D's Notebook

Tag: politics (Page 1 of 6)

On Government, Politics, and The Election

October 30, 2024 /

Sometimes it is hard to articulate why you believe the things you believe, especially long held views. They become a part of who you are and the inflection points that led you to adopt those stances can be difficult to recall.

Take politics, for example. People our age have likely held the same views, or some version of a core set of opinions, for over 30 years now. Do we remember what it was that triggered our beliefs on how government should or should not behave? And do we generally vote for one party or the other based on habit without considering the decades-old reasoning behind it?

That got me thinking about how I feel government should function. In general, I believe that unchecked capitalism is evil. Pure capitalism insists that profit is more important than anything else. The best way to maximize profit is to reduce labor costs to the lowest possible level, to eliminate and/or ignore rules that add expense to manufacturing/providing a service, and so on. Ruthlessly trimming costs while selling at the highest price the market will allow, no matter the damage done to the workers or communities where companies are located or the environment.

Making money and accumulating wealth is fine. Doing so in a manner that intentionally splits society into Haves and Have Nots and prevents the Have Nots from changing the system so it isn’t aligned against them is not in the best interest of a healthy nation.

I believe one of the government’s main roles is to apply guardrails to the economy to keep unadulterated capitalism from trampling all over society. When companies get too big and control too much of the economy, they should be reigned in. When business owners jeopardize the health and safety of their workers as they seek higher profits, the government should be there to protect labor. Even when checked, capitalism will still chew up and spit out portions of the population who can’t keep up. The government should be there to support those who are left behind and aid them in their efforts to get back on track.

While I believe in the respect of the rights of the individual that is core to what makes America different, I also believe that in order to have a healthy, functioning society, we often need to take into account the collective over the individual. Especially in a nation of 350 million people. Not always, but often. Government should be the entity that cautiously herds a wide range of competiting interests into a logical collective that solves problems for as many people as possible. Even if sometimes that progress is not the most graceful of efforts.

Obviously I could spend paragraphs breaking down why I support this cause or am against that policy, but I feel like these are the bedrock principles most of what I believe in are built upon.

With that in mind, it should be no surprise that I loved Nilay Patel’s endorsement of Kamala Harris on The Verge this week. So many endorsements are about policy or personality. Patel mirrors my view on what the purpose of government in a modern society is – guiding collective action – and the candidate best suited to ensuring that continues to happen.

The bummer about the age we live in is that Patel’s piece is much more a takedown of the Trump campaign than a glowing endorsement of Harris. To be sure, he is a fan of Harris, even if he has some critiques of her campaign. It’s just the force she is up against is so overwhelmingly toxic that he spends the bulk of his time attacking it.

I especially liked Patel’s thoughts on how Trump and his supporters view collective action. Basically, the movement doesn’t believe that collective action events exist, or if they do, argue they are actually good things that should be left alone rather than threats that need to be addressed.

Trump doesn’t give a shit about any of this because he only cares about himself. He generally does not care to solve problems unless it benefits him personally, and the intellectual foundation of the MAGA movement that’s built up around him is the complete denial that collective action problems exist at all.

Trump simply cannot use the tools of democracy to run the country on our behalf. His brain does not work that way, even when it appears to be working. He is too selfish, too stupid, too cognitively impaired, too fucked in the head by social media — too whatever. He just can’t do it.

Patel goes on to explore how Trump fails the collective action test specifically on gun violence and vaccinations.

The Verge being a tech site, Patel also dives into the uncomfortable relationship between leaders in the tech industry and Trump. Specifically how these Tech Bros believe supporting Trump will allow them to race into the AI era without having to face consequences for whatever evils their experiments conjure up.

They would prefer to remake our country into a broken oligarchy where they have finally ended the free market and privatized our lives into an overlapping series of enshittified subscription monopolies, and they have taken to openly wishcasting what they would do with unchecked power.

I’ve tried not to read too much about this year’s election, as it tends to increase my blood pressure, make my heart beat funny, and generally make me feel bad. But I read Patel’s piece multiple times. I wish more people would.

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for school shootings and measles

Weekend Notes

July 23, 2024 /

Belated notes after a morning of driver’s ed, some cleaning up after our travels, and starting to prep for our next trip.

Kid Hoops

Five months of travel ball came to an end this weekend in Louisville. L’s team went 2–2, losing both of their bracket games. It was a very weird weekend.

Like last week, the courts were filled with teams from all over the country. We saw teams from Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, California, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Iowa, New Jersey, and Nebraska.

Saturday we started against a team from Michigan. We led by seven at halftime unofficially. I say unofficially because the old dude running the clock and scoreboard had no idea what he was doing. At one point we had seven points even though we had not hit a 3 or a free throw, thus should have been on an even number. Later, when we did hit a 3, he gave both teams two points. Our assistant coach keeps track of stats on an iPad and tried to correct him multiple times, but old man was not having it. So, officially, we were just up four at the half. The dad from the other team who was keeping the official book was no help. He tracked the score with slash marks rather than numbers. So, for example, when L hit a 3-pointer, rather than write down a 3 on his sheet, he wrote down III. Thus he couldn’t reconcile his scoring to our coach’s digital version. Three of us rotate keeping the book when it is our team’s responsibility, and we took turns ripping this guy and discussing our scoring methods when we heard this after the game.

Anyway…we trailed 45–37 with about six minutes left before our girls got their shit together and ripped off a very nice 18–2 run to put the game away.

We were supposed to play a team from Florida Sunday, but they didn’t make the tournament and we won by forfeit, which also clinched first place in our pool. For some reason despite teams being in four team pools, you only played two pool games.

Weird.

Our coach asked for a replacement game and we got one against a team from Wichita. Since the game didn’t count in the standings, and they were coming straight from another game, the coaches agreed we would play 16 minute halves with a running clock rather than 14 minute halves with dead ball stops. And their coach asked ours not to press because his girls were tired.

So, naturally, our team was the one that looked tired and we trailed 18–2. Our coach said, “OK, we’re pressing now,” and got it down to two points at halftime. Then someone decided the second half would be just 12 minutes.

Whatever, we ended up winning by two.

Weird.

Onto bracket play. We started with a team from Arkansas. All skinny, white girls. They had won their two games both by 30+. Watching them in warmups, I leaned over to another dad and said, “I hate to jinx us, but this doesn’t look like a team that will beat us by 30.”

Any guess what happened next?

Yep, these skinny chicks from the ‘Saw ran our girls off the court. We hit one 3 in the first half. They missed one, going 7–8. We were down 35 at one point. But, hey, we got it down to 29 so I wasn’t wrong!

Their coach was a true piece of work. She ranted and raved the entire game. At halftime she screamed at her girls like they were down 15 not up 15. She yelled at our dad who was keeping the book when he tried to help her get her roster in. She yelled at the very nice older woman who was running the clock. I think her team played so good because they were genuinely frightened of making her mad and getting murdered.

Monday morning, our loser’s bracket game, against another team from the same program as the one we beat in game one. Nice little game. We trailed most of the first half but started the second half on an 8–1 run to jump up by six. Gave it all back and trailed by 4–5–6 most of the last six minutes. We put on a surge late but came up just short, losing by two. The real killer was we had a stretch where everyone kept selling out on the offensive boards and letting them get run-outs because no one got back. They scored six points on layups when we had no one within ten feet of the scorer. That’s the ballgame, right there.

I was keeping the book this game and their coach got super salty at the end of the game. She had been pretty quiet most of the day but in the last five minutes started screaming about every call. When her team was late coming out of a timeout and ref put the ball on the floor and started counting, she kept yelling “That’s fucked up!” over and over. When we fouled to put them on the line, she was all over the ref about how it was an intentional foul. She would not let up. The ref warned her multiple times before she finally walked away but kept yapping. Later we decided it would have been hilarious if she got T’ed up in the last 10 seconds of a two-point game and we won because she was an idiot.

Alas…

L did ok. Her best game was that last one, when she scored nine and had three assists and two steals. She scored 4, 7, and 5 in the other three games. She hit a couple threes but otherwise all of her scoring continued to be by finishing tough drives. She was, again, pissed that her team struggles because half the players don’t know the plays. She has basically told me she doesn’t care where she plays next year, as long as it’s on a team that practices. Once again it was glaringly obvious that every team we played gets regular practice time together. The close wins would have been more comfortable, I think we could have hung with that Arkansas team, and we win the last game if we practice a couple times a week.

Not the best ending for the team. I see some real growth in L’s game. Her finishing has gotten a lot better. Her defense has improved. Her free throws were much improved until the last two weeks. She actually airballed one on Monday. Yikes. We need to keep working on the jumper and her being better with both hands when facing tough defenders.

She had her last CHS weight lifting session of the summer today, has her last open gym tomorrow. They’ll take a few weeks off and in late August probably start doing some morning open gyms. After we get back from vacation we’ll figure out if she’s going to do any private work with teammates like she did in June, or we focus on individual workouts.

Feature Court

We had a couple hours to kill between games Sunday so a couple dads and I checked out the feature court, where the semifinals of the U–16 tournament were taking place. There were bleachers on one side and double rows of chairs for college coaches. When we walked up there was a game between a team from Ohio and one from Colorado going on. There were so many college coaches there that the IU head coach had to stand next to us since all the seats were taken. Eventually she got away from us schmucks.

We also saw coaches from Syracuse, USC, UCLA, Cal, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisville, and Wisconsin.

I know I’ve shared this before, but it is really incredible watching these high-level games. Teams will run out 3–4 girls who are well over six feet tall. They can all shoot, rebound, and get up-and-down the court insanely fast.

Later we watched a team from Oakland that is sponsored by Jason Kidd. Bradley Beal had teams there. Good to see those guys supporting the women’s game!

Hotels

I forgot to mention last week that we finally stayed at decent hotels. In Cincinnati we were in a Courtyard and you would have thought we were in a luxury resort the way the girls acted when we checked in. Our coach said, “See, those nights in the bad hotels made them appreciate this more than they did before.”

True.

We were in a Hilton Garden Inn this week. It was perfectly fine. We gambled a little by booking there, which was just a couple minutes from the expo center where the tournament took place. It was not on the official hotel list, so we didn’t have an approved reservation number when we pre-registered the girls for the tournament. When they checked in to get their tournament badges, they had to show proof of lodging. I nervously stood to the side with another team dad while our daughters checked in, waiting to get called over and be asked to pay the “opt out fee” but they both got their badges and we hustled out.

Again, big fucking racket. It cost $70 to get in for the weekend, a bottled soda was $5, parking was $12 per day. And then they want you to stay only at the mediocre hotels that are on their list. We decided that’s why our hotel wasn’t on the “approved” list: there was a free shuttle so you didn’t have to pay for parking.

Democracy

Well, two weekends in a row that were monumental for news regarding our electoral process. Where last week’s news was an unwelcome surprise, Sunday’s news that President Biden was dropping out of the race was the exact opposite. It seemed inevitable and probably best for everyone. We tend to avoid talking politics in our AAU parent group, but this news had us cautiously discussing it, mostly regarding the historical ramifications rather than what we thought of any of the candidates involved.

I don’t know that Biden’s move saves the Democrats’ hopes this fall, but it for sure helps them. I think he’s a good person and that his presidency will generally be regarded as decent. He did some big things that benefitted a lot of people, including many who didn’t vote for him in 2020 and had zero chance of voting for him this year. But he inherited a disaster of an economy on the heels of an insurrection designed to overthrow our democracy. All his big projects, while good in the long term, may have been ill timed given the health of the economy, extending the inflationary period beyond the Covid days. Then again, our economy was so jacked that maybe anything any president did would have had as many negative effects as positive ones as we tried to get supply back in sync with demand.

Now we just have to hope Kamala is up for the fight that is ahead. JD Vance has already rolled out the lazy “she’s not grateful enough” line that tends to get attached to women and minorities. I’m sure that’s going to be repeated constantly over the next four months. Fortunately, she is facing a horrible human being that most of the country does not like. Seems like a low bar but we failed to clear it eight years ago and nearly tripped over it four years ago.

Weekend Notes

July 16, 2024 /

What a weekend! I assume a lot happened in the world, but last weekend was a live period for college basketball recruiting, and there were several massive tournaments in the Midwest. We played against or saw teams from Pennsylvania, Washington state, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, Connecticut, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, plus a ton of teams that didn’t have a location in their name so we couldn’t identify them.

The best player I saw was a 6’5”-ish girl from Michigan. I randomly walked over to her game as it was ending. The seats reserved for college coaches were filled. People were lined up three-deep around the court. I only saw her line up for a rebound so didn’t see anything of her game. I also tried to find her on a recruiting list but had no luck. Of course, while she plays for a Michigan team, she could be from anywhere, so without a name I was kind of stabbing in the dark.

L’s team had seven games in five days, in two different tournaments, in two different cities, so the days are a bit of a blur. I didn’t see any of Spain’s fantastic Sunday, Tadej Pogacar blowing open the Tour de France, the Home Run Derby, or anything else that was newsworthy. Fingers crossed nothing happened that will be in the history books one day.

Kid Hoops

No need to give a full breakdown of all seven of L’s games. That would take too long plus they run together to me at this point. It wasn’t a great weekend, anyway. Her team went 1–6 in those seven games.

Two of losses were against teams we had no business being on the same court. Both play the equivalent of two levels up from where L’s team is slotted in the AAU hierarchy. Thursday we lost to a team from Pittsburgh by 25. Friday we lost to a team from North Carolina by about the same score, but where we were only down 10 at the half in the first game, we were down 10–0 two minutes into the second game.

We later learned that North Carolina doesn’t have the same restrictions as Indiana when it comes to high school teammates playing together. In Indiana, only three girls from the same high school program can play travel ball together. There are zero rules in North Carolina, so this team was mostly from the same school. Not only have they been playing together for years, they play together year-round. Makes sense that they looked like a well-oiled machine.

Plus they were just really good. Their best player scored 23, and we had a running clock for the last 17 minutes of the game. She hit 3’s. She drove and scored. She blocked shots and grabbed rebounds. An athletic, 6’1”-ish player. I wish I had written down her name to follow if she ends up anywhere in three years.

Another loss came in double overtime to a team from the Seattle area. I missed this game but I guess we had every chance to win in regulation and OT, but blew both, then L had a chance to win the game in the second OT but didn’t get a foul call. In this tournament double OT ended when a team was up two points. In our second tournament, double OT was timed and the third OT was sudden death. Can we get some consistent rules here, tournament organizers?

The fourth loss was the most frustrating of the weekend. This was to another team from that same North Carolina program. We started up 12–0 before giving up a 14–0 the other way. The rest of the game was back-and-forth. L hit a 3 with about 3:00 left to give us the lead, but we gave up an immediate 3 on the other end and never got the lead back. Our girls just faded badly and couldn’t handle the physicality of summer ball.

These first four games were here in Indy. Sunday we drove down to Cincinnati for two days.

We lost the first game by 11. Again, we wilted against the physical nature of summer ball and trailed by 14 at the half. We finally started being tough in the second half and cut it to three but gave up back-to-back 3s that killed us. L had a half-court shot go in-and-out at the halftime buzzer. I told her if that had dropped, we would have won. The math doesn’t work out there but I insist the momentum shift would have been massive.

Finally, in game six, we played a bad team from Colorado. It took us a half to get going but ended up winning by 25.

Then Monday we finished against a team from New Jersey. They kept getting up by 5–7, then we would come back. We had a little run right after halftime and got it down to three. L missed a tough runner to cut it to one, we gave up a 12–0 run, and the game was over.

Yikes.

I mentioned this a couple times in there but our girls just looked super uncomfortable with the adjustment to travel rules after playing high school ball in June. Refs call almost nothing in travel ball to keep the clock moving. So teams are super physical knowing they can get away with it, and our nice, mostly suburban girls, just do not like that. I bet we win at least two of those games we lost with high school rules in place.

Plus you could tell that all seven teams we played against practice on a regular basis, where we had a couple partial practices around the holiday weekend that never had more than half the team there. There was a lot of grumbling from our parents about how our program needs to change their high school model, which does not allow for regular team practices except for the highest level teams. Our organization will have its own facility starting this fall. We hope that means the high school girls can get at least one practice per week in there, but there’s been no word about next year’s model yet.

Our team is not the most talented – I’d say we have one girl who would be a varsity player at any school, and then not until she’s a junior or senior – but they are very smart and when they had a chance to play together a lot in May, looked really good against similar competition. Getting practice time would not make a difference against those high level teams. I’m confident we would have won at least two more games if we practiced on a regular basis.

How did L do?

She had two really good games, then was decent in the others.

She guessed she scored 13 or 15 in that double OT game, but didn’t look at the scorebook to confirm. Our coach texted me and said she played well and did a great job getting to the rim and finishing in that game.

She had 13 in the game we blew the big lead. She should have had 15 but she totally wiped out on a breakaway. She claimed there were wet spots all over the court and slipped on one. She also had four assists and three steals in this game.

In the other five games, she averaged just under five points. Didn’t hit many 3s. Like most of her teammates she had way too many turnovers. Her free throws had been great all summer, but something was off there this weekend and she went just 1–5 (that I saw).

You can definitely see how all her work has paid off in her finishing. She was super aggressive all weekend and had her fair share of shots blocked inside. But she’s learned how to find an angle and get a shot up on the rim that often falls in. She takes some crazy-ass shots sometimes, but a decent amount of them either crawl in or at least have a chance where they used to be wild tosses that had no chance.

She was not enthused on the way home. She’s pissed more about her team and their inability to get on the same page than the losses. She complains about girls that don’t know the plays. Our offense is not super complicated but, again, when you don’t practice, teammates who aren’t like her and learn where everyone is supposed to be quickly are going to struggle. A couple girls in particular were always in the wrong spot on both ends and it killed us in a couple games.

On the other hand, one of our girls who is new to basketball and is struggling to figure out how 6’1” body and a new game at the same time had a couple stretches where she was really good.

We go to Louisville next weekend for our final event of the summer. Based on the early, partial schedule we’ve seen, we should be playing teams closer to our skill level. Fingers crossed…

Teeth

It’s been a rough dental summer in our house. All the girls have had to get multiple fillings. Pretty awesome when we just have a preventative dental plan.

Both M and C have had to go in for multiple visits to get everything fixed. One of C’s new fillings was giving her a lot of trouble. So, rather than go to L’s first game Friday, I took C to the endodontist for a consult. Fortunately there’s no need for a root canal at the moment. The doc was hopeful that the sensitivity is just because the filling is so close to the nerve and in time there will be new calcification that insulates the nerve better. But there is also the chance C will still need a root canal down the road.

When C told the endodontist she goes to CHS, the doc said her kids graduated from there a few years earlier.

“You probably know their crazy cousins, though.” One of her nephews was in M’s class and they were friendly. Another is in C’s class, but they run in different circles. And her niece is one of L’s best friends. Later we found out that until a few weeks ago the doc lived two doors down from one of M’s best friends. In fact, M went to her daughter’s grad party a few years ago just because she was at her best friend’s house that day. And the doc’s son goes to UC, although he’s older than M and they wouldn’t overlap in classes.

Small world.

Democracy

I don’t write about politics much these days. It depresses me. I think we’re in a very bad place, and headed to a worse one, no matter who wins this year’s elections. Or the 2026 ones. Or the 2028 ones. Our process seems hopelessly broken. Despite it seeming like most rational people want other choices, seek elected officials that will work to find common ground and represent all instead of a narrow set of interests that will keep them from getting primaried, we remain stuck with the mess we’re in.

Yet it seems like I need to share a few words about the shooting Saturday night. Very few words.

Once the initial shock passed and we got some clarity on the situation, the thought I was left with was Malcolm X’s famous line about chickens coming home to roost.

In this case, when you forge a political identity and movement based on fear, hatred, and manufactured bogeymen; make said movement about a person rather than an ideology; endlessly malign and delegitimize anyone and any view that is counter to yours; lie, lie, lie, and lie again; and throw in a heaping dose of paranoia, well, it’s not surprising we got here. All the ingredients are there in America 2024 for a disaster. It’s a bit of a surprise it took this long for us to reach this point. I’m hopeful this was a momentary blip. I fear it was the beginning of an even more difficult and tense time in our nation’s history.

It’s sad when you start hoping climate change destroys the world before our nation has a chance to fall apart.

Weekend Notes

September 18, 2023 /

HS Football

Two games again this weekend.

Friday night Cathedral played at the public school down the street. Both girls had some friends over before the game and we walked to the stadium. First play of the night CHS snapped the ball over the quarterback’s head, he chased but could not cover, and North Central took over in Irish territory. Not a promising start.

North Central was winless and it showed, as they went nowhere and gave the ball back to CHS, who methodically ran up a 49–0 lead before halftime. A penalty on the final play of the game gave NC an untimed snap, and they got the ball into the end zone to lose 49–6.

I’ve gone to four of the first five games this season (L has been to all five) and each of them has been on a perfect evening for football. CHS is out of state the next two weeks. We’ll see if the weather holds when we return to games in October.

Saturday I took L to the freshman game so she could take pictures. NC took the lead twice on huge kickoff returns that set up short possessions. Each time Cathedral answered with a 70+ yard TD run. The Irish pulled away in the second half to win 34–21. Very entertaining.

I stood near the dads of a couple of the players, who had a game-long commentary going. I’m thinking I should just live blog what they say some week as it is hilarious.

Oh, and L handed her phone to a friend to take a picture of her with some football player after the game. Then she saw the kid twice more over the weekend. Good grief…

College Football

Surely it is a sign of how far KU football has come that Jayhawk fans were pissed off about Saturday’s result. I mean, the program went something like a decade without winning a road game once. So even if needlessly close and nervous, getting out of Reno 3–0 should be what we’re focusing on, right? When you struggle with a team that got blasted by an FCS team the previous week, it’s going to mess with your head.

The worst part of the game wasn’t that KU played poorly, or that I don’t have CBS Sports Network and had to listen to the game, or that I’m not crazy about KU’s radio announcers. No, the worst part was that it began at 10:30 Eastern, and since victory wasn’t assured until there was under a minute to play, that meant I went to bed after 2:00 AM Sunday. Several of my buddies checked out at halftime, which was probably the smart move. I was wiped out on Sunday. I had Colorado State-Colorado muted on the TV so I was entertained. Just wish the game had started at a more reasonable time.

Saturday was also M’s first game in the stands for UC, as they played Miami (OH). The schools have the oldest non-conference rivalry in the country, and I was amazed to learn that despite winning 16-straight in the series, UC only led by one win.

M got fantastic seats and I was constantly looking for her in the crowd shots. Never saw her though.

Miami played great and held a lead into the fourth quarter until the Bearcats jumped ahead. Miami tied it and then UC had a makable field goal to win the game late that Miami blocked to send the game to overtime.

In OT Miami scored first, then picked off a pass in the end zone to get the W. Now the series is tied 60–60–7. Two of M’s best friends go to Miami. I bet those girls were way nicer about breaking a long losing streak than I would have been in the same situation. We talked to M Sunday and she said it was a lot of fun, until the very end.

Colts

Another Sunday of doing work for relatives meant I missed most of the Colts game. I was tracking the score and saw the Colts were up 14–3, then 21–3. I also noticed that Gardner Minshew was playing. That was strange.

When I got home and looked up what happened I learned that Anthony Richardson had gone nuts early, smacked his head on the turf, played two more series, and then reported concussion symptoms and sat out the rest of the game. Hmmmm.

You can’t get too excited about beating up on the Texans – who tried their hardest to come back in the fourth quarter – yet it’s still promising that the Colts apparently looked really good with Richardson in. Now comes the worry of when he’ll play again and if he’s now in the “every big hit might cause a new concussion” zone. Which is a bad place to be.

KU Hoops

This is not good. Very not good. There were some rumbles of displeasure/disbelief when Bill Self took on Arterio Morris, given he played last year with a domestic abuse charge pending in Texas, but no general outcry. I would expect even Teflon Bill is going to get some serious heat about Morris as more comes out about this case.

Assorted Other Notes

We got the girls’ car back from the repair shop on Wednesday, about a week earlier than expected, which was awesome. It looks nearly perfect, so no complaints.

One of our senate seats is opening up here in Indiana next year, so the rats are scrambling to get their names out there early. The last two Sundays NFL games have been flooded with ads from all the “self-made outsiders” who will be in the Republican primary next spring. Throw in a very nasty Indianapolis mayoral race in this fall’s election, and I’m already having to mute commercial breaks. Really looking forward to 2024.

Speaking of commercials, I saw my first Christmas ad on Saturday. That was September 16 for those of you who don’t own calendars.

While on the subject of getting an early start on the holidays, S and I were at Target on Thursday and bought two full-size, posable skeletons for the front porch. We got a lot of looks as we wheeled them through the store and parking lot. We’ve given them some accessories and have a couple more things coming. Once we get everything situated the way we like I’ll share a picture.

A Satisfying Ending

November 9, 2020 /

Sunday night I sat down to bang out some election thoughts. After about an hour and a couple beers I had over 2500 semi-coherent words. Younger me would have pushed on, getting everything out of my system, working until well after midnight to finish and then post the piece.

2020 me, though? He was ready for bed. And as morning dawns I feel like I want to take another, sober, stab at my 2020 election post. So here goes.

There has never been an election moment like Saturday, 11:30ish eastern time, when most press outlets finally submitted to the math and declared Joe Biden the winner and president-elect.

We had never sat through five days of staring at the TV, waiting for updated results while we listened to the analysts talk through the scenarios over-and-over again.

We had never got the call at mid-day on a Saturday, when people could flood from their homes and celebrate together in daylight.

And, of course, we’ve never had a loser – that’s right, loser – viewed with as much contempt as DJT.

Throw in a pandemic that has had us all isolated for eight months and it’s no wonder that the joy of the moment burst into spontaneous, street-filling celebrations in large cities around the country.

It was beautiful. It brought tears to my eyes. We deserved that moment after the past four years of destruction.

Once it became obvious that the math was on Joe Biden’s side, sometime Wednesday I guess, I began fearing that the election would be called when I was away from the TV. I had errands to run, kids to drop off and pick up, etc. When I was home I was pretty much always in front of the TV, waiting for Steve Kornacki to share more positive numbers. It always seemed like some big vote drop was coming in Philly, in Atlanta, in Phoenix right before I had to leave the house.

Sure enough, I was dropping L off at a friend’s house at about 11:30 Saturday when I got a text from S saying “Joe Biden is president-elect!!”

Damn, damn, damn!

I hustled home, backed up the DVR, and was able to see the moment MSNBC called the race. For some reason it felt important to do that. I will always remember sitting in our friends’ driveway – Trump supporters no less! – and getting the text from S letting me know that it was over.

Thus, Saturday turned into an unforgettable day. It was gorgeous here, nearly 80, and seemed more like September than November. It may have been a reward for putting up with four years of hate and nonsense. But it could have been snowing and below zero and the day would still go down as perfect.

The stretched-out vote count felt like one of those epic, multi-overtime playoff hockey games. You equally wanted it to end and last forever. I became addicted to those little endorphin rushes of 25,000 new votes being uploaded in Allegheny County, and press conferences by local elections officials. I adjusted my daily activities around the shift changes at MSNBC. These moments were concrete and significant, unlike the normal bluster that fills time on political programs. I wanted the Biden win called, but I also wanted these tiny, tangible moments that mattered to continue to carry the day.

I enjoyed sharing this week with my girls. They all became anti-Trumpers independently four years ago. We never sat them down and explained how we felt, and why we felt that way, but they all picked it up. Which is a risky proposition in Indiana. Most of M’s peer group are Biden fans, but she does have a couple friends who are Trumpers. Apparently the mock election at CHS went to DJT 52–48. We are glad our girls have taken the proper path without any overt prodding from us.

So, it was fun for them to ask questions all week. It was fun for them to pass through the room and ask for updates. It was fun to catch them following the news on their own devices. It was fun to put on the political scientist hat I earned nearly three decades ago and talk them through the processes and institutions and functions of our democracy.

As excited as I am about Biden’s win, this election cycle was obviously a mixed bag. The Republicans will, most likely, maintain control of the Senate. Mitch McConnell has never wanted to build anything other than a Supreme Court majority in his life. But he lives to destroy things, and he no doubt has found a new will to live knowing he can spend the next four years preventing Biden from accomplishing anything. He is an absolute fuckhead.

The Democrats lost ground in the House. The district I live in was seen as a potential pick-up, and even seemed to be leaning blue in the final run-up to the election. The Republican – you can’t make this up, she was born in the Soviet Union and loves Trump – ended up winning easily. That was a huge bummer.

In another local election, though, our votes helped send the first Muslim to the Indiana state senate. This was my first general election in Marion County and it was nice to be in an overwhelmingly blue county. The neighborhoods we drive through every day were filled with signs for Biden and the other Democrats on the ballot. M spent Saturday night in a particularly blue neighborhood. I imagine if I had driven through it early Saturday afternoon there would have been people out on the sidewalks celebrating.

Of course the biggest disappointment is that over 70 million people still voted for Trump after his attempts to tear our country apart. After his four years of lies and conspiracy theories and support of racists and efforts to line his pockets. After his absolute botching of the worst crisis our country has faced since World War II. Joe Biden is about as vanilla of a candidate as the Democrats could have run out there. While he will end up winning the popular vote comfortably, the electoral college still relied on far too many narrow margins in battleground states. Even after all the hate and garbage that Trump has spewed, a huge chunk of the country still thought he was the better choice than a relatively safe opponent like Biden. That does not bode well for this country’s future.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo presented an argument that I like a lot: “Folks, Let’s Get It the Fuck Together.” Yes, there are disappointments and reasons to be concerned after this election. But the biggest goal, removing the most unfit, unqualified, destructive person who has ever occupied the presidency? We pulled that off. The future is full of perils and uncertainty. But DJT, willingly or not, will lose his legal mandate to lead the country in just over two months.

Biden was, at best, my third choice from the crowded Democratic primary field. But the argument that he was the best suited to beat Trump was always compelling. He neutered some of Trump’s favorite attack angles. The fact he presents as a fundamentally warm, decent, and unoffensive human being made it tough for Trump to grind him down. His age and experience creates direct links to the mythical “simpler” times when our country wasn’t so hyper-partisan and give hope that maybe at least some segments of the political community can come together for genuine debate and bargaining rather than constantly trying to destroy each other.

I think those hopes are unrealistic; a majority of the Republican leadership is far more concerned with obstruction and destruction that sitting down with Biden and finding avenues of working together to solve our country’s problems. Far too many Republicans see government as fundamentally evil and their roles are to keep cutting it off at the knees rather than presenting alternate, more restrained uses of government power.

Perhaps all that inertia is worth it just to get Trump out of office. I harbor no illusions that he will go away, though. Where most former presidents fade into the background, he will not shut up and the media will pay attention to everything he says. He will basically live on Fox, OAN, and perhaps his own future network, spouting his lies and hate without ever being challenged. I absolutely expect him to run again, which is a completely frightening prospect. Or one of his idiot kids will pick up the mantel in four years. And there’s no telling how much damage he will still do in the next two-plus months.

Bottom line, though, is that he will leave office as a loser.

For now, though, we have Biden to attempt to undo some of the many wrongs that were instituted over Trump’s reign. And we have Kamala Harris breaking through multiple barriers to show that for all the challenges that gender and race and lineage present, you can still plow through them all.

The victory may not be as total as we had wanted, but it is reason enough to celebrate for a bit.

A few other thoughts:

  • Steve Kornacki is the hero we need in this moment.
  • It bothered me that some in the media kept calling the events of last week a “Biden comeback.” No, it wasn’t a comeback. Many of the votes cast for Biden were cast well before Election Day. Just because they were counted after Election Day does not mean that he “came back.” This line fits into the Trumpian arguments that the election was stolen, since it creates the impression they were cast after Election Day. Happily most media members have moved away from this framing of the vote count.
  • I guess Trump’s final gift to our democracy is his complete undermining of it by claiming victory before the vote counting process is complete and then arguing that the election has been stolen from him. It is expected behavior. He’s always been a pathetic child and this is exactly what your shithead, four-year-old nephew does when he doesn’t get his way. It is shameful that so many mainstream Republicans are joining him. For a party that loves to prattle on about how their view of America is the proper, patriotic one, and how they are fulfilling the wishes of the founding fathers, they sure love to undercut the pillars of democracy at every opportunity.
  • Like most I was frustrated with the pace of the count. Until I realized how fundamentally different counting mail-in and provisional votes are. They aren’t registered automatically in the machine for easily tallying. They have to be physically touched and examined by multiple people before they can be scanned into the system. When you have literally millions of these around the country, it’s going to take awhile.
  • Each January, as I finish up my Christmas beers, I hide one Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale in the back of the beer fridge, saving it for a moment later in the year. Often those beers are pulled out after a big KU win in March or April. There were no opportunities for that this year, so my 2019 Celebration Ale still sat in the back corner of the fridge, waiting. Saturday evening I busted it out after Harris and Biden spoke. S had a drink of her own and I clicked my glass against hers, saying “Fuck Donald Trump,” as our toast. Yes, fuck him.
November 7, 2020 /

Fuck you, Don. Try not to destroy too many more things on your way out.

Weekend Notes

November 2, 2020 /

Here we are, the week many of us – a plurality of those who voted four years ago – have been looking forward to for an entire election cycle. And it dawns dominated by a sense of dread. Regardless of the results of tomorrow’s election, I think the US is on a horrible course, one where democracy is constantly subverted by a vocal minority. Where intimidation and voter suppression has become a normal part of one party’s methods for hanging on to political power. Where we are pushed to hate each other more than seeking common threads that can allow us to move forward. Where people who know nothing attack those who have spent their entire lives become experts on a given subject. Where “brands” are more important than belief.

I wish I could say that any of that is going to change in 2021 if/when different people are inaugurated. I fear even if there is change, that is just going to embolden those darker elements and they will spend the next four, eight, however many years continuing to tear our country apart in the name of saving it for their narrow, minority view of what it means to be American.

The US needs a reset button. Neither Trump nor Biden nor anyone else out there has the ability to push it, though.

With that out of the way, I will get into some weekend notes.

Driving

It was a HUUUUUUUGE week for one of our girls. Last Wednesday M passed her driving test. Saturday morning we went to the BMV and 30 minutes later she walked out with her driver’s license.

I thought it was somewhat appropriate that she nearly ran a red light on our way to the BMV. I mean, seriously…

Based on most of her recent drives, though, she seems comfortable behind the wheel. She still has plenty of areas for improvement, but has gained a lot of confidence in her months of practice.

She got to drive solo for the first time Sunday afternoon. She is working on Sundays as an assistant to her aunt who is a personal chef. S went to pick her up and was going to have M drop her at St P’s for L’s game, then drive home alone. When S got to the game she told another mom what was going on and that mom said, “Oh God, I’m having a panic attack for you.”

M made the seven minute drive without incident, although she did say it was “weird” to be driving alone. S asked her if she wanted to fill the car up with gas on the way home and she said no. Funny how they want to drive, but don’t want to do all the other things that come along with it.

She’s been bugging us about a car for her for a couple months. It doesn’t help that she has two friends who can’t get their licenses until 2021 but their parents have already bought them cars. Another friend turns 16 today and woke to a new car in the driveway. We’ve been looking a little, and trying to develop a plan. We keep debating whether to get her a used car, or to pass S’ current car down and then one of us starts a new lease. I imagine we’ll get it figured out in the next few weeks.

M is really hoping to be able to drive to school soon. I would enjoy going to a single-school drop-off again. CHS does not usually give out parking passes to sophomores. With the parking lot slightly reduced because of construction tag availability is even more restricted this year. Another friend with a soon-to-be driver asked the principal and was told sophomores can only get passes when there are “extenuating circumstances.” We told M she needs to go into the office and find out what it will take to get a pass, but she keeps putting it off. Again, she wants to drive (and get her own car) but doesn’t seem interested in the work that goes along with that privilege.

Very excited to make the call to insurance later today and see how much our rates go up. Oh well…

We have local nephews who are passing all kinds of fun milestones which reminds us of how those baby/toddler/preschool years with so many of those moments. They sure stretch out when you get to the teen years, but when they come along, they are pretty, pretty, pretty big. And while those childhood markers come fast and furious, they don’t usually change the parent-child relationship that much. But driving is one of the first steps in your child beginning to spread their wings and separate from you.

It is nerve-wracking, for sure. I’m not a big worrier when it comes to my kids. I assume if they are at a friend’s house that the parents are keeping an eye on things and our girls normally make good decisions. But putting a 16-year-old in a car is kind of frightening. You hope that they are being careful, that they are paying attention, but in the end you can just hope for the best and that they make it home safely each time they leave on their own.

Halloween

All three girls did stuff for the holiday, but only one of them did anything traditional.

M first joined a bunch of friends at the girls state championship soccer game. CHS was playing a team they lost to 1–0 in September. They came up short again, losing 4–3 on penalty kicks after a 0–0 draw through regulation and overtime. After that she went to a friend’s house to watch movies and hang out.

C went to a small, co-ed party. The kids were outside at a bonfire with an adult bonfire nearby to keep everyone in check. I know the parents who hosted are kind of hardasses about some teenage stuff, so I’m assuming the shithead boys in C’s class didn’t try to do anything dumb.

L joined a group of friends to dress up as the crew from the Toy Story movies and trick or treat. She was Buzz Lightyear. She had a great time and got a lot of candy.

S and I celebrated our night alone by getting take out sushi then watching different shows on different screens. How romantic!

We set out a bowl of candy but the only kids we had were the granddaughters of our neighbors who were in town from Maryland.

Hoops

L’s team went 0–2 last week.

Midweek we played a school that is always really good. Warming up we saw that they were tiny but practiced really well. They ran little plays, hit pull up jumpers, and otherwise appeared like a team that plays together for more than the CYO season.

We were down 12–10 at halftime. That alone was a victory as arguably our best player is out quarantining. We got back a girl who missed our first three games quarantining and she looked utterly lost. She was so nervous she got called for traveling 3–4 times, and she’s normally one of our better ball handlers.

It fell apart in the third quarter. I’m not sure if we scored. We made a little run late but still lost by nine.

Sunday we played a team that features a girl that is nearly six feet tall. Seriously, in sixth grade! We played against her in kickball and she was awful, but we heard they run a bunch of clear out plays for her so she doesn’t have to move very much on the court. Even knowing what was coming didn’t help. She bullied us early and we started the game down 12–0.

It never really got better. They played a zone with her in the middle so even when one of our girls finally made a move to the lane she was there waiting.

And our girls totally lost their minds. We have two inbounds plays, two press break plays, and just one zone offense. We’ve been practicing them for two months. For some reason five of our seven players decided not to run any of those plays correctly. When the other team pressed three girls would run up court and leave L to face three defenders alone. On our baseline inbound play no one broke the correct way. It was maddening.

When we got home I fired up the Google machine to look into easy zone offenses for youth basketball to see if I could find something else for us to run since everyone plays zone.

(Quick aside: zone defenses should not be allowed in youth basketball. They are lazy, they don’t teach the defenders how to play, and they prevent girls from developing offensive skills as the game turns into a bunch of passes on the perimeter until someone turns it over. CYO basketball, especially, which is full of girls who play basketball for a month every year, should ban zones. I also think pressing should not be allowed since most of these teams struggle to get the ball up court under the mildest of pressure.)

Anyway, I checked four different coaching sites and all four suggested the exact offense we run. So I guess it’s on us, the coaches, for not teaching the girls how to make good decisions or follow our instructions.

Luckily for us we get to play this team again in two weeks in the first round of the tournament. Maybe that tall girl will be quarantining. Or maybe our girls will all grow six inches in the next 13 days. And maybe we’ll have all eight of our players for the first time all year.

Everything is Bullshit

August 27, 2020 /

I’m having a hard time with what is happening around this country right now. What frustrates me most is that I no longer have the patience to sit down and hammer out a couple thousand words about what is going on. I’ve tried, but the longer I type, the madder I get.

So in place of a post I would have offered in the past, when I could work through that anger to try to get something coherent to share, I will offer this video from Trevor Noah. Trevor does not get enough credit. I almost never watch *The Daily Show* anymore (or did in the pre-pandemic age). But every time I see him speak about any issue, serious or humorous, I am deeply impressed. And here he offers the summation I agree with most: this is bullshit.

How Shit Got So Bad

August 11, 2020 /

Feel free to skip this article if you think the “China virus” is overblown, that it is going to disappear any day, that Democratic lawmakers are using it as an excuse to institute socialism and take away your freedoms, etc.

But if you’re sane, this is a completely devastating reminder of just how royally the president has fucked everything in 2020.

Coronavirus: How Trump killed tens of thousands of Americans.:

Trump has always been malignant and incompetent. As president, he has coasted on economic growth, narrowly averted crises of his own making, and corrupted the government in ways that many Americans could ignore. But in the pandemic, his vices—venality, dishonesty, self-absorption, dereliction, heedlessness—turned deadly.They produced lies, misjudgments, and destructive interventions that multiplied the carnage. The coronavirus debacle isn’t, as Trump protests, an “artificial problem” that spoiled his presidency. It’s the fulfillment of everything he is.

Heartbreaking Times

June 1, 2020 /

It is hard to know what to write today. We are in day four of an absolutely glorious run of weather. We got to see a few friends this weekend. The SpaceX launch was very cool. There’s a new wave of openings here in Indianapolis today which is making life feel a little more normal.

But all that is offset by what is going on in our country right now.

Last night Indianapolis was under a 10-hour curfew. We live far from where the violence and destruction was on Friday and Saturday nights, but it was still eerie to have all the restaurants and stores around the corner from our house close early to allow everyone to get home before 8:00. There was some traffic after 8:00, but it was certainly much lighter even compared to the reduced traffic of the past two months.

Indy got off light. There were a couple downtown banks and shops busted open, a few small fires. Minor compared to many other cities around the country.

It was very difficult not to follow the demonstrations around the country and not get emotional about it. Violence, destruction, looting is never the correct path. And I realize it is often two very distinct groups who are doing the peaceful protesting and the more violent acts. But I understand the motivation.

The George Floyd murder was just the latest and most egregious example of law enforcement using unreasonable and deadly force when dealing with Black men in this country. We’ve been seeing the videos for years, and before everyone had a phone in their hand we heard the stories for decades. But far too many white people wrote those stories off as exaggerations or outright lies. Others assumed that there had to be an act before the cameras started recording that justified the police’s acts. I think it’s this third group that bothers me the most. That view supports the idea that police can take any actions they want against a perceived criminal, even if those actions aren’t in proportion to the alleged crime. “Well, he had a criminal past and he was running, what do you expect?”

Plenty of white people sympathized, but none of us did enough to counter the racists, overt or covert, who twisted these incidents into opportunities to give the police more weapons rather than the public more protections. Or the politicians who look at the violence that came after the act and view it as the real problem, not the actions that caused the violence. Or the Thin Blue Line fanatics who forget that in a free society the police do not serve as judge, jury, and executioner out on the streets.

I don’t know what the answer is. It really feels like this country is broken, has been for some time, and we just keep getting worse. Plus we have a president who will use this as a gigantic wedge to anger the people he thinks will get him reelected, who will punish those who need help, who will reward those who took lives, who will somehow place blame on people who have zero responsibility but have the nerve to speak against him. Hell, it’s already starting. We can only hope that it backfires and is yet another epic failure in his presidency that will bring it to a resounding end next January.

As much as I want to believe a new president will change things, I don’t think it will make a huge difference. New elected officials may take over and implement new policies, but you can’t force people to be empathetic, and, as I’ve said before, I think empathy is on its last legs in this country.

It seems impossible for people to look at someone different than them and understand what their lives are like. White people and people of color. Men and women. Citizens and immigrants. Republicans and Democrats. Mask wearers and non-mask wearers. Someone with a different perspective is meant to be marginalized until they have no voice or power. We see it in everything from our legislatures to social media to youth league sports to the line at your grocery store. Everyone seems pissed off at everyone else, and if we can quickly identify a difference between us, we immediately turn it into a racial/political/gender fight.

We’ve told our girls over-and-over that it’s fine not to like people, it’s fine to be upset with someone else’s behavior, it’s ok to think someone is a jerk. But that’s all they are, a jerk. They aren’t a Black jerk or a gay jerk or a Mexican jerk.

I’m a cynic by nature, but I also often believe in a hopeful future. The arc of history bending toward social justice and such. That belief has fueled me through other tense moments in our nation’s history.

I’m not sure we are capable of overcoming all this hate, especially when so many elements of our society seem focused on glorifying our divisions to generate clicks, likes, favs, views, and votes.

I would love to be proven wrong. I would love it if I never see another video of police, or random strangers, killing Black men for no reason. I would love it if politicians realize it is better for our country to find areas of common ground rather than using scorched earth techniques that are focused more on destroying their opponents than governing. I would love it if social media companies didn’t hide behind the false flag of neutrality and took some responsibility for what is posted on their platforms. I would be fucking thrilled if white people in power didn’t think it was bad for business or would cost them votes to protect the most vulnerable people in our society.

Maybe the summer of 2020, which is off to a horrible start, will shake something loose and we’ll find a way to start getting along again.

Sadly, I think things are going to keep getting worse.

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