My Prayer For The Week

One of the ingrained assumptions of being an American is the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. I have watched it a total of ten times during my adult life, the outgoing President riding in the motorcade with the incoming President from the White House to the Capitol, then sitting behind him and watching him take the oath of office, then politely applauding. Its always a cool moment, satisfying, even comforting. This year at the beginning of inauguration week, I’m holding my breath that it goes off without bloodshed. There will be no huge throng of people on the Mall watching. There will be no parades and no fancy balls to mark the occasion. Only members of Congress, a few guests, and a thousand masks. But there will be 25,000 American Troops and newly erected fencing, even some razor wire, photographs of which will be gleefully distributed on Chinese, Russian, and Iranian media. Add this embarrassment to the growing list of things I thought I would never witness during my lifetime.

So, my hope and prayer is that when this week is over there will have been no violence, no deaths, no destruction of property, that all 50 state capitols will be secure, and that we can begin to move forward to the very difficult task of learning how not to hate each other so much. I wish Joe Biden all the best. I can honestly say that I have wished every new President the very best at the beginning of their term in office. I did for Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump. Generally speaking, when a President fails it’s a failure for the country. When they succeed, generally the country succeeds. Good will should be the default emotion for any new President from every citizen of this country. When Biden does well, I will commend him here. When he screws up I will let him have it in this space. What I will not do is engage in inflamed rhetoric fantasizing about his gruesome death like I saw from Alec Baldwin this weekend. I will not tolerate violent language here. I believe it is possible to disagree, even strongly, with politicians without stooping to ad hominem attacks. After ten years and over 2000 posts, I’m sure if you search thoroughly enough you will find examples of such attacks here, but I hope very few and nothing recently. I am not a perfect witness in this area. Sometimes I forget myself and get caught up in the moment. But we all have to get better at this, better at disagreeing, better at talking to each other.

Maybe, a year from now, we won’t be so obsessed with the travails of politics. Maybe at some point our attention and our interest will be towards more nobler things. Maybe one day soon our disagreements will be less vitriolic. Maybe on that glorious day in the future when the masks finally come off, there will be smiles underneath.

Ten Things To Look Forward To

Since it is all but impossible to find even a shred of good news these days, I have taken it upon myself to assemble a list of ten things that we all have to look forward to in 2021:

1. That first blissful, 70 degree day in mid to late March when you scramble through the drawers to find a pair of shorts to wear.

2. The smell of hamburgers on the grill before your first meal of the year taken on the deck.

3. Opening Day of the baseball season.

4. The giving and receiving of robust, enthusiastic, heartfelt hugs.

5. A President who isn’t on Twitter.

6. Standing shoulder to shoulder in a packed church, singing at the top of your lungs.

7. That unique thrill that passes through the body and mind when you back the car out of the driveway, headed out for summer vacation.

8. The first tailgate of the college football season with trash talk filling the air unfiltered by face masks.

9. That first gathering with your small group from church around somebody’s fire pit, where you hear the sound of someone’s voice lifted in prayer thanking God for his Word and for these good friends.

10. That first delightfully cool day in late September when you scramble through the closet to find a sweater to wear.

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.

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.

America, We Have a Problem

CHAMPION	SELECTING ORGANIZATION
2020	Alabama	CFP
2019	LSU	CFP
2018	Clemson	CFP
2017	Alabama	CFP
2016	Clemson	CFP
2015	Alabama	CFP
2014	Ohio State	CFP
2013	Florida State	BCS
2012	Alabama	BCS
2011	Alabama	BCS
2010	Auburn	BCS
2009	Alabama	BCS
2008	Florida	BCS
2007	LSU	BCS
2006	Florida	BCS

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.

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.