Friday, January 15, 2021

Coping With 2021

What do you do when you’ve had maybe the most disturbing, disappointing week of business in at least ten years? How do you deal with that creeping feeling that the world is falling apart and there isn’t a single thing you can do to stop it? What next, when you’ve come to the conclusion that people are in the process of losing their minds? How do you cope with the knowledge that all of this has happened in a mere 15 days of the new year??

DAD JOKES. You go out there and dig deep for the worst, most pitiful ones you can find, collect them, then share them here on The Tempest. At least that’s what I do.

- Why did the couple buy stale bread on their wedding day?
Because they wanted to grow mold together...

- Did you hear about the dad who burnt the Hawaiian pizza?
He should have put it on aloha temperature...

-How did the carpenter find her spouse?
She used a stud finder...

- If you want a job in the lotion industry, the best advice I can give you is...
Apply daily...

-I got you a refrigerator for your birthday.
Can’t wait to see your face light up when you open it...

-I bought a dictionary only to get home and discover that all the pages are blank.
I have no words to describe how angry I am...

-I used to date a girl named Ruth. Whenever I was with her, she made me a better person. Then she dumped me.
Now I’m ruthless...

-Why was the superhero the one to flush the toilet?
Because it was his duty...

-What’s the easiest way to remember your wife’s birthday?
Forget it once...

-Kids: Dad, we want to see the new Pirate movie!!
Dad: No way.
Kids: Why not??!!
Dad: Because its rated Arrrrgh!!

-The Surgeon General has determined that listening to too much Queen is bad for your health.
Probably because of the high Mercury content...


Making Travel Plans?

My winter restlessness has come early this year. Usually around the middle of February I begin to feel trapped and isolated, in desperate need of sunshine and a change of scenery. The fact that this feeling has arrived a full month early shouldn’t come as a surprise. Something tells me I am not alone.

This week has been packed with appointments, but yesterday afternoon some downtime finally arrived. Immediately I pulled up my Expedia account on the old iPad. Welcome Back, Douglas!! The fact that I was so greeted should also come as no surprise. The travel industry has been battered by COVID like no other. A box quickly popped up...Would you like to chat? Poor things...

I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Where could I go during a pandemic where 4000 people a day are now perishing? Yes, I know, I see friends of mine on Facebook all the time traveling all over the place and God bless em. I’m feeling much more cautious these days. I saw what COVID did to my neighbor and I want no part of that. Plus, any travel plans I come up with will have to pass the Pam Test, a rigorous set of protocols that judge harshly any ill-conceived, hastily cobbled together plans, which are exactly the kind of plans I specialize in. 

My first idea was a quick four nighter to the Cayman Islands, a delightful location we have visited twice before. But that would require much research into foreign travel restrictions, airplane travel, etc..which sounded much too much like work. Then I reeled it in a bit and did a little recon work into Key West, another favorite spot of ours. Surprising how many hotels there are booked solid after March 1st. Suddenly the idea of being in Key West at a time when it is crawling with the sort of folks who frequent Key West seemed like an unsellable idea and not nearly as relaxing as I was imagining a trip like this would be. Time to reel it in further...Isle of Palms, Charleston, SC. Nice. We could drive instead of fly. But the weather there in late March early April is no slam dunk. Might be chilly. What about Myrtle Beach? Closer, cheaper and my partner has a place on the beach. Same weather gamble though, and my luck we’d be there the same week as the Hells Angels For Trump Rally or something.

Of course, I could stay in the Old Dominion. There are plenty of great places to visit here. But the predominant thought in my mind when contemplating this getaway is...warmth. Late March/early April would be a weather crapshoot. Wait, what about a week in Florida during spring training? We could stay in a nice hotel and catch a few games. It would be nice and warm. But, what will the COVID protocols be like in April? Will they be more relaxed or more stringent? There’s no way to know at this point. Maybe we could stay a few nights at a hotel in DC and do some sightseeing...wait, DC is a war zone. Nix that.

Maybe I’ll just have to suck it up in 2021 and wait until Maine. July 1st is only 165 more days, right? Perhaps I can make it until then.

Probably not.

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

AirBnB Announces Plans To Get Out of The Bribe Business

Here’s a small case study in how my mind works. (Pam: Wait, your mind works?). Whenever I am reading a news article about anything having to do with politics I do so with ears wide open and a barnyard manure filter working overtime, not because of media bias necessarily, but rather because it is impossible for me to ponder political things without reading between the lines. Nothing is ever as it appears. Here’s a perfect example.

This morning I learned that several American corporations have turned against politicians who voted to decertify the 2020 election results. This particular sentence stood out:

AirBnB, Verizon, Comcast, Marriot and others have stopped all donations to politicians who voted against certifying the election results.

My response to this rather prosaic sentence was probably not what its writer intended. All I could think was...Why in Sam Hill is AirBnB making political contributions in the first place?? Seriously. Why would an online vacation rental marketplace feel the need to give money to politicians? Am I the only one who thinks this way? Couldn’t that money be put to more productive use elsewhere, like say...making their website more user-friendly? Why do the men and women who run such a fabulously successful enterprise feel it wise and necessary to donate cash to Congressmen, Senators or Presidential candidates? The question answers itself. 

My mind always seems to be at cross purposes to conventional wisdom. If I were the CEO of a successful new venture it would be my goal to remain invisible to politicians. I would want the lowest possible profile when it came to my business and its relationship to Washington DC. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near their radar screen. By donating money to them I come to their attention. The last thing any self respecting enterprise wants or needs is to have the undivided attention of elected officials. Not that my business would be up to no good. On the contrary, my company would be busy making the very best product or providing the very best service possible to its customers, so busy in fact, it would be oblivious to who its political representative even was! 

Spare me the lectures. I fully understand why AirBnB and all those other corporations bankroll politicians. When your country’s tax code is 2,600 pages long, with another 60,000 or so pages of addendums, codicils and explanatory case law attached, that’s a minefield of potential danger. But its also a great place to hide a favor that some savvy pol might be able to slip in that might benefit your business. In other countries, this is referred to as a bribe. In America its called working the system by the cynical and civic engagement by the clever. Either way, it would all be eliminated or at least greatly reduced by The Flat Tax.

Until then we will have to put up with the corruption that naturally flows from a system that encourages vacation rental websites, hotel chains, and cable providers to have to make grand virtue signaling proclamations divesting themselves from disobedient politicians.

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

America, We Have a Problem

CHAMPIONSELECTING ORGANIZATION
2020AlabamaCFP
2019LSUCFP
2018ClemsonCFP
2017AlabamaCFP
2016ClemsonCFP
2015AlabamaCFP
2014Ohio StateCFP
2013Florida StateBCS
2012AlabamaBCS
2011AlabamaBCS
2010AuburnBCS
2009AlabamaBCS
2008FloridaBCS
2007LSUBCS
2006FloridaBCS


America, we have a problem. Although the country has been through over a decade of vast and disruptive change in almost every aspect of life from technology to manufacturing, from social mores to fashion and everything in between...one thing never changes. The SEC owns college football and the University of Alabama owns the SEC. Moreover, over the last fifteen years, only once has a team from outside the old Confederacy won our nation’s college football championship. Heck, almost half the time the winner has been from a single state...Alabama. This is the very definition of a monopoly. This football hegemony by the Old South is blatantly unfair to the many fine teams from every other region of the country. 

Lucky for us, the political party which now rules the country has a long and storied history of not only standing up for the oppressed, but also of going after big corporations and their attendant monopolistic practices. They need look no further than the Southeastern Conferences’ stranglehold on gridiron dominance. Last night’s game was a perfect example of the unfair advantages enjoyed by the University of Alabama over the team from Ohio State. Bless their hearts, they gave it a hardy effort, but it was like watching the New York Yankees playing the Portland Seadogs. 

Then there’s the matter of optics. In this era of sectarian and regional strife it just won’t do that teams from the Old Confederacy continue to dominate so martial a sport as football. It’s high time that someone has the courage to level the playing field...an affirmative action plan for northern, midwestern and pacific coast schools, as it were. Perhaps a limit on scholarships, or only allowing SEC teams to field ten players a side, even better—award all non-SEC teams a 14 point head start each game. Whatever it takes, something must be done.

Monday, January 11, 2021

Another Fun-Filled Week

For someone who loves history so much, I’m finding that living through it as it’s being made is no fun. Every morning when I wake up I wonder what will happen next in Washington. The fact that the center of my attention has been captured by that town is galling. For someone who has spent most of his adult life seeking to build a life as far removed from Washington foolishness as it was possible to get, now suddenly it is impossible to divert my eyes from the spectacle it has become. American politics has become the ten car pileup with multiple fatalities on Interstate 95 with 250 million rubber-neckers looking on in horror. It seems like everyday has featured one large block screaming headline after another, each more outlandish than the last. Remember back years ago when the biggest argument coming out of our nation’s Capitol was...Should We or Should We Not Audit the Federal Reserve? Those were the days. Who can forget the riveting national debate about whether or not the government should bail out Chrysler? The only divisive thing about that argument was how to spell Lee Iacocca’s last name. But unfortunately, this isn’t 1979, we did bail them out but Chrysler went belly up eventually anyway, and Lee Iacocca has gone on to meet his maker.

Today’s political debates feel apocalyptic by comparison. Every issue seems like life and death. Protests, demonstrations, riots and other mayhem are ubiquitous. Violence is no longer something that organically boils over, but rather something that is premeditated, organized by elements within every movement you can name, designed to create chaos and the disruption of order. The disrupters may very well be the outliers of the crowd, but when the most extreme elements carry cell phones and gleefully advertise their mischief to the world, its the outliers who define the movement. Perhaps that’s not fair, but that’s the world we live in. Thanks, Steve Jobs.

So, this week I have to meet with nine clients over the next five days to discuss their accounts. I will do so with one eye on their numbers and the other on my news feed. Here are the possibilities:

- The resignation of a sitting President
- Impeachment proceedings
- The invoking of the 25th Amendment
- More armed insurrections at State Capitol buildings throughout the country
- Some nut job or nut jobs with guns and a grudge reeking havoc somewhere.

In other words, just another fun-filled week in America, 2021.

Saturday, January 9, 2021

Final Thoughts on the Events of Wednesday Afternoon.

Perhaps the most outrageous part of Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol was the fact that the perpetrators marched under Jesus Saves banners. The presence of religious symbols throughout the crowd, although deeply disappointing, was regrettably predictable. Its part of a decades long co-opting of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the Republican Party’s most Nationalistic elements. After the events of this week I can only say that we have got to find a way to discard this toxic notion that Jesus Christ and America are on the same team. Half the time we aren’t even playing the same freaking sport! We have made an idol out of political power and its pursuit has replaced discipleship as the core function of far too many American churches. We are now reaping the whirlwind.

I fear that for the most part the witness of the American church is damaged beyond repair. The center of the Christian witness will have to forever come from some other shore. We are the ones who need missionaries now.

Thursday, January 7, 2021

Character is Destiny

I turned on the television around 3:00 yesterday afternoon. By that time I had already had three appointments and was busy doing the resulting paperwork when I noticed a text from my son...


An hour and a half later I was still sitting on the sofa watching, transfixed by the audacity. A couple of times I felt myself choking back tears. There were thousands of American citizens storming the Capitol building, overpowering the Capitol police, then parading around inside the Senate and House Chamber, taking selfies of themselves sitting at the Speaker’s podium, thinking themselves triumphant. Earlier in the day I had heard snippets of President Trump’s 90 minute speech to this same crowd, exhorting them to save the country, feeding them a series of toxic lies about how the election had been stolen from them, how he had actually won in a landslide! After whipping them into a frenzy, he slipped into his motorcade and escaped back to the White House to watch what would happen from the safety of the West Wing. When the Vice-President refused his unconstitutional request to reject the votes of the Electoral College, word travelled fast through the marching crowds. I sat and watched overcome by two consistent emotions, anger and sadness.

Of course, as soon as the optics became horrifying enough, a tidal wave of lies began flooding social media from Trump supporters claiming that it wasn’t them at all. It was really Antifa radicals dressed up to look like Trump supporters who were responsible. The old false flag Trojan Horse trick. It took all of two minutes of Google searches to discover that the alleged Antifa infiltrators were not. But, it won’t matter to the hard core apologists. The slimmest of fig leaves is all they will need to absolve themselves and their leader of guilt. Perhaps the worst part of the whole spectacle was the pathetic video produced by the White House in response to it all, a 60 second whine-fest, spewing more stolen election horse-shit with a big wet kiss to his patriots and the affectionate suggestion that they all go home now.

Winning.

Later last night my daughter sent me this charmingly concerned text, “What are your thoughts tonight?” This was her way of checking up on me. Big things were happening and her Dad was strangely silent. I replied along the lines of, “I can’t put enough coherent thoughts together at the moment to say anything. It is generally a bad thing to write while overcome with sadness and fury. Then I sent her a cartoon to change the subject...


Later last night it was time for the clever memes to begin raining down, the tiresome and predictable but what about, if this was BLM??!! Words cannot express how much I loathe this sort of lazy commentary. Whoever can make the biggest logical leap with the wittiest phrase wins. I’ll leave that short form silliness to the armchair philosophers.

Finally, as I lay awake in the darkness last night, I thought about a phrase that my Dad said to me one time years ago...character is destiny. His view was that how your life turns out is a function of your defining character traits. If you are a thief, someone or something will end up stealing your life from you. If you are violent, you will eventually be a victim of violence. If you are a manipulator, you will eventually be manipulated. When I think of Donald Trump, the first thing that comes to mind is that his defining characteristic is...lying. If you tell enough lies in your life, you become a lie. Set aside for a moment any positive accomplishments of his administration. For a second, put aside your views on immigration, trade, abortion etc. What Donald Trump will ultimately be remembered for is his shameless and pathetic actions since Election Day 2020. The man who promised us nothing but winning, winning and more winning, ends up not only losing reelection, but both houses of Congress in the bargain. He has single handedly destroyed the Republican Party for a generation.

Many of you disagree with me about all of this. I know. Nothing I say or write will change your minds. That’s ok. A few days ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a Trump guy. I asked him the following question: “Suppose an audio tape was produced that had Barack Obama on the phone to the attorney general of Florida asking him to find him 11,000 votes so he could overturn the election in his favor. What would your reaction be? I dare say it would send you into a spittle-spewing rage, and rightfully so. But I haven’t heard one word from you about Trump’s call to the AG of Georgia.” If our outrage with presidential behavior is dependent on the president’s party, then that’s the very definition of false outrage. And yet, for four years now, millions upon millions of people have been content to look the other way at rampant dishonesty. Yesterday, the bill came due.