The Lessons of 2016

The Hunger Games (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The year 2016 is coming to an end, and few people are going to mourn its passing.  But that doesn't mean the year didn't have a few lessons to teach us.  Such as:

Never underestimate the billionaire real estate mogul who gamed the political system and won the White House with a plan to make America great again.  Even if he is a rude and crude individual who promised to drain the swamp, only to restock it with other billionaires and retired generals.

If you're Hillary Clinton, never assume the keys to the kingdom will be handed to you, even though you won three million votes more than the other guy.  Never assume that Bernie Sanders supporters would automatically come rushing to your side once he quit the race.  And never assume the Russians or some hacker had anything to do with your defeat.

If you're the mainstream news media and you're still wondering why the billionaire real estate mogul got elected, look in the mirror.  You gave this man so much free airtime that he didn't have to spend a dime on political advertising.  Also, if you're one of those who bemoan the rise of fake news, don't be surprised if extreme conservatives complain that the MSN is capable of making stuff up too.

If you live in Flint, Michigan or anyplace else where fracking is a problem, don't drink the water.

If you live in North Carolina, make sure you know where your bathroom is.  And best of luck to the new Democratic governor, who had some of his powers stripped by the outgoing GOP governor.

If you live in places like Aleppo, Belgium, Orlando, or anywhere else terrorists and war struck this year, you have our deepest sympathies.  And that's all you're going to get.

If your name is Merrick Garland, you might as well forget about that Supreme Court nomination.

If you live in North Dakota and you have successfully protested against the construction of an oil pipeline that would go through sacred grounds, you know darn well that treaties are made to be broken.

If you are an African-American male, your chances of surviving an encounter with the police are about the same as the likelihood of officers getting convicted.

If you're British and you voted against your country remaining in the European Union, be careful what you wish for.

If you're President Barack Obama, you must be looking forward to being a private citizen again.

If you're Garrison Keillor, you should be taking it easy and writing books instead of reliving the past on cruise ships.  We hear the new "A Prairie Home Companion" is doing well, even if fewer radio stations are running the program.

If you're bothered by all the movies and TV shows that imagine dystopian societies, maybe they're trying to tell us something.

The Grim Reaper was the biggest pop star of 2016, escorting several music legends to their final exits.  Prince, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Merle Haggard, Leon Russell, Bobby Vee, Natalie Cole, Leonard Cohen and George Michael.  As Jim Morrison--who checked out at age 27--once put it:  "No one here gets out alive".  Here are some of the other notables the Reaper made visits to:

Antonin Scalia, Nancy Reagan, Morley Safer, Muhammad Ali, Wendell Anderson, Fidel Castro, John Glenn, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Alan Thicke, Ron Glass, Florence Henderson, Gwen Ifill, Robert Vaughn, Janet Reno, Tom Hayden, Agnes Nixon, Shimon Peres, Edward Albee, Phyllis Schlafly, Gene Wilder, Garry Marshall, Elie Wiesel, Alan Young, Janet Waldo, Doris Roberts, Patty Duke. Garry Shandling, Larry Drake, Keith Emerson, George Martin, Pat Conroy, Harper Lee, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Vanity, Abe Vigoda, Dan Haggerty, Alan Rickman, Rene Angelil, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds.

If you're wondering whether 2017 will be better or worse than 2016, you're not the only one.

No Holiday From Scandal

English: Logo for the University of Minnesota (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once again, the University of Minnesota's athletic department is the subject of scandal involving questionable sexual behavior.  This time around, it almost cost them a bowl game appearance.

Ten players from the football team were suspended by the University for allegedly taking part in the sexual assault of a young woman at a post-game party in early September.  Neither Minneapolis police nor Hennepin County attorneys could find enough evidence to charge anyone with a crime.  But the University's Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action report--acquired by KSTP-TV in Minneapolis and published on its website -- described what happened in great and sordid detail.

Because University officials, including President Eric Kaler and athletic director Mark Coyle (who had only been hired a few months after the last AD resigned due to a sex scandal), chose to hide behind state privacy laws to avoid talking about the case, the football team decided to take matters into their own hands.  They announced a work stoppage in support of their teammates, meaning they would refuse to participate in any football-related activities unless their demands were met, which included due process for the suspended players.  That meant not playing in the Holiday Bowl football game against Washington State, scheduled for December 27 in San Diego, California.

Now why on Earth would they give up a chance to play in a nationally-televised bowl game, the University of Minnesota's first in the state of California since 1962?

Then the players started reading the EOAA report, and to check the temperature of public support.  Once they found out the details, they also discovered that support was growing colder than the below-zero temperatures.  So the team ended its work stoppage just hours before the University had to give its answer to the Holiday Bowl committee, which is that they're going west.  After all, who wants to be seen as supporting violence against women?

Football coach Tracy Claeys, whose job status is already shaky because his team had an unimpressive 8-4 record this past season and has two years left on his contract, upped the ante with his tweet about how proud he was of his players taking a stand.  What happens in San Diego will go a long way toward whether Claeys coaches next season or not.

But enough about football.  Sexual assault is a big problem not just at the University of Minnesota, but at campuses across the country as well.  Young women who came to college to earn their degrees, and to experience life away from their parents, sometimes end up getting more than they bargained for.  They have to watch their backs when it comes to every man they come into contact with.  And when the worst happens, good luck trying to get anyone to believe your story if the man has a different view of what happened.  Especially if your attacker happens to be a star athlete who's bound for the pros, and the institute of higher learning you're part of is protecting him at all costs.

In announcing the end of their work stoppage, the Minnesota football players solemnly pledged to not only demand justice for their accused colleagues, but to also take a stand to reject sexual violence against women.  Now let's win the big game!

Well, the football team came to their senses before it was too late.  When are University of Minnesota officials going to come to theirs?

Transitioning Into Chaos

English: Donald Trump's signature. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since we last left you, President-elect Donald Trump has been holed up inside his Trump Tower office in New York, preparing to downscale to the White House come January 20, 2017.  He's been meeting with his transition team, ironing out who's going to be in his Cabinet (more on that later), and what happens to his business interests.

Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the legitimacy of Trump's victory.  While he may have won the Electoral College's vote, Democrat Hillary Clinton leads the popular vote by nearly two million.  Court-ordered recounts have been made in Wisconsin and Michigan, and they both show that Trump won by slight margins.  And the CIA concluded that the Russians might have interfered with the election to make sure Trump won.

But Trump doesn't care about any of this, and why should he?  This is the same man who hollered during the campaign that the election was being rigged.  Well, it was rigged all right--in his favor.

Trump's most notable accomplishment thus far was to convince Carrier, an air conditioner manufacturer, to keep some of its jobs from moving to Mexico from its plant in Indiana.  That's great, but it still means half of the jobs are going south of the border.  And Carrier, which has many government contracts, can't afford to offend the future President.  Trump has to learn that he can't save every job that's either being automated or going overseas.

While Trump has been trashing Alec Baldwin's portrayal of him on "Saturday Night Live" on Twitter, taking phone calls from the President of Taiwan that sets off diplomatic alarm bells in Beijing, and telling the world he isn't all that interested in getting a daily intelligence briefing because he says he's a smart guy, he's been packing his Cabinet nominees with corporate types, retired generals, far-right ideologues and former rivals.  They all seem to share Trump's disdain for climate change, trade policy, immigration and the Affordable Care Act.

Sometimes Trump makes a show out of his nominations, just like he used to do on TV's "The Celebrity Apprentice"  Take Secretary of State, for example.  The list of candidates read like a Who's Who of conservative politics--Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, David Petraeus and John Bolton.  Instead of those guys, Trump is reported to have chosen Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil.  His being pals with Russian president Vladimir Putin is qualification enough for Trump, even if it scares the living daylights out of the rest of Washington.

At least Trump had the sense to hire women who aren't beauty queens to fill important positions in his administration  Nikki Haley, the Governor of South Carolina, has been named United Nations ambassador.  Betsy DeVos, charter school advocate and philanthropist, was picked to be Education secretary.  (Isn't this the Cabinet position Republicans always want to get rid of?)  Elaine Chao, who was Labor secretary under President George W. Bush, has been nominated to lead the Transportation department.  Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is her husband.

All of these nominations have to be approved by Congress.  Some of the nominees raise questions about their stands on social issues, and how to implement Trump's most controversial policies here and abroad.  The hearings will also be a good test for how much push-back a Republican Congress gives the new President before ultimately caving in to him.

Barring an Electoral College miracle, Donald Trump will be sworn in as President in less than two months.  He will not have the mandate to do whatever it is he wants, but it doesn't really matter.  He could be the best President we've ever had, or he could be the worst.  He could also be the last, as far as anyone knows.  Our freedom and our future depends on it.

John Glenn (1921-2016): Space Pioneer

John Herschel Glenn Jr. (born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio,) is a former American astronaut, Marine Corps fighter pilot, and United States Senator. He was the third American to fly in space and the first American to orbit the earth. This photo for his second space flight on October 29, 1998, on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the early 1960s, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union showed signs of boiling over.  Spy planes were shot down.  A dispute over control of Berlin led to a wall that divided the Communist East from the capitalist West.  And the presence of Soviet weapons in Cuba nearly caused a nuclear war.

There were also high stakes being played by the two countries above Earth.  The USSR launched the first satellite, and Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.  President John F. Kennedy issued his call for man to land on the moon before the end of the '60s.  NASA responded by naming seven astronauts to represent the new Mercury space program.

One of those astronauts was John Glenn, a former marine test pilot who had flown missions in World War II and Korea.  On February 20, 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth aboard the Friendship 7 capsule.  The trip took nearly five hours, and he orbited Earth three times. Upon his return, most of what was then called the Free World hailed his achievement, throwing him ticker tape parades and such.  Eventually, before the decade ended, the crew of Apollo 11 fulfilled Kennedy's challenge.

Glenn parlayed his space-hero image into a political career, representing his home state of Ohio as a U.S. Senator from 1974-99.  In 1984, he ran for President as a Democrat, but lost out to Walter Mondale.  Glenn also got caught up in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s, having accepted a bribe from financier Charles Keating.  Glenn and John McCain of Arizona were the only Senators exonerated as part of what became known as the Keating Five.

Glenn returned to space in 1998 as part of the crew aboard the shuttle Discovery at the age of 77, the oldest person to do so.  Once again he was celebrated for his achievement, although some grumbled that he got this opportunity as a political favor.

With the Cold War over and the moon having been conquered, there's talk of sending humans to Mars and possibly other planets by 2040.  This would not have been possible without the efforts of Glenn and the other Mercury and Apollo astronauts who helped pioneer space exploration.

John Glenn died Thursday.  He spent 95 years on this planet, and a few hours above it.  Now he'll be in permanent orbit.