Day One.

College football is front and center today, but in the background a lot of us are probably already asking, “Where the hell are we gonna be on Day 366?”

We don’t need pundits and prognosticators to tell us that this is gonna be a very challenging year. The maddening thing is that it didn’t have to be this way. Global warming and all the other assaults on our pursuit of happiness aside, if Republicans in Congress had had a backbone, Trump might have already been impeached, and the judicial wrangling and civil unrest that would have inevitably followed might have already started to subside. As it stands now, we’ve got a country on edge— arsenals at the ready, dug in, tired, angry, confused, and ready to pounce, ready to release the pent-up frustration, misdirected as that may be.

Maybe this is the year when our adversaries around the world stand by and watch to see if we implode, if we destroy ourselves, do the job for them. Of course they’ll do their best to hasten the process with outright military aggression, or AI-fueled disinformation campaigns that will succeed to one degree or another in trolling millions.

And another four years of Trump? That just can’t happen. To even utter the possibility stretches credulity to its breaking point. It’s looking like millions of people will be pissed in early November, regardless of how the election turns out.

So, if there is a God in heaven, here’s a prayer that the divine presence come and dwell among us in the months ahead– to shine some light, soften many a heart. We’re going to need all the help we can get.

Donald Trump has made it necessary to familiarize ourselves with the basic tenets and provisions of the Constitution, even as it remains open to interpretation.

Trump’s lawyers claim immunity for their client with regard to January 6; Jack Smith warns that if Trump can prevail with that claim, then the country will have no recourse when it comes to calling to account rogues bent on pushing boundaries and testing limits and fabricating excuses for awful behavior.

A Trump win here leaves the country in the unenviable position of suffering long-term damage at the hands of a needy attention hound who doesn’t give even one shit about America and the majority of Americans who’ve known all along that he is, indeed, an overmatched weakling.

The die will be cast, going forward, for a country with no safeguards, no actionable provisions in place to contain and stop the next (or is Trump the end of the line?) power-hungry maniac with designs on the seat of power.

Hands will be tied, and the best anyone can do will be to lament as they witness the place crumble. A fallible yet once proud nation de-clawed, with a porous backbone and a heartbreaking number of traitors calling themselves patriots.

Sorry for harping on this, but maybe there are too many bowl games at the end of the NCAAF season.

I know, I know—it’s good business for sponsors and teams and all that. But the product on the field is suffering, less than stellar and engaging. Even the Orange Bowl turned out to be a bust, mostly because FSU was severely depleted by injuries, and no-shows due to portal transfers and players sitting out to preserve their health for the NFL draft. And maybe Georgia piled on in order to be part of any conversation about why they weren’t in the final four. Lots of asterisks, though.

Anyway, these New Years contests just don’t have the same panache they used to, though the CFP contests oughta be interesting.  

Angry waves—though not rogue waves, I guess—in Ventura County and elsewhere in CA, flooding streets and businesses, injuring multiple people. Pretty wild.

Is this an example of the rising sea levels and more intense storms scientists have been warning about for years? Are we seeing the coming to fruition, before our eyes, of predictions that naysayers still insist on ignoring?

Probably just a one-off, right? Let’s chalk it up to El Nino, and start cleaning up.

On a related note, the end-of-season bowl results are reflective, to some extent, of the absence of certain players who chose not to suit up, because they’re getting ready to move on to playing on Sundays and don’t want to jeopardize their chances by sustaining injuries that end their careers before they even start.

This is understandable, but it all kind of dilutes the product on the field.

Oh well, the bottom line is still the bottom line– back-ups get to play, voracious fan bases get to watch one more football game, and schools get a bit of notoriety and some decent financial compensation. So, it’s all good.

NCAAF playoffs coming up. Is Michigan gonna get its ass kicked again, or will they finally find a way to validate their presence? Meh… probably not.

And Florida State—get a grip, step back and away from the lofty opinion you have of yourselves. Alabama, as much as I can’t stand them, clawed their way back into contention and deserve to be in the conversation. And yes, you probably deserve the same, regardless of the depletion in your ranks. But the Committee has spoken.

Sounds like, looking ahead to next year and beyond, there will be another process in place that may or may not yield more satisfying results. In the meantime, FSU, take a chill pill. You’re way too full of yourselves.

Focus on Georgia. If you can beat them, well, that’ll add fuel to your fire.

Well, say goodbye to Nikki Haley, though probably not, according to David Brooks. And Chris Christie came to her defense at one of his town meetings, telling those in attendance that she doesn’t have a racist bone in her body– which may be something he believes, or it might just be an attempt to rescue the person he sees as having the best chance, currently, to dethrone Trump.

Anyway, she blew an opportunity to bring a bit of clarity to an issue that shouldn’t be at all difficult—the one about slavery being the main underlying cause of the Civil War. She couldn’t come right out and say that, until a day or two later when she couldn’t say it enough, couldn’t be any clearer.

She was the governor of South Carolina, though, which was the first state to secede back in 1860. The mindset still lingers, apparently. People are still sore, still hiding, still making excuses. The clarity still conveniently eludes many, and Ms. Haley may have been playing to that crowd. Yikes.

Wake up! You all have the power to simply move on.

The stream of decisions regarding whether or not Trump’s name ends up on ballots in 2024 has begun.

So far, Colorado and Maine have said No, Michigan has said Yes to the primary ballot but has withheld a decision on the November ballot. And therein lies the potential rat’s nest we’re heading towards– electoral chaos, as CNN puts it– even if the Supreme Court doesn’t drag its feet and decides to make a decision on this in a timely manner.

My question arises from that decision, whichever way it ends up coming down: What will keep states from ignoring it? Seems to me that we’re heading deeper into the weeds, regardless of how the SCOTUS rules. Someone’s gonna be unhappy. Blue states may or may not abide by any ruling, and red states will likely disregard it if the court ends up ruling against Trump.

I guess what I’m saying is that Supreme Court decisions don’t necessarily hold water—look at the overturning of Roe v Wade. Even though the two cases are not apples and apples, states will have their opportunity to counter with their own initiatives, or, in Trump’s case, by just including Trump’s name anyway.

The wild card may be if there are enforced consequences for somebody if states disregard the SC ruling—fines, jail time, etc.

I wonder what kind of odds Vegas might offer regarding a stacked SCOTUS ruling against Trump. Ooh… another thing to bet on!

I recently saw an article on one of the newsfeeds that treated the topic of fun, and how we’re not having any anymore. That in part, because of social media, there exists a heightened sense of shame and an inability to find joy because we’re so often comparing, so often seeing others who, from all appearances, are enjoying life more than we are.

On a different but related note, I’ve always had trouble with the analysis of athletes who emerge from an unproductive stretch by explaining that their game improved after they convinced themselves to just “go out there and have some fun.” Seems like a trite, arbitrary thing to say and to try and do.

I guess I get it from the standpoint of tricking your brain into somehow ignoring the scrutiny from fans and analysts in the broadcast booth, along with handling the pressure the athlete him or herself is already feeling with regard to living up to contracts and endorsements worth gazillions of dollars. It must be difficult to separate enjoyment from a focus on execution and handling the pressure of fans in the stands or behind the ropes, along with a TV audience who may want you to succeed but will also bite your head off if you don’t.

So, fun. Seems to me you can’t force it. Fun is fun when it’s less planned, more organic—or whatever word works for you. I can’t help but think that fun has gone dormant because people are too easily bored anymore. They’re trying too hard and getting stupid and ridiculous (think gender reveal parties with an incendiary component). Or they’re working long hours in order to have enough money to have a little fun… Maybe fun is just a guilty pleasure we can never truly enjoy because we feel we should be working. Yikes.

I used to have fun going out in our back yard and smashing rocks, just to see what they looked like inside. I can still play catch with someone and consider it fun. If I’m near an open body of water, I can skip rocks until my arm hurts and consider it fun. I can sit in one place for a while and marvel at a sunset or the scenery and consider it time well spent. I guess fun for me doesn’t necessarily require other people or exotic locales or activities that push the envelope, which all sounds more like work to me, and like someone’s just trying to show off.

Quick-hit developments in the Israel-Hamas war. Depending on the source, we learn that the fighting will go on for months, or that talks are unfolding between different players regarding a ceasefire or end to the hostilities.

It’s hard to know where things stand, but it’s clear if it were up to Bibi, Israel would fight on until not one Hamas fighter is left and his own countrymen and women are dying in (relative) droves as well.

Netanyahu is a hawk, seemingly oblivious to calls to let up, to show mercy on Gazans who are literally trying to stay alive, who have next to nothing going in their favor. He is coming across as not so much a good leader as just another hothead with something to prove, or something that distracts, something to hide behind.

Apart from trying to rid the region of a terrorist organization, how can he so insistently order the continued loss of his own soldiers, not to mention getting the nation to buy into his own sense of urgency, or whatever it is that’s driving him? It might cause one to think in terms of unacceptable sacrifices.

Meanwhile, the U.S has to walk the tightrope of supporting an ally and trying to get that ally to reevaluate its strategy, to ease up on the relentless bombing and indiscriminate killing of civilians who, in Bibi’s estimation, must be guilty by association.