Crazy enough

This will no doubt come as a surprise to those who know me as basically a sloth with library cards, but I’ve been buying—and using—athletic shoes since my college days. Runners, walkers, cross-trainers, soccer shoes—the whole megillah.

But in all this time, I’ve never owned a pair of Nikes. I’ve bought Brooks, New Balance, Asics, Saucony, Avia and—for the past six years—Mizuno. For some reason I never got Nike, Reebok or Adidas.

However, this changed yesterday, when I walked over to the froofy running store in the People’s Republic’s Faux Urban Center and bought these:

I’ll alternate them with my current pair of Mizunos, which are already apparently showing signs of being walked on a lot (two months old, already wear on the soles).

I bought them because of the #JustDoIt30 commercial featuring Colin Kaepernick.

Kaepernick’s been on Nike’s payroll for years, but never used due to him being a lightning rod for faux-patriotic goober hate drummed up by our Golfer-in-Chief (who, tbh, is still pissed off that the NFL wouldn’t let him buy a team in the 80s, and he lost money on his USFL team, and more money when he lost his lawsuit against the NFL; we all know that his one constancy is his ability to hold a grudge across decades) because he knelt during the playing of the national anthem at football games to protest police murders of African-Americans. When his contract with the Forty-Niners ran out, no NFL team would hire him. A company with less money in its coffers would have cut him altogether; it certainly wouldn’t have built a campaign around him. Nike’s taken a bold step with this one.

I get it that no corporation runs an ad campaign just to do the right thing. Nike is expecting to make a buck out of this—they’re expecting to make fistfuls of bucks out of it. They’re also attracting faux-patriotic goober hate, as manifested by the public shoe-burning videos making the rounds of social media. (Yes, they’re burning shoes they’ve spent hundreds of dollars on, just as they bought Keurigs to smash and Starbucks coffee to pour out in “protest” of corporate actions. They ain’t too bright, this crowd.)

I don’t give a toss about football, so I’ve been at a remove from all the take-a-knee controversy. My opinion is that this is legitimate, powerful protest, although I think the protest would start really taking off if white players started taking a knee, too. When people from the power-holding class start protesting, that’s when change comes about. Some measure of the efficacy of Kaepernick’s protest can be found in the spit-hissing rage of all the goobers, who falsely turned it into disrespect of the flag, which morphed into disrespect of the military. Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, tweeted about it a couple of days ago:

You should look at some of the replies in the thread—they’re stultifying in their stupidity.

So, no brand loyalty, no real connection to the sport, and yet I was deeply moved by this commercial that focuses on people with crazy dreams; so much so that I went into the froofy running store and asked specifically for something in the stability line, and do any Nikes fit the bill? My $130 ain’t going to take the company too far, but I felt I had to do something.

And I’m going to work on getting my dreams crazy enough.

Lunchtime for leporidae

I’ve written before about the brown bunny that occasionally visits my back yard. I hadn’t seen him in a while—but it has been very hot, and he is wearing a fur coat, so I was hoping that he was hanging out somewhere in the shade, maybe with his paws dipping in some cool water.

Well, I noticed him hopping through last week, but he was too fast for me to get a shot of him. I’d put out my pot of basil and my pot of parsley when the remediation folks tore up the living room—I did not think whatever chemicals they laid down would be healthy for the little plants. I thought it was cute when Brown Bunny got up in the parsley pot and nibbled the herb, but a couple of days ago he started chowing down like it was the main course.

I took a few videos, but it did not look like the little lagomorphic toe rag was going to stop until he’d scarfed it all.

So I brought that pot inside. He’s not interested in the basil: I can leave that out until I get the replacement floor.

Little Red Hen that could

As you know, it’s been a tough week for anyone who cares about civility and decency in this country. But amid all the darkness there have been a few glimmers.

One is an update from the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. That’s the small farm-to-table place that last June—in the nicest possible way—asked White House Lying Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to find someplace else to feed herself and the seven others in their party. This triggered much popbead-clutching among the gap-tooth KFC set bemoaning how vicious all the libtards are, followed by threats of violence, boycotts and a lot of other things they couldn’t spell.

As I wrote, I went on the Red Hen’s website and ordered gift certificates, asking that they be sent to a local shelter for victims of domestic violence. That seemed appropriate, given Sanders’ colleagues propensity for committing battery on their partners.

Evidently I wasn’t alone, as noted in the update I received a few days ago. Staff at the Red Hen have been busy apportioning gift certificates among the shelter, food pantries and other local worthy recipients.

(Whatever photos they reference did not make it through the email.)

I love that they’ve been able to turn their principled stand on behalf of employees who are the targets of the vicious policies emanating from the White House into a community of care. I’m glad they’ve been recovering, and that I could be a part of it.

The opposite of greatness

You don’t need me to point out that there was considerable kleptocrat-related kerfuffle around honoring John McCain in the period between his death on 25 August and his interment on Sunday.

At every possible point when he could have been presidential, Cadet Bone Spurs instead chose to be petty, churlish and bloody minded. It’s not just the issue of flying the White House Flag at half-staff, which was in itself…extraordinary. (Throughout the week, around Northern Virginia, flags were at half-staff everywhere. Office buildings, car dealerships, even fast food outlets. FFS, even Chick-fil-A had theirs at half-staff. But the White House?)

At every turn he had to be driven to give the absolute bare, grudging minimum. After all, he’s the president, he’s the boss of everything and McCain didn’t give him the respect he should have (= heap fulsome praise on the Orange One and support every vicious, anti-democratic, dangerous whim coming from the Oval Office), so why should he give the guy anything? Also—he’s always held a grudge against McCain, so this was the perfect time to get even; perfect because he finally doesn’t have to worry about McCain issuing a withering statement.

Throughout the week Widdle Donnie was reported to be furious at all the attention McCain was getting. It was excessive, he told his aides (who I’d say should get hazardous duty pay, except they knew what he was when they signed on, so screw ‘em) again and again. It was the kind of attention a president should be getting, not a senator. Especially a senator who never appreciated that Donnie won!

Perhaps it was that perception that McCain was already getting too much attention that kept Li’l Donnie Two-scoops from tweeting his usual poorly-spelled snottery about the man whose record of service has stuck in his orange craw for years. But you know he was pissed off that he wasn’t invited to the funeral, especially when his nemesis Barack Obama was.

The regime was represented at the service by chief of staff John Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, both retired Marine generals who ought to know better than to serve such a dishonorable master. They looked like spectres at the feast, uncomfortable knowing that the man in the flag-draped coffin was far better than the one to whom they report.

Jarvanka crashed the funeral, invited—so reports have it—by Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina who showed his friendship for McCain in recent years by becoming a kleptocrat apologist and betraying everything McCain stood for. Ivanka spent some time absorbed in her mobile phone; maybe texting Daddy or possibly just playing Angry Birds.

Kult Klepto fretted on behalf of their master at how Jarvanka were disrespected at the Cathedral. Someone called Sam Nunberg, who has some affiliation with the family (I don’t know who he is and I don’t care enough to look him up, but if he’s been around for  a long time, he probably ought to be lining up criminal lawyers—eventually Mueller will get around to him, too) flounced—and I am not making this up—“It was a very nice gesture by Jared and Ivanka to attend. I find it contemptible that the McCain family couldn’t seat them in a better, more respectable section.”

Because they’re used to the VIP room at whatever club they go to.

(Actually, I can see why that would bite, when the Obamas, the G.W. Bushes, the Clintons, Dick Cheney and Al Gore were all in the front row. I can hear the tantrum even now, 28 miles from the White House.)

The very same folks who have made death threats to those who disagree with our amateur autocrat took umbrage at several of the eulogies at McCain’s services—Joe Biden’s in Arizona, Bush’s and Obama’s in Washington. It’s tacky and so sad that people inserted politics into a funeral.

The comments on Twitter pointing out that politics in funeral orations is a tradition that goes back at least to Thucydides will not have had any impact. Thucydides is way too long a word, and besides—he wasn’t a real Republican. (These same folks despised McCain as RINO and not nearly obsequious enough to their Cheeto-dust idol.) They completely flipped out at Meghan’s. The “politics” they object to were references to decency in government, generosity in leadership and service to a higher good.

No wonder that pissed them all off. (Interestingly, no one speaking at the services mentioned the name of the current occupant of the White House, but even the double-digit IQs of the cultists made the connection that such qualities do not describe the kleptocrat. And their feewings wewre huwt.) Even more that when Meghan powered through, “The America of John McCain has no need of being made great again because America was always great,” the Cathedral rocked with the applause that spontaneously broke out.

(I’d have given real money if some camera had caught Kelly and Mattis at that moment.)

Other cultists wanted the kleptocrat to be even more petulant than he actually was; they wanted him to fling feces via Twitter or however—because the display of civility and collegiality at the funeral service was just more than they could bear.

However, while much of Washington gathered at the Cathedral to honor a man who dedicated his life to service to the country, the occupant of the White House motorcaded off to his golf course in Loudoun, to play golf. There’s a photo of him, shot with a long lens, all by himself, in the rough. Probably cheating on his score.

In the early evening, when he’d no doubt heard what Meghan had said about America, he tweeted, in all caps, his campaign slogan. So there!

Okay, I’ve got this off my chest. I did not want to sully my thoughts yesterday about McCain’s passing by mixing in all the petty vindictiveness and just all around shite from the mob boss and his ilk. But I also didn’t want it to pass unremarked.

Gratitude Monday: We can do better

Ordinarily on this Monday I’d write something about my gratitude to the generations of workers who’ve shaped America’s history. But this time, I’m just going to have to point you to what I’ve said before on the subject. Because I’ve spent the past week thinking about the life of John McCain, whose passing has for some reason had me in tears.

If ever someone could be said to be sui generis, it would be McCain. You can read about his remarkable life of service pretty much anywhere, but there are a few things that have struck me.

We here and now all to often apply the term “hero” to all and sundry, but I do think of McCain as heroic. Not for being a naval aviator during the Vietnam War, and not even necessarily for having survived nearly six years as a POW in Hanoi after being shot down. But for having reached deep within himself to withstand torture for all that time, and for refusing the early repatriation offered him by his captors when they learned he was the son of an admiral.

He returned home in 1973, with his fellow prisoners. He never fully recovered from the injuries he suffered in captivity. He lived with the physical limitations and pain until his dying day. No one—no rational person—could ever accuse him of being a moral or physical coward.

McCain cultivated his image as a maverick; he used it to great effect in his political career—first as a Congressman from Arizona, then as a Senator and also as a presidential candidate. I have to say that I opposed many of his policies—one of my colleagues described him as a right-wing nut job, and I can’t disagree. I mean, I need only leave two words here to sum this kind of thing up: Sarah Palin. But one of his truly admirable characteristics was that—for all the mistakes he made—he was a man who could acknowledge his missteps and learn from them.

There was nothing small or petty about John McCain. This is rare among men these days. In politicians it’s almost unheard of.

As McCain made the journey to his final rest last week—from his ranch near Sedona to the Arizona Capitol to lie in state; a memorial service in Phoenix; lying in state in the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Friday; funeral service in the Washington National Cathedral Saturday; private service and burial in the cemetery at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis—I followed along.

(I had to smile writing that last bit. McCain’s record at Annapolis would have to take an elevator up about 15 floors to achieve less-than-stellar status. He graduated in 1958 number 894 out of a class of 899. But he balanced his abysmal academic record by racking up an astronomical number of demerits.)

On Saturday I was driving around the area running errands, when the funeral service was being broadcast. When Meghan McCain began her eulogy for her father, I parked and listened. It wasn’t long before I was sobbing. Ditto, later, listening to George W. Bush and then Barack Obama talking about a man who—while being a burr under their saddles—nonetheless earned their respect as a straight shooter who always had the interests of the country at heart.

One passage from Bush just set me in floods: “If we are ever tempted to forget who we are, to grow weary of our cause, John’s voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder: We are better than this. America is better than this.”

The eulogy that struck me with such joy was Joe Lieberman’s. Rather than try to capture its affection, I’ll just let you watch it yourself.

You get the full sense of McCain’s energy, his drive, his curiosity and his capacity for friendship—genuine, heartfelt friendship.

One other thing struck me about the past week: the outpouring of affection, admiration for McCain from people who’d never met him. From Arizona to DC, to Annapolis, people lined highways and streets, in the dead of night and in August-heated days to pay their respects as his hearse passed. They queued up at the Arizona and national Capitols to file past his coffin. 

They held a candlelight vigil at the Vietnam War Memorial, saluting the old warrior one final time.

These were not organized efforts. Individual men, women and children made their way to the roads and memorial sites in their hundreds, hands to heart to honor a man they’d not met. They knew they will not see his like again..

Even his old Vietnamese foes expressed their admiration and respect for McCain—who, along with John Kerry, perhaps more than anyone else brought about normalized relations between the US and Vietnam.

The Secret Service's farewell tweet went straight to my heart. During his presidential campaigns, his protection code name was Phoenix. Not just as the Senator from Arizona, but as a man who'd been broken and risen stronger for the breaking.

One last thing—as with Lieberman’s eulogy, this tweet sums up his life:

I'm thinking that Saint Peter is gearing up for some misbehavior in heaven; well, he's been given 81 years of warning and time to prepare.

Today I’m grateful for the life and service of John S. McCain III.