A few thoughts of a political nature while I put together some non-political posts – yes, it is possible! 🙂

…the problem is, I would love to be posting about my golf game, but I’m nowhere near to playing golf. I had a follow-up appointment with my primary care quack on Monday, and while the good news is that he was very pleased with the results of me being on a low-dose blood pressure medication (it looks like taking a pill is going to be part of my bedtime regimen going forward), the bad news is, after I told him about my Xiaflex procedure and the pain and swelling I was still encountering, he wished me good luck with hitting balls without pain for at least six months.

…which means, come April, if nothing has changed, I’ve got a decision to make about my participation in this year’s Goodboys Invitational. I think I should have done my homework before taking a plunge into the Xiaflex procedure. Although, who knows how bad it might have gotten had I waited? It was getting pretty bad.

Some other observations:

Kamala Harris is not only a fraud, she’s a vile, Catholic-hating opportunist who slept her way to the top. Seems to me to be a perfect poster-child for the Democrats.

…if this is true, count me disappointed.

…and speaking of 2020 candidates, isn’t it a tad early for your campaign to be characterized as in “disarray“? I mean, we’re still a friggin’ year away from the first primaries, aren’t we?

But here’s the problem: the above illustrates the problem so-called “mainstream” Democrats are going to face in 2020: not only are there going to be too many candidates, it’s going to be a shit-storm of controversy and intrigue continually fed by the media/entertainment complex to whom the Democrats are so closely – and poisonously – intertwined. Think about it: everyone at CNN, MSNBC, and the mainstream network are nothing more than left-leaning Democrat politicos who have their oars in the water for one candidate or another. We already know no white male heterosexual male stands a chance (sorry, Joe Biden, you should have stayed in in 2016), and you know damned well that whomever is not positioning far enough to the left is going to find themselves undercut and sliced to shreds by a bunch of hack, leftist political operatives who, to this point, have had nothing better to do than trash Donald Trump.

…know this: these people have no class, no morals, no soul, and are the most vile and vicious of political animals who will leak and lie and undercut anyone and everyone along the way to elevate their own standing in the leftist cable news network wars of talking heads. You just watch.

The most ignorant of prognosticators are already out in force saying where and how President Trump is vulnerable, but what these never-Trumper morons are missing is that the Democrats are going to have to actually field an opponent to Trump, and none of them will have anywhere near the political cache and operation that Madame Hillary had – not even close. Next to Hillary, the next crop of Democrat challengers are going to look like a bunch of wet-eared, socialist/leftist pikers who’ll get destroyed, not just by Trump, but by their own internal party politics. The Democrats in 2020 are going to find out just what “Mittens” Romney and the Republicans found out in 2012: it’s not enough to be against a sitting president, you have to give people a damned good reason to change horses midstream.

..that being said, the same holds true for anyone who says Trump has it in the bag for 2020. Twenty-one months is a lifetime in politics. No one knows what the world or the political landscape will look like. Nevertheless, the frothing, drooling mainstream media can’t help themselves thinking about a change in the Oval Office, and in my mind it does the Democrats no good. People will be sick and tired of the 2020 election before the primary process even gets underway.

To this day, I still can’t believe the likes of Hillary Clinton – Hillary Clinton! – lost to the likes of Donald Trump – Donald Trump!

…but every time I start think that, I come to my senses.

One might ask why the Democrats have chosen such an unattractive, incompetent loser to give the rebuttal to President Trump’s State of the Union speech. You’d think they’d want to pick someone who has at least won an election and get people to tune in.

…admit it: you – and everyone else – wants AOC! Hell, I’d watch just to look at her! She may be a leftist Socialist who would love to see the likes of me silenced and in jail, but (at least to me) she’s easy on the eyes.

(On the subject of easy on the eyes, Gwyneth Paltrow can hit-and-run me on a ski slope any day. I mean, what a body!)

…but I know why the Democrats have chosen her: their big effort in 2020 is to eliminate any form of voter ID for elections at all levels. In their mind, Abrams was cheated out of being elected governor because of racist voter ID laws, so whether she’s competent or not, she’s the poster child of the Dems’ get-out-the-illegal-vote effort.

Why I love Roger Stone and will gladly support his legal defense fund: he speaks the truth:

Stone pleaded, “I’m broke. I’m looking at $2 million in legal bills to try to not spend the rest of my life in prison on some kind of trumped up phony political charges because I supported Donald Trump for president, and because I helped bring down the most evil, corrupt, foul-mouthed, self-centered, short-tempered kleptocrat in American history: Hillary Rotten Clinton.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Well, it’s Waste Management Phoenix Open Week here in the Valley of the Sun, and the vibe is already there. Think about it: you’ve got a great golf tournament with Chamber of Commerce weather expected, you’ve got the Super Bowl with GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) Tom Brady coming just hours after the golf tournament’s conclusion, and we’re all living in the greatest country on God’s green earth, free (at least for now) and lacking for virtually anything. I mean, how good is that?

A few thoughts and comments:

How I wish the mainstream media would have the guts to show President Trump in a forum where his inherent goodness, warmth, and humor show through. But they can’t, and they won’t, and you know why? Because they’re a bunch of assholes. It’s no wonder dopey, brain-dead libs who drink in their bullshit on a daily basis think the guy is Hitler.

…which is why it is the mainstream media that is fully and wholly responsible for the “climate of hate” we now find ourselves in:

The reason I pose these questions is not to point out blatant media bias, which is so glaring at this point that no one who wasn’t trying could possibly miss it, but to ask how the current climate of hate in this country contributed to this Taheb’s blood lust, and what we as a society are doing about it.

Until fairly recently, I strenuously disagreed with this notion, and to some extent I still do. Climates, much like guns, do not kill people. People kill people. Blaming a climate lets the perpetrator off the hook because, when the killer’s agency is minimized, so too is his culpability. What else can a passive receptor of hate-filled messaging do except to kill the person whom he is told to despise?

Those who live, breathe, eat, and sleep their hatred for Donald Trump are nothing more than rubes: beyond ignorant, believing a force-fed agenda and narrative by a mainstream media who hates Donald Trump, not because of who he is, but because of the threat he presents to the “Deep State” and the Washington elite and their cohorts in the mainstream media. To them, Donald Trump is an existential threat. And you know something? They’re right.

…that being said, there’s no excuse for the drooling, frothing hatred being pushed out on social media these days. Someone is going to get killed, and all because a mainstream media and entertainment industry morons who are the equivalent of human puss are given a platform by said media for their vicious and vile hatred. Entertainment industry folks who, BTW, closet themselves behind their own walls while denigrating a president who sees the same thing as necessary to protect this country and its citizens.

Run, bitch, run! The Democratic Party deserves you. And why not? After all, you’ve got as your main competition the likes of a total phony who lied about her Native American to achieve minority status and another who slept her way to where she is today. Great crowd, that.

…first thought after reading this: does it come with a mattress?

This is exactly right, and why I won’t go to anything but supermarkets anymore. Why go to a book store when I have the largest book store at my fingertips with my new Kindle? Why go to Walmart looking for a basic CD player and a HDMI cable when I can order it off of Amazon Prime? Look, I don’t know what the long-term implications of all this is (I suspect they’re not great), but I’m 63 years old and don’t need to be driving my 1999 Saturn with 178K miles on it looking around for something that might or might not be there. I may be old and sentimental about things and the way they were, but I’m not stupid.

…just this morning I was antsy about finding a new book to read. While sitting on the toilet and flossing my teeth (I know y’all didn’t want to hear that, but no worries, there are no photos!) I poked around on my Kindle and not only found this cool book, but downloaded it and was able to start reading it in fifteen minutes time! And all without wasting any gas or burning any unnecessary fossil fuels in the progress. I mean, how cool is that?

A few thoughts before I start finishing up all the housecleaning I wanted to do before I set my sights on the back patio next weekend.

I’m regretting having ever had that damned Xiaflex procedure for my hand. Or maybe not: I mean, who knows what the recovery time I would have been had I put it off for another year, or five or ten years? Maybe I’m just not a good patient, but I’m seven weeks in and I’m still feeling quite a bit of pain and still have quite a bit of swelling, to the point where I’m afraid I’m going to have to have a re-consult with the quack who did it.

…I talked online with a guy who had the same procedure; he says 6-9 months is going to be needed before I’m completely pain-free, and that’s assuming my hand doesn’t start regressing, which is what happens with 30% of the cases. I miss hitting golf balls, and I can tell you I’m F-A-R away from even thinking about that right now. Granted, it’s still six months away, but I’m beginning to wonder whether playing Goodboys Invitational weekend is going to be feasible this year.

…but even if I do (I know a lot of folks aren’t going to want to hear this), I’ve decided next year (2020) will be my 30th and final Goodboys Invitational; after that I’m hanging my Goodboys spikes up. Call me an old fart or whatever, but there comes a time where one wants to go out while he doesn’t have to start making excuses. I’ve had a good enough run, but I’ve gotten picky and finnicky in my old age, so it’s time to plan a nice, leisurely run into the sunset. All things must pass.

I don’t care what you think or may not think about Robert Mueller’s muh-Russia investigation, but this is not what America is all about. To treat some political operative like he’s some Muslim extremist or most-wanted bank robber is a disgrace. Were I President Trump, I would accept the political consequences and sack Herr Mueller. Even if someone hadn’t tipped off CNN – you want to talk about “Deep State”? Again, this is just disgraceful. It makes you wonder whether a silent coup against Donald Trump isn’t some crazy conspiracy theory.

…this simply cannot be allowed to happen – the FBI needs to be disbanded, people fired, and then reorganized under the Department for Homeland Security. I truly think the future of the Republic hangs in the balance.

…exactly. If we’re gonna do pre-dawn raids with FBI agents in full riot gear because it’s suspected someone has lied to Congress, where are the pre-dawn raids at Chappaqua and the houses of James Comey, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, and James Brennan? All without a doubt – whether intentionally or not – lied to Congress – most especially Madame Hillary, who would be behind bars under any reasonable justice system. You simply cannot have two standards for justice in this country. Otherwise, we’re just another banana republic.

…speaking of which, this is a damned good song.

Another YouTube gem. Sorry, I’m just a sucker for Brian Wilson’s funky synth stuff from the early-to-mid ’70s.

Amazing what you find on YouTube. While poking around for some Olivia Newton-John videos, I came across videos from the early ’70s where Carly Simon sings “That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be” and “Anticipation”. Wow! Was she a sexy thing in that red dress. Talk about oozing sexuality. That hair! Those legs! Those lips! That adorable nose! Hey, I’m just a guy…

…but the released version of “Anticipation” was always a fave – a great ensemble performance that caught my ears with its very cool piano, bass and drums.

…and the same with “You’re So Vain”.

…more poking around on YouTube. Talk about “The King” being The King. He’s grossly out of shape and sweating like a pig, but he still gives a performance that is almost hard to believe. Watch how he wills himself to complete the song the way it was laid out for him. Man, Elvis was the greatest.

You read stories like this and ask, what kind of ****hole might this kind of country be?

They’re only, like, weeks into their tenures as congresswomen, but, like, already Democratic upstarts like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar are morons. If this is, like, the best the Democratic Party has going forward, God help us all, y’know?

OK, I’ll admit it: back in the early to late 70s, when I was in my early to mid-twenties I had a soft spot for Olivia Newton-John and her music. Great voice. Beautiful eyes. To this day I don’t believe I’ve heard a female vocalist harmonize with herself as uniquely and artfully as ONJ did – especially when the producer would add a hint (or more) of echo to her vocals. How many female vocalists could hit high notes but still keep it as soft as a pillow as Olivia? Unlike today’s pop divas, she never tried to pulverize you with the power of her voice, she just sang the friggin’ song – a quality you just don’t see anymore. Lovely vibrato. Was she an all-time greats? I dunno, she always had a truly lovely and unique voice. Most certainly, as a pop priestess she was as good during her time as just about anyone out there.

So it is with sadness that I read that she may be in declining health with cancer. Unfortunately, it appears that she’s always had it in her genetic make-up, and everyone knows, the genes giveth and they taketh away. Anyway, it got me thinking about what my top 10 list of ONJ songs might be, so here is what I came up with. Y’all welcome with your own suggestions.

10. Don’t Stop Believin’. Decent enough tune, but a lost opportunity, IMHO. I always thought this sounded like a George Harrison-penned tune (the slide guitar has more than a bit of a George feel) and could have stood a less “poppy”, heavier production – Olivia’s voice certainly could have handled it. Still, the blocked Olivia harmonies sound great and are as good as anything she did. It’s just a little too light to these ears.

9. You’re The One That I Want / Hopelessly Devoted To You. Two songs from her work on “Grease”. Both well sung, both good-sized hits. Not sure she carried off that black spandex look all that great (Olivia was never that curvy), but that’s OK – artists have to grow, and between “Xanadu” and “Grease” you gotta give the girl credit for trying.

8. If Not For You. Olivia’s first hit, this remake of a Bob Dylan tune was bettered by George Harrison on “All Things Must Pass”, but it propelled ONJ onto the charts. I remember my brother Mark bringing home the LP, thereby introducing us to the woman whose poster would always adorn our cellar wall next to the “Jaws” and “All The President’s Men” posters that would serve as inspiration during our Top Priority practice sessions. Not sure she ever took a better picture.

7. Let Me Be There / If You Love Me, Let Me Know. I combine the two songs here because they’re really just both one in the same. Good solid vocal performances all around, and huge hits. I listen to these songs now and it amazes me just how straight-forward her vocal stylings are. Nothing fancy, she just has a lovely voice and uses it to the best of her advantage.

6. Xanadu. Olivia does disco. OK, I’ll admit it: I’m probably one of the only folks who would put this in an ONJ top ten list, but I like the tune and, even better, the oh-so-70s arrangement by Jeff Lynne and featuring ELO. I remember going to see the movie with my brother Dave. I remember Gene Kelly in it, think it was one of his last performances. Not good. But in the video her hair is stunning. As are her shoes.

5. Come On Over. Penned by Barry and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, it’s really not that much of a tune (to be honest – it’s just 2 1/2 verses), but for some reason I’ve always loved her vocal performance. Olivia sings it both forcefully and passionately, and it always melts my heart. And since I’m a sucker for tags, this song has a very nice, albeit brief, tag.

4. Fly Away. OK, this was, of course, a huge John Denver hit – one of his best. But Olivia’s contribution here is truly stunning, to the point where she steals the show from ol’ JD. Again, the producer uses echo to create a ghost-like presence, and her voice is so uniquely “hers” I imagine I wasn’t alone when, hearing the song for the first time (I still remember that exact moment, something that makes music so transcendent), saying to myself, “Shit, that’s Olivia Newton-John!”. Her vocal performance here is wistful, sad, hopeful, but (as usual with Olivia) always angelic, especially when she sings in the outro tag, “I want to fly!”. Just lovely.

3. Love Song. Olivia did a lot of covers back in her early days – some good, some not so, but this cover of a Elton John “Tumbleweed Connection” tune is lovely and beautifully arranged with that hint of blocked, echoed harmonies that always made ONJ’s vocals shimmer. I wonder today what someone like Phil Spector might have conjured up had he been enlisted to produce an album for her. Knowing how Phil was at the time, he probably would have blown it, creating one or two classics but losing the rest awash in his “Wall of Sound”. This tune followed “Banks of the Ohio” on her 1973 “Let Me Be There” album, and the two songs together are, in my mind inextricably linked in their quality and beauty.

2. Banks of the Ohio. This, I’m sure, would be only my choice, but to me it has always been a gem. I’ve posted on this before as a simple, yet effective, example of how to take a simple tune and arrange it in a way that makes it both interesting and enjoyable. The “celestial chorus” harmonies behind the last chorus (all Olivia, BTW) are both intricate and stunning in their beauty and uniqueness. I’m also linking to a lip-synced performance not so you can see how the dolts in the audience clap on the downbeat instead of the backbeat (pathetic!), but so you can see just how damned attractive she was back in the early 70s. Her beauty radiates.

1. I Honestly Love You. I’m guessing (although not altogether certain) that this would be just about everyone’s choice, as this Peter Allen-penned tune has to be her signature song. Hearing it today as Olivia sang it – no forced emotion, no wandering all over the melody like just about every female (and male) singer does today. Here Olivia sings it straight and honestly, just as the sentiments the song portrays.

…A little “Jaws” trivia for you fans out there: IHLY” is played in the background during the beach scene just before the kid on the yellow air mattress gets devoured by the shark (the famous reverse-zoom scene into Roy Scheider’s face). Check it out!

So that’s my top ten. I know what y’all are thinking: but no, as much as it sounds like something The Police would have sung, I really don’t like “Magic”; same with the abysmal “Let’s get Physical”. It might be because I just can’t get past how awful her hair looked at the time. Although I do give her credit for trying to stretch and break out of the mold. And songs like “Have You Ever Been Mellow”, “Please Mr. Please”, and “Sam” are just too light even for these Olivia-sympathetic ears.

Whatever the state of her present health is, I wish Ms. Newton-John the best – she was always one of my faves, and her songs bring back some very fond memories.

Look, like many others I know, I’ve tried to tolerate all the bullshit the mainstream media has tossed at conservatives and Trump supporters like me, but after this past weekend I feel as if something has changed. First it was the media salivating and running non-stop speculation over a BuzzFeed story accusing President Trump of telling his lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. Never mind the fact that the BuzzFeed authors of the piece lied about having seen actual documents supporting their report, nor was it clear that even their (supposed) sources had seen such a document or documents. But who cares about facts when you’ve got hours of rabid, frothing Trump hatred to fill? It finally took no less than the Mueller investigation team to deny any such document or information even existed.

Next it was a piling on by the mainstream media and every leftist loon after a snippet of video emerged in which a group of Kentucky high-schoolers attending the “March for Life” in Washington wearing “Make America Great Again” hats were accused of harassing an elderly Native American war veteran with racist chants. Again, as PJ Media’s Bruce Bawer writes, the media not only got it wrong, but the whole radical left piled on to turn it into a social media shit-show:

Presumably everyone knows the story by now. Last Friday, after attending the March for Life in Washington, D.C., several boys from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, were waiting outside the Lincoln Memorial for their bus home when something happened. The early reports accused the boys, some of whom were wearing Make America Great Again caps, of encircling and harassing an elderly Native American activist and a group of African-Americans. A snippet of video seemed to confirm this account, which was based largely on the testimony of the Native American activist. Next thing you knew, media around the world were reporting on this gang of racist pro-Trump louts and accusing them of White Privilege (even though several of them are black) and famous names on both the left and right were spewing the kids with vitriol.

Then longer videos emerged, and the story turned completely around. The group of African-Americans, who turned out to belong to a racist, anti-Semitic cult, the Black Hebrew Israelites, had been screaming at the boys, calling them “crackers” and “faggots” and the products of incest, among much else. The elderly Indian turned out to be notorious left-wing mischief-maker Nathan Phillips, whose claims to be a Vietnam vet have been challenged and who in 2015 accused some Michigan college students of harassing him. Last Friday, he wasn’t surrounded by the boys from Kentucky; he got up in their faces, banging a drum and chanting. Other Indians with him called the Kentucky boys interlopers on Indian territory and told them to go back to Europe.

Far from doing anything wrong, the high-school boys responded to these outrageous provocations with extraordinary restraint.

It wasn’t bad enough that the story was, as initially reported, 100% factually wrong. What made it much worse is that, even after the entire video showing the entire incident in proper content – the teens being subjected to horrific chants by a bunch of Black anti-Semite, homophobic loons, and the supposedly helpless Native American revealed to be a professional instigator and agent provocateur – the mainstream media and leftists on social media continued the piling on knowing it was false. Several days after the fact, you still have folks refusing to apologize for their false reporting and vicious taunts, attacks, and physical threats of violence.

I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it was shocking, disheartening and unnerving to see such vitriol and abject hatred coming from a political persuasion that supposedly prides itself on tolerance, acceptance, and diversity. I’ve always agreed with Michael Savage that, at its heart, liberalism was a mental disorder, but to see the kind of hatred out there is just mind-boggling. Can you imagine these vile and irrational haters being someone’s husband, wife, father, mother, or child? It’s frightening.

I’ve tried to understand why the left is so consumed with hatred – hatred of Donald Trump, hatred for this country, hatred of anything and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their ideology. But after this last, completely and totally outrageous attempt by the mainstream media and the political left to continue to push what they know to be an outright lie, I’m with The Smirking Hillbilly:

Something that has dawned on me today. They hate us. It doesn’t matter what is true or false. They hate us and will accept nothing but our complete destruction and the destruction of everything we hold sacred. There is no compromise or understanding with people like that.

So here is the main thrust of this post: it’s one thing to hate the president, it’s a whole ‘nutha thing to fill your entire broadcast days and print with unsubstantiated rumor and stories attributed to anonymous sources – if not outright lies – for the sole purpose of undermining Donald Trump’s presidency and ridiculing those who support him. That’s not news, that’s just serving as a propaganda ministry for the so-called “resistance” movement. (Which, BTW, is fine with me – just stop calling yourselves news and thinking yourselves as honest journalists, which you’re not – you’re just activists hawking lies and leftist propaganda). As Jazz Shaw points out in a recent Hot Air post, it doesn’t matter whose lives or reputations are destroyed so long as it furthers the narrative:

…But it does exemplify what now seems to be a hard and fast rule at the New York Times, the Washington Post and most cable news outlets. The MSM has a tendency to jump on stories they like (i.e. reports that reflect badly on the GOP/White House) without spending quite so much time verifying them as they would if the story didn’t support the narrative.

I understand that the news business in the age of social media is a competitive rush to publish and beat everyone else to the scoop. But you have a choice of either waiting to be sure you got the story right or jumping down the rabbit hole with everyone else. In this environment, you might get away with either, as long as you followed the same pattern consistently. But when you err on the side of caution for stories which might make Democrats look bad and leap into the void immediately on tales that tarnish the GOP (or specifically Donald Trump), you compound the problem.

If you don’t want to keep being accused of trafficking in Fake News, there’s a fairly simple remedy available. Do better.

If it were conservatives doing this kind of thing to liberals or progressives, I would be ashamed and be the first to call them on the carpet. But you know what? I’ve come to the opinion that we as conservatives simply don’t have the meanness, the viciousness, and the perfect ability for hatred that liberals and progressives exhibit on a daily basis. Their only religion is politics, it’s all they know or care about, and they live and die with it on a daily basis. It’s sad, and it’s pathetic. But that doesn’t mean I have to be dragged into playing their game, which I hereafter won’t. It’s not because I’m not willing to participate in a healthy debate over political opinion or the great issues of the day; it’s because for the liberal left it’s all about attacking and destroying anyone or anything that disagrees with, or sees things different than the way they do.

So going forward, I’m not putting up with any more of the liberal left’s bullshit. I’ve always been – and will always be – more than willing to hear someone else’s perspective out if offered in a rational and deliberate fashion, but there comes a point where you’re not just being disagreed with, you’re being attacked. So enough is enough. You don’t like President Trump? Fine. But don’t disrespect the office – at least when I’m around. I was hardly a supporter of Barack Obama, and I could be pretty hard on him and his taxpayer-mooching wife at times, but he was still my president. So if you want to diss Donald Trump, conservatives, and those who support him, at least do your homework first. If all you want to do is spout the same lies, disinformation, and bullshit purveyed by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, take your frothing, irrational hatred somewhere else. To me, they’ve become the enemy of the people, purveyors of fake news who care only about pushing their own hateful ideology and narratives, vile and vicious cretins who will write anything, say anything, or do anything to destroy anyone or anything who refuses to submit to their dogma.

My view is this: anyone or anything that doesn’t respect my political views no longer respects me as a person. Therefore, there is no reason for me to continue to respect their political views nor they themselves. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. But after this weekend, I’ve come to realize you’re the ones who dealt the play, not me.

A few thoughts, observations, and comments on this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday while wondering: a) how the NFL could allow something like this to happen in such a big game, and just how long one can reasonably expect Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the New England Patriots to keep reaching Super Bowls:

Were I counseling President Trump about where he should give his State of the Union speech, I would say give it in Grant Park in Chicago – remember that? – and use it to tout the significant economic progress being made by minorities under Trump’s economic policies. Inform the nation how these economic gains are an extension of Martin Luther King’s own vision for African-Americans, and compare and contrast his own willingness to stand strong on border security against long-standing weak and corrupt Democratic leadership in our inner-cities that suppresses economic opportunity in much in the same way illegal immigration and sanctuary cities do. In my view it would be winner, winner chicken dinner and a fabulous way to informally kick off the 2020 election cycle.

…speaking of holidays, I despise President’s Day and consider it a perfect example of the dumbing-down of American culture and a willful lack of interest and desire to teach basic American history. Restoring George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays as national holidays, while perhaps not as convenient to auto dealerships and department stores as having a long “President’s Day” weekend is, would encourage the teaching of what these greatest of American presidents meant to our country and its evolution.

The Atlantic targets the history of electronic music and what became of it, but it’s so off-base it’s almost useless. For one thing, George Harrison (Electronic Sound) and The Monkees – gasp! (their Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd. dabbles with it throughout) were among the first to play around with the synthesizer as a tool for integrating weird sounds with music. (The Monkees probably heard about it through Frank Zappa, who was there at the start.) At any rate, any article that blames conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (!) for electronic music’s downfall is typical liberal clap-trap. Truth is, electronic music was always going to be niche, and would soon – like everything else – be watered-down and commercialized through its increasing use in disco. Besides, by the early ’80s there were already cheaper and more practical alternatives.

…the one thing the article does get right is just how cool electronic music could be when done right, and the article referencing the band Kraftwerk and Donna Summer’s still-stunning-after-all-these-years “I Feel Love” makes it interesting, if not altogether satisfying, reading.

Dan Bongino is asking the important questions the media won’t. But I don’t blame the Democrats or the media for this. Where we are is the result of one, and only one, person: former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Turns out, there was no greater defender of the so-called “Deep State” and “Swamp”, and he tolerated Democratic congressman Adam Schiff’s personal vendetta against the president.

It’s time for Voter ID to become the law of the land. Democrats will call you a racist for believing that requiring everyone to show a picture ID in order to vote is racist, but they’re the ones exhibiting the racism of low expectations. Do they not think minorities are capable of having a driver’s license, social security card, or a state-issued voter ID card? You can’t get on a plane, or deposit or withdraw money out of a bank without a picture ID, why shouldn’t voting require the same? After all, as Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds notes, a fraudulent vote cancels out a legitimate vote. It’s time for Democrats to stop using race as a shield to making Voter ID mandatory across the board, but they won’t – after all, if you require voter ID, you can’t cheat, can you?

Honest to God, liberals are such economic morons. I mean, why stop at a $33 minimum wage? Why not $1000 an hour? Or $10K an hour? If you’re intent is to make sure no one has to ever worry about money, why not just make everything free?

Jeez, ya think?? I mean, paging Captain Obvious!

…along those same lines, sometimes the headlines just write themselves.

I’m now ashamed that I voted for loser “Mittens” Romney for president. But what was I supposed to do, vote for Hussein Obama? Still, it was sooooo embarrassing to see the guy get crucified by the mainstream media on a daily basis and not even lift a glove in protest. Of course, now that Donald Trump is president and the late (but hardly great) John McCain is bye-bye, Mittens sees himself as the Senate’s new “Maverick”, and the mainstream media calls him a “statesman” and “voice of reason”. Yeah, right. To which I say, screw you, Mittens:

Hat tip: Sara Carter.

It’s actually been a pretty good week, even though the swelling and pain in my hand is no better after hitting those balls last weekend. Think I’ll shut down the golf game for another month. Then, if things are no better, it will be back to the hand quack for another assessment. I’ll admit to being a little worried. OTOH, we got our patio door fixed for $300, saving us anywhere from $4K to 11K for a replacement solution, the new landscaping lights in the front and back look great, and we hit our first financial target of the year on schedule, which will make our Edelman Financial guy very happy. In the meanwhile…

Will you be watching? I will:

On the evening of January 20, the moon will undergo a full lunar eclipse. This eclipse occurs when the orbit of the Earth passes between the sun and the moon. This alignment causes the shadow of our planet to be cast upon the moon giving it a distinctly red hue. The common name for the moon during this full lunar eclipse is the Blood Moon. This will be the last total lunar eclipse until 2021.

And then if you’re fortunate enough to survive that, you’ll have Monday the 21st to look forward to – the date so-called “experts” say is the roughest day of the year for folks to handle psychologically. Why?

The “Blue Monday” theory, as it became known, was derided by scientists who said the equation made no sense, as well as by psychologists who felt the theory diminished the nature of clinical depression. But the truth is that, for a lot of people, the third Monday of January (which falls on January 21st this year) really does feel like a grim day—and for good reason. The holidays are truly over, the days are short, the weather is less than awesome, and there’s still so much more winter to come. Most people have already abandoned their New Years resolutions by now, so motivational levels are low. You’re in between pay days, which might leave you in a tight squeeze if you really splurged on Christmas gifts. And while doing Dry January has tons of amazing health benefits, it doesn’t exactly lend itself well to going out.

I guess that makes sense, but my Goodboys pal “The Funny Guy” and I always considered the day after the Super Bowl to be the low day of the winter. So we’d do a bar crawl through downtown Lowell and try and lift our spirits by, well, lifting a few spirits. Ahhh…those were the days. Speaking of the Super Bowl, “Blue Monday” won’t feel so blue in New England if the Pats are able to beat the Chiefs and make it to the Super Bowl. Wouldn’t that be something?

It’s right around this time of year that one really notices the days are getting longer. (Unfortunately, the mornings are still lagging – my 7 AM calls with the India folks are still starting while it’s dark outside.) And here in the Valley of the Sun, it’s just not humans – the mourning doves have obviously noticed as well, since just this week we’ve seen a noticeable uptick in dove activity. A few days ago I heard the first dove cooing at a gawd-awful 4:30 AM (too early and too damned dark if you ask me!), and the doves outside my office window are obviously both mate and house-hunting. I can see and hear them all day long, and it tells me spring ain’t too far away.

…it’s still too early for our feathery acacia bushes – no sign of buds on them yet, but they’re the first ones to bloom around here. Give ’em a another week or two and the buds will be there.

…but already the Valley is gearing up for the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Between that and its finish on Super Bowl Sunday before the Big Game, it makes for quite a healthy vibe here in the Valley.

Article: 60 Years On: Reflections on the Revolution in Cuba. I’ll save you the time and trouble reading. Castro was a paranoid sociopath and the Cuban people got taken for a ride:

Almost nothing remains of the Revolution’s promises of opportunities and civil liberties for all, for which so much blood was spilled. On the contrary, a strict system of surveillance and control has been its most durable “achievement.” For Cubans, the promise of liberation remains a dream, endlessly deferred.

But socialist morons like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren will always get all the free press they need. You want to know the difference between capitalism and socialism? Capitalists walk dogs. Socialists eat them.

Someone’s gonna need a bigger boat…

The Eades’s have been preaching this gospel for years. I was never much of a label-reader until I went on the Eades diet. Fortunately I’ve never been much of a “sweets” or a soda guy, but once you start looking at the vast amount of products out there containing HFCS it shouldn’t surprise you the obesity problem this country has.

Jeepers, what a way to lose the brand wars. Whatever happened to companies, y’know, focusing on making and selling a good product and leaving the social justice warrior stuff and sermonizing to the do-gooders?

Free Republic contributor “Gort_Klaatu” hits the nail squarely on the head when he (or she) writes, Gillette Has Got It Backwards – It’s Toxic Feminism That Is Ruining Our World:

Gillette will hopefully go belly-up due their recent commercial that, as many other parts of today’s society are now doing – vilifying men at every chance they get. The real problem of our societal slide is toxic feminism. This is evidenced in every form of media we are exposed to.

A few examples:

The TV show “The View” in which four radical women shout down a pretend moderate to the wild cheers of their like-mined studio audience.

A freshman congresswoman who refers to the president as a “Mother——” without gaining so much as a rebuke from her own political party. Nancy Pelosi and other women politicians usually have a milquetoast of a man standing beside them waiting to say “Yes Dear”.

The rampant belief that there is more than one gender which is championed by feminists at every turn because this helps build their cause. By allowing women to call themselves men they try to prove they need no biological males and that anything a real man can do, a pretend man can do just as well. By encouraging men to call themselves women, feminists welcome them into the fold with open arms because the brainwashing will be so much easier now.

Men that have been indoctrinated into seeing things “from a woman’s inclusive point of view”, have destroyed institutions such as the Boy Scouts, and demoralized and weakened our military. These same “men” such as Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, and every major male newsman have made the real men in this world the enemy because they would rather have a latte and prove to women that they are comfortable with their sensitive side.

When they need a tire changed, their plumbing fixed, and worse yet, a crime from being committed on their person they can fend for themselves if the think men aren’t important.

Europe has turned their back on real men and look at the hell they are going through now with the animalistic invaders from other countries destroying their society with rampant crime. But men that point these things out are called evil, racist, misogynistic, homophobes.

Time for real men to take a stand and stop his crap once and for all.

Of course, this has been coming for some time, ever since Women’s Lib movement of the Sixties, which was laudable for its desire to bring about a more equal playing field for women in the workplace. But like anything associated with liberalism, the movement was never satisfied with any form of progress until its evolution into Feminazism and the final goal to grind masculinity in all its forms into the dust to the point where it has become a cancer that affects everything in our culture – most especially how companies do business. Don’t believe me? Look at your own companies – you’ve got women in upper management who spend their days not so much concerned about what the company does but how it goes about it. Look at your company’s legal and Human Resources departments – what was once a fairly simple, yet effective “Personnel” department dedicated to hiring, firing, and paying employees has been turned into an overbearing do-gooder monstrosity known as Human Resources (which, BTW, is neither human nor a resource).

Look at any institution and see what the recruitment of women has done for them; while on the surface you might see what some would call “progress”, you don’t see success. Look at what the mainline Protestant churches have turned into, the decline in standards, quality of clergy, and – not surprisingly – membership. I’ve seen it up front and know what I’m talking about. See what the influx of gay clergy has done to the Roman Catholic Church over the past fifty years. Look at your colleges and universities, and the quality of education in our public schools. Let me tell you – it’s not men who are driving the agendas and the quality of education into the sewer. Look at your local public schools and the feminization of everything: playgrounds used to be a place where boys fought and played dodgeball and rough-housed around; now every boy and girl in the local weekend soccer league gets an trophy for simply “participating”. Everything these days is about quotas and fairness and every kind of bullshit that goes with that. And it ain’t men who are driving this agenda, I can tell you that.

What this country – indeed, our Western culture desperately needs is for men everywhere to stand up and step up to emphasize the point that the world is filled with winners and losers. Life isn’t fair. Nothing, for that matter, is fair – not in this world, not on this planet, not anywhere. It’s dog-eat-dog out there – as it should be – where only the strongest survive. Let me tell you: there is no greater disenfranchised group in this country right now than young men. Metrosexual hipsters whose fathers weren’t around because their parents’ divorce decree left them in the custody of over-bearing and well-meaning but overly-protective mothers. Where are the father figures? Where are the men who once taught their sons manly things? In the end, there are only two kinds of men in the world, those who prey on the weak, and those who are needed to stand up to them and repel them. Who’s going to rise up when the next Hitler comes around? Who will we be able to rely on to stop him? The gender-questionable teen at the local McDonald’s with the braces, pink hair, and stud in his nose who talks like the guy who picks out the dresses on “Say Yes To The Dress”? I don’t think so.

The feminization of men is creating a generation of men who deep down resent the overt female influences in their lives and turn on women in order to use them and abuse them as retribution for the self-hatred they feel for being the wusses they have become. Ask most women what they are looking for in a man, they’ll say someone who is strong and confident man who is confident in his own skin, who can be a protector, equal, a bread-winner, a good father. What woman would want some lazy, unmotivated girly-man, unsure of who or what he is, dependent upon a mommy figure to tell him what to do, how to dress, what to think, and dependent on her to bring home the bacon? But that’s what the Women’s Movement has created.

Enough is enough! Men of the world unite! More meat, less broccoli! Make par, not war. But if you’re called upon to make war, do what William Tecumseh Sherman and George Patton – real men in their own right – instructed their troops to do: kill them, kill them all. And it takes a certain kind of man – a manly man – to conduct war. Can you imagine today’s wusses, crouched low in landing craft bobbing and heaving towards some beachhead in the South China Sea, one hand on their carbine, the other holding their spiced lattes aloft so as not to have them spill?

…which is why, I suppose, that liberals hate Donald Trump so much. As an unapologetic alpha male, he celebrates the alpha males in our society – the military, our fire and police, our border agents – you know, all those institutions traditionally staffed and dominated by men. If you want to call it masculine toxicity, fine, but if you’re in a bank being robbed, who do you want to see come to your rescue, this guy or this guy?

You know what I say? Give every man what he wants deep-down: a fast car, a barbecue grill for grilling massive amounts of meat, a smoker to smoke those meats, and a six-pack of beer that he can guzzle while smoking up the neighborhood for the good of his family. A man unashamed to show his love for his children, to help with their homework, a man who wants to break 90 on a regular basis but is yet unafraid to help with the work around the house as an equal partner. A man who works as hard as he plays. A man unashamed of being a man, damn it.

…and if he happens to look at a pretty girl and admire the way she walks down the street, get off his ass! As long as looks but doesn’t touch where’s the friggin’ harm? If he wants to watch a war movie or the damned football game, or take his son fishing or play catch down at the local ball field in order to create a bond, let him do it. If he wants to play golf in the Saturday league down at the local country club, then kick back with a beer or two afterwards, let him! Far better than pestering him and bitching about the fact he doesn’t want to accompanying you to your yoga or Pilates class.

Gillette is making a big mistake here. They’re destroying their manly brand, but that’s what the women who created the ad campaign set out to do. They want to go woke? Let them go broke.

Now, excuse me while I refill my glass of Pinot Grigio (just slightly chilled, thank you) and work on those Olivia Newton-John and ABBA posts I’ve been meaning to get to. There’s also laundry to do.

Caught this post by Ace of Spades because it had to do with one of my favorite subjects: wine:

Oh, to answer the question: “good wine” means the one you like and can afford (the cheaper the better). I generally stick to a particular style of wine, and currently that means Australian Shiraz or Shiraz-blends that are made in the old style of big fruit and not a lot of tannin and acid. Unfortunately they are getting harder and harder to find, because ass-hats like the writer of the above review have an out-sized influence on wine-making style. Don’t let their virtue-signalling idiocy influence your wine buying. Wine writers are mostly full of shit, and themselves, and what little utility they provide is a consistency in description, and not all of them can do that. Find one who makes sense, and figure out how he describes the kind of wine you like. Hell, he might hate it, but as long as he uses the same descriptors you’ll be fine.

I never thought about using that strategy before, but I’ll bet it works. I’m no wine snob, but if other folks want to be so that’s OK with me. With wine, it’s all about the mood and what you like.

…BTW, there are two really good movies having to do with wine: “Sideways”, and “Bottle Shock”. “A Good Year” isn’t bad, either – but then again, how could it not be? Anything with Russell Crowe in it has gotta be good, right?

But I digress.

Me, I have to say I’m not really adventurous when it comes to wine, but I’ll try anything once. I do try to stay away from Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays, only because I find them a little heavy for my tastes. For reds, I’m more of a blends guy. I absolutely luv-luv-luv Greg Norman Estates Cabernet Merlot and virtually any kind of chianti. As far as whites, my go-to is Pino Grigio, the drier the better. My daily habit is a couple of glasses of Principato, but on a hot summer afternoon after a round of golf a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, or even a Riesling, is OK by me.

You can read the rest of Ace’s post for good wine talk, but check out the embedded video for chicken-fried steak. Man, that got my mouth watering pretty good. The chef’s idea of cutting the fat out of that pice of ribeye and using it for flavoring is pretty cool. Just so’s ya know, just as Omaha Steaks makes one helluva pot roast (although you got to keep checking for when it’s on sale), they also make a very nice chicken-fried steak. Heat both sides in a 400-degree oven for 15 minutes a side and it makes for a very nice dinner with shredded or diced potatoes.

…and the chef is right about beef and pork fat. Never, ever cook your bacon in a microwave! Cook it on the stovetop and save the reserved grease for when you’re doing home fries or shredded spuds, or (my favorite) cook your cut-up Brussels sprouts in it with a little white wine, garlic, and chopped onion. You’ll be glad you did!

First the good news: had my follow-up with the hand quack who performed my Xiaflex procedure. He called it a “home run”, said it couldn’t have gone better. I mentioned my concerns about the pain and swelling I was still having, and he assured me it would go away in time. I’m counting on him for that to be true, because, while I can swing a golf club OK, hitting balls right now is out of the question. On Saturday I went down the street to the PGA Tour Superstore and hit some 7-irons from the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach, then had to quit after five balls because of the pain. My PT says I’m at least 6-8 weeks away from hitting balls without uncomfortable pain, although there is a possibility, albeit rare, it could take upwards of a year before that kind of pain is fully resolved. That sucks. If that’s the case, hasta la vista, Goodboys 2019. I’ll admit, I’m feeling a tad frustrated right now.

…but you read some of the stories of others who had the same procedure and, damn, I am fortunate.

This is pretty funny.

Been watching the Jillian Michaels / Al Roker debate over the keto diet and lifestyle from afar, and it’s pretty amusing. My view is that, while Michaels is a total fox, she’s also nothing more than a huckster in the same vein as, say, Rachael Ray and all the other Food Network stars. Take everything they say and sell with a grain of salt. It’s not like there isn’t a huge problem out there that Michaels is ignoring:

America has been fed (pun intended) false information about nutrition for decades. One biased and utterly garbage study was used as the basis of the “Food Pyramid” that the federal government touted for half a century (watch “The Magic Pill” on Netflix). The Food Pyramid’s biggest accomplishment was to help make heart disease the number one killer in America.

Thanks, experts!

A huge industry has grown up around helping fat people not be fat. This is because there are so many fat people in America. Jillian Michaels has profited greatly in this industry. A New World Order in which people can lose weight simply by buying better groceries and not spending money on “fat burner” supplements (which Michaels sells) is bound to be disturbing to those who have made a lot of money under the old system.

Michaels’ complete lack of regard in her rants for the most basic facts about keto lead me to believe that she is more fearful of the easy-to-obtain benefits of the lifestyle than she is about the well-being of the dieting public.

In Michael’s case, one would think given her history she’d be more interested in the welfare of folks to the extent that whatever inspires them and helps them to lose weight, just do it.

Me? I don’t trust anything – and I mean anything – the government and so-called “experts” tell me about anything. Think about it: the nanny state has never been more intrusive in our lives, and you have to wonder who the so-called “experts” are driving that agenda. You have Big Government, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Food, Big Education, and Big Entertainment working together to push “common wisdom” on everything from diet to climate change, from cars we should be driving all the way down to baby car seats and sunscreen. And what has been the result? As a country and a culture we’ve become fat, physically and intellectually lazy, over-reliant on government, all to willing to accept opinion stated as fact, and unwilling to face hard facts and make tough choices about what the role of government is in our lives.

The president is right about the need to protect our southern border, but there’s also trouble afoot at our northern border as well. I personally don’t care as much about the wall as that we start taking seriously the enforcement of our immigration laws. If you are found here illegally, you’re allowed to apply for asylum. If your situation doesn’t apply, you go to the back of the line and are deported until you’re either accepted or turned down. A wall alone isn’t going to stop illegal immigration if we as a country can’t or won’t support our own immigration laws.

If you’ve got the body for it, the answer is yes. Next question?

As I’ve been saying all along, the whole “Russia Collusion” thing was nothing more than an Obama White House plot to torpedo the Trump administration’s ability to get its footing and protect both the “Deep State” and Obama’s socialist agenda from being overturned. The biggest mistake President Trump made was appointing a Washington insider like Jeff Sessions as Attorney General instead of someone who could find all the bad actors in the DOJ, Department of State, and the FBI who created two separate codes of justice: one for Hillary Clinton and them, the other for the rest of us.

This could be the first book I download onto the Kindle I got for Christmas. Looks like it’s a “must have” for all Jaws afficianados out there, most especially a few I know in GB Nation.

Asking the important questions. Me? I often wondered the same thing. (Hat tip: Instapundit)