Chipotle Wants to Get into Your Head -- Minnesota Politicians Make Nice -- Moving the Goal Post

“Our ultimate marketing mission is to make Chipotle not just a food brand but a purpose-driven lifestyle brand,” the executive, Christopher Brandt, said on an earnings call. By that, he added, he meant that “Chipotle will become a brand that people want to know about, want to be a part of and want to wear as a badge.”
NYT

I went into a fast food joint to grab a bite to eat;
the staff gave me a group hug, strewing flowers at my feet.
With only a half hour, I just wanted service quick;
but first I had to fill out a long survey, mighty thick.
Then a psychoanalyst was brought into my booth;
she wanted me to tell her all about my gilded youth.
And finally a doctor came to take my pulse and temp;
he offered me a sedative (I think twas made of hemp.)
I fled that place in terror; their compassion was intrusive --
and found refuge at KFC -- so careless and abusive! 

The author of the above NYT quote, Sapna Maheshwari, emailed me this reply:
"hah, this is a very funny one!"

The decline of civility in political debate was alarming. Harsh rhetoric was getting in the way of resolving bitter disputes.  This was Duluth, Minn., more than a decade ago as tensions rose over local budget strains.   The leaders of Duluth decided to do something about it. Civic leaders launched something called Speak Your Peace: The Civility Project. They drew up a list of nine guidelines for civilized debate so simple they could and did fit on a wallet card.  Then, a funny thing happened. People took the idea to heart. All six major units of regional government—city and county boards and school districts—adopted the guidelines. As debate improved, so did the process of addressing problems.
WSJ

Political niceness is rare;
it's likely something in the air.
With pine trees and lakes
and very few fakes,
Duluth would support a Voltaire. 

President Trump's defense in the Russia investigation has been a study in goal-post moving — constantly watering down previous denials and raising the standard for what would constitute actual wrongdoing.

Washington Post

To shrug off a carload of blame

the bigwigs like playing a game;

diluting the facts

and hiring hacks

to make their opponents look lame.

Hey Kings; Show Me the Money!

Awake, O kings of the earth! Come ye, O, come ye, with your gold and your silver, to the help of my people, to the house of the daughters of Zion.
Doctrine & Covenants. Section One-Twenty-Four. Verse 11.

Your majesty, I got some bills 
quite serious, and not for frills;
If you would heed these words of old,
then how about a bag of gold?
And then, my liege, perhaps you'll dowse
a place where you can build my house! 

Surprise! Trump Hates the New York Times -- If Trump Can Get a Job in the White House, You Can Get a Job Anywhere -- The City of Austin Wants a New Name

Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger told Trump in Oval Office meeting that newspapers were hiring armed guards because of threats against the press. Trump said he was surprised they didn’t already do that.
NYT

Because of his dull paradigms,
Trump thinks that the great New York Times
is full of riffraff
who relish and laugh
at all their own literate crimes.

Americans looking to land a first job or break into a dream career face their best odds of success in years. Employers say they are abandoning preferences for college degrees and specific skill sets to speed up hiring and broaden the pool of job candidates.

WSJ


Of course it is easy to find
a job of most any old kind.
Just look at the Trump --
a guaranteed chump --
who got a good job flying blind.

On Wednesday, Austin’s Equity Office recommended the renaming of seven streets and removal of three historical markers honoring Confederate history, calling it a high priority for the city to decide.  The office published a second list, without recommendations for action, but in need of review of items grimly yoked to the Confederacy, including slavery, racism and segregation.

Austin’s name fell on that list.

Washington Post

The mayor of Austin declared

the city was truly prepared

to switch the town name

to something more tame -- 

so activists would have them spared. 

Winter Driving

The Utah sun pours down on my cement patio until it's too hot for bare feet. My peony bushes take on a rusty brown patina, no matter how much I water them. Even the shade of the horse-chestnut trees as I take an early morning walk seems sullen with heat. It is high summer here in the desert, and all I can think about is winter driving.

I grew up with a father who was completely fearless when driving his car during the murderous Minnesota winter. It never seemed to occur to him that black ice or cunning slush lay in wait to send him slamming into a snowbank. True, he never drove very fast -- but he never took heed of the elements, either. During cold waves that sent the temperature plunging into the minus twenties or thirties he would carelessly roll down his window while driving so he could smoke one of his innumerable Salems, even while the rest of us in the car begged him for asphyxiation rather than a frozen death. The raging howls of a blizzard were to him but a spring zephyr -- he would throw a pan of boiling water on the windshield to clear off the ice and drive off through the white murk to Aarone's Bar & Grill on East Hennepin to pump suds for the regulars. Coming home late at night from his beery work, often half-crocked himself, he never had an accident on the snow-packed streets. Of course, during the winter, he was often preceded by a friendly snowplow, whose driver had been sampling boiler makers with dad to take the chill off. 

Until I was 27 I never drove a car at all. Up until then I never had to deal with winter driving. I walked or took the bus.  I well remember the April of 1972, when I was a First of May with Ringling Brothers Circus, appearing at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A snowstorm descended on the Big Apple early in April, and while cars crept along at a slug's pace and pedestrians were huddled in creeping masses of misery, I, in my cheap blue Army & Navy Surplus nylon parka, cavorted in Central Park, building snowmen and reveling in the bracing pure air -- such a great relief from the normal New York fug back when the Clean Air Act lacked teeth.

But my enjoyment of winter's delights was nearly extinguished once my wife Amy taught me to drive. Where before winter roads  seemed bucolic and inviting, they were now revealed to me as death traps -- just waiting to lure me onto a patch of invisible black ice. 

Some thirty-five years ago you could still put chains on your tires for winter traction in some Midwestern states. Getting them on was an operation fraught with tension and the temptation to use every bad word the Good Book proscribed -- and then some. First you laid out the chains, which formed a sort of horizontal ladder on the ground, and then you slowly backed over them until the tire was in the middle of the 'ladder.' Then you tried to wrap the chains around the tire and hook them together. It normally took me at least a dozen attempts per tire. By the time I had them on my back felt like the Rockettes had been performing on it, in stiletto heels. This was somewhat alleviated by the cheerful jingly sound the chains made as they bit into the compacted snow and ice of the road. I liked that sound when I was driving; it was the song of safety. But then state legislatures had to butt in to protect our sacred highways and byways by outlawing tire chains.

With a large family and a small income, buying winter tires each year was not always in the cards. I often had to navigate icy winter roads with tires as bald as Yul Brynner. It was more like skiing than driving. From November until April my knuckles stayed a milky white, from gripping the steering wheel so hard. 

And then there was the matter of starting an old clunker on a below-zero morning. I never had the luxury of a garage for the family jalopy. I kept a case of those yellow plastic bottles of Heet in the trunk, always pouring one into the gas tank in the evening if Barry ZeVan the Weatherman predicted an arctic sunrise. 

Most winters I invested more in Heet than I did in hot chocolate for the entire family.

I could never bring myself to dash a pan of boiling water onto the windshield like my dad, so I went through a variety of metal and plastic ice scrappers -- none of which ever seemed to do more than rearrange the thick frost into fiendish whorls that wouldn't disappear until I'd had the car running and the heater on for twenty minutes. And the winter grime that would collect on the windshield in a matter of minutes when I was on the freeway rarely budged when I turned on the windshield wipers, no matter how much of that blue fluid I spritzed on. 

Oh, and did I mention frozen car locks? Many a frigid morning the car door locks were frozen shut. Of course, I always kept a can of WD-40 for just such emergencies -- but I kept it inside the car, and if all the locks were frozen . . . well, you get the picture. I had to string together every pickin' extension cord in the house so I could run Amy's electric blow dryer to thaw out a lock -- risking electrocution in the process as the extension cords sank into the snow. 

But it wasn't all torture:  Driving out on Larpenteur Avenue with all the kids to look for a pungent pine to set up in the living room for Christmas. On the way back the magnificent turpentine fumes from the warming tree made us all a bit giddy, so we yodeled carols like Fred Waring's Young Pennsylvanians. There were occasional forays out onto the ice in the car at White Bear Lake, where my Uncle Jim kept a fishing shack during the winter fishing season. The kids didn't relish the fact that there was only two feet of ice between them and a watery grave, but I made light of it to such an extent that they would eventually start sliding about on their bellies in their snow suits while I vainly tried to inveigle so much as a single bony perch to take a meal worm. Driving back home I inevitably stopped at Bridgeman's for hot fudge sundaes. I had a deal with a waitress named Cindy -- for a generous tip she always made sure our sundaes had more hot fudge than ice cream. You haven't lived unless you've had a bowl of Bridgeman's hot fudge, with a dab of vanilla ice cream in the middle! 

The best part of winter driving was when I didn't have to do it. Sitting around the TV with Amy and the kids on a brisk winter's night, watching "The Adventures of Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn for the umpteenth time, with a bowl of Orville Redenbacher and mugs of Swiss Miss -- knowing there was nothing to force me out into the bitter night to face extinction on those uncertain roads -- that's a happy feeling I still recall today. When it's 97 degrees in the shade.

Jesus Christ is Joy

"For Latter-day Saints, Jesus Christ is joy!"

President Russell M. Nelson

The quiet rise of sun and moon above the mountain peak;

the placid waters stirred by wind, the music birds do speak.

A child who takes my hand in theirs, a smile that's unrehearsed;

the joy this brings is from the Christ and makes my heart to burst.

  

***************************

An email response to this poem from Bruce Young, an assistant English professor at BYU:
Great thoughts. I especially love the phrase "a smile that's unrehearsed." Genuine, spontaneous joy and friendship are some of life's greatest gifts--and yes, like all good things, they come from and are contained in Christ.

Trump Takes Credit for Economic Boom -- Big Data is Now Big Brother -- How Safe from Russian Hacking Will the November Elections Be?

President Trump hailed the economic data as evidence that his policies on trade, taxes and other issues were working. Robust growth is good news for Republicans, who are counting on the economy to help them in midterm elections this fall.

NYT

I don't think Republicans know

their chances this fall are still low.

The data be damned;

most folks are still jammed -- 

and think that conservatives blow. 

Companies are facing an erosion of faith in their ability to do the right thing with what they’ve learned. Most of us are using Facebook , for instance, but a growing number of us don’t trust Silicon Valley tech giants to responsibly handle what we share.

WSJ

Big Data get out of my life.

You've caused me enough painful strife.

If I want to stress

some more and not less,

I'll spend extra time with my wife!

President Trump chaired a meeting Friday of his most senior national security advisers to discuss the administration’s effort to safeguard November’s elections from Russian interference, the first such meeting he’s led on the matter, but issued no new directives to counter or deter the threat.

Washington Post

November will be here real soon --

so what of that old Russian goon

who hacks into polls

and screws up the rolls --

will all of our votes he dragoon?

— The traffic sign that greets visitors on the south side of Ulysses, a tiny town in rural far north-central Pennsylvania, is suitably quaint — a silhouette of a horse-drawn cart reminding drivers that the Amish use the roads, too. But on the north side of town  is a far different display: a home dedicated to Adolf Hitler, where star-spangled banners and Nazi flags flutter side by side and wooden swastikas stand on poles.
Washington Post

Some minds close up shop when they're young,
and having accepted the dung
of mongering cheats
who think they're elites --
keep spreading manure with their tongue.

Their skins will be whiter than yours

 O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God.

Jacob. Chapter Three. Verse 8.

It really won't matter a bit

the color our skin does emit;

If we misbehave,

then no one can save

us from anguish down in the pit.

How Crooked is Wells Fargo? -- Facebook Stock Takes a Nosedive -- GDP Spike Called 'Unhealthy' by Economists

The two letters cited goals for Wells Fargo product sales that led employees to push customers into products that generated more fees or to move client assets between different products or investing platforms to generate more revenue—and bigger bonuses for employees.

WSJ

Of course not all bankers are sharks,

and some of them sing with the larks.

But I'd rather trust

my precious gold dust

with anyone else, like Karl Marx. 

Bye, $100 billion.  That’s the bitter pill Facebook swallowed Thursday as years of security lapses pulled the company’s market capital down by more than $100 billion. The cliff dive was the largest single-day drop in value in Wall Street history.

Washington Post

I wouldn't buy Facebook stock now

because this once famous cash cow

has stumbled and crashed

and people's dreams trashed -- 

because it treats data like chow.

The United States economy grew by a whopping 4.1 percent last quarter, and President Donald Trump took to the podium Friday morning, giving a speech in the White House South Lawn where he took credit for the growth and promised that the high numbers would be sustained throughout his presidency. Leading economists, however, are not so sure.
Newsweek

I wonder what Trump's gonna think
when all of it goes down the sink.
His tariffs and taxes
are acting like axes --
he'll make Mrs. Trump hock her mink!

And salvation is free

. . .  and salvation is free.

Second Nephi. Chapter Two. Verse 4.

The cost of my salvation is the price of my assent

that Jesus Christ is Savior and he lived with pure intent.

And with that sure conviction I have found my life a gift,

given in abundance and with no thought of mean thrift.

To those who think salvation is superfluous at best,

that dependence on the God of Hosts is simply jest,

I say that your salvation is both near and fully free --

but only through the Lamb of God who hung upon a tree. 

Why Mexican Journalists Can't Buy Life Insurance

Ruben Pat was the second journalist killed in a month from Semanario Playa News, the online publication he founded. He was at least the seventh journalist killed this year in Mexico, one of the deadliest countries for journalists.    LATimes

A journalist in Mexico has life expectancy

of not much more than somewhere 'round the age of thirty-three.

They disappear so often that it's hard to keep them straight,

or remember in which way they met their awful fate.

I wonder why they don't give up, since no one takes their side.

I guess it's cuz they're stubborn and have too much honest pride.

It's sad to think in Mexico when young people decide

on careers as journalists they're choosing suicide!