My Case for Kamala Harris

I was at a gathering a few months back, and a friend I hadn’t seen in some time asked if I was still writing, and when I said no, she asked me why.  I told her the honest to God truth that a certain former president had broken me and if I sat down with the intent to write I’d probably just bang my fists on the keyboard and any words that could be made out would come out to, “Grr, fuck Trump!”  And I didn’t want this blog to become a regular occasion of, “What has the orange lunatic done lately?” because I imagine the people who read this blog either (a) didn’t want to hear it, or (b) wouldn’t mind hearing it, but they’re pretty much in the same boat as me.

So that’s why I’ve been gone.

At the same time, I’ve been paying (way too much) attention to this election cycle, and I feel this one’s too important to keep quiet (as if I’ve actually kept quiet – anyone who reads this thing knows EXACTLY where I stand).  So, I decided it was time for me to put my thoughts into writing so any future administration can have a very easy time throwing me in any hypothetical gulags.

Yes, today we’re discussing why I’ve cast my vote for Kamala Harris.

Author’s note: there’s a decent chance this post will get a little raw and nasty.  If you’re concerned that you might read something here that will change how you think of me and cause you to disassociate with me, you may want to skip this post…I’m making no apologies.  Like I said before, it’s too important.

The Policies

I don’t think Kamala Harris is a perfect candidate.  She’s not a great candidate.  She’s barely an ok candidate.  Her #1 redeeming quality is, “She’s not Donald Trump,” and #2 is, “She’s not Joe Biden.”  I’ll readily admit that I’m practically a one-issue voter, with that one issue perfectly matching with her #1 redeeming quality.  I’ll expand on that in more detail further, but let’s examine a few issues that explain why she – and her party – have earned my vote.  And if this looks more like, “Why I’m not voting Republican,” and less, “Why I’m voting Democrat,” well, tough shit…I’m not arguing semantics here.

Abortion Rights

Look, aside from someone not being Donald Trump, I don’t really have a single-issue that I vote on.  I’m pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ+, pro-voting rights, pro-civil rights, and I believe we’ve got a serious gun problem in this country (although I’m not for coming for people’s guns).  But with people calling this Roevember and correctly pointing out that this is the first presidential election after Roe v. Wade was struck down, it’s important to get the elephant in the room out of the way.

Republicans don’t care about abortion.  Let me clarify that.  Republicans care about abortion because it wins them the evangelical vote.  Beyond that, ask any Republican in the House, Senate, Supreme Court, or running for president how many abortions they’ve paid for, and I guarantee the average is nowhere near zero.

But evangelicals hate abortion.  They believe life begins at conception and women are nothing more than broodmares created to bring more men and broodmares into the world.  Abortion is an evil sin that women use because they don’t have the moral fiber to keep their legs shut.  Any politician that comes out in favor of abortion is fine with killing babies in the name of Satan.

And because evangelicals hate abortion, and the evangelical voting bloc is a not insubstantial portion of this country of ours, Republicans hate abortion too.

And so, now that Roe has been overturned, we have 13 states that have enacted total abortion bans, 9 of which don’t allow for exceptions for rape or incest.  And sure, there are medical exceptions in each state, but as we’ve seen with the cases of Josseli Barnica in Texas or Amber Thurman in Georgia, among, I’m sure, many others, what constitutes a medical emergency is a bit of a mystery to the doctors who could face prison time if they try to save a woman’s life when she’s in crisis.

Thankfully, in every state where abortion access has come to a vote of the people, including several very solidly Republican states, the anti-choice measures have failed.

But Republicans will never stop their anti-choice crusade.  They’ll scream about late-term abortions, as if someone decided after 7 or 8 months of carrying a child that they didn’t want it anymore and had it aborted, when in reality every late-term abortion was a wanted child where the woman experienced a tragedy, and the baby can no longer be carried to term.  I won’t even dignify the nonsense of a “post-birth abortion”, which doesn’t exist, because it’s just the Republicans trying to convince you that Democrats are literal baby killers.

They can tell you they won’t come for IVF, which requires the destruction of embryos, but they’ll vote against a national right to IVF bill.  They’ll tell you abortion should be left to the states, then come out and introduce an abortion ban in the Senate.  They’ll ignore the fact that nearly 65,000 rape-related pregnancies occurred in the states with near-total abortion bans following the Dobbs decision.  It doesn’t matter how many women die that shouldn’t, it doesn’t matter how many more infants die that didn’t need to suffer because they were forced to be brought to term, to Republicans, abortion is evil, women who have it performed on them are immoral and deserve their fate, and doctors who provide basic medical care should be in prison.

If either party sweeps the presidency, House, and Senate, the filibuster will almost certainly be gutted and a national law either permitting or outlawing abortion will be implemented.  I’m giving my vote to the people who care if women and children die, and that sure as hell ain’t Republicans.

Trans Rights

I’d like to imagine that we’re at a place where gay rights are entwined in the fabric of our country, but we’re giving platforms to conservative kickers who speak out against the “deadly sins” of Pride month, so we’re not there yet.  And considering Clarence Thomas called for a review of the case that gave gay couples the national right to marry in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, it’s safe to say we’re nowhere near closing the book on LGBTQ+ rights being infringed upon.

But the right has chosen to make transgender rights one of the great boogeymen of the 2024 election, and thus that’s what I’m going to focus on.

To hear conservatives tell it, sending your children to a public school runs parents the risk of having their beautiful boy come back as a girl when you pick them up at the end of the day.  That children are identifying as cats and as a result schools are required to keep litter boxes on hand for those kids (the real reason schools stock kitty litter is far more depressing – it’s part of a “go bucket” in case students are locked in a classroom during a school shooting, which Republicans don’t give a damn about).  That we’re handing out gender reassignment surgeries to every prisoner that wants one.  And dear God don’t get them started on trans kids invading girls’ sports or wanting to go to the bathroom in peace.

Trans people are not trying to dress up as the opposite gender to get ahead in life.  They were born in bodies that don’t correspond with their gender identity.  Without gender affirming care, they are more prone to suicide and self-harm, something that you’d think wouldn’t be an issue if a guy just wanted to wear a dress or win a college swimming meet.  Democrats advocate for people to receive the gender affirming care that they need to allow them to live their best lives.  Where’s the harm in that?  You don’t want your taxpayer dollars going to prisoners’ care?  I don’t want my tax dollars propping up the disgustingly bloated military industrial complex.  Sometimes our tax dollars go to things we don’t like.

Less than 1% of the world’s population identifies as transgender.  There has never been a reported situation where a transgender person assaulted a child in the bathroom.  The odds that a transgender person is going to have an impact on someone’s life is somewhat minuscule, but to watch a Monday Night Football game, you’d believe that the transgender community is coming to turn every man in America into a woman.  Thanks, but I’ll vote for inclusivity.

Other Issues

Look, I could go into further detail on why I think Harris’s policies are better for the country than Trump’s are, but let me just give you a few bullet points:

  • She’s for expanding voting rights.  Republicans have realized that their policies are unpopular, so instead of shifting to the mainstream, they’ve decided to double down and attempt to limit who can vote, specifically targeting minority groups who have historically voted for Democrats.
  • She’s in favor of reducing gun violence.  Republicans think a good guy with a gun is the only way to counter a bad guy with a gun.  Tell me how often that’s worked out.  Much as I love him, John McClane isn’t coming through that door.
  • She supported the border security bill.  Republicans agreed to the deal that would’ve added 1,500 border security agents then decided to bury it because Trump wanted to run on a border crisis.  They don’t care about the border – they care that they can villainize “illegal immigrants”.
  • She’s for imposing term limits on the Supreme Court and requiring them to comply with the same ethics rules that other federal judges are bound by.
  • She’s pro-union.  I used to be very anti-union, and then I grew up and realized that the guy who clocks in in the morning, goes to the bar, and clocks out at the end of the day is the very small exception, and not the rule.  Unions increase wages and protect workers against the fuckery that our corporate overlords try to pull on us.  Naturally, the right wants to outlaw labor unions.
  • Harris is calling for a ceasefire in the Middle East.  Now, I’m no expert on Middle East policy, but there’s a genocide going on in Gaza (sorry, just because you suffered through a genocide doesn’t mean it’s impossible for you to impose one on someone else).  I don’t think the Biden administration has been great with their continued and undying support of Israel, but I know that Trump has been meeting regularly with Benjamin Netanyahu, ignored centuries of territorial disputes to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and called for a ban on Muslims coming into the U.S.  I’m terrified that Muslims sitting out this election – justifiably so – are going to swing the election to Trump, thinking he’s good for them or will end the atrocities in Gaza.  Like I said, I don’t know shit about the Middle East, but however Trump would end the situation isn’t going to be good for the Palestinians.

The Economy

I’ll be honest with you.  Financially, I’m in decent shape, so the matter of grocery prices doesn’t hit me as much as it does people who are struggling.  I’ve never really been in a situation where I had to count pennies to have food on the table (although when I was young after her divorce my mom did scrounge and save for Baskin Robbins), although I have previously voted – or considered voting – for my financial interests before anything else.  I was younger and naïve and believed that our social policies were not going to move backwards.  I’ve learned enough to know that that’s obviously not the case, and thus I’ve decided I’m never going to vote against people’s rights to save me a few bucks at the check out line or gas station.

But I also know that, much as the right would like you to believe that inflation was the result of Bidenomics that Harris has to answer for, in reality, inflation was a worldwide problem, the U.S. recovered quicker than most developed countries, companies are posting record profits, and, in just one example, a Kroger executive admitted the company gouged prices above what was necessary to maintain profits during the COVID pandemic.

Now, just like I’m not an expert on most policies, I’m not an economist either.  I’m a moron who hides behind his keyboard and manages to save a bunch of articles that support my position.  And lord do I have some for you on the economy.

A Time article summarizing what a Trump win would mean for the economy found the following:

  • Trump would impose tariffs on every import coming into the U.S.  Contrary to what Trump believes, tariffs are not a tax on the exporting country, but rather on the importing company, who will then pass those added expenses on to their customers.  The investment bank UBS projected that a 10% tariff could lead to a 10% contraction in the stock market.
  • A report indicated that the inflation rate could rise to between 6% to 9.3% by 2026 under his policies, as opposed to a baseline estimate of 1.9% without his policies.  The average American household would see annual cost increases of $2,600 to $7,600.
  • Extending his 2017 tax cuts would add $5.8 trillion to the federal deficit.

Further, his plan to end taxes on overtime, Social Security benefits, and tips would add $3.6 trillion in debt – not to mention hastening Social Security’s insolvency – and his proposed campaign to detain and deport undocumented immigrants would cost $350 billion.  All told, his policies would add twice as much to the national debt as Harris’s would.

Trump will tell you that his tax cuts promote job creation and trickle down to the working class.  They don’t.  They lead to stock buybacks and bigger bonuses for corporate CEO’s.  A recent study from the London School of Economics found that 50 years of tax cuts did noting to change GDP or unemployment rates, and led to the incomes of the rich growing much faster in countries where taxes were lowered.  One of the co-authors of the study found that the period with the highest taxes on the rich was also a period with high economic growth and low unemployment.

Keep this in mind when Elon Musk and the tech bros of Silicon Valley are donating millions to get Republicans elected.  I don’t necessarily agree with the growing calls that billionaires shouldn’t exist, but Elon Musk could pay a 10% wealth tax and still be worth $244 billion.  Even if you factor in the 20% capital gains due on the stock he’d have to sell to pay the tax bill, he’d still have enough to buy every team in Major League Baseball and the NBA and have more than $34 billion leftover.

Now, enough about what the policies of “business genius” Donald Trump will do to the economy.  I looked up some of the standard barometers of the status of the economy from the beginning of the Reagan administration until the end of the Trump administration1 and determined an average change per presidential term by political party.

MetricDemocraticRepublicanBiden
Unemployment Rate Change-21.71%+19.34%-35.94%2
Gross Domestic Product Change+20.16%+23.38%+28.07%3
Federal Debt Change+25.89%+51.91%+23.81%
Federal Debt to Gross Domestic Product Ratio Change+5.22%+23.01%+3.32%
Consumer Price Index Change (i.e., inflation)+9.06%+13.53%+19.87%
Dow Jones Industrial Average+69.14%+31.77%+34.57%4
S&P 500+70.24%+29.58%+47.80%
Nasdaq+95.73%+41.92%+32.48%

You can argue with the methodology or discuss the overarching theory that a given president is working off the policies of his predecessor, and if you want to do that, I’d be fine looking at the numbers you put together.  As Mark Twain once said, there’s lies, damned lies, and statistics.  And you can attribute some of the numbers to shocks to the system (the 1987 stock market crash, the Great Recession, and the COVID pandemic), but for the most part those can be seen as functions of the policies of the administration in place.  But over the last 40+ years, the numbers are pretty telling: during Democratic presidencies, the unemployment rate, debt/GDP ratio, inflation (with the exception of the Biden administration), and the stock market all change at more advantageous rates than they do under Republican presidencies.

Do with that what you will.

The Other Guy

Donald Trump is a fascist.  This isn’t the rambling of a keyboard warrior who just thinks that the party opposite the one they support is automatically fascist.  This is the opinion of his Chief of Staff.  And this isn’t one of the guys that Trump hired because he’d tell Trump everything he wanted to hear, John Kelly was a Marine Corps general, one of the guys that was hired as a guy that would keep Trump in check.

Of course if that’s not enough for you there are the 13 officials from his administration who signed an open letter backing up Kelly’s criticism.

Or how about an interview with a Yale philosopher who wrote a book called “How Fascism Works” and said that Trump practices fascist politics 6 years ago?!?

Trump admires dictators and calls our allies weak.  He’s called his political enemies vermin and says that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.  He’s called for using detention camps for mass deportations.  He’s said he will use the military to handle an enemy from within, specifically, “radical left lunatics”.

A collection of 233 mental health professionals signed an open letter calling Trump an existential threat to democracy.  They accuse him of intense sadism, citing it as a symptom of malignant narcissism, and compare his psychology to history’s most evil dictators.

I could go on for days about Trump’s cruelty, his inability to take responsibility for anything he does that doesn’t work out, his refusal to apologize for any mistakes, his blatant hypocrisy, his racism, his sexism, his transphobia, his criminality, or the fact that he’s a sexual predator.  None of that matters.  All of that was known in 2016 and 2020 and tens of millions of people decided that they were perfectly fine with all of that because for years they’d been led to believe that Democrats were the enemy and would lead us to Communism.  They’ll gladly do it again this year knowing all of that, and that he led an attempted insurrection against this country, and that hundreds of people who know what they’re talking about are calling him a threat to the nation.

If that doesn’t chill you to the bones, you’re either not paying attention, or you don’t care.

Final Thoughts

As I’ve said before, Kamala Harris is not a perfect candidate.  That she’s the best the Democrats could come up with, after finally realizing that the corpse of Joe Biden threatened every down ballot race in the country is truly a depressing state of affairs, and it’s more depressing that there is an excellent chance that a person as flawed, cruel, and flat out evil as Donald Trump will be elected president again.

I’ve thought a lot about the people who have voted for Donald Trump or will vote for him this election cycle.  And I try my best not to view them as fundamentally flawed or irredeemable, because the people I know who have voted for him aren’t voting for him because they want to see women die when having an otherwise treatable miscarriage; or would rather trans people kill themselves than live as their true selves; or want to see people rounded up and thrown into concentration camps; but rather because they think those things don’t impact them and his economic policies are better for their families.

I’m terrified of what will happen next Tuesday, and what will happen between November 5 and January 6, and I’m terrified of what will happen on January 6 if circumstances arise that the election could be taken from the rightful winner, and I’m terrified of what will happen in the next four years should Donald Trump be inaugurated as president on January 20.  And I say that as a somewhat well-to-do straight white man.  I can’t imagine what marginalized communities are going through.

I’ve tried my best in this post to provide hopefully non-biased articles (as much as that’s possible in this world) that support my positions.  I don’t think I’ll change anyone’s mind but at this point it’s the best I can do.

  1. If you’re wondering about these arbitrary start and stop points, the current conservative movement is widely regarded as having its true jumping off point with Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1981.  And I would have included the Biden administration, but as his term is not yet completed, I didn’t want to do an apples to oranges comparison.  When looking at the numbers of his administration, though, it doesn’t change the overall point.  His term’s numbers are included for your information. ↩︎
  2. Through 9/1/2024 ↩︎
  3. GDP, Federal Debt, and GDP/Federal Debt Ration through 4/1/2024 ↩︎
  4. DJIA, S&P 500, and Nasdaq through 10/7/2024 ↩︎

Everything is Awful

It’s been over 3 years since I’ve written (at least for this blog, I’ve written a few things at my sports blog in that time – you should check it out if you haven’t already…well, unless you’re a Michigan fan), and a few of you have asked if you’ve missed some posts from me. Not many of you, but enough to reinforce my belief that I actually have a writing style that keeps people entertained, if only for a few minutes. That said, there’s a rather simple reason why I haven’t sat down and put the proverbial pen to paper.

Everything. Fucking. Sucks.

It’s really nothing more than that. Sure, there are some excuses other than that. The last time I sat down to write something for this blog, I’d come off a fairly unpleasant year where my mother, uncle, and cat had passed away, and my father had been hospitalized. I was still dealing with settling all of the matters of my mother’s estate, and a project to digitize and organize all of my mother’s photos was taking up much of the time I might otherwise be writing – a project that is not fully completed as of this writing.

Nothing of note has happened since then.

I mean other than the pandemic, the insurrection, constant barrages on the civil rights of minorities and the LGBTQ+ community, the descent toward authoritarianism by a rather significant portion of this country (not to mention one of our two major political parties), a baseball lockout (not a huge issue in the grand scheme of things, but I’m a baseball nut and my team has finally started to spend money), and now a war triggered by a madman that those authoritarians in this country are propping up.

That doesn’t even count the fact that I’ve had 7 jobs since I wrote last.

(Ok, I’ll admit that overdramatizes the situation, as a couple of those jobs were contract-to-hire or reorganizations where there was no actual change in job responsibilities. But I really have had 5 jobs with 7 employers since I last wrote.)

It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write. I’ve gone on fairly regular walks in the last 3 years, and on those walks my mind has often wandered to the thoughts I’d like to share with the world. But when I get back to my home I’ve never had the good sense to sit down and write down those thoughts. Probably because I have the attention span of a puppy and get distracted by whatever show I’ve decided to binge at any given time (these days: Euphoria – good but disturbing, especially if you’ve got children…I imagine, anyway).

In the end, the simple fact is that everything sucks. I don’t say that lightly. As I mentioned in my last post, before she passed away, my mother – who had always wanted grandchildren – expressed her happiness that neither my brother nor myself had had children, so dismayed at the world had she become. And that was almost 4 years ago.

So what I’m going to do is offer up my thoughts on a few of the things that are pissing me off, and hope that clears my head and gets me into a better frame of mind to want to sit down more often to share my thoughts with you. This isn’t going to be pleasant for everyone, so now’s your time to bail.

You’ve been warned.

I’m serious.

Ok, here we go. Thanks to everyone who’s still here.

Today’s Political Discourse

Look, when writing about the things that have pissed me off over the last 3 years, it would make sense to start with the global pandemic that has dominated everything since March 2020. And believe me, I will get to it. But unfortunately, a rather significant portion of my displeasure with the pandemic and how we have approached it has been dominated by our differences in political viewpoints. It is a huge problem in this country, and I’m not keeping quiet about it (not that I ever have).

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I’m a fairly progressive individual. I believe in abortion, Medicare for All, Black Lives Matter, equality for the LGBTQ+ community, and voting rights, among other things. You don’t have to agree with me on these matters, but you do have to understand that it’s going to impact what you read here going forward. And I am a firm believer that the Republican party is an ongoing threat to democracy in this country.

You can call me a nut, you can say I sound unintelligent, you can tell me to calm down and not think about it because it’s 2+ years away. You’ll be hard pressed to convince me that it’s untrue. The Republican party gave themselves over to a snake oil salesman who admires dictators and attempted to overthrow an election. If you believe Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, just stop reading now. You’re beyond saving, you’re too stupid for me to engage with.

They refuse to disavow him. If Trump says the sky is green, 209 Congressmen and 50 Senators would sign a binding resolution stating that the sky is and always has been green. They have turned into a cult and it will lead us to our downfall. Barring a conviction and prison sentence – something that is looking increasingly unlikely lately – Trump will be the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee, he will either win outright or he will follow the Bill Maher playbook to complete his coup and take the presidency in 2025, and he will come up with some excuse as to why he hasn’t exhausted his 2-term limit and run again in 2028. And if he does take the presidency by coup – sorry, but it’s not nearly as ridiculous as some of you believe – then democracy in this country will have died.

The Republicans are going to take the House and Senate in 2022. There’s little chance that doesn’t happen. And they will likely work to advance their abhorrent agenda to take away a woman’s right to control what happens to her body; to take away what pathetic health care we provide to people in this country; to take away gay marriage; to stop just short of saying, “Minorities can’t vote.” If you don’t look at their actions and see that this is what they intend to do, you’re beyond help.

(And don’t tell me you’re “fiscally conservative, socially liberal”. I recently joined Match – more on that later – and this is one of their options for your political preferences.  It drives me crazy. That’s some semantic bullshit. I used to spew that shit when I was young and stupid(er). You are what you vote for. If you vote conservative because it’ll cost you less in taxes, you’re a conservative. You don’t get to disavow their social atrocities because you only voted for them because it’ll save you a couple of bucks that you can probably afford.)

I’m not letting the Democrats off the hook. The Republicans are evil, but the Democrats are fucking incompetent, plain and simple. They’ve got the White House and both houses of Congress and yet somehow can’t get anything passed because 2 Republican-lite Senators bog their agenda down and think that bipartisanship is an achievable goal. I guess we should be glad they don’t flip to Republicans and give the Senate back to Mitch McConnell. Maybe Biden will be able to sneak his Supreme Court nominee through, but I’m not holding my breath.

The one thing the Democrats should be able to stand on as a notable achievement of the Biden administration – the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is one of the only things I ever agreed with Donald Trump on – they fucked up. Don’t get me wrong, his critics are being disingenuous in their criticism, because whenever we withdrew from that quagmire, the Taliban was going to take over. But it could’ve gone much smoother.

And, much as I stand with the progressive wing of the party, they seem to be attempting to sabotage a lot of legislation that would help a lot of people because it doesn’t go far enough. Tough shit! Progress comes in stages. I’m fine with a $3 trillion progressive bill, but I understand why some – even some Democrats – might find it tough to stomach and want to pass something a little more manageable. Get passed what you can get passed and live to fight another day.

I liked it better when I was 12 and had no clue who the Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader was. This country is fucking doomed.

The Pandemic

We live in a country where over 967,000 people (as of this writing) have died as the result of a pandemic that kills about 2% of the people who get it. Over 1000 people a day are still dying of the disease. And at this point, it feels like almost every death is preventable.

I have a friend who went into shutdown mode when the pandemic hit. No guests. Didn’t go out to restaurants even when he was allowed to. Got the vaccine as soon as he could. He did everything he should have done. If we had all followed his lead, this thing would’ve been gone in a month.

The trouble is, we didn’t follow my friend’s lead. The leadership in this country knew how bad it would be and ignored it, for fear of setting off a panic. Truth is, they didn’t care about a panic amongst the people, but in the markets. They couldn’t stop that. What’s amazing is the president told one of the reporters that broke the Watergate scandal that the disease was going to be a major problem – before anyone even knew about the virus – and that reporter saved it for a book instead of reporting it.

(I’m not even going to get into the media in this post…it’s a shit show, but I’ve spent so much time defending the media that I’ll need more time to justify my hypocrisy.)

Refusals and/or displeasure with closure of businesses and schools. Ignoring mask mandates and making scenes when confronted. Claiming the vaccines are some sort of government conspiracy or that you’re “doing their own research”. I’m glad my parents taught me to know what I don’t know, because I know that no matter how much research I do, it’s not going to compare to the years the doctors who created the vaccines spent on it. You don’t want to get vaccinated? Cool. My sympathy is gone, and I don’t want to hear any stories about some unvaccinated schmuck having his “Come to Jesus” moment and deciding he should’ve gotten vaccinated as he takes his last breath. I will get a booster every week if they tell me to if it means the world stays open.

Full disclosure, I got COVID being an idiot, as I went to a crowded bar on St. Patrick’s Day. I then gave it to a friend, who passed it on to his family, before I knew I had it. I literally got the call that I could schedule my vaccine appointment the day I got my positive test. Don’t be like me.

The sad thing is that the vast majority of the people who resisted all of the mitigation efforts fall into one specific political orientation, and it’s not much of a surprise which one. The simple fact is that the COVID crisis has shown us that most conservatives don’t care if people die, as long as their world isn’t inconvenienced one little bit.

Sports

Alright, enough about the serious stuff. I think I’d be somewhat more happy if I could have one good sports team to celebrate. But the last time a Detroit team won a playoff game was over 2100 days ago. The last time they won a playoff series was over 3000 days ago, and it doesn’t look like either streak will be snapped this year.  And, to add insult to injury, the Lions traded away their franchise QB, and he promptly wins the Super Bowl in his first season with a new team.  But hey, at least I won a chunk of change backing up my claim that he’d win whenever he left Detroit.

Michigan State’s football team went through a rather significant collapse and their most successful coach in half a century left the program in shambles.  Our new coach has brought them back to some level of national prominence, so that’s a plus. But the basketball team, long a national power, had the season cancelled because of the pandemic just as they were primed for a deep tournament run, and the two seasons since have not exactly inspired much confidence. They snuck into the tournament in 2021 because of a 2-week run that fooled the committee into thinking we belonged, only to lose in a First Four matchup while our fans bitched our seeding. They snapped out of a stretch where they lost 5 out of 6 with a win against the #4 team in the country, so our tournament streak looks to be safe, but this isn’t really a team that seems poised for a deep run.

Sports are not exactly pleasant. And that’s just the on-field stuff.

Baseball is likely to cancel games because the owners have locked out players, refused to negotiate, and claimed they’ve run out of ideas, all while refusing to raise minimum salaries and their de facto salary cap in line with the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, they try to convince us owning a baseball team isn’t a healthy investment as they take public funds to build stadiums and keep all the profits. I realize that any labor dispute between a professional sports league and its players is routinely criticized as “millionaires vs. billionaires”, but it’s never that simple. The fact is that even if the average salary is in the millions of dollars – and it is – the dispute between the owners and players is not much different from any sort of labor dispute with a unionized work force, with the ruling class doing everything they can to give their workers as little as they possibly can. Am I weeping for the players? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean I am ever going to side with ownership.

(Especially since the family that owns the Tigers kinda sucks.)

Simply put, everything is awful and I can’t even take solace in sports. Fun times.

Dating

I’d love to be able to put together another entry in the Date from Hell Chronicles, but the simple fact is that there’s not much to tell on the dating front.

(Actually, that’s not entirely true. While I’ve found that my readers find those stories fairly entertaining, for me they come from some moments that don’t exactly leave me beaming with pride.)

But a pandemic that requires people to quarantine at home doesn’t leave much opportunity for dating. I was seeing someone at the beginning of the pandemic, but it became pretty apparent that she wasn’t as interested in me as I was in her, I said something to that effect via text (it’s 2022 – no one talks on the phone), and she accused me of being threatened by her independence. Good times.

I went out on a couple of dates with a woman who ultimately decided I didn’t live close enough to her and she wanted to find someone in her neighborhood (I live about 15 miles away from her).

I had some encounters with a friend that ultimately came down to us both being fairly lonely and not liking to drink alone, but we ultimately weren’t all that compatible.

I had a few decent dates with a girl I really liked, but after a conversation discussing rather significant differences in what we want, she ghosted me.

I’ve used the dating sites, but there aren’t many matches, and the ones I do get aren’t all that exciting. I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that “Happily Ever After” just doesn’t exist for me, or if it did exist it was probably with someone I’ve already pushed out of my life.

There have been some good things.  I managed to lose 50 pounds.  For the first time in my career I’ve found a job with a company I can see myself retiring with.  I managed to cross a few new stadiums off my bucket list.  The housing market has me poised to make a decent amount of profit if I want to sell my house (although any gains would go into another overpriced home).  My brother’s health issues have subsided for the time being and my dad seems to be doing fairly well.  As bad as things are, they could certainly be worse.

That’s it folks. I’d love to sit down and write on a regular basis, but I really don’t have the energy. I work from home, and when I’m done for the day I’ll lie on the couch and watch TV until I go to bed. Occasionally I’ll meet up with friends for drinks or dinner, but that’s about all I want to do these days. I’m fairly certain I’m going through some low-grade depression, but it could also be that I’ve reached that wonderful point of middle-age where men are shown to be as miserable as they’ll be in their entire life (I believe I read that it peaks around 46, so I’ve still got a couple more years before rock bottom comes).

I hope it’s going to get better, but we’ve also experienced a great deal of collective trauma in the last few years and I’m really coming to the conclusion that most people who get ahead in this world do so by treating people like absolute shit, and I just refuse to go down that road for my own success. I’m fine with where I am in life, but I can’t say it’s left me particularly happy.

Sorry that my first post in years has been a bit of a downer. I’m not exactly a “glass is half full” sort of guy.  Here’s to hoping things get turned around and my mood changes. I’m not overly optimistic.

Hello Again! And Good Riddance 2018.

Well, it’s been a while, and I figured I should make it a goal – not a resolution, those are too easy to give up on – to try to write more.  So before I start on some of the thoughts that have been bouncing around in my brain, I figured I’d provide everyone (well, the 3 people who read my blogs on a regular basis – Hi Dad!) an update on why I’ve been away so long.

Last year was not a great year for me and my family.  And I’m not talking about this being something like 2016 where it seemed like a new celebrity was dying every week and then we elected a literal lunatic to run our country.  Our 2018 had a body count.

The “year” from hell actually started right after Thanksgiving 2017, when I got back from my dad’s house to discover my beloved cat skinny and lethargic.  A trip to the vet found him with a kidney problem and they gave me some food that would make him feel better.  It didn’t.  He barely touched it, the next morning he fell getting down from his cat tower, and I knew his time was up and I had to have him put down.

Fast forward to a Saturday evening in February 2018.  I received a text from my mother asking if she could do a 3-way call with my brother and I.  She told us in very clinical, professional terms: “I have good news and bad news.  We’ve found your uncle.  He’s deceased.  He jumped off the George Washington Bridge four years ago.”

Huh.

Now, a little backstory.  Obviously because he killed himself four years ago, he’s been missing for quite some time, so the news that he was dead was something of an inevitability.  The “good news” that my mother referred to was the fact that we’d found him, as she’d been looking for her brother for quite some time.  We discovered he had been buried in an unmarked grave in New York, so my mother went through the process of having him exhumed and cremated and sent to her so she could spread his ashes.  My uncle’s ex-wife and daughter weren’t much help, which I’m pointing out not as criticism but simple fact.  When your father/ex-husband puts you through hell with his problems and then disappears, it’s not hard to understand why you’re happy about the closure but may not want to address the logistics.

The problem with that is that my mother was in what we’d later find to be failing health, relying on oxygen to breathe, and dealing with anxiety issues that only exacerbate the problem (something my brother and I didn’t realize until months later when a doctor told us we needed to help convince her to address the anxiety).  Throughout the first half of the year she was in and out of the hospital and various rehab facilities, with the occasional stop at home in between.  Because she lived 90 miles away from us and was not insistent upon my brother and I coming up on the weekends (and because my brother and I are horrible people who have absolutely zero awareness of our surroundings), we didn’t see just how bad things were getting until she wound up in the ICU in May.  But the doctors told us physically she was improving and that her biggest issue was the anxiety, so we got her on some anti-anxiety medication (about 40 years after she should have been on them) and she was able to go back home with some home health care assistance.

Then in June we got another one of her “good news/bad news” phone calls.  They had found some blood clots in her lungs, which was causing a lot of her problems, so they could put her on some blood thinners and get things under control (the bad news being, of course, that the clots could go from her lungs to her heart and kill her, so there was that).  She was coherent and lucid and it looked like things were turning around.

Then two days later her doctor called and told us we needed to put her on a breathing machine.  I was her medical representative and knew she didn’t want to be on a breathing machine permanently, so I asked when she’d come off.  The doctor said he didn’t know if she would, I said that wasn’t something she wanted, so he told me it was time for my brother and I to come home.

Huh.

We knew our mom was sick, we knew she wasn’t going to be around for another 10 years, but we hadn’t considered the end would come so soon.  So we came home, said our goodbyes, and watched our mom die.

We would later find out through a couple of her friends that it wasn’t such a huge surprise that she was going so quickly.  Apparently her friends would see her going downhill every time they saw her, and she would respond by telling them they were not to call my brother and I.

Thanks Mom.

Finally, in July, my dad had a health scare that required an emergency trip to visit him in Illinois.  He’s had pretty constant health problems since he fell and broke his leg a few years back, including one that would be comical if it wasn’t so serious where some workers who were repairing his roof knocked something loose and caused a “small” carbon monoxide leak that affected him more than his wife because he was home 24/7.  After some prodding from his wife (my dad’s like most 70-something men when it comes to being stubborn), my dad headed for another hospital trip.  On Saturday when my step-mother asked if he’d like for us to head down, he said with everything that had happened with our mom he didn’t want us rushing down unless it was serious.  The next morning when she asked the same thing, he said that he wanted us to come down.

Huh.

Thankfully, after a 10-hour drive my brother and I arrived and did a bit of a, “That’s it?” to each other.  He was on oxygen and couldn’t talk (a bit of a deja vu situation with my mother), but he was coherent and could converse via pen and paper.  We went back the next morning to see him upright and talkative, and headed home.  Thankfully, after all his health woes, he seems to be as well off as we could expect at this point.

There have been other issues.  My brother had a relapse of what we’ll call some health issues that resulted in him losing his job.  And in September we woke up to text messages from our step-sister saying that she and her family were safe, which led us to discover that her synagogue had been shot up by a madman and 11 of their friends and fellow congregants were dead.

Huh.

I couldn’t even take solace in sports.  For the first time in over 30 years no Detroit team played in a playoff game.  The Tigers’ once-in-a-generation superstar was revealed to have a second family and then missed most of the season after tearing his bicep.  The Red Wings’ captain retired when his back wouldn’t hold up.  We actually found ourselves saying, “At least we have the Lions,” which, if you know anything about sports might be the greatest statement of a cities’ sporting ineptitude short of bringing up Frank Wycheck to someone from Buffalo.  Michigan State’s basketball team went from a national title contender to losing in the second round to an inferior Syracuse team (adding insult to injury Michigan wound up in the national championship game).  Their football team showed promise early, only to flame out at 7-6, ending the season with one of the most unwatchable bowl games I’ve ever seen.

And just for good measure, Michigan State found themselves embroiled in a sexual assault scandal that cost us our president and our athletic director; cost us $500 million in settlements to survivors; might be the poster child for how not to handle a public relations crisis; and has Penn State looking at us and saying, “Jesus Christ guys, seriously?!?”

There’s been some good to come out of all of this.  My cat was 17 and I knew his time was winding down, and I found another cat who’s annoying and a bit of a dummy, but entertaining as hell.  We finally have answers about my uncle.  My mom is at peace, which is important when I realize that, as someone who always wanted grand kids, she found herself so dismayed by the state of our country that she said to me at one point that she was glad my brother and I didn’t have kids to raise in this world.  My dad is doing better for now.  My brother is working on himself.  My mother’s rather frugal lifestyle has given my brother and I some opportunities we might not have otherwise had.

I’m sorry this post doesn’t have any of my typical witticisms or comedic tendencies.  But if there’s a chance you were wondering why I hadn’t written, I hope you can understand that dealing with family health issues, wrapping up an estate, cleaning out and selling a house that hadn’t been cleaned in years, dealing with the fact that our mother didn’t keep us as informed about her health issues as we would’ve liked, and just the general mourning process where you don’t necessarily want to do anything on some nights, I wasn’t necessarily in a spot where I wanted to sit down and write.  I’m not promising anything solid for this year, but I’d like to do better.

Here’s to a better 2019.  Honestly, it can’t be that tough, can it?

The Date From Hell Chronicles, Volume 4: Trust Your Friends

It has been brought to my attention that my blog posts have been increasingly sporadic and somewhat boring.  I must admit I can see the point, as the state of the world today has me more than a little pissed off and lazy/apathetic (at least when it comes to sitting down and writing).  So today I’m choosing to ignore politics and the shitty state of Detroit sports and go back to the comedic well.  That’s right my friends, by special request, we’re bringing you a new entry in the Date from Hell Chronicles.

As always, I swear on my life that this actually happened (to the best of my recollection).  And to my parents, I apologize.

Our story today actually came over a year ago, but after it was over I found myself really reassessing things and wondering what the hell I was doing with my life, so I wasn’t particularly enthused about revisiting this particular evening.  But after a year I can definitely see the humor in it.

This particular story begins almost 4 years before, when a group of friends and I were out to watch some football.  One of my friends and his girlfriend decided to invite a friend of theirs and introduce her to me.  After a while we head back to his girlfriend’s place, me and the friend play around a bit, we go back to her place (more on this in a minute), play a bit more, then fall asleep.  Nothing really significant happened, and when the date that is the subject of this story takes place, I’m fairly certain she doesn’t remember me.

Now, there are two things to note about this girl.  One, she was missing a tooth.  I understand that people have dental issues, but generally you try to get things like this fixed.  Two, she lived in her father’s basement.  Again, I understand that people fall on rough times and need to stay with family, but it’s a bit of a red flag at my age.

Fast forward to the summer of 2016, and my friend Shoe Boy’s* girlfriend Farmer Girl* is trying to set me up with her sister.  Except her sister has 4 kids, including a newborn, and because I’m an asshole who would prefer to date people without kids, I subtly push her toward setting me with Toothless, the girl from years before.  I’d checked out her Facebook page, she looked fairly normal, and I figured after 4 years she had probably gotten her tooth fixed and her own place.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.  And the guilty.

If only.

So Farmer Girl decided to set up a double date with Shoe Boy and Toothless and I for a Saturday in July.  As Farmer Girl and I were coordinating, we decided to meet up around 8:00.  I told her I was going to check out a movie and then I’d meet up with her, and she asked what movie.  I told her I was going to see Suicide Squad, and she suggested the 4 of us go together.  Sure, no problem, let’s check out the 6:30 movie, and then we’ll grab drinks and food after.

Shortly thereafter, Farmer Girl texts me in a huff saying that Shoe Boy was being a dipshit, she wasn’t going out, but that Toothless still wants to meet up and I should get in touch with her.  OK, this is a bit of a red flag, but to be honest I’m looking at Toothless as a bit of a slump buster (look it up if you’re not familiar), so I decide to hit her up.  When I do, she says she’s definitely interested in hanging out, but that I need to pick her up because she can’t drive.  Another red flag.

Now, if I had any common sense and/or self-esteem, I would’ve looked at the sum total of red flags – the missing tooth, living in her father’s basement, not driving, my friends bailing and eliminating any support system – and decided to cancel or reschedule.  But nope.  Because hey, I might get laid.

If only.

If you’re familiar with the show How I Met Your Mother, you’re familiar with the concept of a Lemon Law date.  Essentially, if you show up to your date and the person is nothing like what you expected, you declare “Lemon Law” at the beginning of the date and you go your separate ways.  Now, I’ve never called Lemon Law on a date, but I’ve been very tempted and I’ve met people who have.  If ever I was going to use it, it was when I showed up to pick Toothless up.

If only.

She still lived at her father’s house.  She was still missing the tooth.  And of course she couldn’t drive (not necessarily relevant in a lot of cities, but certainly an issue in Detroit).

The girl was not unattractive, and I’m not particularly a looker, so I decided to muscle through and hope there’s a decent payoff at the end.  So we head to one of my favorite local bars to grab dinner and watch the Tigers and the Olympics.

Red flag #1: she starts ordering shots of Fireball.  With Every. Single. Round.

OK, I wasn’t quite looking to go down this route, but hey, payoff, right?

So we finish up at bar #1 and decide to hit a dive bar and maybe play some pool or darts or something.  I mention another one of my local favorites, which both she and Farmer Girl despise.  She offers up the Toy Chest.  The Toy Chest is a strip club (red flag #4).  More significantly, the Toy Chest is a strip club 25 miles away (red flag #5).

Now, previously in the Date from Hell Chronicles I have discussed a personal policy of never turning down a girl who says she wants to go to a strip club, so while I wasn’t particularly looking to see more than one naked lady that night, I wasn’t going to turn her down.  But I wasn’t about to drive 50 miles getting to and from a strip club when there were several on my side of town, so I called veto and suggested Centerfolds, which is likely the diviest strip club in the Detroit Metro area that hasn’t shown up on Bar Rescue.  She’s down.  In fact, not only is she down, if I’m not mistaken she claims she had previously worked at Centerfolds as a house-mother.

We get to Centerfolds and notice that there is a party bus pulling up just as we pay our cover and head in.  This didn’t really stand out except to notice that Centerfolds isn’t exactly the type of place you might take a party bus to.  But after we get in and order our drinks – a bucket of beer for me, a drink for her, and, of course, shots of Fireball – I notice that she’s over talking to one of the guys from the party bus.  Not a huge deal, I try not to be the type of guy to tell someone who they can and can’t talk to.  It turns out that she had babysat the guy years back.  But when the guy shows up at our table a few minutes later, the date goes into “What the fuck is going on?” territory.

The guy sits down and proceeds to tell Toothless that he’d love to see her tits, and that he’s wanted to ever since she babysat him.  Hey, this is understandable, every guy wants to see every girl’s boobs, and to an extent I had to admire the balls on the guy for even asking.  For some reason I don’t recall being particularly pissed, and I’m not sure why, although I imagine the general lack of interest I had in Toothless was the primary reason.

Now, considering the fact that she was ordering shots with every round and was, in fact, the one who suggested we hit the strip club, I should not have been surprised when she accepted the guy’s request (red flag #6).  Instinct, however, had my eyes bulging out of my head, as she looked at me and told me not to look, as this was third date material for me (I didn’t tell her that there was no way in hell there was going to be a second date, let alone a third one).  After the guy had gotten a good enough look, I told him it was time for him to leave, he did, and we finished our drinks and decided to head to another local strip club.

Why we were doing a tour of local strip clubs I’ll never know.

It needs to be pointed out that throughout the evening Toothless and I were trying to get in touch with Farmer Girl and Shoe Boy to get them to come out, which probably says something about how well Toothless and I were getting along.  Between the two strip clubs, Toothless finally heard from Shoe Boy, who asked her point-blank if I was getting laid tonight.  Thanks Shoe Boy, somehow I don’t think that question is going to help.  A fact that was confirmed when she proclaimed quite indignantly that it wasn’t going to happen as she doesn’t do that on the first date.  Understandable, although you can hopefully understand a guy’s confusion when you just showed your tits to another guy in the strip club.

As you might imagine, my mood changed considerably at this point, because I am a terrible person.  We went to the next strip club, ordered another drink, had another shot, and she asked if someone was working (they weren’t).  We finished our drinks, then decided to close the night at a “normal” bar.  Bet you don’t know what we did there?  That’s right, ordered a drink and a shot (shocker!).  Except Toothless kept disappearing, which I wasn’t particularly concerned about, although I did find it a bit rude considering we were supposedly on a date.  I finally ventured outside, where she was talking to another guy.

And then, for the second time in my life, I left a date at a bar.

To be fair, this time I paid the bill, but I’d had enough.  This was supposed to be a casual double date, and for various reasons, I’d missed out on a movie I’d been wanting to see, watched my date take out her tits for another guy, seen her talk to a different guy at every single bar we’d been to, and paid a ridiculous amount of money with nary an effort to pick up a tab (I don’t care about paying, I care about the offer).  So I decided to cut my losses and call it a night (to be fair it was almost last call).

I made it home, fell on the floor, passed out, and woke up to a voice mail from Shoe Boy praising me for leaving her behind.  I didn’t really think it was particularly praiseworthy, but I did feel like less of an asshole for doing it when he sent that.  I sent a text to apologize to Farmer Girl later in the day, and she, surprisingly, apologized to me for setting me up with her.

In telling this story to friends previously, it was a no-brainer that I had asked to be set up with a total shit-show, she had behaved like a total shit-show, and it was a funny story.  In writing it up, however, I realize that I had been asked to be set up with someone for a one-shot date that hopefully ended up in bed, so I didn’t exactly have the purest of intentions.

Shockingly, Farmer Girl still wanted to set me up with her sister, but since she and Shoe Boy have broken up it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.  And while this might come as common sense to most, perhaps when your friends have single friends, and they’re not offering to set you up with those single friends, you really shouldn’t push the issue.

Naturally, though, I have to learn the hard way.  The lesson, as always: I am an idiot.