Two Nightmares

Here's a couple of nightmare scenarios for you to ponder on this fine Tuesday morning five weeks from election day 2016.

Nightmare number one.

The final polls before Election Day show Hillary Clinton with a sizable lead as Donald Trump's campaign begins to unravel in an orgy of incoherent ramblings and eleventh hour kitchen sink vitriol. Every major national poll has Clinton winning by 7-10 points, with an electoral college rout in the making. But as the votes are counted, the punditry class is shocked to discover that the polls were wrong. The race is razor thin close. Apparently, an awful lot of people lie to pollsters. The number one trending topic on Twitter and Facebook becomes the Wilder Effect. The nation is shocked to wake up on November 9th to discover that Donald Trump has pulled off the upset of the century, eeking out a 49%- 47% victory. When the results are announced, riots break out in almost every major city in the country as an alliance of Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, the AFL-CIO, and  La Rasa take to the streets. Accusations start to fly. The election was stolen! The Koch Brothers are blamed for rigging the machines. The basket of deplorables are accused of depressing the black vote. Barack Obama declares martial law to quell the violence.

Nightmare number two.

The final polls don't give much comfort to either side. Some show Clinton ahead, others give Trump the edge. An exhausted country trudges to the polls to get the whole thing over with. To the surprise of literally everyone, Hillary Clinton outperforms her poll numbers in record breaking fashion, winning a huge percentage of not only the black vote, but the Latino vote as well. The much feared angry white hick vote fails to materialize, especially in rural areas where Trump had polled so well. A broad coalition of minorities and women rise up to deliver Clinton a landslide popular vote victory of 56%-42% and an electoral college blowout. When the election is called at 10:30 eastern standard time, news reports of violence begins to spread. Trump supporters are convinced that the fix was in. They take to the streets and begin attacking gatherings of celebrating democrats in every major city in the country. The nation is horrified to see the violence spill into hotel ballrooms on all the television networks. Barack Obama orders the networks to go dark and declares martial law.

Unfortunately, neither of these scenarios seem far fetched to me. I live in a country where either of these outcomes seem plausible. We are so decided. The rhetoric has gotten so shrill. The distrust and even hatred across the aisle seems so intense. Either of these could happen.

Here's what I hope. All I want is for whoever wins, to win convincingly and for there to be no shocking result either way. Because if somebody comes out of nowhere in this race, the other side isn't going to accept the result. Confidence in the system is at an all time low. We better have a clean decision, or it could get ugly.

Predictions, (the important kind).

Apparently, Julian Assange of Wikileaks fame is planning some huge document dump tomorrow which is rumored to contain damaging, potentially game-changing information about Hillary Clinton. Stop. What could we learn at this late date about Mrs. Clinton that would make her less attractive as a candidate? Furthermore, how damaging would this bombshell have to be to compete with Donald Trump's sleaze lollapalooza? I mean, on the week where we discovered that Trump made a cameo appearance in a porn film, how bad will this news have to be? My prediction? Nothing we learn tomorrow will alter the death spiral trajectory of this interminable campaign. It is clearly a sprint to the bottom, a jack-knifed nosedive into the deep end of gutter politics. But there is good news. Donald's porn cameo was fully clothed, and there's only 36 more days until erectio..er..election day.

In the meantime, I have bigger fish to fry. It's October and that can only mean one thing... MLB playoffs are here!! So, let's dispense with politics for a minute and get to something really important...who is going to win the World Series? Let me save you the trouble. Here's how this is going to play out.

National League

The San Francisco Giants will beat the New York Mets in the wildcard play-in game. Madison Bumgarner is a post season beast and will out-pitch a professional baseball player named Noah.

As their reward, the Giants will get mauled by the Chicago Cubs in their seven game series.

The Los Angeles Dodgers will probably sweep my Washington Nationals. The Nats only have two quality starting pitchers at his point and Bryce Harper is suddenly hitting like Harper Lee. Not a good combination.

This means that the Dodgers will play the Cubs for the National League pennant in a seven game series which will probably go seven, with the Cubs winning.

American League

The Toronto Blue Jays will beat the Baltimore Orioles in the wildcard play-in game, giving baseball-crazed Canadians everywhere false hope.

Toronto will then go on to face the Texas Rangers, where those baseball-crazed Canadians will be rudely brought back down to earth. The Rangers in six.

The Boston Red Sox will quickly dispatch Sam Issac's Cleveland Indians. Do Cleveland fans actually think that their city would win an NBA championship and the World Series in the same year? Please.

This will put the Red Sox against the Rangers for the American League pennant in what will be probably the best seven game series of the year. The Red Sox will prevail on a Big Papi grand slam in the bottom of the ninth of game seven.

World Series

The Cubs haven't won a World Series title in 108 years. Put another way, the last time the Cubs won a World Series not only was Pluto still a planet, it hadn't even been discovered yet! Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House. The leading cause of death in the United States was the FLU, for heavens sake! Unfortunately, Cubs fans will have to wait one more year. The Red Sox win, giving New England the NFL, MLB sweep yet again.

So, go out there and place your bets, people. Remember to send me a check for 10%!!

Two Years Of Lucy

Two years ago today, this girl landed on our doorstep. Katie Boone, now Katie Atkinson, was her first owner, but was in the process of moving and getting married and couldn't manage all of that and a precocious four month old Golden Retriever at the same time. I was finally in the market for my third Golden. Pam was ambivalent. Our discovery of her availability itself was serendipitous. Katie just happened to have had lunch with my niece Christina Garland where she had mentioned that she was going to have to find a home for her dog. Christina heard the word "Golden" and immediately thought of me.

An appointment was set for us to meet her. Pam was nervous. I was nervous because Pam was nervous. The thing is, secretly I had to acknowledge that all of my wife's arguments against getting another dog were valid. Yes, it's a huge commitment. Yes, our freedom of movement would be curtailed. Yes, the financial impact might be significant if she turns out to have allergies like Molly.
Yes, yes, yes. Plus, how could she possibly measure up to Molly, her sainted and blessed predecessor? The truth was, I was still grieving Molly. She would never be replaced. When they knocked on the door, my heart began to beat loudly in my chest.

She was a whirling dervish of a thing, but well trained. We were quite impressed by the tricks she had

already been taught. Katie clearly loved her and was having difficulty with even the idea of parting

ways with a puppy with such deep, and loving eyes. Within thirty seconds, I was sold. I'm not sure how Pam really felt, but outwardly she seemed to approve.

Two years later, we are the proud owners of Lucy, the most uniquely idiosyncratic dog on the planet. She's healthy as a horse, strikingly beautiful, more fun than a barrel of monkeys . . . and dumber than a box of hammers. We have no regrets and will always be grateful to Katie for allowing us the privilege of being her owners. Although, in truth we don't really own her. She owns us!

Here's Why Statistics Are For Losers

Here's a little inside baseball about my blog that illustrates perfectly how misleading statistics can be. September of 2016 is in the books with the highest readership in the nearly six year history of The Tempest. In fact, September was the sixth consecutive month of increased readership as illustrated below:

MONTH                                           PAGE VIEWS

April                                                      3797
May                                                       4123
June                                                       5225
July                                                        5837
August                                                   6063
September                                             6898

Very nice. Over the last six months the number of page views has nearly doubled, up a whopping 82%. With all of this increased traffic, one might expect that the revenue steam generated by this blog would also have grown, by a factor close to 82% . . . but, one would be wrong. The highest revenue month was in fact...April, when The Tempest raked in a staggering $7.26!! September's nearly doubled traffic produced $5.43. At this rate, by the time I manage to attract 15,000 page views a month, I'll owe Blogger money!

Thankfully, I don't do this for a living. I do this because it makes living more fun.

Does NOT Paying Taxes Make You Smart?

Nobody loves paying taxes. Even the most liberal Hollywood celebrity who can be counted on to support every big government project has accountants on his/her payroll whose job it is to avoid paying them as much as the law allows. I'm no celebrity and I can be counted on to oppose most big government projects, and I have an accountant who is charged with the same task. But, I feel compelled to make it clear that if my accountant presented me with a legal scheme that would lower my tax bill to zero, I would decline it. Why? Let me try to explain the unexplainable.

When I heard the Donald in the debate the other night say that if he paid no federal taxes on his alleged 600 million dollar income, that would make him smart, it touched a nerve with me. I don't know the first thing about Trump's finances. Although my gut tells me that when someone talks about his personal wealth so much it usually means that he isn't as wealthy as advertised. But, for our discussion let's assume that he truly is as loaded as he claims. Does avoiding taxes on a multi-million dollar income make him smart?

I find it easy to believe that someone with a great accountant, especially someone in the real estate business could, in fact, find a legal way to avoid paying federal income taxes. That's because our Rube Goldberg contraption of a tax code, with its 7000 pages of addendum, codicils and waivers lends itself to this sort of thing. When lobbyists and politicians and lawyers write the laws, what would you expect? So, it's probably legal. But is it smart? No. Here's why.

Let's imagine that Mr. Trump lived under a flat tax of 17%. That would mean he would owe the Treasury roughly 100 million on a 600 million dollar income. By not paying, the burden of funding the government's latest boondoggle falls to someone else. But the funding of the legitimate functions of government falls to someone else too. That aircraft carrier doesn't pay for itself! So, guess who ends up paying the freight? Not the poorest Americans. Not even the lower 45% of earners who currently pay no income taxes because of things like the earned income tax credit and the home mortgage deduction etc. etc. Yes, you guessed it, the middle class, specifically the upper middle class.

But, there's another reason why not paying your taxes is not smart. It means you are a lousy citizen and even worse, an ingrate. We live in the greatest nation on this planet. There is more opportunity here than anywhere else in the world. We live a life of comfort, plenty and ease unimaginable in most of the rest of the world. I thank God every day for allowing me to be born an American. One of the things that makes America work is a functioning government. As a citizen, although I may not like how my tax dollars are spent and although I may think our tax code stinks to high heaven, it's my job to pay what I owe. Somebody has to defend us, somebody has to administer our system of justice, someone has to build bridges, hospitals and highways. When I pay my taxes, I participate in providing the funds that allow my country to work. When I  weasel out of paying, I become a fake citizen, in essence . . . A freeloader.

Yes, I allow my accountant to claim my mortgage interest deduction. Yes, I keep my business receipts. Yes, I established a c-corporation years ago to help lower my tax bill. But, I have declined other, more imaginative schemes to avoid taxes, partly because I didn't understand them, but partly because I feel blessed in this life. America has been one of the greatest things to ever happen to me and I did nothing to earn the title American. It was an accident of birth. But the prosperous life I've built here is no accident. It has come about in no small part because the freedoms I enjoy here, and freedom isn't free, my friends.

So, on the fifteenth of every month, I make sure there's enough money in my business checking account to cover the IRS draw. I complain about it. I grumble and moan. But I pay, and a part of me feels good and grateful. If that makes me dumb, so be it.

Getting Excited!

One week from today, I get to see my kids again! This time, for the fourth or fifth year in a row, I forget which, I have rented a cabin in the Smoky Mountains near Gatlinburg. It's about a four hour drive for both of them and about six for us. It's far too short of a trip. It seems that just about the time we get settled in, it's time to leave. But I still do it because it's fall, its usually delightful weather, cool and crisp, and it gives us an excuse to be together.

There will probably be some hiking, perhaps a ride or two on the famed alpine coaster, maybe a go-cart race. If we have enough time we might go zip-lining. But mostly the weekend will involve lots of  cooking, eating and sitting in rocking chairs out on the back porch looking out over the blue-gray edges of the mountains spread out to the horizon. We will get caught up on all the gossip that isn't worth texting but makes for great den chatter. I will bring my guitar and try to coax a duet out of my talented son and his pretty singing girlfriend. I will pamper my daughter to within an inch of her life to help her recover some of her lost sanity from the insane rigors of back to school month. So, essentially whatever she wants next week, she gets.

Of course, there's always the chance that the weather will be horrible, that it will rain the entire four days. In which case, we will be forced to stay in our luxury cabin the whole time eating home cooked food, watching movies and playing games. As is usually the case with these trips, the television will never get watched. All of those big screens black and lifeless on the walls. As a result, my attitude about the world will improve.

We will miss Lucy and Jackson. No pups on this trip. But, that translates into less stress which is the whole theme of the trip this year. Let's get away for a few days and leave the wackiness that is America in 2016 behind. Let's clear our heads and celebrate what is good about life for a bit, shall we?

Why, yes. I think I would like that very much, thank you!

Schooled By My Big Brother

I called my brother last night. I had just heard that Wilson Ramos, all-star catcher for the Nationals, had blown out his knee and was lost for the season. I was in the midst of bemoaning the National's dimming playoff chances when he reminded me that...it's baseball, anything can happen! Then, he changed the subject to my last blog about the debate. Without saying so, he suggested in a round about way that perhaps my view of the future was overly bleak. Doug, we survived James Garfield, right? How bad can it be?

He's right. I'm as guilty as anyone of seeing the glass as half empty. The heat of the moment is a terrible/perfect time to write a blog. It's perfect for capturing passion, it's terrible for communicating wisdom. So, upon further review let me point out several worse things that our country has been through and survived.

1. The Revolutionary War.

How we even became a nation was essentially a series of miracles, punctuated by improbably fortuitous coincidences, wrapped around rare, unexplainable military victories. If there had been a Vegas betting line back in 1776 it would have had Great Britain minus 100. The over and under would have had the Empire crushing us in less than six months, seven tops. They had the best fighting army in the world. We had George Washington and a bunch of farmers. But here we are, 240 years later.

2. The Civil War

Who would ever have thought in 1865, after killing over 600,000 of our fellow Americans, that our greatest days as a nation were ahead of us? That so much death and destruction was visited upon our nation over our greatest national sin was probably divine justice. But the fact is, we paid a horrible price to free our slaves and rid ourselves of that institution, proving that God is not mocked. Despite the horrific loss of life and the destruction of cities great and small, within one generation the United States of America was being transformed into the mightiest industrial power in the history of the world. The aforementioned James Garfield was the fourth consecutive forgotten President of the post war period. You know, the ones nobody can name after Lincoln and before McKinley? So much for the notion that America is doomed without a strong leader in the White House.

3. Jimmy Carter

The first President I ever voted for was Jimmy Carter. Even back in 1976, I loved outsiders. He was arguably the most moral, decent and humble man ever to hold the office. Jimmy Carter was and is the sort of guy who you wouldn't hesitate asking to babysit the kids. And yet, by practically any measure he was a feckless disaster as a leader. One and done. Jimmy Carter had more personal integrity and a more dependable moral compass than Hillary and Donald combined. But that didn't help him lead the country. You want to watch a cringe-worthy presidential address? Google his malaise speech. Brother! My point is, whichever one of these two winds up in the White House . . . We will survive.

Sometimes it's hard to see past the junk. When you're in the middle of it, all you can see is the junk. But, when you step back and put on the magic glasses of perspective, the skies brighten. I have done that thanks to my big brother. Things are looking a little brighter to me this morning.

God bless America.