Resolution Checkup

At the beginning of this year I wrote about my plan for 2013. Primarily, it was about striving to live in the moment, neither obsessing over yesterday’s mistakes or worrying about tomorrow’s problems, but simply living all in, in the moment. As January winds down, its time to access my progress. Unfortunately, to do so would require me to obsess over yesterday’s failures so,…just kidding.

The first book I read this year was an autobiography of the quirky knuckleball pitcher from the New York Mets, R.A. Dickey. I’ve been fascinated with his story, a journeyman career minor leaguer who finally makes it to the show in his mid thirties then becomes an unhittable 20-6 as a thirty eight year old, practically unheard of in Major League baseball. Well, it turns out this this book wasn’t about baseball at all, rather it was about the amazing story of a guy who overcame the most horrible childhood imaginable, and with the help of an intense faith and otherworldly commitment to excellence manages to become a great pitcher. Along the way he climbs Mt. Kilimanjaro, for the fun and thrill of it. Ironically, one of the keys to his success is his learned talent for living “all in the present”. For Dickey that meant blocking out the two minute old memory of watching a hitter launch one of his pitches 400 feet into the left field stands for a three run homer quickly enough to be totally committed to his next pitch. No small feat. It’s the same with all great athletes. To be great requires an extremely short memory. The golfer who hooks his drive into the water, the quarterback who throws an interception, the point guard who misses a free throw, all have to quickly regain their composure because the game doesn’t end with one mistake, the next opportunity is coming up and they better be clear-headed and focused, not beating themselves up over what happened two minutes ago. Thankfully for the rest of us, life isn’t that dramatic.

The second book I read was Jon Meacham’s amazing biography of Thomas Jefferson, “The Art of Power”. This is the third biography of Jefferson I have read so I’m familiar with the subject, but in the expert hands of this Pulitzer Prize winning writer, he comes alive in new and fascinating ways. What has stuck me in this reading is the sheer intensity of the life Jefferson lived. It’s as if he determined at birth that he was going to wring every last drop of vitality out of his time on earth. He was going to see all that he could possibly see, learn all there was to learn, build all he could build, grow, plant, cultivate, imagine, discover, all while the day was called day. Thomas Jefferson was an architect, a planter, a writer, a philosopher, a musician, a scientist, a botanist, spoke five languages, and managed to serve his country as a Governor, an ambassador, Secretary of State, Vice-President and President. Reading about Jefferson always produces in me a sense of shame at my comparatively meager ambitions. The mere existence of a guy like Jefferson makes it difficult for me to lay on the sofa eating beef jerky, watching ESPN, without debilitating guilt. Thanks, Tom.

The point of all of this is, if one could combine the commitment to the moment of R.A. Dickey with the zest for life of Thomas Jefferson, one could do a lot worse in life. The good news is, so far this year, it’s working for me. I have been largely successful in living in the moment. My problem in the past hasn’t been beating myself up over failures as much as worrying too much about the future. So far, I’ve been able to let go of tomorrow for the most part. Tomorrow will come regardless of the amount of time I devote to it’s planning. For me, it’s not one day at a time, it’s more like one minute at a time.

I have been given much in this life. For reasons unknown to me, God has blessed me with success. Living in the moment with gratitude and wonder seems an appropriate response.

Snow Conspiracy?

They are calling for snow today. “They”, of course, are the weather forecasters on all the local channels, plus the people over at the Weather Channel. As is usually the case, this particular snow storm has been talked about since last week, such is the science of modern meteorology. Effective in 2013, the big shots in the weather world have decided to start naming snow storms like they name hurricanes. This particular storm must not be very menacing because as of this hour it is nameless.

Here in my corner of the cosmos, snow is greeted with a combination of childlike glee and unhinged panic. At the mere mention of snow in a forecast, hordes of west-enders descend on every grocery store west of the Boulevard, gobbling up every loaf of bread and gallon of milk on the shelves. I have long suspected that there was something nefarious about this spectacle. If the Ukrop’s brothers weren’t such fine upstanding Christian men, I might think that perhaps money was changing hands between the grocery titans and the weather forecasters in town.

Bobby Ukrop: Hey Jim. Uh, listen, we’ve had a pretty slow January over here, and we’re in a bit of a bind since we’re way overstocked on bread and milk. I was wondering if you could help us out.

Jim Duncan: Bobby, I’m surprised at you! You think you can just call here and ask me to cook up a phony snow forecast just so you can move some groceries?! I am a professional meteorologists for God’s sake, I have a reputation to think about, I have..

Bobby Ukrop: I’ll give you $25000 and a life long supply of White House rolls.

Jim Duncan: Done.

　

With the explosion of the internet in recent years, Richmond weather geeks have a new place to go for wild weather rumors. There’s this guy on Facebook with the initials DT. He runs some sort of weather consulting business for farmers and commodity traders. For 9 months of the year he labors in obscurity, but when winter arrives, he becomes a rock star. His Facebook page blows up. He’s famous for making outlandish forecasts of blizzards when the local TV guys are calling for a dusting. Like the proverbial broken clock who is at least right twice a day, DT has built his reputation on being famously right twice…three years ago. Ever since then people have considered him the go-to guy for snow. I hear him on the radio whenever snow is in the forecast, and more often than not he’s explaining why the local TV weather people are fools. It doesn’t seem to matter how often he’s fabulously wrong because he was the guy three years ago who nailed those two storms that nobody else saw coming. What a gig!

Well, I’m prepared for whatever comes our way today. There’s milk in the fridge, bread in the pantry, and as long as we don’t lose our internet connection, lots of great entertainment on DT’s Facebook page.

Dunnistan's First International Crisis

It has been brought to my attention that while the government of Dunnistan is more than adequately staffed with women, there is a disturbing lack of ethnic diversity, in point of fact, the number of minorities in my administration equals zero, about as undiversified as you can get.

While it certainly was not my intention to present to the world a monochromatic face, as it were, never let it be said that Dunnistan is not sensitive to politically correct notions of fairness and diversity. Some have suggested that Dunnistan’s lack of minority representation reveals latent racism. Nothing could be further from the truth. To assuage the concerns of the global community, I hereby announce the following appointments.

Like all other central governments in the world, mine is constantly expanding, whether it needs to or not. New employment opportunities sprout like daffodils in the spring here in Dunnistan. Just yesterday for example, it was pointed out to me that we have no liaison to the Asian community. It fact we have no liaison to any community and didn’t even know one was needed until I read in “Nation-Building For Dummies” that to get along in the modern world, it is vital to reach out to all corners of the globe to seek out alliances. This revelation has presented me with a golden opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. My sister-in-law, Rizaline happens to be Fillipino, and about as friendly and kind as any citizen of Dunnistan. She will be a perfect Ambassador at Large. In addition, her son, my nephew Sean, is half Fillipino, so his appointment to the newly minted position of Secretary of Rock and Roll and Brightly Colored Shoes should be well-received by the world diversity police. I am also considering creating a job for my Niece’s husband, Ruaridh, since he’s originally from Scotland. But I must first get a ruling from the United Nations as to whether he qualifies as a minority. If so, then Dunnistan will have minorities in 3 of the 11 positions filled so far, a sparkling minority representation of 27%!!

This founding father business if exhausting.

The Speech

As promised, I didn’t watch any of the festivities yesterday. I spent quite a productive day at work, a very good thing, but as a patriot I felt compelled to at least find a copy of the speech and read it. So I did. Google is a wonderful thing.

President Obama has been elected twice now. He is the clear choice of a majority of my fellow citizens. He is entitled to his views and is free to push his agenda as he sees fit. Much of his speech featured soaring rhetoric, the kind that he is known for. Naturally I disagreed with much, though not all of it. However, two lines captured my attention. They jumped off the page and attacked me. Seldom have I heard such fabulous nonsense come from the mouth of a President, any President.

“ The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”

Where to begin? Ever since I have been a working adult I have been taxed 6.2% of my pay for Social Security and 1.35% for Medicare. The reason I have been charged this tax is precisely because these programs were designed NOT as welfare, but rather a benefit that citizens pay for. The reasoning has always been, from Otto Von Bismarck forward that government programs of assistance must never be viewed as entitlements by the citizen because if they were it would produce sloth and freeloading. Thus, the citizen pays in to the system and “earns” the benefits he later receives. My Social Security benefit is not a “commitment” I have made with my fellow citizen, it is a commitment that my government has made with me. I pay in to the system, and the government promises to not screw around with my contributions and further promises to pay me when the time comes for me to collect. Because of government malfeasance over the last 50 years, these programs have morphed into gigantic unfunded liabilities and with all due respect they are indeed “sapping our initiative” not to mention our national bank account. In thirty five years time by every prediction model used by either political party, the entire federal budget will be spent paying for these three programs and the interest on our national debt. If that doesn’t “sap our initiative”, what on earth will?

“ No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”

　

What the hell is he talking about? I have never met a single, solitary soul who believes that “ a single person” can do any of these things! This is why people have banded together for, oh, four thousand years of recorded history, to do things as a group that cannot be done individually. To the President, there apparently are only two options when confronting problems…”one single person” or a huge, leviathan government. Has he never heard of civil society? Is he unfamiliar with local associations like churches, charities, Kiwanis clubs, PTA’s? Must every social ill be the soul province of Washington? This is the Life of Julia writ large. That little cartoon put out by his campaign depicted a single woman from birth to death relying totally on a benevolent government at every step of her life as if she had absolutely no where else to go. In the President’s view of our country, the government can and should be the fount of all solutions. The problem is, we are stone cold broke, and our benevolence comes at a cost. No where in his address did the President hazard a plan for the how this great society plans to pay for any of this. All we got from this speech was…bad things happen in life, and your government is going to be here to make everything better, no matter how much money it takes.

OK. Good luck with that.

An Inaugural Lament

Today is Inauguration Day. I won’t watch, since I’ll be at work, but I probably should. I did watch last time. I watched Jimmy Carter’s, and the first Ronald Reagan one, and the first W. one I think, so I have a spotty record.

Today is also Martin Luther King Day, and I won’t be participating in any memorial activities honoring him either. I have nothing against MLK, just as I have nothing against George Washington or Abraham Lincoln when I completely ignore them on President’s Day. See, since I’m not a teacher, or a government employee, and since I don’t work for a bank or the Post Office, I don’t get the day off with pay. I’m one of those greedy evil guys you hear about on the news who works for himself, and let me tell you, my boss is a real jerk.

Don’t misunderstand, owning your own business has it’s benefits. You never have to ask for a raise, never have to ask for time off, never have to worry about getting fired. I’ve never once in 30 years been sent home for being inappropriately dressed. So, I’ve got those things going for me.

But being your own boss has its drawbacks. I have no one to blame for my failures. I don’t have sick pay. I’ve never taken a paid vacation. I have to provide my own health insurance, and it’s terrible. There’s no employer’s contribution to my retirement plan, and I have to pay both halves of my Social Security tax. But, the worst part is that I have to be a success every single week or there’s no paycheck. Well, not exactly “no” paycheck, but rather a greatly diminished one. There is no room for failure or even slumps because the effect is immediate. 30 years ago, I traded relative safety and stability for independence and potential. When friends get laid off from their jobs, I think I made the right choice. When I endure a slump and have nothing to pay myself, I’m not so sure. But I made my choice. It’s a free country.

30 years ago, guys like me were celebrated. We were called entrepreneurs, risk takers, the drive-shaft of the engine of commerce. Now we’re vilified as greedy, self centered and unpatriotic, mostly by the men and women who will fill the grandstand behind the President at today’s ceremony, and especially by the President himself. He won reelection largely because there are far too few of “us”, and we are an easy target. Fair enough, it’s a democracy after all. But forgive me if I don’t participate in the festivities today. I’ll be busy trying to make enough money to pay my “fair share”. Trouble is, after paying the Feds on the 15^th, my State on the 27^th, my property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, licensing fees to all the States where my clients live, business taxes, errors and omissions insurance, and after trying to dig out from under six years of putting my two kids through college, there just isn’t much left. And yet when I look at the sea of faces behind the President on that grandstand today, I will see an average net worth per capita of somewhere around 5 million, and it is these people who derisively call me…rich.

So, I harbor the President no ill will. I wish him every success over the next four years. We could use some success about now. But, no, I won’t be tuned in today. I’m a little busy here.

Dunnistan. Fully Staffed and Open For Business!

My brother left me a message on my phone yesterday, indignant that I hadn’t named him the Secretary of State of The Republic Of Dunnistan. My nation isn’t two days old and I’ve got my first diplomatic challenge. After re-reading yesterday’s post it occurs to me that I should flesh out the infrastructure of Dunnistan, since I left you with precious few details about the makeup of my State, and here in Dunnistan, we pride ourselves on full-disclosure. In fact our motto is, “Dunnistan, the only Nation with no State secrets.”

OK, my Secretary of State is my brother Donnie. This was a no-brainer since he’s always been someone who hates conflict and avoids it at all cost. Since my entire defense apparatus consists of one Daisy Powerline 35 BB gun with one 2400 count plastic box of ammunition, Donnie will be severely restricted should he get the urge to invade another country. Donnie will also be my point man at the United Nations. Since the Gross Domestic Product of Dunnistan is only $250,000 I’m sure we will be in line for some sweet no-interest loans from the International Monetary Fund.

I’ve decided that we don’t really need a Secretary of the Treasury. I mean, all the money we need is generated out of thin air in the basement, and it never has to be paid back, and even if it did, we would be paying ourselves back, so what’s the point?

The population of Dunnistan is limited so those who serve in my administration will have to wear many hats. For example, My sister Linda is my Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Surgeon General. She’s the most tenured nurse in the family so, she’s qualified. My other sister Paula serves as my Attorney General and Press Secretary, and Secretary Of Education. Although she isn’t actually a real lawyer, she has led 25 groups of talented and gifted students to victory in mock trial competitions during her 30 year teaching career. Close enough. Anyone who knows Paula knows that she will be the greatest Press Secretary of all time. After the first press conference, every reporter in the room will cower in fear at the back of the room rather than risk asking a “perfectly ridiculous question!!”

My daughter will be the Poet Laureate, and my Son will head up the National Endowment for the arts. Since Dunnistan is all about endowments, thanks to our handy printing press, the arts will flourish.

That leaves an awful lot of jobs to be filled by the First Lady…as follows.

Secretary of the Interior

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Secretary of Agriculture

Technology Czar

Secretary of Organization

Common Sense Czar

Welcome Wagon

She’s in charge of the interior of all State buildings( my house ), she keeps the nation organized with her epic computer skills, she welcomes all visitors with grace and cheer, a multi-tasking government official if ever there was one.

One more thing. In the spirit of always creating new government jobs and continuing the time-honored tradition of nepotism, I have created a new post, the Secretary of Fixing and Repairing Stuff. This position will be jointly filled by my two brothers-in-law, Bill and Ron. Seeing as how the executive branch of my government has very limited truly useful skills, there will be much work for them to do.

There. A fully functioning nation, complete with a working bureaucracy, staffed by cronies of the President. We are ready to roll and open for business!

The Republic Of Dunnistan

I want to be a country. I would like to become my own nation. I could name myself The Republic of Dunnistan, or Dougalia. There would be some great benefits to such a move, not the least of which would be immediate access to waterfront property( an office at the United Nations ). But the real reason I want to become my own country is financial. I want to be able to loan money to myself.

As just plain me, I always have to worry about money. Let’s say I’m bringing home $10,000 a month, but I’m consistently spending $15,000 a month. For Doug Dunnevant, this is a problem. I’m eventually faced with tough choices. I either have to find a way to come up with more income, or I have to cut my expenses back, or some combination of the two. But, for The Republic of Dunnistan, I would just go down to the basement, crank up my Federal Reserve printing press and within a few minutes, I will have loaned myself enough money to cover my shortfall and then some.

Being my own country would be awesome. I’ve even designed a flag. It would have a bright yellow field with a giant smiley face in the center. Why shouldn’t I be deliriously, single-mindedly happy? With that printing press in my basement, there wouldn’t be anything I couldn’t do, nothing I couldn’t buy, no limits to my capabilities. I could dream big because there would never be any limits, just crank up the machine.

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The award for Liar Of The Week goes to Lance Armstrong. It was a close vote with Manti Te’o giving him a run for his money. Lance went on Oprah and admitted that he had doped his way to seven Tour de France titles. The fierce and angry denials of the past ten years were theatre. The personal and legal destruction of everyone in his path over the past ten years was “regrettable”. I thought maybe there would be tears and uncomfortably painful contrition. There were no tears and nothing that even resembled contrition. It was as if he decided to throw us all a bone, “Ok, yeah, I cheated. Can I go now?” The biggest mystery is what on earth was he trying to accomplish. If he was trying to present himself sympathetically, he failed. Confessions only bring sympathy if they seem heartfelt and if the confessor seems personally devastated by his own behavior. He was neither. LIVEWRONG, Lance.

　

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President Obama signed 23 executive orders this week in a ceremony at the White House surrounded by cute 8 year olds. These particular cutie-pies had written him letters after the Sandy Hook tragedy asking him to “do something” about guns. The President even let them read their letters. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against 8 year olds. I was one once and I hear I was pretty cute myself. My own two kids were positively enchanting at 8. But, it always creeps me out whenever I see any politician surround himself with the kiddies when he is signing legislation. Not only does it look manipulative, it makes me think that I’m being head-faked. “No, no… pay no attention to what I’m signing, look over here. Aren’t these kids adorable??” Besides, I’m thinking that one shouldn’t write laws based on the desires of children precocious enough to write letters to the President. On the other hand, maybe the Republicans should take some notes. The next time they vote against deficit spending, perhaps they should call a press conference and march little Johnnie out to read this statement…

“Mr. President, my name’s Johnnie, and I’m here to ask you not to borrow anymore money. I’m 8 years old and my share of the national debt is already over $50,000. If we keep borrowing money at this pace, by the time I’m old enough to be President myself, there won’t be a country left to be President of. And while you’re at it, could you please do something about the vending machine at my school? Some idiot took out the Snickers, and M&M’s and replaced them with carrot sticks and Wheat Thins. That’s like, so stupid!”