Random Musings

Before a Long Weekend Getaway

Later today, my inamorata and I will join some friends for some sailing in New England. This was a bit of a pop-up for me, but I was able to re-arrange a few things to free up the time. As I will deny loyal readers the benefit of this little slice of heaven Substack appearing in your emails this coming Monday morning, I provide this out of cycle offering to tide you over.

• Is there another banal act as satisfying as enabling the “I’m on vacation” alert on one’s work email? Put aside for a moment the fact that as long as there is cell coverage I’ll continue to read and likely process most emails; I have at least driven a stake into the ground. Whether it remains is entirely up to me.

• A quick glance on the interwebs, and I find that the flight I am to take later today has a “48.6% on time” performance. I don’t know how to evaluate this. Getting on base 48.6% of the time would earn one a spot at Cooperstown, but making 48.6% of one’s extra point attempts would earn one a quick exit from any NFL roster. A fifty-fifty shot at being late is not encouraging.

• Geese are returning to the farm this week, and it reminds me that I need to police up my blind for the coming season. I equate the cacophony of goose flocks with autumn, and I am always surprised to hear them return while it is still very much summer outside. I hear a bunch in the field outside my window right now, and it brings a broad smile to my face.

• No matter how I approach it, I cannot find a positive way to think about President Biden’s proposal to transfer a kabillion dollars in student loan debt from those who took it on voluntarily to those who will discharge it at the business end of a (figurative, and if necessary, literal) gun. It fails on legal grounds, it fails on moral grounds, it fails on economic grounds, and it fails on prudential grounds. It is a naked political act designed to get 22-35 year old educated people excited about the Democratic Party enough to counteract the impact of a generally unpopular president on the midterm elections. And it just may work. I encountered the following in a story on this proposal yesterday: “Kristin McGuire, 40, said that $10,000 would not make an enormous difference in what she owes for the bachelor’s degree in public administration she earned at California State University in 2005. Ms. McGuire borrowed $24,000, but with interest and fees, her debt has ballooned to $50,000". YGTBFSM. This is ridiculous.” Seventeen years ago, a woman graduated from college with $24,000 in student loan debt. Seventeen years ago. Now that debt has doubled. And we should take it on? No thank you.

• Four years ago today, John McCain died, a death that impacted me beyond what I would have predicted. Firstly, I consider one of McCain’s sons a friend, and I felt awful for him. Secondly, we were smack dab in the middle of a presidency that revealed how incredibly far we had (as a country) fallen from the kinds of things McCain stood for. Truth be told, when I was an ardent Republican, I was not a big McCain fan, or at least not a fan of his political stances. That Republican Party was generally conservative, and it served as an adequate political vessel for my policy choices. Pre-Trump, I used to say that I was a Republican first and a conservative second, but that was specifically because the GOP at least pretended to be a conservative party. John McCain not only was less conservative than the center of mass of his party, but he seemed to take joy in clashing with those more conservative than he. Hence my political gripes with McCain. Now that the GOP is not a conservative party but a populist outlet (sensibilities which any sentient conservative should be able to identify as being irreconcilably opposed) and a personality cult, my conservatism and what it is that conservatism seeks to conserve, have become more dear to me. Watching those things under attack in the last administration gave me a greater appreciation for McCain’s principles, and so when he lay in repose in the Capitol, I joined thousands of others standing in the blazing sun simply to pass by his casket to say thank you.