A Final Round Double Bogey at the 18th Hole

 It's Masters Weekend.

But instead of the usual blooming azaleas and walks along freshly mown spring grass, the Golf Gods decided in this year of COVID to hold the tournament as the shadows lengthen and thoughts of Thanksgiving dinner and it's inherent new fangled difficulties begin to fill our heads. The first two rounds have both had to be extended to the next day because of a lack of daylight in order to finish them (honestly, why didn't they take a silly thing like daylight into consideration?). Nevertheless the tournament will be played and some young white guy or Tiger Woods will be modeling that oh so preppy green jacket come Sunday night.

But I'm not here to talk about sports. I'm here to talk about sportsmanship.

A couple of days before the election, soon to be ex-Vice President Mike (Mommy Says I'm A Good Boy) Pence called up Jack Nicklaus and asked him to endorse the Trump/Pence ticket. Jack Nicklaus is the greatest golfer of all time until someone else is better and I guess the campaign was worried about potentially losing the white male country club vote.

That alone shows they really didn't know how to run a campaign.

Well Jack being as Republican as can be wrote a full throated endorsement of the Great Orange Cheeto and then went on to imply, no downright say that the other side were communist authoritarians. It was that last bit that was a bridge too far even for white shoes America. Golf fans of all stripes decided old Jackie double bogeyed that hole and let him know it. But Nicklaus, finding himself in front of a microphone for the first time in many a year decided to double down on that $5 Nassau and go on to state that he thought the COVID numbers, both cases and deaths, were overblown. He even said someone he knew was asked if it was okay to say their late parents had died of COVID because the hospital would get more money (hmm, where have I heard that line before?).

Yup, old Uncle Fuzzy ruined everyone's Thanksgiving by sitting down at the end of the table and going off on how the COVID can't be real cause he ain't gotten it. Pass the yams.

Skip ahead 10 days. The Masters traditionally begins with a ceremonial tee shot from one or two living legends of the sport. Stand on the first tee, have someone hand you a driving wood, and have everyone ooh and ahh at how an 80 year old can still get it out there a hundred yards or so. Then take a couple of questions from reporters and shuffle off to the clubhouse for a mimosa.

Before going any further I should mention how Jack Nicklaus was thought to be one of the great exemplars of sportsmanship. Famously he told his opponent at a deciding Ryder cup match to go ahead and pick up his ball when it was sorta close to the hole, thus causing a tie in the match and allowing his opponent and the rest of the opposing team to save face. In his lifetime he preached sportsmanship over winning, and that cheating was not to be tolerated in any facet of life. 

Do you see where I'm headed?

Sure enough one of the first questions was from Christine Brennan of USA Today:

“As you know, I wanted to speak with you before I wrote my column about your very public support of President Trump. I’d love to ask this now if I may. You are known as the ultimate gracious sportsman in the game of golf and really throughout sports, certainly with your career, with Ryder Cups, the way you’ve handled victory and defeat and the like. I’m just curious: What is your advice to President Trump on how to accept defeat?”  

Jack stood tall, squared his shoulders, drew a breath and replied:

"I think I’ve said enough about that. I don’t think this is the place for politics.”

Um, yeah. You said a whole lot with that statement. You said that the wanna be presidente for life was right to go ahead and keep contesting an election he has clearly lost. You said it's okay to keep looking for legal loopholes to stay one step ahead of the Southern District of New York's prosecutors. You said the will of the American people should be disregarded because, well, they're wrong and he (and me) are right. You said you believed the lies and the falsehoods Donald Trump has perpetuated on the public these last four years are okay by you so long as those godless Demoncrats don't get into the White House. 

In other words, what you said was that sportsmanship doesn't matter. Being a gracious loser is for suckers. Winning at any cost is all that matters.  

Just like your hero Donald Trump, who by the way is well known to cheat at golf. 

Ohh shanked that one good. Can I get a mulligan?

You Get What You Pay For

Once in another lifetime I sold office furniture. All kinds of furniture, file cabinets, chairs, desks, new pieces, used pieces, whatever you needed in order to sit on, work at, or catalog your office.

I had a rule of thumb, a deal I would make with nearly all the people I sold to. I told them there were three things that were available in any deal. Being the nice guy, generous soul I was, I told them they could have any two of the three.

But the third was for me.

The three things available to them were the following:

1) The item can be exactly what you are looking for. The right color, the right style, the perfect fit for your decor.

2) The item can be exactly the quality you are looking for. High end leather, heavy duty steel or in the case of used furniture a perfect condition.

3) The item can be exactly the price you want to pay for it.

Like I said, I told my customer they could have any two of the three. Thus if they wanted it to be exactly what they were looking for and in exactly the quality they wanted, they would have to pay my price for it. And if they wanted exactly the product they were looking for and in a low price, then they had to take it in a lower quality. You get the picture.

This kept everybody happy. My customer got a fair deal, I got to make money, and we both walked away from the experience with a certain amount of satisfaction.

I mention this because more and more consumers aren't satisfied with their purchasing experiences. The United Airline fiasco of last Sunday was merely the latest example, but it's been in the cultural trade winds for several years now. Baseball teams use "flex pricing" to sell at scalper prices tickets to the most popular games. Electronics stores advertise ridiculously low prices on a particular item and only in the small print mention that only one or two are available per location. Cell phone companies have so many pricing plans and change them so often that's it's quite possible two users with the exactly the same plan can be paying wildly different rates. And of course airlines have so many up charge extras that once were givens such as more leg room, the bulk head seats, checked luggage, food and drink, and coming soon overhead storage space.

When people aren't satisfied with something as simple as buying a product or service there is a grumble in their stomachs, an ache that isn't soothed until they lash out in some way. United executives can't figure out why so many people are so upset about that video? How about it's because every one of us knows that guy could have been us. Heck, it WAS me on one occasion, albeit I wasn't dragged off the plane, but I was escorted off by security after being told my seat was needed for someone who paid more for that flight (he had paid the outrageous walk up/day of the flight price).

The ache isn't helped by the multitude of ways now available to search for pricing and the subtle admonishments given to continue to search for better pricing even after making a purchase. Ever wonder why for days after you bought that pair of tennis shoes from Sears an ad for those shoes keeps appearing on your Facebook wall? It's their way of saying somebody else might have gotten a better deal. You shouldn't rest until you know you have gotten the best deal possible. There's a rumor somebody somewhere in that other place over there got it for FREE!

What happened to just buying something and moving on? This constant litany of being told to never be satisfied is driving all of us just a little bit off our collective gourd. The reality is it's not in some people's interest for us to be satisfied. There are those out in the big bad world who want to keep us dissatisfied with everything, to make us think that the deck is constantly being stacked against us because, well, they are the ones who are stacking the deck. It's a beautiful bit of fraud. Make people dissatisfied by taking from them that which once satisfied them (a pleasant economic exchange) and then tell them that they are right to be dissatisfied so they need to keep searching for that mythical something better. Whatever you do keep picking at the scab of any transaction be it economic or personal or political, there must be something better. No, nothing is good enough...

And that's how you wind up with Donald Trump as president.

I suggest we as consumers turn my old three point deal program around and start telling people we are spending our money with that THEY can have any two of the three. That if they want to get their price and sell what they want to sell then it has to be at the quality you want. And if they want to sell the item or service at the quality they have then we get to pay the price we want.  And if they want to sell the quality at the price then we get to get exactly what we want. And both of us will walk away from the transaction happy and we'll all be satisfied.

And we might just save democracy.

United Flight 3411...or Tiananmen square?

America, Sit Down We Need To Have A Talk

Dear America:

Sit down we need to have a talk.

Look, we have been through a lot together. For so many years we've been partners in this marriage and let's face it a lot of it has been fun. Remember when we found gold and you sent all those miners here? Or that time those Jewish immigrants from the East Coast got tired of being harassed by that Edison fellow and came here to make Hollywood a worldwide symbol of creative fervor? And who could ever forget all those ships we built in Richmond or planes in Los Angeles. We changed the world, then we saved the world, then we changed the world again. You and us, together.

And we had our share of tough times too, I'll admit it. Some of them were our fault, others yours, but we were always able to work things out. But for the last several years you've been changing. Once you proudly took in the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Now you talk about building walls and making lists. Once you proudly boasted of your prowess in both science AND the arts. Now you denigrate anyone who shows any intellectual capability greater than a Jeopardy contestant.  Once you dared to say we can put a man on the moon then went out and did it. Now you say leave me alone I wanna watch the game. Watch it, not even play it.

Once you elected men of ideas and ideals to the presidency, men like Lincoln and Roosevelt (both of them). Now you've gone one step too far and we can't let this go on anymore. Making a man president who is manifestly unfit, an admitted sex offender, who pals around with neo-Nazis (no, make that real Nazis), who is a crooked real estate con-man, who finds it convenient to not believe experts in any field, who probably is mentally unbalanced and definitely passes the established tests police and psychologists use to establish someone as a psychopath and oh by the way he polled two and a half million fewer votes than this opponent is just beyond the pale.

Look we tried to make you a better country. We tried to make you realize that when you accept everyone as an equal, everyone benefits. You don't lose any of yourself by saying someone else's life has validity. We tried to make you realize that being polite and being concerned about the other guy makes it easier for everyone to get along, but you mocked it as merely "political correctness". It's not political at all, but it is being correct because that person over there isn't a race or a gender or a skin tone or a nationality. That person is a human being and they deserve to be treated with respect.

America, California wants a divorce.

We just can't do this anymore. We just can't keep pretending that it doesn't bother us that you end up listening to those drinking buddies of yours in that great swath of red states instead of those of  us who really have your best interests at heart.  Here's the reality, while they may be fun to pal around with and drink beer with and watch the game with, they don't contribute anything. They don't innovate, they don't create, they just sit around all day and grouse about how someone else is the cause of all their problems, usually someone who has more melanin in their skin. You find them so easy to be with because they give you simple, easy answers to life's tough questions.  They're what the twelve steppers call enablers. And while they grouse and complain you need to ask yourself, is their economy the sixth largest in the world? Do they have virtually no unemployment? Is their air and water cleaner then it was twenty years ago? Hell, even the things that are bad here, like the drought we are in, that we know the cause of (climate change) they want to pretend doesn't exist. I got news for you, they are not your friends. They, and the man they voted for,  are not going to make you great again.

Yet time and again you disregard us and all the examples we have set and listen to them call us "fruits and fairies that don't know nothing about real life" and then AGREE WITH THEM. You want to be with us, but you want to agree with them. You can't have it both ways. We're not going to take it anymore.

So we're walking. We want nothing more to do with you. Nothing. Well, maybe something with New Orleans or New York. No..no..have to be strong. Even the stuff we love about you we are willing to give up to get our sanity back.

And speaking of getting things back, we want our stuff back. I know you put your name on a lot of it, but we both know it belongs to us. So give us back our computers and our iPhones and our movies and our TV shows. And don't forget all that food the Central Valley has been sending your way all these years, not to mention all the wine and beer.

You can keep Disney world, we've got Disneyland.

Of course don't forget also about the money. All those trillions of dollars we send you every year that never gets spent on things we care about like single payer healthcare or cleaning up the environment. What was it you spent it all on? You NEEDED that new battleship? Just like you NEEDED that new bomber plane and the tax breaks for the rich and the bailouts for Wall Street. We have had it with handing our social security money over to you and you wasting it on a subsidies for oil companies. Those guys make billions each year, they don't need more money from us. In short, we're tired of making the money and you throwing it away on useless toys and trying to buy your way into having friends. We don't want to be a part of that anymore.

We will keep the children. And by that we mean the immigrants. We know you really don't care about them so there is no reason to even discuss joint custody. You don't respect them and the hard work they do. They are a huge reason our economy booms. They do all those back breaking jobs that no one else wants to do. Why? Because they believe in the future. Like we do. Like you once did. But sadly not anymore.

Good luck with that making you great again thing.

That's all we have to say. From now on you can speak to us through our attorney Mr. Eric Holder

It's Taco Labor Day!

By now most of you have heard about the Donald Trump surrogate who in an attempt to excuse his master's vile rhetoric about Mexicans made a comment about how America was in danger of becoming a land of "taco trucks on every corner".Everyone's had a great time with this, from Easterners wistfully asking for this to become the truth to Westerners smirking "yeah, like that's not the case now". Mid-Westerners wonder if this means the hot dog stands would have to move and Southerners are asking the question, "what's a taco?".

Much has been made that the commentator was Latino, the head of (possibly the only member of ) Latinos For Trump. Whatever his ethnic background, whatever his reasons for making the comment, the thing I want to point out is that he is a REPUBLICAN. And his statement basically pissed on one hundred and fifty years of Republican party theology.

If you remember your high school American history class, you will recall that the major reason for the founding of the Republican party was as an anti-slavery party. But it's secondary philosophical underpinning was as a party of business, in particular the party of the railroads who sought to transport American products from sea to shining sea. With a bloody civil war, a new amendment to the constitution, and the martyrdom of the greatest American to ever live behind them, the primacy of slavery was overtaken by that secondary business notion. Since then the Republican party has taken the stand that "the business of America is business" and have strongly advocated that government should not get in the way of business. Even when proven again and again that government needs to step in and tame some of the baser instincts of business (several depressions including a great one, air quality, water quality, child labor, the list goes on and on) Republican candidates have stood by the notion that the self made man, the boot-strapper, the guy who's willing to work hard and long is the exemplar of being an American and his name is Businessman.

So what is a taco truck? It's a small business built by hard working people who labor from sunup to sundown to legally and ethically make a living by the sweat of their brow and the flavor of their carnitas. They don't want a government hand out, they don't ask for anything other than the opportunity to satisfy the hunger of their customers. And if you ever happen to be in the same neighborhood as El Molino's truck, well then you will thank your lucky stars and gratefully accept the plate handed down as if from the heavens. A taco truck could one day become a taco shop, then a restaurant, then a chain of restaurants. It's the American Dream writ large with a side of guacamole and an Agua Fresca.

Aren't these the people the Republican Party has always claimed to be the champions of? Aren't they the ones the Congressional Republican Caucus trots out to prove how onerous government regulation of business is? Aren't they the exact people the Republican party wants all Americans to be?

They would be if it weren't for that inconvenient truth about their accents and their skin tones.

The very notion that any Republican candidate would disparage any business would have been thought preposterous even just four years ago. The idea that their current candidate puts himself forth as the right man for the presidency because of his achievements in business and then has one of his flunkies malign a business takes the issue into the realm of the absurd. I have never agreed with Republicans on any economic issue, even when I was the white male business owner they were trying to get support from, but I understood their economic philosophy and could at least see how some people could agree with it. Trump doesn't even make a pretext of being concerned with small business. For that matter he doesn't seem to have a handle on what big business wants. What the Trump version of the Republican party stands for is the fear mongering of second rate demigods. "They" are the reason for your economic travails. If it weren't for "them" being industrious and wanting a better life then you would have the life you dream of. "They" are the reason you are a lazy slob who has no interest in making a better life for himself as long as the beer is cheap and the game is on the tube. Vote for Trump and your life will be everything you dream of!

Republican championing of the small business man is, was, and will always be just a sham, a pretext to get what they are really after, unfettered deregulation of big business. Republicans claim to love business, but unless it's big and capable of funding nine or ten tables at the latest Elephant dinner dance they really could care less. The version of the Republican party that Donald Trump fronts now adds to this a sickening veneer of bigotry and hate. The small guy, the start-up, the taco truck who takes a couple of bucks away from McDon King Jr Corp? Crush them. Destroy them. They are the evil preventing harmony in the world. A world of sunshine and butterflies, where white, straight, Christian, men rule over all they can see.

And where there is a Chipotle on every corner.

Bag, Douche