When you talk for a living, you’re gonna mess up. Rule 45 says clean up your own mess, Joy Behar

As someone who blogs for public consumption every day, I’m certain I’ve written and published something really, really stupid. Something that, if someone else said it–someone I disagreed with–I’d use it as evidence they’re a horrible, horrible person.

If you speak or write enough, you’re almost guaranteed to do it. Presidents do it. Celebrities do it. And talk hosts do it.

Which brings us to Joy Behar and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The View co-host Sunny Hostin spoke of the projected number of people displaced and killed by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of another country (as many as 50,000 Ukrainians killed or injured and 5 million displaced).

“I’m scared of what’s gonna happen in Western Europe, too,” Behar said. “You know, you plan a trip, you want to go there, you want to go to Italy for four years and I haven’t been able to make it because of the pandemic and now this.”

That’s right. Ukrainians families are being split as their country is bombed. In many cases, women and children are seeking safety in Poland while men are staying to fight. I watched a video yesterday of a young woman wearing pink nail polish on her toes, wearing black leggings. And talking about using an AK-47 to defend her country.

And Joy Behar’s worried that she won’t get some of that fine Italian wine.

Joy Behar speaks for a living. She says a lot of words. Because she’s human, some of those words will be stupid. Given the number of words she says for public consumption, you could extend her some grace. But she made the comments Thursday and hasn’t clarified them. Nothing was said about them on Friday’s show.

And in the past, Joy Behar hasn’t extended that grace to others who step in it.

The world has rallied to the defense of people who could literally lose everything. Their leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is being hailed around the world as a hero–a real-life version of Bill Pullman’s character in Independence Day.

We cheered for this in a movie 26 years ago. Now it’s real.

At the very least, the next time someone inevitably sticks their foot in their mouth all the way up to the thigh, Joy Behar should keep her mouth shut.

Maybe that’s not possible.

Is this what it was like in 1939?

War isn’t new.

I can pretend that I’ve lived through a few decades of peace and prosperity because I don’t live in Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, or any number of other places that have suffered war.

But this feels different than those places. For one thing, there’s a surprising amount of unanimity in reaction to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As much as Donald Trump has tried to shy away from condemning Putin, he seems to have lost most of the Republican party.

For another thing, for the first time in the better part of a century, a European war–and potentially a World War–seems possible.

Sure, we all watched during sweeps in 1983 when ABC presented The Day After and we all pretended it was a real possibility that old white warmongers would blow up the entire world. But there were too many people with too much to lose. Mutual assured destruction, held up as a bad thing through my time at college, actuall worked pretty well.

Maybe it’s bravado or posturing, but Putin’s put the possibility of a nuclear attack on the table. Right now, it applies to anyone who interferes with his plans in Ukraine. But if history–and Putin’s own words–show us anything, it’s that he’s not done. He views the end of the Cold War as unacceptable and seems to want to rebuild the Eastern bloc. Assuming he eventually overruns Ukraine, we’ll see what’s next.

Poland was part of that Eastern bloc, and if Putin attacks them, the rest of NATO is duty-bound to come to its defense. For the first time, we’ll be engaged in direct warfare with another nuclear superpower. That’s never happened.

This is why this feels different. This isn’t a bunch of left-leaning scientists pushing the hands of a fictional clock closer to a fictional midnight to get headlines. This is the real deal.

I considered that possibility that skin color and race were factors in why I cared a lot more about this. Why I changed my Facebook profile to feature the Ukrainian flag. Why I make a point to listen to news podcasts every day and scan whatever’s available to stay up to date.

Maybe race is a factor. Maybe I care more because this is Europe, not Africa. Or maybe, as a child of the cold war, I remember what it was like then. I remember the stories of people who’d been to East Germany. I remember waking one night to jets taking off one after the other from the airbase in Plattsburgh, NY, which existed only because of the Soviet Union. As our existence today proves, it was a drill.

I remember being at a radio station when the teletype dinged ten times, something reserved for really bad things, like nuclear war. And those memories are nothing compared to the experience of real war.

This has the potential to be much more than a regional war. All war is hell. It always kills people. But this war could kill a lot of people. And if it goes off the rails, it could kill more people than we can imagine.

I don’t know what 1939 felt like and I don’t want to.

We’ve already been back to 1918, 1929, and 1968 this decade. Let’s pray for no more time travel.

Good God, we are fortunate to be here and not there.

On the way to my men’s small group this morning, I listened to the BBC World News Podcast. As you’d expect, the Russian invasion of Ukraine dominated, much of it with stories about the bombings around Kyiv. Some of the coverage was interviews with the people who live there. It talked about bombings and how they were gathering in shelters. About how regular people were arming themselves to fight for their country’s existence.

They will almost certainly lose that fight, but Russia may also find that invading a country is a different thing altogether than occupying it.

As I drove, I listened to a woman talk about the Russians bombing her airport. And I watched a plane approach final landing at Tampa International.

The vast majority of Americans don’t understand war. We can’t imagine what it’s like to like our home to find shelter and have no idea whether someone wantonly wiped it from the face of the earth. We don’t know what it’s like to see a person, make plans to see them again shortly, then have no idea whether we’ll ever see them again.

We don’t know what it’s like to have our airport bombed or to wonder whether to flee and save our lives or stay and fight and probably die.

We may live in the house we do and work the job we have because of hard work. But we do it in the United States because of…luck? Divine provenance? It’s certainly not because our actions.

If you exclude Pearl Harbor, it’s been 155 years since there’s been war here. That’s a long time. We take things like the existence of our airport or the ability to go to the store for groceries and safely return for granted.

We may be exceptionally talented and hardworking. But we’re also exceptionally lucky.

The people jonesing for a civil war have no idea what war is. They think it’s like a Clint Eastwood movie. They think it’s full of heroism and manliness. Instead, it’s a bunch of terrified people doing what they need to do to survive. Many of them fail. Many who don’t come home with deep wounds they never talk about.

There’s no bigger point to this post, other than the fact that while we argue over critical race theory, bathrooms, and professional sports team names, we need to take a minute to understand how enormously lucky we are to be able to have those arguments.

No one is invading our country. While we argue for what we believe in, we should take a second and look across the table to realize it’s one thing to argue with words and quite another to argue with tanks and missiles.

And maybe those people on the other side are less than real enemies. Maybe they’re just people who see things differently.

Trump’s praise of Putin shows that the same thing could happen here

Four years ago, at a joint news conference following his Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin, then-President Donald Trump was asked about reports that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 Presidential election, which Putin denied. The reports of interference were backed by the United States intelligence community. (They weren’t the reports that said Trump colluded with Russia.)

“President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Donald Trump sided with Vladimir Putin over this country’s intelligence community.

Now, as Putin uses manufactured history to deploy “peacekeepers” into Ukraine, Trump praised Putin for the invasion.

“This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. So Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force,” the former President said.

“We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. … Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. … I know him very well. Very, very well.”

Donald Trump advocated invading Mexico.

He said we need to consider deploying “peacekeepers” into Mexico as part of an effort to take over Mexican territory. That’s exactly what Putin has done in Ukrainee. As part of his peacekeeping mission he annexed two Ukrainian states. Now he’s taking over the country. He hasn’t bothered to hide his end game, unilaterally declaring that Ukraine has no legitimate existence outside Russia, history be damned.

That’s what Donald Trump considers as genius.

Intelligence from the region seems to indicate that if Putin does invade, he has a hit list of people to be imprisoned or killed and that any invasion will be purposely harsh on the people who live there.

That’s what Donald Trump considers very savvy.

Ukraine is a corrupt country, but it’s not run by a bloodthirsty monster. It’s not an “invention,” as Putin indicates. Compared to Russia, it seems to be Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood.

And the man who presumes to be our once and future leader seems to think that invasion and slaughter are wonderful. Donald Trump is telling the country and the world what he wants to be.

Trump is a man whose handler at the time, Roger Stone, threatened to publish the motel room assignments of RNC delegates who didn’t vote correctly in 2016. Now he wasn’t advocating violence against these people, but if something were to happen…

Trump is a man who advocated violence against people who held up signs against him at rallies. He’s a man whose commitment to freedoms he doesn’t agree with is as thin as tissue paper.

The Atlantic published an article this week that effectively charged Putin with running the entire country of Russia as nothing more than his own personal sandbox. Whatever he wants, he takes with no regard to the cost. He looted his country for personal and political enrichment and seems to feel no responsibility to the people he rules.

This is the guy Trump seems to idolize. It’s part of a pattern with him, as he’s heaped similar praise on North Korean Chairman King Jong-un. Neither of them tolerates those who might oppose them. Trump doesn’t either. In his view–and it’s a view he’s articulated in almost every criticism of political opponents–tolerating dissent is a sign of weakness. To be strong is to crush any opposition, by litigation if necessary and by force when possible.

If you’re backing this guy because he’s protecting your freedoms, you better hope those freedoms always dovetail with what he wants. The second the don’t, you become one of the people he has to–and wants to–crush, so he doesn’t look weak.

He adores the “strength” of Putin’s charade peacekeeping mission into Ukraine. The hit lists and his creating a false history. The depicting Russian as victims of the relentless and vicious Ukrainians (who have never violated Russia’s borders). And then the invasion with the intent to crush and kill any who stand in his way.

This is the model of governance Donald Trump idolizes. This is how he operates. Anyone who speaks out against him is like the relentless and vicious Ukrainians who have threatened his very existence. He’s hurt to the point where the only valid response is to crush his opponents as ruthlessly as possible.

And his backers feel so threatened by the same perceived enemies that they jump on board, manufacturing threats so they can be part of the victory party.

The only thing standing between the United States and a Putin-like leader in Trump is the Constitution.

If you don’t believe it, read his words. Pretend Joe Biden said them.

The man who was President of the United States, who came close to repeating his Presidency–the man who could still be President in 2024–advocated doing what Putin is doing to Ukraine on our southern border.

Tucker Carlson would probably classify this as hate, but maybe while we’re praying for the Ukrainians, we might be praying for ourselves, too. We’re closer to their fate than we’d ever believe.

ABG: Always be giving

The movie version of Glengarry Glen Ross was released in 1992. The Alec Baldwin monologue is classic and timeless. Too many days, I shake my head at the realization that this is the way the world works.

Only one thing counts in this life: get them to sign on the line which is dotted. The only thing that counts is what you produce and if you can’t produce, get out of the way for the people who can.

It’s not just a business trope. It’s evolved into how we see each part of the world. Did you vote for the right person? For the right reason? I don’t think you did.

What if we’re measuring wrong? What if the true measure of success isn’t whether you closed the most sales this month, only to have to hit a higher goal next month?

Certain things will always be hard. That’s just life. But what if we worked to make make the things that don’t have to be hard easy? What if we saved your stress and hard work for the things that really have to be stressful and hard?

I’ve been listening to a guy named Jordan Harbinger lately. In his most recent podcast, he sets the Alec Baldwin rant on its ear by saying ABG: Always Be Giving.

Always be giving.

This doesn’t mean you treat yourself as a sponge that needs to be wrung out dry for the benefit of anyone pronounces ownership of your skills and time.

It means you look for ways to give value for people around you. It means when someone comes to you flustered and looking to stay afloat–and that manifests itself a lot of ways–you protect your boundaries, but listen to them, find out what the root cause of their angst is, and help them solve the problem. Maybe you dig in and do the work. Maybe you just tell them who to talk to. And maybe you just listen.

The best thing that happened to me in the past five years was accidentally being copied on an email to one of my biggest internal customers. This customer was hard-core and demanding. Everyone knew it.

The email was from one of her customers and it lit her up. It showed me why she was demanding. If I were in her position, I’d have reacted the same way.

Instantly, I had a clear path to providing value: make her pain go away. Do what I could do to resolve what I could and give her alternatives for the things I couldn’t.

I used to hate my job. Some days, I still do. But more days, I don’t. I’m not focused on the next rung of the ladder now. I’m focused on my customers–on what I can do to make their lives easier. That mission gives value to what I do. I’ve come to know my internal customers and care about them. I understand some of what makes their days harder.

More to the point, they know I care. And that means when I tell them I can’t do something, they trust that’s the truth and they’re more willing to work with me on alternatives.

I can’t imagine approaching work any other way now.

Those are the parts of my job that I enjoy–the ones where I can help make peoples’ lives a little easier.

I’m not perfect at it; no one is. But I’ve switched my alignment and that makes a difference.

And who doesn’t want to make a difference?

Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ amendment (now withdrawn) is legislative terrorism

Author’s note: The graphic at the top of the article is a representation of what I think the amendment does. It is not my position on the issue.

A Republican member of the Florida State Legislature withdrew an amendment that would’ve required school authorities to inform parents within six weeks if they found out a child was other than straight. Rep. Joe Harding blamed the media for the withdrawal saying “all the amendment did was create procedures around how, when, and how long information was withheld from parents so that there was a clear process and kids knew what to expect.”

Joe Harding, apparently the real victim here.

He did it, in the words of Nancy Pelosi, for the children.

The bill still restricts discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Another amended version of the bill stripped an exception to the notification provision if the child’s life might be endangered.

That those two amendments existed in the bill amounts to legislative terrorism. It’s a clear statement from some members of the state legislature that all the gays should go back to San Francisco where they belong or something. Perhaps it’s part of the state’s hurricane protection program.

If your kid is gay, he’s still your kid. A lot of people are gay. You probably know some of them. You can’t make him not gay by controlling what he hears at school. You can’t beat it out of him. You can’t pray the gay away.

And the God who runs to his wayward son before the son asks forgiveness (the parable of the prodigal) isn’t going to damn your kid to hell because he did all the right things but he also kissed a boy and he liked it.

He’s your damn kid. God loves him. You’re supposed to love him. You’re supposed to be happy when he finds happiness, even if he is schtupping someone you don’t like.

That’s more important than winning a political argument. That’s more important than owning the damn libs.

This legislation isn’t freedom. It’s a clear statement that we only want the right kind f Floridians.

It’s more thug tactics from a party that used to have a soul.

Jesus screws with me over breakfast

Jesus talked to me while I was trying to write at the bagel place.

“Nice mask,” Jesus said.

I sighed. Jesus smiled down on me the way he does when he’s screwing with me.

“I’m a fully vaccinated booster pers–did you come here just to give me crap or for something useful? I’m writing.”

Once I found out Jesus wouldn’t disown me for being annoyed with him, I enjoyed our talks a lot more.

“Did you see what that atheist posted about you kind of being a moron for believing in me?”

I waited for him to add the indication that sometimes I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he didn’t. Jesus tends to speak to me in my own voice. Sometimes I don’t like that.

“I saw it.”

He sat down and looked a little longingly at my bagel sandwich.

“Dude,” I said, “I spent an hour on the rower to fit this into my calorie budget. Please don’t turn this into a lesson on giving to the hungry.”

That made Jesus laugh, which was annoying.

“What did you think of what he posted?”

I shrugged. “I told him what I thought. I was respectful about it. He thinks I’m a moron. It’s a free country.”

Jesus didn’t respond. I looked down at my laptop. I was about halfway through outlining a story that was pretty ambitious for me, about a woman magically endowed with the power to heal people and how that power could be perverted.

“What?” I said.

“You know he’s my son and I love him.”

“I was respectful. I wasn’t an asshole.” I let my irritation trickle through. “If he blew a tire out in the rain, I’d stop and help him. What do you want?”

“That’s nice. But what did you think about what he said. It annoyed you.”

Not as much as this.

Jesus smiled at me. No use hiding what I was thinking. He knows. It’s like a game sometimes. I know that he knows that I know that he knows…

“Why were you annoyed?”

It was clear Jesus wouldn’t be leaving this point alone until I had the conversation he wanted. It’s not my favorite attribute of my personal Lord and Savior.

“I suppose I don’t like being called a moron. In particular by someone I was respectful to and who seems to be all about compassion and diversity, except for someone who disagrees with him.” I waited for Jesus to respond, then thought of something else. “And I realize there were too many first-person references in there.”

“You also apologized for the bad experiences he had with people in my name. That was nice touch. I like how you left it at that, instead of defending me.”

I shrugged slightly because it’s Jesus and what else are you going to do. “Thanks?”

“You figured I can fight my own battles. I like that. I am, after all, the Savior of the Earth,” he said.

“Don’t hurt your arm there.”

When Jesus laughs, it’s a rich sound that fills your ears and makes your soul flutter a little bit. I like it when he laughs and I was about to tell him, but of course, he knew. I could see it in his eyes.

“Who were you offended for? You? Or me?” Jesus was still eying my sandwich, but I ignored that.

“I was offended by me. And when I started a defense, I wrote it that way. Then I figured he’d maybe posted it looking for someone to be belligerent about it. So I took a different tack.”

“You apologized.”

I nodded.

He picked up my coffee and drank from it.

“You’re gonna get cooties,” I said.

He smiled. “I survived half a day on a cross. I’ll make it through this.” Then he returned my coffee.

“He’s my son. He’s a good person, but he sees things differently. If you needed help, he’d help you.”

I nodded and figured that if I were in the rain and the guy knew my mind, he’d find a big puddle and splash me with it. Which probably said more about me than the guy.

“Your ego gets in the way. You’re too easily offended,” God the Son said to me.

“What’re you gonna do?” Sometimes Jesus didn’t leave it at that. That’s never fun.

Jesus smiled. “But you’re headed in the right direction. You did okay there. You followed the rule that the Gospels, the prophets, and all the Law are wrapped up in.”

I knew the Bible, at least a little, and knew that he hadn’t quite said that. “What’s that?”

Now it was his turn to shrug. “I think you say it Don’t be a schmuck. My version’s a little less coarse, but yours will do.”

He got up and glanced down at my coffee, which was now full and steaming hot.

“Don’t get cooties.”

Then Jesus was gone.

A Monday morning choice to make

About ten years ago, we did this trust exercise at work where each person had a lunch bag and you could write one word for the person whose bag it was and slide it in.

I only remember one card, which said Rude. The rest were nice, but this was the one that stuck with me.

I don’t want to be rude. Work is hard–if it weren’t they’d call it something different. Sometimes it’s hard because it’s hard. But sometimes, it’s hard because people make it hard.

We can choose whether or not to be the person who makes it hard. It’s up to us.

Early in my career, I was one of the people who made it hard on others. I was out of control and desperately unhappy. I couldn’t see beyond my unhappiness to see the unhappiness I was foisting on others.

Being forced to see that was a rude awakening for me, but it was necessary to motivate change in me. So I write this from the perspective of a person who’s made peoples’ days harder and made them easier. Easier is better.

I work for the money, to feed this horrible addiction I have to food, clothing, and shelter. Almost all of us have to do that, so we’re in the same boat. If that’s the case, we might as well make it easier.

Yesterday, our pastor talked about taking the message of Jesus out to the people. He talked specifically about not being a jerk about it.

That’s my goal–too not be a jerk about it. To first do no harm. And for people to see Jesus in me without my saying it.

Sometimes, I have fleeting moments when I’m good at it. Those moments have increased over time, especially since I stopped kicking my own ass when I forget myself and make it hard for someone.

I’ve done my best to align myself to help people feel closer to home. It’s a choice we can make every day. Ultimately people will remember our capacity to do that (or not) more than whatever money we make.

Sorry if this seems preachy or pretentious, but it’s a reminder I need to see and hear. If it helps you, then that’s even better.

America needs more microbreweries (and not because of the beer)

We went over to Tarpon Springs yesterday for what amounted to a giant cheat day for me. (After a month and a half of no alcohol, it didn’t take much to make my head swim, but that’s a different story for a different day.)

Our second stop was a restaurant whose menu my wife had scoped out. While we were eating, a bunch of people came in, including a guy wearing a Let’s Go Brandon t-shirt and a Trump hat. I don’t care if you like Trump or dislike Biden; it’s a free country. But wearing a t-shirt that effectively says eff the President of the United States seems like provocation for its own sake.

We finished eating and went to another microbrewery and guess who shows up, but the Brandon guy. Because that’s what you do in a microbrewery, we wound up talking. They’re from Rochester and seemed like nice people. We talked about a brewery near Syracuse we’d both been to and I told them about some of the places I went around the Capitol District last summer. Then they went out to the beer garden.

There was no brawling about politics, no discussion of the Big Lie. It was just people having a pleasant discussion on a nice day in a fun brewery.

There’s an article floating around saying that people are moving for political reasons–that red people are moving to the red states and blue people are moving to the blue states. That’s too bad. Being around people like you all the time just distorts reality and hardens your viewpoints, making them inflexible.

There are two places people will treat each other well, putting politics aside: after a disaster, when you’re helping each other for a greater cause, and in a microbrewery.

Disasters suck.

Maybe it’s not a microbrewery for you. Maybe it’s a tea house or a winery or a running track. Whatever it is, we need opportunities to see similarities in people who have different viewpoints.

We need more microbrewery moments.

A time for achievement, a time for purpose. A time for glory. (If you don’t give up.)

It’s been one big bastard of a week, or at least it started out that way.

People were far enough up my ass that I won’t need a prostate exam or a colonoscopy ever again. They were so far up my ass they came out my mouth (and tasted like crap).

And to top it all off, although I’ve been almost unerringly loyal to Noom’s dietary restrictions, I gained four pounds in two days.

You frigging try living on 1500 calories a day, exercising, then gaining four friggin pounds after not moving the scale much for the better part of a month.

I really wanted the giant asteroid to come and put me and all of humanity out of our collective misery. I overreacted and ate 1000 calories one day, then went to bed and promptly had dreams about weighing myself.

And I woke up angry at God and the universe He created.

So here’s what I did:

— I weighed myself the way Noom requires every morning. It was a little courageous because I had no idea what to expect. And I feared I’d be up another two pounds. Or more.

— Instead of the rower, I got outside and went for a run. Because my hip is sore, I can’t run the way I used to, but I got four miles in and walked a little more than a fifth mile. Getting outside was nice.

— I listened to some podcasts that helped me frame things differently. (Jordan Harbinger–I highly recommend him.)

— I decided to take a day off.

In short, I stuck with the program and took care of myself. I worked at looking at the work challenges in a different way. Mostly, I decided I was valuable and worthy of protection.

The day off was completely selfish. I got up and exercised, then weighed myself, as Noom requires. I went to the bagel place and did some writing. The exercise give me the calorie space to have a bagel with egg whites and turkey sausage. Then I came home and made snickerdoodles for my dad because he likes them. Then we went to dinner with him. It was a very nice day. Selfish isn’t always bad.

Oh, and I lost five pounds the day after the second two-pound gain, then I lost four more pounds today. I’ve given up trying to understand my body, but I now fit in the shirt my daughter got me for my birthday.

Couldn’t come close to fitting in this a month ago. Also, I have a big head.

Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but if you do the right things and value yourself, good things often follow.

When I woke up Thursday morning, I had no idea the week of feces would end the way it did.

You just never know. As long as you get up and keep making the effort, good things will come.

To blatantly rip off the great John Facenda:

Each new day means a brand new challenge, rich with new opportunities. A time for achievement, a time for purpose.

A time for glory.

(Say it in his voice and you’ll be ready for anything.)