To My Readers,

I have been thinking about writing to you for some time now. Each time I publish an article, there are certain people whom I can count on to at least check out what I have to say. There are many others who read my work that I do not know well or know at all in some cases. As of today, I have 8948 followers, but a good deal of them do very little reading.

I wonder sometimes why they follow me if they are not going to read what I write. Maybe they read one article long ago and liked it, but haven’t found anything else I’ve written interesting. Maybe they just like to click the follow button and figure that if they follow me, I will follow them back. I don’t typically do that. How can I possibly follow 8948 people and read what they write? I keep the number of people I follow relatively small, and if I follow you, it is because I enjoy reading the things you have written.

First of all, I want to tell my readers how incredibly flattered I am that you read my work. It takes a certain amount of confidence to put your work out there for everyone to read, especially if there is anything remotely controversial in it. The people who read my work are enormously kind and generous in their comments, and for that I am thankful.

I also want my readers to know that I am aware that not every article I write is going to be interesting to them. I get that. I’m fairly certain that some of my readers will look at my title and scroll past it, or think to themselves, “Oh, he’s writing about that again.” I try to keep my topics varied, but I will admit there are certain topics I tend to write about more than others. Stay tuned. I have some in the works that will be very different from what you are used to reading.

I also publish my work on Substack, something I’ve been doing for just under two years now. Substack is a very different platform from Medium. Probably the biggest difference is that I only get paid on Substack if the reader pays for a subscription. A yearly subscription is about $80, and a monthly subscription is about $7 per month.

You do not have to pay to read my pieces on Substack unless you want to. I understand that it is not possible for most people to pay for a year’s subscription for every person whose work they read on Substack. The costs add up very quickly. I can’t afford it either, so I am grateful that I am able to read some people’s work without a subscription. If you read my work on Substack and have a paid subscription, I am deeply honored. I mean that. You are the reason I publish there.

The tricky part about Substack is whether or not to let people read my work for free. I go back and forth on this all the time. On one hand, I want everyone to read my work in the hope that maybe, just maybe, they will pay for a subscription.

Some writers put a break in their work on Substack so that people without a subscription can only read the first few paragraphs. If they want to read more, they have to pay for a subscription. I did that for a while, and then I decided to just let everyone read for free. I’m still not sure I like doing that, though.

What bothers me about this is that people who pay for a subscription aren’t getting anything extra for their money. They are getting the exact same content as those without one. Why should they pay for a subscription if they could just read for free?

I don’t have a good answer for that except to say that it is the paid subscriptions that keep me publishing on Substack. If I had no paid subscriptions, there is a good chance I would simply close up shop and publish only on Medium. If anyone has a solution to this conundrum, I would love to hear it.

Finally, to those of you who take the time to comment on either platform, and especially those of you who I have gotten to “know” on these platforms, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your company. In many ways, it is you who I write for. Thanks for being there.

Sincerely,

John

It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years since I ran through the gauntlet of Army basic training, the hottest summer of my life in more ways than one. A lot of people who know me are always surprised to find out that I am a veteran, and they always ask why I joined. There is little about me now that would lead someone to think I was ever a soldier.

When people ask me why I joined the Army, I generally tell them it was a momentary lapse of reason, but that isn’t altogether true. I knew what I was doing, or at least I thought I did.

I grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin named Tomahawk with a population of a little over 3000 people. It was a nice place to spend my childhood, but by the time I was in high school, I was tired of it. Small towns have limited offerings, both socially and in terms of employment. I didn’t have the money to go to college like so many of my classmates, and the thought of staying in Tomahawk gave me the willies. There was no way I could do it. I had to find a way out.

Since I couldn’t go to college, military service became my ticket out. In the fall of my senior year of high school, I began to meet with military recruiters. My dad was in the Marine Corps. So was my brother. Naturally, that was the first recruiter I met with. I was fairly certain that was the direction I was going to go, that is, until I met with the Army recruiter.

They both sounded promising, and they both offered what I really wanted, which was a one-way ticket out of my hometown.

The Army offered one thing the Marines did not. The Army had a base in Colorado, and that was the one place on Earth I really wanted to be. I wanted to see the mountains and experience the place John Denver sang about. And yet, there was a big part of me that wanted to continue the family tradition of joining the Marine Corps. Whenever I faced confusing choices like this, I went to the one person who I knew could help me sort it out, my dad.

He is the one who told me that I should join the Army. He said there was nothing I had to prove by joining the Marines, and that if going to Colorado was what I wanted, that was the direction I should take. I took that as his seal of approval, and so I filled out the necessary paperwork, went to the induction center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and enlisted in the Army.

My arrival at Fort Jackson

I flew from the induction station in Milwaukee to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, on June 22, 1976. I had never been on a plane before, which only added to the excitement. I remember that as the plane gained speed going down the runway, I kept thinking that if we went any faster, we were going to leave the ground.

Duh.

I spent the first three days at the U.S. Army Reception Station, getting, as Arlo Guthrie sang in his song “Alice’s Restaurant,” “injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.”

The reception station was a fairly pleasant place. It was a large brick building that had air conditioning. During the day, we went to various stations to receive our clothing, our shots, and a whole host of other things that we needed to have before actual basic training began. The messhall, which was called a “dining facility,” wasn’t half bad. If this was the Army, I thought, I could definitely handle it.

Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

The Gates of Hell swing open

On Friday, June 25th, my group had completed everything we needed to at the reception station. It was time for us to ship out to our basic training company. We gathered our things and waited patiently for the cattle cars to arrive.

For those of you who might not know, cattle cars are large trucks with benches that carry large numbers of troops from one place to another.

We boarded the cattle cars and made our way apprehensively toward our final destination. A short time later, the cattle car came to a stop, and the gates of Hell swung open.

Waiting for us were somewhere between ten and twelve drill sergeants in their Smokey the Bear hats, all shouting at us to make a formation, calling us names, and creating chaos as I had never seen before.

“Get over there,” one drill sergeant shouted.

“Who told you to get over here?” a different one screamed.

“Drop and give me 25 pushups,” commanded another.

The purpose of all these rapid-fire, often contradictory commands was to shake us up and keep us in a state of fear and confusion. It worked wonderfully. I could tell this was not the first time they had done this. My guess is that they actually practiced how to keep us all off balance.

Once we were finally in something of a formation, we began what is known in the Army as “the duffle bag drill.”

“Pick ’em up,” shouted one drill sergeant, meaning our heavy duffel bags.

We all labored to get our duffel bags over our heads, but the weight made it difficult for all but the strongest.

“Drop ‘em,” came the command, which was quickly followed by “Pick ’em up.” They repeated these commands over and over until our arms felt like rubber. Up and down. Up and down.

“Up.”

“Down.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one recruit pass out.

Keep in mind this was in South Carolina in the summer on hot asphalt, and we were wearing our new, black Army boots. The outside temperature was at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit, if not hotter. Satan would have to up his game if he wanted to compete with this Hell.

That night, as I lay on my bunk in a warehouse of strangers, I wondered what the hell I got myself into.

I became a trained killer

For the first two weeks of basic training, we spent most of our time learning to march and how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble our M-16 rifles. While learning to march seems to be somewhat pedestrian (pun intended), moving 200 men from point A to point B efficiently required discipline and coordination.

This was also a time when our drill sergeants made it very clear that the barracks were to be kept spotless, and our bunks needed to be made perfectly every morning.

Keeping the barracks clean was not an easy task. The barracks I was assigned to were the old wooden barracks that were built before WWII. Still, if our efforts didn’t measure up, our drill sergeants would knock over our bunks and completely trash the barracks. It would have been funny if it weren’t so much work putting things back together.

It was hot like no other summer I had ever experienced. The daily temperature at Fort Jackson in the summer was consistently over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and often was above 100 degrees. There was no air conditioning in the barracks, the mess hall, or any of the other buildings we ever went to, save one, the chapel.

The chapel was air-conditioned, and that was the summer I found God, at least for a while. For that one hour each Sunday, I got a brief respite from Satan’s breath.

For the next two weeks, we spent our days marching out to the rifle ranges to learn how to effectively use our M-16 rifles. Other than for the long, hot march out to them, this was actually fun. I had been shooting guns my whole life, and getting to target shoot for free was great.

Most of the guys in my platoon had never used a rifle before, and it showed. They couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if they were standing next to it. The scary part of this is that these guys didn’t know the first thing about gun safety. They would accidentally point their guns at other people, and I never knew if they were smart enough to make sure there was no bullet in the chamber. Fortunately, no one ever got shot.

I, on the other hand, could hit the bullseye most of the time. On weapons qualification day, I qualified as an “expert” marksman. If you needed to have another person in your foxhole during a war, you could do a lot worse than having me in there with you.

The hand grenade range followed our rifle training. I had always played with toy grenades as a kid when we were “playing Army.” I also saw them used in war movies.

Holding a real live grenade, one that could blow you to smithereens if you didn’t handle it correctly, was an intimidating experience. In order to make a grenade explode, the first thing we had to do was pull a little metal ring out of where the handle meets the main body of the grenade. The second step was to flip the handle off.

Once the handle was flipped off the grenade, the five-second countdown to detonation began. In other words, we had five seconds to get rid of the grenade before it blew up.

In throwing the grenades, our main goal was not to kill anyone in our platoon. Our secondary goal was to throw the grenade and have it land within a certain distance of the target.

I qualified as an expert in grenade throwing as well.

In the weeks to follow, we learned how to blow up tanks using the LAW (light anti-tank weapon) that looked a lot like the toy bazookas we played with as kids. We also learned to shoot the M-60 machine gun and how to set up a claymore mine.

If you are unfamiliar with the claymore mine, it is basically a small box filled with metal ball bearings and an explosive. When it is set off, the device explodes and sends those metal ball bearings flying at a lethal speed toward anyone or anything that is in front of it. To be hit by one is roughly the same as being shot with a shotgun at close range.

On August 19th, 1976, I graduated from Army Basic Combat Training and would go on to my permanent duty station with the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado as a trained killer.

In looking back on the whole experience, I’m glad I never had the opportunity to use any of the skills I learned. I have a feeling a lot of other people feel the same.

The phrase “if your horse is dead, get off” is an ancient tribal saying frequently attributed to the Dakota or Lakota people. What this means is that if something is not working, stop trying to make it work. Hoping the horse gets back up is useless. Whipping the horse harder is of no use either. There comes a time when you simply get off and walk away.

It’s that time for trickle-down economics.

Ronald Reagan championed this kind of economics, and it’s not unfair to say that the current economic doldrums is the grandchild of his policies. Throughout the 1980s, that was all we heard about. Reagan used the terms “trickle-down economics” and “supply-side economics” interchangeably. While they are not exactly the same thing, they are very close, close enough for argument’s sake.

Let’s do an autopsy on this dead horse.

Why trickle-down economics didn’t work

What a lot of people don’t understand is that this horse was born dead. Whether on purpose or by happenstance, it never had a chance to work the way it was marketed to the people.

Reagan told the American people that by loosening regulations and giving large tax breaks to the wealthy, American business would be energized. Factories would be built. Jobs would be created. A new day would dawn. America would be great again.

Where have we heard that nonsense lately?

On the surface, it sounded workable. After all, once the wealthy people and corporations are freed from government regulation and burdensome taxes, wouldn’t they want to invest that money into their businesses here? For the gullible and naive, this made perfect economic sense. For those who knew better, this was a plan to siphon off wealth from others and generate new wealth for themselves.

Even Reagan’s vice president George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics.”

There were two things that ensured that trickle-down economics would not work. The first is that in order for trickle-down economics to work, it has to take place in a closed system. By that, I mean that all of the money generated from tax breaks and other financial incentives given to the corporations and wealthy owners had to stay in the United States.

We do not have a closed system at all. We have a global economy. What did the corporations and wealthy owners do with their tax breaks and financial incentives? They used that money to construct or improve manufacturing facilities overseas. The money did trickle down, but just not to the American middle class. It trickled down, albeit in a very small way, to the sweatshop workers in countries like Vietnam, Thailand, China, and Cambodia.

The second factor that ensured trickle-down economics would not work is pure, unbridled greed on the part of corporate CEOs and wealth owners. Of course, these people would be in favor of trickle-down economics and Ronald Reagan in general. They saw an opportunity to fund their overseas exploits with financial giveaways from the United States. And that is exactly what they did.

Manufacturing never came back to the United States the way Ronald Reagan promised. It never came back to the United States the way George W. Bush promised either. And it has never come back the way Donald Trump has promised either. The truly sad part is that none of these leaders really believed it would, but they knew the average American would believe the lie and vote for them.

George W. Bush and the ownership society

George W. Bush continued what Reagan began. He loosened the regulations on the banking industry and called for an “ownership society,” where the middle class would be able to own homes and businesses. It sounded so promising in his speeches, and after the 9/11 attacks, people needed to feel a sense of hope. Bush’s promise of an ownership society gave them that.

Of course, what no one wanted to talk about was how loose the whole lending industry had become. People were obtaining adjustable rate mortgages with no documentation at all. Down payments were waived. It was an easy time to buy a house.

This caused a rush on the housing market, which drove up the prices at a rapid rate. People began to believe they could buy a house and watch its value skyrocket. They then could see it and take the profit. It was all so easy.

The problem came when those adjustable-rate mortgages reset, and the people who bought houses they really couldn’t afford began to lose them to foreclosure. Others simply walked away from their loans and let the banks take their houses.

What goes up must come down, and such was the case with the housing market. Houses lost half their value. People saw their equity evaporate. The only people who came out ahead were those who collected fees for drawing up the loan documents, real estate agents who made the sales, and lawyers who assisted people in their bankruptcy filings. Everyone else lost.

The ownership society quickly became the foreclosure society.

Donald Trump and more of the same

Under the Trump administration, we are watching history repeat itself. While Trump doesn’t use the term “trickle down economics,” his policies are exactly that. Trump is very much in favor of ridding the corporations and wealthy owners of those inconvenient regulations.

He has often stated that getting rid of regulations and giving financial incentives to corporations will bring manufacturing back to the United States and that the middle class will prosper from it. He tells them that this will make America great again. They believe him.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Today there are more billionaires than ever in human history, and yet there is more poverty than ever. The middle class, which was supposed to be the main beneficiary in this system, is shrinking. Young people, many of whom are shackled by student loan debt, cannot afford to buy homes or raise families. Older people are holding onto their homes because they can’t afford the cost of assisted living or a nursing home. They get by the best they can.

Trickle-down economics didn’t die. It was born dead.

I taught in a number of locations throughout my career. I began my career in northern Wisconsin in a rural school district where only about 1000 people lived. Other than for a school for the deaf, it was the smallest school district in the entire state.

After three years of winters that were colder than a well-digger’s ass, I moved to the Twin Cities, where I spent the bulk of my career teaching in an alternative high school for kids who were at risk of dropping out. The kids I taught there had to meet certain criteria that made them at risk, such as being pregnant or parenting, having experienced homelessness, having gone through a drug treatment program, or being two or more years behind in school.

In 2017, my school district offered a retirement incentive to us older teachers that was hard to turn down. It was a blatant attempt to get rid of us older teachers with higher salaries and replace us with new teachers whose salaries would be at the bottom of the scale. I understood this, but as I said, the incentive was hard to turn down.

So I retired, and three days later I unretired and accepted a new position in the city of Milwaukee. The school I was to work at was on the city’s north side, the roughest part of the city. I thought my many years of teaching at-risk kids in the Twin Cities was the perfect training for the position I had just accepted.

I could not have been more wrong.

The north side of Milwaukee is the part of the city no one goes to unless they live or work there. It is plagued by high crime, severe intergenerational poverty, homelessness, and hopelessness. My school was adjacent to the poorest zip code in the state of Wisconsin, the same zip code that also had the highest incarceration rate. This was the zip code most of my students came from. In a nutshell, it was poor and Black.

If someone asked me to describe the area where I taught, I would say it was basically a cemetery waiting to happen. One year while I was teaching there, I knew 10% of the people on the Milwaukee Homicide list. They were all current or former students of mine. It was not at all unusual for me to hear gunshots while I was sitting at my desk in my classroom.

The school I worked at was a program for kids who were expelled from Milwaukee Public Schools. Most of them were there for fighting, drugs, or other gang-related activities. Most of them couldn’t read above a fifth-grade level, and many couldn’t read at all.

When I first saw my students, I was stunned. They either didn’t know how to behave in a school setting or didn’t care. When they came to class, they didn’t sit down. They didn’t listen to me when I told them to. They threw books and other materials around the room. They danced on the desks. They tossed things out of the window. It was chaos like I had never seen in a school before. It was like a scene out of the movie Dangerous Minds.

In time, things settled down a little to where I could at least conduct class. I developed something of a relationship with some of the students who seemed to want to rise above the chaos. Then there were those who couldn’t have cared less. They loved the chaos. They were the chaos. Some classes went well, while others didn’t. I had to recalibrate my expectations. I was not going to “save” anyone here, but I hoped to at least give some of them a nudge in the right direction.

I get a new student named Jimmie G.

It was against this backdrop that Jimmie started at our school. I still remember the day he walked into my freshman English class. He introduced himself and asked what he was supposed to do. I explained the assignment everyone was working on, and he sat right down and got to work.

I was impressed. Not only did he sit down and begin working, but he obviously knew how to read much better than most of the other kids in the class. He was reasonably polite, did his work, and didn’t create any problems. He was a pleasant addition to my class.

Jimmie was a reasonably good student. He could read and write, and when he wanted to, his behavior was more than acceptable. We all knew Jimmie came from a tough background. He was living with his father when he attended our school. No one ever heard him, or anyone else, mention his mother.

The first time I had a concern about Jimmie was when he asked me if I had ever heard of Larry Hoover. I told him that I hadn’t. Jimmie seemed surprised and told me with a certain pride that Larry Hoover was the leader of his nation. I knew what that meant, but I didn’t let on to Jimmie. Instead, I told him that I would look him up later in the day when I didn’t have class.

If you are unaware of who Larry Hoover is, he is the leader and founder of the Gangster Disciples and has been in prison since 1973. He was serving a 150–200-year sentence for murder when, in 1997, he was convicted of organizing crimes from inside the prison. He was then sentenced to life.

This is Jimmie’s hero and the leader of his “nation.”

In the weeks and months to come, Jimmie began to get in trouble. He had several fights in the bathroom and had one incident outside of school where he followed a student home and threw rocks at his house. When his father was asked to come to the school to talk about the incident, he gave Jimmie a “high-five” and congratulated him. The boy whose house Jimmie threw rocks at was from a different gang than the one Jimmie and his dad belonged to.

In the last few weeks of school, Jimmie’s special education evaluation was completed. We were told he had emotional and behavioral problems, and that an Individual Education Plan was in place for him. This meant he could not be suspended so long as his behavior was caused by his disability. In technical terms, his behavior was a manifestation of his disability. He loudly proclaimed his delight by announcing “now you can’t suspend me no more.”

Great.

The next week he pummeled a girl in the back staircase.

School got out in May, and I didn’t see Jimmie or hear anything about him until I returned to school that fall. It was then I learned Jimmie had been arrested for stealing a car, possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment, and fleeing a police officer. In putting those 4 charges together, we see a picture of a young man with a gun who stole a car and then drove at high rates of speed in order to get away from the police, putting other people’s lives in danger.

While he was awaiting trial, one of our staff members went to visit him. Jimmie told him to tell Cory, another one of our students, that jail is no joke and that he needs to stop doing things that he could get arrested for.

Corey, being Corey, did not take Jimmie’s advice and is currently serving a long prison term for armed robbery and attempted first-degree homicide. He is scheduled to be released from prison in 2046 and will be off parole in 2061. If I lived long enough to see it, I would be 103 years old.

For his crimes, Jimmie was sentenced to eight years in state prison. Four of the years would be actual jail time, and the remaining four years would be “extended supervision,” or parole as most of us call it.

But to what? And to where?

When I thought about Jimmie’s eventual release from custody, I have to admit I had my doubts about his ability to turn things around. I didn’t see anything in his behavior while he was a student of mine to give me much reason to think he would turn things around.

When he was released, he re-entered society as a 21-year-old felon with minimal job skills and no work history. He had spent his entire short adult life in prison. The types of jobs he would find, assuming he could find any at all, would pay extremely low. He had no savings and no family that could offer him any help at all. As a felon, he would struggle to find a place to live. What landlord wants to rent to a felon, particularly to a violent one? What employers are willing to take a chance and hire one?

Within three years of their release, two out of every three prisoners will be re-arrested for a new crime. Given Jimmie’s childhood, the lack of any responsible parenting, his long-standing gang involvement, and the types of crimes he has shown he is capable of, I felt it would only be a matter of time before he re-offended. I didn’t think it would be a matter of “if.” It would be a matter of “when.”

I was right. In 2024, just months after his release, he was arrested for possession of a firearm. As a felon on parole, he was not allowed to carry one. Now he is back in prison, having been sentenced to three additional years behind bars. He is scheduled to take another try at parole in 2027.

Maybe the next time he will have more success.

On a personal level, would you hire him? Would you want him living next door to you? I can’t imagine that anyone would. Do you know what the scariest part of all this is?

Jimmie’s next victim is out there walking around, completely oblivious to Jimmie’s existence.

I officially retired from teaching in June of 2023 after 36 years in the field. I wasn’t so much tired of teaching, per se, as I was tired of meetings, helicopter parents, and worse, helicopter administrators. I was weary of warmed-over staff development, which was often just a rehash of things I learned years before. Someone once told me that I would know when it was time to retire. She was right. I did. And I did.

During my first year of retirement, I learned how long eight hours could be if there wasn’t much to do. During the summer months, keeping busy was easy. There was always grass to mow, weeding to be done in the garden, and of course, a luxurious afternoon nap.

I went out for breakfast fairly often and was absolutely amazed at how many other people were doing the same thing. I wondered why they weren’t at work like I had always been. The parking lots at shopping centers were full, and I wondered why those people weren’t at work either. There was a whole world out there I never knew existed because I was always at work.

Don’t any of those people work?

In time, however, boredom began to creep in. Everyone I knew was still working. Before long, not only was I going out for breakfast, but I was going out for lunch or dinner too. I began to think I was duped. Is that all there is to retirement, going out to eat and waiting for the day to be over? I began to feel like I was just sitting around waiting to die.

After one year of trying to find something to fill those hours that work used to fill, I decided to return to work, only this time on my terms, not theirs. I looked over the possibilities and decided to apply at a number of large retail stores because I knew those stores are almost always hiring, and I was right. Within a couple of weeks, I was hired at one well-known retailer in the grocery section, the exact section I was hoping to work in.

I have worked around food on and off much of my life. When I was in high school, I worked in a bakery. Then, after graduating high school, I enlisted in the U.S. Army and was a cook in an artillery unit. I love cooking, shopping for food, trying new recipes, and experimenting. Some people might call me a foodie, and they would be right.

What I do

My primary job is a simple one. I am supposed to keep the dry shelves, refrigerators, and freezer sections full. To assist me in that, I have a small electronic device that tells me what I need to pull from the back of the store and put out on the sales floor. It’s really an amazing process.

When someone buys something, the scanner that the cashier uses tells the store’s computer what was bought. That information is then relayed to the handheld device I have so I know what needs to be replaced.

It can be a pretty grueling experience some days. People buy a lot of food in the course of a day. It is not at all unusual for me to come to work and find well over 200 kinds of items that need to be replenished, and for each of those items, there could be anywhere from one to twelve or more units of that item. In other words, most of the time there are well over a thousand individual pieces that need to be put out on the sales floor. Whew, right?

I definitely get my steps in too. It is not unusual for me to log over 10,000 steps in a single shift.

If you were to shop at my store, much of the work I do you would never see. You wouldn’t see me in the sub-zero freezer climbing up on a step stool to lift down a 25 lb box filled with bags of frozen potatoes. You wouldn’t see me up on a tall ladder lifting down full cases of Gatorade. You also wouldn’t hear me bellow out profanity-laced curses when I drop something.

“Is there any more in the back?”

That is probably my least favorite question I get asked. If I tell the customer that we don’t, they most likely won’t believe me. Even though I know we don’t have any more of a particular item in the back, I find myself having to walk all the way back there just to prove what I already know. Once I do this, they seem to believe me.

My next least favorite thing to hear is “It says on the internet that you have (fill in the blank).” When I tell those people that we don’t have what the internet says we do, sometimes they get upset.

Then they show me their phone and say, “But it says right here that you do.” Sometimes they are showing me the website of a different store or items that are only available online. Other times their information is just plain wrong.

Look. Just because it says so on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true. I can’t make the stuff out of thin air, and I can’t sell a person something we don’t have. I wonder if they believe everything they see on the internet.

Most of the customers are nice, though. They ask for help when they need it, and seem appreciative when I help them. I like that interaction. It makes me feel like I am doing something useful with my time.

Maybe I am.

Who I work with

The people I work with comprise a broad spectrum of college students, people who need a second job to make ends meet, people whose spouses are the main source of income, and career people. Most of the people I work with are part-time. Large retailers like this employ an army of part-time workers because it saves them from having to pay out much in terms of benefits. Overtime is almost unheard of.

The employees also span the spectrum of ages too. Some of my coworkers are high school students. Some are college students. Some are middle-aged. I would venture a guess that about 60% of the people working there are women, or at least that is how it appears to me.

Me? I am the old guy who can answer just about any question, whether it’s about groceries or something else entirely. I’ve even been known to give the right answer on occasion. I probably look like I have been there for decades, even though I have only been there about two years.

Sometimes, though, when I am working with my younger, female partner, customers will ask her a question instead of me. I know why, too. She is prettier than I am.

Hard to believe, huh?

Like anyone, sometimes I make occasional mistakes. On the rare occasion when I do make a mistake, I just tell them I am the DEI hire. They laugh. I laugh. A little bit of self-deprecating humor goes a long way towards making things right.

Interestingly enough, I find that I have to prove myself the same way I did when I was a kid. Most of the older people who work at my store are cashiers and don’t do much hard physical labor. Not me. I am doing physical labor and a lot of it. I don’t want anyone thinking I am not up to the task anymore. Pride is funny that way.

A few weeks ago we got a new supervisor who is young enough to be my grandson. He was born in 2002 and graduated from high school in 2020. This is probably his first real job. I don’t take anything he says very seriously. He’s a pup, a baby. He has so much to learn, and he doesn’t even know it yet.

What I enjoy most

I think what I enjoy most about this job is the people I work with. They are mostly a pleasant bunch. I haven’t run into anyone there I genuinely dislike, and I hope no one there dislikes me. If anyone doesn’t like me, they have done a wonderful job keeping it a secret.

I think my bosses like me. I rarely call in sick, and I don’t mind working on the weekends like some of my younger counterparts. When I hear one of the supervisors complain about how many people called out “sick” on a weekend, I remind them that they are lucky to have people like me who don’t have a life.

I am quick to point out that if I were 20 years old, I probably would have called out “sick” today as well. They laugh. They think I’m kidding.

I’m not.

I love that I can quit any time I want. This is not my bread and butter. This is not my career. I can walk out the door and never come back if it suits me. There is a freedom there that I never experienced in my teaching career. I know I could get another similar job within days if I chose.

When I am asked if I want to train for another part of the store, I always decline. I tell them that I am an old dog and that is a new trick.

I don’t know how long I will stay, but so long as I feel good and I am treated decently, I will keep doing what I am doing.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Wisconsin. It is a beautiful state. The northern part is covered with lush, dense forests and an abundance of lakes. On the eastern side, Door County juts out into Lake Michigan and is a much-loved tourist area. It is also the only place in the state where cherries are grown. Eating a cherry pie made from Door County cherries is a real treat. On the western side of the state, huge bluffs stand out against the sky and loom over the spreading green farm fields. In the south, the cities of Madison and Milwaukee offer top-tier colleges, a vast array of cultural celebrations, and restaurants of every kind.

If you grew up in Wisconsin, you probably have watched the Green Bay Packers play every season and cheered their wins and shook your head when they lost. They have a major league baseball team called the Milwaukee Brewers, named for the city’s reputation as a major beer-producing city. If you are from Wisconsin, you also know that “fear the deer” has nothing to do with deer hunting.

The population of Wisconsin is more diverse than most people might suspect, too. In the cities of Madison and Milwaukee, you will find people whose ethnic ties span the globe. In the cities of Eau Claire and Wausau, you will find a large population of Hmong, people who originally came as refugees from Laos when the ill-fated endeavors of the U.S. there collapsed. Wisconsin is also home to eleven federally recognized tribal nations, ten of which maintain their own reservations or land trusts.

Still, even with all this diversity, 77.7% of the state’s population is white.

Recent Wisconsin politics

Wisconsin’s politics are all over the place. The once-blue state is now solidly purple, though I haven’t found anyone who can explain the reason why. The current governor, Tony Evers, is a moderate Democrat. Before him, it was Republican Scott Walker. Walker’s claim to fame was his attack on teachers and unions during his tenure.

The two U.S. senators from Wisconsin could not be further apart. Ron Johnson, an older white male conservative, is in his third term. He likes to tout his success as a businessman, though he rarely mentions that he married into it. Johnson is among Donald Trump’s closest allies in the Senate. Tammy Baldwin, on the other hand, is a liberal Democrat who is openly gay. She has never voted to confirm a Trump appointee.

Wisconsin has eight congressional districts. Six of them are represented by Republicans, while only two are held by Democrats. The two Democrats, Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore, represent the districts that contain the cities of Madison and Milwaukee, respectively. The rest of the state is represented by Republicans, though there are some very competitive races in the upcoming midterms.

The gubernatorial race in Wisconsin in 2026

In the lead-up to this election, the Democratic primary saw David Crowley, a Black male moderate, compete against Francesca Hong, a woman of Asian descent who is a Democratic Socialist. Hong was favored to win, which caused panic among the moderates. As a candidate, she had a number of flaws that the Republicans could exploit, not the least of which was a statement she made a number of years ago about cancelling Thanksgiving. It is worth noting that she did not get the endorsement from other prominent Democratic Socialists such as Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

It was a tight race, but when the smoke cleared, David Crowley squeaked out a victory with 39.8% of the vote compared to 39.3% for Hong. That represents a difference of only 3796 votes. Races don’t get much tighter than that.

This sets up a contest between David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany. Tiffany is currently the congressional representative for Wisconsin’s 7th District, a district that covers a large part of the northern part of Wisconsin. When we look at each of these candidates, it’s obvious that Wisconsin has a very clear-cut decision to make.

Democratic candidate David Crowley

Crowley is 40 years old and is currently the Milwaukee County Executive, an office once held by a previous governor, Scott Walker. A quick perusal of Crowley’s biography tells the story of a boy who grew up under tough circumstances in Milwaukee. His parents struggled with drug addiction, and the family lost its home when Crowley was ten years old. Crowley was evicted from his home two more times before he graduated high school.

In 2006, Crowley began his studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and attended intermittently for years. He finally completed his bachelor’s degree in Community Engagement and Education in 2024.

Crowley formally launched his campaign for governor on September 9, 2025. In the face of a crowded Democratic field and low levels of support in the polls, Crowley suspended his campaign on July 8, 2026. When the frontrunner Sara Rodriguez suspended her campaign over finances, Governor Tony Evers encouraged Crowley to re-enter the race, which he did.

Crowley is running on an affordability platform, specifically in housing and energy, specifically solar energy. He also wants to improve health care and modernize BadgerCare, the state’s health insurance for people who otherwise would not have health insurance. He is pro-choice, and supports rights and protections for the LGBTQ+ community.

The rest of his positions can be found here.

Republican candidate Tom Tiffany

Tom Tiffany is 68 years old and is currently the congressional representative for Wisconsin’s 7th district. He became the representative for the 7th district when Sean Duffy resigned to become Secretary of Transportation in the Trump Administration.

Tiffany was born in Wabasha, Minnesota, and grew up on a dairy farm near Elmwood, Wisconsin. He graduated from Elmwood High School in 1976, the same year I graduated from a different high school in Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and graduated with a major in agricultural economics.

Tom Tiffany’s platform is identical to that of Donald Trump. As a matter of fact, during his time in the House of Representatives, he voted with Trump 100% of the time. You can’t get any more MAGA than that. As such, he is an election denier and believes Donald Trump actually won in 2020. He has said he would have rejected the 2020 vote for Biden in Wisconsin if it had been up to the legislature.

He has also said that he stands for a way of life “where common sense beats woke nonsense.” In other words, he is anti-woke, anti-DEI, and completely in line with Trump’s agenda. He believes that school children are currently being brainwashed by liberal teachers.

He is in favor of merit pay for teachers, even though the details of this are at best, sketchy. He is against the development of wind and solar energy in Wisconsin, and like Trump, favors fossil fuels.

You can read more about Tiffany’s positions here.

What it will take to win

As of this writing, Crowley has a four-point lead in the polls. Whether that will continue as the election nears is anyone’s guess.

For Crowley, it will be crucial for him to bring in those voters who supported Francesca Hong in the primary. While she didn’t win the primary, she didn’t exactly lose either. Crowley needs her supporters to turn out for him. It will be interesting to see how he goes about doing that.

His skin color will also be a factor, whether the people in Wisconsin want to admit it or not. Wisconsin has never had a Black governor. As a matter of fact, in 2022, the Black lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, was defeated by the intellectually-impaired Ron Johnson, even though Johnson is widely seen as a buffoon.

Are Wisconsinites ready to vote for a Black governor? We’ll see.

Tom Tiffany’s Achilles Heel will be Donald Trump. Trump’s current approval rests at 33%, which is extremely low, even for Trump. As the war in Iran drags on, and as gas prices continue to rise, voting for someone as devoted to Trump as Tiffany is will be a hard sell.

This is one race to keep an eye on. It could be a bellwether for 2028.

There is something wrong with Pete Hegseth.

I’m not quite sure what label to put on it, but Pete Hegseth and “normal” are like two ships that pass in the night. It’s no one thing about him, either. I think it is just the whole package. His greased-back hair, his smartass demeanor, and the way he verbally machine guns anyone who is saying something he doesn’t agree with all make for one unpleasant person to be around.

I knew guys like him in college. They typically belonged to those obnoxious fraternities that tried to emulate Animal House, but always fell short. Their frat house was the one playing “Highway to Hell” so loud people on the other side of town could hear it. They not only drank a lot of beer, but they wanted to the whole world to know they did. They told jokes like this:

Question: What’s the difference between toilet paper and a freshman girl?

Answer: Toilet paper doesn’t follow you around after you use it.

That is the kind of persona Pete Hegseth telegraphs. He wants to be a man’s man and ooze masculinity wherever he goes. To that end, he has done everything he can to get rid of anyone who doesn’t measure up to his standard of manhood.

He makes no bones about his dislike of gay men serving in the military, and while not saying it explicitly, I don’t think he is very fond of women serving in the military either. He wants a military that is as macho as he wishes he was.

Where did Pete Hegseth come from?

Pete Hegseth grew up in Forest Lake, Minnesota. Forest Lake is about 45 minutes north of Minneapolis, where I live. I’ve been through Forest Lake many times on my way to my hometown in northern Wisconsin. It’s a pretty place with lots of woods and lakes. Hence the name.

Forest Lake also has the reputation of being very conservative. During the time I was teaching in the Twin Cities, it was generally known that Forest Lake was not the kind of town you wanted to teach in. The salaries were comparatively low, and the supervision was comparatively high. In other words, they kept their taxes low by starving the school budget and they kept a close watch on any teacher that was a little too liberal.

Pete Hegseth was the valedictorian of Forest Lake Area High School’s Class of 1999. He was pretty good at basketball and was named all-conference twice and all-state once. Apparently he was good at shooting 3-point shots.

After high school, he attended Princeton and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics in 2003. While he was at Princeton, he was the editor of The Princeton Tory, the school’s conservative newspaper.

Let that sink in for a moment. The Princeton Tory. A Tory was a person who stayed loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution. This, coming from a guy who claims to be some sort of super patriot. Irony abounds.

Also, besides lettering in sports, he was also quite adept at bigotry at an early age. During his time at The Princeton Tory, he said he would “defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.” He also attacked the New York Times when it stated that it would publish all announcements for gay marriage.

He and his fellow editors stated that this would lead to publishing marriage announcements for “incestuous, zoophilic, and pedophilic relationships.” In case you are wondering what a zoophilic relationship is, it is a relationship between a human and an animal.

I don’t know of any state where a marriage between a human and an animal is provided for, though some of those deep red states in the South make me wonder.

I’m not questioning Pete Hegseth’s academic ability. I am questioning his character and his wisdom. He seems to be lacking in both. Scratch that. He is lacking in both.

Pete Hegseth’s obsession with masculinity

As much as he likes that title “Secretary of War,” the department he leads is still officially the Department of Defense. I suppose being the Secretary of War sounds a lot more masculine than being Secretary of Defense, at least in his mind. To that end, Donald Trump issued an executive order that allowed for the Defense Department to be called that as a secondary name.

One of Hegseth’s most recent forays into the ridiculous was his call for all members of the military over the age of 30 to be tested for their testosterone levels. I don’t know if I ever heard him explain his reasoning for that, but the only reason for doing something like that is a fear that his military is becoming too feminine.

Men naturally begin to lose testosterone sometime in their 30s. It is usually a very gradual process. The symptoms of having low testosterone, or low-T as it is called, are varied. These symptoms include low libido, loss of morning or spontaneous erections, trouble maintaining an erection, shrinking testicles, and loss of muscle mass.

The question has to be asked. Why is Hegseth so interested in other men’s erections? Could he just be telegraphing his own low-T? Is Pete having trouble keeping it up himself? Is he just projecting this onto other people under his command?

To that end, Hegseth wants to have his soldiers over 30 tested. He hasn’t made clear what happens after that. Would soldiers over 30 who have low-T be required to receive injections of testosterone or take testosterone pills?

I thought Hegseth was against gender-affirming care. Silly me

If Hegseth wasn’t so dangerous, he would be comical. He is such a poster boy for what is wrong with men these days. I can hardly wait to see what comes next.

I already know I will get some flak for this.

When I read the news these days, I feel glad that I am not a young person just starting out. If there was ever a society that eats its young, it’s this one. All the time our children were growing up, we kept telling them how important it is to get an education so that they will be able to have a good job someday. We told them that, with a good-paying job, they would be able to buy a house and have a family. They could go on vacations. They could drive a nice car. The world would be their oyster.

When I look at the current state of the economy, I realize this was just one big lie.

Young people today who took our collective advice are saddled with enormous student loan debt. Those monthly payments slowly chip away at the amount owed, all while the interest on them adds up. In most cases, it takes ten years or more to pay off a loan on a four-year education.

An interesting thing about student loan debt is that, unlike almost every other kind of debt, student loan debt cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy filing. George W. Bush saw to that when he got in bed with the big banks and signed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) in 2005.

With the passage of that act, student loan debt could no longer be discharged. A person can buy a yacht, go on an exotic vacation, and max out their credit cards and have all that debt discharged by declaring bankruptcy. But if that person took out a loan to go to college, studied hard, and got their degree, they cannot discharge that debt.

If you bring up the topic of student loan forgiveness, you are almost always met with animosity from those conservatives and lower-IQ people who feel that if you borrow the money, you should be made to pay it back, period. They never seem to think people like Donald Trump, who declared bankruptcy six times, should have been made to do the same. His debt is forgivable. A college graduate’s debt is not.

Go figure.

How about that house? As of the second quarter of 2026, the average sales price for a house in the U.S. is $502,700, while the median sales price is $410,700, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Averages run higher because multi-million dollar luxury sales pull the overall math up.

If a young person wanted to buy a median-priced home in the U.S. and needed to put 10% down, they would need to cough up $41,000. That, of course, doesn’t include the closing costs either. How many young people have that much cash lying around? You know the answer to that question.

Let’s not forget the interest. The current interest rate on home mortgages is 6.71%. Even if a person managed to put up the $41,000 down payment, they would be left with a balance of $369,700. Here is what that looks like:
Monthly payment = $2388
Total interest paid = $489,996
Total paid = $859,696

Keep in mind that the $2388 per month is only principal and interest. Taxes and insurance would be on top of that, not to mention upkeep and repairs. Against this backdrop, is it any wonder so many young people have given up the dream of home ownership?

The average price of a new car in the United States is $49,855, according to Kelley Blue Book. Of course, a person could buy a used car instead of a new one. For those taking that route, the average cost is $27,028. If that is too much, a young person might look at buying an older car and take their chances with the repairs that might pop up at unexpected times.

Automobile repairs are pretty cheap, right?

We haven’t even talked about children yet. According to the Brookings Institute, the average cost of raising a child is between $16,857 and 18,761 per year. This does not include the cost of college. Just for conversation’s sake, let’s say the average cost is $17,000 per year. That would come to another $1416 per month.

Holy smokes, Batman.

The erosion of the American Dream

We are a long way from the days of Ward and June Cleaver, when one income was all that was needed. Back in those days, the dad was the one who usually went off to work each day while mom stayed home and tended to the house and kids. That was the world I was raised in. My mom never worked outside of the home, and my dad was the sole breadwinner. Almost every family I knew lived in that paradigm.

By the time I reached adulthood, that scenario was already economically threadbare. The rising costs of everything made it almost mandatory for a household to have two incomes. As time went on, the initial outrage from the older generations gave way to acceptance of the two-income household as the norm.

As the years progressed, two incomes weren’t even enough. People who worked in lower-paying occupations like me found that a third income was needed if we wanted anything more than subsistence living, especially once we started having children. While we were raising our son, my wife and I both worked full time, as a teacher and a social worker, and I took on side jobs to help us afford the things our two incomes didn’t.

Even with three incomes, there never seemed to be enough money. Something always came along to wipe out whatever extra money we had.

Polygamy: When the once-outrageous starts to make sense

There is an old joke that goes something like this.

Question: If having two spouses is bigamy and having many is polygamy, what is it called when you only have one spouse?

Answer: Monotony.

When the days of Leave It To Beaver faded away, and two-income couples started to become the norm, older generations were in shock. They were outraged. They wondered who these women were that left their children to go find work. Some of those women even put their kids in daycare. The older generations thought the world was truly going to Hell in a handbasket when they saw that.

Just as the single-income family faded into history, the two-income couple is beginning to do the same thing. For many people, two incomes are not enough to sustain a decent standard of living anymore.

Maybe it’s time to rethink what marriage is, and what a normal household might look like. The Mormons used to practice polygamy until they were forced to give up the practice. In other cultures at other times, it was not unusual for men to have more than one wife. It’s not like this kind of thing hasn’t been thought of and practiced in the past.

A ménage à trois is a French phrase that literally means “household of three.” Given the state of the economy and the general trajectory of life itself, maybe it’s time to give arrangements like this some thought. Whoever said that marriages had to involve only two people? More traditional people think marriage should be between one man and one woman, and in more modern times, we have adjusted it to mean two people, regardless of their sex.

Why not three?

With three adults in the home, work and family chores could be assigned as the family agrees. Two might go off to work each day, while the third person stays home with the kids and tends to the household chores. If there are no children, maybe all three go off to work each day, and the household has a badly-needed third income.

There are obviously things that would need to be worked out. For instance, how would it work if one person wanted out of the marriage, but the remaining two didn’t? What if one of the partners died? Would both of the remaining members be considered widows or widowers? I am sure there is an army of lawyers that would gladly draw up contracts for these marriages that would cover all the contingencies and scenarios in a divorce for a “modest” fee, of course.

Hey, speaking of lawyers, did you know that lawyers are being used to replace rats in laboratories across the United States? That’s because there are more lawyers than there are rats, and they will do things that rats won’t do.

I know a lot of people would be aghast at the thought of how sex would play out in such marriages. The simple answer is that it doesn’t matter. Why should I care what kind of sexual Olympics go on in someone else’s house? It’s none of my business.

Some people reading this will think this is satire. Others will think I’ve gone around the bend. I will let you, the reader, decide that one for yourself.

Have a wonderful day.

Most of what you are about to read is true.

If there is one thing there is no shortage of, it’s advice on how to age gracefully. My feed on Facebook and my junk email folders are filled with all kinds of advice about how I can make my golden years 24 carat. Some of the advice is common sense, while other advice is way out there. Then there is still more advice coming from people who I think are trying to do me in.

Separating the wheat from the chaff is no small task.

At my part-time job at Target, I sometimes get asked how old I am. I am well aware I am probably the oldest person on the sales floor, and I know that my gray hair and gray beard betray my numerical age. When I tell people that I am 68, the most common reply is something like “You sure don’t look it.”

I’m never sure if they mean it, or if they are just being kind. Either way, I’ll take it. I sometimes wonder what age they think I am. I sure don’t look like I’m 48, that is unless I am 48 and aging badly. I know I don’t look 38 either. So what’s left?

My 50th high school reunion took place a little over a month ago. I didn’t attend, but I did see a lot of the pictures that were taken and posted on our class’s Facebook page. From what I saw, I am doing okay. Some of the people in the pictures look like they are aging well. Their weight is normal, and they have a healthy look about them. They are obviously taking care of themselves.

Then there are the others. Honestly, some of them look like they are about to enter a nursing home or something. They are overweight and bloated, and their general appearance makes them look old, older than they actually are. Some of this might be due to their genetic makeup, but my hunch is that a lot of it stems from how they live, how much exercise they get, and what they eat. The people who looked like that at the 40th reunion aren’t around anymore.

What I do to preserve my youthful vigor and boyish figure

One thing I do to stay young is to remain physically active. I think a lot of people, once they retire, slide into a sedentary lifestyle. I can think of no quicker way to meet your maker than to turn into a couch potato in your later years.

I have a part-time job at Target that is fairly demanding. On a typical shift, I easily get 10,000 steps in. I am also climbing up and down ladders and lifting heavy boxes. It’s not a bad workout, and it’s a lot cheaper than a gym membership. On the days that I don’t work, I make it a point to go for walks in one of our local parks. There are a lot of parks where I live, and most of them have nice walking paths near water. Going for walks there is not an odious task.

I recently bought a set of juggling balls too. When I was younger, I used to juggle all the time, but as the years progressed, I stopped. It’s been a good 20 years or more since I last did it. Juggling is a great way to strengthen my hand-eye coordination, and as we age, that is something people start to lose. I am nowhere near as good as I used to be, but I am stubborn. I will get there, dammit.

The flip side of getting enough exercise, of course, is to get adequate sleep. I tend to get around six to seven hours of sleep each night, and I take naps liberally. As a matter of fact, I am sound asleep right now as I type this, and you probably can’t even tell.

Interacting with young people helps keep me young. I don’t want to turn into one of those crochety, grumpy old men who have nothing good to say about today’s youth. Let me be clear. Today’s youth are amazing and beautiful. They are our children and grandchildren. Why would we want to throw shade on them?

Got a new tattoo? Cool. Dyed your hair blue? Looks great. Your jeans are torn, and your shirt exposes your shoulder? No problem.

But it’s not just that kind of stuff. I listen to what they have to say without judging. They didn’t grow up when I did. To them, there has always been the internet and smartphones. There have always been apps, Uber, and DoorDash. They are immersed in the modern world, as they should be. After all, it’s their world. It can be yours too if you don’t reject it out of fear of change.

If you want to get old in a hurry, start hating the present and start telling yourself the world has gone to Hell in a handbasket. That’s the kind of stuff old people say. That’s the kind of stuff old people have always said.

I am also realistic about what limitations I do have. While I am in reasonably good shape for someone my age, I am not 20 years old. I am not 30 years old. I am not even 40 years old. I sprain muscles much more easily than I did when I was younger. Muscle tissue tears more easily and takes longer to heal. I need to be a little more careful about what I do.

To that end, I will not be doing any hang gliding, bungee jumping, or marathon running any time soon. No rugby for me.

I am also aware that my reaction time is not what it used to be. That is a common change when we get older. Given that, it’s probably not a good idea for me to zoom around on a motorcycle or ATV. Even though part of my brain thinks I can do the same things I did when I was younger, the other part warns me that discretion is the better part of valor.

I’ve stopped eating meat and all animal products. Don’t worry. I’m not here to preach the virtues of veganism. I don’t even call myself that because of all of the baggage that comes with that label. Most health professionals do, however, warn us to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and eat less red meat.

If you have done any reading about how factory farms are run, you probably wouldn’t want to put any of their products in your mouth anyway. The meat is injected with antibiotics and dye. The animals are fed GMO corn from feedlots and injected with bovine growth hormone. Some animals are sick or crippled and covered with feces. Yuck. Double yuck.

To be honest, I’m not sure why anyone eats beef, or rotting cow carcass, as I call it. Let’s face it. Unless it is drenched in butter and salt and smothered with mushrooms, onions, and gravy, it tastes like cardboard. Giving up meat wasn’t as difficult as you might think. Even the lowly hamburger needs ketchup, mustard, mayo, pickles, and lettuce to taste like anything. Chicken isn’t much better. Without the seasoned breading, there is almost no taste.

When I gave up eating meat, my consumption of saturated fat and salt plummeted, which is good for my blood pressure and overall health. With meat not being the centerpiece of my plate, I have had to learn to cook creatively, using different vegetables and grains. It’s been a fun pursuit, and I continue to look for new recipes to try. No one can accuse me of not eating enough fruits and vegetables.

Finally, I don’t worry about my numbers. My goodness. Older people run to the doctor constantly, looking for salvation from death. Some are worried about their blood pressure. Others are worried about their blood sugar. More often than not, doctors simply tell those patients to do the kinds of things I mentioned above, after doing a blood draw and billing the insurance company, of course.

Of course.

There are older people sitting in waiting rooms all across the country as I write this. Some need to be there, but I suspect many do not. A lot of people are there to do a re-check of their last re-check. It becomes almost an obsession for some. They live for their numbers.

Look. I’m not saying to avoid going to the doctor, but the plain truth is this. Some day you are going to die. No one gets out of here alive. Why spend a large part of your later years worrying about it? If you don’t have a heart attack, you will develop cancer. If neither of those gets you, something else will. Be reasonable, but don’t be obsessive about it. Doctors can only do so much.

That’s all I have for now. Be well.

We survived another primary season, people. The relentless commercials on television, the mailers in our mailboxes, and the door knockers are gone for a few days while the losers lick their wounds and the winners regroup for the next onslaught.

Let’s take a look at what happened and who is left standing.

Without a doubt, the most interesting race was the Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin. In this race, Francesca Hong, an Asian-American female Democratic Socialist, was running against David Crowley, a Black male moderate Democrat. Hong was favored to win, and that sent the Democratic establishment into a panic.

While the results aren’t completely tabulated, as of this writing it looks like the moderate, David Crowley, will win. No doubt this will allow the moderate Democrats to breathe a sigh of relief. The moderates had serious concerns about her ability to win the general election. Given some of her past statements about cancelling Thanksgiving, those concerns seem legitimate.

One candidate is Black, male, and moderate. The other is Asian-American, female, and progressive. Both are young. Crowley is 40, while Hong is 37. While Crowley won the primary, he did so by only 3000 votes. The race was about as close to a tie as you can get.

The person Crowley will be running against is Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate. Tiffany is a 68-year-old white male conservative who voted with Trump 100% of the time. You don’t get much more MAGA than that.

The challenge for the Democrats in Wisconsin is simply this. Will they be able to get the progressives to vote for Crowley? In a state as purple as Wisconsin, where the population is almost a 50–50 split between Democrats and Republicans, every vote will matter. Unless the Democratic establishment can convince the progressives to support Crowley, Tom Tiffany will be the next governor in Wisconsin.

The race factor cannot be ignored either. Wisconsin is 84% white, and whether anyone there wants to admit it or not, there is plenty of racism in Wisconsin. In 2022, Black male Mandela Barnes, the intelligent, articulate lieutenant governor, lost his bid for the U.S. Senate to Ron Johnson, who is probably the biggest buffoon in the Senate. Race matters.

There were some interesting results in Minnesota as well. In the Republican primary for governor, Mike Lindell, the Trump-supported My Pillow guy, lost to Lisa DeMuth, the current Speaker of the House in the Minnesota legislature. She won by over 45,000 votes. It wasn’t even close. Given how much of a clown Mike Lindell is, I am surprised it was even that close.

DeMuth will be facing the wildly popular Amy Klobuchar in the general election. Klobuchar won her race with 89% of the vote, and she didn’t even campaign. In order for DeMuth to win this race, Klobuchar would almost have to try to lose. A word of advice to Amy Klobuchar — don’t get overconfident. Hillary Clinton was supposed to run away with the presidential election in 2016 too.

In the Minnesota Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, progressive Peggy Flanagan trounced the moderate Angie Craig. Craig, a member of the House of Representatives, unfortunately voted for Trump’s immigration raids, and we all know how that played out in Minnesota. Can you say “oops,” Angie?

Flanagan will be going up against the well-known former sports reporter Michelle Tafoya. Tafoya has no political experience at all, but since when did that matter? Tafoya describes herself as a “pro-choice conservative with libertarian leanings.” She won the Republican primary against Adam Schwarze. Schwarze thought being a former Navy SEAL wrapped in the flag would carry him to victory. It didn’t. Never underestimate the importance of sportscasting in the United States, Adam.

In South Carolina, Darlene Graham received the most votes in the Republican Senatorial primary and will face Ralph Norman in a runoff. Darlene Graham is the sister of Lindsey Graham and received the endorsement of Donald Trump. She has no political experience at all, a fact that she is very proud of.

Personally, I don’t think Trump endorsed her out of respect for Lindsey Graham. My guess is that Trump endorsed her because, with no political experience, she will do as she is told. Trump likes that in a person.

Onward into the fog

There were many, many more primaries that took place on Tuesday, way too many to discuss here. Some are more interesting than others. Some are exciting. Some are predictable.

The two most important contests in this coming election, however, are not about individuals. They are about ideas and influence.

On the Republican side, it is all about the amount of influence Donald Trump still has. Will his endorsed candidates win? Or doesn’t his endorsement matter as much as it once did? After all, Donald Trump’s time in office will begin to sunset soon. He will be a lame duck after the midterms, but it is still up in the air about how lame he will be. How important will it be for a candidate to identify as MAGA? We will soon find out.

On the Democratic side of things, it is a contest between the progressive/Democratic Socialists and the moderate, corporate-owned Democrats. Are those who identify as Democrats tired of the lackluster accomplishments of the moderate Democrats? Are they willing to take a chance and vote for progressive candidates instead? In those races where a moderate Democrat prevailed, are the progressive Democrats willing to set aside their ideological differences and vote for the moderate, or will they stay home and risk a Republican victory?

Stay tuned. It’s going to be an exciting high-wire act in November.

I don’t think I’ve heard the word “communist” this much since the Vietnam War. The political right and their misinformed supporters are already wringing their hands at the prospect of Democratic Socialists winning seats in the House, Senate, and in city and state elections. The leaders on the right are splashing that word all over the media, and their followers are lapping it up like thirsty dogs on a hot afternoon.

As I sit here shaking my head, I wonder how long it will be before I hear the long-discredited domino theory paraded around as if it were something new. Already many Christians on social media are warning about how these “communists” will persecute Christians. But then, what good is it to be a Christian if you can’t complain about someone “persecuting” you?

Going into the midterm elections, the Trump Administration is like a beached whale. It can’t move forward. It can’t go backward, and it can’t turn around. There is no “win” in Iran. There is no health care plan. Gas prices and the cost of living are higher than ever, and they haven’t the foggiest clue about how to fix it. The reflecting pool was a debacle. The Freedom 250 celebration was a flop.

They are like the pitcher in a baseball game who walked the last four batters but doesn’t want to give up the mound.

The moderate Democrats, for their part, continue to push for the same lukewarm leftover policies from years ago. They seem almost oblivious to the fact that these are the same positions that caused them to lose previous elections. They wring their hands over going too far to the left or too far to the right. They don’t want to make anyone upset.

They are neither fish nor fowl, as the saying goes.

They point to Obamacare as their chief accomplishment, and yet today that seems like a relic of the past. The problem was that after crafting this breakthrough program, they turned it over to the insurance companies to run instead of pushing ahead for universal, single-payer health care. That makes about as much sense as building a chicken coop, filling it with hens, and then letting the fox oversee operations.

I’ve always said that if today’s moderate Democrats were running the space program in the 1960s, we never would have landed on the moon. Instead, we would have circled the moon a few times and called it good enough.

To be fair, though, if the Trump Administration was running the space program in the 1960s, we wouldn’t have even launched a spaceship. Instead, Trump would have just gone on television and announced that we did land on the moon and his followers would have applauded wildly. Anyone who asked for evidence would have been accused of “hating America.”

Speaking of the Trump Administration, every election cycle they seem to need a bogeyman to scare people with, and they promise to be the ones to protect us from it. In previous elections, Trump and his handlers warned us about the “deep state,” a highly secretive group of people embedded in the federal government who actually run things and are not accountable to the American people. QAnon was supposed to expose them and a vast, global conspiracy.

Remember QAnon?

In 2024, Trump used immigrants as the bogeyman. They were taking our jobs, filling up our schools, and committing horrendous crimes. Haitians in Ohio were accused of eating the dogs and cats. This was all a bunch of hooey, of course, but it was enough to get people to feel threatened and vote for their “savior.”

Trump can’t use the same bogeyman twice, because if he did, it would be an admission he didn’t eliminate the threat from the last election. This time around, the threat is communism and communists. Everyone who speaks out against Trump is labelled a communist. Every policy proposal that runs counter to what Trump wants is labelled communism.

Communism was a big deal back in the 1950s when Senator Joe McCarthy was running his House Un-American Activities Committee. Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, was a well-known communist hunter and took delight in his role in sending Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. Trump is banking that most Americans don’t remember what a farce the anti-communist crusade of the 1950s was, and unfortunately, that is a pretty safe bet. Most Americans living today weren’t alive back then.

The strategy for this election cycle is to muddy the waters and create confusion among the simple-minded. The goal is to get people to think that communism, socialism, and democratic socialism are the same thing. They’re not, but when has the truth ever mattered to Trump? My guess is that most of the people railing against “communism” have never read the Communist Manifesto.

What exactly is Democratic Socialism?

Put simply, Democratic Socialism is an economic system based on democracy to provide for the greater good for everyone. It does not do away with capitalism or private property. It does not do away with private enterprise. It does not require that the government own and operate all businesses.

In the area of healthcare, Democratic Socialism seeks to implement a single-payer, government-run national healthcare program that covers everyone without deductibles, copays, or premiums. In other words, it would be a program where if you need to see a doctor, you see a doctor. If you need medicine, you get medicine. If you need an operation, you get an operation. Period.

Many people today say the United States has the best healthcare system in the world. I don’t disagree with that, provided you are able to access it. Unfortunately, unless you have good health insurance or a lot of money in the bank, you can’t. Medical debt remains the top reason people file for bankruptcy, and many of those who file do have insurance.

In 2008, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin warned about “death panels” that would be created under a universal healthcare plan. I have news for Ms. Palin. Those death panels, as she puts it, already exist. They are the people who deny care and claims to the people who are insured under their company’s plan. Now some companies even use AI to determine whether or not an insurance company will cover the claim.

Americans are tired of the current way health care is managed and mismanaged. I can think of no better example of people’s disgust with the current system than the outpouring of support shown for Luigi Mangione, the man who allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Democratic Socialism also seeks to eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities, along with free childcare and pre-K services. The cost of post-secondary education is in the stratosphere, and student loan debt remains one of the chief obstacles for young people to buy homes and start families. Imagine the positive impact on our economy if these people were able to invest in homes and businesses instead of funneling their money into student loans.

Public colleges are already partially funded by taxpayers. Why not just take it the rest of the way and pay for it entirely via tax dollars and free our children from the shackles of educational debt? No longer would parents have to save for their kids’ education. No longer would graduates spend the next decade or so paying off these large loans. What is there not to like?

There is little question that Americans are stressed out from work. Many people work 60 hours or more a week just to keep their heads above water financially, leaving little time for recreation or time with their families. When the rankings come out for which countries have the happiest people, the U.S. is never anywhere near the top.

I myself routinely worked two jobs while I was teaching just to have enough money to pay for basic needs, the mortgage, childcare, and incidentals. We didn’t have any luxuries. There were no exotic vacations or expensive cars. We lived a very ordinary lifestyle. I spent most of the time during the years my son was growing up in a state of complete exhaustion.

Some people might say “Suck it up, Buttercup,” but the Democratic Socialists don’t. They are looking for a better way of life for all of us. This is why they are working to achieve a high minimum wage, a 32-hour work week, and paid family/sick leave for all workers.

Again, what’s not to like about that?

Democratic Socialists believe housing is a human right, and as such, believe in universal rent control, building publicly owned housing, and strengthening tenant rights. In other words, they want to end homelessness, not just talk about ending it like so many politicians today do.

On any given night in the U.S., there are approximately 745,652 homeless people. Of those, 50,000 are veterans. During a typical school year, 1.5 million children will experience homelessness.

Keep in mind that this is going on in the richest country on Earth.

Some would argue that homeless people want to be homeless, or that they can go to shelters. This is a clear case of kicking the can down the road so they don’t have to own the problem. First of all, there are not enough shelters, and even if there were, the people experiencing homelessness would have to be able to get to them. Secondly, a shelter is not a home. It is a warehouse where the unwanted are kept. Those who stay in shelters often have to leave first thing in the morning, even though they have nowhere to go.

There is also the issue of crime in the shelters. Safety is not guaranteed, which is why many people would rather sleep outside in a tent than go to a shelter. Shelters are not the answer. Housing is.

Democratic Socialists also support what is called “The Green New Deal.” They want the government to invest in sustainable energy, such as wind and solar power, and to begin the move away from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, whether we like to admit it or not, are a time-limited offer. They are a finite resource, and one day we will run out. That is not an opinion. That is a scientific fact. To ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, like what the Trump Administration is currently doing, is simply irresponsible.

Imagine the scenario where the government owns all the means of producing energy so that no one would have an electric bill or a heating bill. Impossible? Only if we continue our obsession with fossil fuels and corporate ownership of energy production.

In the months to come, we will hear people like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, Francesca Hong and others called “communists.” We will hear their proposals called ridiculous, naive, or un-American. We will see millions of dollars spent on television ads critical of them and their platform. We will hear moderate Democrats call them unelectable.

You, the voter, will have to ask yourself what you want for this country going forward. Do you want to see a continuation of what we already endure, or do you want something different? The key is in your hand if you want to unlock a different future.

As the French counter-revolutionary philosopher Joseph de Maistre said in 1811, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” Don’t you think you deserve better?

I do.

I don’t think many people would argue that our government, in its current form, is not broken. Despite congressional session after congressional session, presidential administration after presidential administration, and Supreme Court ruling after Supreme Court ruling, nothing much ever seems to change. The wealthy get wealthier. The poor continue to barely hang on. The threat of a government shutdown is a common occurrence.

A new election cycle starts the day after the previous election. Politicians campaign relentlessly. States redraw their congressional districts with the help of computers and AI to the greatest advantage for the party. Winning becomes the end-all, be-all. In the words of the late football coach Vince Lombardi, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

There are numerous factors that cause the breakdown of our government that not only result in a somewhat permanent division in our country, but also make it virtually impossible for the government to respond to our needs. In order to regain the health of our government, I submit the following:

1. Replace lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court with ten-year terms. The Supreme Court, as designed by the writers of the Constitution, was supposed to be apolitical. The reality is that it has been anything but. Seats on the Supreme Court have become too high-stakes, so much so that the planning for replacing justices starts years before a justice dies or retires. Young judges are groomed for the seat by their respective parties, and the parties wait like vultures for a justice to retire or die so that they can be replaced with the youngest, most ideologically pure justice that can pass the smell test.

In the 1980s, Clarence Thomas was groomed by conservatives to take “the black seat” when Thurgood Marshall retired or died. Thomas, at age 43, wasn’t remotely qualified to sit on the bench. The unqualified Clarence Thomas has sat on the Supreme Court since 1991, 35 years and counting, and went ten years without speaking a word. But his appointment was a major coup for conservatives, as they replaced a liberal justice with a conservative one. Tipping the balance on the court for decades is a goal for both parties, and timing the death of justices should not create a political crapshoot.

Ten-year appointments would also make the appointments less of a high-wire act. Presidents would not need to find the youngest, most ideologically pure justice to appoint in the hope they would continue his legacy for decades. In 10 years, that justice would be replaced by whoever is president at that time, with a high likelihood that president would be from another party. This would not only do away with appointing young, less-qualified justices, but it would also serve to keep a better balance on the Court with more rotation.

2. There should be a timeline on how long the Senate has before acting on presidential appointments. During the final year of the Obama presidency, Mitch O’Connell made the decision by himself not to conduct hearings on Merrick Garland, the man Obama had nominated to replace Antonin Scalia, who died. McConnell’s justification was that the next president should fill that vacancy rather than the current president. As a result, Scalia’s seat remained vacant for 422 days, the longest vacancy in our country’s history.

There is nothing in the Constitution that gave McConnell that power, and nothing that prevented him from taking that liberty. Had Hillary Clinton prevailed in the Electoral College, there would have been nothing preventing McConnell from keeping that seat (and other seats) vacant until a president from the “correct” party was in power, assuming the GOP maintained the majority in the Senate.

What if there were five vacancies on the Court? At what point would the Senate be constitutionally required to act? As it is, there isn’t one. It is at the whim of the majority leader. Neil Gorsuch essentially occupies a stolen seat on the Supreme Court. This is not the stuff of a healthy democracy.

3. Abolish the Senate. The current bicameral legislature was created as a compromise between the states with larger populations and those with smaller populations. In your civics or American Government class, you probably learned about “The Great Compromise.” In order to get the smaller states to ratify the Constitution, its writers decided to create two chambers in the legislature, one based on population, and the other with every state being equal.

At first glance, it seems reasonable. However, when we dig a little deeper, it’s easy to see how this chamber allows the tail to wag the proverbial dog. States with small populations have the same say in the Senate as states with the largest. The stale argument is that all states are equal. They are not.

The Senate is the DEI hire of our federal government. The Senators of the smaller states are the equivalent of participation trophies.

Elevating a made-up entity like a “state” to the status of a person is the same kind of thinking that leads people to believe such stupid things as “corporations are people” and “money is speech.” None of those things are true.

In 1787, the population differences between the individual states were nothing like they are today, so it is understandable that the larger states caved to the demands of the smaller ones to keep the Union intact and allow for the ratification of the Constitution. In 1787, the largest state was Virginia, with a population of 747,610 people. The smallest state had a population of 59,096. The difference between the largest state and the smallest was only 688,514 people.

Today, however, the differences in population are huge. The state with the largest population is California, with 39.3 million people. The state with the smallest population is Wyoming, with only 588,000 people. The difference in population between the largest and smallest state is 38,712,000. Yet, despite this huge difference, each of them has the same representation in the Senate.

There is nothing fair or democratic about this. It’s ridiculous. Period.

4. Do away with congressional districts. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires states to be divided up into congressional districts. Doing away with congressional districts would do away with the need to redraw the lines of each district. There would be no gerrymandering.

My state, Minnesota, has eight congressional districts. Right now, there is one representative for each district. By eliminating the congressional districts, Minnesota would still have eight representatives in Congress, but they would all be at-large representatives and would be representing the entire state instead of a small portion of it.

5. Abolish the Electoral College. This sacred cow from the past has proven its worthlessness time and time again whenever a candidate wins the presidency without winning the popular vote. This has happened five times, with two of those times occurring recently. George W. Bush and Donald Trump both came in second place in the popular vote, and yet became president nonetheless.

The Electoral College was created to keep the states where the enslavement of Blacks was allowed in the Union. There is nothing democratic about the Electoral College. If the National Football League had an Electoral College, the Seattle Seahawks would have won the Super Bowl in 2026 because they had the second-most points. There is no other office in the entire United States where a government official is elected this way.

6. Replace private donations to political campaigns with public financing only. Make it illegal to donate to political candidates, or at least limit such donations to a relatively small amount. Citizens United needs to be overturned, and all donations should be a matter of public record. It’s time to get the billionaires and the PACs out of our elections. There should be no such thing as “dark money.”

I won’t hold my breath for any of these changes to take place. There are too many people and too many institutions profiting off the status quo. Still, I hold out the hope that one day Americans will wake up and see that we are all in this together, and that our politics do not have to be a zero-sum game with a winner and a loser.

Not many people know this about me, but several years ago I stopped eating meat and all animal products, such as milk, eggs, and cheese. To be perfectly honest, I’ve only told my closest friends and casual acquaintances. Still, whenever someone hears this, the question is always the same.

Are you vegan?

I always give them my standard response. I tell them that I don’t call myself vegan because of the baggage that invariably comes with it. Many people, when they learn that someone is vegan, automatically assume that person is a sanctimonious snob, and they feel the need to defend themselves. They begin to argue that people are meant to eat meat. They resort to calling vegans “soy boys,” implying that they are not as masculine as the carnivores. Some even go so far as to tease and taunt about how they love animals because they taste so good.

It’s a fairly predictable sequence of events.

I have toyed with vegetarianism and veganism most of my adult life. I have gone years without eating meat, only to find myself later sitting at Texas Roadhouse carving up a medium-well ribeye with onions and mushrooms. I’ve never been able to figure out why, but I suspect it has something to do with laziness. Cooking vegan meals on a daily basis requires a certain level of knowledge and creativity.

I’m not writing this to defend my own dietary choices or to attack those of others. What you put in your mouth is your business, and I respect that. I do, however, want to point out some of the contradictions in our collective attitude about eating meat.

Animals: pets or products?

One of the more interesting and amusing aspects of eating meat is the choosing of which animals we eat, and just as importantly, the ones we don’t.

For instance, most people don’t think twice about eating beef, chicken, fish, or pork. More adventurous people will consume lamb and goat. You can go into almost any restaurant or supermarket and find all of these animal products in abundance. I have to admit I find it amusing, however, that dead cow flesh is called “beef” and dead pig flesh is called “pork.” Why isn’t it just called cow or pig, instead of beef and pork? Could it be that people don’t want to be reminded of which animal they are eating? Eating “beef” sounds more pleasant than eating “decaying cow flesh.”

While most people don’t think twice about eating any of these animals, they react with disgust to the idea of eating a dog or horse, even though they have never eaten it. Go ahead and suggest that we should be eating horse or dog to someone, and their predictable reaction will be a look of disgust, followed by “ewwwwwwww.”

By every measure, a pig is just as intelligent as a dog, but if you treated a dog the way a pig is treated on a factory farm, you would be arrested. It has to be asked. Why are some animals treated with such reverence while others are treated with callous cruelty? They all feel pain. They all experience fear. They are all sentient beings.

Hunting: What is the purpose in modern times?

I’m not against hunting. I did plenty of hunting in my younger years, and I have no intention of being a hypocrite by criticizing those who still do it. But given the abundance of food today, I have to wonder what the purpose of it is in modern times.

Some people will claim that hunting keeps nature in balance by thinning the herd. I suppose there is some truth to that, but nature can do that without humans hunting. If deer are abundant, the wolf population will increase, and they will take care of thinning the herd. If there is a plethora of rabbits, the owl population will increase and bring the rabbit population down. Nature doesn’t need humans to keep things in balance. Nature is a self-correcting system.

Others claim that hunting is worth it for the meat. That might be the case, but I don’t think the arithmetic supports that. When we take into consideration the cost of the gun, the ammunition, the hunting license, the special clothing, the deer stands, and all of the other paraphernalia modern hunters think they need, the cost of any meat they get is astronomical. Financially, they would be much better off just buying their meat at the supermarket.

Choosing which animals will be hunted also merits some discussion. Just as with purchased meat from the supermarket, hunting has its own rules regarding which animals will be hunted and which ones will not.

In the northern part of the U.S. where I live, people hunt deer, partridge, duck, rabbits, and squirrels. I know a lot of people turn their noses up at the thought of eating squirrel, but it is actually very good.

Other animals are also hunted, but since their populations are significantly smaller, a limited number of licenses are issued via a lottery system. Today people hunt elk, wild turkey, and, in some states, moose, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats. While these hunts are much rarer than deer hunting, they do exist in certain locales.

Does anyone know of any good recipes for bald eagle?

I’m obviously kidding, but it does bring up this question. Why do we hunt some animals and birds, but not others? I imagine the drumsticks on a bald eagle would be a sight to behold, and if done right on the grill, they are probably pretty tasty.

Ewwwwwww, right?

But why? How many people reading this have ever eaten bald eagle? Since it is the national bird of the U.S. and is protected, my guess is none. Why don’t people hunt and eat groundhogs, owls, bobcats, mountain lions, or wolves? How about mink, sandhill cranes, blue herons, beavers? It can’t be because they don’t taste good, because no one has tasted them. It has to be something else. But what?

Finally, there is the question of protein. Many of my meat-eating friends say they eat meat because people need protein. Of course they do. I would never argue that people don’t need protein, but meat is not the only source of protein, even though a lot of carnivores seem to think so.

If you stop to think about it, where does a cow get its protein? Where does a chicken get its protein? Neither of these eats other animals other than insects. How is it that cows and chickens can get protein from plants, but people cannot? That’s because it’s not true.

Black beans, pinto beans, lentils, tofu, peas, and nuts of all kinds provide protein. There is no shortage of foods that can supply the protein needed for a healthy diet. Of all the great apes and other primates, humans are the only ones that kill for meat. The others eat plants and insects and get their protein there.

It’s time for me to wrap this up. I personally don’t care what you eat. It’s really none of my business, but I do hope I gave you something to think about as you wolf down that burger or steak.

Bon appetit.

Through no fault of my own, I was born and raised in Wisconsin. Actually, northern Wisconsin was a very nice place to grow up. There is an abundance of lakes, lush forests, and dairy farms that dot the countryside. It is the kind of place where small town cafes still exist, the kind where people go to hear the gossip over a cup of coffee.

When I was growing up, I was always kind of proud that my state was called “The Progressive State.” I never heard of political scandals. No one was ever forced to resign their office because of their misdeeds. There was just something “clean” about living in Wisconsin. We even had a Medal of Honor recipient from the Korean War, Einar Ingman, in my hometown. We didn’t call states “red” or “blue” back then, but Democrats almost always won whatever office they ran for.

That seems like a million years ago now. Today, Wisconsin is considered a “purple” state, meaning the population is evenly divided between liberal candidates and conservative ones. I think Wisconsin could be best characterized as a politically schizophrenic state. Nothing demonstrates this better than its current U.S. Senators, Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin.

Ron Johnson is essentially a rubber stamp for anything Donald Trump wants. While he claims to have been a wildly successful businessman before being elected to the Senate, he never mentions that he was actually born in Mankato, Minnesota and married into his “success.” Politically, he is about as conservative as they come.

Tammy Baldwin, on the other hand, is his polar opposite. Unlike Johnson (or RoJo, as he is sometimes called), she was actually born in Wisconsin. She is openly gay, and unabashedly liberal. She champions LGBTQ+ rights, helped craft the Affordable Care Act, and is considered a progressive by her constituents.

How is it that a state can have two U.S. senators with such opposing views?

Wisconsin: The City of Light

Progressivism has deep roots in Wisconsin, dating back to its progressive governor Robert LaFollette (1901–1906). Under his leadership, Wisconsin embarked on a series of progressive reforms, including the direct primary and progressive taxation.

Wisconsin has over 800 co-ops, where the direction of a business is decided democratically by its members. These co-ops include agriculture and dairy, electric and utilities, and retail establishments. Co-ops are so important in the state that in order for me to obtain a teaching license there, I had to take a college class in co-ops. Wisconsin wanted its teachers to understand how these businesses operated and why they are important.

Even now, all these years later, I can remember who my U.S. senators were when I was in high school. William Proxmire, a democrat, was famous for never having missed a vote. That was almost unheard of, and hence, was one of his claims to fame. He also gave out what he called his “Golden Fleece Award” to institutions that were wasting taxpayer money.

The other senator, Gaylord Nelson, another democrat, was the founder of Earth Day.

Wisconsin is also known for its superior educational system. The University of Wisconsin system has 13 comprehensive universities scattered across the state. In addition to those campuses, there are a number of branch campuses that provide education to smaller towns and are connected to the larger universities. Finding a location to pursue a degree is not difficult.

In addition to the University of Wisconsin system, there is a plethora of private colleges, technical colleges, and community colleges. Education was always a high priority.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison was the scene of some of the largest protests against the Vietnam War. They take their politics seriously in Madison. Those who live in Madison are proud of their political activism.

The current governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, is the former Superintendent of Public Instruction. Evers previously worked as a teacher, principal, and district superintendent. He walked the walk before he ever talked the talk.

Wisconsin: The City of Dark

Just as there is much for Wisconsin to be proud of, there is another side of Wisconsin that also has to be told.

One of Wisconsin’s better-known residents was a man by the name of Ed Gein. Ed Gein was a murderer and grave robber who was known for making household items, upholstery, and clothes from the skin of his victims. He even made a “woman suit” from women who loosely resembled his mother. He was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Psycho (1960).” Gein died in 1984 at the Mendota Mental Health Institute and was buried in an unmarked grave so that no one could desecrate it.

Decades later, Wisconsin was again thrown into the limelight by the crimes committed by Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer was convicted of killing, dismembering, and cannibalizing 17 young men between the years of 1978 and 1991. He lured young men to his apartment with alcohol and money, drugged them, and then strangled them. Then he ate them. He was convicted and sentenced to 15 life terms. Dahmer was killed by a fellow inmate in 1994.

Question: What cell was Jeffrey Dahmer kept in?

Answer: I-812

Just southeast of where Ed Gein lived is the town of Ripon. This is the birthplace of the Republican Party, the party now owned and operated by Donald J. Trump. Of course, the party founded in the 1850s bears no resemblance to the Republican Party of today, a fact modern-day Republicans like to overlook. Back then it was the party of Lincoln, the party that fought against the institution of slavery. This was the party that caused the South to secede from the Union and start the Civil War.

Not anymore.

Besides Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, Wisconsin is also home to the well-known anti-communist crusader, Senator Joseph McCarthy. “Tailgunner Joe” made his name by destroying the careers of others with his House Un-American Activities Committee. Anyone who disagreed with McCarthy politically was risking being labelled a “communist.”

If this doesn’t sound familiar, you haven’t been keeping up with the news. In the words of Yogi Berra, “its deja vu all over again.”

Of course, McCarthy’s antics caught up with him, and he was eventually condemned and censured by the Senate. At that point, his career was essentially over, and he died in 1957 at the age of 48.

The Ku Klux Klan is no stranger to Wisconsin either. A man from Mercer, WI, Michael McQueeney, was a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1990s and 2000s. McQueeney, who owned Antler’s Pub in Mercer and lived on Spider Lake, frequently posted photos on social media of himself in Nazi gear, at rallies, and with Klan leaders, and openly admitted to having been a grand dragon with the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He organized several rallies throughout Wisconsin and neighboring states over a span of several years.

This is the town where I began my teaching career.

The 2026 gubernatorial race: light vs dark

The 2026 gubernatorial race is nothing less than a battle between the City of Light and the City of Dark. You could not have two candidates further apart on the issues than Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong and conservative Republican Tom Tiffany.

Tom Tiffany will be the Republican gubernatorial candidate barring something catastrophic occurring. Like Ron Johnson, he too is an immigrant from Minnesota, having been born and raised in Wabasha, Minnesota.

Politically, Tom Tiffany is about as conservative as a candidate can be. During his time in the House of Representatives, he voted with Trump 100% of the time. In fairness, though, he didn’t always show up to vote, having missed 130 out of 3028 roll call votes. This translates into missing 4.3% of the roll call votes, more than double the average.

He is no William Proxmire.

His own website states that he is for “common sense instead of woke nonsense.” He wants to stop property tax increases that fund the public schools, all the while bashing the public school system as ineffective. He also wants to ban sales of land to “Communist China.” There’s that communist thing again.

Joe McCarthy must be grinning in his grave.

On the other side, the unapologetic Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong is almost certain to win the Democratic nomination. She is outpolling the other Democratic candidates by double digits. Wisconsin’s Democrats are apparently tired of the moderate, corporate Democrats who lose even when they win. They want something different. They are tired of the slow drift to the right.

At age 37, her youth stands in stark contrast to the gerontocracy that currently runs our government. Politically, she aligns with Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani. As such, she favors Medicare for All, taxing the wealthy, protecting the environment with strong legislation, and returning Wisconsin to the progressive state it once was.

Conservatives are flailing wildly at the prospect of her winning the race, and have accused her of things like wanting to ban Thanksgiving, and that she would essentially do whatever Communist China wants her to do.

There’s that communist thing again. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Hong, of course, is not Chinese. She is an American of Korean descent, but when facts are optional, it’s easy to tie her to China. I guess all people of Asian descent can just be lumped together, right? Just ask anyone who was put in a Japanese detention center during WWII.

The question for the moderate Democrats in Wisconsin is simply this. Are they more afraid of the Republicans winning, or the Democratic Socialists? That same question holds true for moderate Democrats nationally as well.

Stay tuned. Things are about to get interesting.

If you ask a person to describe someone, you are likely to hear them tell you that the person is just “average.” He’s average height, or he is average weight. He’s of “average intelligence.” He’s just the “average Joe.” Sometimes that person will describe themselves the same way. “Oh, I’m just average,” they will tell you. For the most part, we use that word to mean unremarkable or nondescript. It is a way to appear humble and not call attention to yourself, even if inside you really don’t feel that way. Or maybe we are just too lazy to get into the details of it.

So what exactly is average? I decided to do a little research. Here is what I found.

Globally, the average man is 5’ 6” tall, and the average woman is 5’ 2”. At 5’ 9”, I have always thought of myself as “of average height.” Not so. I am actually taller than average. As a kid, I had always dreamed of being able to dunk a basketball, but between my height and my less-than-spectacular vertical jump, I never came close. I was at least hoping to grow to be 6 feet tall, but I failed on that measure as well. I used to tell people I was 5’10” if I wore 2 pairs of socks, but now that seems silly. I am 5’ 9”, taller than the average male. My ego is thus restored. There will be no short man complex for me.

The average weight for adults varies widely, depending on which part of the globe you live in. The average weight for me depends on what month of the year it is, if you get my drift. My average weight during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays tends to be a bit higher than my average during the summer months. But that is another story.

The men of North America boast the highest average weight at 177.9 lbs. I was not able to find if a distinction is drawn between different times of the year, as I did with my own, but be that as it may. At 180 lbs, I am right around average, and in this instance, I like being average. The average weight for women in North America is 168 lbs. Given the abundance of food that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week in North America, it should be no surprise that men and women weigh more on average than people from other parts of the world.

Do you want fries with that?

In Oceana, the average weight for men is 163.4 lbs. In Europe, it is 156.1 lbs. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the average man weighs 149.7 lbs. In Africa, it is 133.8 lbs, and bringing up the rear are the men of Asia, whose average weight is 127.2 lbs. I am thankful for living in North America, where sporting my 180 lbs is average, as opposed to being morbidly obese in many other parts of the world.

The average Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, of a person is a score of 100. I found it interesting that they keep adjusting the difficulty of the test to keep the average at 100. They didn’t say if people are getting progressively less or more intelligent, though. About 68% of all people fall in the range of 85–115.

I have taken a number of “intelligence” tests over the years, including IQ tests. I would guesstimate my IQ is somewhere between 110 and 120. I’m not brilliant, believe me. As a matter of fact, if the IQ test was based on the ability to take a car’s engine apart and put it back together, my IQ would rival most potted plants. Very few people have an IQ below 70 or above 130.

Very few can take a car’s engine apart and put it back together either.

Only 45% of the world’s population is considered “educated.” For the sake of this essay, and because school systems vary widely around the globe, I am confining my statistics here only to the U.S. 85% of Americans graduate high school, but only 6.7% have a college degree. I have both, and a master’s degree to boot. I am apparently well above average in terms of education. That doesn’t mean I am any smarter than the next guy, but it does mean that I spent a lot of money and sat through a lot of lectures on a lot of topics. Some of them were even good.

Globally, the average person is 29.6 years old, while the average life expectancy is 78.9 years. In doing the math, it means that the average person today has about 49 years left to live. This surprised me somewhat, as the birth rate has steadily been declining in the past few decades while life expectancy has been steadily rising. At age 68, I am significantly above average in this respect. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

If you died before 78.9 years, you are below average. Of course, if you died before 78.9 years, you are probably not reading this either.

Is “LOL” an appropriate thing to write in an essay?

The average American household net worth is $1.06 million, but a more realistic middle-point median net worth is $192,700, according to data from the Federal Reserve. The reason that the median net worth is the better number to gauge your financial success is that the billionaire class skews the numbers wildly. It’s like putting one foot in a bucket of hot water and the other in ice water, and saying on average, the water is room temperature.

Half of all marriages end in divorce. The other half ends in death, or so the joke goes. Still, 54% of men and 60% of women will marry once, 13% of both men and women will marry twice, and 3% will marry three or more times. Over the age of 25, 23% of men have never married, while only 17% of women have stayed single. The average age for getting married has been steadily climbing as well. The average man gets married at age 29, while the average woman says her vows at age 27. So, if you are a 29-year-old man married to a 27-year-old woman and you have two kids, you are about average.

If you are average, you probably also belong to organized religion. 84% of the world’s population does. 29% are Christian of one flavor or another. 24% are Muslim. The other 31% is divided up among all the other organized religions of the world, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Druidism, and so on. 72% of Americans believe in Heaven, but only 58% believe in Hell. I’ll bet you anything that if you ask the 72% who believe in Heaven where they think they will end up, ten out of ten will say Heaven.

There you have it. Average. If, after reading this essay, you still think you are average, you are probably the only one.

Dearly Beloved,

It’s been a long time since I last communicated with you directly, over 2000 years now, and I thought I would take the time out to drop you a line and see how you’re all doing. I hope this letter finds you all well and in good spirits. I’ve been watching you all for some time at a distance, and I must admit I have some concerns I need to speak with you about.

One concern I have is this label you have given yourselves. I never asked any of you to call yourselves “Christians.” I just asked you to follow me and to love your fellow human beings as you love yourself. I wasn’t a Christian. I was Jewish. You really don’t need a label like that to tell people who you are. They should be able to tell that by your actions.

It’s too easy for people to get the wrong idea of what you stand for when you use that kind of label, and it is also easily manipulated into a marketing tool. I’ve seen the word “Christian” on everything from bookstores to panels on pickup trucks advertising landscaping services. You remember what I did to the merchants at the temple, right? Please stop. I feel so used when you do that. Some of you couldn’t pick me out of a lineup of two. How many times have you been asked for money by Christian leaders? I never asked anyone for money.

I’ve also noticed that you focus a lot on the Ten Commandments, wanting copies displayed in public areas and in schools, and so on. That was my dad’s work. He and Moses teamed up on that, my dad as the author and Moses as the messenger. I think it’s fine that you are still honoring those commandments, but what about the Eight Beatitudes? That was my work, and I think I did a pretty good job on it. How come you never want those displayed anywhere?

Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are those who thirst for justice. Blessed are the peacemakers. I delivered that at my Sermon on the Mount. Remember? Just between us, I think mine is better than my dad’s, but don’t tell him I said that. His was a list of things you can’t do, and most people have trouble keeping them. I am trying to inspire good behavior. No judgment either. I just want you to be nice. You can do this.

Sometimes I watch you support political candidates who don’t remotely resemble anything in my Beatitudes. The ones you’ve voted for in recent years are anything but meek or merciful, and they don’t seem to be making peace anywhere either.

The Bible also tells you to welcome strangers and to treat them as guests. I’m not sure how you rationalize your support for ICE and deportations given that. Sometimes it’s like you haven’t listened to anything I’ve said.

I have to tell you, I am not impressed with the way you make my dad out to be either. To listen to you guys, you would think my dad is a pretty big hypocrite and a jerk. You always have him sending people to Hell for all kinds of things. You tell people he’s angry and jealous and punitive. He does everything he tells you not to do. That’s not exactly flattering. He’s really a pretty nice guy once you get to know him. I mean, he is a dad, and so some sternness comes with that territory. I get that. But he made you, and he loves you. Don’t forget that.

He expects you to mess up from time to time. If he wanted you to be perfect, he would have made you that way. He is just hoping for you to recognize when you make a mistake and own up to it and make it right. Once you do that, he is cool with you again. Actually, he is cool with you anyway, but he does like to see some emotional maturity exhibited from time to time. Is that so much to ask?

There is something else I want you to know. Mohammed was my brother. So was Buddha. Mohammed did not create a religion and name it “Islam.” One of his followers did that. Mohammed wasn’t a Muslim. So too with Buddha. He wasn’t a Buddhist. They weren’t high priests or ministers or anything like that. They were just teachers. That’s what I am, though I did have a side gig as a carpenter. All we were trying to do was to teach you how to get along with each other and live a little better so that your suffering is a little less. None of us wanted you to fight each other about whose teaching was better or more important. We all had good things to say and good things to teach you.

Some of my teachings were about renouncing material wealth. Remember how I told this guy to sell all he owned, give the money to the poor, and come follow me? I knew he wouldn’t do it. And he didn’t either. What did he think I was going to say? Raise the rent on your tenants, score a six-figure salary, do well in the stock market, and come follow me? I never gave a sermon about the merits of capitalism. I never once told any of you to go out and make as much money as you can any way you can, did I?

If I thought capitalism was such a great idea, I would not have given away the loaves and fishes at the Sermon on the Mount. I would have charged a hefty price the way they do at sporting events. I healed the sick for free too. Didn’t charge anyone a dime. Think about how much I would have made raising people from the dead! I would have put Elon Musk to shame. But I didn’t. I did everything for free because I loved them.

I’m also going to let you in on one of our better-kept secrets. There is no such place as Hell. That was just something your leaders invented to keep you in line. Seriously, if my dad didn’t like how you lived your life and just couldn’t stand the sight of you anymore, he would just zap you out of existence. Why would he bother maintaining Hell? Can you imagine the utility bill for a place like that in winter? There is no such place as Heaven either. Heaven is just a state of mind, and that is all it has ever been. If you are a good person and live a good life, you will find it within yourself, and you will deserve to be there. I promise.

I am going to close now. I hope this helped clarify some of the things you have been struggling with. Please take care of yourselves and each other. Until next time………..

Love,

The J-man

One of my favorite movie characters is Chance Gardner, played by Peter Sellers, in the movie “Being There.” In that movie, Chance lives in a very sheltered world, and all he knows about the world is what he has seen on television. Sometimes I feel like Chance Gardner.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on my life, the things I’ve done, the good times I’ve had, and the people I’ve known. There comes a point in life where you almost have to. It’s like Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

The flip side of the things I’ve done and experienced are those things I haven’t done or experienced. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how many things there are that I haven’t done, seen, or experienced. I jotted these things down, and I was amazed. How is it I’ve missed this much?

What have I missed or not done? Let’s take a look.

Like most people, I pay at least some attention to the weather. I already know tomorrow it will be 95 degrees. I want to know if a storm is coming or if it will be too cold to go outside.

In this part of the country, the big weather news is always tornado warnings. Sirens go off. People grab their kids and head to the basement and wait for the warning to be over. Then, when the warning is done, they breathe a sigh of relief and go back upstairs. I’ve done this dozens of times in my life. (include something about stormchasers and how exciting it must be)

You know what? In all of my 68 years, I have never seen a tornado. I also have never been in a hurricane, even though I have seen countless news clips of them and the damage they cause. Ditto for floods. I have never actually been in a flood either, and I’m okay with that.

I grew up in the northern part of Wisconsin, an area that is known as “the northwoods.” When I was younger, I spent a lot of time in the woods. I’ve seen a lot of deer, bears, coyotes, and most of the other animals you would expect to find there.

I have never seen a moose in the wild, though. That would have to be an awesome sight to behold. I’ve never seen a bobcat or a wolf in the wild, either. In all fairness, however, there really weren’t many wolves around when I was growing up. There were rumors of a small wolf pack near where I lived, but no one I knew ever actually saw any of them.

They were an endangered species at the time, but from what I have read, it sounds like the wolf population has grown significantly since then. Nature is on the rebound in that regard. Maybe someday I will get the chance to see one. Then again, maybe not.

I’ve always wanted to see a mountain goat in the wild. I’ve never seen one of them either.

At age 68, I have yet to have any major health issues. I’ve never broken a bone, and I’ve never had surgery. I have no chronic health conditions. I do try to take care of myself. I eat well, exercise, and manage my stress levels. I suppose that and maybe some above-average genes, contribute to that. I suspect, though, most of it is just dumb luck.

I am well aware that, no matter how good care I take of myself, tomorrow I could be run over by a chain-smoking, drunk driver who was reaching down to take a bite of his Big Mac. Tomorrow is promised to no one, I guess.

The cool thing about living in the modern age is that there are so many things for people to do to entertain themselves. Some people go skydiving, bungee jumping, or rappelling. Those who like water can go scuba diving, sailing, jet skiing, surfing, or go on a cruise ship. Some who like going up in the air can go on hot air balloon rides, go paragliding, or go for rides in helicopters.

I’ve never done any of those things. Not one.

I always feel like I’ve missed out on something whenever I see the question “Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met?” I have never met a famous person. Not one. I’ve never even met anyone who was reasonably well-known. I’m not sure how I would react if I did. Are they different from other people?

This might sound a little morbid, but I’ve never seen a dead body except at a funeral home. I’m okay with that, I guess.

Thankfully, I have had very little interaction with the law in my life. I’ve never been arrested, and I’ve never spent a night in jail. I did try to spend a night in jail once, though. In 1981, I was riding on a Greyhound bus and got dropped off in Crescent City, California, on a rainy night. My backpack wasn’t on the bus, so I was stranded. I didn’t have much money, so I went to the local police station and asked them if I could sleep in a cell. They smiled and said that I couldn’t.

I’ve never served on a jury either, though I came close one time. A number of years ago I actually had to show up to be questioned during the selection process. I spent an entire morning waiting and then being questioned. In the end, I wasn’t selected. I wonder if it was because I asked, “Where is the guilty SOB?”

Even though I wasn’t selected, I did see that if I “checked in” on Facebook, it would say I was in the Dakota County Jail. I couldn’t resist that one. That is a prank waiting to happen. Within minutes, I had friends texting me wanting to know what I had done. I had a good time with that one.

I’ve never run a 5K. I see people bragging about how they ran this 5K or that one, and I always wondered why they do that. Most of the people I see running look miserable. It is the rare runner who actually looks like they are enjoying themselves. A lot of the 5Ks that I have seen people run are one gigantic circle. They end up right where they started. Wouldn’t they have gotten there faster if they had just stayed put?

As for me, I have a car. I can cover the 5K much faster if I just drive there.

I’ve never been on television or the radio. I’ve never had my picture up at the post office either, if you get my drift.

For as much as I follow and write about politics, I have never run for political office. That whole process looks like a hot mess to me. I’m surprised anyone wants to.

Finally, I have had a lot of jobs in my life. I worked in a bakery and a fast food establishment. I was a cook in the Army. I worked in a factory, and I picked apples in Washington state. I worked on a railroad. I taught high school and worked retail.

But for all the time I have sat in a bar or gone out to eat, I’ve never tended bar or worked as a waiter. I honestly don’t know how they keep track of all the orders and requests that come flying at them during a shift. I am a pretty easy customer. I rarely complain about anything, and I always tip even though I don’t want to. Maybe if all the customers were like me, it might be a more appealing occupation, but they’re not.

Chance Gardner never did any of these things either, but he did see a lot of these things on television, just like me. I am Chance Gardner. I think there is a little of Chance Gardner in all of us.

I’ve been in something of a slump recently. I was shocked to discover that I have yet to publish anything in the month of July, which is very unusual for me. It’s not that I don’t have things I want to write about. As a matter of fact, I’ve started six different pieces, but every time I sit down to work on them, I find my mind wandering and little or nothing gets done.

Why?

It’s been hot lately, and that definitely makes me lazy. It was 93 degrees Fahrenheit today, and the rest of the week it will be about the same. It’s too hot to go outside for a walk. It’s too hot to even mow the lawn. I’ve never been a big fan of summer anyway, but this summer seems worse than most of the others. I just can’t seem to find the energy to think, write, or create. As far as I’m concerned, the leaves can start turning any time now.

I’ve been watching the news a lot, but it seems like it’s the same stuff over and over in an endless cycle, going nowhere in particular. I saw that Lindsey Graham died yesterday. A lot of left-leaning people are happy about that. I’m not. I don’t want to be one of those people who dance on someone’s grave. I don’t feel happy about his death or sad either. The truth is that I don’t feel much at all. Whoever replaces him will do the same things he’s done and support the same things he’s supported. It will just be a different name and face doing it.

Ho hum.

The war with Iran continues to drag on. The four-week war is now in its fifth month, and there is no end in sight. We have ceasefires where no one ceases firing. Announcements are made that the Strait of Hormuz is open, and gas prices slip down slightly, only to bounce back up once Iran closes it again. I had a slight hope that gas prices would come down somewhat near where they were before the war started. I should have known better.

Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policy is boring and impossible to keep up with. Right now, I have no idea which countries have high tariffs, low tariffs, or no tariffs. I have to wonder if the people in Trump’s administration even know. It’s all so helter-skelter and chaotic. I do know this. Tariff or no tariff, things are expensive.

The Freedom 250 celebration and, indeed, the entire Fourth of July was a big flop. The Lincoln Monument reflecting pool, with its flag-blue bottom coming unglued, was an eyesore. The fence around it, with the National Guard keeping an eye on it, only magnified its ugliness. The 100-degree heat that descended on Washington during the celebration makes me wonder if there really is a God. If I were God, that’s what I would have done too.

Trump, unable to admit that changing the color of the bottom was a mistake, did what he always does when things go wrong. He finds someone to blame. Several people have been indicted for vandalizing it, or so they say. My guess is that we will never hear any more about it. That doesn’t even matter, since the main purpose was to deflect any blame away from Trump.

Speaking of finding people to blame, Trump is now blaming “communists” for a lot of the things that are not going well in this country. Communists? That played well in the 1950s and during the Vietnam War, but I haven’t heard anyone drag that stale argument out in a long time. You would have to be a special breed of stupid to think there is a communist insurgency in the United States.

I will give Trump credit for knowing his fan base, though. If any group of people has what it takes to believe stuff like that, it’s them.

There has been a lot of speculation about Mitch McConnell this past week. He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and there has been no news about his condition until today. Many people thought he might have died and that the Republicans were keeping it a secret. As it turns out, Mitch McConnell fell and then developed a mild case of pneumonia.

McConnell is 84 years old. He was born in 1942. Do you know what else happened in 1942? The Battle of Midway. The internment of Japanese-Americans. The escalation of the Nazis’ “Final Solution.” The Battle of Guadalcanal. Franklin Roosevelt was the president. Less than 10% of American households had television.

That’s how old Mitch McConnell is.

The Catholic Church is having a mini-crisis, which they call a “schism.” A group of very conservative Catholics who are critical of the Pope went ahead and consecrated four bishops without the consent of the Holy See. For this, they and their followers are excommunicated from the Church.

These conservative Catholics want the Mass said in Latin with the priest’s back to the congregation. That’s the way it was until Vatican II was held in 1965. I still remember going to the Latin Mass when I attended St. Mary’s Catholic School. I had no idea what the Mass was about, but I knew I better stand, kneel, and sit at the right time or else I would get wholloped by Sister Mary Discipline.

What is particularly funny is that they are not backing down. As a matter of fact, some of them are comparing themselves to Joan of Arc because she, too, was excommunicated. Christians, and Catholics in particular, love being martyrs for various causes, real and imaginary.

Does that make them Protestants?

Anyway, my 50th class reunion was held on July 3rd. I had thought about going, but I decided against it. It would have been a four-hour drive there, and a four-hour drive back, just to attend an event that only lasted three hours. That seemed like a lot to go through.

I did see a lot of pictures that were taken there, though. My class has a Facebook page, and a lot of people have posted the pictures they took on it. I recognized probably 90% of the people I saw in the pictures. I was surprised at that. People’s appearances change as they age. I will admit I had to do a double-take or two on some of them, but eventually their faces came into focus, and I knew who it was. I like to think some people asked where I was, but I have no idea if anyone did. Most of my closest friends from high school are dead.

I’ve never liked crowds, and the older I get, the less I like them.

I like how this feels. My keyboard is massaging the tips of my fingers, my thoughts are getting splashed onto the screen, and bit by bit, I am bringing this piece to a close. It feels good to be writing again, even if this is just some incoherent rambling on a variety of topics.

Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you. I’ve been one poor correspondent, and I’ve been too, too hard to find, as Gerry Beckley sang in Sister Golden Hair.

It doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind. Stay tuned.

A recurring fear among Democrats and others who are opposed to Donald Trump is that Trump will do something to remain in power when the 2028 elections take place. There is no question about Trump’s love of power. The question is how far he would go to hold onto the immense powers of the presidency.

Some people have speculated that Trump will find a way to serve a third term by challenging the wording of the 22nd Amendment, which limits the president to two terms. They posited that Congress might amend the 22nd Amendment to allow the president to serve a third term. Others have suggested that Trump could be elected vice president, and once the election is concluded, the person elected president would resign and Trump would ascend to the presidency.

There has also been a lot of hand-wringing over the possibility of Trump declaring martial law and suspending the elections if there is a war or insurrection. Some think Trump will use the war with Iran for this purpose. Others think Trump will say the U.S. elections have been rigged and use that as an excuse.

Most of these scenarios, however, are either not constitutionally possible or, if they are, they are highly unlikely. Changing the Constitution is a lengthy and time-consuming process, and there is no guarantee that the change will be ratified by enough states or within the needed time frame.

Declaring martial law would be risky. There has to be a credible reason for this to happen, and even if the courts allowed it, it is for a limited time. Declaring martial law could actually cause the very insurrection Trump would need to declare martial law, albeit after the fact. Again, the risks for Trump are too great for him to pursue this avenue.

The most likely scenario: a proxy presidency

In January of 2029, Donald Trump will no longer be president of the United States, but make no mistake about it, he will still be the leader of the MAGA movement. The question facing Trump is simply this. How can he hold on to the powers of the presidency when he is no longer president?

The answer is simple. He needs to make sure that the person elected president is willing to take their orders directly from Trump. That person would then simply be a proxy for Trump, and Trump would be something of a “shadow president.” But who would be willing to do this?

The answer? Just about any of the MAGA members of Congress.

There are two criteria Trump has to take into consideration before anointing anyone to be the 2028 Republican nominee. The first is electability. There are a lot of MAGA politicians, but most of them are not very electable for that office. Some have too much baggage. Others don’t have enough and aren’t very well known.

The second criterion Trump needs to consider is loyalty. He will need to find someone who will follow his agenda and take his orders without question or pause. They need to be willing to obey Trump if they want to continue to enjoy the support of MAGA. They need to understand that Trump will decide who MAGA supports. Ask anyone running for Congress who did not receive an endorsement from Trump.

The presidential election is over two years away, but already people are jockeying for position and setting up exploratory committees. Let’s take a look at some of the people who might be looking to curry favor with Trump and win the MAGA endorsement.

J.D. Vance is generally considered to be the frontrunner at this stage. He is the sitting vice president, and as such, is viewed as the heir apparent. He also has the endorsement of Ericka Kirk from Turning Point. While many of us find that laughable, Turning Point does have a large following that could translate into votes at the polls. He often comes across as awkward, and his political experience is limited. As for his loyalty to Trump, he made a number of disparaging remarks about Trump when Trump was running in 2016. He said at that time that Trump was unfit for office and compared Trump to Hitler. He said that Trump was “morally reprehensible” and a “moron.”

Since then, however, Vance has kissed the ring and apparently has been forgiven.

Marco Rubio is another name that has been floated for 2028. Rubio has had his sights set on the presidency for some time now, and actually ran against Trump for the nomination in 2016. In one of the debates, Trump referred to Rubio as “Little Marco.”

Rubio, like Vance, was not a fan of Trump in 2016. He stated that Trump was a con artist and even joked about Trump’s makeup and the size of his hands. He was critical of Trump’s misadventures with Trump University and his many bankruptcies.

Rubio, too, kissed the ring, asked for forgiveness, and was rewarded by being named Secretary of State. Rubio has a good deal more political experience than Vance, and for a long time was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party. In terms of loyalty to Trump, he, like Vance, has shown he is willing to sacrifice his personal dignity to show loyalty to Trump.

Rubio is probably more electable than Vance. He is more experienced and more articulate. He would probably be the better debater, too.

Finally, there is Ted Cruz. He is generally loyal to Trump, but he has more baggage than American Airlines. His quick exit to Cancun in 2021, while Texas was reeling from a winter storm that left large numbers of people without power, is still being used to mock him by his opponents.

Cruz has been a loyal supporter of Trump, even though Trump insulted Cruz’s wife and called Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.” When the smoke cleared, Cruz also kissed the ring and was allowed back into the MAGA fold.

Will there be others vying for the Republican nomination? No doubt there will be. As of this writing, however, Vance, Rubio, and Cruz are the only ones who have expressed an interest.

The candidate who Trump feels has the right mix of loyalty and electability will be the one who receives Trump’s endorsement and the support of MAGA. Should Trump’s pick prevail in 2028, Trump will have won his third term, albeit by proxy.

Elon Musk finally accomplished what no other human being has. No, he didn’t find a cure for cancer or end world hunger. He didn’t end homelessness or achieve world peace. He didn’t find a way to make our air or water cleaner or save endangered species.

Instead, he became the world’s first trillionaire. No one in the history of humankind has ever “achieved” that level of gaudy wealth before.

I don’t know about you, but I have trouble understanding numbers that large. What follows is my attempt to understand how much money that is, and to help the reader do the same. No matter how you slice it, $1 trillion is a lot of money. Let’s see what this number looks like in real terms.

Musk’s net worth has been oscillating between $1.2 trillion and $1.4 trillion. The difference between those two numbers is not $2 billion. It is $200 billion. When numbers get that large, so do the decimals.

Two other people well known for their massive net worth are Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Jeff Bezos’s net worth is about $250 billion, while Mark Zuckerberg’s is about $191 billion. Given that, it is interesting to note that the net worth of both Bezos and Zuckerberg is closer to my net worth than it is to the net worth of Elon Musk.

As a matter of fact, the combined net worth of Bezos and Zuckerberg is closer to my net worth than it is to the net worth of Musk. Let that sink in for a moment.

Keep in mind also that the net worth of Donald Trump is about $6.5 billion, which is less than 1% of Musk’s net worth.

What would a $1 trillion look like if we had that in $100 bills? If we stacked the $100 bills, it would stand between 631 and 679 miles high, depending on how much the stack compressed due to the weight. That distance is further out than where the Earth’s atmosphere ends, and is more than twice as high as the orbit of the International Space Station.

If this were done with $1 bills, it would reach 67,866 miles high, or about one-fourth of the way to the moon.

If we laid out $1 trillion in $100 bills, it would stretch from New York to Chicago, and if those bills were stacked on pallets, they would cover a football field and stand eight feet high and weigh about 22 million pounds, or roughly 11,000 tons.

I think you get the drift.

I was curious about the purchasing power contained in $1 trillion as well, so I got out my calculator and did some figuring. We all know that buying a house today is out of reach for a lot of Americans, especially younger ones. The average price for a house in the United States in 2026 stands at $508,000. Elon Musk would be able to buy 1,968,503 houses. That is just a little under two million houses!

Every night in the United States, there are about 771,480 homeless people. If Elon Musk decided to buy every one of those people their own house, it would cost him just under $392 billion, or about a third of his net worth.

In other words, Elon Musk has the ability to completely erase homelessness in the United States, and he would still have over $600 billion left over. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The average American has four credit cards, and as of 2024, there were over 608 million active credit card accounts in the United States. A lot of people pay off their balances each month, but there are also a lot of people who don’t. How much credit card debt is there? Today, the outstanding credit card debt in the U.S. is $1.25 trillion.

No matter how you look at it, that is a lot of credit card debt. Still, if Elon Musk’s net worth swings up to $1.4 trillion, he could literally pay off the credit card debt for every American and still have $200 billion leftover.

Whew.

I was curious to see how long it would take a person working at the federal minimum wage to earn $1 trillion. Given a 40-hour work week and 52 weeks in a year, that person would work 2080 hours in a year. With the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour, that would come to a total of $15,080 per year.

I divided $1 trillion by the $15,080 of yearly earnings, and the result was 66,312,997 years. Let me say that again. A person working for the federal minimum wage would have to work 66,312, 997 years to make $1 trillion! 66 million years ago, the Earth was at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

What was going on at that time? There were a lot of dinosaurs roaming the Earth, and the continents were drifting. That’s how long ago someone making the federal minimum wage would have had to start working in order to make $1 trillion.

Senators and Representatives in the United States Congress are paid $174,000 per year. There are 100 senators and 435 members of the House. Excluding the extra money those in leadership positions are paid, the total Congressional salary for all 535 members comes to $93.3 million. With Elon Musk’s massive net worth, he could easily buy the entire Congress.

Wait. I think he already did.