The Greatest Opportunity

“He hath eaten me out of house and home, he hath
put all my substance into that fat belly of his…” - Shakespeare


So it turns out that repealing and replacing the not-so Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is hard to do. Fixing it may not be any easier. There are those who do not want to take anything away from the current offering. There are those who want to take a little bit away. And there are those who want to strip it to the bare bones. And they all have their heels dug in. This mindset is why we have a $20 Trillion dollar national debt and are pretty much guaranteed to keep adding to that debt as long as we can get away with it. It’s why entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and various other social “safety nets” ; taken together representing almost 50% of federal spending, are untouchable and ever growing. And the unfunded liabilities associated with Social Security and Medicare aren’t even on the books.

There are hardcore conservatives who want to turn the clock back on most entitlements, starting with the Affordable Care Act. The progressives (liberals) only see the need to do more, give more and get more votes in return. There are some moderates in the middle who are doing their best “can’t we all just get along” dance; but it’s not working.

I live in a very red county in a very red state. And I’m mostly conservative, especially on fiscal issues and foreign policy. Not so much on social issues. The sad truth is that this last election cycle was likely the final hurrah for conservatives. Things are changing, even in Texas. In the major metro areas, age and ethnic demographics are pointing left. And this is pretty much the trend across the country. It will accelerate if Trump fails over the next four years and it appears increasingly likely that he will. The Democrats are committed to stopping him and not all of the Republicans are committed to supporting him. Throw in his own craziness and self-inflicted wounds; and the Democrats will gain ground in the mid-terms then regain the White House in 2020 (as long as they don’t select a really bad candidate again).

So what does the future look like? I mean the future from now to 2030. Federal spending will grow along with entitlements, including more funding for healthcare. Taxes are going up. It may not all be in the form of income taxes, but the government has to find more revenues. The debt will increase, but a growing economy may slow down the rate of that increase. America will still be great, but very different. More left turns than right turns eventually puts you somewhere farther to the left. I hope I’m wrong. But there’s an old saying about having the world’s greatest opportunity to screw up the world’s greatest opportunity. We may just be watching the GOP do exactly that.

An Oceanfront View

I have always been a “mountain person” not a “beach person”. But that may be changing. I recently spent a couple of days on the Georgia coast. My wife and I had visited there over 25 years ago. Our first trip had been to St. Simon’s and this time we opted for nearby Jekyll Island.

We were there in mid-week, before Spring Break and the beaches were empty. Mountain people tend to prefer solitude which may be why I’ve never been much of a beach person. I could never afford to go to a secluded beach. So my beach experiences have been of the Texas Gulf Coast or Florida public beach variety which is akin to Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon. Tolerable if you’re about half-drunk, but otherwise unbearable.

The beach at Jekyll Island was perfect. Walking there at sunrise is a worship experience no matter who or what you worship. It’s just in our DNA. For a Christian, the first light of daybreak says “in the beginning”. The sky, the water and the beach speak of creation. Let there be life. Birds are everywhere. Small island deer stand frozen in the dunes then disappear. High tide has just passed and the waves are retreating leaving signs of life and death on the wet sand. It is as it has been for thousands of years. Ebb and flow, moon and sun.

And I believe there is, indeed, a purpose to all of it. It did not “just happen”. Something does not come from nothing. There is a “first cause”. We call it God. And for Christians it is personal. Life is short, eternity is forever. That beach is somewhere in between. Someday it will all come together. And the mountains will be there as well.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”–John 1:1-3

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.