Lucy and the State of the Union

I have taken my first sip of coffee. I have turned on the gas fireplace and settled on the sofa. I begin to read the news from overnight. I hear Lucy jump off the bed upstairs, then the harried, frantic sound she makes bounding down the stairs. In a graceful flash she leaps up to within a foot of my face, presenting me with this...

If she could speak, what is it that she is asking me...for this is assuredly a questioning face. Those eyes can burn holes through you. She is unrelenting in her staring powers. 

1. "Why so glum Dad? How about we go outside and wrestle?"

2. "You feel bad, don't you? You should eat something...how about a sock?"

Instead, I tell her she's a very good girl, then I scratch her belly. Soon, she leaps down and disappears back upstairs, having completed her mission. It's the same thing every single morning. She is dependable, true as the North Star. She simply must check on me and gauge my welfare each morning. Maybe it worries her how serious I become when I read the news. She probably wonders why I do it. She doesn't understand responsibility, she doesn't even know what I do for a living. All she knows is that every morning I look into my iPad screen and turn glum. Lucy doesn't do glum. She's a dog and therefore...glum-free.

This morning I read the President's SOTU speech. Yeah, I know...I could have watched it on TV last night. But, I haven't watched one since Bill Clinton vowed that the "Era of big government is over!" Don't think I've ever recovered from that bold-faced lie. Besides, the optics of the SOTU are infuriating to me, the grandstanding, the phony stagecraft, the blank faces of the Vice-President and the Speaker to either side of the President, the props that Presidents increasingly now bring with them and set in the gallery to illustrate some point. All of it is nauseating in a very bi-partisan way. I much prefer Thomas Jefferson's decision to send the SOTU to Congress in writing, which every President after him did until Woodrow Wilson started all of this anti-republican pagentry.  So, I read the speech. I have no comment on the thing other than the observation that it sounded odd to me that this President would bemoan the lack of civility in our politics one minute and then a minute later suggest that his political opponents are controlled by "hidden forces." So, apparently, for this President civility is defined as agreeing with him. Thanks for clearing that up!

Anyway, this was his last SOTU, and it sounded like it. All of the angst that Americans are feeling is the result of things that happened before he took office, in his telling, and every good thing that has happened over the last seven year, both actual good things and things that perhaps only he thinks are good, are due to his brilliant mind and pure heart. Fair enough. If I were the President and I was giving my last SOTU speech, I would have pitched it the same way. 

Still, had it been up to Lucy, I wouldn't even have read it. I would have been outside wrestling in the mud with her!

Angry Old Man?

For the past couple of days I have been savoring a new book, a collection of Peggy Noonan columns called The Time of our Lives. She and I have had a weekly appointment for the past twenty years or so. She publishes her syndicated column in the Wall Street Journal, and I read it. I never miss one. Ever. Ours is not a sycophantic relationship. We sometimes disagree. But her writing is so glorious, so wise, I simply cannot stay mad at her for long. If you were to ask me who I wish I could write like, my answer would be...Peggy.

But this blog is not about Peggy Noonan, but something she wrote, that when placed beside Mr. Ricky Gervais' performance last night at the Golden Globes demands comment.

Writing about the death of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Noonan said this:

"She had manners, the kind that remind us that manners spring from a certain moral view--that you do tribute to the world and the people in it by being kind and showing respect, by sending the note and the flowers, by being loyal and cheering a friend. She was a living reminder in the age of Oprah that personal dignity is always, still, an option, a choice that is open to you. She was, really, the last aristocrat. Few people get to symbolize a world, but she did, and that world is receding, and we know it and mourn that, too."

Ricky Gervais is certainly not the first person in show business to trade in the put down. I grew up watching Don Rickles skewering Hollywood types on the Johnnie Carson show. But, Don Rickles was constrained by the times he lived in. If he descended into foul mouthed F-Bomb throwing, he would have been finished. Not so Mr. Gervais.

I will not here catalogue the carnage from last night. You can Google it yourself. And honestly, part of me always enjoys any opportunity I get to watch the Hollywood elite get cut down to size, so for that I suppose I should thank him. But, as I watched his act and thought of Peggy Noonan's words, I became overcome with sadness.

Watching him playing for laughs the suggestion that an old man might come out on stage and perform a sexual favor on him...or yucking it up about what he uses his Golden Globe statuette for back home-- it is on his bedside table, after all-- is to be reminded anew that I live in a very different country than Jackie Kennedy did. While personal dignity might still be an option for us in 2016, fewer and fewer of us are taking it.

I find myself longing for grace and a touch of class now and then. I see a publically drunk Cameron Diaz and long for Grace Kelly. I see Kim Kardashian and dream of Audrey Hepburn. Was she even real? 

I suppose that this post makes me sound like the old guy yelling at the neighborhood kids to "get off my lawn!!" Fair enough. Not everything in 2016 American entertainment is bad, just as not everything about an older America is worthy of nostalgia. But, there is a coarseness today, a creeping meanness, where rudeness is mistaken for charisma. We see it in Hollywood and on the campaign trail. If manners and civility have somehow become bourgeois, and if they have been replaced by the ugly and garish...well, we are the worse for it. Sorry, not every hip new trend is worthy of celebration. Gervais, and those like him should shame us. And they would if we could remember what shame was.

Conviction Without Courage Is Cowardice

Conviction without courage is cowardice.

These words came to me last night as I was sitting in a Starbucks in Occoquan, Va. waiting for the traffic on 95 to die down. I was reading the Washington Post and then the New York Times, then my cellphone news feed...you have to wait a very long time for the traffic to die down in Occoquan.

There were stories of good people doing nothing while innocent people were victimized. There were stories of decent people being railroaded by a tiny contingent of malcontents demanding their way or the highway, dressed up bullying. Other stories spoke of learned men and women who should know better, giving in to the shrill, unhinged demands of pampered children whose combined life experiences could be shoehorned into a thimble. Everywhere, it seemed, loud and angry people were demanding this and that while beleaguered adults looked on helplessly unable or unwilling to push back. 

Some will say that the problem in our day is that we have lost our moral compass, having rejected absolute truth, having no longer a North Star, we have been set adrift in a sea of moral ambiguity. To which I say...bull****. Sure, maybe a few cloistered academics have fallen for the everything is relative claptrap, but the average Joe knows evil when he sees it. The problem is not that we have no convictions, the problem is that we have lost our confidence in them. Without the moral courage that convictions demand, we have become moral cowards, passive bystanders watching a small pack of losers taking over the world.

Then I read a story about the Trump campaign. He has opened his mouth at a campaign event and some fresh absurdity has proceeded out of it. But it hits me at a Starbucks in Occoquan that Donald Trump has captured lightning in a bottle. His seemingly fearless attack on political correctness, his willingness to say whatever he thinks, consequences be damned, resonates with a people who have grown accustomed to standing on the sidelines passively taking whatever the elites have dished out. Trump has given voice to the morally timid, the bystanders of modern life. They hear him saying harsh things, even rude, dehumanizing things...and it pulses with something that has slipped away from them over the last fifty years...power.

But if conviction without courage is cowardice, what is courage without conviction? Donald Trump may indeed have courage, but to what end? What exactly are his convictions? It's terribly hard to tell at this point. How would the man govern? Would he be conservative? Fiscally prudent? To his supporters does it even matter? For me, nothing could possibly matter more. For, although it is a good thing for a man to have courage, if not enlisted in the service of moral conviction yields terrible results. 

Two famous motivational speakers, Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar used to debate what was more important, education or motivation? Zig would say, "You've got to motivate people first, Jim. You can always educate then later!" Jim would reply, "No Zig, if you motivate an idiot, all you will have is a motivated idiot who will arrive at disaster quicker!"

While conviction without courage is cowardice...courage without conviction is chaos.

My Trip Into Hell

Today, I have three appointments north of Fredericksburg. That's right, I will be spending roughly six hours of my day in what everyone else in the Old Dominion refers to as Northern Virginia. For those of you not familiar with the idiosyncratic nature of Virginia rivalries, let me attempt to enlighten.

Virginia is a very proud State. We are quite proud of the preeminent role that our State played in the founding of this nation, we are the Mother of Presidents, after all. We are,oddly, even proud of the roll we played as the most powerful and influential State of the Confederacy, for what that's worth. Virginia is full of proud people...proud and aristocratic. There's a lot of old money here. We fancy ourselves as the most genteel of states, that embodiment of our most beloved son, Thomas Jefferson's agrarian ideal. But somehow along the way, something went terribly wrong. That something is Northern Virginia.

Sometime around the 1940's with the arrival of FDR and his New Deal, the power and reach of Washington began to mutate. To accommodate this growing monolith, suburbs began to explode in size and garishness. This army of technocrats, functionaries, hangers-on, and sundry bureaucrats had to live somewhere, and who in their right mind wants to live in DC? So, suburbs like Alexandria, Arlington, Burke, Lorton, Centreville and Reston were transformed from sleepy little hamlets to buzzing centers of activity inhabited by people most assuredly not form Virginia!! To accommodate their commute, construction began on a bee-hive of beltways, bridges, off ramps, loops and towering six lane highways that literally has never stopped. 

So, here's how things are going to go for me today. I will take the Short Pump ramp onto interstate 95 around 11:30. It will take me about 50 minutes or so to make it to Fredericksburg, a 53 mile drive. Then, just north of this, last truly Virginia city on 95, I will begin to notice a sea of red tail lights ahead. That means it has begun. The 46 mile drive from Fredericksburg to the Occoquan exit will take about an hour and a half. But that's the easy part of my trip. Once my last appointment is over, it will be around 5:30 in the afternoon. The roughly 100 mile drive back home will take anywhere from 3 hours to a day and half.

My brother has lived just over the border in Gaithersburg, Md. for the past twenty years or so and has had to fight this insanity on a daily basis. The fact that he has not killed one of his fellow commuters is a miracle. No wonder people who work in Washington are always in such an angry  mood! Maybe if our nation's capital was in Key West, there wouldn't be so much partisan hostility...and we Virginians could have the top third of our State back!

Yes...There Are Ads on My Blog.

Ok, so regular readers of this space will notice something different about the Tempest since January 1. Yes, although I've been writing here for five years now, I finally decided to allow the fine folks at Google Adsense to run ads on my blog. You've probably noticed them on the top right and bottom of each post. The main reason I haven't done it before now is the fact that I have no control over what kind of ads are run. So, I was worried that suddenly some giant flashing neon ad for an erectile dysfunction drug would wind up emblazoned across the top of my blog!! But I was assured that nothing like that would happen, so I've decided to give it a try. If after a month I find that it isn't A. Worth it, or B. Just too annoying, I'll stop doing it.

Here's the thing though...although I'm a fairly competent businessman, I have no clue how this Adsense business works...at all! I have been bombarded with charts and graphs and introduced to an entirely new vocabulary, from page views to impressions, to clicks, and an entire host of abbreviations like rpm and avv, none of which anyone has bothered to define and explain. The thing I can't figure out is how these people decide which ads run on which post? For example, the other day I wrote a blog about the mess in Oregon with the ranchers who took over a bird sanctuary, and a Michelan tire ad popped up....??

Apparently the blog earns money based on the number of times readers click an ad...I think. Whether or not anyone actually buys anything seems to be inconsequential...I think. So far, after five days, I've made 67 cents...I think.

So, if you run across an ad that isn't particularly obnoxious, click on it. It will be a good thing for me if you do...I think. If The Tempest starts making actual money, maybe I'll let the readers pick a charity for me to donate to, or even better, maybe I'll make a political contribution to whichever candidate will tax me least!

When Good Things Happen to Good People

I have a friend who lives in another state. We don't see each other a lot and seldom get a chance to talk, but it doesn't seem to matter. He's still a good and dear friend. He has been a tremendous influence on my son over the years, one of those wonderful people who arrive on the scene in the lives of your children at a crucial time and make all the difference. Every parent knows what I'm talking about. The fact is, I can never repay him for the devotion and the wisdom he has poured into my son.

Anyway, several years ago my friend went through a divorce, later on in life than is common. I felt terribly for him. He never was one to whine about it, but whenever we talked, I could tell he was lonely. Regardless of how he may have been feeling, it never impacted his work. He is a teacher/musician, and what he produces is magical. I marveled at how he could go about his work with the same boundless enthusiasm and passion despite his loss.

Years have passed since then. A year or so ago we were at a party together and he was telling me how terribly awkward it was trying to meet people at his age. He sounded like he was almost ready to give up and move on into the rest of his life single. But, my friend is the kind of man who God had in mind when he said in the book of Genesis, "It is not good that man should be alone." All I could think to say to him was..."You just never know when someone might come along. It usually happens the minute you stop trying to make it happen. God's timing is probably better than yours."

Last fall I was sitting on the sofa checking out the Asian stock markets at 6 am, when my cell phone lit up. Who in the world could possibly be calling me at such an ungodly hour? It was my friend...and he had news that just had to be shared, no matter what the clock said. He had met a woman!

I listened to him tell the story as only he can, with all the hilarity and joy of a school boy. When I hung up the phone I remember thinking that I knew no one on Earth who deserved it more.

Then, just last night he called again, this time to inform me of their engagement and the mythically romantic way it came about. It was a tail that would have made Shakespeare jealous. I put him on speaker phone so Pam could hear it. It is a beautiful thing to hear a man so full trying desperately to express the gratitude of his heart for his good fortune.

I hadn't had a particularly good day. It had been full of conflict and anxiety, the type of worry that overtakes you in the business world at times. But my friend's call changed everything. Suddenly, I had forgotten the cares of the day. All I knew was that something awesome had happened to a very good man.

Scripture tells us that we are to "rejoice with those who rejoice." You know why? Because it's a great feeling when good things happen to good people!

How To Get Yourself Killed

The Chinese economy has slowed to a crawl, prompting a 7% sell off yesterday and a 20 billion dollar cash infusion this morning by the Chinese government. Stock markets around the world took their cue from China yesterday and sold off dramatically. Today, indications are that the sell off will continue. Saudi Arabia has withdrawn diplomatic recognition of Iran as the Sunni-Shia rivalry in the Muslim world escalates, providing an answer to the often asked question...the Middle East couldn't possible get worse, could it? Meanwhile, a group of ranchers are holed up in a federal facility in Oregon, promising violence against anyone who tries to dislodge them. Back in Washington, our government proceeds spending roughly 11 billion dollars every single day, even though they collect only 9.7 billion in revenue per day. Our current national debt is a little over 18 trillion dollars. Nobody, no political party, no Presidential candidate has any earthly idea how to pay that kind of money back. At the current rate of spending and the new trajectory of interest rates, in a few years we are going to have trouble just servicing that much debt. 

The weird thing is that 34 years ago when I got into business, our national debt was a mere 1 trillion, and everyone was freaking out because we had never seen a debt with that many zeros. Back then interest rates were through the roof, CD rates were 10-12%. My first home mortgage was over 13%! I remember some of the older guys in the business wondering whether or not we were about to go into a depression. We didn't. And now our debt is 18 times higher than it was then. So, I guess that when my liberal friends laugh at me for worrying about deficits and debt, they have a point. 

Still, I find it very difficult to think that 18 trillion dollars of debt simply doesn't matter. The interest payments on that debt will continually eat up an ever larger share of our national income over time, money that won't be available to provide a safety net, fight terrorism or maintain our National parks. All the smart people in Washington, when they talk about the debt at all, glibly assure us that we will "grow our way out of it." With an economic growth rate hovering around 2%, and 94 million people out of the workforce, I don't find that argument very persuasive.

But, sometimes I feel like I am the only American left who worries about it anymore. Trump, Cruz and Rubio aren't losing any sleep over it. Hillary and Bernie don't feel in any way constrained in their ambitions for an ever expanding and muscular federal government by the presence of an 18 trillion and growing outstanding obligation. So, we just go along with our collective plans to do nothing...except add to it. 

So, Dunnevant, you might ask, what would you do about it? Well, for starters, I suppose that I would impose an across the board cut in spending. Not a cut in the rate of increase of spending, an actual cut. You know...if your department spent 2 billion last year, this year you will have to get by on 1.8 billion. At least, that's what a spending cut looks like in my house. But Doug, an across the board cut assumes that all spending is of equal priority, when in fact some spending is essential and some isn't. It's the job of our political leaders to prioritize. True. But our political leaders have not demonstrated the required leadership skills to prioritize anything. So, it's just going to have to be across the board...no exceptions. But, what about defense? What about it? It gets cut. Deal with it, generals. Then, after my "draconian and heartless" budget cuts were in place, I would work on the revenue side by cutting...yes, cutting, some tax rates. Twice in my lifetime personal and corporate tax rates have been cut resulting in an increase in revenue to the Treasury (JFK and Reagan). Then I would eliminate all of the corporate welfare that has been caked into the tax code. This would make me public enemy number one on Wall Street, at the banks, down on the farm, and on K street. 

And then...I would be assassinated.