Author: BC

America loves Winston Churchill. As one educated at a public high school named for Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, I can attest to this. And why wouldn’t we? After all, it was Churchill who, after resisting round-the-clock German air raids in London, and executing one of history’s most magnificent evacuations at Dunkirk, accepted the role of FDR sidekick with full knowledge that WWII victory meant the end of Pax Britannia. If defeat to the Nazis was a ruinous calamity, by the end of the Casablanca Conference of 1943, Churchill could be certain victory came with its own tremendous cost.

One can only imagine how much more difficult and precarious things would have been had Churchill refused to cede Roosevelt and America its leadership role, if he had disputed basic propositions put forward by FDR concerning war planning and post-war cooperation. What if he had instructed Montgomery to give no quarter to US Generals? To abide no plans he felt compromised English superiority? What if he fully refused to be a team player, figuring the Nazi rout at Stalingrad, and Hitler’s frailties had already cast the die? Why invite the Americans to England? Britain first… and always! Events may have unfolded quite a bit differently.

Normandy has long been a proving ground for US Presidents. Reagan, perhaps a B-Lister in Hollywood, but plenty good enough for the bully pulpit, was never better than when he paid tribute to “the boys of Pointe du Hoc” on D-Day’s 40th Anniversary. Ten years later, Bill Clinton raised his game while praising American veterans of the invasion, humbling himself in thanks from a grateful world. Indeed, humility and sincerity are the guiding lights for all world leaders when they speak from the Post-War order’s most hallowed ground.

American exceptionalism at its nucleus is an unapologetic declaration of our intention to rest on the laurels of American sacrifice reflected by places such as Normandy, and men so old and so few they almost surely will all be gone by the next commemoration. It is a constant shrill reminder that, “hey, we could have just sat it out, but we arrived to save the day! You’re welcome!” Whatever spoils America garnered from the blood spilled on French beaches is beside the point; when needed the most, we gave our all. Make no mistake, MAGA is the political embodiment of American exceptionalism’s relentless morphing at the lips of Fox/AM blowhards into a grotesque militancy that labels any humility by US leaders as “surrender” and falling into the role of a “sucker.” Whatever Churchill ceded us for our selflessness wasn’t enough, and the bill remains past due. Several generations of prosperity be damned… what have you done for us lately?!

Churchill’s successors stand at a precipice of the nation’s own misguided creation. Brexit was no more than an English equivalent to American exceptionalism. “We won’t be saddled with the obligations of others! Leave us to our own devices. Britain first, last… always!” Take away Nigel Farage’s accent and complete sentences, and he could be just another Trumpie railing against immigrants and anything resembling constructive cooperation. A nihilist is a nihilist, whichever side of the pond he’s on. Forget leading the world, Britain now can’t even figure out how to abdicate its role as a credible continental partner.

Into this mess came our personification of American exceptionalism’s lazy entitlement, more ignorant and unhelpful than usual. Where Trump goes lying fantasies follow. On the 75th Anniversary of American global leadership the leader of the free world felt it appropriate to delay proceedings while he played his flute for his wretched core back home. Laura Ingraham, who never met a PC-persecuted neo-Nazi she didn’t want to defend, was on cloud nine to oblige. While old and frail heroes cooled their heels, the man who treats NATO members as deadbeats, fabricated a quote by the organization’s Secretary-General, declaring him a savior of the post-war world’s signature alliance. The best anybody could say about his stilted formal D-Day remarks was he pushed back his constant desire to ad-lib, which would have surely produced an international incident.

In Ireland, he couldn’t be bothered to even research what his host’s sensibilities on Brexit and borders were, causing awkward embarrassment as he assumed they were as nasty and xenophobic as he is. Of course, the issue of accommodations became tricky when the President insisted on providing one of his struggling golf clubs US taxpayer dollars to put up his entire retinue. Trump’s policy whims may be utterly unpredictable, but his greed and overt corruption are as faithful as a clock.

Most of England’s electorate appears to now understand what a mistake the Brexit referendum was. If it is permitted to be reintroduced and voted on again, there is little doubt of the result. Yet and still, just like us, they are suffering the consequences of fidelity to democratic principles that yield decisively awful results. Like Churchill, who oversaw the end to a way of life he couldn’t imagine disappearing, Brits now struggle to pull back from populism’s ugliest leanings. In his own perverse way, Trump did England a big solid by vividly reminding them how bad such a Frankenstein can become, further steeling their spines to continue to reassert duty over nihilist self-absorption. It was farcical to see Fox and Friends struggle from their on-location feed to disguise London’s collective disgust for Trump. That they have a far easier time of it here in America should gravely concern us all.

Truth seems at an ever greater premium in America right about now. What’s worse, way too many don’t seem bothered much by the development. It’s certainly a cliche, but that doesn’t make it any less a fact, democracy’s lifeblood is truth. There simply isn’t a way forward for free and open elections if voters lose confidence in what they require to inform them. When most simply shrug and discount truth’s preeminence, accepting the inevitability of malleable facts, the entire exercise loses its basis for being. I mean, what’s the point?

HBO’s important mini-series, Chernobyl, offers a long overdue look at the world’s worst ecological disaster. And while the production provides a riveting narrative as to how exactly it occurred, and the many unsung heroes responsible for mitigating what could have been a far worse catastrophe, the moral of the story centers on the ceaseless and interdependent lies on which Soviet science was based. The fact that, were it not for a few brave Russian physicists, a critical design flaw in most of the country’s nuclear reactors would have continued to exponentially enhance the possibility of another Chernobyl-like accident unabated, speaks to the existential threat government without any duty to truth reflects.

The dark specter Trumpism represents isn’t just embodied in the constant stream of lies its namesake produces, but in the pathological way his wretched core struggles to consume them and render them somehow palatable to the broader body politic. It’s no longer disputed that the President lies continuously; his massive output is impossible to adequately gaslight and sanitize. Even false equivalence – the proposition all politicians are dishonest and Trump is no more or less guilty of what we have always accepted as a norm – is tacitly deemed inadequate to digest the profligacy of his falsehoods. No, now the narrative has become far more odious, Soviet in nature…. that lies are an appropriate part of the arsenal required to stem liberal assaults on our “freedom.” It’s just “Trump being Trump” and looking past his lies is a patriot’s duty, a failing that can be made a strength so long as one isn’t saddled with the weakness of sentimentality toward absolutes. After all, the ends justify the means.

That Trump seems to be genuinely losing his ability to tell fact from fiction hardly matters anymore. Whatever he says is immediately cleaned up for wretched core consumption by Fox/AM… separating the pit from the fruit and reinterpreting as needed. On the internet false memes, most devoted to either sanitizing Trump or demonizing his critics are shared without thought, original written material being a kryptonite to most Trump supporters. That most of the memes being redistributed are fabrications doesn’t phase the base at all; if it supports the narrative, use it.

Recently an old friend of mine from a youth gone by, and a virulent Trumpie, shared a meme that came by my feed. It was an outrageous lie that quoted Hillary Clinton in 2013 declaring business titans like Trump should run for office while praising his honesty. The message covered all bases, Clinton hypocrisy, Trump greatness, Liberal selectivity of storylines, the full trifecta. I commented to my friend how outrageous the whole thing was, that by 2013 Trump was a leading birther and Obama’s Secretary of State would surely have nothing good to publicly say about him. I asked why he would spread such a clearly fictional message. His response was inane but, taken as typical of a millions-strong sensibility, fully chilling. He lol’d and told me to relax, proclaiming how funny it was. I countered by asking whether he felt any responsibility to be truthful, his response was a full set of lols. Since I was trolling his page, Trump backers came to the rescue, all putting their own stamp on a unified theme…. so what if it’s not true, it could and should be!

Of course, this isn’t to say ignoring fact doesn’t occur on both sides of the aisle, and it certainly isn’t to contend that US political history isn’t rife with distortions and outright lies being introduced for electoral benefits. What’s different now is a dismissal of truth as the final arbiter and judgement mechanism of bad behavior. Trump doesn’t care, or, evidence now seems to indicate, even realize he is lying. And he enjoys a 24/7 multi-media operation intent on regurgitating his thousands of falsehoods into buoyant ballast of the shit river narrative that both created and sustains his viability. No different at all from a state-run information service. TASS in red, white and blue.

For the President’s wretched core, and the new GOP leadership, which now fully reflects and supports Trumpism’s nihilist propositions, “honesty” is now defined as Trump’s constant attacks on the parameters of responsible government. “Truth” is now but a tool to be employed to justify and normalize what just three years ago was unacceptable and politically suicidal. Not much daylight is left between Trump’s complete dismissal of truth as a constraint on behavior and the Republican Party’s allegiance to the concept as a guidepost for government. Right now Mark Meadows and Jim Jordon traffic in Trumpism deceit just as recklessly as the President, no surprise there. But GOP leaders in the Senate are beginning to follow suit, instead of no commenting about one White House lie after another, the Thunes and Grassleys appear ever more willing to act in line with fictional presumptions.

When Trump was elected economic indicators and Department of Labor statistics were corrupt and unreliable. Three months later they were biblically accurate proof of an economic miracle. Before Trump, “tariff” was a dirty word in GOP halls, now the party is engaged in full-time spinning of its ruinous effects on wide swaths of its constituency. Negotiating with North Korea was traitorous in 2015, now Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have trouble speaking English after Trump, with zero evidence or ambition to do any more than simply state a falsehood, disputes US Intelligence on renewed missile testing by Pyongyang. Across the board, from fully inane (“I never said she was nasty”) to the critical (“I never had any business in Russia. Nothing!), we now suffer a compulsive liar as President. What uncharted waters this will lead the country toward, and how we will endure that voyage, most likely will decide whether American democracy goes past tense.

Most critical will be what has always represented the tipping point of authoritarian and totalitarian consumption of societies: will truth lose its status as the absolute standard for both the creation and reflection of reality. Will we accept the premise reality is but a product of what the state deems it to be, or will we demand government tailor its actions to the truths it is forced to face. Near every hour Trump lets us know where he stands on that question. Moreover, certainly his wretched core, and ever-increasingly the GOP, appear consumed by the notion a maniac’s whims should be permitted to supplant inconvenient facts when political ends require it. The degree of comfort the rest of us are capable of finding in such an Orwellian landscape, and whether it will temper the lengths we are prepared to go to in opposing its consummation of our national life, may very well spell our future. The highest of stakes. BC

In the 60s Paul Newman classic, Cool Hand Luke, “the Captain” savagely beats the story’s hero, Luke Jackson, after he is caught trying to escape the southern work camp where he is serving time. “What we have here is a failure to communicate,” announces the Captain to Luke’s fellow detainees after his violent anger cools. None of the inmates mistake his meaning.

Robert Mueller could have prefaced his 10-minute statement yesterday with the same memorable Hollywood line. Yet and still, despite its omission we should be just as clear as George Kennedy and company to his meaning. There never was a “Mueller Time,” merely a Mueller Report. Exhaustively researched, carefully worded… a 448-page collection of facts, which provide a solid basis for Congressional action – not Special Counsel action, or DOJ action, but Congressional Action.

On a personal level Mueller’s words were a blunt announcement that he is no super hero, and after two years of very thankless work, is instead a tired 72-year old who wants his life back. But on a broader, more theoretical level, the now former Special Counsel, made clear the helpless inanity of the idea a moron like Donald Trump should have more than 200 years of American democracy depending on superpower intervention. Everything we need to deal with the current pestilence is available. Just do your jobs… I’ve done mine.

Meanwhile, it should not be lost Mueller cleared up a couple of critical points for the record. First, if there remains any doubt, the President is either lying or inexcusably misinformed when he blathers there was no Russian collusion. Not only was their collusion, but it was surely directed by the Kremlin. Next, despite the assumption by near everybody else in the US, Mueller from the beginning never accepted it as his responsibility to even consider indicting Trump. That he would allow such a fundamental miscommunication to percolate all this time without making public remarks to address it is inexplicable and perhaps unforgivable, but he clearly corrected it yesterday.

By making it clear he never felt it his purview to charge Trump, Mueller laid Attorney General Bill Barr bare as a perjurer. Barr asserted under oath Mueller told him his motivation not to charge the President was influenced by more than merely Mueller’s understanding of his office’s limitations, clearly implying the Special Counsel would have permitted more damning evidence to override his fidelity to how he believed the law and constitution limited his role. Yesterday, Mueller was crystal clear on this point… he would not have allowed that. Barr was lying to Congress.

Finally, Mueller, ever the literary tactician used one word to convey his feelings about whether Trump’s malfeasance requires intervention. In addition to forcefully stating “if we had had confidence the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” he employed the word “when” instead of “if” in describing a pressing need to bring the hammer down when “… a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators…” There can be no doubt who he was referring to, or whether he believes it a major matter requiring additional institutional oversight. And if anybody wasn’t clear enough on the level of gravity Mueller accorded the entire assault on US democracy he spent two years investigating, he finished his statement with an exclamation point that “all Americans” should heed.

So moving forward Congress can either accept Mueller’s baton or flinch and let it fall away. Two and a half years in there really isn’t a plan B to impeachment. Trump is holding this country hostage, mollifying him until next November to presumably rout him at the polls and wait to see what crisis he will create on his way out doesn’t sound attractive. New initiatives like slapping Mexico with tariffs because they aren’t meeting the President’s criteria for blocking immigration to the north, and mindless saber rattling at Iran, which could start a stream of events the Administration loses control of, reminds us Trump is an aggressive and unpredictable cancer. Waiting him out is flat out dangerous to both us and the planet.

Republican adults are beginning to emerge from their untimely slumber. Just today former Maine Senator and Defense Secretary William Cohen offered an op-ed piece calling for impeachment. Cohen, who as one of a handful of GOP members of Congress who joined Democrats in calling for Nixon’s head, knows a bit about going against the grain. He pointed out that most of the country initially opposed impeaching Nixon, but came around as facts came to light. Mueller has produced 448 pages of them; his statement yesterday clearly urged the Democrats to take them out for a test drive and see what they can do. Trump in the Senate dock creates a platform he can’t interrupt, and events he and his poodle Barr can’t preempt and redefine.

In the fall of 2016 many of us, too overconfident in Clinton’s chances, scoffed that if the US electorate was idiotic enough to elect a reality show nihilist, the nation deserved the cataclysm it would surely receive. Now we know just how ugly and existentially perilous a Trump regime is. We also know his wretched core of die hard support tops out at just under 40 percent. Allowing the fear of alienating those with their hands covering their ears to forestall holding US history’s most corrupt and seditiously incompetent President to account amounts to throwing in the towel and accepting the dive to the bottom he represents. We must be better than that. Yesterday, Robert Mueller challenged us to stop cutting bait and get some lines in the water. Heed his call. BC

For those of us who raised active children Memorial Day weekend brings to mind the traveling youth sports team. Whether it be baseball, softball, basketball, lacrosse, volleyball – whatever type of activity – the memories of quality one-on-one time spent with your child en route to god-knows-where are precious…..but not without pain, particularly for parents of second-teamers, who drove miles of traffic-clogged byways only too often to share their child’s disappointment after riding pine.

It’s a fully preventable situation, most always caused by coaches doing far more harm than good inserting themselves into what should always be the exclusive domain of the kids their efforts are supposedly all about. For my money, and, believe me, travel volleyball took a hell of a lot of it, any but the most select of 13-year old athletes should be coached with their enjoyment and increased enthusiasm as primary objectives. Losing isn’t as fun as winning, but being denied a chance to participate makes any victory hollow. Coaches who don’t get that at this level, I have no use for. Period. Sadly, in my experience, such cluelessness is far from the exception.

It’s important here to distinguish programs. I refer to the modern suburban mutation of teams created for young teens seeking a higher level and more frequent competition than local house leagues can provide. It’s a niche that’s produced a cottage industry of for-profit outfits often competing against each other to lure athletes with promises of more elite coaching and skills development.

The price tags to join such teams are stunning, and require aggressive marketing that the results will be worth the investment. But for every parent convinced they have a prodigy with a future college scholarship on their hands, there are those like me, simply indulging their child’s desire to connect with peers and get some kills. In Northern Virginia, teenage girls volleyball has morphed into a remarkable hierarchy of programs that flourish through word of mouth, each branded by itself as an elite operation devoted to preparing its players for the next level. My daughter seemed to already know which teams she could tryout for with a reasonable hope of being selected and those above her pay grade of talent.

In the parenting division of labor discussions my wife and I frequently engaged in, there was never any question sports participation was my exclusive responsibility. I even volunteered to coach basketball a couple of years earlier, which I enjoyed far more than I expected. Yet and still, when it came to travel-team girls volleyball, I simply followed where my daughter said to go. It was her show; she understood where her skill level belonged, so that was the program she tried out for.

Of course the team’s director was not one to modulate his expectations. Speaking to parents after the selection process, one could be forgiven for believing their kid had just made an Olympic squad. Words like “determination” and “effort,” “sacrifice” and “teamwork” were bandied about. One word used more sparsely was “fun”. The schedule was an eye opener. Tournaments seemed to be held everywhere but within the local radius. Pittsburgh, Ocean City, Lancaster, PA and the bowels of Delaware were preferred destinations.

The Pittsburgh tournament took place during Memorial Day weekend. I had never been to Pittsburgh before, and I will surely never mention it as a holiday mecca. I gulped hard, now fully comprehending the time commitment I was signing on for. Meanwhile, the check I was asked to present before leaving further extinguished any inclination travel volleyball wasn’t serious business. In fact, it was the largest single outlay I made that fiscal year. The fact a sizable line was formed at the “financial questions” – read payment plan – table as we left, said it all…. 21st century youth sports is a pay-to-play proposition.

The caste system of travel team sports becomes apparent almost immediately as the first game begins. There are the team’s undisputed starters and the rest. Parents of players unconcerned with playing time, in my observations, can be some of the least empathetic and self-aware people one will find. There perspective more than too often centers on winning and losing, with precious little attention devoted to much else. Whether kids other than their own are enjoying the event is too often not any concern. Since they take their own child’s playing time fully for granted, the amount others are accorded doesn’t register for many.

The idea that all the kids should enjoy the experience is not a priority for many a 1st team parent. Why has always escaped me, but perhaps that’s because I have often been a 2nd-team parent. I do know for certain this blind spot is pervasive and usually reflects the attitudes of the coach. And make no mistake, the size of the gap between how a team’s parents perceive tournament competition provides a solid indicator of that coach’s priorities. The two go hand in hand. When I coached my daughter’s basketball team, my guiding focus was full participation. Now, it was a house league with clear minimum play requirements, but they were unnecessary with me. Nearly a full half of our final game was devoted to getting the only scoreless girl on our team a basket, I couldn’t imagine her not sharing in that feeling. Several years later I would learn many coaches’ priorities were not near as inclusive.

Six years ago to the day I was in Pittsburgh cheering on the girls of “Poison Ivy.” We had arrived into town toward the end of Friday rush hour, greatly aggravated by a home Penguins playoff game. Nuff said. My daughter was a solid enough contributor to her squad, tall and adept at producing a kill given the right set. However, she was not a starter, her playing time was not assured. Like several other girls, she far from hampered Ivy’s chances when on the floor, but was a notch below her 1st team counterparts. And while I had discussed with her the possibility she wouldn’t get as much playing time as she wanted on a team this talented, I was confident a little would go along way. A kill here, kill there, a couple of rotations each game would satisfy her need for relevance.

Poison Ivy’s coach didn’t see it that way. A Pat Summit caricature, she was in Pittsburgh for the hardware, that was her first, middle and last priority. Whatever experience she saw the girls having began and ended in the win-loss column. Substitutions were sparse, and when made usually meant to punish a starter not playing up to snuff. As one match ran into another the girls on the floor tired, while the girls on the bench slumped and became discouraged. The thing about volleyball tournaments is, unless your team isn’t losing or winning at all, nobody ever seems to know how well it’s going. However, after Ivy lost their second match on the second day of competition, it was clear the big bling was not in the cards. Nonetheless, the coach felt consolation matches would reflect on her performance, so second teamers remained seated. I will never forget the incredulous pain parents showed sitting for yet another match only to see the bored shame in their child’s face. First-teamer parents, as clueless as ever, continued to cheer on their athletes, who were surely tired and sore and would have gladly sat for a change. It was disgraceful.

Our drive home from Pittsburgh was quiet, my daughter processing her feelings, really kind of confused how she wanted to present herself to me. I let her know she had done the work, and it was completely the coach’s failing for the indignity she had suffered. I reminded her how happy she was to make this team, and any step up in life is going to require sacrifice. Moreover, just because somebody is your coach or boss doesn’t mean they can’t make mistakes; it was a part of life.

Still, I was livid and regretful I had paid a few thousand bucks to entrust my daughter’s well being to such a self-important imbecile. At least Issie had actually seen action. One of her teammates, a wonderful, fully competent setter, saw three serves of playing time. Her father, who had brought his parents along to watch her play was speechless and crestfallen, trying to figure out how a trip they had all looked so forward to could produce nothing but sadness and hard feelings.

It would be wonderful to be able to say Pittsburgh was an aberration, it wasn’t. In fact, the next year’s coach was even worse, a young, former college baller, determined to make his mark on the NVA coaching scene, with zero consideration for anything past a W. Even his starters reviled his indifference to their teammates. It was like the twilight zone… deja vu all over again.

I’ve come to appreciate how the differing views of parents on this issue clarify broader dispositions. Some I’ve talked to express support for such nonsense, equating the issue with the “participation trophy” debate. It’s hardly a coincidence that many of this school of thought seem to suffer a general lack of empathy, a recurring penchant to dismiss concerns for those excluded for whatever reason. News flash to knuckle heads: coaching 13-14 year old kids carries one primary responsibility… make sure they have fun and emerge from the exercise at least as enthusiastic as they started, particularly if their parents are paying four figures and devoting all of long weekends to support the endeavor! Be like doctors… at the very least do no harm! As I said before, a little goes a long way; coaches who can’t be bothered to oblige that common sense proposition should find something else to do. Our children deserve better. As always, remembering the fallen on Memorial Day weekend. BC

When the most important legacy one can imagine for his time in office as POTUS is a wall to keep the tired and hungry out, nothing should come as a shock or seem too ridiculous. That Trump’s minions appear comfortable expanding on the boss’ preoccupation with what color his monumental achievement should be painted, and whether spikes should adorn the top of of the structure, speaks with volume about our Chief Executive’s priorities. After all, as Sarah Sanders noted… “the President is one of the country’s most successful builders….. and wants to make sure we get the job done under budget and ahead of schedule.” Of course, ask any great builder, sweating the details is what counts…. get the small stuff right and the big strokes, like actual funding for the project, or tangible returns on monies already allotted, will surely fall in line. Thus far, $1.57 billion has produced almost four miles of wall, but let’s not digress.

If there is a non-profit, 501-C3 equivalent to the dark web it would surely be We Build The Wall, whose advisory board includes such odious right-wing extremists as Steve Bannon, former Colorado congressman and OG immigration bundist Tom Tancredo, Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince, and voter suppression fraudster Kris Kobach. The organization’s website is a self-parody, awash in racist memes and white national nastiness. The latest excitement centers around a raffle drawing that will soon be held. The grand prize? …. Two lucky patriots will get to attend the ceremony for the first completed stretch of Trump’s everlasting glory, and, hold on to your MAGA hats, actually get their names engraved into the structure!! Who could make that up?

Any good sales professional remembers those first few weeks at the entry level, when their employer provided the training necessary for a career as an account executive. The word no is simply a request for more information, a failure of the prospect to understand the benefits he’s yet to embrace. It’s not an obstacle but an invitation to highlight the pluses your product or service brings to the table. If hearing “no” discourages you, better look for other work.

Tommy Fisher, CEO of North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, has taken that mantra to a whole new level in his efforts to gain the $billion plus contract to construct Trump’s signature obsession. Eliminated from consideration by the Army Corp of Engineers, who rejected Fisher Industries’ bid, citing a failure to meet established requirements and garner necessary approvals, Fisher filed suit last month against the US Government. A conservative gadfly and major GOP donor, Fisher has appeared often on Fox News to rail against immigrants and tout his company’s patent-pending construction system that gets the job done “faster than any contractor using common construction methods.”

Like most everyone else lobbying this Administration on most any issue, Fisher figures only one person needs to be convinced, the entire established vendor selection process and Homeland Security procedures be damned. Not only is Fisher refusing to take no for an answer, like our President’s approach to governance, he’s simply going to fake it til he makes it…. act like it’s a done deal. Whether it’s his repeated appearances on Trump’s favorite Fox shows, a more than cozy relationship with We Build The Wall, or the efforts of ND-Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer, who Fisher has fully bought and paid for, the President has become a fan, and is now pushing for Fisher Industries to get the wall contract in his typically shameless and inappropriate way.

Despite being told in no uncertain terms by both Corp of Engineers and DHS officials the Fisher Industries process “does not meet the operational requirements of US Custom and Border Protection,” Trump is making known he wants Fisher to get the nod. That’s more than enough for Fisher, who has actually moved forward to construct a section of wall in El Paso on private land owned by….. you guessed it, We Build The Wall! It’s anybody’s guess how deep that slimy group’s financial ties and potential rewards go with Fisher Industries – another investigation for a future date – but they are all in pushing for Fisher to get the contract. Fisher has invited Trumpie lawmakers to El Paso to join Fox/AM A-Listers and the We Build The Wall crew for the “unveiling” of the section his builders have completed…. Fisher has trumpeted the event as a game changer. Meanwhile, his law suit alleging improprieties with the border wall procurement process awaits a hearing on its dubious merits.

So, let’s add all of this up. A company’s bid for a monster government contract is rejected out of hand by those authorized to oversee the procurement competition. What to do? Get a team of lawyers to sue, while ignoring the decision and making an end run around the process with full assistance from shady right wing non-governmental influence peddlers, all the while taking to Fox/AM air waves to denounce the swamp of corrupt bureaucrats responsible for denying patriots the blessings of your wonderful building techniques. Sound familiar?!

Two and half years in and the signature accomplishment Trump seeks for his Presidency fully illustrates how incompetently autocratic our first Fox/AM Administration has become. As Democratic contenders for the White House sort out their differences and present their varied styles to primary audiences, they would do well to take a collective inventory of what is at stake. It’s impossible to imagine how the US government will withstand Trump unleashed with the “mandate” he will surely howl to the heavens a second term bequeaths to him. Right now the President faces impeachment and as equally an unfathomable route to 270 electoral votes as 2016, against an opponent who will surely generate more excitement and participation than HRC…. and this is how business is conducted. Imagine another four years begun with him already ensconced and flush with re-election bravado! All or nothing. Survival or ruin. A going democratic concern or Fisher Industries. BC

Randy Santel approaches what he does with an evangelical determination. More than 700 times over the last several years he has overcome challenges precious few would even consider. Over and over he has fought the clock to achieve preeminence in his specialized pursuit. Sometimes he has failed, which is most often punctuated by the harsh indignity of public puking, but not often, usually willing himself on to victory. And in his own way, with the enthusiasm borne from youthful naïveté, his enterprise is a metaphor for today’s America. Santel is a competitive eater, literally traveling the globe to document his relentless encounters with food challenges, chasing glory one pig out at a time.

Our President always wants his base to know he is every bit as committed to getting the W as Santel. When he announced his latest “comprehensive” immigration plan, he praised it as the first concerted effort in 50 years to tackle the intractable issue head on. That most lawmakers on both sides of the aisle disagreed had little effect on the Administration’s messaging. Asked how any plan that fails to mention the future of DACA can be taken seriously, White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders went full Orwell, deadpanning that omitting DACA precisely illustrates the proposal’s solemn intentions. In other words, if part of the discussion is intractable and unpleasant, pretend that issue no longer exists and get the win; that’s what really counts anyway… right? Huh?!

Nine pound pizzas, multi-gallon milk shakes, 96 Oz. steaks and thigh-high cheeseburger towers, Santel tackles them all. From Iowa to Scotland, Florida to Spain, his “Atlas and Zeus” You Tube domain chronicles each foray into gastronomic oblivion. He’s definitely not doing it for the riches. Typically, a successful effort results in very modest reward from whichever establishment he visits and promotes for a particular challenge. A free meal, perhaps a T-shirt, maybe some chump change if he breaks a previous record.. When Paul Newman and George Kennedy created one of movie history’s great scenes in Cool Hand Luke, it’s doubtful they figured, 50 years later, eating 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour would barely raise the eyebrows among a sub culture that sprouted seamlessly from America’s devotion to excess. Try 20-dozen or so raw oysters in an hour! Now there’s some real chowing!

Successful previous administrations shared an effective decision making process, which included robust input from Capital Hill. Why toil to roll out a policy or proposal that dies in committee, or finally gets back to the President’s desk so laden with amendments it’s no longer recognizable. It’s the difference between serious governance and show-pony politics. Better to solicit input from the get-go, respect the process. Had LBJ simply plopped a civil rights package on the docket and screeched for a vote, defeat would have been a certainty. Pretending formidable opposition to the legislation was inconsequential, or could simply be steamrolled by Presidential force of will was nonsensical, and would have meant he wasn’t serious about getting something historic to the finish line.

Today we have a President who defines bipartisanship as Democrats bending the knee to his desires – and if they do, it means he didn’t ask for enough and its goalpost moving time – anything else is a bad deal his base will shrilly denounce. Policy substance is a detriment to the only thing of real importance….. getting a win. To be fair, immigration has been kicked down the road for decades, Trump isn’t the first to dodge the political pain it’s solution would require. But he is the first to mold the issue into a central campaign pledge, with nothing but hatred and draconian measures constantly sold to his wretched core as prime indicators of his political courage. Of course we’re finding out it takes no bravery at all to cast immigrants as scum, and welcome them to our shores by stealing their children and denying any and all claims for asylum. When Stephen Miller can rise to the top, you’ve created a snake pit, not a policy shop.

It appears the key to Randy Santel’s success is deconstruction. He never attempts to actually eat some monstrous sandwich as it was intended to be consumed, instead always devouring its contents first and then finishing the bread as a fully separate item. One could rightly ask if that is really true to the nature of the endeavor. After all, the contest is to eat a sandwich, not a bunch of meat and cheese and bread. Yet and still, most of the creations he tackles are so massive conventional consumption is impossible anyway so it seems purists don’t have much of a case. In any event, reducing a pizza meant to feed an entire sky suite to its body and crusts means, as the clock ticks down, Santel will be struggling to ingest a mound of very unappetizing dough. By the time he finishes and declares victory in between contorted belches, witnesses have sworn off pizza for the foreseeable future. But Santel only cares about the win, ugly or not.

It seems intuitive that, were one really serious about solving the immigration quagmire, better to break it down to its component parts and hammer out consensus one at a time. Pre-Trump approaches recognized the logic behind such a strategy and, while still failing miserably, at least showed a sliver of good faith by sticking to what was practical. As a rule, Trump and good faith are oxymoronic, never more so than with respect to immigration. Doing anything right by desperate refugees, on any issue, large or small, is sacrilegious to the template for nastiness he promotes as his brand of leadership. Extending or cementing DACA would be the very essence of decency, and offering it would place real pressure on Democrats to come up with concessions to make it happen, wall funding included. It may even beguile more than a few from their current impeachment preoccupation. But such win-win possibilities are no longer even considered by this Miller-led West Wing. Trump would rather just ignore the issue altogether, fixating instead on allowing “those we can use” to the front of the line, and what color paint is best for his wall. Like Middle East peace, “comprehensive” is a synonym for “non-starter,” a waste of everybody’s time…. no more than a new talking point for rallies. Turns out Mr. Negotiator can’t even get to first base because the nihilism he represents abhors solutions. Far better to simply blather “agree or else” and, once again, claim the win.

When Randy Santel began his eating obsession a few years back, he was a splendid physical specimen, ripped to the core with full six-pack abs. Now, more than 700 “wins” later, he is overweight and soft, a sad testament to the insults gluttony bestows on even youthful frames. You wouldn’t call him obese, but you surely wouldn’t say he is healthy, the once lean athlete replaced by a lumbering gourmand. Indeed, God knows what such constant satiation is doing to his heart and other vital organs, but Santel seems unconcerned. Each day is a new opportunity to turn too much sustenance into waste. And make no mistake, each video he produces mirrors America in the Age of Trump….a nation bent on the rightness of stuffing itself with the rewards its past selflessness earned, scarfing down its due, no longer restrained by moderation. Enjoy it now, while it lasts, and never apologize. Making improvements to what we’ve been blessed with is lib foolishness. The clock is ticking and that slice of pie is zero-sum, yours or somebody else’s. Forget about the opus of reaching consensus and actually governing, it’s all about getting the W…… even if it kills you. BC

To adequately address the multiple fronts of insidious chaos this Administration initiates one must triage events and establish a working order of which outbursts portend the most injury to the national interest. With trade wars ready to explode, and the President now firmly backed by the GOP to pursue repressing those who investigated his seditious corruption, both our economic vitality and pluralist political process face imminent peril. Add to those crises new UN data that clarifies Trumpism’s militant inaction on climate change as an existential threat to life on the planet, while moving up the time table on our doom significantly, and one is slapped silly by a trifecta of self-inflicted hazards. Two and a half years in we’re no longer shooting ourselves in the foot, the barrel now rests firmly at our temple.

Listening to Trump hold forth on any subject produces anxious nausea if you are brighter than he is, and/or not addled by either obsessive bigotry or greed. He still believes tariffs are a cash cow for the US Treasury, and clean coal is actually a niche ore mined for its pristine burning properties… nuff said. It has been conveyed by those who have worked in the West Wing that catching the President’s attention requires a hook of either the sensational or ugly innuendo, facts are tedious and risk losing him completely to the relentless distraction he suffers.

Apparently, bundist Stephen Miller and doomsday John Bolton have mastered the art. When it comes to pushing Trump’s buttons and focusing his most visceral nastiness, Miller is the Iago of Pennsylvania Ave, understanding the invading hordes from the south, or fiendish Persians to the east will reliably snap the President into momentary cognizance, edicts and tweet storms at the ready. And as if ending American democracy and precipitating economic as well as ecological ruin is not enough, we now must ready for ICE unleashed and war with Iran, Miller and Bolton’s twin preoccupations.

New revelations suggest what really got head of Homeland Security Kirsten Nielsen canned was her opposition to a massive 10-city Gestapo-like ICE sweep of thousands of immigrants ruled deportable. Miller’s brainchild, and vigorously supported by Trump, the operation would have surely gone off as ugly as it sounded, with ICE squads kicking down doors and rounding up families like the vermin Trump and the ghoulish Eichmann wannabe believe they are. Nielsen, and the President’s previous selection to head immigration enforcement, Ronald Vitiello, together challenged the plan, seeing it for the half-baked and chaotically authoritarian horror it represents. And while their opposition seems to have succeeded in at least postponing the madness, it earned both the boot, as Trump confirmed afterward, intoning about new plans to “go in a tougher direction.” Purges are Miller’s love language, and a West Wing awash in Apprentice pettiness and sycophancy can’t help but reward those who slither most efficiently.

In Europe our allies no longer attempt to make nice, viewing us now as far more problem than solution. Nothing proves them more prescient than our haste to pick a war with Iran. While Trump was feting a regressive Hungarian strongman previous Administrations distanced themselves from with praise he only provides “tough” leaders, who always seem to disdain the democracies which empowered them, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was stopping by Brussels to crash an EU planning session.

European Foreign Ministers have not held back criticism of Trump’s abrupt trashing of the exhaustively crafted US-Iran nuclear deal. Lately, Pompeo’s mission has been to kick things up a notch or two, making clear not only are all options on the table when it comes to Iran, but force now takes up far more space than diplomacy. Pompeo’s sorry position speech last year inferred most anything less than a surrender of sovereignty was not going to satisfy this White House, with the goals of the abandoned nuclear pact downgraded to just a couple of items on Washington’s ever expanding list of grievances. Linkage, nihilist style.

Both the Saudis and Israel would love America to commit blood and treasure to weakening their principal competition for regional hegemony. To which Trump’s reply is simple… how high?! In Brussels nobody appeared psyched to meet with our chief diplomat, understanding clearly Pompeo’s messaging was a one-trick pony express… we’re taking names of those not sufficiently aboard our war wagon! War with Iran is our prerogative, yours is to support with enthusiasm, and pay more for the privilege! European Foreign Ministers are far from inclined to oblige. England’s Jeremy Hunt actually created equivalence between America and Iran while expressing fears of escalating tensions both parties have heightened.

Of course Trump is to lessening tensions what cigarette smoking is to emphysema, and his recent statements have been especially unhelpful. The Saudis declared yesterday the damage two of their tankers and a Norwegian freighter recently sustained near the Persian Gulf was “an act of sabotage,” but wisely refrained from speculating on suspects, they knew who to rely on for that. Wisdom being a notably foreign concept to our President, he enflamed as usual, threatening it will “be a bad problem for Iran if something happens, I can tell you that.” One can only expect the worse when Iran’s rhetoric proves no match to a US President’s for militancy. Frederica Mogherini, the EU’s chief diplomat, reluctantly agreed to a last minute meeting with Pompeo and emerged unimpressed, cautioning both parties to exhibit “maximum restraint.”

Between unprecedented US pressure on allies to abide newly tightened sanctions against Iran, and the overt distrust Europe now understandably displays as Trumpian sabers rattle louder by the day, it’s near certain NATO won’t survive a unilateral US attack in the Persian Gulf. Of course Trump et al will shed few tears about that outcome, and the GOP makes it less mistakable on the hour they will fall in line behind any outrage the Administration entertains; thus, a cataclysmic war with Iran is quickly becoming a more when than if proposition.

Added to the menu of other waterfalls this White House strokes mindlessly toward, a full reckoning appears assured. The fervent hope used to be we could survive our worst civic failure with a benign mulligan, a valuable lesson we could absorb and use to do better next time, spared the worst consequences of our screw up. Trump and the GOP are having none of that, like Glenn Close’s unhinged character in Fatal Attraction, they aren’t about to be ignored, and electing a Fox/AM nihilist will prove to be anything but an innocuous dalliance. We are going to have to fight like hell to break this thing off…. and it’s going to be harrowing. Allowing the tea pot to whistle unattended will surely ruin us. BC

“We must not be misled by left-wing incompetent news media that, day after day, feed us a diet of fantasy telling us we are bigots, racists and hate-mongers.”

George Wallace

“Bigotry is a disease of the mind – a poisonous infection unbounded by age time or space. It is transmissible, capable of being passed down from elders to child, from community to community, from racial and religious kin to racial and religious kin.”

Colbert King

Perhaps the most damaging falsehood we accepted as part of 21st century conventional wisdom was that far more of white America emerged from the Civil Rights battles of the 60s shamed and morally chagrined than actually did. We predicated the foundations of our national story, and future societal aspirations on the notion an overwhelming white majority was shamed into understanding how wrong it was to abide institutional racism. At the very least, we assumed, most really believed the law needed to be applied equally or the hypocrisy would simply be too ugly to look past, too blatant to permit other political goals to move forward in its shadow. It now appears certain we were mistaken.

Worse, in according so many the benefit of the doubt they neither deserved or really cared to receive, we established a false complacency that simply ticked away through the years as they added up cumulative grievance they would either go to their grave possessing or unleash if the opportunity presented itself. That day came in November of 2016, and decades of unrequited bigotry and resentment has come spewing forth unabated, indeed fully amplified by the POTUS and the GOP.

On every front we thought had been decided there is now what amounts to open efforts at nullification. Voter suppression, outrageous and unprosecuted police misconduct, a plethora of discrimination initiatives pursued under the sham of religious freedom, “self defense” statutes to protect those who outright murder minorities they are scared silly of, housing discrimination, business disenfranchisement, the list goes on and on. Moreover, there is more than enough flat out racism, no longer hidden in the shadows, or even dog whistled in ugly code words, to match the surge in institutional bigotry.

Trump as a symptom or Trump as the cause and effect; it probably doesn’t matter much. The pivotal question is does this reflect the dying gasp of a couple of generations who stewed at the kitchen table but kept their mouths shut in public, acceding to the dictates of “political correctness” until they were liberated by the ugliest Presidential campaign in modern American history? Or is this a malignancy that has spread throughout and afflicts, not just the sons and daughters of Wallace partisans, but grandkids as well? Is Trump the death throes of our wretched past, or the hideous specter of our dysfunctional future? Is he merely the walking dead spouting vile ignorance and nastiness that won’t survive him, or is he injecting future generations with virulence that will addle their plans and aspirations?

Regardless of the answer to that critical question, the accoutrements surrounding this massive out-of-the-closet movement are all very familiar. Pushing back the boundaries of what constitutes bigotry has always been a racist preoccupation, as has creating the false equivalence necessary to debate what should already be established. Trumpism is all about both of those regressive pursuits. Trump’s smothering embrace of law enforcement is more wedge strategy than anything else. When his wretched core thinks of who a cop’s natural enemy is they have only one skin color in mind. Ditto when the President drones on about our ICE heroes. And when the unrepentant draft evader wraps himself in the blood and sacrifice of America’s service people, there is nothing coy about the subtext. That hate crimes skyrocket in every host area after a Trump rally provides all the clarity one requires about both message and audience.

Of course the internet provides the coarsest and most direct evidence of the liberated legions of white intolerance. I long ago moved past my shock and dismay at the memes old friends felt comfortable sending out under their tag. Awful stuff leaving little to the imagination, usually tied together by a nasty intonation underlining the us vs. them thesis that runs throughout Trumpism. Most worrisome about the internet is its grasp of our youth’s attention, and potential to shape their perspective. Daily evidence of inane yet frightening examples of groups of teens exhibiting Bundist tendencies speaks to the fragility of America’s future.

Years ago I was playing in an impromptu golf tournament with a friend I thought I knew pretty well. He was a funny guy of quick wit and an enjoyable nature. We were the odd foursome in the group of perhaps 15 after another friend bowed out at the last minute, so only three of us would play together, my friend riding in his cart with a buddy, who he obviously went way back with. As we began playing, and casually conversing on the tee box as we waited to hit, my friend felt unguarded enough to start telling his best n*****r jokes. I was startled and fully unable to do anything other than stare at him awkwardly, suggesting we change the subject. Seizing on my unease, he decided to start ribbing me about my reticence to find humor in racist abasement, which his pal seemed to enjoy. Still feeling some level of shame I didn’t initially call him to task, I viewed his prodding as a new opportunity to assert decency into the situation and told him I found no humor in such idiocy and to STFU about it. The rest of our round was tense and unenjoyable. Moreover, our once thriving friendship deteriorated afterward, which I have zero regrets about.

The point here is threefold. One, anybody who would like to wager their 401K on how my former friend voted in 2016 please contact me. Two, is there any mystery what kind of narrative he listened to around the dinner table growing up? Finally, this was close to 20 years ago, and we both had very young children. I don’t have much doubt what his children heard while eating their supper about America’s first black President, who, back when their comedian father was performing his impromptu routine, was still an unfathomable scenario. And remember, this all takes place in swanky, ever-more-liberal Northern Virginia, not the Deep South or flyover country.

Many of us were naive in believing that part of America’s national identity is a collective ability to learn from the lessons our mistakes teach us and move on. That proposition is being sorely tested at this moment. Trumpism is regressive in all of its elements, but none more so than its ceaseless embrace of ugly racial sensibilities once thought dead and buried. There is a building panic in America that unvaccinated children are going to create a resurgence of childhood diseases we thought were whipped. If only that same manic vigilance was on hand to protect our kids from the ugly bigotry we once assumed they’d never have to ponder. BC

In college I was lucky enough to study journalism under some great professors. Second to none was Don Murray, a Santa Claus look alike with experience and wisdom to spare, and he was not stingy sharing it. A Pulitzer Prize winner, he dispensed lessons in a conversational manner, encouraging both participation and the ideas it produced. I continue to be amazed by how prescient he was by raising topics that at the time seemed ancillary and not particularly relevant.

One day he brought up exactly such a subject out of the blue, asking us what we thought of all the burgeoning sources of news and information cable was providing. To a person the answers were much the same… it was an absolute good, a boost for democracy and the fourth estate that undergirds it. More sources meant more access to information and truth. As Mitch McConnell announced on the Senate floor yesterday… case closed. It bears noting that this was a class of serious students, some headed to highly successful careers as reporters. Jackie McMullen, for example, is now a preeminent sports opinion writer and ESPN regular; we were a focused group. Anyway, upon hearing our version of groupthink, Professor Murray begged to differ and posited his reservations about cable’s explosion onto the market place of news gathering. Information and truth are a democracy’s most valuable commodities; perhaps the manner they are gathered and distributed should be elite and rigorously protected, lest they are taken for granted and devalued. I remember receiving his insight with a slight nod of affirmation and acceding that his point made sense; yet I continued to be underwhelmed by the topic’s importance and soon enough we were on to something else.

Truth in America has never been cheaper, and the President of the United States works feverishly to further lessen its standing. Don Murray was spot on in his concerns, and the US citizenry is engaged in a cold civil war as a result. One cable creation owns most of the responsibility for this…. Fox News of course.

From its first day on the air Fox has aimed to abase the best practices of American journalism and cloud the very idea of truth as the foundation for news gathering. The audacious lie it put forth from the start – that almost the entirety of American journalism is biased and corrupt – has gestated and been fully digested by millions, eventually spreading like an unchecked cancer to infect the foundations of our national life…. and the aorta of our civic heartbeat.

Fox News is a totalitarian entity, that is it always has to be moving forward and intensifying its behavior. From oddly distasteful to more relentlessly misinformed to shrilly partisan and now rabidly reckless, the Fox snowball must keep rolling down the mountain; the nihilist zealots its diehard viewer base has become won’t permit any pauses. Nor, it seems, will its first American President.

Yesterday, the New York Times came out with devastating news; it had received 10 years of Trump tax returns, dating back to the 80s, and the truth about his business acumen that hard numbers reveal. At the very time he had a bestseller out cultivating the fiction he was a self-made business prodigy, Trump was in the process of losing over a billion dollars, much of it money from his father, Fred Trump. The data can’t lie because Trump himself provided it, and its findings are clear….everything Trump touched failed miserably, often leaving banks and investors – and his father – on the losing end. According to the NYT, the Donald wasn’t simply a bad businessman, he was literally one of the worst businessmen. How bad was he? The article notes that in “….multiple years he appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual taxpayer.” Now that’s failing bigly! Fred Trump seems to have endlessly indulged his manic son’s desire to buy enterprises and ruin them, most prominently Eastern Airlines shuttle for $365 million and the Taj Mahal and other Atlantic City casino properties to the tune of $800 million. It’s not hyperbole to say simply everything Trump headed up went south in a hurry. More than hapless, far worse than incompetent… disastrously horrible.

In a sane and modestly vibrant democratic entity these revelations would constitute a death knell. After all, the Donald is really nothing if not the self-made business titan prepared to foist common sense on a nation gridlocked by gray scale indecisiveness. Ask any of his wretched core what most appeals to them about Trump and they will surely cite the fiction he has nurtured from day one as a business success, now fully destroyed by raw data. But of course we know this isn’t it for the President, not even close. Instead of a decisive blow to a congenital liar, a critical nexus in his public disgrace, yesterday’s scoop is but another example of the cautionary tale Professor Murray worried about near 40 years ago, when truth began to lose its value.

The President’s twitter feed always accurately indicates how concerned he is about a particular topic. So his near immediate multi-frame gibberish attacking the article’s veracity betrays it struck a nerve. It’s worth reciting in full because it provides such a sterling sample of the crisis at hand:

“Real estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases. Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered “tax shelter…you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes….almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job.”

What’s stunning is Trump’s unabashed willingness to admit criminal dishonesty in service to protecting the lie of his business acumen. Of course, it’s doubtful he has to worry about either with regard to his wretched core, who won’t entertain the revelations as anything other than MSM lies… just another attempt to destroy their duly elected President. Fox/AM will both bury the story and attack it with the same presumptions. And the GOP? How will it respond to more overwhelming evidence that the POTUS elected under its banner is a colossal liar and fraud? Clown question. “Hot off the presses!…” sure ain’t what it used to be.

The codependency of Trump and Fox/AM has one primary target…truth. This President lies without thought; he is the autonomic nervous system of deceit. Fox/AM now has no brand other than as Trump’s primary support structure; its consumers will accept nothing else. Virtually nothing from either entity is honest or in good faith; that’s where we are. Make no mistake, the well being of truth, and the willingness of the US public to appreciate it, will mirror our nation’s survival as a going democratic concern. Right now we have three main groups: those in thrall of lies; those cognizant and respectful of the truth; and those who don’t care either way, and despise the entire issue, demanding only to be left alone. A society indifferent to truth or its revelation deserves what comes its way….. and, tragically it seems, that’s surely what’s heading toward us. BC

The Kentucky Derby has been a primary obsession of mine for 30 years now. Ever since, on a May afternoon in 1989, every bit as wet and dreary as yesterday, I agonized before betting my remaining $58 on a single exacta box of Sunday Silence and Easy Goer, Derby glory has taken up way too much space in my closet of ambitions. Every year it begins as a dull ache in February with an initial set of prep races meant to identify candidates with the potential to shine in May, perhaps a prodigy to get on early with a future bet at big odds. By early April the field has been winnowed to perhaps 30-35 horses; a final series of 1 1/8 mile races eliminates the remaining pretenders.

A week out from the first Saturday in May true Louisville zealots can think of little else, as final workouts are scrutinized to identify “now” horses with a fondness for Churchill Downs. Friday night before the race is always more exciting and anticipatory than any Christmas Eve I ever experienced. Derby day is a frenzy of gambling, with one of the best undercards of the year. Few things can equate with a major score before the main event, bestowing “house” money to play with for Derby bets, relieving the pressure of losing mortgage funds and freeing one to swing for the fences. As “My Old Kentucky Home” plays at the Twin Spires, the post parade provides a final chance to assess one’s selections. Are their ears pricked? On their toes? Washed out? The anticipation becomes almost unbearable.

When the gates spring open it is electric, a cavalry charge to the first turn, a critical phase that may not determine the winner, but always sweeps away at least several losers. Watching the Derby in a crowded public forum is a chaotic and confusing experience. The din of the crowd makes hearing the race call impossible, and with 20 horses, it’s more the norm to lose track of your candidates than the exception. Turning for home usually identifies the eventual winner as invigorated contenders separate from struggling pretenders. Running the classic distance of a mile and a quarter for 3-year old colts is like climbing above 28,000 feet on Mt. Everest, either the physiology is there or it isn’t. Genetics surge to the fore with cruel abruptness. Yet and still, few things compare to confirmation that, as they pass the final pole, your horse or, better yet, horses, are prospering and will factor in the decision. The adrenaline such a realization produces can lift a truck, or more aptly, deafen those around you. In just a couple clicks more than two minutes it is all over, sometimes producing ecstasy beyond measure, far more often quiet disappointment and recrimination that, despite all the study, all the analysis, you missed what now seems so patently obvious. And then, like every real horse player knows, it’s time to move on to the “get out” race, the next card, the next meet, the next year. Life can indeed orbit around the Kentucky sun.

Few people in the world know more about the Kentucky Derby since 1988 than I do. That’s not braggadocio; it’s simply the truth. A favorite parlor trick of mine is to ask who I seek to impress to name any year between 1988 and the present. When they do so I quickly rattle off every relevant fact about that Derby renewal like a savant, plus a special personal anecdote to accentuate the experience. It’s not hyperbole to say I could talk all day about my Derby highs and lows. Is there a book in there? I suppose. But really it’s simply the life and times of a breed heading toward extinction… the hardcore handicapper.

Anybody serious about the Kentucky Derby hates rain. It renders the most rigorous of analysis near worthless, tossing the outcome to fuzzy intangibles like hoof sizes and niche pedigrees, freaky race flows and lucky paths that form in the mire. For the last three years the heavens have been penal toward those of us transfixed by the greatest two-minutes in life. Yesterday was particularly harsh as reports of certain and near continuous rain like last year proved inaccurate until about an hour before race time. At just the moment it appeared disaster had been skirted, the skies opened up and made up for the delay with a deluge that transformed a fast track to a bog within minutes.

In 2009 I loved a horse called Dunkirk, and was very confident he would pay off handsomely. Trained by Todd Pletcher, a preeminent force in the sport, Dunkirk was coming into the race the right way, with a pedigree and versatile running style that would serve him well at the classic distance. But rain intervened. As the minutes ticked closer to post time my confidence ebbed, along with my enthusiasm. He seemed disinterested in the post parade, appearing disdainful of the gloppy footing. As I stood in line to bet, already certain it would be far less than I budgeted for, I made a decision I am still exceedingly proud of… I stepped out of line and went to get another beer. If Dunkirk won, more power to him, but nothing felt right and, except for a couple exactas bet earlier, I was just going to enjoy the race. Of course, had Dunkirk jogged and paid near $20 to win, I’m sure I would have looked for a stool and short rope…. but that’s not what happened.

If a poll had been taken that week of which entrant could be thrown out with no second thoughts, Mine That Bird would have prevailed in a landslide. New Mexico-based, he got into the field only because of a brave finish at monster odds in a graded two-year old race. In fact, he was the perfect example of what eventually motivated an overhaul of the entire Derby qualification process. He didn’t belong and shouldn’t have been there. But there he was, and after the first call was so far detached from the field you simply had to take race caller Tom Durkin’s word he was actually still running. His jockey, Calvin Borel, a Churchill Downs fixture, who had won the roses on Street Sense in 2007, was aptly nicknamed Calvin Bo-Rail for his penchant of saving ground with his mounts. At the second call it seemed he could save all of Kentucky and still not win, so hopelessly behind was Mine That Bird.

At the halfway point it was anybody’s race, except it seemed Mine That Bird’s. But then Calvin got busy! Hugging the rail like paint, he began to pass tired ones on the far turn, building momentum on a path improbably free of pedestrians. Up front, as they turned for home, Pioneer Of The Nile, the betting favorite, seemingly took control of the race. Yet suddenly, along the Churchill fence, a mystery horse swept by everybody into the clear, fully separating himself from the field. Durkin, a Hall of Fame race caller, stuttered and fumbled trying to identify the animal now drawing away by widening lengths. By the time Durkin figured it out, the race was a rout, Mine That Bird winning by almost seven lengths at more than 50-1. A flustered Durkin called it an “impossible result.” Dunkirk checked in toward the rear, confirming my wisdom, and reinforcing my belief that rain changes everything and creates lottery conditions.

Ten years to the hour after Mine That Bird’s shocker, Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott struggled for the right words when asked how his first Derby win felt. After all, Country House, elevated to victory after Maximum Security suffered the first disqualification in 145 run for the roses, wasn’t even his first stringer; Tacitus, the second choice at post time, was who Mott’s binoculars were surely fixed on. Country House was parked out at post 20, and at 65-1 was near every bit the throw out Mine That Bird had been a decade earlier. Mott was gracious as he could be, appreciating the victory, but understandably offering reticence for “backing in” to the winner’s circle. One can imagine him later, alone with his emotions, perhaps weeping a bit that his sport’s holy grail finally fell to him for all the wrong reasons. Great men don’t settle for technicalities, nor appreciate an asterisk.

There is no doubt Maximum Security deserved to come down, his transgression was severe, surely distorting the race’s outcome. Upon video review, it seems near miraculous he didn’t clip heels with War of Will and cause a catastrophic incident that would have further wounded a sport already reeling from too many tragedies. One can only imagine the carnage caused if the lead group of horses had gone down in a field of that size. Disqualifying him was the only call to make. However, that doesn’t make it any easier to digest for those who were winners and ready to cash….. until they weren’t. Of course, I have plenty of tales to tell about being “brought down” while in possession of a previously winning ticket. The pain is excruciating, the frustration extreme. Now it’s part of Derby lore. Another running. Another tale to tell. And of course there’s always next year. BC