So this is what happens. Briefly, some background. I have loosely followed the Kaepernick saga since Colin decided to sit for the national anthem. Colin was protesting racial inequality I guess, in as much as a guy making millions apparently felt like he wasn't getting a fair shake. This week, I read an article wherein Ray Lewis, former Baltimore Raven great, explained why Colin Kaepernick can't find a job in the NFL. According to Lewis, Kaepernick's girlfriend apparently likes to run her virtual mouth on twitter in addition to her day job. A racist tweet from her caused Ravens' management to drop any thought of signing Kaepernick. After reading this, I believe Ray Lewis is probably correct. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/ravens/2017/09/06/ray-lewis-ravens-backed-off-colin-kaepernick-after-girlfriends-tweet/636586001/ The other odd thing that happened is that I read that false letter on Facebook- attributed to the Kansas City Chief's owner- in which h...

- from the movie, WarGames. In his book, "A New Earth", Eckhart Tolle talks at great length about the damage that the human ego causes. Ego is a false sense of self, or who you think you are, created in your mind. This is what you present to the world as you. Of course it is false- but you can't possibly allow the world to see who you really are. Or so you think. Imagine inheriting some kind of dictatorship such as the Supreme Leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. You've done absolutely nothing to earn such a position- but there you are- leading 26 million people around by the nose. You buy in to the whole illusion. You must be great you tell yourself. The people around you expect great things, your ego convinces you that you must do great deeds, and so you begin all of your anti-American sabre rattling with a giant false sense of self- furthered along by those who surround you. You kill a few people, including your uncle, aunt, and your brothe...

I lost 35 pounds and 1 girlfriend. It was a good trade. I aggressively applied the Atkins diet on Jul 18 to my 290 lb frame. When I say "aggressively" I am talking 30 carbs or less per day, every day. No creamer, no orange juice, no booze, no breath mints. The only carbs I would take in came from vegetables. Coconut oil. On a tip from a commenter, I started using coconut oil. Three big globs in my three cups of coffee in the morning, I also used it to saute' vegetables at night. Costco has virgin, organic oil in 5 pound containers. I am a believer. My energy levels shot up almost immediately. After my coffee, I would drink one low carb protein drink, swallow my supplements, ( I am a huge believer in turmeric) and headed out for the gym. I run/walk 5k every day which took me about 34 mins. I can usually make 4 days in a row before I have to take a day off. As my weight came off, my times improved and my knees hurt less. I am an over pronator with flat feet. My h...

"For everything you know, there was a time when you didn't know it." I remember my first commercial plane trip very well. I was pretty excited about it. It was uneventful as plane rides go. That trip in the early 70's had something not found on commercial airliners anymore. The plane was full of cigarette smoke. Everyone seemed to smoke back then. There was simply no point in complaining about it because you would be told to shut up by the smoking mob. That's how it was. Today, nearly 50 years later, our culture has changed dramatically. The smokers are all dead or recovering. Smoking today is not only frowned upon and illegal in any number of venues- smoking in public may subject you to any number of verbal assaults and shitty looks. That type of obnoxious behavior never happened in the 70's. Some people feel entitled to engage others with that type of obnoxious behavior because now they stand with the new majority. I know that mentality well. The p...

Today I'd like to talk a little bit about my favorite subject, me. About two weeks ago, while on the Beartooth Rally in Red Lodge, Montana....friends of mine shot photos of me. I guess I must have been in denial over my weight gain. I had ballooned up to 285 pounds and although I am 6'4"- I still looked like a sausage on a stick. It is so easy to eat this shit they sell us. The weight gain is always subtle. Just a pound or two here and there and voila! Before you know it- you look normal in a buffet line or at Walmart. I can't give up that easy. I have been fighting a war with my body for ten years now. My fattest was in 2007- I tipped the scales at 300. My slimmest was also that year, 218 pounds. From a 40" waist to a 34" and I could have fit into a 32". Each time I gain weight which tends to be every two years, I get fed up and employ the masochistic Atkins diet. It works. But I have made improvements on it. That's what I want to talk abo...

One of the most profoundly puzzling pieces of American history came about in early 1942. It was the FDR executive order which allowed 140,000 Japanese Americans to be rounded up, arrested, and imprisoned for no other reason than our unfounded "fear" that maybe they might be sympathetic to the Japanese war effort rather than the US war effort. To my way of thinking, FDR single handedly destroyed every Constitutional guarantee afforded to any citizen of this country. The Japanese were illegally seized, denied due process or a speedy trial, their homes and businesses were lost, and they were falsely imprisoned. All of that would be bad enough but something even worse happened. I can find no historical record anywhere, that any individual here in America, ever filed a lawsuit on behalf of those Japanese Americans who had been stripped of their rights. You'd think somebody, somewhere, might have offered an opinion that perhaps, not only were we doing the wrong thin...

Last week I did something that many people would never do. I looked up a fellow cop that we very nearly fired, some 20 years ago. The reason I did this is because I always liked him and maybe deep down, I needed to get ok with what happened. Sometimes in life you do something for one reason expecting one outcome- and an entirely different result happens. So as we sat down last week, I never saw the slow moving emotional train wreck that was headed my way.  Mostly I think, that was a result of my bad memory and poor judgment. But then again, I have always been that way. So we sat down and talked and eventually the conversation turned to that three month time frame some twenty years earlier- a time when he was very nearly fired and ultimately resigned. Back then I had chalked the whole episode up to his immaturity and nothing else.  What I failed to do, quite honestly, was examine my own behavior and how I handled things. And as I sat there talking and listen...

Today's piece is a little long but it is a truthful account in as much as all of the information I pass along here has either been corroborated or proven out thus far. I hope you find it insightful. I think it was 1978 or pretty close to that. I was an impressionable teenager in the Order of DeMolay, a masonic organization that transforms young DeMolay disciples into adult Freemasons. The organization endorses ethical and moralistic conduct within it's membership which is a main ingredient in this story. I would have been 16 or 17 during that particular year which is entirely dependent on my rapidly deteriorating memory. The DeMolays employ a type of hierarchical structure wherein members in good standing, those with experience obtain leadership positions within the organization. I forget the names of all of those positions now except the top rung. The top position within the Order of DeMolay is called "Master Councilor." Ron was our Master Councilor. Ron's ...

For many years, I resisted the temptation to join Facebook. I have always seen it as some sort of superficial, public popularity contest. Some folks use Facebook as a political platform, espousing their political views daily. Some use Facebook to pass along jokes and witty sayings, which I must admit, I like. Others post you tube videos. Sometimes people use Facebook as a means of trying to shame someone, usually a former love interest. I find that conduct, even if it's shadowy and veiled, as reprehensible. Some people are lonely. Others form groups or play games. Some people are going through hard times and need help and support. Others use Facebook to glean information and play detective. Some people pretend to have this giant network of thousands of friends. Like trophies on a wall. Look everyone, I am this wildly popular person and I only do fun, exciting things. Here's a picture of me somewhere eating a giant plate of nachos. So those things happen. I am not a fan of man...

Are Americans lazy? CNN thinks so.  http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/12/news/economy/us-economy-big-problem-tyler-cowen/   So does Tyler Cowen, economist. The author of this piece and our economist could not be more wrong. I loved reading this piece yesterday because not only are the contributors well off the mark- but in typical CNN fashion they start in on the Trump bashing which I am so sssiiiccckkk of reading. Fuck. I only click on CNN Money to look at commodity prices. I wasn't planning on reading another inaccurate editorial dressed up like cutting edge news. Years ago my friend Billy quoted the title of this blog today. When he said it- I remember thinking how profoundly simple and undeniable that statement was. He said that every one of us is trying to do precisely that. Make the most money with the least amount of work. What's killing American productivity? I love the Yellowstone Park "Feeding the Bears" analogy. In Yellowstone Park, the rangers don...

A few years before she died, I asked my mother if it was simply a rite of passage that most elderly Americans conclude that our country is going to hell. I always hear that from the older demographic- I think because the younger demographic has no hist orical point of reference. You can only know how bad America has gotten by knowing what a great country this once was. There is no other way. We did not become great because of governance or socialistic practice or legal precedent- we were great once because anyone who worked hard and used common sense could find the American dream and the rule of law protected them. Today the rule of law protects the aristocracy and the corporate oligarchy via the Supreme Court. All nine of those Harvard grads exist solely to protect the haves from the have nots. One day there will be another revolution and a bunch of those necks are gonna get stretched. That's history and that's how it always ends-the cynical side of me desperately wants to be ...

Prior to last year's election, I found myself arguing with a couple of Trump supporters. The Trump supporters had bought into the "Art of the Deal" mentality that Trump gets things done. They think, I suppose, that business triumphs translate into political triumphs. They are two entirely different worlds. I knew this. But I also know that people don't like Donald Trump. His likeability index flat lined long ago. So right after Trump gave Hillary another get out of jail free card, Trump set about the task of appointing his elite millionaire and billionaire buddies from places like Goldman Sachs to cabinet positions- solidifying more control for the aristocracy. Then we had last nights- non vote- on the Obamacare repeal and replace. With republicans controlling both houses and the presidency, they can't even bring a bill to the floor for a vote. Much less pass one. Why not? Because people don't like Trump. His own party doesn't like him ...

Spinning the truth into lies. The new media business model. For those of you who think President Trump's travel ban is unprecedented- please read on. Last Friday Donald Trump signed a travel ban from seven middle eastern countries. What I have done here is included a news piece from CNN- I've done that so that you can see how CNN shades the truth by stating that the travel ban includes seven "predominately Muslim" nations.  http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/30/politics/trump-travel-ban-q-and-a/ A few years ago, I got embroiled in a rather nasty back and forth with a liberal atheist- who otherwise quite educated- was defending followers of Islam. Our argument ground to a halt when I asked her if she knew the history of Mohammad the child rapist- or if she had ever read the Quran. Had she lied- I most certainly was prepared to offer a pop quiz on the spot. Instead she opted out of the argument, I suspect because she realized she was on the verge of completely exposing he...

One of my favorite quotes- taken from a horse racing bettor's t-shirt- "Often wrong, never in doubt." Such is the world of a sports bettor. C'mon it's the Superbowl- are you really afraid to lose 20 bucks at the party? Or would you rather waist (ha!) your money on sugary coffee?  Here then is my case for this year's Superbowl winner- the New England Patriots. The league commissioner, Roger Goodell, suspended Patriot quarterback Tom Brady on the flimsiest evidence in the football deflate gate scandal. The Patriots went 3-1 over that span, losing only to a decent Bills team. Brady isn't just a quarterback- he may be the best that ever played. His numbers certainly indicate that. The Patriots and Brady were already pissed off having missed the SB last year when Denver came in and thumped them. Motivating Tom Brady even more, Goodell handed out his sentence and never attended a game in Gillette stadium. Smart move- Goodell might have been mobbed an...

I have never really cared for stories about the sick and dying. I've never found the subject appealing. In fact, I'd rather avoid the whole thing until that moment when it becomes unavoidable. My mother was a farm kid. The second of six. She grew up in eastern Montana on the banks of the Missouri River. She lived an abandoned life as a child she once told me, lost in the middle of six kids while cooking for farm hands- helping to scratch a living out of the dirt. The Great Depression was fresh in the minds of the folks back then and they lived a frugal existence, barely making ends meet and wasting nothing. She tried to fix or repair everything that broke. Her harvest gold washer and dryer will testify to that. That was how my mother lived her life. So about the time my father first showed an interest in my mother, the sparks flew right away. Mother would later tell me that my father was the only person that showed genuine interest in her at that insecure time of her life. ...