Wait. Who Won?

I'm angry, too.

As angry as the factory workers in Ohio or Wisconsin or Michigan who have been reduced to cashiering at Jerry's Food Mart. Yours aren't the only lives which resemble a wool sweater after a turn in the dryer.

The difference between us is that I know where to have a hissy fit—and where not to. And that you don't ever have a hissy fit in a voting booth. Despite our rampant cynicism, elections are far too important to reduce to reality TV-styled entertainment.

Granted, there is a great deal wrong with the United States of America. For instance, there are far too many people struggling in the nation called the wealthiest in human history. 

But that isn't an accident. It's on purpose.

I want you, dear Trump supporter, to tell me what side Republicans took. Did Republicans fight that or enable it? Please tell me why you believe a self-absorbed, narcissistic billionaire like Donald Trump has the slightest interest in you and what remains of your life.

Donald Trump is a businessman. He represents the privileged class which exported your job to Mexico and China and Pakistan and then got a Republican-sponsored tax break for doing so.

What do you have to offer Donald Trump? Your rusted-out Corolla? Your socks? Your employee discount? You voted yesterday. This is today. He got your vote. That is the extent of his interest in you, bro.

You see, our first ADHD president gets bored quickly. Once, he wanted money. He got that. Then he wanted celebrity. He got that. Now, in the immortal words of Huey Lewis & the News, he wants a new drug: power.

And thanks to the peculiarities of the electoral college, he has that.

Donald Trump got that by pushing your buttons. He's the driver who cut you off not once, but three times on the way to work. And by the time you got there, you were so angry you couldn't think straight. Sound familiar?

Granted, Hillary Clinton wasn't an inspiring alternative.

The Democratic National Committee, in their preening obsession to nominate not only the first African-American president but the first female one as well, kicked the better candidate in this race to the curb. Despite the polls which showed he could not only compete head to head with Trump more effectively, but beat him.

And that's on the Dems, one-hundred percent.

But you voted for Trump. Not the DNC. And now we have him.

I know thinking is largely discouraged in twenty-first century America because it takes so long and robs us of our social media time. But have you ever questioned exactly how immigrants 'take' our jobs?

This is the phrase repeated ad infinitum by Donald Trump and other conservatives, and yet as so many of the posts on this blog bear out, I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to 'take' anyone's job. Ditto the immigrants (illegal or not) Trump loves to disparage.

That's because jobs aren't taken—they're given. And immigrants were given their jobs. Given their jobs by businessmen engorged by the promise of larger and fatter profits. 

Let's be very, very clear about something—businessmen respect and are loyal to just one thing: money. Profit is their morality. Expanding markets and boosting shareholder value two of their Ten Commandments. 

Money doesn't have borders. Money doesn't have morals. There is no right or wrong, with the possible exception of profit and loss.

It is the nature of the beast.

Despite this, we believe that businessmen in government are a good idea. And wealthy, celebrity businessmen are an even better idea.

Businessmen know how to tell people what to do and when it should be on their desk. Businessmen know how to issue edicts. Businessmen know how to dispense ultimatums. Businessmen know how to point their gaudy, ring-encrusted fingers and sneer “you're fired!”

But a government with three well-defined branches doesn't work that way—at least not yet.

Spotting business opportunities and making money does not a great president make. It makes a successful businessman. If you even need the refresher, the ability to lead is not measured in dollars.

Case in point: Illinois has its own billionaire president. He has succeeded mostly in deepening the already-massive rift between Democrats and Republicans and is about two-dozen zip codes removed from a clue of how to mend it.

Worse, he probably doesn't care.

As wealthy businessmen do, he will attempt to buy control, not earn it. He will spend and spend until he has a Republican majority, the better to enact his toxic agenda until Illinois is a living facsimile of feudalism. 

That is Donald Trump's business plan for the United States.

And you voted for him.

To all you angry, pissed-off male Trumpers, tell me how you justify to your daughters voting for a man who advocates grabbing women by their pus, er, crotches?

And if you're a female Trumper, you have just earned a one-way ticket to the feminist-hell of the nineteenth-century and no longer have a say in political conversations.

Tell me how you explain the actions of the Seattle Seahawks fan who repeatedly screamed at Kathryn Smith, the NFL's first female assistant coach “Hey waitress! Get me a Pepsi!”

You know who he voted for, right?

Let me hazard a guess: that treatment is okay for female Democrats, but if someone were to say that to your wife (I'm probably being generous here) or your daughter, you'd run them over with your F-150.

Can you say schizophrenia? How about mental illness?

All I can say is you voted for him. 

I don't know whether to laugh at or pity you.

You actually believe Donald Trump knows more about ISIS than our military? You've taken to heart his claim that Trump can end the gun violence in Chicago in a week? That he's going to build a wall along our southern border and hand Mexico the bill? 

If so, I'm guessing you're composing your annual letter to Santa right about now.

I laugh that you actually believe Trump is going to make America great again, a pathetic slogan steeped in dewy-eyed nostalgia. It reflects the sad notion that the nineteen-fifties were the apex of human civilization.

Good luck with that. 

And by the way, can we return corporate tax rates to what they were in the nineteen-fifties, too?

I laugh at the farmer on the NBC network news who arrived at the conclusion he wants big government out of his life. Um, does that include agricultural subsidies and price supports, too?

I didn't think so.

Finally, I laugh at Trump himself. Still think it's rigged, Donnie? Still think the so-called liberal media and the political establishment are out to get you? Even after a billion-dollars' worth of free publicity and a perfectly-timed political bombshell?

Naturally, the Clinton majority have questions. Will Donald Trump be good for the country? For me? 

This is akin to asking if Wal-Mart is good for America. 

Wal-Mart is good for Wal-Mart. And rest assured, Donald Trump will be good for Donald Trump. He will use the office as his personal ATM, just like his BFF Vladimir Putin. 

To paraphrase Annette Bening in 1990's The Grifters “Donald Trump is so crooked he could eat soup with a corkscrew.”

Worse, he has lifted the lid of decorum off the United States, and it's mighty hard to see it ever going back on.

And you voted for him.

Myself? I'm just waiting for the 'Don't Blame Me—I Voted for Hillary' bumper stickers.

That and the 2018 mid-terms.

Greetings from Brigadoon

If this were a nineteen-forties movie instead of a blog, it'd open with a black and white shot of a printing press, furiously running off newspapers. Crisp, buoyant music would accompany the scene.

Papers at every stage of their creation would be shown, right up to the point where they're bundled up and tossed on delivery trucks by thickly-muscled guys chewing cigar butts and wearing ivy caps.

From the center of the frame a tiny front page emerges. It is spinning. It stops only when it dominates the screen. Cubs Win Series! Fans Dancing in Streets!

Alas, this is a blog. Not a movie.

Cue to a sleepy older guy in a worn Cubs t-shirt and sweat pants bathed in the bluish white light of a computer monitor. There are no printing presses or delivery trucks. Only a hasty mea culpa being banged out on a fifteen-year-old keyboard.

Remember that scene in Moonstruck when Cher tells her mom she's going to get married? Freshly wakened, mom asks “Do you love him?”

Cher: “No.”

Mom: “Good. When you love them, they drive you crazy.”

See, that's how it is with the Cubs and me. I love them. And in the aftermath of their game 4 loss, I was crazy. Convinced it was over. Kaput. Fini. If they didn't feel confident and comfortable in Wrigley Field, where would they?

My previous post, Blind Until I See, was my inner Cub fan doing what all Cubs fans do. Dialing up the defense mechanisms and steeling myself for yet another dose of soul-shredding agony. How was I to know that freed of the pressure cooker Wrigley Field had become, they would spread their wings and play like the 2016 Cubs?

I have never been more delighted to be wrong.

Being a bad prognosticator means never having to go hungry, because when all else fails you'll always have your words to eat.

Blind Until I See

At least one more game remains to be played. But it is over. Over in the same sense that a body has expired by the time it is interred.

They have surrendered in everything but fact.

All the right words were said. This was a generation either ignorant or immune to history.

But like a diver descending to uncharted depths, the further one goes the greater the pressure. It is paralyzing. It crushes interlopers.

What team could shoulder the weight of generational expectations? Ignore the foreboding and all-too-familiar signs of imminent collapse? Resist facts as insistent as they are abundant that this cannot happen?

Must not happen.

Will not happen.

The cult lives on. Baseball's take on Deadheads have been hardened by another layer of failure. Rain will not douse the candle of their faith. 

Contrary to popular belief, hope is not a poison.

Cub fans celebrate New Year's Day in Autumn.

Have a happy 2017.

This Just In

At 9:46 PM CDT on October 22, 2016 Yasiel Puig hit an Aroldis Chapman pitch to Cub shortstop Addison Russell. Russell fielded the ball, threw it to second baseman Javier Baez, who then stepped on second and subsequently fired to first baseman Anthony Rizzo for a game-ending double play.

This means the Chicago Cubs have won the 2016 National League Championship Series over the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 2, and are headed to their first World Series since 1945.

In other news, an unidentified male with reddish skin and horns and carrying a pitchfork has been admitted to a local hospital with what appears to be frostbite.

More details as they become available.

I Am a Health Care Sisyphus

Last March, I wrote about the struggle to initiate my health insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.

Despite receiving (and paying) two bills, I remained without coverage. I was told several times that while the bills correctly listed my chosen plan and ID number, I didn't exist in any database that would lead to actual coverage.

I had to wait—even if the bills didn't.

In that post, I concluded that Blue Cross' billing department seemed to be the only one able to accomplish anything, and as such ought to be running the show.

That was premature. It turns out they just needed a little time to catch-up to the rest of the company.

From January through July, I was able to pay my bill via telephone, ensuring next month's coverage was, well, covered. It was the only aspect of my plan that was simple, consistent and trouble-free.

But simple, consistent and trouble-free don't jibe with the BCBSIL business model. Complicated, labyrinthine and convoluted do. Which are the reasons I presume OrbiPay was discontinued.

In place of OrbiPay on the August bill was a phone number which didn't contain the promised functionality (at least if the prompts on the menu can be believed). Who knows, maybe if I had recited the Magna Carta in Latin, farted three times and screamed “Death to ObamaCare! Let a free and unregulated marketplace decide our health care choices!” it might have relented.

After several excruciating attempts, I resorted to calling OrbiPay, where lo and behold I was able to make my payment.

September and October have presented larger challenges.

The number listed on the bill again refused to reveal its check-by-phone option in September, and despite being listed on the BCBSIL web site, OrbiPay was no longer in service. I at last reached a human being by dialing a third number and overriding its voice recognition software.

Things didn't go so smoothly this month.

OrbiPay is still dead—and still listed on the BCBSIL web site. (What does it cost to update a web site, anyway? Fifty-million? A hundred-million? A couple hundred bucks?) The number listed on the bill, which again promises to accept payments by phone, won't accept mine. Ditto the number I used in September.

I finally reached a human being after launching a stream of invectives into the receiver at the voice recognition software.

The operator who answered was not able to tell me why my payment had been refused, nor why OrbiPay's number is still listed on the BCBSIL web site. She was able to offer a one-time telephone payment that is somehow different from other telephone payments so that my account might be brought up to date.

Remarkably, the story doesn't end there.

Yesterday I received a customer service questionnaire from BCBSIL, which is certainly laudable. It wanted to know how they did.

I clicked away at the 'Take Our Survey' button, eager to respond.

The little round icon in the upper left-hand corner that tells me the browser is searching for the page went 'round and 'round and 'round. Then it went 'round and 'round some more. It stopped about the time I began to think I was watching the introduction to Vertigo.

The result? Server Not Found.

I realize now fault lies with me. I expected something. And that is where I consistently go wrong with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.

If I wasn't so exhausted by the struggle to deliver money to a multi-billion-dollar health care behemoth, I'd accuse them of wanting to be a non-profit. Or some other kind of dirty, filthy Obama-styled socialist.

But we all know what a joke that would be, don't we? This is a company that eliminated credit cards as a method of payment. Guess those swipe fees were killing them.

I can hardly wait for the inflated premiums and astronomical deductibles I am told lie in wait for Illinois customers in November.

I'm sure they will be difficult to pay as well.

Suffering from the DTs

Life is stressful.

Galavant isn't returning for a third season. I can't write about my favorite baseball team for fear of jinxing them. Wells-Fargo (the robber-bank) is still in business. And I have to wear long polyester pants and a polyester shirt in 89 degree heat as I digest the news that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are taking a ring off it.

If that isn't enough—and it is—Donald Trump continues his battle with Tourette's in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Sigh.

Can I confess something to you? I have the DTs.

Historically, DT Is shorthand for delirium tremens, a condition brought about by the sudden absence of alcohol in the human body after an extended period of abuse. In 2016, it refers to exposure to presidential candidate Donald Trump.

On the rare occasion when Mr. Fact-free does take his medicine and announces that Barrack Obama was born in the United States after all, the media goes ape shit. 

If only Barrack and Hillary had responded to their requests for comment with “Donald who?” or “So?”

Alas, they took the media as seriously as an Edward Albee (R.I.P.) play.

Is it too late to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize? The 2016 deadline has long since passed, but 2017's Nobel slate is as empty as Donald's yawning maw. For those of you congenitally immune to irony, you can submit Donald's name here:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee

Henrik Ibsen Gate 51

Oslo, Norway 0255

Who knows, maybe it will all be better in November. The team that cannot be named will be champions, the president-elect won't have a y chromosome and Brad and Angie will have reconsidered.

In the meantime, anyone got a drink?

Trumped

That seems just about right. The man responsible for the most toxic and divisive political movement of the last hundred years (with the possible exception of Joseph McCarthy), is walking away with forty-million dollars.

And that's after the sexual harassment charges and twenty-million dollars worth of hush money his boss shelled out to silence accusers.

The truth behind all of this is that Roger Ailes made his boss, Rupert Murdoch, a whole lot of money. Fox News corrupted the truth and distorted perception. It put 'facts' on the endangered species list. It helped polarize a population into left and right while the wealthy ran up the middle for trillion-dollar touchdowns.

This is the twenty-first century ethos that allows Donald Trump to be considered as a legitimate candidate for the office of President of the United States of America. Lies over leadership. Demagogues, not democracy. And worst of all, entertainment over experience. 

Have Trump supporters even considered what Donald will be if he wins this thing? 

A politician!

After watching the farce-slash-forum last night on NBC, and imagining the mouth-breathing minions awe-struck by Trump's celebrity and single-cell political platforms, it is difficult not to imagine him winning this election.

Donald has perfected the verbal and body language snark of the reality TV crowd. Of the monster truck crowd. And of the professional wrestling crowd. To them, Trump's comical ego passes for confidence. And his put-downs for wit.

Clinton's fatal flaw is to credit Americans with a.) an attention span, and b.) a brain.

Like scores of Republicans before him, Trump successfully plays to the lowest common denominator: white, stupid and angry. He pushes their buttons like the teen-aged king of an eighties video game arcade. 

He is also a masterful manipulator of media. Even as his campaign threatens to curtail their freedoms, they cannot stay away. Every utterance of Donald's is front page news. Every new slander, every new libel, every new outrage is the lead story on that night's network news.

See what I mean?

The great irony, of course, is that the LCD folk who are his core supporters won't even exist after a Republican victory. They won't even be beneath the radar. They'll remain marooned in their small towns, mired in the hopelessness of their opioid abuse and abortion/LGBT/racially-fueled hatred.

Oh, they'll bellow on Rush Limbaugh and fly Confederate flags from their pick-up trucks. But they'll be among the first thrown under the bus when the TPP is enacted and the wealthy are further enriched, their power even more firmly entrenched.

If nothing else, a Trump victory will certainly prove that a people gets the government it deserves.