half of what they are now.  But there was nowhere to go, so gas supplies were high and demand low. Honestly, inflation was inevitable, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, but it was also a tradeoff to avoid a pandemic depression.

And now Congress has passed the Chips Act to increase production of computer chips here in the United States.  That’s not just “another jobs” bill.  It protects the US national security, by  lowering our dependence on Chinese chip production.  And just this week,  the PACT Act, will not only increases veteran health benefits, but recognize their unique sacrifices in exposure to chemical hazards.

Legislation Coming

Coming up:  perhaps a diminished Build-Back-Better, but still the biggest climate change law proposed in American history.   And the bill more than pays for itself, making every corporation worth more than a billion dollars pay a minimum of 15% on its income.   And finally, Congress is doing the obvious.  Every private insurance company in the United States negotiates “deals” for purchasing drugs.  As a user of daily prescription drugs, the difference between my “out of pocket” (about $50) and the monthly retail cost (over $600) is amazing.  

Private insurance companies spend 42% of prescription drug costs.  The second biggest spender is Medicare, at 33%.  Add Medicaid, and the US Government spends 44% of total drug costs (KFF).  But, by law, Medicare and Medicaid are prevented from negotiated the same kind of drug “deals” that the private companies get.  They have to take what the drug companies give them.

This “baby” Build-Back-Better includes allowing the US Government to make its own deal for drug prices, at a huge savings to the American people.   The current plan “on the table”, pays for all of this, and adds hundreds of billions to pay down on the US National Debt. 

Legislation Missing

What’s missing from the Biden scorecard?  Incredibly important voting rights legislation, reaffirming the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond.  While the current majorities in both the House and the Senate are in favor of that, two Democratic Senators are unwilling to “break” the Filibuster in the Senate to get it passed.  What is possible on the voting front?  A bipartisan “repair” bill to fix some of the worse faults revealed after the 2020 election.  That’s the new electoral vote certification act, that already has enough Senate votes to end a filibuster.

And the affirmation legislation, necessitated by the now radically right Supreme Court majority.  What we thought was settled law about abortion and contraception; gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, now all seems “up in the air”.  Congress could pass laws making those rights nationally guaranteed, in fact, that is exactly what the Supreme Court is demanding.  The House has put forward women’s health rights legislation, including legalizing abortions, but the sixty votes in the Senate aren’t there.  There might be some hope for Senate passage of gay marriage legislation, but that’s nowhere near a “done deal”.  

In The World

Biden has led the revitalization of NATO, much in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.   And in Ukraine, the United States is the biggest supporter of the Ukrainian forces, holding the line against Russian aggression. 

As ugly as it was, President Biden also ended America’s longest war and got our remaining troops out of the impossible situation in Afghanistan.   Last week, he demonstrated that America’s withdrawal didn’t end America’s involvement in the region.  An “over the horizon,” incredibly precise strike against Al Qaeda killed their leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, on the balcony of a luxury apartment in Kabul.  There were no other casualties, no “collateral damage”.  

And Biden skillfully this week let China know that while we still respect the “One China” principle, the United States supports Taiwan’s autonomy.  His friend, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, demonstrated that resolve in her visit to Taiwan in spite of Chinese protests.

Early Summary

It’s been eighteen months since Joseph R Biden was inaugurated as the 46^th President of the United States.  His ceremony was surrounded by 20,000 National Guard troops. It was a show of force to protect against further Insurrection.  And much of America’s attention is focused on the ongoing efforts to undermine our national tradition of free elections.  Congress, and the Department of Justice, are deepening their investigations into what happened before, and what is happening now.

But that’s not been Biden’s problem.  Despite the political upheaval and the riveting testimony in the January 6^th Committee hearings – Biden’s gotten a lot done.  But there is plenty more to do,  And he’s not even halfway through his first four years.  

Election Day

In several states, yesterday was election day.  Here in Ohio, at least as a Democrat in Pataskala, there wasn’t much to vote on.  There were candidates for the Ohio Democratic Central Committee.  All the Democratic State Representatives and Senators here weren’t on the ballot, there was only  one candidate  running for each seat.  So there’s wasn’t much to “drive” me to the polls.

But in Michigan and Missouri, Kansas and Arizona there were massively important elections.  

Referendum on Abortion

Let’s start with Kansas.  With the end of Roe v Wade, The Republican legislature of Kansas wanted to ban abortions in the state.  But the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the State Constitution guaranteed the right of women to choose their health care, including abortion.  So the legislature decided to put a Constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot, allowing them to ban abortions.  

They did it in the August primary election, the least “attended” election in almost every state.  Like the failed strategy of “passing school levies” when nobody votes, the idea was that the Amendment would slide on through with only 10% of the voters showing up.

But Kansans showed up in droves, rivaling a Presidential election.  And the people of “red” Kansas, conservative Kansas, the Kansas of Bob Dole, did what they often do.  They surprised us.

Kansas has a Democratic Governor.  That’s great, but it has more to do with the fact that she ran against Kris Kobach, a candidate even the Republicans couldn’t stomach.  But to say Kansas is all Republican, all the time, just isn’t true.  And the people of Kansas made a statement yesterday.  While many of them might not support abortion, they voted to keep “choice” in the Kansas Constitution.  And they did  58.8% to 41.2%, with a turnout rivaling the 2012 Presidential election.

History Lesson

History tells us that the Party who wins the Presidency, loses seats in the Congress in the next election.  All of us history teachers know the “drill”; with the Senate tied and Democrats having a five vote margin in the House, Republicans should take over the Congress.  But the results of “red-red” Kansas should be both a warning and a lesson.  For Republicans, a warning:  the Roe v Wade overrule is going to drive folks to the polls, and they are going to vote against the Republicans who fought for it.  For Democrats, a lesson:  be smart, campaign against the “extreme” Supreme Court.  Hang it on the Republicans. 

But in Michigan, Missouri and Arizona; there was another lesson to be learned.  The Republican Party remains in the thrall of Donald Trump, the “Stop the Steal” lie, and willing to curtail democracy to maintain power.  In state after state, “dedicated Trumpers” were nominated to run for office, even against more moderate Republicans. 

Extremists

In Arizona, Mark Finchem, an avowed election conspiracy theorist who was on the steps of the Capitol participating in the Insurrection of January 6^th, is the Republican candidate for Secretary of State.  In states, the Secretary of State is the chief election official.  So now, in Arizona, one of the two candidates to be in charge of elections, believes that Arizona’s 2020 election, so often recounted and even “Cyber-Ninja’ed” and found to be correct, was stolen.

And in many other elections in Arizona and others, the Republicans nominated the most extreme candidates possible.  So voters in November will have a clear choice in those elections.  They can choose a 2020 Trumper, a Stop the Steal conspirator, a pro-Insurrectionist; or they can vote for the Democratic candidate.  And that’s exactly what the Democratic Party wanted.

Democrats want to run against the Supreme Court and for the Roe ruling.  Democrats want to run on what many would call “libertarian” values, letting people choose how they live their personal lives.  And the Supreme Court is giving them the issue, allowing state governments to determine who can make those choices, and who can’t.  

Foolish

But most of all Democrats would like to do what they did in 2018.  They want to run against Donald Trump.  In 2018 you might remember the “slow-motion blue Tsunami” that brought Democrats to power in the House and Nancy Pelosi back to the Speakership.  That was all a reaction to the 2016 election of Trump, and fell in line with the historic trends mentioned earlier.  And now with the nomination of so many Trump supporters to run as the Republican candidates, Democrats are getting exactly what they hoped for.

In fact, in some cases Democrats did more than hope. In Michigan (and other states) the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee played “hardball”, and actually ran commercials designed to support the most extreme Republican candidates.  Their reasoning was simple:  any Republican elected to Congress was going to vote for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, and generally back the Republican Party.  So Democrats might as well help Republicans choose the candidate easiest for a Democrat to defeat in the general election.  

So they’ve got it:  folks like Finchem and Lake in Arizona, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, Hershel Walker in Georgia, and even JD Vance in Ohio.  Democrats can contrast their moderate to Progressive views, to Trumpian extremes.

“The die is cast” as Julius Caesar would say.  2022 will be another election of extremes in the what historically will be called the “Trump Era”.  Democrats will likely quote Lincoln:

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Democrats can hope that it’s past time for all the people to be fooled.  Or to quote another great statesman, Peter Townsend of the Who, “We won’t get fooled again”. 

Nichelle

Nichelle Nichols passed away a few days ago.  She was eighty-nine years old, and died of natural causes.  Her death is sad, but it’s not a tragedy.  She lived a full life.  And while her name may be unfamiliar to many, she was a ground-breaking actor. She helped to shape our world.

Today’s story starts when I was nine years old, about to turn ten, in 1966.  There was a new series debuting on television.  Back in those days we lived in Dayton, Ohio, and television consisted of two stations – WLW-D (channel 2) and WHIO (channel 7).  WLW-D was “Dad’s Station”, he was the manager, and it was an NBC affiliate.  Thursday, September 8^th, was the beginning of a program that would literally change the world.  It did so much, that in one variation of another, it’s still running today, fifty-five years later.  It was called Star Trek.

While the characters in the show “…boldly go where no man has gone before”, the show itself was breaking ground in our own society.  From the very beginning, one of the lines crossed by Star Trek, was that of racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes.  Sure the Captain, James T. Kirk, was a traditional white male.  But his first officer, Spock, was an alien with a slightly green skin tone. And his communications officer was a Black woman. 

Uhura 

Her name was Uhura (it means freedom) and while she actually had a first name, Nyota, though we never heard it. The rest of the command crew:  Sulu (Oriental), Chekov (Russian, at the height of the Cold War), McCoy (a Southern white man) and Scotty (no surprise, Scotsman) were widely diverse for 1960’s programming.  

Nichelle Nichols played Uhura, a highly proficient communications officer, capable of communicating with the far corners of the galaxy through her technical prowess.  And she was the “model” of a Star Fleet Officer.  She was calm in a crisis, professional in her actions, and loyal to her fellow officers.  She had that unique characteristic of grace under pressure.

How important was her character?  She was one of the first Black women with a consistent role in a national series that wasn’t traditional or subservient.  Uhura didn’t “cook, wash or cleanup” on the Starship Enterprise.  She was an equal co-member of the crew, the first Black woman to have a critical position, week after week, journeying through the stars.

It wasn’t where Nichols saw her career going.  She was planning to leave the show and move onto Broadway.  But then a Star Trek fan (known even then as a Trekkie), had a private conversation with her.

Do you understand what God has given you? You have the first important non-traditional, non-stereotypical role.  You cannot abdicate your position.  You are changing the minds of people across the world, because for the first time, through you, we see ourselves and see what we can be”.  

That “Trekkie” was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Nichols stayed with the show, and the following movies, until the first generation of  Star Trek actors ended with Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country in 1991.  Their mission turned out to be twenty-seven years long.

The Franchise

The Star Trek franchise introduced us to alien captains, female security officers, Black, Oriental, Gay and even multi-gendered characters.  But the push for inclusiveness started with Nichelle Nichols. And it wan’t just because of her renowned interracial kiss with Captain Kirk on national television (they were forced to do it by evil aliens).  It was, and is, the common theme of the franchise. Race gender, and all of the other stereotypes really don’t matter.  That any person can take any role, and competently lead us into the galaxy, on a five (or fifty-five) year mission.

There have been thirteen full length motion pictures, eight television series, three cartoon series, and well over fifty games, from video to a Star Trek Monopoly.  The show is so integrated into our society, that the race to create a Covid vaccine was actually called “Operation Warp Speed”. And the newly created sixth branch of the US Armed Forces, the SPACE FORCE, has a Star Trek symbol as their emblem.  I’m not kidding, really, take a look.

I hope they don’t play the theme music as you drive on base – but they might!!

Learning from the Bridge

When the original television show ended and before the first series of movies began, Ms. Nichols sang with Duke Ellington and other big bands.  She always served as a recruiter for NASA, the real Space Program, helping to make the Agency more diverse.  

Sure, I’m a Trekkie, an original from September 8^th, 1966, just six days before my tenth birthday. I stayed true through the original series (and reruns) and The Next Generation all the way into the mid-1990’s.   While I got lost for a bit, somewhere between Deep Space Nine and Voyager, I did come back for all of the new movies, and the newer series:   Enterprise, some of Discovery, and all of Picard (available on Paramount right now).

And I still remember learning from Uhura on the bridge of the Enterprise, back in the sixties, as she had a conversation with Abraham Lincoln (that’s a whole other story).

LINCOLN:  What a charming negress. Oh, forgive me, my dear.  I know in my time some used that term as a description of property.

UHURA:  But why should I object to that term, sir?  You see, in our century we’ve learned not to fear words.

KIRK:  May I present our communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura.

LINCOLN: The foolishness of my century had me apologizing where no offense was given.

KIRK:  We’ve learned to be delighted with what we are.  The Vulcans learned that centuries before we did.

Nichelle Nichols died this weekend.  She was a force for change, in the twenty-fourth century she portrayed.  But more importantly, her efforts changed our own twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  She will be missed.

This is a continuation of a “Sunday Story” – about car stories.  No politics here, but lots of “stops” along the highway!!

The VW Life

The Squareback (Volkswagen Station Wagon – not a “Hippie Van”, that will come later) was the car of my college days.  For a ten-year old car it held up well, only completely breaking down a couple of times.  I did drive it around Washington, DC without a battery for a couple of months. But I found parking lots with slopes – and as long as I could park at the top, I could push the car into position, get it going downhill, then jump in the driver’s seat and “pop the clutch”.  Once the engine was going – who needed a battery anyway?

Besides, traffic was crazy and parking expensive in DC.  So I generally took the bus or the brand new Metro (subway) to work on Capitol Hill at the Longworth House Office Building.  Driving the rest of the time wasn’t a problem – as long as I didn’t want to stop.

In the winter of my junior year of college the engine blew again.  I was giving a ride to a friend from Cincinnati back to school at Denison on a sub-zero Sunday afternoon.  All of a sudden, the entire car was filled with smoke, and I quickly pulled over to the side of I-71, just past Fort Ancient where the Ku Klux Klan had their “training farm”.  I walked to the back, opened the door, and lifted up the engine hatch (remember, the engine was in the back).  Flames leaped out at me, and I quickly slammed the hatch shut.

A Cold Day

Sure the engine was on fire.  But the immediate issue was the freezing cold.  Ten below was serious, and while the fire warmed us for a minute, it wouldn’t last long.  We stood huddled on the side of the road, trying to decide whether to jump the fence and deal with the KKK guys, or walk the five miles to the nearest exit.  Luckily, a passing trucker noticed our plight, and pulled over to offer us a ride.  He took us in his eighteen-wheeler to the next truck stop.  My passenger called for another ride, and I arranged to have the Squareback towed back to Mom and Dad’s house.

It was right in the middle of the Winter Olympics.  I remember this, because Carlos (from next door) was a former professional skier.  So while we worked on the engine in the garage, we also kept track of the skiing competition on TV.  In fact, there were various engine parts that migrated into the family room as we worked.  It was warmer in there anyway.  

Cooking Engine Parts

Mom wasn’t too concerned about that.  But then, there were these two parts that were a very “close” fit.  In fact, it was so close that the “hole” had to be heated to make it bigger, and the “peg” iced to shrink it, so it would slide in the hole.  So when Mom found the pistons in the oven, and the wrist pins in the freezer, we finally reached the end of her patience.  We were banned to the garage fulltime. But we got the engine going once again.

It wasn’t mechanics that finally doomed the Squareback – it was rust.  After I graduated from Denison and began working at Watkins Memorial High School in Pataskala, there were these open holes in the floor.  That might have worked for Fred Flintstone, but winter in Ohio was too cold for that kind of ventilation.   I  even got frostbite on my accelerator foot on one long trip. So I started looking for my next “luxury” car.

Riding in Style

And I found it; a nine-year old Volvo.  It was the height of luxury; cloth seats, a big four door sedan, a trunk as big as my apartment; but still with a “stick shift” that could make it drive like a sports car.  And I now had another reason to want a bigger car – I was coaching, and needed to haul kids to meets from time to time.  No longer would I put nine in the car, but the Volvo could comfortably (and legally) hold six.

And the Volvo served me well for four years. Sure there was that one time when I was sitting in my apartment, watching the black and white TV, when someone urgently knocked on my door.  When I answered, they asked if the black Volvo was mine.  I said yes, then they calmly said it was smoking in the parking lot.  I ran down to find the entire wiring harness was burning out, a $700 fix for a $1000 car.  That was how I learned the lesson of “bad money after good”.  When you own used cars, you need to know when it’s time to “let it go”.  But I stuck with the Volvo for another two years.

The Last Trip

It was on a track trip that the Volvo finally convinced me it was done.  We were going to a meet in Dayton, a couple of high school kids and an eighth grader running in the Junior Olympics at Trotwood.  As we were passing through downtown Columbus, we hit a bump, and hard a big bang.  All of a sudden, the Volvo was much louder – part of the exhaust system was in the middle of I-70.  There wasn’t much to do, so we kept heading to Dayton.

When we reached the track, I noticed a huge “bubble” on the side of the tire.  The exhaust was now blowing directly on it, and partially melted the tire down.  But we had a meet to run, so I decided to deal with that later.  After the meet, I changed the tire, and bent the exhaust away from the wheel.  Then it was back in the Volvo for the trip home.  But something else was wrong.  The Volvo engine had two carburetors, but one of them decided not to work.  That meant that instead of four cylinders generating power, we were driving on two, about the size of a motorcycle engine.

We took the back way home, averaging forty.  When we finally got back to school, I knew it was time to go car shopping once again.  This time, it was different.  This time, I was looking for a “new” car.  

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22

To Spite Your Face

So here’s an old tale from the British Isles. Viking raiders landed in Scotland in 867 A.D., and were headed south. Saint Ebba was the Mother Superior of the convent at Coldingham, and was desperately worried that the Vikings would “defile” her nuns when they arrived. So, she urged them to cut their noses and upper lips, so that the Vikings wouldn’t find them attractive, and wouldn’t take their virginity. It worked; the Vikings found the disfigured nuns disgusting. So instead of any defiling, they trapped them all in the convent, and burnt the building, and them, to the ground. (I’m hoping getting her nuns immolated wasn’t how Ebba earned her sainthood, but I bet it was).

So that horrible tale is how we got the expression that my English mother often used:  “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”.   Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell must not have had an English mother.  Last week, he found the perfect way to “cut off his nose”, and, like the tragic nuns of Coldingham, he managed to burn his whole Party.

Holding the Bag

The sequence of events went like this. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made a deal with the House Progressives back in October. The Progressives agreed to vote for the Biden infrastructure plan. In return Schumer and the Senate Democrats agreed to pass the Progressive supported Build-Back-Better plan by “budget reconciliation”. That allows the fifty Democrats in the Senate and the Vice President to bypass the inevitable Republican filibuster.

The House Progressives voted, and the infrastructure bill became law.  But when Build-Back-Better reached the Senate, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia balked and refused to vote for it.  Since the Democrats have exactly fifty votes and depend on every Democrat to pass legislation, Manchin’s refusal meant that Build-Back-Better was dead.  The House Progressives, got left holding “the bag”. (So that’s another expression from England – when a bunch of thieves stole things and got caught – there was always one in possession of the stolen stuff – left “holding the bag”. That was the one the went to jail or the gallows.)

Progressives were, to use a more modern expression, “salty”, but still continued to support the rest of the Democratic agenda.  Their noses “remained intact”.  (“Salty” is a US expression, supposedly from the 1920’s referring to sailors with hot tempers who become “unexpectedly enraged”. They worked in the sea, therefore they were “salty”). 

Wrench in the Works

Meanwhile, Schumer, Manchin and Biden continued to negotiate to find some way to pass parts of Build-Back-Better, even if Manchin couldn’t agree to the whole package.  Several times in the past few months they’ve been close to a deal, but Manchin always “torpedoed” it in the end.  Democrats all over the country began to look at Manchin as the biggest block to the Democratic agenda, though there were fifty Republicans who also served that purpose.  But somehow Manchin always was the one “throwing a wrench in the works”.  (I figure torpedoes and wrenches are pretty self-explanatory). 

That all came to a head a few weeks ago.  Biden publicly rebuked Manchin, but Schumer remained quiet, still trying to get something done.  Then Schumer and Manchin had a public rupture, each angrily telling the press their side of the story.  It seemed, this time for sure, all the pieces of Build-Back-Better were done for, at least until after the November elections.  That put a black cloud over the entire Democratic Congressional body. Historically, the Party that wins the White House loses ground in the Congress two years later.  With the Senate tied, and the House narrowly Democratic by five votes, any losses would mean Republicans take control.   No Build-Back-Better, No possibility of a Democratic majority, at least in the House.

No Brainer

Democrats desperately needed some legislative “wins” to campaign on.  But Manchin seemed entrenched in his opposition to any Build-Back-Better proposals.

In order to solidify Manchin’s intransigence,  McConnell made it clear that Senate Republicans wouldn’t support anything, even bills they themselves wanted to pass, if Schumer tried to pass any Build-Back-Better proposals by budget reconciliation.  So Manchin and Schumer went silent.  The Senate passed the Pact Act, a bill for US veterans who were victims of the military “burn pits” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it went to the House for approval.  

Schumer then proposed the “Chips Act”, giving companies incentives to build computer chips in the United States.  It was a “no-brainer” bill for both parties.  Democrats got jobs in the United States, Republicans got money to corporations.  Everyone was happy.  They could go out and tell their constituents they “helped”. (No Brainer – a problem or situation that does not require any thought or use of brain matter to come to the correct conclusion).

Who’s Salty Now

Then Manchin and Schumer pulled an “upset”.  The day the Chips Act passed the Senate, they reached an agreement for a $700 billion “baby” Build-Back-Better.  It was written as a finance bill, making it eligible for the fifty vote budget reconciliation process, and was exactly what McConnell wanted to prevent.  But Chips was already going to the House for confirmation.  This time McConnell was left “holding the bag”.  

So it was McConnell’s turn to be “salty”.  Now McConnell is known as a brilliant tactician, and no one; not Schumer, not Biden, not Manchin expected McConnell to “cut off his nose”.  But that’s what he did.

The House made minor changes in the Pact Act, requiring the Senate to reconfirm its passage. McConnell had forty-one Republicans vote against it, filibustering its approval. He got Republicans to vote against American veterans who were disabled because they were in contact with poisonous fumes during war. To be clear: the Leader of the Republican Party led his Senators to vote against American warfighters, as those veterans, dying of cancer, stood on the Capitol steps. McConnell didn’t just slit a nostril, he removed the entire orifice.

Burn It Down

The veterans were more than “salty”; they were besides themselves (a Biblical reference, Acts 26:24 meaning really, really, angry).  And they were represented by comedian Jon Stewart, who was quick to profanely point out how two-faced the Republicans were (a reference to the Roman God Janus, who had two faces and could say two different things at the same time). 

So for the past four days, McConnell and the Republicans have had their “feet held to the fire” (you get that one).  Stewart and members of the Veterans’ groups put enormous pressure on the Republican Senators to change their vote on the Pact Act.  And not surprisingly, Schumer will give them the chance to do so, on Tuesday.  

If Republicans switch and vote for the bill, they caved into pressure. If they stand firm, they estrange themselves from veterans throughout the country, and give Democrats another talking point.  McConnell has already “cut off his nose to spite his face”.  Now he has to decide whether to let veterans burn his whole party down too.

Promises

Joe Biden won the Presidency by campaigning for a list of issues.  One of the biggest complaints about Biden’s Administration is that, so far, he hasn’t “come through” on his promises.  There’s lots of reasons: narrow margins in Congress, ongoing Covid pandemic, Covid and international economic dislocations, the machinations of a rabidly conservative Supreme Court.  But Biden fell prey to a politician’s greatest weakness. He made promises he couldn’t keep.

Of course, that’s not completely fair.  Biden kept his promises about Covid recovery.  In one of his first acts, he managed to squeak a final Covid relief bill through. It cost $1.9 trillion and every single Republican voting against it.  And he also came through on every legislator’s favorite – infrastructure.  Even some Republicans jumped onboard the infrastructure bill, worth $1 trillion for improvements throughout the United States.

The List

Check off Covid relief and infrastructure.  So what other issues are on the list?

Voting rights are perhaps the most important, and the biggest Biden Administration failure (so far).  Two companion voting rights acts passed the House of Representatives. Those bills would undo much of the Republican retrogressive restrictions passed in the states.   A full fifty Democrat (plus the Vice President) majority in the Senate were in favor of passage of part of those bills. But there were two Democrats who refused to “break the filibuster” to get them done.

In the end voting rights were a “big fail”.  Not only will many Americans not be able to vote because of that failure. But on a practical political level, many of the Americans left out would vote Democrat.  

The other issue on the list that so far has been missing in action is student debt relief.  Forty-three million Americans own $1.6 trillion in student debt.  The weight of that debt holds back the economy, with thirty-somethings making loan payments instead of mortgage payments.  And while there’s plenty of argument; “they had their eyes open when they signed for those loans in the first place”, it is generally agreed that student loans were made at near predatory rates, without regard for any future ability to repay.   There has been some forgiveness for the most egregious “for profit” universities. And the promise of loan forgiveness for community service is finally being fulfilled.  But for the vast majority of debt holders, there’s still the monthly payments to Sofi, Mohela, Great Lakes, or the other servicers.

Build-Back-Better

And until yesterday there seemed little hope for lowering drug prices, raising taxes on corporations, improving the environment, reducing the national debt, or reducing other costs in health care.  All of those ideas were popular, and part of Biden’s big plan, “Build-Back-Better”.  But they also fell to the filibuster and two Democrats unwilling to change that “tradition”.  

There have been ongoing negotiations between one of the two Democratic roadblocks, Senator Manchin of West Virginia, and the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.  But a couple of weeks ago, it seemed that Manchin walked away, dooming any further advancement of the Biden agenda in 2022.

Meanwhile, there was a bipartisan bill called the “Chips Act”, that would increase incentives for corporations to build computer chips (and other electronics) in the United States.  This came about after Covid, when China shutdown production of computer chips, and the US found there were no alternative sources.  It wasn’t only economically inconvenient, but was a national security issue.  The United States needs to have domestic sources for computer chips.

Surprise Deal

Minority Leader McConnell threatened to filibuster the Chips Act if Schumer put forward any part of “Build-Back-Better” as a “budget reconciliation” bill that could not be filibustered.  But with the failure of the Manchin negotiations, that point was moot.  So yesterday the Senate passed the Chips Act. Seventeen Republicans joining almost all of the Democrats (Bernie Sanders was opposed).  

Then the big surprise – Manchin and Schumer reached an agreement on a “baby Build-Back-Better”. 

Instead of the $2 trillion cost of original Build-Back-Better, it actually raises revenue by over $300 billion.  It does that through a 15% corporate minimum tax, closing interest loopholes, increasing IRS enforcement, and most importantly, allowing the Government to negotiate Medicare drug prices (like every insurance company does).  It reduces the government deficit by $300 billion, even after it pays for the other provisions.  

And what gets done?  It extends the Affordable Care Act subsidies through 2024.  And it budgets $370 billion towards energy infrastructure and climate, with a $4000 tax credit for low and middle income individuals to buy electric cars.  And there’s tax credits for energy saving home improvements, and $60 billion for clean energy incentives to corporations.

Chips and More

Is it everything Biden wanted in Build-Back-Better?  Of course it’s not.  But it does start to check the boxes.  It lowers health care costs, addresses environmental concerns, and gets corporations (like Amazon that paid $0 income tax) to pay their fair share of taxes.  And it will pass through budget reconciliation. There’s no opportunity for a Republican filibuster.

And since the Chips Act is already passed in the Senate, McConnell can’t hold it hostage.

It was just lucky happenstance that Manchin and Schumer reached their agreement, hours after the Chips Act was passed.  I’m sure everyone was acting (performing?) in good faith when Manchin walked away from negotiations.  

Nothing is final.  Senator Sinema of Arizona still will have her say.  And Republican Senators are now calling of Republican House Members to vote against the Chips Act.  Of course, Democrats have a clear majority there, and there is no filibustering in the House.  So, if everything holds together, “…the good Lord willing and the river don’t rise”, Biden will get to sign the Chips Act, and the “Inflation Reduction Act”, baby Build-Back-Better.  

Computer chips, health care costs, corporate taxation, climate change, even government deficit:  Biden will get to check a whole lot of boxes.

It couldn’t happen at a better time.

Democratic Choice

There’s lots of reason that the election of 2020 was critical, and that weren’t all about Donald Trump.  Say what they might, but Democrats had a wide choice of candidates.  They had the old “radical”, Bernie Sanders, who surprisingly appealed to the younger members of the Party.  There was the “shining star” candidate, Pete Buttigieg, the brilliant young mayor, veteran and gay man who represented “the future”.  There were the tech-millionaires, Andrew Yang and Tom Styer.  And there were all the Senators; Klobuchar, Bennet, Booker, Harris, Warren and the others who “legitimized” the field with their traditional experience. Of course, since we’re Democrats, we had our “far-out” candidates, Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson.

And then there was the most traditional candidate, the thirty-six year Senator, eight-year Vice President Joe Biden.  Tradition is the world – he represented the “next in line” in old order politics, the “President in waiting”.  He had three problems:  he was old, he always stumbled, and he was “old order” in a “new world”.  

But that’s who we nominated, the “old (and old)  order” candidate.  Regardless of all the lies and the nonsense of “Stop the Steal” by the Trump campaign, that’s who won the election by seven million votes.  The best argument that we can make – Americans wanted to go back to “normal”, choosing a Warren G Harding type candidate (elected in 1920 after all of the upheaval of Woodrow Wilson, the first World War, and the League of Nations debate).  America wanted to “return to normalcy”. 

Old Order

That’s not necessarily what Biden wanted to do.  He entered office with a transformational Franklin Roosevelt type New Deal program.  But that wasn’t “normal”, and the narrow Democratic margin in the Senate allowed the prototypical “old order” Democrat, Joe Manchin, the power to stop anything (and everything).  That’s the definition of “normal” in American politics.

But there are “new order” Democrats who are tired of operating under the “old order” rules.  One of them is Sean Patrick Maloney, the Congressman from New York, and Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  His job is to maintain the Democratic majority in the House, a daunting task.  Tradition, the “old order” way, says that the Party that wins the Presidency loses seats in the House in the next election.  And since Democrats only have a five vote majority, it wouldn’t take much to lose control of the House.

Maloney is a prime mover in the plan to not only choose good Democratic candidates for Congress, but to also help Republicans choose “bad” candidates to run against them.  The idea is this:  if Republicans run “normal” candidates, then the “normal” history will happen, and the Republicans will end up in the majority and Kevin McCarthy will be Speaker of the House.  

Electoral Equations

Something out of the normal has to happen. In mathematical terms, you have to change the equation to get a different answer.  And here’s how some Democrats are doing it.

The 2021 Governor’s election in Virginia was the primer.  The Republican, Glenn Youngkin, ran on a traditional Republican platform.  He distanced himself from Donald Trump, even as he still campaigned on many of the issues that were “Trumpian”.  He came across as a “old order” Republican.  And he was running against an “old order” Democrat, former Virginia Governor and Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe.  So the “old order” equation held firm:  the winning party of the Presidency traditionally loses the Virginia race in the next year.  And Democrats lost.

How to change the equation?  Don’t let the Republicans run “old order” candidates.  And how could Democrats possibly impact who Republicans are going to nominate for office?  Help out the ones they want to run against.

The Republican Party is smaller than it once was.  Some “old order” Republicans have eschewed the Party of Donald Trump, and are now “Republican leaning” Independents.  So they don’t vote in Republican primaries anymore.  The majority of the current Republican voters still support Donald Trump and all of the ideas that come with him.  

But the majority of all the voters weren’t willing to vote for Trump in 2020.  The theory goes:  if Republican run avowed Trump acolytes, they’ll win in the primary, but they lose in the general election, if faced by a “normal” Democrat.  So to change “the equation”, Democrats are helping the most extreme Republican “Trumpers” get nominated.  

Choose The Opponent

The House election for the Western District of Michigan is a good example.  Republican Congressman Peter Meijer voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Insurrection.  Meijer is an “old order” Republican, conservative but definitely not a Trumper.  He is running in the primary against John Gibbs, an acknowledged Trumper.  Democrats are “on the air”, paying for ads saying that Gibbs is “too conservative” and “too close to Trump” to represent Western Michigan.  Of course, in the general election against a Democrat, that’s a completely legitimate ad.  But it’s running now, in the primary, and is likely to motivate Trump-supporting Republicans to come out and vote for Gibbs against Meijer.  

Democrats don’t want to run against Meijer.  They want to change the equation, and run against the extremist, Gibbs.  Democrats are putting their “money where their mouth is” and paying for ads to run in Western Michigan, now.  And that same kind of effort is happening in many districts all over the country.

And it’s not just the House elections.  John Fetterman of Pennsylvania (a “new order” Democrat) is running for Senate against “Dr Oz”, supported by Donald Trump.  Tim Ryan of Ohio (another “new order” Democrat) is running for Senate against financial manager and author JD Vance, supported by Donald Trump.  They got what they wanted, a fierce contest with a “Trump Republican”, not an “old order” Republican.

(Need an example of an “old order” election – look at Ohio’s gubernatorial election, with “new order” Democrat former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, against “old order” Republican Governor Mike DeWine. DeWine is heavily favored).

That’s not the “old order” way, nor the “normal” way to win elections.  There are many who would say it’s not even “fair”. But it’s not “normal” times, no matter how badly we wanted to “return to normalcy”.  It’s a high stakes gamble:  run against the most extreme to maximize the chance of winning.  

For the sake of the nation, just hope they don’t lose.

World Market

The United States has the largest economy in the world.  And our economy is completely integrated into the world market.  The keyboard I’m banging was made in China, the t-shirt I’m wearing in Honduras, the LL Bean “wicked good” moccasins that I live in are from Australia.  And the Starbucks coffee that is permanently attached to my right hand (or by intravenous connection to my right arm) is grown in Costa Rica.

It’s easy for Americans to focus on our internal issues.  From gas prices to the fate of our Democracy, we worry about ourselves first; the rest of the world second.  But  the fact is that everything happening in the world impacts us as well.  So while we think a lot more about Roe v Wade or the rise in gun violence in our cities, we can’t just ignore what’s happening outside of our borders.

Wheat and Maize

Let’s talk about wheat.  Wheat is a basic food source. Whether “they” eat bread or cake, “they” need wheat to do it.  The world top exporters of wheat are:  Russia (20% of the export market), Canada (14%), the US (14%), France (9%) and Ukraine (9%).  The world’s top importers of wheat:  Egypt (10% of the world market), China (7%), Turkey (5%), Nigeria (4%) and Indonesia (4%) (OEC).

The war Russia is waging in Ukraine impacts everyone.  Many nations are boycotting Russian goods, and Russia is doing its best to keep Ukrainian wheat from going onto the market.  That impacts 29% of the world wheat market.  And since wheat is a basic world commodity, it impacts the cost of the piece of toast I just ate for breakfast, or the bun on that McDonald’s cheese burger you had for lunch.  Less wheat on the market, means the cost of wheat for everyone goes up.

Corn (some call it maize) is even more critical.  The United States leads world exports with 37%.  But Ukraine is third with 11.4% of exports (Russia is less than 2%) (World Top Exports).  And corn doesn’t just go on the table for human consumption.  As you drive across Ohio, most of the corn (now elbow high by the end of July) is feed corn, meant for livestock not your dining room table.  Take 11.4% of the corn off the world market – and prices go up for that, and all of the other food commodities that eat it to get to your refrigerator.

Covid Continues

China is still battling Covid.  Just this month, the Chinese government shutdown the city of Xian (population – thirteen million) because of the new Covid Omicron BA 5.2 variant (CNN).  Xian is a major exporter of computer software, lighting equipment and auto parts.  And there largest trading partner is, the United States.  So Covid is still driving economic dislocation.  Maybe it’s why your car is still in the shop waiting on parts, or your paying premium prices for the new light fixtures for the remodeling you started during the Covid crisis here.

The Russian War

The war in Ukraine is grinding on.  The Russian strategy seems to be to wait for the rest of the world to “grow weary” of the cost of supporting Ukraine.  That cost isn’t just the price for artillery or rockets, it’s the cost to the citizens of the United States (and the rest of the world) for their basic goods.  We are all sharing in the battle to stop the Russian invasion of a sovereign nation.

The Russian economy is wrecked from the sanctions, but Russian propaganda is doing its best to keep the world, and its own citizens, from talking about that.  Instead, they make “a deal” to let Ukraine get their wheat on the world market, then launch a missile attack on the docks where that grain is stored.  Or they hold an American athlete hostage.  Anything to distract from the real price the Russian people are paying for Putin’s “adventure” in Ukraine, 15,000 troops killed, perhaps three times that many wounded (WAPO).

Who’s to Blame

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is touring Africa, blaming the United States for rising wheat and corn prices.  If the United States would just lift economic sanctions on Russia, he says, then the cost of the wheat and corn would come back down.  And that’s true, but for the “cause and effect” of those sanctions.  If Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine, there would be no need for sanctions.  Lavrov hopes that the African nations will overlook that little factor.

It’s likely to get uglier before it gets better.  Just now, Russia is announcing that it will reduce the natural gas flow to Europe in half, to 20% of full capacity (Reuters).  The people of Europe are participating in the war against Russia, through their own financial sacrifices.  How long they, and we, are willing to hang on, may determine the fate of the Ukrainian people, just as much as Ukrainian victories on the battlefield.

Ukraine Crisis

• A Full Plate – 7/26/22
• Ukrainian Independence – 6/30/22
• No Victory Day – 5/10/22
• Desperate Moves – 4/27/22
• This is the Time – 4/20/22
• The Winning Message – 4/18/22
• Victory Day – 4/12/22
• Chapter Two – 4/11/22
• Zelenskyy’s Choice – 3/31/22
• The Gaffe – 3/28/22
• Putin’s Choice – 3/27/22
• Far Away From the Front – 3/20/22
• The Next Step – 3/17/22
• Thinking the Unthinkable – 3/14/22
• Russian Oil – 3/11/22
• Kyiv’s Choice – 3/8/22
• The Logic of Madness – 3/7/22
• Lights Out – 3/6/22
• Ante Up – 3/3/22
• State of the Union  3/2/22
• The Guns of March 3/1/22
• Sanctions 2/26/22
• What Happens Next 2/24/22
• The Games Begin  2/22/22
• Talking with a Friend 2/18/22
• Trip Wire 2/2/22
• On the Brink 1/23/22
• The Ukrainian Dilemma 12/5/19

Sit Rep

Monday, July 25^th:  it’s “Christmas in July” day – if that’s a thing for you.   Here’s the daily gas report.  For all those worried about inflation:  the cheapest gas within ten miles is $3.70, down over a dollar from two months ago (Sam’s Club).  And if you want to know a more “average” price, look here in Pataskala, the home of all those little Amazon vans driving the fuel demand up. It’s $4.29 just down the street, almost sixty cents more than Sam’s, but still down from the $5.00 mark –  Merry Christmas. 

Forty percent of the current inflationary pressure is from fuel costs.  So fuel going down is a good thing, even if you don’t drive.  It’s likely to mean that other prices will start to come down a bit as well.  But prices are “sticky”, they go up easier than they come down.  Everyone along the chain is happy to take a little bit more profit for a bit.  So don’t expect the price on sliced cheese or bread to drop right away, but it’ll happen eventually.

On the News

The cable news feels like all-Trump, all-the-time again.  The powerful information coming from the January 6^thCommittee is driving a lot of that, but in the back of my head I still hear the warnings of 2015.  Donald Trump said it; “(I)t’s better to be bad news than no news”.  His goal was to keep his name “up front”, that was his definition of “winning”.  On that basis, he’s definitely winning right now.  I had the forlorn hope that after the Biden inauguration somehow Trump would be like that “old soldier” and fade away.  But that won’t happen.  Instead, the United States must have a “truth and reconciliation” moment with the reality of not only Trump, but all of the ugliness he dredged up in American life.  

It’s not that he created anything, but he altered the “environment” to allow so much of that ugliness to the surface.  What was unacceptable behavior just a decade ago, now seems to be just fine.  Drive down Main Street in my Pataskala – and see the “F**K BIDEN” flags hanging on the porches.  People may have thought that about Bush or Obama, but they didn’t put it on the front porch for every eight-year-old to see.  

It’s Personal

I heard a bit of Pete Buttigieg’s interview from the Sunday news shows.  When asked how he felt about the Republican Congressmen who voted against putting gay marriage into actual law (instead of depending on the Supreme Court), he had an interesting answer.  Pete is gay,  married to Chasten, and they have two young children.  The Secretary of Transportation described how on Sunday morning he gave Chasten a break, and took care of the children’s breakfast.  It was a typical young parent scene:  the high chair tray wasn’t sitting just right, and Pete was trying to keep the cereal in the tray, as he sliced bananas and got milk ready.

He testified to Congress on Friday about highway funds and other transportation issues.  It was a bipartisan discussion:  Republicans and Democrats alike want the roads in their districts fixed.  Everyone was working together.  Then the Republicans he was working with, left that meeting and went to the floor of the House to vote against Pete’s marriage, against his family and against his life choices.  For him, and for many, it’s not just politics; it’s personal.

Courage under Fire

I also got to see snippets of Liz Cheney’s Sunday interview on Fox News.  There are few substantive political issues where I could say we agree, but she is absolutely a woman of courage.  The Fox commentator claimed that the Committee was unfair, without “real” Republican representation.  Point by point, Cheney laid out why “those” Republicans chose not to be a part of that process, and how the committee today was a result of that abrogation of duty.  And she made a telling point:  did anyone really think that former Attorney General Bill Barr or the other witnesses would somehow “wilt” under a Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz “cross examination”?  That didn’t seem likely.

Sunday on the Track

So Sunday was not necessarily and “uplifting” day for me.  That is, until Sunday night.  It was the final night of the World Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon.  Hayward Field has been the center of American track since the 1970’s, and Oregon alumni Phil Knight, Chairman of Nike, has made sure that the new facilities there are the best in the world. 

I was a head track coach, and like a father of a family, I had to love every event “equally”.  No kid on my team could feel that I didn’t care about their efforts and struggles.  But I have to admit, there were two events that always had my focus:  the pole vault, and the 4×400 relays.  And last night, for the final night of competition, was the finals in both of those events.

The United States Track team has been disappointing for a number of years.  Part of that is the world “catching up” with American track and field.  Eight athletes from eight different countries may line up for a race, but they all went to college here in the USA; UCLA, or Florida, or Arkansas (and of course, two of this year’s World medalists went to “little” Ashland University, just an hour up the road).  So American coaches and advantages are shared worldwide.

But the Tokyo Olympics were truly disappointing for the US team.  Only seven gold medal winners, and 26 total medals in the games just felt like a huge letdown, matching the silence of the pandemic Tokyo stadium.

Tracktown, USA

Hayward Field was the exact opposite these last two weeks.  The stands were packed, with seating strategically placed to support individual events venues within the stadium.  And the crowd was “stoked” and knowledgeable.  They (including some of my good friends – just a little jealous) knew when it was time to listen, and when it was time to cheer as hard as they could.

And the US team came through, thirteen golds and a record thirty-three total world medals.  Last night, was a perfect ending.  The American men literally ran away with the 4×400, the team coaches perfectly putting the right athlete in the right position.  A collegian ran the anchor leg, far out ahead of the rest of the field, to bring the baton home.  The best runner, 400 world champion Michael Norman, ran second, hammering out a lead that the rest of the field could never overcome.

And on the women’s side, they US made a last minute change as they came to the starting line.  Former 400 hurdle world record holder Dalilah Muhammad was injured during warmup.  Dublin, Ohio native Abby Steiner stepped in at the last minute to run the second leg of the race.  The US had the lead from the start, and Abby ran one of her best splits to hold up her end.  And on the final leg was perhaps the fastest woman in the world, current 400 hurdle record holder Sydney McLaughlin. She literally ran seconds faster than any other woman in the field to bring the baton home for gold.

The Final High

And what about the pole vault?  The American, Chris Nielsen, cleared 19’5” to earn the silver medal.  But it was twenty-two year old Mondo Duplantis, the pole vaulting prodigy raised in Louisiana and vaulting for Sweden, who took the gold.  He ended the night, and the championships, by clearing a height higher than any man had cleared before, 20’4 ½”.  That vault broke his own world record, and while it’s hard to see him wrapped in a Swedish flag instead of the Stars and Stripes, the Hayward Field crowd cheered just as loudly.   

For just a moment, politics weren’t front and center.  Sometimes we need some moments of joy, to interrupt our world.  The track championships had all that and more, a Christmas in July for me.

Here’s another in the “Sunday Story” series. A break from politics – just stories, this time about mechanics, cars, and driving adventures.

Oil Change

Yesterday I changed the oil on my 2004 Jeep Wrangler (or in “Jeep-speak” a TJ).  That’s not a big thing, I’ve been working on cars since I got a driver’s license.  I can still “turn a wrench”, at least for the simple maintenance stuff.  Most car mechanics left me behind when it required a computer to “diagnose” an engine, but changing oil hasn’t evolved much.  It was good to get my hands dirty.

I’ve never been a “new car” guy.  I owned thirteen cars in the almost fifty years I’ve been driving, and only two were new.  The rest were somebody else’s troubles.  Adventures with my cars (and vans, trucks, and SUV’s) often revolve around a piece falling off, or a critical part breaking, or, the worst, the engine catching on fire (twice).  

The Fury

It started with my first car, when I was sixteen years old.  In 1973, I paid my cousin $250 for his 1969 Plymouth Fury III. It seemed like an “old car”, and my cousin drove it hard, with over 200,000 miles on it. That was the result of his selling artificial flowers across a territory that stretched from Kansas to Indiana, Wisconsin to Missouri.  And it didn’t work, at least not well.  Starting the car created a cloud of dark smoke.  Even then, it felt like we were changing the environment for the worse each time I turned the key.

But our Cincinnati neighbors were more than happy to teach me the “fine art” of engine repair.  On one side was Carlos Phillips.  Carlos was a sales manager for Monsanto, but on the side was constantly repairing and refining his two, classic ‘356’ Porsches (1955 and 1956).  On the other side was Tom Morgan, a more practical Proctor and Gamble engineer.  Tom fixed cars all of his life, and was more than willing to pass on the knowledge to an eager young driver/mechanic.

So we rebuilt the Plymouth engine in Tom’s garage, with Carlos lending a hand, and my Dad falling asleep against a tire leaning on the wall.  I learned all about blown gaskets and warped heads, torque wrenches and “cheater” bars.  And, when things weren’t going just right, Tom had a P&G Engineering tool – a ballpeen hammer.  Sometimes a bolt just needed a little more persuasion – just a “rap” or two would do it.

Side note – it’s Dad’s birthday today. He would be 104. He’s been gone for six years now and I miss him still. He wasn’t a car guy – but he wanted to support what I was doing. Happy Birthday – Dad!!

Riding in Style

We put the Plymouth into driving shape, and it was my “ride” in high school, and the first year of college.  It drove like a “boat”, with two huge bench seats.  After my freshman year at Denison University, my summer job was a “day camp” for 11 and 12 year old boys.  I had as many as eight, but that was no problem for the “Fury”.  Five in the back, and four in the front, plus me, and we could go anywhere.  Seatbelts – well there were a couple in the front seat – none in the back. Cars only had to be equipped with them at all in 1968.  We cooked out at the local parks, and went on “road trips” to museums.  The “Fury” was our dependable ride.

During my college sophomore year the Fury’s engine blew again.  It was time to send it to “the car farm”; you can’t sell a broken car.  So I gave it to Dad, who donated it to the Goodwill and took a tax break.  The last ride of the Fury was from the house to the Goodwill, smoking enough to create global warming, and finally quitting just as I pulled into the parking lot.  I glided to a spot and handed over the keys.

The Squareback

Carlos let me “kibbitz in” on some of his Porsche work, and I fell in love with the four cylinder engines in the back that you could almost pick up by yourself. The four-speed stick shift on the floor made driving fun.  I could never afford a Porsche, and the next best thing was a Volkswagen.  But there were two problems with that.  First, I needed more room than the Beetle offered.  I had to move back and forth to school, and would spend my junior year of college doing a lot of travelling.  I worked for the Carter/Mondale Presidential campaign in the fall, then studied at American University in Washington, DC in the spring.

But Volkswagen made a “station wagon” that they called the Type III, a Squareback.  It was the perfect car for me, with enough room to put all of my dorm stuff inside (the couch was strapped to the roof).  And it still had that little air-cooled four cylinder engine in the back, almost just like Carlo’s Porsches, and “four on the floor”.  I found a white, 1967, all ready for me.

The second problem was Mom.  Mom was British, and was a “spy” in World War II for the Special Operations Executive.  She still bore a grudge against the Germans, serious enough that I wasn’t sure I could bring a German-built car into the driveway and survive the experience.  We had to have some serious discussions about the War (after all, it was thirty years ago) and how some things changed.   She wasn’t happy, and seldom took a ride in the Squareback, but she grudgingly agreed it could have space in the driveway.

Blown Engines

The first time I “blew” the Volkswagen engine was on State Route 37 south of Granville.  I was passing a truck, going down the big hill.  A car was coming, faster than I thought, and I forgot to shift from third to fourth.  I got around the truck, then realized that I was “red-lined”.  The little engine was screaming, and I quickly popped it into fourth gear.  But it was too late.  The Squareback got me onto I-70 and ten miles west towards Columbus, but started smoking just at the Reynoldsburg exit.  I managed to pull of the Brice Road exit, and coast into the Shell station.  

Mr. Spangler, the owner, was about to head home for the night, but was willing to tow me back to Granville.  We stopped and got a twelve pack of beer on the way, and shared a couple as he told me about his home nearby in Pataskala. I didn’t know much about it at the time. He dropped the car in my dorm parking lot.  I called Cincinnati and told them I wasn’t going to make it home for dinner.

Advanced Study

Dad came up and got me the next day, and I borrowed his “back up” car, a red 1969 Cutlass, for a couple weeks.  That’s how I drove the Volkswagen engine parts to the store, as I rebuilt the four cylinder engine in my dorm room.  It probably wasn’t “acceptable” by the student code, but I wasn’t the first to do it.  A guy a few doors down rebuilt his engine, but while he was working on it, his car got “loose” and went down the hill into the woods behind our dorm.  So he was stuck with an engine as room furniture and no car to put it in.

It took three weeks, a week to tear things apart, a week to get the parts machined, and then a week to put it all back together.  And there was probably some studying going on too.  But the Squareback would “ride again”;  to Washington DC and back, through a blizzard in the Pennsylvania mountains, and even around the hookers in Times Square in New York City.  

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22

The Hallway

It is more than painful to watch.  Police officers, standing in the hallway, checking phones and equipment, conversing in whispers; as the shooter stands amid the dying and dead children behind the classroom door.  It took seventy-seven minutes to go through that door.  There were near four-hundred police officers at the school, but it took seventy-seven minutes to be “the good guys with guns against the bad guy with a gun”.  The Columbine lesson from more than two decades ago was known by every officer there:  don’t wait.  But wait they did, and kids and teachers died, that may well have lived if the “protocols” were followed and they went straight through the door.

Some claim it was a failure of courage, that every man in the hallway was a coward.  But, it’s never that simple.  One officer had his gun taken away and was escorted from the building.  His wife was dying in that classroom, and they were concerned he would “go in” without permission.  Of course, that’s exactly what they all were supposed to do.

Leadership

It wasn’t a failure of courage, of all three hundred and seventy-six officers.  It was a failure of leadership, at the highest levels.  Sure, the Chief of the Uvalde Independent School District Police, a force of six, should have taken charge.  He even wrote the policy that said it was his job.  But he failed to do so.  So it’s on him.  But it’s also on the dozens of Texas State Police who were on the scene in minutes.  Their chief, Steve McCraw, the grizzled old man so quick to place blame on a teacher for an open door that wasn’t, didn’t order his men in, not even the vaunted Texas Rangers.

And there were dozens or more of Federal Border Control agents.  They were used to being around the school.  Uvalde is at a major crossroads within 100 miles of the border.  Border Control was constantly in the area, looking for what they called “bailouts”, fleeing migrants.  In fact, there is now evidence that the Uvalde school was “locked down” so many times because of “bailouts”, that a “lock down” order lost its urgency. Where was their commander, ordering them through the one classroom door to take out one man?  

Teachers and children died because of a failure in leadership. All it took was one person, one “leader”, to say go, and those officers in the hallway would have done what they ultimately did anyway. They would have gone through the door, and “taken out” the shooter. There was no lack of courage, there was lack of leadership.

It’s called dereliction of duty, failing to do what you are by your “job”, supposed to do.  And we’ve seen it before.

The Insurrection

On January 6^th, Donald Trump, 45^th President of the United States, encouraged an armed mob to march on the Capitol Building.  His speech started at noon, and was over an hour long.  But before he was even done, the “mob” around the Capitol was breaking through the outdoor barriers.  Just after his speech ended, at 1:30, the final outdoor protections to the building were breeched.  Meanwhile, the Congress, in joint session, was meeting to confirm the electoral votes.

Just after 2:00 pm, the windows were broken, and the mob entered the Capitol.  Soon the Vice President and the Speaker were escorted from the Chambers, and the building went into “lockdown”.  But there was no locking down a building that was already breeched.  At 2:24 Donald Trump sent a tweet saying:  “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” It was gasoline on a fire.

At 3:36 the White House press secretary tweeted that, at the President’s direction the National Guard was on the way. But it wasn’t until 4:17 pm that the President “tweeted” a video, telling the mob:

“I know your pain. I know your hurt. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated. … I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.”

And, it wasn’t until 5:40 pm that the first National Guard troops arrive at the Capitol Building (NPR).

Preserve, Protect and Defend

It was three hours and seventeen minutes from the beginning of the attack until the President of the United States responded.  We watched all three hours and seventeen minutes “live” on television.  So did he.  But, like the leadership at Uvalde, he did nothing.  

There is plenty of evidence that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, intentionally caused the Insurrection at the Capitol.  And there’s even more proof that he tried to subvert the election, and the “peaceful transfer of power”.  But there is one, single, incontrovertible, damning fact.  The President takes an oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.  And for over three hours, he did not.

Like the Uvalde Chief and the Texas Director:  Donald Trump was derelict in his duty.