New Shoes in the Rain

Good Tuesday morning, friends.   Our schizophrenic weather has plunged us back into the deep freeze this morning, as the temperature is currently a balmy 25 degrees as I write this! As you probably know, tonight is the State of the Union address, an annual requirement for the sitting President to report to Congress and, by extension, the country, on how we’re doing as a nation.   Historically it’s often an exercise in both self-congratulation and introducing new legislative objectives for the coming year. I would emphasize the word “historically” here, because our current President is nothing if not willing to buck historical trends. For instance, his administration sports the lowest year-one approval rating of ANY presidency in history.   He has had an alarming number of cabinet and staff personnel depart during that first year in office, whether they’ve left voluntarily or otherwise.   He and his allies in Congress have fully politicized and subsequent...

Greetings, friends.  We're out of the deep freeze here in my home area, although the thermometer can't seem to make up its mind what each day will feel like.  Yesterday our temperatures were in the high 50's with some scattered showers; today we have already achieved our predicted high temp of 43 degrees! If you're an employee of the federal government, I'm happy that you're going back to work today.  But given the way that the entire shutdown drama unfolded, I wonder if you're not in for a longer period of inactivity come February 8.  That's the next date when the government ceases to be funded, and avoiding that shutdown rests on verbal commitments by politicians, most notably from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, from my own state of Kentucky. Worth noting that late Friday night McConnell procedurally objected to an bill that would have ensured that military personnel would retain their pay and the families of fallen soldiers their death be...

Greetings, friends.  It's 6 degrees here in Lexington as I write this.  Not much more I need to say, is there? The title of today's post refers to what we're seeing and hearing in the news, and that's true whether you rely on local and national TV news, newspapers, radio or online sources.  The things that are being reported that were said and done and arranged and kept secret are, well, they're just staggering. I've mentioned here before that I was a young teenager during Watergate, but because news was slower in coming and there was no Internet, the bits and pieces that we received were harder to put together quickly. Not anymore.  Now we have major newspapers competing with television networks and purely online news platforms, all working diligently to scoop each other.  And the real problem I see is this:  as more and more outrageous things are reported, whether they are related to potential collusion with foreign countries during an election, low o...

Good morning, friends.  We finally came out of the deep freeze here in central Kentucky over the past few days, and it's going to be around 60 degrees both today and tomorrow.  But it won't stay that way, sadly. Lots of stuff rolling around in my gray matter this morning, with no particular order or priority.... Before we begin, I just want my readers to know that I'm using a bloc of my "executive time" to compose this post. I read that CBS decided to add a male back to their "CBS This Morning" daily show, choosing respected journalist John Dickerson to join their remaining anchors.  I found this interesting, as NBC elected to make Hoda Kotb, a recent fill-in, the permanent anchor of "Today" just a few days earlier.  Since hearing both decisions I've wondered how both decisions are being received by critics of media companies, given their prior blind eyes toward sexual harassment in their own workplaces.... Speaking of media, it was...

Good morning, and happy new year to everyone! I'm actually taking the day off today, as I had planned to do so between Christmas and New Year's, but had scheduled a few events during that time that I could not easily move. Anyway, as I write this, my watch tells me it's 1 degree here in Lexington, so what else is there to do but hunker down and share a few thoughts? Yesterday was the National Hockey League's annual "Winter Classic," made so by an actual game played outdoors, usually in a baseball or football stadium.  My wife doesn't much like hockey in general, but always enjoys this special event, and yesterday was no exception (and our grandson's entry into the sport a couple of years ago probably doesn't hurt, either). Anyway, the New York Rangers hosted the Buffalo Sabres at the New York Mets' baseball park in Queens, Citi Field.  Temperature was around 12 degrees when they began and the game actually lasted into overtime, when the...