The View from Right Field

The @Cubs Are Taking Away Our Future Memories

I’m away, but I wanted to comment on my Cubs season ticket invoice, which I received yesterday.  It came with a note that we won’t be getting real tickets for the games this year.  Everything will be on our so-called smart phones.

Which is sad.  I have ticket stubs from when I went with my dad to games 60 years ago and ticket stubs from when my then-fiancé, now-wife, and I went to a doubleheader on Billy Williams Day 50 years.  I also have the ticket stubs from the first games my daughter and son went to in the 1980s. 

Break

I'll be gone for a couple of weeks.  I'll be back after Thanksgiving.

Election Results In the Age of Trump

The main thing we can say about the results yesterday is something we could have said before the election: Divisiveness and partisanship will increase next year, and political consultants will get even richer.  Six months from now, everybody will look back on the last two years as the good old days of peace and calm (except political consultants – see the prior sentence).

While neither side in the tweet- and spending-fest that ended on Tuesday focused on it very much, the 115th Congress actually accomplished some important things.  The Democrats didn’t like them, but Congress passed a tax reform bill, finally increased defense spending, and beat back a number of late-term Obama administration regulations via the previously little-used Congressional Review Act.   Not to mention the judges Mitch McConnell got through the Senate.¹

Voting In the Age of Trump

So, what do you do next Tuesday if you’re not a Democrat (and will probably never be as they move more and more to the left) and yet you’re appalled by much of what Donald Trump says and especially how he says it.  Plus, good Republicans, like Paul Ryan, are leaving.  But you still have to vote.

One idea might be to figure out who you want to be happy on Tuesday night.  Or, alternatively, who you don’t want to be happy on Tuesday.  Maybe, in an ultimate case of “the lesser of two evils,” the question is whose victory party would be more obnoxious?  The Democratic celebrations could be pretty bad, and their policy ideas, to the extent they have any other than “Trump’s horrible” and “Medicare for All will be free,” are not where I think the country should go.

@Cubs - The Second Anniversary

It seemed appropriate to "Fly the W" today.