It’s Father’s Day.  I’m a father.  Of course that means I have a child.  Actually I have two of those. I tend to kiss off holidays I am directly involved in, like birthdays and Father’s Day, and I prefer no one make a big fuss about them.  Actually that’s generally true for any holiday.  There used to be some benefit to some of those holidays, like if it meant I got that particular day off from work.  But now that I am retired, every day is a holiday.  It’s great, but no holiday stands out in particular.  However, I kind of sit around a lot and think about stuff, and today I started thinking about Father’s Day.  And fathers.  And unfortunately we are right in the middle of this bazaar political season so I couldn’t help thinking about Donald Trump.  Do you think he would be considered a good father?  I know he would consider himself to be a good father.  But how about you?  He supposedly has a boat load of money, but you know what they say.  Sure, money is all and everything to Donald Trump, but I think most of us with little need for garish ostentation find other things just as rewarding and more important to pass along to our children.

My father was a  member of the “Greatest Generation,” a World War Two veteran, and solidly middle class.  And he was a bigot, as was my wife’s father, and I imagine most fathers of that time.  My dad was not an out and out racist by any means, but use of the “n” word was not an uncommon occurrence for him.  That I know of he never used the word in a directly derogatory way.  It’s just the manner he assimilated his thinking in time and place, which is ironic in a way, since he was raised on a farm in Iowa, and then lived most of his adult life in a state with even fewer African Americans.  I don’t believe there are too many geographically defined areas that are less racially diverse than Wyoming.  So I grew up in that ethnically deprived environment, with an isolated view of the the world.  Even the nuns in the Catholic grade school I attended revealed some fringe ingraining of racism, like suggesting interracial marriage was frowned upon by God.  Then I went to college, Creighton University, Omaha Nebraska, and have lived here ever since.

College life was a racially enlightening experience for me, and a progressive one.  When I was a freshman, I think you would have to say for a short time my bigotry was even worse than my father’s.  I directly encountered black people for the fist time, and the friends I hung out with came from family backgrounds very similar to mine.  Denigrating minorities was a part of social conformity, and is also a part of my life I am shamefully embarrassed about.  But it was not much longer, about my junior year in pharmacy school, that my views, impressions, and understanding of ethnicity veered dramatically.  It was a turbulent time.  Lots of protests, demonstrations, riots, and destruction and- hate.  The hate was palpable and I saw it first hand when the heart of Omaha’s black community went up in flames in 1969.  The tempestuous episodes of the late 60’s changed me, and for the better.  I felt there had to be a way to eliminate all the hate, or at the very least deal with it and deflect it.

I thought we were making progress as time went on.  Not too long ago it seemed to me racial tension had reached its zenith about the time of my personal character adjustment.  But lately you can’t help but feel we are slowly sliding backwards, and I am beginning to wonder if we will ever be free of bigotry’s contemptible grip.

But then I look at my kids, both now adults.  They are notably representative of their generation, one much more open-minded and tolerant.  I can’t speak for all of us baby boomers, but I think as a group we can take some credit for that.  I know my wife and I are fairly confident that as parents we conducted our lives in a manner that was respectful of everyone, that we divested ourselves from the careless, insensitive and bigoted innuendo of our fathers.  It may take yet another generation removed from my children before we see significant progress once again.  The present political climate here and around the world is so infested with hate that it is obvious it will take a lot of work. And this concern involves race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, you name it.  The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified 784 active hate groups in the United States, which includes 72 Klu Klux Klan and 142 Neo-Natzi groups.  You will likely see the same type of statistics in Europe.  But there is hope- your kids and mine.  They understand better than my generation that with all the world-wide connectivity, all of humankind is in this fight for common dignity and respect.  We are in it together.  We have to grapple with the fact that life now is not so much about you and me as it is about us.

As a father I am very proud of my kids.  All the diaper changes and worries about health issues, putting up with all the teen-age angst and vehicular destruction, all the wondering if they would survive college or ever be able to live on their own-  it all paid off.  It paid off because I know they were really good kids who developed into exceptionally caring, responsible adults.  If there is one thought that encapsulates what I expect from my children, it is that they always show respect for everyone and have a deep appreciation for the natural world.  I can see in them that I have accomplished that.  To all you fathers out there, if you recognize this in your own children, then you too should consider yourself successful and a good father.  This Father’s Day, what I wonder about Donald Trump is this:  can he honestly say that same thing?  Happy Father’s Day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re like me you just can’t pull yourself away from the Republican presidential debates and the ongoing circus of events surrounding them.   It’s like dealing with a nasty hangnail.  Maybe if you tear that last piece of loose flesh away things will be smoothed over so it will finally heal properly.  It hurts like hell, but you do it anyway, somehow thinking you are doing your finger a favor.  I keep watching these debates and rallies, even though doing so absolutely tortures the part of my brain that assimilates logic, desperately trying to understand how Donald Trump can maintain his attraction to so many people.  During the first March debate I thought for sure his lack of substance and knowledge about basic political and economic facts would finally be exposed.  And by Fox news no less.  “The Donald” tells a fib every 5 minutes.  One of his whoppers is that he claims he can save 300 billion dollars annually on Medicare drug purchases.  Chis Wallace not only verbally pointed out Medicare drug expenses totaled only 78 billion a year, but he had the figures displayed on the  huge auditorium projection screen for every viewer in the country to see.  To my knowledge, powerpoint has never been utilized in such a humiliating manner in these debates.

As usual Mr. Trump danced around the blatant disregard of facts, and once again his amazing wizardry with information distortion seems to have done little to harm his endearment with the masses.  It’s fucking unbelievable.  The facts are right in front of people, in the facility and on TV sets in huge block numbers and still a vast segment of the population chooses to ignore how uninformed this presidential candidate is.  I am starting to get why the evangelical right considers Donald Trump to be a favorite though.  Potentially being able to change thin air into barrels of cash has got to seem more impressive than that trick Jesus did with water and wine.

These debates are a stark reminder that it is impossible to logically change an opinion when that opinion was not logically arrived at in the first place.  People believe what they want to believe.  And apparently many people believe discussing the size of your dick on national television is perfectly presidential.  The Republican party is imploding and it has no one to blame but itself.   I have to say I find it hugely entertaining, yet depressively alarming.

                      

I think everyone understands most of us are disillusioned with establishment politics in this country.  However I am ever confident people will come to their senses and start rejecting the radical political opportunism that is going on in the Republican party right now.  Having said that, morbid curiosity gnaws at me in anticipation of what will happen if there is a brokered convention and Mr. Trump is denied the nomination in spite of having the majority of delegates.  The major operatives of the Republican party are having such a shit attack they are even suggesting their members flush a basic tenet of democracy down the toilet and vote for who the establishment wants rather than who that voter prefers.  They are promoting exactly what people are fed up with- establishment politics.  Remember the turmoil during the 1968 Democratic National convention in Chicago?  Hundreds of protesters who felt politically disenfranchised were bruised and bloodied.  I have a feeling mid July in Cleveland will offer up some very similar drama.  That hangnail just will not go away.

 

Following is the transcript from this evening’s Breaking News story aired on our station.

——————————————————————————————————————————–
Good evening.  There is no reason you should know me, so before I go any further I guess I should introduce myself.  I am Billy Bimble, President Trump’s assistant press secretary.  As you are probably aware, President Trump was arrested this afternoon and is in a Mexico City jail, along with Press Secretary Hannibal, and the president has instructed me to speak to you tonight about his current predicament.  Before I get to that however, the president wants me to assure you that, although he is naturally upset with the Mexican government, he is perfectly safe and is confident the misunderstanding about his situation, as well as the wall under construction along the U.S.-Mexico border, will be all cleared up very shortly.  I spoke with him just an hour ago and he sounded like he was really pissed off, like usual, so that’s a good sign.

An hour really didn’t give me much time to get my thoughts together, but I will do my best to explain what is going on.  Remember, I am just an assistant, so you really shouldn’t expect much.  Actually I was just handed my title during this recent conversation with the president.  What I was before was the guy who carried around President Trump’s can of hair spray.  You might think that is the mother of all sweet jobs, but let me tell you the responsibilities are enormous.  You know how angry he gets.  In the last three years he has fired four people who couldn’t do the job right.  I bet you didn’t know that, did you?  I kind of psyched myself with the goal of hanging on and making it through this last year of his first term.  Now I’m hoping he gets a second one.  When I was handling the hair spray duties, I wasn’t so sure.  I got tired of getting yelled at.  But I have a feeling there will be a lot less pressure now that I am assistant press secretary.

So you are probably wondering how in the heck President Trump got himself into this fix in Mexico.  The details are still murky, but I am sure it had something to do with his anger issues.  He was already upset when he boarded Air Force One for his trip.  That’s the reason I’m still here and not in a jail in Mexico.  If you watched the news you might have noticed his hair flippity-flopping around while he was waving to the crowd right before he stepped into his plane.  He says I should have been prepared for that cross wind and given him a second coat before he climbed up the stairs.  Then he angrily snatched his hair spray out of my hand, said he’d just handle the job himself, and told me to go home.  I bet he’s damn glad that cross wind came up now.  At least he’s got me here to try and explain away all the troubles that are swirling around.

Some say he went a little too far when he challenged Speaker Ryan to that dual, but his approval rating skyrocketed when he fired Vice President Palin.  He did a standing back-flip when those poll numbers came out.  By now you all know how close President Trump was to shooting her.  And who can blame him?  It wasn’t so much the United Nations address she gave this summer, although that was pretty bad.  Even our U.S. translator couldn’t figure out what in the world she was saying.  Shutting the proceedings down for a day so people could go over their notes didn’t seem to help.  I guess Russia was pretty miffed.  Somehow those guys originally thought Vice President Palin called President Putin a “hole of and ass” for one thing, not to mention how upset the entire European Union was when a German diplomat misconstrued something she said to mean “Euro-trash.”  You have to hand it to all those interpreters in the building for sticking together and sorting things out.

But no it wasn’t that bewildering speech.  I tell you it was that which is known to all of us- that voice, the screeching sounds emitted like that of a wailing banshie, inflicting debilitating migraines upon the unprepared and causing dogs to howl and scatter in startled confusion.  It was after enduring one of Vice President Palin’s ten minute, ear drum shattering ramblings in the Oval Office that the president could stand it no longer and threatened her with his Glock 17.  I was in that room when it happened, and make no mistake it was I, Billy Bimble, who saved Vice President Palin’s life.  I take full responsibility.  I am truly sorry, but I was simply reacting instinctively.   Please, everyone!  Give me a break and stop tweeting all the hate messages.

Like I said, what exactly happened in Mexico is still unclear.  What is known, the stuff you know about from news reports, is the president went to Mexico on sort of a pacification mission, I think you would call it, about the wall he is building along our southern border.  And you are probably aware that Mexican President Cabarro got his underwear in a bunch over that thing.  Sixty feet high seemed like overkill to him I guess.  He said he would never agree to pay for a single strand of barbed wire, let alone a wall that blocks out the sun, and if President Trump wanted to do something about it he would just have to come down to Mexico because he sure as hell wasn’t going to go to Washington now that President Trump signed off on Amendment XXVIII.

I know everyone in our great country is well aware of this new constitutional amendment, but as I understand it this is being broadcast in Mexico, so I’ll go over it just in case there’s someone down there that has a TV set.  It was our insightful sitting president that sat around and finally did something about gun control.  Just so you know, our hispanic neighbors, Amendment XXVIII, specifically Section 1, mandates that every citizen of the United States of America carry a firearm of some sort at all times.  No doubt all our guns scare the crap out of you, our Mexican friends, which if you ask me is kind of ironic with all the bullet-riddled  bodies you have laying around in your country.   But you should understand it turned out to simply be the best way to clarify our pesky second amendment.  That stupid thing was so ambiguous.  I don’t know what in the heck our founding fathers were thinking there.  Man, would they be amazed if they could see the nice AK-101 I picked up for my little boy.  It knocks the little tyke right on his ass whenever he pulls the trigger.  Cute as the dickens.  I got that on-line at Fred’s Friendly-Fire Firearms Emporium.  Poor Fred was really taking some heat before section 3 of Amendment XXVIII made sure everyone knows on-line sales are just a sensible way to get guns into everyone’s hands.  And in my experience, Fred’s gun prices are hard to beat, unless you have a neighbor like I do.  Jack Vinivici- he just lives three houses down from me- he always has a garage sale of some sort going on.  Thank God section 4 of Amendment XXVIII came along to protect the rights of guys like Jack.  He likes to have special gun sales in the summer and early fall.  Then he can just lay everything out on tables in his driveway.  I was driving by his house last week and that’s when I picked up a sweet 9mm P99 pistol for my thirteen year old daughter.  She was a little upset I didn’t get her an assault weapon, but I just don’t think she should have a rifle slung over her shoulder.  I know a lot of the ladies like to accessorize with leather, but personally I think it looks a bit trampy.

Anyway, I guess what happened is, like you know, President Trump flew down to Mexico and while this wall conference was going on, apparently at some point he asked one of his secret servicemen to give the back of his head a quick shot of hair spray.  I know from experience touching up the back of the president’s head can be tricky.  If he feels any kind of moisture on his neck he can get pretty cranky.  And sure enough that’s what happened.  Evidently the president yelled out “You’re fired” and unfortunately a couple of President Cabarro’s body guards thought he said “Fire” and then all hell broke loose and after the gun smoke cleared both of President Trumps’s secret servicemen were in the hospital and the president and Press Secretary Hannibal were in a Mexico City jail.  That’s all I know so far.

Now I know all of you want to jump in your cars and head down to Mexico with your guns.  The president has asked me to tell you to stay calm.  He has also asked me to instruct the Secretary of Defense to amass the First and Second Armies along the border.  The president is running out of cell phone charge, so he asked me to pass this information along.  My cell phone battery is running low too, so If you wouldn’t mind Mr. Secretary, please inform the Joint Chiefs of Staff of this request.  The president is confident once the Mexican government sees the potential smack down they are about to get from our men in uniform, they will release him.  He’s pretty sure they’ll remember what happened back in 1846.  Of course if our boys do end up invading Mexico they might have some trouble getting over that wall.  I suppose if worse comes to worse they’ll just have to blast a hole in it.  Man I hope I’m not the one that has to explain that to President Trump.

So everyone, stay home!  We all know you have the guns to do the job, but let’s leave this one to the U.S. Army.  We don’t want things to get out of hand like they did last month.  You know how people blow everything out of proportion.  It’s ridiculous.  If I hear one more complainer say “Now our mass shootings are taking place at mass,” I swear I will shoot them myself.  Sure that gunfight that broke out in St. Patricks’s Cathedral gave our new amendment a black eye, but remember now it’s normal people like us doing the shooting, not all those crazy people.  Who knew the Irish take their Notre Dame football so seriously.

OK!  I think we are all on the same page.  Let’s calm down and holster up.  We have nothing to fear but fear itself- FDR.  And now that we all have our guns, what in the world are we afraid of?  Good night and God bless America.

 

Authors Note:  4 out of 5 people that liked this post also liked “Pre-Class Reunion” (May 2015) and “Female Final Four” (February 2015).  These people also consider the one guy that didn’t like these posts to be a big prick.  Also, 5 out of 5 of these people hated everything else on this site.  They can all just kiss my ass.

I was a little nervous at first, after Ted Cruz made his big announcement.  He knows for a fact Democrats commit more crimes of violence, like way way more, than Republicans. http://www.politicususa.com/2015/11/30/ted-cruz-completely-insane-claims-democrats-commit-violent-crimes.html.  I’m a Democrat, I think.  Or at least I have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate lately.  And after thinking about what Ted Cruz said, I started to worry a little bit.  Just the other day when the Packers lost another game I was really, really pissed.  I mean really.  I was seriously thinking about sending a hate letter to Aaron Rodgers and giving him a piece of my mind.  But then I had second thoughts and realized I really should be sending my hate letter to the entire offensive line. Their protection was leaking like a sieve and he was getting clobbered.   I was going to tell them how much they sucked, but again I stopped myself.  I was suddenly struck by how out of control all my hatred had become.  It had escalated from hating one guy to hating six guys.  I counted the tight end too.  I know he’s not really an offensive lineman, but I thought he was doing a pretty shitty job as well, so I threw him in the mix.  So there you go.  You can see how I would be concerned.  This is so unlike me.  At least when I’m sober.  I didn’t reach the point where I wanted to go out a buy a gun or anything, but still.  Maybe Ted is onto something.

     CRUZing OUR AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES  

REPUBLICAN                                                                                                           DEMOCRAT

That all happened last week.  Today I just remembered something.  I’m a Republican!  At least I should qualify as a Republican in Ted Cruz’s eyes because I am officially registered as a member of that party.  I rarely admit that, but that’s how it all went down back when I first voted.  Why I did that is a long story.  For now let’s just say I made a mistake.  But the fact remains every time I go to vote, there I am, listed as a Republican.  It’s kind of amazing to me how that keeps following me around.  Should I be worried about that?  I know I should go somewhere or get online or something and change things around.  But the simple fact is it just doesn’t matter, I don’t think.  I’m really not a Democrat either.  I have problems with both parties.  I guess I could register as an Independent, but it seems like the end doesn’t justify the means since everything is working out fine for me at the voting booth anyway.  I suppose there is that tiny, remote possibility I could fuck over some poor Democrat that ends up loosing in a primary by one vote because I didn’t get the correct party ballot.  Let’s not go there.  The point here is I am sort of a Democrat disguised as a Republican, safe from Ted Cruz’s scrutiny but thanks to Ted Cruz wondering if I am safe from myself.  Who knows when I might pull out a screw-driver and attack someone. Or I might use my rubber mallet.  It’s pretty big.  Here’s a picture of some things laying around my house I might be able to hurt you with.  I know because I have hurt myself with all this stuff.  And this is just a short list.  Some close calls I’ve had with lawn and garden equipment come to mind as well.  

I was kind of bothered about all of this so I started making a few phone calls. I figured anyone who has been in jail at some point in their lives would be able to help me out.   The best I could come up with were acquaintances of mine who got hauled in for DUI when they were in college.  I know that’s actually not a violent crime, unless you happen to be really plastered and cause some horrific accident.  Thankfully that was not the case with my two buddies.  But still they shouldn’t have been driving around.  Anyway I asked them if they remembered filling out a form or something when they were in jail that would document the fact that they were a Republican or a Democrat.  That’s all I really wanted to know.  I figured if you end up in jail all those forms have to be the same, right?  Doesn’t matter if you are in there for shoplifting or assault, the form would be the same.

My friend Bob (below) said he didn’t recall any such question at all, just address and phone number and stuff.  But he did remember right after the sex question he wrote “Last night, if a date with Rosey Palm counts.”  He was always like that, especially when he was tooted.  Unfortunately for him all that scribbling on the form got him cited for defacing county property and he had to spend an extra night in jail.

The other friend I called was Johnny (at right).  I am pretty sure when he got hauled in to jail for DUI when he was in college there was something other than alcohol influencing his driving.  Back in the 60’s he experimented with anything he could get his hands on, uppers, downers, LSD, PCP, peyote, you name it.  As he recalled, there actually was a question about being a Republican or Democrat, and it came right after the question about being a citizen of Neptune or Saturn.  Then he said he really had to go because he wasn’t feeling too hot and thought that might be related to his snacking on a bad batch of brownies he had recently brought back from Colorado.

Realizing I really wasn’t getting anywhere with my research, I called up Henry (below) an attorney friend of mine,  He emphatically stated there was nothing on any form you would fill out for any crime you committed, violent or non-violent, that would ask you a question about your political affiliation.  He then went on to emphatically state what a piece of shit Ted Cruz  was, and that progressed to a savagely hateful tirade about the presidential hopeful that went on so long I had to hang up.  I took that as verification of what I suspected all along, that there is not a politically oriented question on any prison intake form.  From that conversation I also suspected that first, Henry was a Democrat and second, there thus might be something to Ted Cruz’s basic premise that Democrats are more inclined to violence than Republicans.

So it was back to square one.  And actually I am still stuck in that square.  After all my research I figured out one thing though.  The conclusion I arrived at was that this was one more example of the political genius of Ted Cruz.  I’d seen it before (see my July 2015 blog “Trouble in Texas”).  Ted is after all a presidential candidate, and except for Donald Trump those people aspiring to the highest public office in the land don’t go around just making shit up, at least without a motive.  And Ted recognizes opportunity when he sees it.  Fact or fiction what Ted has going for him here is a chance to close the gap he has with Trump in the polls by utilizing one of Trumps own tactics.  To protect our citizenry, Donald Trump  has the Muslim community in his sights to federally surveil, and now I can only conclude Ted Cruz is about ready to unveil his program of surveilling Democrats if he is elected.  And the best part of his plan is he already has a database of registered troublemakers, something Donald Trump has yet to work out.  And the numbers!  No comparison.  You’ve got maybe ten million Muslims in the U.S., but over one hundred million Democrats to select from.  I guess that will require a lot of policing manpower, but just like his tax plan, numbers are of little importance.  What counts is what sounds good at the moment.  Anyway, if you’re a Democrat and in January of 2017 we have Ted Cruz as our president, that funny clicking sound you hear on your cell phone is just Ted listening in.  And as far as my political party registration goes, well I am going to leave well enough alone till the dust settles.  I might as well play it safe.  I have a feeling there will be an irritating cloud of some sort enveloping our political landscape for a very long time.

 

We are getting creamed!  ISIS has taken us to the cleaners and it seems the war against them is lost.  This is the United States of America for god’s sakes.  There is not a country on the entire planet that can match our military might.  How can we be taking it in the shorts by a bunch of lunatics living in the 8th century.  Somehow there has to be an explanation.  There is just no way we should be losing any kind of war to any kind of transgressor.

This very scenario is starting to look eerily similar to one that transpired before.  I read about it somewhere, I think it was back in grade school.  I kind of forget.  It might have been high school.  Oh Ya!  I am starting to remember now.  There was this guy who came out of nowhere and took over not only his own country but several surrounding ones.  It was an extraordinary rise to prominence if I remember right, an unparalleled accomplishment in the annals of history.  Here was this guy, with absolutely no  formal qualifications, who somehow slipped through the cracks and took over a political group of extreme nationalists and become their leader.  He was able to capitalize on that coup and become the leader of his entire country by taking to the streets and working up the masses with perplexingly vitriolic speeches about a particular religious group that he felt was responsible for their country’s defeat in a previous war it had recently been involved in.  Do you guys remember this?  I think it all happened back in the mid 20th century.  I just did a little research and I found a picture of this remarkable individual.   Believe it or not, we have a similar rising star right here in America.  He has an amazingly comparable political background and is using amazingly similar acts of fomenting speachafying  to amazingly be tracking politically in the same manner his mid twentieth century mentor did.  I found a picture of him too.

Just so you see where I am coming from, here are those pictures of these two political look-alikes.  Test your knowledge of history and current events and see if you can identify which one of these guys lived back then and the one moving along nicely in U.S. political progression now.     

How did you do?  I kind of gave things away I guess.  Color film developing was pretty labor intensive in the mid 20th century.  Of course the guy in the black and white picture has to be older.  And if you recall in the end things didn’t work out so well for him or his country.  Maybe this other guy will study up on stuff and be able to maneuver history down a different path.  I kind of doubt it though.  History just has a way of repeating itself and I have to tell you this kind of history makes me kind of nervous.

Related:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/news/64909/donald-trumps-9-11-celebration-claim-widely-disputed

What an interesting development all this campus unrest has created.  So many memories for me.  Ah, the 60’s. and 70’s  Who can forget.  Protests galore.  Vietnam and flag burning.  Selective Service and draft card  burning.  Women’s rights and  bra-burning.   Gay rights.  Civil rights.  Campus rights and rules.  Academic restrictions and practices.  You name it and we were there for the revolt against it.  Compared to today though we were severely handicapped.  What we would have given for all the social media avenues available now.  Only thing is none of it would have done any good anyway on my campus.  All the screaming and shouting and phoning and texting would have lost traction and evaporated like always.  That’s because Creighton University suspended its football program in 1942.

 

 

 

Student Protest 1965       Student Protest 2015

Football rules.  Yale, Princeton- wake up!  You have the blueprint for successful  protesting right before your eyes.  Your rebellions need a serious upgrade.  Get your football team involved like those Missouri students did.  You should know this.  You’re going to school at Yale and Princeton for Pete’s sake.  What was your SAT score anyway?  Same goes with Ithaca College.  Oh shit!  Sorry.  I forgot.  Your football team sucks and you probably hope to keep the limelight off of that dismal bunch.  But Yale and Princeton, come on.  Your guys aren’t doing too badly.   I guess I don’t know for sure if records hovering just above mediocrity fill up your stadiums,  but that Ivy League tradition has to count for something.  I bet just like Missouri your administrators aren’t about to kiss off a million plus bucks by not playing a football game.  I know it’s the Ivy League and maybe contractually a million dollars per game is not exactly the standard that the league signs up for, but if your football team doesn’t show up there has to be some kind of very serious penalty, not to mention the lost revenue and fan hysteria.  You should grab that leverage by the balls and run with it.  You would get what you want before the sun sets.

The power of football is so glaringly obvious I am surprised it has taken this long for someone to utilize it.  Sure there is that ongoing threat of student athletes unionizing, but that shit will be tied up in litigation for years.  The real iron in the fire readily available to strike is not the unionization thing.  It’s simple modern student activism coupled with confusingly germane athletics.  If something is  bothering you, pick up your cell phones and get the word out to your football team.  They’ll give those administrators such a fucking migraine your demands will be boxed up and gift-wrapped and delivered right to your door.

 

                                                           

Student Advocate  1965                                               Student Advocate  2015

The threat of a football game being canceled has so much potential.  Outside of a nuclear bombing,  from my perspective there is nothing in existence that possesses the negotiating leverage of football.  Its attraction is so powerful I think there is a distinct possibility we could harness that energy for the common good.  Every country in the world should have a football team.  And I’m not talking about that soccer shit.  That just won’t fly here.  Well maybe if we want everybody to take a nap it would work out.  I know that sport is huge everywhere except here in the U.S., but believe me if we get everyone on board with American football the sky is the limit.  We’ve already been infiltrating Europe with NFL games  If we are persistent enough we can get the whole world exposed and addicted.  It seems to me we are doing a pretty good job on that front.

When every country finally has its own national football team, the world is bound to be a better place.  If some country feels there’s some kind of shenanigans going on in another county all that needs to be done is to threaten to cancel the upcoming football game.  Dignitaries will be making phone calls and flying all over the place to broker a quick resolution.  And think about it.  If some shit-ball organization like ISIS comes around fuckiing with our football, the entire world will raise up in indignation and exact hell-bent revenge.  This is just one of my really good ideas that I think should be given some serious consideration.

 

 

My mother broke her hip so I am here with her in beautiful St. George Utah doing various things to help out with her transitions from her regular life to hospital life to rehabilitation life and back.  And she will be back.  She is remarkable.   96 years old and never complains.  She is still as particular as ever.  She has me running back and forth to her assisted living facility, where she normally lives without assistance, to pick up this and that for her stay in the rehab center.  It took me three trips to finally retrieve the correct white blouse she indicated was a complete necessity for stylish strutting up and down the hallways in her two wheeled walker.                                                 

Jimmy Walker- Funny              Johnny Walker- Not too Shabby     Wheeled Walker-Not Funny at all

More on that later probably.  I love St George.  The scenery is stunning and though I avoid the place in the summer if at all possible because of the relentless heat, this time of year the weather is perfect for me.  There is one thing you should prepare yourself for however if you some day do decide to visit here.  In this valley of the octogenarians what you will be completely bombarded with will be the constant presence of the Fox News channel.  I actually caught a break with my mother for awhile.  The various incapacitations of her predicament evidently caused her to kind of forget about Fox News and I was able to sneak in a considerable amount of football viewing the first few days.  That all changed yesterday as she settled in to her rehab accommodations.

Of course the next Republican debate is coming up, tonight as a matter of fact, and the entire Fox News organization is giddy with excitement since they are hosting the event.  I have to admit it holds some interest for me since the last one caused so much consternation among the candidates.  I’m kind of surprised some of them didn’t dial up their mothers on their cell phones and complain to them right up there on the stage.  It’s a debate.  Answer the questions.  Sure some of them are borderline ridiculous but behind most are the desire to find out if you are a nincompoop or not.

The big complaint from most of these presidential hopefuls was that the questions during the last debate were too personal or off topic, at least from what I can gather.  Personally I didn’t see a lot of that, but that’s just me.  But Fox News apparently got all lathered up about it.  I don’t know for sure because I never watch Fox News.  But that’s what I hear.

While shifting around uncomfortably in my chair listing to Bill O’Reilly last night, something he said caught my attention.  He was interviewing one of the moderators of the upcoming debate and of course handing out his advice on what the line of questioning the moderators should use.  He was insistent there should be some “entertainment value” offered, that there ought to be some “zingers” thrown out there to keep the audience’s attention.  And the moderator could’t agree more.  Maybe it’s just me but I think that is what all the complaining was about over the last one.

So you should pay attention tonight.  Maybe the moderators will take Bill’s advice and we will be in for a real treat.  I know I’ll be watching.  I’m here in St. George Utah.  I have no choice.