This weekend we received a belated Christmas present – a trip to the “Axe Throwing” facility at a local family fun center.

If you are my age, the first thing axe throwing brings to mind is the “Ed Ames” incident on the Johnny Carson show:

Anyway, while waiting for our axe guide we watched a family at the nearby climbing wall. This is a 20-foot tall wooden wall with holes cut out so that kids can easily scale the wall. It includes safety cables so nobody risks falling, and is not even remotely challenging for an average kid.

This was a pretty typical American family, a single mom with four kids – two boys about 11 and 9, a toddler and a baby. The 9-year old had walked up the stairs to an adjacent apparatus and was hollering “Mama, I’m scared!” She told him to wait for his brother to climb the wall and help him. The pudgy 12-year old had clearly not climbed anything but a couch for many years. He was mystified by the challenge of putting a hand or foot in the next higher hole to get up the wall, nor did he have the strength or confidence to do so. “Mama, I can’t do this!”

My wife and I looked at each other, simultaneously thinking that our home-schooled grandson or granddaughter would scale that wall in three seconds flat, and then look for something more exciting to do.

It was a pathetic American vignette. Two young boys who had never been physically challenged, were totally out of shape, and had no confidence or ambition. They had clearly been coddled by a helicopter single mom and a school system that teaches them that they are victims and the most important thing in their lives is safety and risk-avoidance. I have no doubt that Critical Race Theory has held them down since they started in public school.

The sad thing is their future is not bright. Once out of mama’s protective reach, they will be overrun by the few capable and ambitious young men (and women) on the way up the ladder of success. Or worse, they will be actually victimized by tough young bad-asses.

That is exactly what our government wants and plans for these boys: more single-mom families, CRT in every institution, and a risk-averse cancel-culture that views self-reliance and confidence as hostile aggression. The implications of this cradle-to-grave government coddling are far-reaching and depressing.

We must stop the destruction of the nuclear family. Kids need dads who don’t allow them, especially the boys, to succumb to a life of wimp-hood. There will always be winners and losers, but the proportion is changing rapidly, and I guarantee the winners will have more fun.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

For you, baby, I would swim the sea
Nothing I’d do for you that’s too tough for me
I’d put out a burning building with a shovel and dirt
And not even worry about getting hurt

Ain’t that tough enough
Ain’t that tough enough

TUFF ENUFF – the Fabulous Thunderbirds

My son uses disability busing to get around Charlotte, NC. Totally blind, Jeff is a news junky and very interested in politics. So on his bus trip to the gym today he took a political poll on the upcoming presidential election.

Poll size: 1
Sex: female
Race: African American
Age: 40-ish
Occupation: bus driver
Union member: yes
Government employee: contracted

Jeff asked his bus driver how she is going to vote in the upcoming election, and found out she is an enthusiastic Trump supporter. As I got Jeff off the bus, she told me, “We had such a nice visit. Jeff is a Trump fan, too!”

I acknowledged, “Yes, I know.”

She said, “I just love Donald Trump! I don’t care about his personality, I only care about what he gets done.” She added, “All of us black folks in North Carolina are behind Trump. He’s going to win, you know.” I don’t care even a tiny bit about skin color, but she thought it was important to make that point.

So according to Jeff’s poll, Trump will win 100% of the female votes in North Carolina. And all of the black votes. And all of the government employee votes. And all of the union employee votes. And all of the ordinary go-to-work-every-day folk votes.

Margin of error is plus or minus 5%.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

You better shape up, ’cause I need a man
And my heart is set on you!
You better shape up, you better understand
To my heart I must be true!
Nothin’ left, nothin’ left for me to do.
You’re the one that I want!
Ooh, ooh, oooh, honey!

You’re The One That I Want – Olivia Newton John and John Travolta

When I was a kid I was a baseball pitcher. One coach gave me a great bit of advice. He said, “before every pitch, picture in your mind exactly what you want to happen.” He was right. I learned that if you first “see” an inside fast ball ripping past the batter at his fists, it’s more likely to happen than if you just wind up and throw it. You have to know what you want to make it happen.

Later, in business management, I was taught to actively plan all the time, to determine what result we would consider a “success”. In other words, to picture the desired outcome.

I don’t think enough people have considered what results they want from our leaders and our government. How many times have you heard “I really like how Trump has improved the economy and got our troops back home, but . . .” The “but” is always something about his personality, not his performance. But . . . he’s a bully. But . . . he’s too rich. But . . . he has orange hair. Or the “but” is some lie from an anonymous source that is too ridiculous for any thinking person to even believe.

So here’s what I want from my federal officials, prioritized:

• I want our officials to follow the Constitution explicitly and protect our individual freedoms and rights as outlined there.
• I want the federal government to get out of the way and let our free market economy roar. A few regulations that prevent citizens from being taken advantage of are in order – laws that can’t be administered by the states. But it had better be a pretty obvious threat, and a pretty transparent and straightforward solution. And no picking “winners and losers”.
• I want the federal government to protect our states (yes we are a group of sovereign states, not a nation-state) from outside threats, including invasion of our borders.
• I want the federal government to represent our citizen’s best interests with other nations regarding international trade.
• I want the federal government to provide a safety net – economic, medical, humanitarian – for Americans with disabilities, disaster relief, and other needs we are unable to deal with ourselves as states or individuals.

That’s it. Our Constitution is about perfect as it is.

No, I don’t want the federal government to educate my kids, or make decisions about my property, or redistribute income, or build hospitals, or fund police departments, or solve global warming. Not their job.

We not only have to vote for candidates who we think will do what we want, we also need to demand what we want from officials once elected.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

So tell me what you want, what you really, really want
I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want!

Wannabe – the Spice Girls

Today I am not going to whine or point fingers. Instead, I am going to take my best shot at problem-solving. Stick with me.

Back in the early 1980s TQM (Total Quality Management) was all the rage in corporate America. The TQM movement started when the US Army hired Dr. Edwards Deming to take over economic development in post-war Japan. Deming applied quality improvement techniques that transformed Japan from a nation of shoddy third-world trinket-makers to a wealthy nation of world-class manufacturers. His astonishing success gave rise to the thought that maybe the world could be saved after all.

As a young executive, I was asked to select and implement one of many popular TQM programs to make sure that our company stayed at the leading competitive edge of our industry. After looking at the alternatives, I chose the Philip Crosby Theory because it just seemed so simple and common-sensible. The Crosby Theory is based on these principles and definitions and provides tools to achieve them:

• Quality is defined as conformance to requirements
• Quality defect prevention is preferable to quality inspection
• Zero defects is the quality performance standard
• Quality is measured in monetary terms – the price of non-conformance

A government, like a business, is a group of people trying to get something done together in their common interest. And in government, like in business, if there is no agreement on what the requirements are, or how to tell if we are meeting them, there is zero chance of success.

Read the list above again and imagine all the ways that our government could be improved if these principles were applied. How many problems would this solve!

By defining what the requirements are, we would stop wasting time, money and effort doing things that half of our citizens don’t want done. We are fortunate to have a constitution written by geniuses that clearly defines what our government is expected to do.

Another great way to avoid wasting time, money and effort is to prevent problems instead of dealing with them after they are discovered. This would indicate that the single most important thing to our nation’s future is the improvement of our education system. We could apply TQM to that, too.

A major problem with our system of government is there is no standard of performance. That’s why our growing budget deficits and debt seem insurmountable and inevitable. If we are going to survive, we have to have achievable expectations of our government officials and hold them totally accountable.

And how would we measure our success? The only known way to measure anything is numerical. “Niceness” is not a measurement that can be agreed upon. “Respect”. “Caring.” “Fairness”. “Equality”. None of these are objective measurements. Let’s face it, government is all about using our shared money to improve our standard of living. All adults strive to financially improve every day. And no matter how much they “care”, elected officials can do nothing other than spend – or not spend – our money. Measurement of our government’s success must be statistical, not emotional: GDP growth, per capita income, consumer financial security, etc. We want all the graphs to point upward.

Okay, I gave it my best shot. Surely government can’t be that simple. Or can it?

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Ain’t no need to complicate it, we both know that’s overrated
We’ve been there, its safe to say it ain’t our style, yeah
It’s like one, two, three
Just as easy as can be
Just the way you look at me
You make me smile

SIMPLE – Florida Georgia Line