Faux audit

Does it get any more bizarre than this?

After it was announced Friday afternoon by the Arizona State Senate that its six-month long election "forensic audit" determined that Joe Biden did indeed win the presidential election in Maricopa County – in fact, finding Biden an additional 99 votes than in the certified vote count – former President Donald Trump claimed last night that the audit proved that he, Trump, actually won in the county.

"We won at the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn't believe," Trump said in a rally in Georgia.

He's right. I don't believe him. I never have. 

More audits are planned for other states, even though they'll probably confirm the same thing that Arizona did. Some suggest it's Trump's 50-state plan, designed mostly to keep his funding faucet alive.

So here we go again. Trump completely twists the truth like Atlantic City salt-water taffy, right before our very eyes, even when evidence clearly shows otherwise. It's how he placates the perceived grievances of his base. It's how he raises funds. This five-year onslaught on the truth has sent us running for the protection of our partisan camps, further dividing the country like it hasn't been since the Civil War.

Neither side can agree on what the truth is. Truth, as always, is in the eye of the beholder. But truth requires evidence. It requires analysis. It requires common sense. It does not require party fealty. Trump, by contrast, requires loyalty to his cult, not to the Constitution.

Trump almost always never offers evidence to his claims. All he provides is more grievance politics for his white nationalist base.

The problem, of course, is that our democracy as we know it is now dangling by a thread. The ability to vote, perhaps our most sacred Constitutional institution, is being challenged and altered like never before, even in spite of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Instead of making it more difficult to vote, as many GOP-controlled states are doing, it should be made easier. Isn't that what democracy is all about? Do you believe in democracy? Or is it about autocratic power? That's the choice we've come to. That's the choice we have to make.

This quest for autocracy is what brought us Trump's Big Lie about who won the last presidential election. It's what brought us the horror of January 6. It's what has transformed the Republican Party into the Party of No, simply existing to veto any Democratic proposals, many of them incredibly popular, without offering any ideas of its own. Want proof? Where is the Republican health care plan?

Infrastructure needs immediate attention, as evidenced by yesterday's Amtrak derailment in Montana. The debt ceiling needs congressional attention, as does immigration. Everything, it seems, needs attention.

The last thing we need are more faux audits to prove what we already know.

And that's the truth.

Assault by battery

 The last thing I ever expected to see was the eye-catching red battery light come on in my car.

That's never happened to me before. Ever. But here we were, on Route 421 just outside of North Wilkesboro on our way to Blowing Rock for Art in the Park weekend, and my dashboard was telling me to pull over. "Battery not charging," screamed the panic-inducing message. "Pull over safely."

Whaaa...??

I halfway expected the message to continue: "Do it now, or else!"

How could this be? My Volvo S60 is less than four years old. It has just under 23,000 miles on it. 

Kim said to pull off at the next exit and call the Volvo dealership in Winston-Salem. But whatever you do, don't turn off the car.

I rely on Kim for many things, and one of them is her rational calm in stormy seas. Where does that come from? I mean, I've already jumped off the Titanic here while she's rowing around in a lifeboat looking at seagulls and icebergs.

But I called Volvo Cars Winston-Salem and explained what was going on.

"Can I make it back to Winston?" I asked.

A Volvo alternator.

 "I don't know without doing a diagnostic," said Todd, the service manager. "It sounds like it's either a battery cell or an alternator, but I just don't know. Where are you?"

I told him we were outside North Wilkesboro on our way for a much-needed weekend retreat. I told him I was going to try and make it to Winston. He told me the car could quit on me at any time. I told him I was coming anyway. He said they would be expecting me.

So we turned around. We were about 40 miles away. I turned off the radio. I turned off the fan. I turned off the daytime running lights. Anything to save whatever charge was left in my battery.

And, lo, in about a half hour, we had arrived.

"Don't turn off the car," said Kim, and I didn't.

The service manager came out and said they would do a diagnostic, which I figured would take at least an hour as we saw dollar signs ka-chinging in our heads while stewing in the waiting room. Some vacation.

But 15 minutes later, he called us out. "Come with me," he said and I thought, oh-oh, the Titanic was going down for sure.

"We did the diagnostic," said. "It's your alternator. Somehow, the pulley unthreaded itself from the alternator and came off. This is designed never to happen. Our mechanic has been here since 1985 and he said he's never seen anything like this before. You were driving only on the charge you had remaining in your battery. I doubt you could have made it much further.

"But we have to order parts," added Todd. "It'll be Monday before it's fixed."

Then, as if by magic, the sun came out. Doves flew in. Fireworks exploded. The Titanic resurfaced.

"I see here," said Todd looking at his computer, "that you still have about a month of your car's warranty left. This won't cost you anything."

I nearly cried. I could have kissed him, but, you know, Covid. 

But there was more.

It's Volvo Car's policy not to provide a loaner unless you purchased the car from them. We bought our car from Flow Volvo in Burlington. Uh-oh.

"I talked with our manager and told him your situation," said Todd. "And he agreed to let you have a loaner. Enjoy your weekend."

The loaner was waiting for us outside the office. We took all of our stuff out of our car, and put it in the Volvo S60 that had three-quarters of a tank of gas in it. We headed off to Blowing Rock for what turned out to be a spectacular weekend and we never looked back.

Some vacation.

•  •  •

(When we got home, I Googled "Volvo alternator" out of curiosity to see how much a new one would cost. A site, Repairpal.com, listed alternators between $945-$995, with labor adding another $150 or so. My neighbor said I ought to buy a lottery ticket right now, right this minute, before it's too late. Hmm...)

 

Texas

Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of the Texas anti-abortion bill (Texas SB 8), signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday, is the one that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers – and anyone else – who helps a woman get an abortion.

We're talking about taxi cab drivers, Uber and Lyft drivers, persons who offer financial assistance to help pay for an abortion, or even someone talking about getting an abortion in the privacy of a whispered conversation with a supposedly trusted listener. It doesn't matter if the person seeking an abortion was raped or was the victim of incest, the resulting pregnancy, by this law, cannot be aborted.

If a plaintiff successfully wins such a lawsuit, said plaintiff can receive up to $10,000.

A person could make a decent living turning in friends or total strangers via anonymous tips on a Texas Right to Life "whistleblower" hotline. While some Texas legislators claim SB 8 will not devolve into spying on your neighbor because the law does not directly challenge the established law and constitutionality of Roe v. Wade, that's exactly what will happen. I mean, who's going to ignore the lure of a $10,000 bounty?

And this rat-on-your-neighbor policy smacks of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or Communist Russia of the 1930s. Is that what we've become?

Actually, we've already been there. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 also depended on citizen participation in the return of fugitive slaves to their supposedly rightful owners. Sometimes, bounties were paid for the surveillance and capture of people who wanted nothing more than personal liberty and autonomy.

It feels strangely familiar, doesn't it?

Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act was a precursor to the Dred Scott decision, which declared slaves to be little more than property. The Dred Scott decision, under Chief Justice Roger Taney, was one of the emotional touchstones leading to the Civil War.

SB 8 continues the slow-boiling war on women in this country in another effort to take away rights they clearly won with the landmark Roe decision nearly 50 years ago. Not only will abortion issues be put at risk, so will women's healthcare in general, I believe. Think birth control. Think uterine, ovarian and breast cancer screening, especially for the poor. This law, I think, will result in horrible collateral damage.

It's a law designed to set the country back at least 50 years, maybe more. Abortions will never go away, no matter how many laws you pass. They will be performed illegally. Or they will be self-administered with chemicals or medications, if not coat hangers.

And women will die.

And SB 8 is hardly representative of its constituency. Of the 150 members of the Texas Senate, 83 are Republicans. Of those 83 Republicans, only seven are women, and only three are persons of color. Meanwhile, 31 of the 67 Democrats are women, many women of color. So basically, it's white men telling women what to do with their own bodies. Again. As usual.

And why is this all focused on women? There is a male involved with every abortion.

Keep in mind that nationally, polling shows nearly 70 percent of the country favors Roe. Consequently, we may be watching the efforts of a decided minority to challenge, if not bring down, the will of the people.

SB 8 last week got tacit approval from the Supreme Court when five of the nine justices allowed the law to go into effect without a ruling. Thus, SB 8 opens the door and provides a road map for other states so inclined to abolish abortion.

Instead of penalizing women who are already devastated over making a difficult decision, the abortion discussion should also include subjects like sex education, free birth control, adoption and severe sentencing for rape and incest.

Then maybe we can make real progress within the 21st century.

On the (LSB) beam

Although I worked as a part-time employee in the mail room at Newbridge Bank (formerly Lexington State Bank) for five years after my retirement as a sportswriter for The Dispatch, I never grew a serious attachment to the place.

I always thought that kind of loyalty was reserved for the long-term, full-time employees – like my wife, Kim, who spent 31 years there. Those 31 years represent nearly half of her life on the planet.

But times change. Nothing lasts forever.

Consequently, when the current demolition of the main office building began about a month or so ago, I didn't feel much of an emotional impact. Each evening, when we took our daily walk together, Kim and I would stop and look at the debris from that day's reduction. Kim never shed a tear, but I could sense her anguish. How could it be otherwise? Clearly, she was weeping inside. "It's just so sad," she would say.

And then: "I wonder if they know about the beam?"

Signatures decorate a recovered I-beam at LSB.

 I knew about the beam. Back in 1987, when the new towering Center Street addition was being built, a steel I-beam was cere-moniously signed by most of the employees and board of directors and then raised to be installed on the still-to-be-completed fifth floor. It was a crowning moment for all and the gesture was meant to be a keepsake for posterity.

Turns out posterity lasted 34 years.

Kim told Deric Brady, a former Newbridge colleague and the current branch manager of what has now become First National, about the beam. Deric hadn't been hired yet when the beam was signed, but he was aware of its existence. Deric passed the information on to the workers of D.H. Griffin, the wrecking company hired to take down the building, telling them to keep an eye open for a special I-beam and where to look for it.

Then, on Monday, I got a call from Kim.

"They're knocking down the fifth floor," she said. "You better get over here."

I arrived about a half-hour later. Kim was already back at work, but I ran into Cathy Wilkerson, a former LSB/Newbridge employee. She was taking pictures and videos of the demolition, which featured a long-armed machine that looked like something prehistoric. A Caterpillarsaurus Rex (Wrecks?), maybe.

"Did you see the beam?" asked Cathy.

Here's a closer look at some of those names from 1987.

 And there it was, lying in the parking lot inside the enclosed (de)con-struction compound. It was a little bent and dusty, but not so bad off, all things considered. You could clearly see the 120 or so names written in silver or white marker.

I instantly went into time travel mode. Suddenly, Haynes Sherron, Bob Lowe, Kearney Andrews, Ronnie Hartzog, Wayne Kimbrell, Kathy Oakley, Cindy Norman, Earl Snipes, Ardell Lanier, Bob Timberlake, Dothan Reece, Jo Peoples, Steve Weeks, Robin Huneycutt, Max Church and a lengthy host of others were standing right there with me.

I rushed home to get my phone, which I had been charging. When I came back to take pictures, Deric was there.

"I did my job," smiled Deric, taking his own pictures of the beam so he could post them on the Legacy LSB & NBB Bankers group Facebook page. "Yes, you did," I replied. "Great job. And thank you."

As I was walking home, all that sentimental emotion that I couldn't find in earlier trips to view the demolition grabbed me by  the throat: What it meant for Kim. What it meant for me. All those names, some of them now gone. Ghost names.

It made everything personal. Very personal.

And it occurred to me, those names not only signified the people who worked there, but also the heart and soul of that business.

And I held back a tear.

Afghan sunset

It's been awhile since I've had such conflicted opinions, but the situation in Afghanistan is bewildering, to say the least.

On the one hand, I'm delighted to see us withdraw our military from the region. The United States has invested – and lost – $85 billion over the past 20 years trying to train and equip the Afghan army to defend itself against the oppressive Taliban regime. And what was the return? At least 2,500 lost American lives and an Afghan army that couldn't defend itself or its country.

Sounds a whole lot like Vietnam, doesn't it? Why didn't we learn from that experience? Or even the Russian adventure in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which also proved to be equally fruitless for them. Why wasn't that a clue for us?

And while I'm pleased to see us leaving the region, I can't help but feel appalled and let down by an apparently ill-conceived evacuation process that has left tens of thousands of Afghani allies in peril. How in the hell did it come to this? Wasn't there a better way?

This is all very complicated and nothing is in black or white. I'm not in the military, nor do I sit in meetings with the Joint Chiefs or with White House advisors. There are strategies and considerations that I'll never know about, much less understand.

All that I have are the images I see in the media.

The original mission in Afghanistan was to disrupt Isis and the Taliban from using the region as a training ground for terrorism in the wake of 9/11. And the mission was working, sending the Taliban into full flight. But somewhere along the way, the mission somehow shifted from terror busting to nation building, and that's where the quagmire develops. Our withdrawal is coming 19 years too late, it seems to me.

Because a whole generation of Afghans – and particularly women – were given a measure of Western-style freedom from Sharia law, our withdrawal seems particularly heartless as the Taliban returns with its raging male-centric brutality.

And, yet, it was way past time to leave. Recent polling shows that 65 percent of Americans approve of the withdrawal, if not its execution. Will the subsequent absence of American security mean that the Taliban will use Afghanistan as Terrorism Central once more? Probably. But I suspect ever-evolving American technology, featuring drone and air strikes, could hinder and disrupt future terrorist plans.

As it is, we have enough on our plate with our own home-grown terrorists trying to dismantle our democracy.

It all leaves me confused and conflicted. Depending on the time of day, I can give you a different answer to the same question. That's where I am on Afghanistan.

My frustration, anger grow

 

I'm posting this picture for a reason. There are so many aggravating things about this image (found floating around on social media) that I felt I had to respond. It encapsulates all the frustration and anger I have inside of me as we muddle our way through this fourth – and perhaps most dangerous yet – iteration of the Covid-19 virus.

Wait. What? The fourth iteration? What, are we stupid or something? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? 620,000 dead. Do we need a fifth iteration and even more deaths to knock some sense into our heads? What more proof is needed?

Kim said to be careful, because the image could be a fake. Or professionally posed. And she may have a point. But even if it's all of that, the photo still illustrates my position.

So here goes.

If the image is fake, then it's meant to further divide us. This would also suggest the presence of foreign influences, like Russia or China, who are reaping easy dividends off our internally warring and conflicted tribes and rattling our democracy. The very fact that this image came off an unregulated social media also compounds the issue. What is a lie and what is the truth?

But I'm assuming the image is real. The background is flat and scrubby, which suggests a southern red state like Florida, or Texas, or even Arizona, where anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers are royally screwing things up for the rest of us while killing themselves. And us.

The woman is wearing scrubs, suggesting she is a healthcare worker. Her sign hints that she is proud that she is not vaccinated, but that while she is in the medical field, she doesn't care if she might be asymptomatic. She has no way of knowing if she is carrying the virus and passing it on to someone else. Like a child. Or an elder. Or a colleague. And if that's true, she is not smart. She should be fired.

Where is her empathy? Where is her morality?

Why is she smiling? Does she enjoy working in a place where patients are overloading the system, raising the cost of health care? So even if she is helping, she is not helping. She's a hypocrite. Great picture.

Asking that her choices not be mandated makes her protest political. She no doubt thinks her freedoms are being compromised by government mandates (like seat belts, right?). In fact, the key word in her protest – "I" – actually unveils her irresponsibility. Covid-19 is a nationwide – no, a global – healthcare emergency, and therefore requires a national (and global) response, such as masking and taking the vaccine. Individual freedoms also require a responsibility to the greater good of the whole – the "We," if you will, as in "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

We are where we are right now because the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers have given the original Alpha variant enough time to mutate into the current Delta variant. Which begs the question, how far away are we from the Lambda variant and perhaps a total resistance to the vaccine? Already, breakthrough infections are occurring at an unnerving pace. School is about to start and children under 12 are not eligible for the vaccine – yet. But they can catch the virus and give it to somebody else.

If something isn't done soon, look for a resumption of lock downs and mandates. If that happens, we have nobody to blame but ourselves – and the unvaccinated.

The current rate of death and suffering are, to me, the result of unbridled selfishness, not a misplaced sense of patriotism.

So this is how I feel. We are in a very, very strange and dangerous place these days.

The eyes have it

Several weeks ago I was weeding my gardens and throwing down mulch, wondering how much longer we were going to be sweating in the oppressive summer heat.

I actually don't mind sweating. Sometimes, I even like sweating. I gives me a sense a accomplishment, like when I complete my 90-minute recumbent bicycle fitness routine, or when finishing up in the garden for the day.

So when I quit mulching the other day and went inside to cool down and watch a little TV, a little black dot surreptitiously floated across the vision of my right eye.

Great. An eye floater. How annoying.

I've had floaters before, but they usually disappear in a few moments or so.

Not this one. A couple days later, it was still there, criss-crossing across my field of vision and stubbornly refusing to go away. It was particularly aggravating against bright backgrounds, like a clear blue sky on a sunny day, or reading a book printed on bright white pages. There it was.

So I made an appointment with my optometrist, Dr. Cathy Fulp. Cathy's been my eye doctor for probably 25 years or so, ever since she had her own practice here in Lexington.

I like Cathy. She's as nice as they come, and more importantly, she knows that I'm the squeamish eye guy. I hate messing with my eyes. I hate getting drops in them to dilate my pupils. I don't like looking into optometric eyepieces when they almost touch my eyeball. Eeeewwwww.

Cathy knows this. So when I made my appointment with Triad Eye Associates (where she now practices with several other doctors), I requested that Cathy, and only Cathy, check out my eye. She knows how to put me at ease in the optometry chair.

Meanwhile, I made the mistake of Googling eye floaters in an ill-advised self-diagnosis. Suddenly, I'm reading stuff about detached retinas (requiring immediate eye surgery), macular degeneration and other causes of potential impending blindness.

I was on edge. Worried. Crap.

But when it came time for my appointment, Cathy almost instantly put me at ease. An associate put drops in my right eye, per Cathy's instructions. Then Cathy came in. She had me read an eye chart. I peered through eyepieces. She did an eye check with some kind of magic hand-held magnifier (or something) that lets her look inside my eyeball. One machine even took pictures of the inside of my eye.

She had me describe my floater. In my case, it looked like a small black doughnut that was hollow in the center and partially fuzzied up my vision in that eye.

"That makes sense," she said. "Everything else looks good."

What I had, said Cathy, was something called vitreous detachment. This is when the vitreous fluid in the eye begins to deteriorate as we age and floaters develop. There's a 70 percent chance that 70 year olds will get this. It's basically harmless and, with luck, a persistent floater can eventually move out of your field of vision over time.

It's not a more serious retinal detachment, which is usually accompanied by flashes or streaks of light. Then you might have issues. Like eye surgery.

You don't want to mess around with your eyes. I made the appointment to make sure there was nothing more serious going on.

Take it from me – the squeamish eye guy.