The beat goes on

When I was an adolescent I loved cars.

A lot of us did and you may have mentioned it before but I get the impression that your love stopped at the surface.  If a car looked cool that's all you needed, am I right?  That's fine and there's nothing wrong with that but that sounds like an infatuation to me and not a true love.  Go beyond the surface and you enter the realm of the gearhead where you learn the mysteries of the carburetor, the distributor, the different weights of oil, and all that other good stuff.  Oh, that green goo was most likely Prestone Anti-Freeze; that was the only green fluid that I recall.  We used water in the summertime and drained it in the fall when we added the anti-freeze; now it's called coolant and comes in different colors.  Modern cars are amazingly complex but there is still room for the backyard mechanic to work on a few things, or at least troubleshoot some issues.  There are little gizmos you can plug into the diagnostic port that will tell you what the fault codes are and will save you money if you have to take it to the mechanic.  And there's always YouTube and Google to solve the tough problems.

I always liked fiddling with my cars and fixing the little things that went wrong; the trick was knowing when to pass it on to the professionals.  It's embarrassing when a car doesn't start simply because it's out of gas, but don't ask me how I came by this knowledge.

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So, the impeachment process is moving along and my prediction is that Trump, like Johnson and Clinton before him, will be acquitted.  I don't know how it will happen but strings will be pulled, deals will be made, and hoops will be jumped through.  Business as usual, in other words.

I find it amusing that the parties on both sides of the aisle often invoke the Founding Fathers in their sanctimonious interpretations of the Constitution.  Despite the noble intentions this country was founded by a lot of scoundrels and criminals, including slave owners, willing to do anything to get their way.  Treaties were meant to be broken, and the Revolutionary War was also a proxy war between England and France with the assistance of a lot of mercenaries.  Americans have always meant well but have also been slightly crazy, thinking only of themselves and to hell with anyone else.  This pattern has prevailed for more than two hundred years now and is not likely to change.

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It's now almost gone but there were a few inches of snow on the ground in my neighborhood and the temperature has been below freezing.  It's taken long enough but winter is finally here, past the middle of January.  In a few weeks the pitchers and catchers will begin Spring Training, so that should put a smile on Uncle Ken's face.