What If The Supreme Court Ruled On The Existence Of God?

Recently, I blogged something I think was profound*.

Imagine that Trump nominates a young, strict constructionist. Imagine further that Roe v Wade and gay marriage are overturned and sent back to the states for local rulings and the possibility of amending the constitution. What does it really mean?

It means that the people will be given a choice about these key elements of their culture and their lives. It's not the Supreme Court's culture and it's not your culture or my culture, it's our culture and a strict constructionist will hand the power back to us. That's a very, very good thing.

The two rulings causing the most hysteria among the progressives are abortion and gay marriage. Like the existence of God, both are rulings on unanswerable questions.

What is a marriage? Is it defined by biology or emotions? Both sides have merit. Both can be strongly held by well-intentioned people and defended with sound logic and fact..

When does life begin? When the egg is fertilized? When the heart starts beating? When the child can feel pain? When it is born? When it can be considered sentient? Any one of these is defensible. Any one can be strongly held by well-intentioned people and defended with sound logic and fact.

Why are ambiguous questions that define key parts of our culture being decided by 5 people and forced upon 325,000,000? If the questions can be answered in multiple ways without "hate" or illogic, then one answer is as valid as another. The dudes and dudettes on the Supreme Court aren't going to come up with the killer arguments that put those questions to bed once and for all because those arguments do not exist. The Supremes are not supremely wise, they just have the training, experience and position to rule on laws. That's not the same as cultural omniscience.

I am fundamentally opposed to both abortion and gay marriage, but I would find them easier to accept if the citizens of my state voted to make them legal. At least then I wouldn't feel like I was living in a 5-person dictatorship. And frankly, I can't respect 5 people who think they can answer eternal paradoxes definitively for all the rest of us. That's obnoxious.

The real question at hand is not whether this or that ruling will be upheld or overturned, it's this: Who gets to rule on hopelessly ambiguous cultural matters, the 325,000,000 of us or the 5 of them?

Here, we see members of the Supreme Court paying a visit on our elected officials so they can issue a ruling upon the rest of us.

* - Hey, even an ideologically blinded blogger finds an acorn now and again. Although just what that blogger would do with the acorn once he found it is beyond me.

You're Horrible Just The Way You Are!

Last night, one of our sons and I went to hear Jordan Peterson talk on his 12 Rules for Life. It was good fun and very Jordan-Petersony. That is, it was erudite, informative, well-considered and nearly without organization. His talks have a semi-Brownian motion aspect to them and he can wander off into a sidebar for quite a while before getting back to his topic. His sidebars are as good as the intended content, so it's no loss when he does it.

The Professor made a ton of good points and we made superhuman efforts to remember them. I heard a lot of focus on goals and my son heard a lot of focus on responsibility. Here's one that really struck me.

You're not perfect the way you are. In fact, you're a hot mess.

If you were perfect the way you are, why not just die now? After all, things can't get any better, can they?

If you're not perfect, the follow-up is that you have so much potential. With effort, a few decades from now, you'll be a whole lot better than you are now.

What occurred to me was that's a message of hope whereas telling someone they're perfect is a message of hopeless nihilism. No one really thinks they're perfect. We all know our faults. In fact, a lot of us focus too much on those faults. If we thought that we were perfect the way we were, that we would couldn't improve from the sinful, frequently wrong creature we are now, we'd despair. If we think that there is a future ahead where things get better due to our efforts, we can have hope and joy for life.

There. Pretty deep stuff. Enjoy!

No Kennedy, Know Peace

I had a couple more thoughts yesterday about the Kennedy retirement from the Supreme Court, most of them optimistic.

Imagine that Trump nominates a young, strict constructionist. Imagine further that Roe v Wade and gay marriage are overturned and sent back to the states for local rulings and the possibility of amending the constitution. What does it really mean?

It means that the people will be given a choice about these key elements of their culture and their lives. It's not the Supreme Court's culture and it's not your culture or my culture, it's our culture and a strict constructionist will hand the power back to us. That's a very, very good thing.

You can hate on people all day if you aren't selling to them. You can call them racists, suppress their speech, harass and dox them, scream at them, drive their speakers from campuses and attack them in restaurants if you don't have to later try to persuade them to agree with you in the voting booth.

By taking major cultural decisions out of the hands of the people, the Supreme Court did away with many of the reasons the progressives had to behave in a civil manner. Why not howl that everyone who supported Trump was a racist if the big items were off the table? Who cared if you lost another governorship or legislature when you had the courts as your ultimate weapon? Able to crush Christian businesses and drive conservatives out of auditoriums and employment, the red tide at the local level was a relatively minor irritant. That changes when the big items are put back in play.

Yes, the campaigns will be loud and sometimes nasty, but if they want to win, the Democrats will have to reign in the violent and oppressive left. That's a lesson they're going to have to re-learn over time. Right now it's beyond them and they're going to keep calling for everything up to and including riots and physical intimidation. In the end, however, you'd think that a series of failures and the loss of prized "rights" would make them rethink the destructive path they're on right now.

I'm guessing that calling us deplorable won't work.

Justice Kennedy And Dialing Things Up To 17

So Justice Kennedy is retiring. If it looks like he will be replaced by a constitutional conservative along the lines of Gorsuch, Thomas and Alito, we could very well see gay marriage and abortion threatened. If you think the violent rhetoric, the physical attacks and the intimidation from the progressives are bad now, just wait. They're going to positively lose their minds. Forget turning it up to 11, they're going to turn it up to 17.

Enough

I need to take a break from the accelerating calls for intimidation and assaults on conservatives. I had a blog post on that, but instead I'll share one of my favorite Hillsong United's songs with you.

You met me at the sinners table
I found You waiting by the well, unexpected
You are always there
Tracing all my steps

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

This Is Some Crazy Stuff

Apparently, attacking right-wing fascist bigots* on social media isn't enough any more. Now we must attack them in person. Not physically, of course. Well, not yet at least. And assuming that they don't feel threatened enough to escalate things. We're also limiting it to cabinet-level officials. For now.

Maxine Waters calls for attacks on Trump administration: "If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere." pic.twitter.com/jMV7wk48wM

— Ryan Saavedra 🇺🇸 (@RealSaavedra) June 24, 2018

In Scott Adams' podcast yesterday, he said he was now afraid to do public appearances. He didn't reference this lunatic, but instead referenced a different lunatic. There seems to be no shortage of progressive lunatics urging violence these days.

What really blew me away was that Scott, no Republican or conservative and generally a level-headed sort, said, "They're coming for you next." He suggested that as the Republicans' mid-term slogan to get out the vote.

* - This means you, whoever you are and whatever you believe. With as fast as the list of hate crimes punishable by screaming attacks is growing, the odds of you violating one of them is asymptotically approaching 100%.

Politics And Indigestion

So the Red Hen restaurant kicked Sarah Huckabee Sanders out to make a political point. They're standing with the Resistance or something like that. Commentary seems to be running 50-50 on the topic and it's not clear if they will see a drop in business as they may well become a darling of the progressives.

Even if I were politically aligned with them, why would I ever want to go there? I don't want political discussions are dinner in my own house, much less in a restaurant. I certainly don't want to be around a bunch of people who are making political statements with their every action.

This is a natural consequence of an ever-growing State. Governments are run through politics and politics is arguing. The bigger and more intrusive the government, the more we are going to argue with each other. Now we're yelling about which restaurant is serving which side. You can't watch the NFL without political commentary. You can't watch an entertainment awards show without it. Now we're bringing that same love and joy to eating out?

Great. Just great.

Red

It's a photoblog kind of day. One of our sons is getting married and the house will be buzzing soon, so this is all the time I can spare.

As an aside, we love the bride. She's a lovely girl and she likes my fried chicken and biscuits. What more do you need to know? :-)

I took this shot a couple of weeks ago in my mom's garden and it made me realize that the downside to a phone camera is that you just don't get anything other than basic shots with it. Or maybe it's just that I don't. With my Nikon D60 artillery piece, I feel inspired to blast away and try different things, but with the phone it's all about shooting once or twice and moving on.

In any case, mom's prize roses are still prizes and so is she. Enjoy!

Porn Is More Important Than Pay

... to women.

If you ask a divorced woman which would she rather have had through the bad parts of her marriage, the divorce and her single aftermath, a 10% raise or a better husband, she's going to say a better husband. I don't even need to look that up or reference a study, it's just a fact.

Dig this graphic from an article in Science.

In case you're wondering, the research showed that it was more than correlation, porn was actually causal. Marriages are being destroyed because of it.

We talk a lot about the pay gap, which may or may not exist. We don't talk much about porn and the way in which it damages marriages, which absolutely does happen and in large numbers with greater effects than any pay gap.

The Downside To The Trump Economy

... is increased rush-hour traffic.

Without traffic, it takes me about 30 minutes to get to and from work. These days, it's taking close to an hour to get home. The increase has been easy to detect and it wasn't until yesterday, when I had plenty of time in the car to think about it, that I figured it out.

Lower unemployment means more people going to work. More people going to work means more traffic.

I wonder if everyone is seeing more traffic these days.

Separating Families

... is just the next chapter in the novel we're all supposed to be reading together.

So the media and the Democrats, but I repeat myself, are howling about separating illegal immigrant families at the border. It's all the rage, emphasis on rage. We've been doing it for years, far back into the Obama Administration, if not further. There are plenty of high-profile Democrats on record in interviews talking about it and not in breathless outrage.

If everyone knew about it all along and it wasn't a scandal then and it's a scandal now, the family separations can't be the real issue. It's only the latest chapter in the novel. This time the novel is plainly obvious as this chapter was preceded by a viral image of children in a cage that was proven to be from the Obama days.

(Shrug.)

I guess I'm supposed to show how much I care by ranting in high dudgeon, or perhaps even strato dudgeon, about how this is inhumane and it needs to stop and blah blah blah.

I dunno, how about if we keep doing it so word gets out not to bring your kids on a cross-desert trip to break into my country? Wouldn't it be better to not have any kids at all trying to get in illegally? I'm not hearing much about the kids making the trek across Mexican states that are embroiled in drug wars and terrain that is inhospitable for experienced hikers much less small children.

So if we didn't care then and we don't care about the kids making the trip, what are we really discussing? Oh, right. Political talking points.

Yawn.

Volkswagen For The Win!

I am totally in love with VW's World Cup ad campaign. This is one of my favorites. The Argentinians make me laugh every time.

Is The Racialism Thing Just About Played Out?

I get the feeling more and more lately that the racialist moment is ending. The Asian-American lawsuit against Harvard looks airtight. Dig this graph.

The Ivy League is clearly practicing racial discrimination against Asians and, if you read the data beyond just this graph, whites as well. If the Asians manage to get the admittance rules changed for them, it will have to change for everyone and that's a good thing.

People who work hard should be rewarded and not just for their own sake. They make us all better as we have to compete with them. Were I surrounded by slovenly louts, I probably wouldn't be listening to non-fiction books all the time. I wouldn't feel the need to up my game.

What's going on now is a good thing.

On Grooming A Pandora Station

I love Pandora. Here in the Catican Compound, we have about 40 Pandora stations, one for every mood and cuisine. It works on our Amazon Echo as well as our Sonos sound system. We also like to groom our Pandora stations, giving thumbs up and thumbs down to songs we like and songs we don't. The end result has been not quite what we expected.

I recently made a Confederate Railroad station. We're going to go see them in concert in a few weeks and even my Yankee wife has become a big fan. I've listened to the station at work and groom it as it plays. It now only plays a rotation of about 20 songs. The odds of it playing something I haven't heard are practically nil.

I get that Pandora wants to keep me happy, to keep me as a customer, but seriously, guys, I'm not going to bolt if I hear something less than stellar. In retrospect, I probably should have only used the thumbs-down and not the thumbs-up. That might have been the killer as all I'm getting now are my favorites.

Oh well. While you ponder that, here's one of our favorites. Enjoy!

Didn't We See This Movie Already?

Following up on yesterday's post where I suggested that the news media is simply serializing a novel they want you to read and not actually reporting on the whole of reality, I'd suggest that it extends to the arts as well.

Back in the 1950s, the western reigned supreme. If you wanted to watch a sci-fi flick, for example, your choices were limited to giant monsters scaring teens and the very occasional rocket ship to Venus sort of thing. All of them were low budget efforts and never had any of the big names.

These days, it's all social justice all the time. Cute, skinny chicks beating up on big guys, people of varying alternative persuasions overcoming oppressive, white, cis-normal racists and the like. In many cases, the movies are set in the past so they can bring in Jim Crow and cultural sexism to make sure you get the point.

I've gotten to where I can't watch them any more because I can't tell them apart. In the civil rights movies, there's always a scene where the white racists come out of church and then a few minutes later are using the n-word or beating up the protagonist. There's always a scene where some big, white guy says, "You trying to cause trouble, boy?" to which the hero replies in an innocent, squeaky voice, "No, Mr. Johnson, I just want to be the best badminton player I can be!"

Last night, we watched an episode of The Bletchley Circle which is the story of the first Eskimo tennis star. Or maybe it's about a gay teen growing up in 1952 Kansas. Or it could be a group of women who worked together decrypting Nazi transmissions in WW II and now solving crimes as a group. I think it's the latter. I fell asleep pretty early, but not before one of the cis-gendered white men derisively dismissed the work of one of the women who had clearly solved a Nazi cryptogram.

Good Lord, haven't we seen this movie already about a thousand times?

So instead of Black Bart rustling cattle or Miss Ellen Sue losing her farm to the unscrupulous cloned sheep rancher, it's social justice morality plays over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. I don't have a problem with westerns or with social justice stories any more than I have a problem with oatmeal. I just don't want to eat it morning, noon and night.

Here we see either the small-town sheriff trying to fight off the bad guys or a Southern christian about to keep a transgendered Latinx off the women's water polo team.

You Aren't Reading The News

Instead, you're being told a story.

On travel, at a Starbucks, my eyes wandered over a New York Times in a rack. Their Korea headline had something about Trump's dangerous gamble or something like that. Coming back to the hotel, another newspaper's above-the-fold story showed the Pope holding a black child and had a headline telling us that the Pope wanted more lenient immigration laws.

The first one was silly. Prior to the summit, the Norks were flinging missiles all over the place and detonating atomic bombs. Now they aren't. To my mind, missiles plus nukes is more gamble-y than no missiles and no nukes. I couldn't figure out why anyone would write a headline about Trump's gamble under those circumstances, but there it was in the NYT.

The Pope story really hit me. The Pope says a lot of things. I'm no fan of Francis, but he's also said things about abortion. I seriously doubt the newspaper in question has ever run an above-the-fold story with the Pope holding a black child with a headline saying he thought we should stop slaughtering black babies by the hundreds of thousands. And yet he has said that and it is a far more defining feature of Catholicism and representative of the Pope than immigration is.

The reason those headlines were written with the supporting stories attached was that they were the next chapter in the story the newspaper was telling you. Just like a regular novel, there are stories going on all around the hero, but it's the hero's story and one story in particular that is laid out in the book. It's not even the most important story, either.

During the course of a Harlequin romance novel, where Theresa is wondering if Brian is thinking about Muriel while he strokes her hair and tells her sweet lies, there are other things going on in the world. China is building up a military presence in Southeast Asia and Iran is spinning centrifuges while British police officers are arresting English fathers for objecting to Muslims raping their daughters. You don't need to know any of that, this is a story about Theresa, Brian and Muriel. For all it matters, Pakistan and India could be trading nukes and annihilating millions, but what matters to the story is Brian's fidelity to Theresa in the face of slutty Muriel's advances.

That's the state of the modern media. They are there to tell you a story, not tell you the news. Oh sure, one of the largest annual marches in DC is the March for Life, but that's not part of the novel, so they leave it out just like the Harlequin author leaves out drug-gang murders in Mexico. Yes, they're happening, but that's not relevant to the development of the plot.

Never add things to a story that don't advance the plot!

So there you have it. If you see newspapers and TV news as a serialization of the novel the MSM wants you to read, it makes more sense and you can stop yelling at them about not covering or badly covering important events. You'll feel better when you do.

"Theresa?"
"Yes, Brian?"
"Italian bonds just turned into mounds of  worthless paper and Deutsche Bank is totally insolvent."
"Oh my goodness. That makes the Nigerian unrest even more unstable as Star Africa Commodities & Minerals Limited will need to liquidate some of their holdings to make up for unredeemable deposits!"
"Good Lord. That's just what Muriel was saying."
(I knew it! He's still seeing that witch!)

President Trump As Obi-Wan Kenobi

Yesterday, I watched the video that President Trump showed Kim Jung Un at the start of their meeting. I thought it was brilliant.

Two things jumped out at me.

1. Notice how Kim is the hero of the story and Trump is his guide to achieving his goal. This is one of the most important lessons from Building a Story Brand. Kim is Trump's prospect and he's trying to sell him peace and demilitarization. When you sell, you are the guide, helping the hero, your customer, achieve their goals. You are not the hero of the story nor is your product. You are Obi-Wan and your customer is Luke. You will sell them what they need to succeed and then fade into the background while they win the day. This video was absolutely brilliant in doing that.


2. Kim is shown as Trump's equal. A fat, little kid who runs a giant prison camp where only one city has reliable electricity is the equal of the American president, a TV star and a larger-then-life billionaire playboy. The video played to Kim's ego and his undoubtedly unsatisfied desire for more adulation, more money, more fame. It said that Donald Trump saw him as a great man just waiting to take his rightful place in history which could only happen if he made the right choices. Pure genius.

I thought Trump was going to overwhelm Kim and if this video is any guide, he did just that.

Swallowing Toads

I'm in DC on travel and came down to the hotel lobby to see this.

I remarked on Twitter that it looked like the MSNBC hosts had been swallowing toads all night. I didn't notice the chyron about "people who worked in the Obama Administration." Good luck trying to get the American people to believe that this historic summit was somehow due to Obama.

Maybe Actors And Academics Aren't Representative Of The Population As A Whole

After a week of intersectional feminism/racism/gender crises which included a case where a school essay had to be scrubbed because it had triggering words that might offend transgendered Eskimo midgets*, famous actor Robert de Niro participated in a widely-watched practically invisible awards show for entertainers giving prizes to each other by screaming obscenities at the president.

I don;t think he was arguing against bimetalism here.

Meanwhile, the president is doing what many had considered impossible for anyone and negotiating nuclear disarmament in Korea. In addition to that, he's starting a process of pardoning blacks who are in prison for non-violent offenses, leading to scenes like this one.

I'm guessing that right about now, Democratic Party election consultants are starting to wonder if throwing their lot in with Hollywood and the Ivy League was such a good idea.

* - OK, I don't have any evidence this happened, but you have to admit, you wouldn't have been surprised if it had.

Someone Has A Weird Dad

Dig this display unit I saw at a store recently.

Huh?

Flax seed bars, rice crackers and granola are perfect for dad? Who's dad? Certainly no dad I know. There better be beer and pork products wrapped for me on Father's Day or someone's going to be in a lot of trouble!

I Think It's Time To Leave San Diego For A While

Billboards like this are popping up all over town.

Uh oh.

I've seen enough Japanese documentaries to know how these super reptile things always end. The running and screaming and being eaten - it's just not fitting in with my plans right now. I also don't want to find myself with my lips moving out of sync with my voice, you know what I mean?

I figure I can come back around July 20th. Things should have calmed down by then.

Anxiety Dog

... has anxiety issues.

Leah, the larger of our two Chihuahua mixes, is also part Portuguese Podengo Pequeno. Here's what VetStreet has to say about them.

The lively Podengo is an alert and intelligent dog whose watchful nature helps ensure that you will always know what’s going on around your home, both inside and out.

Here's what the AKC has to say.

Bred originally for rabbit hunting, the energetic Portuguese Podengo Pequeno requires brisk daily exercise. They have a rightful reputation for being tough and tireless. Playing in a large fenced yard, a vigorous walk daily, participation in agility or obedience trials, or hunting can provide the needed activity. They should only be allowed loose within safely fenced areas—as hunters, their instinct to follow their nose can get them into trouble quite quickly.

Mix that with a Chihuahua and you've got all the makings of a complete neurotic. Here's what she did last night.

Out of the trash, onto the floor and shredded in no time at all!

 Not a problem, you say? What if I told you she did it at 2 AM?

What kind of dog goes bonkers at 2 AM? Especially after a substantial walk the previous day. I'm not in favor of drugging either kids or pets, but we're seriously considering some anti-anxiety medicine for her.

She probably even dreams of zipping about the house, shredding things.

From Frozen Chicken To Perfect BBQ In 90 Minutes

I came home the other night craving BBQ chicken and wanting to have friends over for dinner. I had thighs in the freezer, but nothing thawed. No worries, mate. We've got this covered.

I made a gallon of salt and brown sugar brine in a large pot and put it on the stove. I chucked two packages of thighs, 3 each, 6 total, still frozen together in thigh-bricks, into the brine. I added a pair of Cornish Game Hens that had been hiding out in the back of the freezer. They were little ice balls.

I turned on the heat and let it go, checking the temperature frequently. It plateaued around 85 degrees as the poultry thawed. After about 30 minutes, I could break the thigh-bricks apart and put them back in the brine. At about 40 minutes, I was able to pull out the hens and butterfly them. I put them back in the brine as well. I let the brine get to 120 degrees and then turned the heat down to low. I started the grill and prepared the rub described here.

NOTE: Don't use salt in your rub if you brine the chicken first. It totally oversalts the food! I did that and it almost wrecked the meal. The method described here was still good, but the salt was too much.

Once the charcoal on the grill was ready, I took the bird pieces out of the pot, applied the rub and put them on the grill. I only needed to partially char the skin as the meat was already at about 120. Once I colored the skins, I took them off direct flame, painted them with BBQ sauce and put the lid on the Weber to oven them for about 10 minutes.

And that was it. They came out perfectly, or would have had I not over salted the little brutes. Frozen to BBQ on the table in 90 minutes.

Yummy!

Progressives And Pets

I heard the audio from the video below on a podcast yesterday and it was absolutely fascinating. Watch the whole thing. Enjoy!

The Europeans Did Not Conquer The Incas

... Francisco Pizarro and his goon squad did.

I'm currently making my way through The Great Age of Discovery: Volume I. I highly recommend it. Written in the 1950s, it is far superior to the politically correct History's Greatest Voyages of Exploration, which selectively edits history to make sure you end up hating the West and feeling sorry for the indigenous peoples who ended up on the losing side. More on that in a later blog post, perhaps.

Francisco did indeed whack the Incas. He showed up with a motley crew of brigands right on the heels of an Incan civil war, which was probably the only way that disease-riddled pack of thieves were going to stand a chance against the Incan Empire. He defeated the Incan King, Atahualpa, in a sneak attack at the Battle of Cajamarca,which was more of a simple massacre than anything else. Atahualpa himself was fresh off the field from defeating his brother and rival for the Incan crown. A while later, the Pizarro ruffians split into two factions and fought a civil war of their own at the Battle of Las Salinas.

In short, one faction after another fought over the same territory and the same wealth. That's not the point, it's just the lead up to this: the Spanish crown had about as much control over Pizarro as you do over the moon.

To travel from Spain to Peru, assuming you took the most direct route possible, would have taken about two months. King Charles I of Spain gave Pizarro permission to explore and conquer, but he had no direct control over him at all. The time it took to communicate saw to that. The conquistadors were effectively independent operators.

Previous failed efforts to conquer the Incas by Pizarro led the local governor of Panama to deny Pizarro permission to try again, after which Pizarro went over the governor's head to the king. King Charles probably figured he had nothing to lose as Pizarro would eventually find a sponsor anyway. Whatever imperial motives the king had, he was certainly also trying to use Pizarro's willingness to gamble his life to get something good for Spain out of it.

Meanwhile, the rest of Europe was unaware of Pizarro's existence, much less his exploits. If King Charles had no direct control over Pizarro, the "Europeans" couldn't have picked him out of a police lineup.

See where this leads? What's all this nonsense about the"Europeans" conquering the new world? At the time of the conquistadors, the work was done by semi-independent bands of adventurers who did their own thing as soon as they got out of earshot of the royal court. Given the multiple sides in the Incan-Pizarro conflict alone, it was more like Somali warlords duking it out over the territory and the loot than an organized invasion.

Pizarro's exploits in Peru against the Incas. Local Starbucks are shown on the map, indicating where Pizarro stopped to email King Chares I of Spain for further orders.

The Morality Of Global Warming

err, Climate Change, isn't as straightforward as you might thing. In the short video below, Dinesh D'Souza explains something I've been trying to say for a while. Dinesh is responding to a member of the audience who claims the Democrats are moral and uses Global Warming Climate Change as the example. "Why don't you err on the side of caution and do something good for the world's poor" is the gist of it.

Enjoy.

You Can't Legislate Affection

I was scrounging through my closet yesterday when I found a box of clothes. I hadn't remembered boxing anything like that up, so I looked into it. It was my old New Orleans Saints gear and then I recalled how it got there.

I've been a crazy N'awlins Saints since Mike Ditka led them to three straight 3-13 seasons way back when. I've listened to their games when they were horrible and when they won the Super Bowl, it was a religious experience. My closet and dresser is full of Saints gear. I love wearing it. No more. Until this passes away decisively, I'm putting it all away.

One more thing. The morons in the NFL think they're sending a message to Trump. Well, maybe they are, but they're sending a much, much bigger message to their fans. They're saying they want to go to war with the President and if we happen to get hurt badly in the cross fire, well, it sucks to be us.

No, boys. It's going to suck to be you. We can live just fine without you, but you're going to have a hard time living without us.

Today, there's a new poll out showing that the NFL is still in the doghouse.

The National Football League has done nothing to recover during the off season from it’s miserable popularity ratings that are now at the lowest ever.

Rocked by the issues of players taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem, overly long games, and scandalous players, just 35 percent say they have a favorable view of “America’s sport.”

According to an Economist/YouGov poll taken May 27-29 another 47 percent have an “unfavorable” view of the NFL.

The backlash was not about the kneeling per se, it was about what the kneeling revealed. They are two different things. When the NFL recently ruled that the players have to stand for the national anthem, it didn't mean that the ultra-wealthy kneelers suddenly loved our country, the ones we normals join the Army infantry to defend, it meant that they were going to be forced to show respect they didn't actually possess.

Before the kneeling protest, we fans had no idea some of the players hated us. Now we know and putting that genie back in the bottle is going to be terribly difficult. Masking their hatred through public pronouncements is showing us just how the mask is applied. Yesterday, the 49ers players hated you. Today, those same players still hate you, but will pretend not to hate you.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be interested in the NFL this season. It's too early to tell. We'll probably still watch Sunday Night Football because we love Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth, but that might be about it.

Prediction: The Kim Summit Is Going To Be A Massacre

Something occurred to me out of the blue today about the upcoming RocketMan - Trump summit.

I left the Republican Party because they nominated Trump, an unscrupulous, self-dealing, dishonest mountebank. His past was littered with broken agreements, stiffed employees, shafted unions and swindled customers. I now see the error of my ways.

Oh, Trump is still an unscrupulous, self-dealing, dishonest mountebank, but he's our unscrupulous, self-dealing, dishonest mountebank. Who would you rather have negotiating for you than someone who can take the Teamsters and Longshoremen to the cleaners?

Meanwhile, the Norks have RocketMan, a little dude who has gotten everything he's ever wanted, is surrounded by sycophants and wins debates by using anti-aircraft guns on his opponents. He's never had to negotiate anything more than deciding which of his lapdogs to execute as an example to the other lapdogs to refrain from mutiny.

It's going to be a massacre.

"Kim, you're a tough cookie, my friend, I'll give you that. I don't think I've ever run across someone with as much talent as you and I've negotiated with the best, let me tell you. Just because I like you and I want to make sure you leave happy, I'm willing to give in and let you destroy all of your nukes, open your borders and sign a peace treaty with South Korea."