I am on the Pacific coast of Mexico. A little town called Chacala, just north of Puerto Vallarta. The Kenny clan is assembling to celebrate what for Kathy and me is a significant birthday. Suffice to say the weather is spectacular and the view magical. I hope you are all getting together with some sort of family while probably under different climactic conditions. Stay warm.

We are hearing recaps of 2025 as we move towards the end. This has in a word, been tumultuous. The good, the bad and the ugly. I will let you line up your own column A and column B. There have been births  to celebrate and deaths to mourn. Marriages and divorces. There have been incredible successes and horrendous failures. 

Every day the news brings mostly bad things. We seem to delight in that. I think a big part of that is a distance created by, I am sure glad that is not me. I think in hospice, people stay away because it is more than an ample proof of one’s mortality. I can’t conjure up in any way how the parents of those two kids at Brown are suffering. Yet it happens hundreds of times every day in incidents that don’t make the nightly news. 

The good is out there. We don’t pay a lot of attention but if we look hard we can find it in so many ways. Stupid things. Little gestures. A smile you didn’t expect. A phone call that bespoke an effort to seek you out. Some quiet nobody who left their life savings to some cause. 

Those are all the best. Pleasant surprises. We never knew. 

Our world today has become an equation and somewhat predictable. Customs and rituals are great as long as they are meaningful and not just repetitious. Oh yes, we always go to Uncle Lenny’s house for Christmas Eve or Grandma’s for a 47 pound turkey on the big day. Creativity and imagination go out the window for that good old time religion. If you really want to do that, go right ahead but don’t do it for the stupid reason, we always have. 

That seems sacrilegious to some and I am not trying to be the Grinch. I am also not saying you have to go off the wall either. But I also run into people that say the holidays are intolerable. Eat,drink and be merry. It is probably why so many gym memberships are sold in January. 

I read a great article the other day on gift giving. It espoused not giving many gifts but just one. The package was the product of a lot of thought and love. It fit the person to a tee not by the price tag but by the depth of thought. One young girl put a message on 30 Keurig K cups so her mom would have something loving and positive to look at in the morning. I thought it was great. 

As part of a ritual where we live, we “adopt” families associated with the Hope Rural School in Indiantown. It is a community of hard working mostly Hispanic immigrants. We help around 120 families by buying gifts for every child in the family. We had a party there about a week ago. Pre K to 5th grade. Incredible!! The families were grateful but not subservient. This place exists without any government funding to be cut off. But wait, those horrible people. We should send them all back where they came from. Really???

You and I can argue about whether he is God Himself or just a nice guy. Crazy how His religion has hung around all this time with various sects and denominations. His message still makes sense. Can you really argue with the tenets and their applicability no matter how far civilization has come?The Bible is still the best selling book in the world.  Have we conveniently put all that on a shelf?

I can’t improve on this. I am so glad you got this far. The message is simple. Peace on earth. Good will towards men. Is that so tough to understand? I hope not. Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and whatever else. 

There was a guy born a couple of thousand years ago. When he got to age 30 he started preaching a way of life. Do unto others. Love your neighbor as yourself. Be humble. Praise someone other than your false gods. You certainly are not a god. Give and accept nothing in return. Don’t kill. Don’t mess around. Don’t steal. What was He thinking?

As always 

Ted The Great 

Factoids:  None to speak of. 

The definition of perspective is an interesting one. A “perspective” is a specific way of viewing or understanding something, shaped by your beliefs and experiences”. You and I see things differently.  The world would love to define us by silos but it is not as easy as that. I scan newspapers with articles and op-eds trying to discover what is going on. How do I feel about it.  Now I have to add is it true? That kinda sucks.

I am rereading George Friedman’s, The Storm Before The Calm. He is a favorite read of mine as a geopolitical theorist. He starts by giving you a capsule summary of our history as a young nation. The good, the bad and the ugly. He then separates various time frames into both institutional and socioeconomic outcomes. Each with its own idiosyncrasies and of course, successes and  failures. All without mudslinging or condemnation. It is what it is. 

He heralds that we are a nation born of rebellion and violence. We are upstarts and cocky. We don’t have the centuries of history and traditions like Europe to fall back on. We have been through slavery but so have many other nations in our world. The 13 colonies were each separate and provincial. We united in war but had differences. We have had robber barons, monopolies and  racism at it best. Not only towards blacks but to the Irish,Poles and Chinese. The Catholics and Jews and now Muslims. Please do not get your back up. It is all there. 

Rather than dwelling on it or trying to change that history, he looks at it as a tableau to be studied. Politically we had the era of Washington and then Lincoln and onto FDR and the last of them Regan,as being noteworthy. We are waiting for the next one and it is probably not Trump. True we are fed up with just about everyone from the government to business to education and our very malevolent press. We have not managed our resources well. Wait TTG, our economy is doing great, unemployment is low and we have a few shootings here and there but overall we get a ‘B”. Not so fast.

I would hold out to you we have a bunch of problems that get ignored while your AI stocks and Bitcoin are flying. Not only Obamacare or Medicare but healthcare as an industry is going to put us out of business. I agree let’s get rid of the subsidies but what do you do from there? Do you just let people die or waste away from their chronic diseases. Immigration has been fixed. Sorta. We have removed by force or their own volition about 2 million illegals. Unfortunately not all were criminals and the hard work they did does not fit into the aspirations of our current legal workforce. 

People are getting old! I had to visit a patient in an assisted care facility. Average cost $7,000 per month. It was not exactly what I was hoping for. And these are the people that can afford it. As the elderly section gets larger and larger there are a lot less young people that are around and better yet willing to take care of Mom and Dad. I could go on but the point is we are approaching tilt on our little pinball game of life. No one and I mean no one is providing answers. 

Friedman will tell you the end of the cycle is not pretty. Our government is moribund. Corporations are too busy making money and will continue to automate. Educational standards are getting lower and lower as we continue to throw money at it. Today’s morality is questionable.Anything goes. We have no states people nor leaders of industry that are willing to come forward and  say,”Hey gang, we have to fix a lot of things. It will require a different way of looking at our livelihood. We have to have the humility to realize what isn’t working and we will ALL have to pitch in to fix it”. Maybe you know that dude or dudette but I don’t. 

This will probably sound crazy but I am suddenly at ease. I take comfort that this has happened before and we have worked our way out of it. In my lifetime,WWII,Viet Nam, the Oil Embargo, Watergate, 9/11, 2008, Afghanistan, Ukraine ,COVID. That is only naming a few. Going back in history was the The Revolution, Great Depression, Civil War. In all those happenings an adult in the room had to come forward. Out of the box thinking and cutting through red tape. Political parties talking to one another. Or perhaps blowing by rules and regs en masse to get things done. We are truly at a crisis precipice. Oops, I better shut up or I will get gaslighted or deported. 

In an absurd way I am accepting our current situation. I have so little power to change things I have to search anywhere to find someone who will. A group of men and women who have to give us tough love. If you think we can go on this way, go for it. I am a little too practical and maybe have seen too much to dig out my rose colored glasses once again. My IRA may be gaining but the underpinning of this big blue marble is showing some serious cracks. As they say,Look Out Below. 

We have become gigantic from corporations to government to our universities. They are hard to control, unwieldy, prone to error and corruption. Friedman will tell you minor repairs and band aids won’t work. In the end we will sober up. Throw the bad parts out and polish up and streamline the good ones. If you believe AI is the salvation tell me what we do with the other 90% that do not directly benefit. I really do have a different perspective and it is not all bad. It sure beats just bitching about it. 

As always

Ted The Great 

Factoids. 

Interestingly the government in relation to the population is less than it was 80 years ago. In 1945 it was 2.6% of the population. In the 70’s it was 1.1% Today it is .6%That’s a scary thought. 

There are approximately 5,000 laws on the federal books. There are also 300,000 rules and regs. Obamacare was 1,000 pages as a bill. There are untold number of rules all written by the staffs of agencies. …ably assisted by insurers, drug companies and HMO’s. Many nullify others or are in direct conflict. 

The National debt is currently $38 trillion. That is $112,000 for each person in the US. 10,000 people turn 65 every day. They are consumers not producers. Healthcare costs $15,000 per every single person every year. We simply do not have the revenue through taxes of all sorts to cover our current expenditures. 

Our life expectancy in the US is 78.4 years  Men at 74 and women at 81. Older people can expect to live around 5 years with pain or a serious illness. Sorry kids, that costs a lot of money.