Most of us survived our teen years with some regrettable / idiotic behavior. I’m certainly no exception to that. The viral video of the group of teenagers from a private Catholic school in Kentucky mocking Native American Nathan Phillips looks like a very powerful teachable moment to me for both the students involved and their parents.

When you’re caught red handed treating your fellow man poorly for no reason at all, there’s an opportunity here to send a message to the teens, their parents, and the rest of us.

As someone whose father was an educator and raised a daughter who is also an educator, I can tell you that one reason the public school systems are broken is because so many parents view their school district as having an obligation to babysit their children. Schools set a standard of behavior and if the line is crossed, they do frequently use suspension as a means to remove disruptive kids from school grounds. I’ve heard stories about how effective this is because parents’ lives are disrupted big-time if they have to leave work mid-day and come pick up their kid from school. Even worse if it’s a multiple day suspension and they have to make arrangements for watching their kid because the babysitting service has put them in a time out.

Politics and MAGA hats aside for a minute, the behavior was mean and disrespectful. It stopped short of being violent thankfully.

I’ve never been someone to be quick with an “off with their heads” verdict especially when it comes to teens. I was suspended once in high school for fighting. Had I been caught doing the other 99 things I shouldn’t have been doing, it would have been an even 100. Let’s face it, kids do dumb things.

There’s chatter on Twitter about expulsions. I actually think a couple of weeks off school on a severe suspension combined with community service would be more effective. The parents will have to deal with their worst nightmare — nobody to watch their kid during the day, and the kids will get some time to think about behavior modification.

Now back to politics not aside. It seems like there may be a pattern here. For the past two years when I see videos posted of racist rants at Walmart or in general, one group of people treating another group of people poorly, why are there always so many of these red hats in the pictures?

Republican strategist Rick Wilson wrote a book titled “Everything Trump Touches Dies” which has a Twitter hashtag of its own that needs no explanation.

I’m reminded of this as I watched “America’s mayor” Rudy Giuliani beclown himself on CNN last night. Chris Cuomo pressed Giuliani on the mounting list of indictments, guilty pleas and convictions to which he responded “I never said nobody on the campaign ever colluded with Russia. I said the President didn’t.”

The once proud, by general consensus mayor of our country for his handling of the 9/11 aftermath now has his reputation in tatters because he hitched his wagon to Trump train. He’s gone the way of Trump University, Trump steaks, Trump airlines, Trump vodka, and Trump casinos.

And that’s just a partial list of the failed businesses.

When you compile the list of human resources whose reputations have taken a nosedive you have to include Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Don McGhan, Emmet Flood, Ty Cobb, Ronny Jackson, Nikki Haley, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Chris Christie. These people all had notable reputations (at least in some circles), but have since paid a steep price for attaching their wagon to Team Trump.

Let’s not forget the sad souls that didn’t have a decent reputation to begin with — who just went from low to lower: Lindsey Graham, Trey Gowdy, Ted Cruz, Devin Nunes, Anthony Scaramucci, Michael Cohen, KellyAnne Conway, Sean Hannity, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Orin Hatch, Stephen Miller, Tom Price, George Papadapolous, Omarisa Manigault, Roy Moore, Sam Nunberg and Roger Stone. Do I dare? Yes I do. I’m going to add Melania “I don’t really care do you?” Trump to the list. You want to talk about Melania and reputation? Okay, let’s do that.

I can think of only one Trump appointee who successfully avoided getting his reputation shattered – James Mattis. But since he resigned in protest, you must conclude along with Rick Wilson that #ETTD.

Furloughed workers are getting on board with Wilson’s assessment too.

I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of people are big talk until an issue affects them personally. Case in point, the 2019 GOP shutdown.

Because of this belief, I was pleased to see pictures of two hour TSA lines at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

Armchair Trump supporters can wait in line while unpaid federal workers begrudgingly scan their bags in between taking sick days.

Isn’t this shutdown great? You know what fixes it? Skin in the game.

The air traffic controllers actually have the power to end the shutdown in less than 48 hours with a strike. Can you imagine the scrambling that would exist in Washington during a complete shutdown of air traffic?

How presumptuous of the federal government to assume workers will report to work for no pay.

The CNN republican stooge strategist baton has officially been passed from Jeffrey Lord and Jason Miller to Stephen Moore and Steve Cortes. Robert Reich takes Moore to school a couple of times a week and establishment republican strategist Ana Navarro found the perfect response to Cortes by filing her nails on air.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks truth to power. She’s 28. It’s resonating with young voters. This is long overdue.

Bernie can say the same words but it doesn’t ring as true with the voters we need to turn out. Same with Elizabeth Warren. Same with Joe Biden.

This probably sounds like age discrimination and you’d be right about that. It is. There’s just no denying the fact that it’s time to pass the baton to a younger, more representative/diverse group of leaders. It’s their future. My parents’ generation had its turn which is why we need these octogenarians to fade off into the sunset.

OAC is too young to lead the party but she can be extremely effective as its messenger until perhaps one day her time comes.

My New Years resolution is to make sure the republican party dies.

I look down the list of hopefuls for 2020 and I can only envision 4 dems who would survive a brutal general election. They are Kamala Harris, Adam Schiff, Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar.

Warren is someone who I can agree on 99% policy issues but I just don’t think she’s tough enough. We need a fighter. I’ve seen Warren at the stump taking some pretty tough talk, but I think there are tougher candidates who won’t get painted with the Massachusetts liberals anchor a la Mike Dukakis. I don’t see how she shakes that label to win a general.

Harris on the other hand is a former prosecutor who, as we’ve seen during congressional hearings, doesn’t take shit off of anyone. And she’s calm, cool and collected while doing it.

Schiff would be the guy if we’re going for a super smart straight shooter.

Brown has a likability factor to him that I think would resonate.

Klobuchar is also smart and tough.

I intentionally left off Beto O’Rourke and Joe Kennedy. I just don’t think the country wants to revisit Kennedy no matter how good his ideas may be. O’Rourke is as inspirational a speaker I’ve seen… up there with Obama, but he’s still a long shot. Maybe someone will put him on the ticket as VP in an attempt to win the south.

Biden is the apparent front runner but honestly I think he and Bernie are just too old. The country is ready for a youth movement.

To that end, I like Harris/Schiff, Harris/Brown, Harris/Klobuchar or as a lonshot, Harris/O’Rourke.

And I also like Elizabeth Warren… as the senior senator from Massachusetts.

Life experience tells me that sometimes before change is possible we have to hit rock bottom. Then and only then do we have that aha moment.

This may sound un american but this is the reason I’m rooting for a recession in 2019. As a collective group of voters, democrat, republican and independent, we need to watch trickledown economics fail spectacularly so that no politician in his or her right mind will ever peddle that canard from the podium ever again.

Trumpism should have died with Charlottesville, but apparently there are more racists among us than we realized. Thankfully enough voters were turned off by the party that decided to “look the other way” at the disgraceful treatment of immigrants and people of color that democrats now control the house of representatives which in turn neuters the Trump agenda for however long he remains in office.

With Trump’s presidency literally hanging by a thread, republicans have one and only one issue they can hang their hats on at the moment and that is economic growth. We’ve seen record low unemployment which usually bodes well for the party in power. What people sometimes fail to realize is that it takes considerable time to know whether economic policies enacted by a party are working or not. I could easily argue that the first year economic results of the Trump presidency were carryover from the Obama administration. This is true for any president.

The problem for republicans now is, the trade deficit is at a 10 year high. Republicans run on a platform of deficit hawks but haven’t addressed the national debt (over 20 trillion and rising). The tax cuts that went largely to the wealthy were supposed to be revenue neutral. That turned out to be more than a slight miscalculation. It was a lie. And they knew it. Tariffs are choking the auto industry and farming. Job growth is slowing. Now the stock market is getting nervous and is below the level it held before the tax cut. To top it off, economics runs in cycles and we’re long overdue for an economic downturn.

1988 Vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentson said it best in his debate with Dan Quayle.

“If you let me write 200 Billion in hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity too.”

Take away the “yeah but look at how fabulous your 401k is growing” argument and republicans are left with nothing to stand on as accomplishments. Let me repeat that. Nothing. The scandals outnumber the accomplishments by a triple digit ratio.

George H.W. Bush, (may he rest in peace), got it right in the 1980 republican primaries when he called Reagan’s tax plan “Voodoo economics”

The next recession NEEDS to happen on the republican watch. Let’s get it over with and bury Reaganomics for good. I just hope it’s not as bad as republican strategist Rick Wilson predicted. I don’t have the exact quote but it was something to the effect of “when this is all over it’s going to feel like waking up on a park bench outside Tijuana after a 3 day tequila and stripper club bender.”

No, liberals aren’t perfect. The SNL joke on congressman Crenshaw wasn’t funny or in good taste. The difference between liberals and conservatives is the apology that followed. Conservatives, hell-bent on imitating Trump double down on the faux pas.

This is why I am not on board with trickledown economics / aka Reaganomics. Republicans point to GDP numbers but workers get squanto.