Confessions

I confess that I have little spare time this weekend – so I’ll keep this post short and sweet.

I confess that all this Putin-worship on Fox News absolutely confounds me.   Isn’t this guy just another macho strongman who isn’t weighed down by scruples?  Isn’t he just another clownish politician who stages phony photo-ops in order to show off athletic prowess that he presumably doesn’t truly possess?  So why are so many of our talking heads celebrating him as some sort of role model for leadership?   Is that really the kind of statesman that Americans should admire?

I confess that, just because I have distaste for Putin, that doesn’t mean I think Hillary should be comparing him to Hitler.  Do we really see this Russian punk in the same league as a man who gave us the worst atrocities in human history?  Doesn’t someone need to have more blood on his hands than Putin in order to warrant the Nazi comparisons?  Let’s please stop comparing every international bully or madman to Hitler.  It just trivializes what the Nazis did.   

I confess that despite my fascination with the tragic disappearance of flight MH 370, I’ve long ago lost patience for watching TV news coverage of the event.   Every day or two we get a bit more information, and that info is appreciated, but cable news channels aren’t satisfied with reporting one or two tidbits.  They feel the need to bring in “experts” and other yentahs to speculate ad nauseum about the situation.   Is there possibly a reason to listen to such endless speculation?  Tell me, when you’re driving and notice a wreck on the highway, would you want the guy in the passenger seat of your car to launch into a fifteen minute discourse on the possible causes of the wreck and the likelihood of each possibility?  If that prospect defines monotonous, why would you want to tune into cable news coverage of MH 370 these days? 

I confess that as a Democrat, I am more than a bit nervous about the upcoming midterm elections.   Even under the best of circumstances, my party tends to struggle in midterm elections because we have difficulty getting out part of our vote.   The problem is worse when the incumbent President is a Democrat.  And this year, the problem is particularly profound because the Dems are generating precisely zero excitement. They’re essentially allowing this election to become a referendum on the Affordable Care Act, and whoever’s job it is to hype that law to the nation is doing about as well as the gang responsible for the website rollout.   For starters, it was dumb that the President encouraged the law to be referred to as “Obamacare.”  But if he’s going to own it, he can at least speak more soulfully about what makes him proud of the law.   Right now, the Republicans have placed the President and his health care law at the middle of every corner bar in this country and invited the public to throw darts at it.  Do we Democrats care to respond to that invitation?   Or are we content to just “wait for Hillary” in 2016?   At this rate, if and when she does get elected, she’ll be dealing with one ornery Congress, and the only winners will be the conservatives who enjoy governmental gridlock.

I confess that the prospects of another failed effort to bring about Middle East peace scares me.  Next month, our Secretary of State is expected to announce that the parties have reached yet another stalemate, and once again we will have nothing tangible to show for the efforts of the past several months.  Next time we bring the parties to the peace table, can’t we please set some achievable, interim goals rather than putting all of our eggs in the Final Status Agreement basket?  I’m afraid that without any accomplishments for the peacemakers to point to as beacons of hope, this latest round of negotiations will leave the Jews and Palestinians with little more than their mutual distrust and the opportunity to build settlements and blow up buildings. I pray that sanity will prevail, but we can’t exactly count on that, now can we?

I confess that, on a personal note, my life over the past several months has been missing something vital. Late in 2013, I watched sadly as my sole surviving pet lost his battle to old age.   On December 31^st, he was put down, and ever since, my family has been dog-less … and I’ve been cranky.  Hopefully, I’ll remedy this lack soon enough, and maybe it will make my posts more uplifting.  It will certainly lift up my spirits.

Finally, I confess that in my NCAA basketball pool, I picked against all three of my alma maters (Stanford, Harvard, American) and the first two actually won their games.   That is just another reminder that disloyal people get what they deserve.  I bet if I still had a dog, I would have taken Harvard and Stanford to reach the round of 16.