My friend Bill Moore suggested I write a blog about Matt Kuchar winning the Players Championship. I guess he is as weary as I am of the political chatter. We say what we have to say and they say what they have to say. And neither side is listening. On and on and on…

So let’s talk golf. I have played golf pretty steadily for nearly six decades, and I still find it therapeutic. I can think of no other athletic endeavor that someone my age could participate in with any hope of enjoyment. I will be 80 in a couple of years, and – God willing – you will still see me out there on the golf course, hacking away.

Of course I don’t hit the ball as far as I did.  And I certainly don’t score nearly as well as I remember scoring back in the day. But memory can be tricky.

My brother Bill gave me a golf towel for my birthday. It is inscribed: “The older I get the better I was.”

How true.

Even with my diminished strength, I can still score an occasional birdie, and a few pars here and there.  But that’s not the point. As anyone who plays golf will tell you, it transports you to a different world, in which the anxiety and the frustrations of the workaday world simply do not exist.

I don’t know why golf is so absorbing. Perhaps it is a kind of alternate reality, a replica of life’s experiences in an environment where the stakes are not so high, where – as in a dream – however bad it gets you return to the real world eventually with no harm done.

To professionals like Matt Kuchar, though, golf is the real world.

It can be a wonderful world at times, but it can also be cold and cruel. Kuchar was a brilliant amateur who won the hearts of viewers when he smiled his way through the Masters. But even the U.S. Amateur champ is still an amateur – as Kuchar learned when he turned pro. He failed on the PGA and was demoted to the Nationwide Tour, where he faded into obscurity for a while. But he did not give up.

He went back to the drawing board and found a swing he could could win with. It’s probably not a swing that you or I could copy. Like Jim Furyk, Bubba Watson, Lee Trevino, Arnold Palmer – and so many others – Kuchar has a swing that works for him but wouldn’t necessarily work for anyone else. For some time, Kuchar has come close to winning and even won a time or two, but it wasn’t until last weekend that he claimed a really big prize.

He battled his way around that mean-spirited PGA course in Jacksonville,older and balder than in his amateur days but smiling still . And he held off the world’s greatest players in an epic display of nerve and grit to win one of golf”s greatest titles. (Photo above shows him celebrating the winning putt).

That’s what golf is all about – triumph over adversity, refusal to give up, the belief, as Lee Trevino expressed it,  that “I’ll play better tomorrow.”

Sadly, some golfers never play better tomorrow. David Duval comes to mind. Even Arnold Palmer eventually lost his magic touch.

Which brings us to Tiger Woods.

He may well have lost his magic touch. But it seems he still has a golfer’s heart.

“It’s a work in progress,” he keeps saying, as he shows an occasional spurt of brilliance only to sputter once again.

Kuchar changed his swing and gained a second spring. So did Steve Stricker. A lot of good golfers have done it. It’s possible that Tiger could do the same.

But you never know.

Golf is never predictable. And that is perhaps its greatest charm.

Maybe we’ll play better tomorrow. Maybe not.

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They who have everything are spending billions - it might even add up to trillions – to defeat President Obama. Why? What’s really at stake here? Surely it’s not just some closely held belief like the sanctity of the embryo or the infallibility of the free market? In my decades as a reporter, I found the underlying motive of political initiatives was usually money.

In the case of the infamous Koch brothers, the underlying reason for their hatred of the president is – at least in part – his commitment to green energy. The Kochs own a coal and oil empire and don’t relish the prospect of alternative energy muscling in on their market. Furthermore, they want to be free to pollute at will and ravage the landscape as they please.

They also have a pecuniary motive for trying to wipe out trade unions. Without unions there would be no one to stop them from exploiting and endangering the miners who work for them.

Sure, they a lso have a fanatical commitment to Libertarianism. But if you look closer you can see they’re driven by greed not just ideology.

It’s not so easy to discover the motives of the other billionaires and multinational corporations that have been freed by the Supreme Court to invest as much as they want in this year’s election campaigns. The court has given them a cloak of secrecy to shield them from our prying eyes.

But common sense should supply the answer.

Nobody spends that kind of money without hoping for a return on their investment. Believe me, these billionaires and corporate giants aren’t opening their treasuries because of their views on abortion, contraception or same sex marriage. That kind of posturing is just theater designed to distract and divide voters.

There’s a prize at stake here. And it has to be worth trillions to justify the kind of investment that’s being made.

I can’t say for sure what it is. It could be some kind of new world order in which the very rich would reign supreme over the rest of us.  But I have no hard evidence to support that suspicion.

All I know is that with those who have everything aligned against Obama, the president  is the only hope for those of us who have nothing.

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I realize this is a campaign year and I know most of the political posturing that’s going on has only one purpose – to win votes. And I am aware that the outrageous proposals put forward by the Republican dominated House of Representatives have no chance of being adopted in the Senate.

But, given all of that, I am aghast at the Republicans’ plan to slash programs like Meals on Wheels, food stamps and school lunches to avoid cutting the defense budget.

What are they thinking?

Do they suppose that the people who depend on those Meals on Wheels are too old to get out and vote? Do they figure that students don’t have a vote, so let them go hungry? Do they write off the poor as perennial Democratic voters, anyway?

And do they believe that the other Americans are so selfish, so heartless, so primitive that they would agree to let old people and poor kids starve as long as they’re OK?

I know the defense industry provides jobs in many Congressional districts, and I know cutting the Pentagon budget could have an economic ripple effect across the land. The sad truth is that America has become the world’s largest arms manufacturer and exporter. The American economy is increasingly based on endless war.

But it may be time to rethink the war-based economy. America spends more on arms than the rest of the world combined. It’s almost as if the United States were a bank robber, holding the rest of the world to ransom with its military might. That worked in the old days but it won’t work today.

China and Russia are flexing their muscles. And while America depends on aircraft carriers to enforce its will, China’s way is more subtle. I read recently that the Chinese have bought their first U.S. bank, for example.

These are tricky times and cave man tactics no longer work as well as they did decades ago.

It’s time for Americans to think of the defense budget in terms of national defense – instead of international intimidation. In that context, the prescribed Pentagon cuts would not be so bad.

 In any case, the idea that old people, children and the poor should be punished to keep the military-industry complex flourishing is simply unthinkable.

It’s hard to imagine that the Republicans are serious when they propose demolishing the social programs that have evolved in America over the past century. Perhaps this latest Scrooge act is just a swaggering appeal to the right-wing crazies who have taken over the party.

Or it could indeed be what the Republicans propose to do if they (God forbid!) win control of the House, the Senate and the White House in November.

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American voters must choose between two paths in November. One leads uphill through rocky ground; the other leads over a cliff. This choice was highlighted yesterday by the announcement that America’s largest bank has lost 2 billion dollars on a crap shoot. If Barack Obama is re-elected with a working majority in Congress, this could not keep happening. If Mitt Romney becomes president it will be par for the course.

President Obama has battled to place some restraint on the people who handle investors’ money. And he has faced obdurate opposition from the Republicans who argue that this kind of  regulation is a brake on economic growth. Romney has repeatedly promised to remove all checks on the finance industry if he becomes president.

It was the Republican Party that eliminated the regulations imposed on the banking industry after the Great Depression, and that reckless act did more than anything to precipitate the economic collapse of 2008.

President George W. Bush and a majority in Congress emptied the public purse to bail out the big banks that had plunged the world into economic chaos. When President Obama took office, things were in such sorry shape that he had no choice but to go along with the bailout plan. The Federal Reserve Board also felt constrained to save the banks, arguing that the alternative was too apocalyptic to contemplate. If my informarion is correct, the Fed printed something like 22 trillion dollars and handed it to the banks at zero interest.

With all that free money at their disposal, banks did not need deposits from people like us, and interest rates fell to absurd levels. You still can’t get more than a percent or two on a certificate of deposit. How’s that for a slap in the face to those thrifty Americans who put a away a few dollars in expectation of a modest return on their savings?

Furthermore, the free Fed money has not gone to business loans or mortgages = as the government had hoped – but to exotic gambling games that pose the risk of imminent disaster. This latest $2 billion loss is an example of what is likely to keep happening.

I don’t hear any talk of a government bailout this time.

The truant bank – JPMorgan/Chase – is going to have to find its own way out of this mess – or go belly up. I can’t imagine the American public tolerating another bank bailout. There are still too many unanswered questions about the last one.

If President Obama gets a second term, he is pledged to continue the banking reform that Democrats in Congress have been fighting for. It will not be easy. The RepublicanParty is the instrument of the financial industry and will battle reform at every step. Imposing the necessary financial regulations will be a rocky, uphill path, but it leads to economic stability. And with enough vvoter support in November, the presient and the Democrats can traverse it.  

The other path – Romney’s and the Republicans’ way – would remove all restraints on the rogue financial industry, and inevitably lead over an economic cliff.

We can only pray that American voters will have the good sense to avoid it.

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On Tuesday afternoon, Senate Republicans filibustered a Democratic bill that would have kept the interest on subsidized student loans at 3.4 percent for another year, instead of doubling automatically on July 1.

To hear Republican politicians tell it, Democrats want to raise taxes to make up for the revenue shortfall that would result from retaining the low interest rate. The Republicans say they would be quite willing to postpone the increase if they could make up for it by taking money from a “slush fund” in the new health care law.

As usual, that’s not quite true.

Democrats aren’t proposing a “tax increase” ; they actually propose to close a loophole that lets corporations dodge employment taxes. And the “slush fund” in the health care law is money designed to cover preventive care.

The fact is that the Republican senators are doing the bidding of their Big Business bosses (as usual).

Lobbyists for such giants as the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association pressured senators to block the Democrats’ bill. Meanwhile, the Republican controlled House of Representatives is cooking up legislation that would call for funding with money cut from the health care reform law. 

Obviously, the House Republicans know their bill won’t get approval from the Democratic majority in the Senate. So, once again, it’s gridlock in Congress.

Instead of making things worse for students, you would think a responsible government would be trying to address the debt crisis America’s college graduates already face.

The total amount of U.S. student debt has reached one trillion dollars - more than the total credit card debt in the country. And, unlike credit card debt or home mortgages, student loan debt cannot be erased by bankruptcy.

The impact on the nation’s welfare will be enormous if this crisis is allowed to worsen. With jobs hard to find and tuition costs rising, America’s young people are trapped in a wretched situation. And America’s future is inevitably compromised.

Sadly, this assault on college kids is part of the Republican agenda to defund public education and create business opportunities for loan sharks and for-profit colleges.

I find it almost beyond belief that a political party would so transparently help powerful predators to exploit the vulnerable. And it is even more incredible that so many of the victims would persist in voting to return that party to power.

Click here to read about the student loan crisis.

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Back when America was young and relatively innocent, it had a unique system of government in which elected representatives could vote their conscience regardless of their party. It was a refreshing contrast to countries like England (and Jamaica, Canada, etc.), where members of parliament must vote the party line or bring down the government.

An example of this type of politician was Senator Dick Lugar. Over his 36 years in the U.S. Senate, he worked on many bipartisan projects, especially in the fields of foreign affairs and arms control – where he was an acknowledged expert. It was this type of cooperation across party lines that enabled America to solve various national and international problems.

Lugar’s defeat in last night’s Indiana Republican primary is a dramatic illustration of the change that has occurred in American politics.

This is no longer Dick Lugar’s America. This is an irrevocably divided nation locked in an ideological struggle to the death. There is no possibility of compromise today; there is only victory or defeat.

Lugar’s loss was attributed to his willingness to work with Democrats in an effort to help his country. The man who beat him in the primary will do no such thing.  He is State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a hardline Tea Party conservative pledged to reject any and all overtures from the opposition in Congress.

Lugar stated it best. Here’s what he said about Mourdock:

 He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.

Obviously, the trimph of Tea Party candidates in 2010 and the continuing influence these radicals apparently retain in the Republican Party have made it impossible for Lugar’s approach to succeed in today’s Congress.

President Obama learned this the hard way. His persistent efforts to achieve bipartisanship and compromise have brought him nothing but betrayal and sabotage.

The Democratic Party has yet to realize that the political scene has changed. Party leaders are still fielding “moderates” who apparently believe they can find common ground with today’s Republicans.

Its dismal approval ratings show that Congress no longer has America’s trust. Voters can see that the institution is no longer a problem solving mechanism but a battlefield for conflicting special interests.

In such an environment, there is no middle ground.  And if the president and other Democratic leaders keep looking for a middle ground, they will lose the battle.

And, as the saying goes, to the victor will go the spoils.

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Poll after poll shows America evenly divided. For example, approximately half of the voters say they will give Barack Obama a second term. Approximately half say they will vote for Mitt Romney. Yes, I know, the figures go up and down from poll to poll, but basically, it’s pretty much a fifty-fifty proposition.

It seems most issues reflect the same division. There’s seldom much more than 50 percent one way or another on anything.

Even in Wisconsin, where that unspeakable governor, Scott Walker, is facing a recall, the polls show about 50 percent of the voters give him a favorable rating.

How can that be?

Who are Walker’s supporters? What do they see in him?

Walker and his aides are being investigated for various kinds of unethical behavior, and his administration has been a calamity for the state. I wouldn’t expect to find one Wisconsin voter who wants to keep him in office.

So who are the 50 percent? And what do they want?

I cannot believe they are so susceptible that the flood of Koch brothers money touting Walker on the airwaves has influenced their thinking.

I can’t imagine some campaign commercial influencing my vote, can you?

Those commercials attacking the president couldn’t possibly make me change my mind. They only make me change the channel.

The way I see it, a radical assault on the rights of Americans is underway, and the Republican Party is behind it.

How could American women vote for a party that wants to take control of their bodies and deny them basic health care?

How could American workers vote for a party that is attacking their right to join a union and promoting policies that put their jobs in jeopardy?

How could members of ethnic minorities in America vote for a party that has implemented voter suppression laws in state after state in a transparent attempt to disenfranchise them?

How could immigrant Americans – or the relatives of would-be immigrants – vote for a party that is intent on harassing immigrants and people who look like immigrants?

How could American retirees vote for a party that plans to demolish Medicare in the long term and drastically increase Medicare copayments in the short term?

How could gay, lesbian or transgendered Americans vote for a party whose leaders proclaim them an abomination to the Lord and refuse to acknowledge their civil rights?

How could people who say they are Christians vote for a party that wants to bomb Iran and build a mighty army that would intimidate the rest of the world? And pay for it by taking the food out of the mouths of hungry children?

The way I see it, the only Americans represented by the Republican Party are male, white, rich, straight, Puritanical and mean spirited.

Do you mean to tell me they make up half the population?

Or are there a lot of Americans who have been bamboozled into supporting a party that is brazenly attacking their civil rights and undermining their ability to make a living and live a normal life?

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President Obama officially begins his re-election campaign this weekend, and, if previous speeches are any indication, he will remind America that he has achieved a lot in his first term. And he will no doubt point to the terrible mess he inherited to explain why he didn’t do even more.

He is right, of course. No American president has ever been confronted with a more Herculean task. Or faced such deliberate sabotage. Recent revelations have confirmed that Republican leaders plotted from the first day of the Obama presidency to thwart him at every turn instead of joining in a sincere effort to solve the nation’s alarmingly grave problems – problems which they had caused.

But by reciting his accomplishments, the president reminds us implicitly of his mistakes. And he admits he has made some.

To me, his most damaging error was treating the Republican leaders as if they were capable of compromise even when he should have known they were committed to ideological absolutes. For example, he must have known they would not – could not – agree to tax increases on the rich, however justified and necessary the tax increases might be.

He should have realized he was mistaken when he observed in his 2004 Democratic convention speech that there is no blue America or red America, only the United States of America. These states are far from united, Mr. President, as you must have found out by now. There are without the shadow of a doubt liberal Americans and conservative Americans, and they drift farther apart by the minute.

He should have understood that the only way to save America from economic misery was to impose his will when he had the majority in Congress to do so. But he watered down his stimulus package with tax breaks and pork as a concession to Republicans and Blue Dogs, and rendered it far less effective than it would have been if he had stuck to such projects as repairing bridges and roads and building a new power grid to facilitate the use of wind and solar power.

But what’s done is done, and I would be surprised if he makes the same mistakes in his second term.

To get that second term, I think the president should resist the temptation to list his many achievements and concentrate instead on the ominous threat of a Romney presidency.

As a referendum on the Obama administration, this could be a close election. As a referencdum on the prospect of a Romney administration, it should be a landslide – in President Obama’s favor.

What American in their right mind would relish the implementation of the Republicans’ austerity budget, their jackbooted oppression of women’s rights, their privatization of Medicare and their elimination of Planned Parenthood? Republicans have made their intentions crystal clear, and included are such land mines as a $6,000-a-year increase in Medicare copayments, tax hikes on low-income wage earners and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.

I can’t think of another counry where a political party would dare to present such a platform to the electorate.

As a referendum on the president, the November election would not only stir up resentment against various aspects of his administration’s policy. It would also inflame the smoldering racism that afflicts a significant segment of American society.

But as a referendum on Romney’s platform, it might awaken Americans to the need to protect their own self-interest against a very grave threat. They might vote with their heads for a change instead of voting with their emotions and prejudices.

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You might look at the national debt, snowballing by the second as interest piles up, and wonder why any government would consider running a deficit. Surely, that’s reckless, you might think. By adding more debt you add more interest, and interest on the interest… and on and on. But you should think it through before you accept solutions like Paul Ryan’s “austerity” budget.

Austerity is not the solution. It would only make the problem worse (as Britain and Europe are finding out – see illustration above). The solution can come only from growth. And growth needs money to prime the pump.

Remember the old story about the farmer who rented space for a roadside sign to advertise his vegetables to passing motorists. He did so well that he figured he might as well put up another sign to attract motorists coming from the other direction. That proved so effective he was able to send his son to college. The kid majored in economics and came home with a prestigious degree.

The farmer’s son studied the economic climate and concluded a downturn was due, so he advised his dad to cut costs by taking down one of the signs. Sure enough, the farmer’s sales declined, and the son advised cutting costs even further by taking down the other sign. You guessed it, sales plunged even more and the farmer went out of business.

The truth is that when a country’s economy stalls, the government has to kick start it or it will get worse. You can’t depend on private investment to fuel a recovery. In this global economy, business has no obligation to any particular country. Private money goes where it can make the most profit not where it can do the most good.

If the government uses deficit budgeting wisely and succeds in reviving the economy, business will return because in a thriving economy private investment can usually make an attractive profit. This will accelerate the recovery, and eventualy the government will recover its investment - with interest – through increased tax revenue.

This process is often described as an economic theory, but it is a simple statement of fact. Money attracts money, austerity breeds more austerity. As the Bible says, to him that hath shall be given and to him that hath not even that which he hath shall be taken away.

You might not agree with the way government spends your tax money. I certainly hate to see my taxes used to produce bombs and bullets for senseless wars. But the need for government spending is indisputable.

Think about it. If the government spends money on projects that produce dividends, surely that would be a good thing? Let’s say there’s a fertile piece of land that’s across an inlet from a major city, and let’s say the government builds a bridge so farmers over there can produce crops and sell their produce to the city dwellers. Doesn’t that make sense?

By their messianic dedication to austerity, today’s Republican leaders are proposing a disastrous course for America. Instead of blindly insisting on slashing government spending, they should join their Democratic opponents in figuring out the most productive ways to spend tax dollars. Naturally, spending would have to be reined in later – after the economy is up and running on its own.

When your car is stuck in a bog, you don’t sit inside and save gas; you get out and push.

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You know as well as I do that the “authorities” keep the “masses” subdued by turning people against each other. The strategy is called “divide and rule” and it’s as old as history. One of my first memories is of my mother telling us children a fable about an old man and his bundle of sticks. As I recall, the old man showed his kids how he could break each stick by itself but could not break them if they were bundled together. Being my mother, she illustrated the story with her own little bundle of sticks.

There are are a lot of poor people and only a few rich people, so if the poor joined forces they would easily rule the world. The poor never join forces, of course; they bicker and battle, finding every possible thing to fight over. So the rich rule the world.

I wonder whether it’s just the way people are or whether the power elite is responsible. It’s probably a bit of both.

In America, the rich are represented politically by the Republican Party, and they hire the best brains they can find to help them  ”divide and rule.” It is no accident that Americans have come to hate each other because they differ on such topics as abortion, homosexuality, civil rights and gender equality.

You might think everybody would agree that people deserve equal treatment whether they happen to be black or white, gay or straight, male or female,  tall or short, left- or right-handed. But apparently a lot of Americans do not think that way. In Central Florida, where I live, the Southern Baptist church is one of the most powerful forces in society. And apparently, the church instructs women to be obedient to their husbands. The Bible says the man is the head of the household, these pastors proclaim.

Today, I read a report that the Vatican had reprimanded a group of American nuns for such “feminist” activities as challenging the church’s ban on contraception. These nuns also had the temerity to suggest that women should be admitted to the priesthood.

To you and me, this is nonsense. Why  would anyone in their right mind try to prevent other people from using a condom or taking a birth control pill? What on earth makes men better priests than women? What reasonable male would insist on being “the head of the household” in the year 2012?

But. clearly, moldy traditions die hard. Somnewhere back in history, a male proclaimed “Me Tarzan, you Jane!” And Jane has had to accept the number-two position ever since. Especially in the workplace.

Rachel Maddow trotted out a bunch of statistics last night to prove that women are being shafted in America, that they get about 25 percent less pay than men for identical work. She argued that everyone, male and female, Republican, Democrat and Independent should be trying to figure out how to right this wrong. Instead, Republicans are insisting the wage gap does not exist.

I wonder why the Republican tacticians would play such an apparently dumb card.  Surely they know they will be proved wrong? Surely they know they’re just making women – working women, anyway – more angry with them? A lot of women are already furious at Republican policies that endanger women’s health, policies hearkening back to their grandmother’s day. 

I think the Republicans are simply driving another wedge between us. They’ve turned straight people against gays, got gun owners in a panic about government interference, conjured up the Muslim faith as a dire threat to society, distributed horror films and horror stories about abortion, invented “attacks” on “stay-at-home moms,” slandered the public school system and its teachers, portrayed trade unions as gangster organizations, held up civil servants as overpaid, underworked parasites…

In effect, they are splintering society every which way they can, turning faction against faction, ethnic group against ethnic group, religion against religion…

Now, they’re trying to turn men and women against each other, and working women against housewives.  

It doesn’t matter whether their lies are refuted or their schemes exposed. What matters is that the American electorate must be divided. If the American people ever unite, the rich will lose their power. And the Republicans are not going to let that happen if they can help it.

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