Trump Has Worst Record for Nominees in 40 Years & The Gambling Scandal Rocking the NBA
October 31, 2025
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: A zen approach to coping with change.
Trump Sets a Damning Record for Failed Nominees: He’s had more failed nominees than any president in 40 years. Definitely not the best and brightest.
Justice Department Will Monitor Elections in California and New Jersey: When the government makes a special case of monitoring elections in states controlled by the rival party, that doesn’t bode well for free elections.
Pentagon announces ‘new’ press corps filled with conservative news outlets: All the legit news platforms left rather than compromise their integrity. Not to worry. There were plenty of conservative outlets with no integrity to take their place.
Video Break: The special bond between children and their dogs.
Sports Spout-Off: ‘Nightmare for the league’: Gambling scandal roils the NBA: The NBA has been on the forefront of supporting social justice, which is why this kind of scandal is so disappointing. Gambling doth make losers of us all.
What I’m Watching: Harlan Coben’s Lazarus is a suspenseful mystery. Season 2 of Nobody Wants This is a charming rom-com. Good Fortune is an enjoyable comedy with a message that seems performative.
Magical Moments in Sports: A celebration of Larry Bird’s game-winning shots. Man, he was great!
Ray Charles Sings “Song for You”: Ray Charles gives Leon Russell’s classic song a mournful blues interpretation.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
Alan Watts (1915-1973), American and British writer who popularized Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.
Alan Watts was popular among college students when I was at UCLA, which is when I first read his book, The Way of Zen. My martial arts teacher and friend, Bruce Lee, suggested other books about Eastern philosophy that helped shape my future thinking outside the confines of Western thought that I’d been raised on. In that sense, reading his book and the ones Bruce lent me helped me to change my thinking. Helped me to embrace the dance.
Change is almost always uncomfortable and requires adjustments. Change is not always good. But change is an inevitable part of everyone’s life and if we don’t learn the difference between good change and bad change, we will be ground under its mighty and relentless wheels. When do you dance with, and when do you dance away?
As we get older, many of us fear change more and more. And with good reason. We witness the changes in our mind and body—the slow deterioration—and that makes us feel expendable, which technically we are. We hear the slow shuffling feet of death approaching and we desperately want to outrun it. To no avail.
The changes in the world around us are only stark reminders of our own insignificance. Once we accept our continuing decay and growing irrelevance, we can at least take comfort in what’s familiar around us. But when the familiar starts to become unfamiliar, we panic. When you no longer recognize the names of popular singers or writers or actors, you can feel your comfortable cocoon shredding. Your favorite shows disappear. Your favorite celebrities die. Your “facts” are proven wrong. Familiar stores and restaurants close down. Entire shopping malls disappear.
Scary stuff.
The Trump administration has tapped into our fear of change by making a comprehensive campaign of pushing nostalgia as if it were fentanyl, hooking their customers with promises of reversing time and Pied Pipering them back to the land of their youth. For Trump’s younger followers, he’s promised them wealth, privilege, and not having to make hard decisions (because he’ll make them for them). His reverse-DEI eliminates merit and gives advantages to White Christian males. What about the women? It’s all laid out in the classic ‘70s and ‘80s Irish Spring soap commercials, featuring a man loving his soap for its manly smell. Then a woman comes in and says, “Manly, yes, but I like it too!” Trump promises women will embrace the return to their joyful role of being submissive.
It is a law of the universe that all things are in a constant state of change. Our bodies. Our minds. Language. Technology. Religion. Culture. Politics. In the midst of all that change, no one wants to be left behind, to be marginalized as outdated and irrelevant. A favorite quote of mine, which I’ve mentioned before, comes from the 1970 movie Getting Straight when Elliott Gould as a grad student confronts the president of the college about the violent student demonstrations outside his door: “Stop trying to hold back the hands of the clock! It’ll tear your arms out.”
Certain values are worth fighting to preserve: compassion, integrity, democracy, etc. But even those may change for the better as we learn how to better express those values and be more inclusive in promoting them. The currents of change don’t have to drown us, they can float us gently along like a lazy river.
Join the dance.