A Candidate Guide, Circa 2016

With the first-in-the-nation caucuses only days away, Iowa is once again in the national political spotlight.  It’s time for my quadrennial assessment of the remaining candidates (here's the 2012 version), in alphabetical order by party:

DEMOCRATS

Hillary Clinton
The good: She’s easily the most credentialed to be president.  The bad: There’s something unlikable about her quest for political power, even after reinventing herself as a senator and cabinet member.

Martin O’Malley
The former governor of Maryland seems smart and likable enough, but he definitely picked the wrong cycle to run for president.

Bernie Sanders
Every four years, it seems there’s a grandfatherly-looking candidate with an unusual message who sparks an interest with younger voters.  The last time, it was Republican-Libertarian Ron Paul.  This time, it’s Democratic-Socialist Bernie Sanders.

REPUBLICANS

Jeb Bush
All that PAC money, all that name legacy, and he’s seems to be getting no traction.  Maybe we have had enough of the Bush family in the White House.  He just doesn’t stand out in this field.

Chris Christie
Not the best bedside manner, but that’s a net good, it makes him look less Washington-insider.  He won’t do well in Iowa, but he could do well elsewhere.  Also: Must lose more weight, America doesn't elect unhealthy-looking presidents.

Ted Cruz
Take a ring-wing whack-job who’s disliked by his own party, and add support from Iowa’s own resident whack-job congressman, Steve King.  This is how you identify the Republicans’ potential Iowa caucus winner.  (Has it really been 2+ years since I wrote this?)

John Kasich
Probably the Republican candidate most appealing to independents, someone who seems to understand that governing is a compromise.  Unfortunately, that means it will be tough for him to win.

Rand Paul
Younger folks like him, but his mostly libertarian message isn't getting the traction it did when his father, Ron, ran in 2012.  Interestingly, he can partly thank Bernie Sanders for that.

Marco Rubio
Youth, intelligence, ethnicity, and likability are in his favor.  He could win the nomination, but if he goes too far to the right to do it (a la Mitt Romney), he’ll have a hard time being elected president.

Donald Trump
He’s the Frankenstein’s monster created by the Tea-Party Republicans, and now they can’t control him.  I still predict he’ll eventually ruin his reputation(?) along with the Republicans’ chances of winning.

Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum
Thanks for visiting Iowa!  Now go home, and stop trying to make a career out of running for president.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

I traveled to Los Angeles over the New Year's holiday weekend, for a bucket list trip to attend the Rose Bowl and Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena.  With the Iowa Hawkeyes playing (Standford) in the bowl game, I figured I wouldn't have a better chance to go, along with 30,000 or so other Iowans (some of whom I knew and bumped into there).

My observations, in chronological order:

* The Santa Monica Pier, and surrounding city and beach, was a great place for us Midwestern tourists to gather.  Seeing the sunset over a beach on New Year's Eve isn't normal, but I could get used to it.

* Pasadena is a tree-filled, skyscraper-less suburb that could pass for a thousand other college towns anywhere in the America.  (Cal-Tech is at its center.)

* The parade exceeded my expectations.  The route is 5.5 miles long, so it isn't that hard to find a spot to watch as long as you aren't near the start.  Standing among the locals around the parade mid-point was perfect.  The colors, the music, the floats, the celebrities -- it was all very cool, and the two hours went by very fast.

* If you go to the parade, and then the game, there isn't a lot of transition time between the two.  Driving or shuttling to the game was almost impossible with the traffic, so most parade attendees made the 2+ miles walk.  Couple that with extremely tight security at the stadium gates, and it takes a while to get to your seat.

* The Rose Bowl Stadium experience was second-to-none.  Not sure there is any other 100,000-seat stadium in the world in such a park-like setting.  Factor in that I'd seen it on TV dozens of times on New Year's Day, but always in the cold and dark of an Iowa winter, when it looked like it was on another planet.  The game outcome may have been awful for Iowa football fans, but at least the Stanford band was entertaining.

* So many freeways, so many cars in LA.  And this was a holiday weekend.  Let's just say that Google maps and traffic came in very handy.

More Brutal Vikings (Not The Nordic Kind)

We interrupt our planned blog entry to bring you breaking news.....

As background, six years ago, I posted this account of what it's like to be a Minnesota Vikings football fan, and listed my Top 5 most brutal Vikings losses of all-time.  I now can add a new one that I'll label as 'tied for fifth':

T-5.  2016 Wild-Card playoff game at home versus the Seattle Seahawks.  In the third-coldest game at kickoff in NFL history, in a game the Vikings were not favored to win (mostly based on a big regular-season loss at home to the same team a month earlier), Minnesota trails 10-9 with under 30 seconds to go.  However, they've made a last minute drive deep into Seattle territory, and line up for a likely game-winning field goal of just 27 yards.  Their fine placekicker, Blair Walsh, had already kicked three other field goals in the difficult conditions, so as long as the snap and hold were good, this was going to be a big win.....and he shanked the kick way left.

There are those that would put this higher on my list (or theirs), but given the stakes of a Wild Card game versus a championship game, given they weren't favored to win anyway, and given that they'd still have to win two more playoff games (at least one and probably both on the road), I don't currently rate it higher.  If this young Vikings team goes no farther in the next couple of years, I could see it rising in my rankings.

Either way, brutal.

2016

It's once again time to review my 2015 list of things I'd like to see happen, and lay out my hopes for 2016.  Here's the 2015 list, with new notes in ALL CAPS:

-Less glorification of big butts.
I'M DECLARING VICTORY ON THIS, BECAUSE IT MOVED FROM A 9 TO AN 8 ON A SCALE OF 1-10.

-A Final Four for Iowa State men's basketball, and an NCAA tournament berth for both Iowa and Northern Iowa men's basketball.
OH, SO CLOSE.  THAT IS, IF YOU CAN CALL ISU LOSING IN THEIR FIRST NCAA TOURNAMENT GAME AS A 3 SEED 'CLOSE'

-More action, less inaction by the U.S. Congress.
A PERPETUALLY WASTED HOPE.

-Stephen Colbert dominating late night television, with Conan and Fallon and Stewart right behind.
OTHER THAN JON STEWART RETIRING, I FEEL THIS IS STARTING TO HAPPEN.

-Common use of Apple Pay.
NOT AS COMMON YET AS IT SHOULD BE.

-Might as well go for it again -- at least medicinal marijuana legalization in Iowa.
C'MON, MAN! PROGRESS IN SOME OTHER STATES, BUT NOT IN IOWA.

-A vaccine against Ebola.
DID NOT HAPPEN, STILL WORKING ON IT.

-A week-long vacation for me.
DID NOT HAPPEN, STILL WORKING ON IT.

For 2016 I'd like to see:

At least some progress, not regress, on medicinal marijuana legalization in Iowa.

Chris Christie versus Hillary Clinton for president, with ? winning.

A higher stock market.

Just one actual, even very minor piece of legislation to make it slightly more difficult to buy a gun.

The personal, financial, and political implosion of Donald Trump.

A way to charge devices without a wire.

An à la carte option for cable and satellite TV channels.

More time for eating right, less time for exercise.

The Meaning Of Christmas (Gift Exchanges)

I can't let the holiday season go by without an annual complaint about the bastardization of some Christmas tradition.  In 2012, and again in 2013, it was Christmas cards.  In 2014, it was Christmas songs.

This year, it's about Christmas gift exchanges.  I'm mostly referring to an event where an inane gift is blindly purchased to be given to another family member or co-worker, without an idea of what the receiver might actually want.

(I want to note that I have disdain for ANY type of co-worker gifting, often couched in the name 'Secret Santa'.  It doesn't matter it it's known what that person may want, because you can be sure most workers don't want feel as if they are being forced to spend time and money buying a Christmas gift for a randomly chosen co-worker.)

Growing up, it was a common practice for a family member to draw a sibling's name and buy a gift for that person.  This was a simple process, and the person could actually find out what the recipient wanted, and buy something useful.

But that wasn't good enough for my generation to pass on to their kids.  No, we had to invent a silly, more elaborate gift exchange process, one that included extended family and co-workers and had no requirements related to practical gift-giving.

Blind gift exchanges may seem like fun to some folks (read: women), but what is the actual outcome?  Time and money being spent on 'gifts' that are very unlikely to be used by the recipient.  And to achieve that ridiculous outcome, people need to sit around for an hour or so watching undesirable presents being opened by others.

Stop the madness!  Everyone would be much better off to open up their windows and throw the money spent on gift exchanges out onto the street, where perhaps a needy person could get some benefit from it.

But at least we are all honoring the birth of the Savior, right?

Good, Evil, And Religion

There's been so much rhetoric lately on domestic terrorism, given the recent events in Paris and now San Bernadino, CA.  It seems there's no middle ground for people who think the answer is arming ourselves with more automatic weapons, or banning said weapons, or perhaps banning immigration altogether.

This week, it was taken to the extreme by the non-to-be-taken-seriously Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who suggested banning new Muslims from entering America.  It's an unconstitutional, certifiably insane idea, but he actually gets cheers from other extreme Republicans for saying it.

I plan to blog about the presidential candidates sometime before the Iowa caucuses.  In the meantime, to all who think like Donald Trump, I say in the famous words of Joseph Welsh to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who destroyed lives in the 1950s with false accusations of communism:  "Have you no sense of decency?"

The underlying current behind all of this rhetoric is religion.  We like to think religion reminds us to love our fellow man, but aren't there as many examples of religion making us hate?

I'm not just talking about radical Islam, either.  I know plenty of Christians who have no problem discriminating against gays (yes, that counts as hate), for no other reason than their religion tells them to do so.  Religion and religious differences have promulgated hate for centuries, from the Crusades to the Revolutionary War to the World Wars.

The other day, I came across a quote from more than a decade ago, attributed to Steven Weinberg.  He's an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions on the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.  (Whaaaaat?)  Let's just assume he's a very smart dude.  Oh, he's also an atheist.  His quote pretty much sums up how this deal works:

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.  But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

Not Thankful Yet Again

Here's the 7th annual edition of my Thanksgiving-time list of things for which I am not thankful. You can get to the trail of prior lists here or by using the label Thanksgiving.

As usual, this year's list is in no particular order:

People on social media who believe everything they read, and then forward it, without question.

Superhero movies.

Caitlyn Jenner and her/his so-called courageousness.

Academic professors more concerned about their tenured, taxpayer-supported livelihoods than needed academic reform.

The Ebola virus.

Those who refuse to vaccinate their children because they don't understand science.

Those who refuse to acknowledge climate change because they don't understand science.

The Southeastern Conference.

Bill Cosby.

The end of the Grantland web site.

Another year without medical marijuana legalization.