This is What Winning Looks Like

The Democrats had a bigly night in Virginia. Not only did they sweep the big three races, but they picked up over a dozen seats in the House of Delegates. Reliably, President Trump assigned blame on his Twitter account:

...Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for. Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before.

All of this winning. So much winning. At some point I may tire of all the winning. 

With this Tweet, Trump is asking his devoted followers one question...Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?

His followers will read about the thrashing the Republican Party took last night in the Commonwealth of Virginia and say, Fake News.

His followers will look at the returns and wonder what might have been if only the voter rolls were purged of illegal immigrants.

His followers will believe that a candidate more enthusiastically committed to the President would have carried the day, Ed Gillespie being far too moderate in his praise of Trump... 

But, make no mistake, Donald Trump will keep on winning. One win after another. He will be the irresistible force of winning, the Babe Ruth of winning. He will be to winning what the 1927 Yankees were to the American League, what the Black Death was to 14th century Europe, what Stevie Ray Vaughan was to a Stratocaster...total domination.

Decision ‘17

Election day is here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I know this because of an avalanche of mail in my mailbox and a torrent of radio, television, and social media ads that have followed me around like a Russian spy for weeks now. Here’s what I know as decision time has arrived:

I must decide among Republican and Democratic Party candidates, (and the always random Libertarian/Green Party odd-ball) for the three statewide offices, Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General. Prior to this campaign season, I had never heard of most of them, but apparently they are each men and women of great accomplishment and skill...at climbing the ladder of their Party’s hierarchy. In addition to these statewide races, I will also be asked to select a Delegate to the Virginia House of Delegates from among two other candidates, one of whom is the only candidate on the ballot this year who actually personally showed up at my door to ask for my vote.

The Attorney General race comes down to a choice between a guy named Mark. R. Herring and another guy named John D. Adams. Advantage Adams. I mean, come on, the dude has an all American, iconic name, bringing to mind our second President and an excellent HBO miniseries. What are we to make of the other guy’s name? What’s the R stand for Mark...Red???

The Lt. Governor’s contest is a tough choice, as it asks the voter to make a decision between a white woman and a black man, clearly a no-win situation. Vote for the woman and it’s because you’re a closet racist and can’t handle a powerful black man in higher office. Vote for the black man and you have latent misogynistic issues, the same sort that contributed so mightily to Hillary Clinton’s upset loss in 2016...according to Hillary Clinton. So, this one is a toss up. Luckily, it doesn’t really matter who wins since the office of Lt. Governor is a toothless, utterly meaningless job with no real world consequence to any Virginian, living or dead. From best I can tell, the actual job of the Lt. Governor is to begin running for Governor as soon as he finishes taking his/her oath. So, whoever wins won’t be able to raise any mischief since he or she will be busy raising money.

The Governor’s contest has been a nasty one, especially these past couple of weeks. As the campaign reached the homestretch, accusations have begun to fly all over the place. If all I knew about either of these guys was what I have heard in commercials for the last two weeks, my choice would boil down to this:

I can vote for a greedy, money grubbing lobbyist who’s supporters are out there tormenting young children with pickup trucks, forcing their parents to comfort them after they wake up from their nightmares to assure them that mean old Candidate X will NOT be the next Governor!! Or, I can vote for the guy who isn’t even a politician, but merely a pediatrician who loves kids, would never, ever run them down with a Confederate flag draped pick up and who has lived his entire life by the VMI Keydet Code of conduct. I mean, seriously...is there even a choice here? How could I possibly bring myself to choose a lobbyist over a pediatrician??

On the other hand, there are troubling issues with regards to the boring doctor. Apparently he disdains ordinary Virginians, (probably because he’s spent half his life trying to collect fees from his cheap, reprobate Virginia patients), preferring the company of effete Northern Virginians and gang members from Central America. That doesn’t sound good. Search through his opponent’s bio and you won’t find a single gang member. What you will find is a series of wholesome waiter jobs he had while working himself through college and then a series of successful businesses he started and ran as an adult, no career politician he. Since he has experience starting companies, who better to create jobs as Governor? And, if we ever need help backing our car into the garage, he’s our guy!

Well, there you have it...Decision ‘17. I honestly haven’t kept up with the polling on any of these races. I have no idea who’s ahead or behind. I would think that the Democrat candidates would be favored since my State has turned bluer with each passing year, it seems. But, if 2016 taught us anything it’s that when it comes to politics and elections, anything is possible. So, I will head over to Short Pump Elementary and do my civic duty. You probably should too.

The Gun Control Act of 1968

The Gun Control Act of 1968 states, among other things, that it is illegal for a dishonorably discharged veteran to possess a firearm. The specifics are as follows:

"d) It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person— 

(6) who [2] has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions" 

"g) It shall be unlawful for any person— 

(6) who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; 

to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce" 

Here’s a suggestion. How about all of these investigative bodies descending on Texas find out who sold Devin Patrick Kelley this:

He was quite proud of his purchase, sharing this photo of it on his Facebook page a mere week ago. She’s a bad bitch, he crowed. So, apparently, despite the clear, unambiguous intent of the Gun Control Act of 1968, Mr. Kelley was able to get his hands on this weapon. The natural human plea when something like this happens is, We have to pass a law that would prevent this sort of insanity. Well, we already did...in 1968. It either didn’t work, or was not followed in the case of this particular purchase. If it is discovered that Mr. Kelley purchased this gun from a registered dealer who simply didn’t obey the law prohibiting this purchase, the dealer would be thrown in jail for the rest of his life since his negligence makes him complicit in this heinous crime. If, on the other hand, the killer got his hands on the rifle via the black market, or some other criminal...then we’re screwed. Short of government confiscation of 300 million firearms from the homes of Americans, I see no remedy. Perhaps instead of passing new laws, we devote more energy and attention to enforcing the ones already on the books...like the Gun Control Act of 1968.

With each new mass shooting, I see more and more people coming out in favor of full confiscation. The ironic thing is, many of those who are the most likely to accuse Donald Trump of being a fascist authoritarian, are the same people who are willing to empower the government with the authority to confiscate 300 million guns from the American people. I suppose “authoritarian” is in the eye of the beholder. But, most people I know who are in favor of more gun control legislation are not proposing confiscation. Frankly, most of them consider themselves supporters of the 2nd Amendment. They just look at what has happened with gun violence in their country over the past ten years or so and, in exasperation, search for some new legal remedy. I have great sympathy for that view. I too am frustrated. I simply don’t see how any new law will work any better than existing law. Even if a complete ban of gun purchases could be passed and even enforced...what of the 300 million guns in the system? And what about the fact that people with ill intent and no respect for our laws will still have access to all the guns in the world, while the rest of us will not? Maybe we could prohibit the manufacture of ammunition. Then once all the available ammo was exhausted all those guns would be useless. Or, we could mandate that every box of ammo contain one exploding bullet that will kill the shooter making the use of a firearm a Russian Roulette sort of thing?

I’m not trying to be flippant about so serious a subject. I’m just trying to point out that this is a deadly serious problem for which there is no easy remedy. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to fashion some solution, but we need to be realistic and clear eyed about what is possible.

...Again

I woke up from my Sunday nap and opened my iPad. A news flash scrolled across the screen...27 Dead, 30 Wounded in Church Shooting in Texas.

At that point I didn’t know any of the specifics, just the broad outlines of a familiar story in my country. Someone had walked into a church, and started killing people. Before I clicked on the headline to hear the details I began to wonder...

I wondered if it was a black church, a white church, a synagogue, mosque or temple.

I wondered if the shooter was a black man, a white man, or a Muslim.

The reason why I wondered these things is because it would make a difference in how my fellow Americans would react.

If the shooter were a Muslim man shouting Allahu Akbar!, we would more or less be united in our outrage. 

If the shooter were a white man and the victims black, a different kind of outrage.

If the shooter were a black man and the victims white, different still.

No matter who the shooter is and who the dead are, all of us will do the national gun control dance, charges flying around like so many stray bullets.

Then I clicked on the story. At this point all that is known is, some guy dressed in combat regalia, walked into a small Baptist church attended by less than a hundred people, began shooting and when it was over, nearly everyone in the congregation was either dead or injured, including one five year old child. In the ensuing chase, the shooter was either killed or killed himself. The victims and the shooter are white. At this hour, no claims of terrorism, no claims by ISIS that this shooter was their’s. 

For me, the only thing that matters is that 27 souls have perished at the hands of an evil person, bringing the total number of such deaths to over 350 so far this year. That’s over 350 people who have been killed in a “mass shooting” event in America in 2017, a mass shooting event being here described as a single incident where 4 or more people are killed by a single gunman. No other country in the western world comes close to that number. In this regard, we are in a class by ourselves.

What the hell is wrong with us?

My Mother’s Voice

My niece, Christina Garland, posted a very special video on her Facebook wall yesterday. It was filmed on October 31, 2010. It featured my mother, holding Christina’s infant son Ezra in her arms, singing to him in her beautiful alto voice, a song of unknown origin. Part of it was vaguely familiar, but most of it was my Mother playing fast and loose with the original lyrics, and making stuff up as she went along. At one point, whoever was filming moved closer to Mom, and this new angle revealed my Dad sitting next to my sister Linda, the proud grandmother of the infant child. They were talking and laughing with each other. Dad looked happy and healthy. So did Mom. She had less than three years to live.

There’s another one of these videos around somewhere, one of Mom and Dad sitting on the sofa in our old house holding Kaitlin in exactly the same way, Mom singing some diddy claiming that Kaitlin was the most beautiful girl in the world. In that video they were both younger, less gray in their hair, thinner, more robust. I searched for it, but couldn’t find it, so I settled in and listened to Mom serenade Ezra...over and over again.

It’s funny what the sound of the human voice does to a person. Shortly after Mom passed away, Pam and I found a message that she had  left on our old land line. She needed for one of us to take her to a doctor’s appointment. Her voice was filled with sorrow and frustration. There were times towards the end when she would fall into despair, and this was one of those times. After listening to the message, I immediately regretted doing so. I didn’t want to remember her voice this way. The day I had listened to it, I had left for a four day business meeting in Chicago. It had only been a month or two since her death, and I hadn’t up to that point shed a single tear. Two days later, while on a treadmill in the gym of the Marriot Hotel, overlooking Michigan Avenue, the sound of her defeated voice from that phone message came back to me, and I immediately began to cry.

But, yesterday, thanks to Christina, I finally have a new voice from my mother to remember, a generous, loving, melodious alto spent doting on one of her great grandchildren. Much better.

Thanks, Chrissy...

Build Your McMansion With Your Own Money

Yesterday, Republican lawmakers rolled out their tax reform plan. It’s a complicated, multi-faceted bill with many moving parts, about which I haven’t yet formed an opinion. But there was one particular item that caught my attention, the limitation of the home interest deduction to $500,000. 

Question: How many people do you know who have a mortgage in excess of $500,000? Not very many, I bet. Someone with a mortgage that big would be someone quite wealthy. The payment on a mortgage of say, $750,000 would run somewhere around $3500 a month. I say, more power to ‘em. If someone has done well enough to want to build a big old house in the country somewhere and borrow that kind of money to do it, God Bless. This is America. Building big old houses is kinda what we do! 

But, let me ask you another question...why should the tax payer be forced to subsidize someone’s multi-million dollar McMansion? Why is Uncle Sam in the business of helping someone build their ten bedroom dream house? Why does someone wealthy and successful enough to build that ten bedroom house need the government’s help in the first place? These questions answer themselves. No reasonable person can justify this sort of tax giveaway with a straight face...but brace yourselves, the justifications are about to begin, and they will be loud, long and bipartisan.

First of all, the Home Builders and Realtor lobby groups will be apoplectic that this particular form of corporate welfare might disappear, for reasons that should be obvious. When the tax code provides subsidies to anyone and everyone who buys your product, with no limits, that’s a pretty sweet gig. But what is going to be hilarious will be the howls of protests coming from the Uber-wealthy status-home owners...from both ends of the political spectrum...who will be impacted by the loss of this freebie. All of those California Progressives who constantly lecture the rest of us for our opposition to out of control government spending, will scream like stuck pigs if they can no longer divert millions of tax payer funds away from poverty programs in order to provide them with their mortgage interest subsidy. Millionaire conservatives who ordinarily spend all their time extolling the virtues of self reliance, will wail like spoiled children if it looks like their mortgage interest free ride might end.

Listen, anyone who reads this blog knows my views on our tax code. What the Republican Party rolled out yesterday doesn’t even come close to my preferred reforms. Still,  I can understand the basic idea for the mortgage interest deduction..in theory. Originally, the notion was...home ownership is a net positive for people and the economy for a whole host of reasons. If the government can encourage home ownership by providing tax incentives, that would also be a net positive. Fine. But, somewhere along the line, like so many other government attempts at dogoodery, it went off the rails. A tax incentive designed to encourage first time home buyers and others for whom the purchase of a home was a colossal undertaking is one thing, allowing the likes of Barbara Streisand to stick the tax payers with the bill for her California dream home and the 10 million dollar mortgage that comes with it...is something else altogether.

Far be it from me to criticize anyone’s desire to build a mansion. But, if you’re wealthy enough to do so...do it with your own money.

Hollywood’s Comeuppance

First, it was the news media. Fox News titans Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, seemingly overnight brought low by women coming forward with charges of sexual harassment. The left coast elites were publically apoplectic with outrage, and privately overjoyed that these two high profile conservative stars were getting exposed for being scumbags. But, over the past couple of weeks, the worm has turned. Now, high profile liberal stars are are being ratted out by suddenly emboldened female accusers. Mark Halperin, of NBC News, Hamilton Fish from the New Republic, Lockhart Steele from Vox, and even Michael Oreskes from the sainted NPR, find themselves under a cloud of suspicion. Apparently, piggish sexual perverts are a bipartisan lot.

Then, Hollywood found itself in the embarrassing position of having one of its premier kingmakers, exposed as a serial rapist. Harvey Weinstein went from literally being referred to as God from the stage at the Academy Awards more times than the ...actual God, to being banned for Life in less time than it normally takes for a George Clooney movie to bomb. Speaking of Clooney, his name now appears on a growing list of hot shot Hollywood A-listers being accused of sexual harassment or worse. Along with Clooney, there’s Ben Affleck, Dustin Hoffman, and Kevin Spacey. Andy Dick, and Casey Affleck are on the list too, although describing them as A-listers might be a stretch. When I say that this list is growing what I mean is that it’s growing like a wild fire in the hills of Santa Monica. Now that it suddenly appears that public opinion is squarely in the corner of the accuser in the sexual harassment business, it’s become a seller’s market. Next week this time, I’d be willing to lay odds that the list will have doubled in size. Practically since I sat down to write this, two more big wig Hollywood producer types have been forced to hire a crack team of lawyers. Chris Savino of Nickelodeon fame, along with Amazon Studios head honcho, Roy Price are now in the sexual harassment crosshairs. What in the name of Cecil B Demille is going on here??

I don’t know. I’m not sure why now, of all times, the scumbags that have always ruled Hollywood are being exposed. Make no mistake, men behaving badly isn’t exactly a news flash. Hollywood men behaving badly is practically a proverb, something that has always been. The fact that suddenly it’s all blowing up in their faces is a mystery. But, frankly, it couldn’t possibly have happened to a better group of guys! Honestly, there’s nothing in this world quite so satisfying as watching a pompous, arrogant, elitist, entitled Hollywood gasbag get their comeuppance. These stars presume to lecture the hicks out in flyover country every chance they get about everything from global warming to tax policy, from foreign policy to the 2nd amendment. To them, we are all a bunch of provincial rubes, hopelessly clinging to our guns and the square, outdated morality we inherited from our even more square and outdated parents and grandparents. They look down their perfectly sculpted, libertine noses at our quaint little monogamous lifestyles and think, Oh, how perfectly adorable. And now the empty husk of their squalid existence is being laid bare by the women they oppressed on their way up the mountain. This is the very definition of poetic justice. Pass the popcorn.

Will there ultimately be some liars among the female accusers? Absolutely. Are some of these accusers simply jumping on the bandwagon for attention? Maybe. But my trick knee tells me that most of these women are telling the truth. Men hold the power, especially in Hollywood. The sort of men who have risen to prominence in the long history of that town suggests that these accusers are probably not even telling the half of it. I say, believe the woman, no matter how many men they take down. 

I can’t wait until the Academy Awards show next year. I can’t wait for the self righteous speeches, and the political lectures. But mostly, I can’t wait to see how many men will be left to hand out Awards or even to receive any. Maybe we will have all female winners. How cool would that be?