In my Impromptus today, I have some sports — starting with Simone Biles — and some presidential politics — a lot of that — and some language — the shape-shifting of English — and other matters. Try it here.
There was a wonderful television moment yesterday. Simone was doing her floor routine, zeroing in on the individual all-around gold. At the end of it, the announcer said, “That should do it.” The commentator said, “Oh, it’s done.”
Let’s have some mail. On Monday, I had a piece about Paul Rusesabagina, the “hotel manager” who saved more than 1,200 people in the Rwandan genocide. (He was portrayed by Don Cheadle in the movie Hotel Rwanda.) About 25 years later, he was made a political prisoner by the country’s dictator, Paul Kagame.
A reader alerts me to an article published last Friday by ESPN: “How the NBA got into business with an African dictator” (Kagame). ESPN has done a documentary, too, found on YouTube: here. Very important. You may have heard the phrase “sportswashing.” That’s what Rwanda is doing, what Saudi Arabia is doing, what China is doing, etc.
In my column on Tuesday, I noted a joint operation between Russia and China. For the first time, they have flown bombers together off the coast of Alaska. A reader writes,
I admit that when I read the headline that day, I thought, “Ho-hum. Happens all the time.” Then I saw that the ChiComs were involved as well as Russia. That’s new!
It put me in mind of the time I was at a SAC base in Northern Maine. We always had some B-52s and KC-135s on alert. Normal operations.
There were also times when every bomber and tanker was put on alert status. (This meant every single bomber was loaded with nukes and ready to take off.) This of course messed up normal Security Police operations. A lot of us who were normally Law Enforcement were put out on the flightline to stand guard over the planes. We called this a “generation.”
Most generations were part of normal SAC exercises. But now and then (and more frequently than I care to think about) we had a generation when there were no exercises scheduled. RUMINT (rumor intelligence) was always that Soviet subs were detected off Iceland, Newfoundland, the Gulf of Maine, and so forth. We never got an official reason for any of them.
Seems like everything old is new again. Or as the Preacher said, “There is no new thing under the sun.”
(Just as a sidenote: I love that phrase “RUMINT.”)
With some frequency, I have been writing about our national debt and federal budget deficit — an issue that few want to hear about, burningly important as it is. A reader writes,
Jay, you said, “Our entitlement programs are headed toward insolvency.” Isn’t it more accurate to say they are already insolvent? When the government takes current income-tax revenue, plus some borrowed money, to pay for shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare?
Well, there’s “insolvent” and “insolventer.” I think those are the terms economists use.
My thanks to one and all readers and correspondents.