One is the loneliest number

He looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. What he has is a target on his back.

Mitt Romney did something today that will without a doubt have long lasting consequences for his political future. He voted to convict a sitting president in his own party.

I've never been a fan of Romney, but I'm filled with gratitude he had the character and bravery to look at the evidence, vote for witnesses (also against his party) and take seriously his oath to be an impartial juror in the shithole president's impeachment trial.

The Cult-Of-Trump backlash was immediate. Within seconds, literally seconds, of his vote, Trump PACS started running ads calling him a traitor, the leader of the Democratic resistance and a patsy for the opposition. Pre-printed fundraising flyers asking for money to fight Romney were in the mail before the final gavel.

I'm sure he's also getting threats to himself and his family by the fine people who want to make America great again.

In the current environment, the vote Romney cast today was nothing short of heroic. It's something he should be proud of. History will recall his bravery for decades to come—just as it will record the sniveling cowardice of all who enabled the unstable genius in his criminal activities, betraying the country and the constitution.

For all the wrong reasons, Romney's now Republican enemy number one. I believe he should become an independent, so he's free to vote his conscience without consequence. And also so the rest of the GOP asshats would have to sidle up to him for his vote whenever they wanted to pass one of their bills reversing the last fifty years of social progress.

I've never agreed with him on much of anything, and I don't imagine I will going forward. Mitt Romney is probably never going to earn my vote.

But today, he definitely earned my admiration.

The waiting is the hardest part

As the late, great Tom Petty said—God bless his rock and rollin’ heart, the waiting is the hardest part.

Tomorrow is the midterm election, and frankly I’m grateful on several fronts. First and foremost, I never thought we’d make it. I figured the shithole president would’ve had a hissy fit about ratings or someone looking at him the wrong way and hit the button by now.

Second, it’s our chance to at least partially take back our government and democracy from the self-admitted (white) nationalist president and sycophant Republicans in congress: I'm looking at you, well, all of you.

And by take back, I mean at least have checks and balances on the Liar-In-Chief. Can you say “override veto?”

But just like the general election a couple years ago, this one is going to go well into the night. With pivotal races a percentage point or two apart, they’ll be tallying their little hearts out. And every time a democrat wins, besides an angel getting their wings, I can already hear republican opponents screaming voter fraud and demanding a recount.

So lets all get out and vote, and then get lots of rest because we’re going to need it.

Not just tomorrow night, but for the next two years.

Reconsidering John McCain

As I watched the 60 Minutes interview with John McCain, I felt a deep, unexpected sadness at the thought he's not going to be around. He's bravely fighting yet another battle, this time with glioblastoma—the same aggressive brain cancer that forms in the brain and spinal cord. The same cancer that took Ted Kennedy.

I suppose like a lot of people, I've gone in and out of liking and disliking McCain. But in his sunset years in the Senate, even though he hasn't always walked the walk, I find the thought of his absence painful.

I thought I'd never be able to forgive him for unleashing the political train wreck that is Sarah Palin on the world, but I have. Despite surfacing with some idiotic gibberish every once in awhile, with the exception of the occasional brief appearance on Fox News, she's long ago been relegated to a footnote, like Kato Kaelin or Ross Perot.

Like we all thought Trump would be.

The constant character trait in McCain's life has, without a doubt, been bravery. When he was shot down and held prisoner, he was tortured relentlessly. At one point, he was offered early release, which he refused. He wouldn't leave until all his fellow soldiers who'd been captured with him were freed.

He's fought endlessly and tirelessly for things in the Senate. And whether I agreed with them or not, and it was mostly not, I admired his intelligence and persistence.

Most recently, at 81, he's geared up for yet another battle. He's made himself a pariah in many dark, dusty corners of the GOP for having the unmitigated gall to do the right thing, and stand up to the most unqualified sociopath ever to hold the office of the presidency. People speculate he's doing it because at this point he's got nothing to lose, but I think it's more than that. I think it's what he genuinely believes.

Donald Trump's statement about liking heroes that weren't captured should make everyone cringe. With McCain being a genuine hero, from a military family of heroes, the statement from Trump is as vile, vulgar and uninformed as the liar making it.

The reason it angers him so deeply is that McCain has become the de facto conscience of the Republican party. His seniority gives him the gravitas, and his sense of what's right and what elected representatives are supposed to do has earned him respect from both sides of the aisle.

I have a friend who was involved at the highest levels of the McCain presidential campaign. We don't see each other often, but when we do we never talk about it, because we both know where each other stands.

I'm nothing if not vocal about my views.

But lately, I see what she saw in him.

I hope McCain beats the odds and beats his cancer. At this critical time in history, it'd be an unthinkable loss to say goodbye to one of the senate's last voices of reason.

Let's hope we don't have to for a while longer.

Talking TED

Although I have almost 800 posts that might make you think otherwise, I actually have a lot of things to say about a variety of subjects - random though they may be.

Well thought out ideas. Inspirational, motivating stories based on my own experiences. And funny. I'm nothing if not funny.

Ask anyone who knows me - as well as anyone can know someone - and they'll tell you I like playing a big room. Plus thanks to serving a little time early on in the telemarketing industry ("Hi, my name is Jeff. How does two-weeks a year in a Peruvian timeshare sound?), I can rock a headset microphone like nobody's business.

I mention these things because they're all essential ingredients for giving TED Talks.

If you're not familiar with them, TED Talks are inspiring, enlightening, humorous and often surprising lectures on a variety of subjects. Everything from how to improve education, pancreatic cancer detection, how not to become an obsolete know-it-all (necessary viewing for creative directors) and many, many other topics.

I bring all this up because I'd like to take the stage and give a TED Talk. If not me, who? If not now, when? My 18-minute lecture would have a snappy title, like Say It With Cash or I'm Jewish-We Don't Do That.

The good news for me is I can actually be nominated to be a TED Talk speaker.

I'll bet you know what's coming next.

I'd like you, dear reader, to help me get a TED Talk of my own. You can go here to find out how to nominate me. I'm sure they get hundreds of nominations each year, but I'm not going to let a little thing like that stop me. As Han Solo put it so eloquently, "Never tell me the odds." Besides, if you do not play you cannot win.

So tell your friends, get out the vote and let TED know you'd like to hear what I have to say.

As long as the subject's not How To Make Money With Your Blog I think I'll be okay.

The market rate

I think it's safe to say most of us don't appreciate the skill and nuance involved in being a supermarket grocery worker. 

For example, the grocery store check-out cashier. Sure, they make it look easy. But clearly there's so much happening we "civilians" just aren't aware of and don't understand.

First, several times an hour they have to move their bodies several degrees forward, leaning into a bar in front of them activating a conveyor belt which brings the groceries conveniently within arm's reach. Then, as if bar-leaning wasn't difficult enough, the job requires them to actually pick up the groceries, with their hands, one at a time, and run them over a scanner which automatically records the price.

But there's more to it than that. Much more.

As any pro will tell you, they can't just continue on unfettered after having run the item. It's simply not that easy. They have to wait until they hear the beep confirming the item has been scanned before they can move on to the next item. Then they have to physically push the scanned item down the counter to their left, where another valiant grocery worker manually lifts it up, then places it in either a paper or plastic bag.

Child labor sweatshops in Thailand have nothing on these supermarkets.

It should be apparent to even the most casual observer these highly skilled professionals are doing God's work by doing a thankless job that clearly chimpanzees or the mentally challenged could never be trained to do.

You can see the difficulty factor on the faces of those brave shoppers going it alone at the automatic check out counters, and getting out of the store and on with their lives way ahead of the rest of us in those understaffed, slow-moving check out lines.

Yet day in and day out, these checkers do it all with the smile, friendliness and great attitude we see on display every time we go to the store.

Knowing how deserving these selfless servants are makes it much easier to support them in their vote whether or not to strike. The reason for the vote is the companies they work for have the audacity, the nerve, the unmitigated gall to ask them to contribute to their own healthcare costs.

The stores - and when I say stores I mean the customers in the form of higher food costs - now pay full fare for employee healthcare. But due to increasing health care costs, they want the employees to pay a monthly bank-breaking $36 for individual and $92 for family coverage.

Apparently all that time scanning groceries doesn't leave them much time to see what the rest of the world pays for healthcare. In the real world, the one outside the automatic doors, those rates would be a godsend.

Their union spokesman, Mike Shimpock, said here that by authorizing this strike they're sending a message to corporations "...for us and for everybody."

First, I don't need your union sending messages for me, but thanks for the thought. And secondly, what exactly is the message they're sending?

The one I'm getting is grocery workers consider themselves some sort of privileged class that should be immune from the rising healthcare rates the rest of us have to pay for the simple reason they haven't had to pay them in the past.

Note to grocery workers: things ain't the way they used to be.

No one wants to be paying the exorbitant healthcare prices we pay, prices by the way that are hundreds of dollars a month more than you're being asked to pony up.

I'm not a union-buster. I belong in good standing to two of them. But I have to say they are way out of step with reality here. Sadly this isn't rare for unions, which historically hold onto unrealistic positions like striking for raises during a recession, while at the same time not offering any concessions. They must think it makes them look brave. It actually just makes them look stupid, uncompromising and out of touch. And it gives ammunition to the real union busters, political and otherwise, that are out to get them.

In '03 and '04 there was a grocery workers strike that went on almost six months, wiped out most of the employees savings and cost the supermarkets 1.5 billion. The winners of that strike were stores that weren't being picketed like Trader Joe's and Bristol Farms.

The grocery union leadership needs to come to the table and negotiate with both the reality of healthcare costs and the interest of their membership in mind.

If they don't, they'll be the ones left holding the bag.