What kind of world are we living in where we may, at some point, look back with a mystifying fondness for the days when we only had to deal with the likes of Donald Trump?

Regardless of what unfolds concerning the indictment rumors, one thing many know for sure is that Ron DeSantis would be a more frightening alternative to the garden variety ineptitude of Trump. DeSantis raises the stakes considerably. A vote for him would be a vote for someone who knows how to get out of his own way, who has a slicker delivery, a longer view, maybe a bit more patience.

DeSantis has a sharper set of tools but the same smarmy, political façade. He somehow seems more dangerous and conniving. Hard to put a finger on it, other than to say he’s a more sophisticated brand of stupid.

So we lose an hour overnight this weekend. The dreaded Spring Ahead. From the amount of coverage this gets and complaining it generates, one might think it’s an actual news story. Reputable news sources focus on the uptick in strokes and accidents and heart attacks, so there’s that.

And yet, it’s a lost hour that technically happens after 2am on Sunday morning. As one commentator suggests, just go to bed an hour earlier. But it’s probably not that simple. That one hour appears to have potentially life-altering consequences.

Nothing to sneeze at, I guess. In any event, come Sunday we’ll be enjoying an extra hour of daylight and maybe a reminder that Spring is almost here.

Oil chief leading COP28 climate summit…

Thought this was a misprint, maybe from an Onion headline, but it was from CNBC. Maybe there’s wisdom in having a fox in the hen house, having the head of a fossil fuel conglomerate lead the gathering of eco-minded (I assume) attendees who are gathered to address climate change.

Or is the whole thing just a formality, lip service and window dressing? Seems hobbled from the get-go, difficult to take seriously.

The news is a cacophonous mess. On the balance, it’s anger and bravado and threats. No one can be seen as embracing peace or compromise, because that would be weakness.

There’s talk of confrontation, and moving beyond a cold war. Who’s talking, though? How widespread are these hawkish sentiments? Do they seep through an entire population, or are they the property of, largely, a small group of men aching for a fight? If it was up to the citizens, would war happen at all?

Enough of the tail wagging the dog. War is the weakness, a sign of failure, a sad, stupid and unforgivable waste of everything.

Pride indeed goes before a fall. The need to prevail, to be the only right—this is the poison.

Kari Lake, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump– names being mentioned in the same breath as 2024. My oh my. The cream rises, eh? The peoples’ desires are apparently voiced through this unholy trinity, these superstar… options for high office.

There are at least two countries between the shores, two distinct audiences tuned into totally disparate soundtracks. If Lake, DeSantis, and Trump remain at the top, if no other candidates can break the stranglehold these ugly people currently employ and enjoy, then next year we will have 2020 on steroids. Many will find a quiet place to hide for the duration, many will turn off their phones and tvs and tell their loved ones to wake them when it’s over.

These three are candidates only in the most tortured and contrived sense of that word. And the other hopefuls aren’t much better. The Republican party has nothing to offer us except fatigue and paranoia, an infatuation with authoritarianism, a strict moral code born of an unformed Christian faith, and a penchant for deregulation that makes their industrial donors happy and the earth more inhospitable.

There is no vision of a better day for all. Their motivations are informed by more basic things, primarily grievance and power. Childish drama on a wildly destructive level.

Baseball is on the clock, batters and pitchers are on notice– in the name of a more “interesting” product and sustained viewership, at the expense of time-honored strategy and ritual, and because viewers at home and probably in the stands have a next-to-nonexistent attention span.

A dwindling capacity for nuance, a discomfort with idle time, unable any longer to put up with what they can only describe as boredom– that cheap, lazy, catch-all word.   

Golf is a great sport. I enjoy watching the PGA tournaments because it’s relaxing and I get to watch players who are, most weeks, really good at a game that I also play but suck at. They’re so good at it, most of the time, and it’s fun to watch.

What’s starting to get under my skin is how much money they stand to win from week to week and how selective these guys are when it comes to which tournaments they play. The Honda Classic, for example, was a shell of its former self last week– top 17 players weren’t there, the stands were only partially full, at best. The winner took home only $1.5 million or so, which I assume was the reason for the dearth of ranked players. And this was Honda’s last year of sponsorship—next year it will be named something else. Maybe it’s just the natural progression of things.

Anyway, this week’s tournament at Bay Hill is a designated event, which translates to the top 43 players in the world being there, and they’re playing for a $3-point-something-million first prize. Of course this is the LIV effect, and it’s apparent it’s all about the money.

It’s not, as Max Homa put it, all about the fan experience, echoing a similar line from players who originally jumped to LIV saying it was all about growing the game. Please and stop it. It’s about the money. The Saudis have a lot of it, and while the LIV league may feel gimmicky and run up on hard times eventually, it’s forcing the PGA to behave similarly, to sweeten the pots of some tournaments to keep pace and keep more players from switching leagues.

As a result, what’s slowly creeping in is the feeling that no amount of talent or competitive drama is going to keep viewers from being soured on a sport they may play themselves, and sporting events which allow those who attend unparalleled access to the action and the players themselves.

I guess I don’t begrudge the players a chance to be compensated for all the years of “paying their dues,” putting in the “hard work” of playing golf all day, and “excelling under pressure,” but maybe the rest of us are waking up to the sick realization that $3.6 million is an unearthly payday for four days on the clock.

There’s a price to be paid for privacy, a downside to living in a remote mountainous area where snow can fall in large amounts. No doubt, the situation is dire and unusual for residents in the San Bernardino Mountains, but their pleas and complaints won’t improve things any faster. Or maybe they will.

Hopefully the highway departments and emergency services can make headway and get supplies to those affected. I guess what always rankles me is the need to blame somebody without considering the circumstances. I’m sure residents are tired, hungry, and frustrated, but finding someone to blame, blaming people who are most likely doing what they can is, well, typical, but unwarranted.

Ron DeSantis is fighting a headwind in the form of #45. Probably just as well—limit the damage to Florida, and hope the rest of the country is way past tired of Trump.

Ron and his neighbors in other states are fixated on sex, more specifically the less conventional expressions of it, like trans kids and drag queens. And let’s not forget his crusade against gays, and black history, and knowledge in general.

Stop naming it freedom, Ron. That’s not what it is, and you surely must know this. Yet you keep chipping away.

Let’s see… Murdaugh convicted of murder, East Palestine residents are unhappy and getting sick, Norfolk Southern is just another big company trying to slide by and hold onto their billion$, the weather is bonkers pretty much all over, George Santos, or whoever he is, is “embattled,” people are trying to figure out what to do with MTG (just stand back and watch her implode), false reports of active shooters in high schools all over the country, no one knows for sure where Covid came from, Ted Cruz is bad-mouthing Dr. Fauci again, panelists at CPAC joke about killing journalists, and—frosting on the cake—two guys in Nebraska have killed a bald eagle and want to eat it.

And buried on page 23 of your local paper is a blurb about last term’s honor roll students, along with a spaghetti supper coming up at the local Lutheran church.

There you have it. Friday morning, March 3, 2023. The way it is.