Bon Appétit

In the Spring of 2016 I decided to drop a few pounds. I used to be 6-2, 225 with those pounds mostly in the right places. I’d pretty much been at that size since I was 18 years old. But over the years, I had gotten shorter and those pounds shifted. One day I looked in the mirror and saw an old man who was 6-1 and 233 with too many of those pounds around the middle and in the dreaded man-boobs. I was still pretty healthy by old man standards. Blood pressure was ok and I worked out regularly. Except for my cholesterol being a bit high, my doctor said “You’re in great shape for your age. Just keep doing what you’re doing but try to drop 10 pounds.”

So I decided to drop 10 pounds. And it wasn’t that difficult. Eat less and up the cardio a bit. Boom, 10 pounds gone. Well, maybe we should drop a few more and see what happens. So we continued to just eat a little bit less and workout a little bit more. Nothing crazy, just less in and more out. A year later I’m down over 25 pounds. Cholesterol is great. Blood pressure is better than OK. Energy level is up. I sleep better and have fewer aches and pains.

And I get questions. Am I ok? Is there something wrong? Nope, just decided to drop a few pounds. Oh...well, that’s good, I guess.

How did you do it? Atkins? Paleo? Weight-watchers? Nope, just ate a little less and increased my workouts from 45 minutes to 60 minutes. Oh...well, that’s good, I guess.

There is a huge industry built around losing weight. There are the diet programs where they claim you lose weight and are never hungry. There are the special workouts where you don’t sweat and just have fun. There are exercise machines that burn more calories faster and allow you to tour the Alps in HD as you go along. There are those annoying Fit-Bit things that tell you how many steps you’ve taken and poke you to get up and move ever so often.

There should be a way to turn “my weight-loss program” into a money making proposition. But most people really don’t want to just eat less and exercise more. We human beings are weak-willed and in a culture of consumption, we see-it, want-it, have-it and, if it’s food, we eat it. And we eat too much. We lose weight and gain it back. We make promises then we break them. It’s true with food, exercise, money, relationships…you name it and we can screw it up.

So one of these days beer and pizza will call out to me and the dam of self-discipline will break. I will say what the hell. Life is too short and who wants to live a little bit longer and not enjoy it. Besides, I can stand to gain a couple of pounds. “My weight-loss program” is just as vulnerable as all of the others to one thing…our choices. But I am committed. I’ve bought new clothes and really enjoy being thinner. Life is good. However, I am keeping my old clothes just in case. For I am, indeed, a backslider by nature. Aren’t we all?

“The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you are off it.”- Jackie Gleason

And Now.. For Other News…

I’m already tired of the First 100 Days countdown. All of the news is about the Trump administration and none of it is fair and balanced on either side of the divide. And a lot of Americans just don’t care all that much one way or the other. 40% of our nation’s 231 million eligible voters did NOT vote in the Presidential election. In the 2014 mid-term elections, over 60% of eligible voters did NOT vote.

While there are certainly non-voters who have strong opinions about how the country should be governed, most of them just don’t care. And a lot of the 40+ million who only vote every four years in a Presidential election either don’t care or don’t have a good reason for voting the way they are voting.

Then there are those of us who do vote most of the time. Some are highly committed to a party platform and/or a candidate. But most of us are just trying to figure out which candidate or party will do us the least harm. And by “us” I mean the personal “us”. Me, my family, my community, my company, my customers, my convictions. Some of us vote FOR a candidate or party and some of us vote AGAINST a party or a candidate. But when it’s all said and done, we go back to our families, our communities, our jobs, our friends, our convictions and we admit to ourselves that it’s not going to get any better. We pray that it won’t get worse. We know that our government is not too big fail and it’s probably way too big to succeed.

So we are ready for other news. Just the facts will do. We are tired of editorials presented as news. We are tired of celebrities telling us how we should have voted. We want to know the time, the temperature, the traffic report and the scores. Beyond that we pretty much know it’s all fake news or just someone else’s opinion. Most of us 231 million eligible voters are just putting one foot in front of the other… just trying to get home in one piece.

The Disrupter and Chief

It’s been said, be careful what you ask for. Well, again we’ve asked for change and we are getting it. Obama’s “Hope and Change” was a trickle compared to Trump’s fire hose blast of “Make America Great Again” executive orders, tweet darts and dust-ups with the media. Trump has taken Washington by storm. Action, action now, is the new normal. That part I like. But, I have to admit that some of the actions are questionable. (The Wall makes no sense…).

Perhaps somethings are meant to move slowly in Washington. There is a reason for checks and balances. Our nation’s founders designed our government to be deliberate and minimally invasive. Over time we’ve managed to make it too invasive and too big. And deliberate has become dysfunctional. But we must remember that it didn’t get that way overnight and it cannot be fixed in a few days, or weeks, or perhaps even 4 years or 8. The world is complicated and it’s dangerous. And it’s more connected than ever.

My advice to our Disrupter and Chief would be to slow down, take a breath. You won the election. Stop campaigning. Rise above the petty squabbles with the media and Madonna; and ignore Saturday Night Live. Step away from Twitter. Don’t go out of your way to piss people off. You’ll do plenty of that by just doing the right things. Pick your battles and allow your opponents to save face. You are holding a winning hand. You have Congress on your side. You are in position to influence the direction of the Supreme Court for a generation. Half of the country hates you and that’s not going to change. Just do your job and make sure that the other half doesn’t end up hating you. How about that?

“In the end, you're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.”
-Donald Trump

Butterfly Wings

Free Will vs Determinism. It’s an age-old debate in philosophy and religion. Whether you believe in higher powers or nothing at all, it’s a subject you cannot avoid. How much control do we really have over our lives? To what extent is our course determined before we are even born?

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one place at one time can result in large differences in the future. For example, a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in another location.

I don’t know about butterflies, but I ended up being a Texan for a lot of reasons, one of the biggest being the American Civil War. All four of my grandparents’ family histories trace back to the Civil War. Three of four fought for the Confederacy. It’s unclear what the other one was doing, but he was most likely on the Confederate side. Two died during the Civil War. Details are sketchy. What is known is that my maternal grandmother’s family moved to Texas from Kentucky in the 1850’s. After the war began, my ancestor joined a Texas Cavalry regiment then fought and died on the Western Front. He left behind a son who was born in Texas in 1861 and to that branch I am attached.

My maternal grandfather’s family also lost one during the war and it is a story straight out of the movies. They lived in SW Missouri near what is today Branson. The father was killed by Kansas bushwackers. Whether he was fighting for the Southern cause or was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, we’ll never know. But the young son and his mother loaded up the wagon and went to Texas. And from that young son, my family tree grew in Texas.

My paternal grandfather’s ancestor joined a Tennessee regiment as did his brothers. One of those brothers was killed, but my ancestor survived. He went back home to Tennessee, started a family and a few years later moved to Texas for better land, more of it and a new start.

And my paternal grandmother’s line goes back to Mississippi and an ancestor who joined the 37th Mississippi Infantry as a youngster, somehow survived and moved to Texas as soon as the war ended. His children were all born and raised in Texas. And the old veteran finally passed away at 98 and is buried in Texas having outlived all of those children.

Not only did all four family streams flow to Texas, but they flowed into a three county region south and west of Fort Worth where their children met and married and had lots of kids and those kids had kids and now here we are. They were country people. English, Scots-Irish and German; more Hill Southern than anything else. Loyal to family, extremely mistrustful of governmental authority, and inclined to bear arms and to use them. Not plantation people, not slave-owners. Like so many, they fought for the South because their friends and neighbors were on that side. For generations mostly Democrats until the Democrats got too liberal. Even still, some continue to vote Democrat just because they always have. Or they don’t vote at all. Baptists, Methodists and Church of Christ all well-represented among them. As prone to violence and alcoholism as to piety and good deeds. For better or worse, I didn’t fall far from that tree.

What if one branch of my family tree had grown in another direction? A decision here, an event there. A bullet missed by inches. One baby dies at birth, another lives a long life with many children of their own. Four families from different starting points move to the same state and settle in close proximity to each other. A great Civil War the common thread. And butterfly wings along the way, even back to the beginning of it all. So there is Free Will, but only in a small corner of one’s life created by forces which determine, for the most part, who and where and what we are or can become. It’s humbling and frightening to think about such things. But it’s also necessary. Necessary for perspective and necessary for faith. Most of all, it’s necessary for forgiveness. We’ll not figure out the mystery or the meaning of it all in this life, nor perhaps in the eternity to come. And that’s ok. It’s probably more than we could handle anyway.

“The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.”– Numbers 14:18

Hacked

I think the American people should express their preferences, and we'll accept their choice.
-Vladimir Putin

So the Russians have been reading our mail and using it against us in ways that are most likely to benefit their national interests. How dare them do such a thing. Since when did countries start spying on other countries? And who would have thought that a rival might resort to cheating in order to gain an advantage? This isn’t the NFL. No one could have anticipated that Vladimir Putin would turn into Bill Belichick.

Welcome to cyber warfare. The Democrats seem to be doing most of the whining, but all of us should be concerned and embarrassed about getting hacked by the Russians. We should also be concerned and embarrassed about the information revealed from those hacks. But we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s just politics as usual. And the Russians, or someone else, likely have a lot of dirt on the Republicans and are just waiting for the right moment to use it.

I think there are several lessons to be learned here. First, make every effort to protect your information. Second, before you hit the send button, consider how you would feel if your email ended up going public (or became part of the discovery process in a legal proceeding.) Third, be prepared for negative news about public figures. And lastly, be prepared for it to be twisted and used according to the bias and agenda of whoever is putting it out there. Propaganda is never used fairly, especially when it has supporting evidence.

Dead Horses

As we head into The New Year, we should all think about this:

• Buying a stronger whip.

• Changing riders.

• Appointing a committee to study the horse.

• Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

• Lowering the standards so that the dead horses can be included.

• Re-classifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

• Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

• Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.

• Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse’s performance.

• Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s
performance.

• Declaring that the dead horse does not have to be fed,it is less costly,carries lower
overhead and,therefore, contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy
than do some other horses.

• Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses. And of course….

• Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

2016 Over….2017 Over the Top?

Last December I made my predictions and as usual, some were pretty good and some were pretty bad. So how did we do?

The 2016 Predictions:

1. Hillary Clinton wins the election. (I’m not sure any Republican could win a national election these days.)

Enough has been said about this. I didn’t see a Republican winning, much less Donald Trump. And, let’s not forget that Hillary did win the popular vote. But, Trump won where the Constitution says it matters. I lean to the right on most issues, so I’m glad Clinton did not win and I’m glad that the Republicans control the House and the Senate. My prediction on Trump follows below in the 2017 Predictions.

2. The U.S. economy muddles along. The second half of the year is better than the first half.

Pretty accurate with this prediction. I’d give it an A

3. Oil prices stay below $50 barrel.

Just missed it. Oil prices have creeped up over the $50 mark.

4. The Arizona Cardinals beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

5. The Chicago Cubs win the World Series over the Houston Astros.

Cubs Win…finally and I called it. Got the opposing team wrong, but I’m still giving it an A.

6. Jordan Spieth does not win a major this year.

Correct- A

7. “Spotlight” wins the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture.

Correct-A

8. The Supreme Court will rule against the University of Texas’ affirmative action admissions policy (Fisher v. University of Texas)

Wrong- F


9. Terrorists attacks against Western targets will escalate in 2016.

I wish I’d been wrong on this one.


10. Federal Debt will remain at levels above 100% of GDP.

Of course it did.


And now for those 2017 predictions:

1. This one is easy…Alabama wins the National Championship

2. E-commerce retail sales will exceed $450 Billion

3. Oil prices go up a bit but remain under $60

4. The Cleveland Indians beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.

5. GDP growth at 3%

6. Moonlight wins Academy Award for Best Movie

7. New England beats Dallas in the Super Bowl.

8. Going out on a limb here, but the next Supreme Court Justice will not be a white guy.

9. Significant M&A activity in the final mile delivery space

10. Trump gets a lot done in his first year and drives the mainstream media crazy.

On the Chinese calendar, 2017 is the year of the Rooster, more specifically the Red Rooster, also known as the Fire Rooster. Yep, 2017 is going to be interesting.