America's Hottest New Party Game: Pin the Quarterback on the Bear

Depending on your definition, professional sports may exist solely to entertain you. Wins? Losses? A three-dimensional, living testament to persistence and an inspirational example of dedication and desire?

Not so much. Provided you're able to momentarily forget about the treadmill to oblivion that is your job, call it mission accomplished. And on that front, the Chicago Bears are wildly successful.

The spectacular mismanagement that has put the Bears in their current position is technically unimportant. What matters is that it's entertaining!

Just listen as Bears fans clutch hope to their breast while a succession of sugar plum fairies dances across their collective imagination: Deshaun Watson. Matthew Stafford. Carson Wentz. And most recently, Russell Wilson.

None of them had (or has) a snowball's chance in Phoenix of ever appearing in a Bears uniform, but that has never stood (or stands) in the way of a good fantasy (aided and abetted by the local media).

But the ugly reality is that the Bears are crippled. They have no cap space. No storehouse of superfluous first-round picks. GM Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy might be the only ones to realize it, but the stay of execution issued by chairman George McCaskey last winter isn't as gracious as it appears.

They have a single offseason to find a ready, willing and able quarterback, revamp an offensive line that—on its very best day—is mediocre and import some wide receivers worthy of the name, all while soothing the ruffled feathers of their presumptive franchise-tag nominee, Allen Robinson.

It's a tall order. Especially for two guys whose success could best be called sporadic.

But Stafford is a Los Angeles Ram. Wentz is an Indianapolis Colt. The Houston Texans have shown no sign of granting the frustrated Watson his wish and if it even needs to be said, Wilson is a very long way from being an ex-Seattle Seahawk.

Only the fans and media tied to the local franchise would be desperate-enough to even entertain the idea.

And if you're Andy Dalton, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Sam Darnold, Cam Newton, Jameis Winston or Marcus Mariota, why would you want to play for the Bears, anyway?

The print media has generated acres of coverage. The electronic media has consumed enough electricity to power a small nation for months. And it should be noted that out of that coverage have come two very salient observations.

One: given their decades-long inability to draft and develop a franchise quarterback, do the Bears have any idea how to properly assess candidates at the position?

And two: is a front office who equates collaboration with an end-of-the-rainbow destination instead of a required component in a functioning executive suite even qualified to lead a professional sports franchise? Much less a mom and pop grocery?

Not from here.

Ahh, but I'm just rabble. A bit player in the nameless and faceless throng. A cell in the teeming great unwashed. Or, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, the fan in the arena. 

Fair-weather follower that I am, I can cackle with delight at a franchise who more often than not is its own worst enemy.

Frustrating? Yeah. Entertaining? As fuck.

Next?

Living by the Sword

As an avowed anti-Republican, the mess in Texas puts me in a funny place. Do I snicker? Cry? What is the correct response? Before you label me a hater and paste this on your social media platform of choice, hear me out.

I feel nothing but pity for the people watching their homes freeze. And then flood. For the people getting socked with four-digit utility bills. For the people whose lives have been upended (again) by a storm stoked via climate change.

On the other hand, Texas and its citizens have long revelled in their defiance of any policy that didn't originate with a Republican. Remember how Texas was at the forefront of the masks-are-tyranny protests last summer? Texans glory in their state's self-referencing itself as a “whole 'nother country.” Is there a soul alive who hasn't been told not to mess with Texas?

I guess our ever-changing climate didn't get the memo.

For the second time in three and-a-half years, Texas' refusal to adopt federal regulations with regards to zoning and flood protocols and to ignore suggested protections directed at its energy grid have blown up in its face. Texas is the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks teenager who believes he can ride his bike with his eyes closed.

Until he can't.

Then he runs home to mom, who despite the yelling and the finger-pointing and the repeated cries to stay out of his life opens her purse and dutifully offers a wad of fresh Kleenex—if not a ride to the hospital (where I discretely point out it is her insurance which provides for his recuperation).

Texas has poached jobs and people nationwide and bragged about it. It loudly claims to offer life without regulation, a state income tax and good old free-market, Republican-styled capitalism.

And I say "Yahoo, partner!"

But here's the thing. Its smarmy, arrogant businessticians want to avoid regulation at all costs, because no one—no one—should be able to tell a white, Texas businessman what to do. They should be free to do whatever the hell they want to do without smothering oversight from the big, bad federal government.

And that's fine. To each their own. 

But it's just a bit disingenuous and a tad hypocritical to turn around and demand aid from that same big, bad federal government before your latest broadside about the evils of overly-invasive government has even had a chance to evaporate.

Like I said, I'm a strident anti-Republican. And I am tired of watching Democrats forced once again to be the parent. Of having to play the grown-up. The reconciler. The nice guy. The one with a fully-developed sense of humanity and bigger, broader horizons in mind.

Yep. Tired. Really. Fucking. Tired.

Texas, pack your play things and go home. Show us some of that famously resilient self-sufficiency! You don't need anything or anyone! It's time to prove it. 

Like that orange-haired asshole you adore, you clearly believe you're bigger than the United States. I'm sure you'd be more comfortable without our suffocating restraints. And our aid.

Was it really that long ago that former governor Rick Perry was making noise about seceding? Hey—anything worth trying once is worth trying twice! Come on, Greg. You too, Rick. I'll even hold the door for ya.

But one thing before you go: mom is out of Kleenex.

The Other Side of the Asile

If you're like me, you might have winced ever so slightly when Republicans accused Twitter and Facebook (and by extension—“cancel culture” Democrats) of denying Donald Trump his First Amendment rights. His right to free speech.

Of censorship and banishment.

And um, I agree. In the tiniest, most-literal sense imaginable.

But this is Donald Trump. The cancer who stood in front of a mob of right-wing nut jobs and exhorted them to do his bidding for him. To march on the Capitol building and prevent the “stolen” election results from being etched in stone—by any and all means necessary.

But like so much of what emanates from the mouths of Republicans, we needn't have worried.

Republicans have taken it upon themselves to administer their own brand of censorship by their efforts to remove, silence or, at the very least, censure those in elected office who didn't march in lockstep with president 45 on everything.

Up to and including sedition.

Sadly, the poster child for this foolishness is Liz Cheney, a congresswoman from Wyoming. Her words, more than any other, articulated the dismay so many of us felt after the events of January sixth.

She said Donald Trump had betrayed the oath he took when he became president. Yes. Betrayed. As in cheating a spouse. Jilting a lover. The word carries a powerful human component of hurt and loss. Of being lied to. It is the perfect choice.

If that weren't enough, Cheney had the temerity to vote for impeachment of Crazy Don, an act which didn't escape the notice of the Wyoming GOP. They voted 66 to 8 to censure her.

Want to talk to me again about the First Amendment, gentlemen? Oh that's right. Only Democrats censor people. You're just ensuring party homogeny.

Sore loser Darin Smith even went so far as to publicly answer the question 'You want to know how far down the Trump rabbit hole I am?' by speaking thusly:

“We need to honor President Trump. All President Trump did was call for a peaceful assembly and protest for a fair and audited election.”

Which he got—weeks before this charade.

I'm trying to imagine the Republican response had it been President Obama speaking Trump's words in front of a crowd of BLM supporters. Telling them “You need to fight like hell! Because if you don't, you're not going to have a country any more!” Or having Obama's faux Giuliani suggest “Let's have trial by combat!”

Yes, Republicans would be falling all over themselves to hang Obama from a tree. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)

But coming from Trump and addressed to an angry, roiling mob armed with guns, ammunition, helmets, bullet proof vests, police shields and filled with a soon-to-be-acted-on murderous rage?

Nah. It's just Don being Don. 

If you say so. 

Watching TV the Roku Way

All of us have been told in one form or another “get with the program”. It might have happened at work or in some aspect of our personal lives, but all of us have been advised at some point to conform and stop being difficult.

Sometimes, it even comes from within.

I have described my dislike of twenty-first century cable TV many times. The ever-spiralling cost of watching blocks of decades-old programming while being repeatedly subjected to the water torture of five-minute commercial breaks had burrowed beneath my skin and was beginning to itch. Badly.

But I kept it. As I saw it, streaming was a chain with many more links and hence, more-prone to breakdown, malfunction and so on. And in the end, was it really any cheaper?

An October price-hike from my cable provider pushed me over the edge. Spotty reliability, shrinking Internet bandwidth and the fact that it had become my largest non-housing-related monthly expense drove me to dump them.

(My most-damning indictment of AT&T is that their's was the only business phone number I knew by heart. I'll leave it to your supple imaginations to puzzle-out why.)

So. There I stood, perched on the precipice of twenty-first century television technology! I was going to stream! Watch Netflix! Have access to all of the fascinating and groundbreaking programming I'd been hearing about, appearing nightly on my TV!

Hoo Boy!

If I have a failing, it's that I allow myself to be carried away by stuff. Despite my robust cynicism, I—at times—believe the hype. And my first foray into this brave new world was no exception.

On the advice of a relative far-more conversant in TV tech than I, I ventured online and bought a Roku device. All was well until it arrived. The initial set-up was simple, as promised. The problem started when I attempted to connect it with my WiFi.

Even despite forty minutes on the phone with a certified Roku tech and another foray under the viral hood of my Internet to confirm the password, nothing. The Roku device steadfastly refused to play nice.

The tech concluded it had to be defective and urged me to initiate an exchange.

In 2021 this is not generally a difficult thing to do. Unless one is working with Roku. Since they claim their customer service telephone number had been deactivated because of COVID, I was left to navigate their cumbersome e-mail system.

Even with the confirmation of one of their own, the exchange took three business days to approve. If that weren't enough, Roku was asking me to foot the bill for the return.

I was not made glad.

I informed them I no longer wanted to exchange the device but return it outright. Shockingly, this was okayed in just twenty-four hours.

I dropped it off at the local post office in a USPS Priority mailer. On the same day the post office confirmed its delivery in San Jose, California, I received another Roku device in the mail.

First, let me acknowledge that consumer expectations are much higher in 2021 than they were in, say, 1991. Computerization has shortened processing and delivery timelines as well as consumer's patience.

As a (mostly) sympathetic consumer, I will also acknowledge that not all customers are responsible. We twenty-first Americans have learned well from the business and political classes and are quite adept at gaming the system—even if it's at a level far below that of the aforementioned populations.

While the wonders of online shopping are touted far and wide, there's a dark side: the rate of return for items purchased online is four times what it is for items purchase in-store, proving conclusively that nothing beats having a potential purchase in hand.

And those returns impact profitability. Someone, somewhere is paying for it. (My guess is that company's mid-to-lower-level employees. No surprise there.)

I am not a capricious shopper. I buy only after examining and re-examining every facet of the item I'm considering—especially clothing. I don't wantonly order three different sizes in four different colors thinking I'll just return whatever doesn't fit or that I don't like.

But I am in a minority. So if companies were to raise the threshold on returns I would—to a point—understand.

But this was different. I had a defective unit confirmed by one of the manufacturer's own technicians. I wasn't returning the device because it didn't match the drapes. Why was I paying to return it?

With the receipt of a unit I hadn't wanted or requested, I was now quite angry. I fired-off a heated e-mail to Roku expressing my displeasure. I graciously offered them two choices: either pay the postage for the second device's return or let me have it free of charge.

That was over a week ago. Their sole communication in that time had been an e-mail telling me they hadn't received the original unit.

Yep.

Their re-enactment of Dumb and Dumber was nerve-wracking. The glacial pace of their processing a no-brainer of a return jaw-dropping. I'll put this as clinically as I can, but it was clear to me I was having sexual intercourse with a vagina made of sandpaper.

I mean, this was not going well. I called my credit card company. And as I was on the phone detailing this transaction to them an e-mail appeared from Roku.

They had confirmed the device's return and were now initiating the refund process.

Problem solved, right?

Two days later (which happened to be the three-week anniversary of this calamity), I received another e-mail from Roku. This one asked when I was going to respond and advised me that if I failed to do so within three days the file would be closed and marked 'resolved'.

If you ask how bad something can get you will inevitably find out.

Since when does a two-sentence e-mail that consists of a greeting and an announcement that they have begun their refund process need to be responded to? What's more, the company that had been dragging its feet for three-weeks was giving me deadlines? Seriously?

I complied and re-stated the obvious and added that, yes, I was still interested in a refund and that nothing had changed. (Sometimes my sense of humor can be remarkably subtle.) That was over a week ago.

On a call to my credit card company, I was informed that in our business-friendly country, businesses have up to ten days to issue a refund. Why? It's probable that corporate lawyers are oilier and sneakier and better manipulators than government lawyers.

With today being day number-ten, I sprang from my bed and opened my credit card account to scan for the long-promised refund.

Nothing.

I dialed the phone. “Hello, credit card company? I'd like to dispute a charge.”

Republican Resistance, Examined.

I was a bit hasty in publishing this last night. It felt rushed and incomplete. And this morning that was obviously the case. Re-titled and re-written, this is hopefully both a better read and a more-convincing argument. 

With Republican resistance to the COVID relief package mounting, Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) articulated their concerns this way: “In the administration's plan, you could have a family with three kids making over three-hundred thousand dollars a year getting a check.”

Wait. That's a problem for you? Seriously? That's a problem for the party that voted 278 - 12 across the House and Senate to pass the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act?

That's a problem for the party that thought it would be a good idea to effectively fill one of those 200-ton Hitachi open pit dump trucks with cash and deliver it to the doors of America's corporate giants and the one-percent?

Really?

Sorry, Rob. I have a memory and it works.

I'm fairly certain Portman's claim is extracted from the most-extreme scenario imaginable, and has the same chance of occurring that Citizen's United does of helping, well, citizens.   

President Biden, I can't imagine you ever seeing this, but I am going to make a suggestion, anyway. You must disguise your relief package as wealthcare (patent pending). Call it the Right to Riches or something like that. You will then be assured of knee-jerk Republican compliance and can then bask in the light of long-sought bipartisanship.

And just think of the tangible excitement on the other side of the aisle. Republicans, relieved to have at last escaped the long, dark shadow of Trumpism, will be eager to document their delight. For starters, it's easy to imagine the over-stimulated Josh Hawley (R-MO) tweeting his not-quite-appropriate evidence and posting it on Instagram. 

The Show Me State, indeed!

(Thanks for the sexting, Josh. Photographs are always a powerful tool in court.)

Yes, Mr. President, there will be push back the moment the one-percent and its servants realize they're not getting the biggest slice of the pie and will call it another example of Democratic-sponsored socialism (which is defined by Republicans as any benefit they don't receive most of). 

What's important is that the Republican instinct to empower the already-powerful and enrich the already-wealthy is abused and exploited. That the rest of us—the 99%--get the sustenance to live another day. 

Those of us who have lost our homes, our jobs, our businesses and, not inconceivably, our loved ones desperately need help.