The Canadiens, not overly weighed down by turkey and fruitcake, managed to beat the Panthers 5-3 at their rink in Sunrise, but with the usual home crowd of vacationing Montréal fans in attendance.
I missed puckdrop and it was already 1-0 when I turned the game on, Tomas Tatar with the early goal. Marc Denis says they started "sur les chapeaux de roue." I found a good crisp stream for this game, much better than what I've found for the World Juniors feeds so far, those are fuzzy and unreliable, sign off without warning.
I'm a pessimist, maybe a fatalist, and I assumed this season would be another one out of playoff contention, what with the giant void at #1 centre, #2 centre, and on the left side of the blue line. So I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the swoon to begin. And I'm perpetually surprised/disappointed.
Tonight, Tomas Tatar woke from his slumber. Tie Domi's foul offspring stuck to hockey. Antti Niemi didn't void his bowels. Michael McNiven, the kid who HIO crowned as ready to take over when we traded Carey Price for Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, remained safely tucked away at the end of the bench. It all added up to a win.
Jesperi Kotkaniemi is being used perfectly in my opinion. Despite his flashes of brilliance, he's still a kid with a lot of growing to do, and he makes mistakes with gusto at times. He was used as much as possible by the coaching staff, and Marc Denis explained that with a horse like Sasha Barkov to face off against, it didn't allow him many chances to shine in the offensive or defensive zone, with the Panthers having the last change. So Jeppu played 12 minutes, in the best situations the coaches could find for him, and he did well. He rang two lasers off the goal posts, came close. The kid is doing fine.
We've tried every combination and permutation of defencemen and defensive pairs, short of putting righties on the left like Team Canada does with Josh Brook, so I'm glad we've arrived at the most sensible combos, and I want to stick with this.
Victor Mete isn't perfect or even great, he's small and weak and his shot couldn't dent a sheet of tin foil, but his many strengths and few weaknesses mesh very well with Shea Weber. What Victor can't do, Shea can do in spades, and vice-versa. It's not a perfect combo, it's not Larry Robinson and Serge Savard or a young Chris Chelios, two future Hall of Famers on a same pair, it's not an overabundance of talent on one pair, but it could/should work. Victor will retrieve and carry the puck, he'll make the passes and jump in the rush. Shea will stay back and mind the store, muck in the corners and punish those in front of the net. Victor will pass the puck, Shea will shoot it.
Same with the second pair, it's not Bouwmeester-Pietrangelo, two superb athletes with size and mobility and offensive acumen while being defensively reliable, but it's also a pair that should work. Mike Reilly has decent size and excellent mobility, he loves to carry the puck and get in on the play. Paired with Jeff Petry, the two of them will make a gaffe or three per game, but will overcome those by being too much to handle, other teams won't be able to tell which one will carry the puck, which one will jump on the rush. They can gamble on offence and have the wheels to get back on defence.
The operative principle here is to stick with this. Enough with the Jordie Benn experiments, we've all seen what David Schlemko has, which is nothing, these are our best options. Leave Victor Mete and Mike Reilly in there to play big minutes, to learn, they're both without peer. Let's not pretend that Brett Kulak can turn into Mark Giordano, let's not give Karl Alzner another another another chance. Let's roll with these guys and let them hit their stride, play with confidence.
They can succeed, they can maybe not quite get there but improve their trade deadline value, they can flame out, at which point we haven't really lost anything, they were acquired at the cost of a fourth and a fifth-round pick. Let's ride those ponies and see what they got, instead of babying them and cajoling them and sticking them in the press box when they irk us. I don't care if Mike Reilly sometimes eases off and takes chances and does things he's been told by coaches not to do. The guy is 24 years old, he's who he is, let's take the bad with the good.
The third pair can be the Thunderdome where the Benns and Kulaks and Alzners sort themselves out.
Saturday 29 December 2018
Thursday 20 December 2018
Jesperi Kotkaniemi on the #1 line to replace Phillip Danault?
Some of the rumbling lately has been around Phillip Danault, and the fact that he has only two goals as the #1 centre, and that maybe it's time to give Jeppu a shot between Brendan Gallagher and Tomas Tatar. He can't do any worse, it's claimed, he'll pick up more points than Phillip, pad his totals, make his case for the Calder Trophy.
I think it's a horrible idea. I say this even though I have zero credibility on this subject, since I've argued from the start of the year that he shouldn't be playing in the NHL, that he's one hit away from a ruptured knee-vesicle or mumpified concussion. Which I still believe, although I now grudgingly admit he's not out of place, he's keeping up with the pace of the play, and seems to have the best attitude possible, "I'm just overjoyed to be here and can't believe how great everything is and will continue to work as hard as I can to contribute to the team and whatever they ask me to do is fine and I won't complain and ..."
Fans are nothing if not fickle or inconsistent though, and after a significant/strident portion of them argued for a rebuild and scorched earth and for Carey and Shea to be traded this summer, to lose on purpose this season to pick as high and as often as possible at the Draft in June, now they're dissatisfied with the dispiriting losses and the weak offensive production of Phillip and want to throw the prize pupil and Franchise Future to the wolves, to face off against other teams' #1 lines.
This is balderdash. The reason Phillip is on the #1 line isn't to tally up points, necessarily, it's to have a competent centre to match up against the Crosbys and the Giroux and the Matthewses of the league. You can put that guy out on the ice against Evgeni Malkin and he won't spontaneously combust, he'll acquit himself decently, keep it close. He's keeping the seat warm for this season and maybe the next, when we can gradually feed more minutes and harder missions to Jeppu, Ryan Poehling, maybe Nick Suzuki. He's the long-relief pitcher, the Stan Bahnsen, chewing up these innings in a lost cause, until tomorrow and Steve Rogers and the next chance at a win.
Phillip serves that major purpose, to keep things respectable and honest in the absence of a #1 centre. He serves the concomitant purpose of giving us losses, losses that we wouldn't earn if we had bled ourselves dry acquiring a Matt Duchene, precious losses that position us well for a shot at the Dylan Cozens sweepstakes this June, and Alexis Lafrenière in 2020.
Next year can be the season we ease Jeppu on the #1 line, like the Jets did with Mark Scheifele, like the Flames did with Sean Monahan. This season, keep sheltering the kid, keep giving him favourable matchups and situations, don't burn him out, don't add any friggin' pressure on his shoulders to produce and win games and jolt Tomas Tatar out of his slump. Let the kid be, he's 18, let him eat his Wheaties some more.
And at that point Phillip can assume his rightful role as a deluxe Bottom 6 centre and a major part of the Canadiens roster, one who can play up the roster if necessary, but is best deployed as a forechecking menace who'll create chances for his wingers, and as a penalty-killer and critical defensive-zone faceoff specialist.
Sunday 2 December 2018
Nikita Scherbak waived, claimed. So it goes...
(December 1, 2018)
Holy crap, the Canadiens have waived Nikita Scherbak.
Look, I'm an asset-protecting nerd, and I cut the cord way way too late on most prospects/players, but this is almost passive-aggressive no? You have Michael Chaput and Forgethisfirstname D'Agostino on your 23-player roster and Nikita Scherbak is the guy you waive?
There was a little bubble of an article/vignette earlier this year on the Canadiens' site, where he showed the New Media arm of the website cameras his modest apartment, with his girlfriend proudly standing alongside him, and I thought it was a little premature, to showcase him like that, like he was an established player. And I know for a young lady intent on growing her Instagram brand instead of, you know, studying up to be a doctor and contributing to society, dating-landing a Canadien is a good get, but I did have the thought that she'd hitched up her wagon to the wrong horse maybe.
So blah blah blah, cross your fingers hope nobody takes him skill size patience, blah blah blah, but if they do this instead of the sensible step of returning one of the AHL callups back to Laval, it speaks volume that they pretty much prefer a clean break, no? That they hope someone takes this contract and failed pick off their hands and be done with it and move on to other things?
The rumour at the 2014 Draft was that the Canadiens really wanted David Pastrnak, missing vowel and all, that he was the next guy on Trevor Timmins' list, and they were deflated when he got picked by the Bruins one selection before ours, and that Nikita was a plan B pick, the other, lesser option if you look to add a talented winger-scorer to your prospect pool. At that point, I set up a mental comparable in my mind, kind of like I did with Noah Juulsen and Jérémy Roy, where I'd evaluate Nikita's progress through the prism of the Dirty Bruins' player. It hasn't gone well so far.
(December 2, 2018)
So Nikita Scherbak is claimed by the Los Angeles Kings. The very first team in waiver-order priority snatched him up, and we'll never know how many other teams put in a claim and were ready and willing to accommodate him on their 23-player roster. Yet I was told by the Canadiens' press flacks that Marc Bergevin had been burning up the phone lines trying to trade him, with no takers. I scoff at this.
The Canadiens, with a very shallow prospect pool, and a very disappointing AHL farm team for years now, instead of hoarding somehow bleed prospects like you wouldn't believe. My offhand list of recent losses:
Mike Condon
Mark Barberio
Brandon Davidson
Jacob de la Rose
Nikita Scherbak
Please correct me and add to the list if I've forgotten anyone that was sloughed off recently.
I'll bring up the bungled cases of Sven Andrighetto and Jarred Tinordi, as waiver-wire-adjacent losses, players that got squeezed out and brought back precious little in return, but if I'm being consistent, I can't really fault the Canadiens brass for. They actually traded them for something, instead of outright losing them on waivers, as little as that something was. That's clearly what I advocate for. I just wish that the timing, the juggling had been done better, more expertly, that the trigger had been pulled at the right time.
But yeah, another former first-rounder, another prospect cremated by our organization, instead of being a Rafaël Diaz-like heap of slag transmuted into a Dale Weise. That list is much too long, in a mere three seasons.
And I'll often hear or read "Well, Mike Condon sucked, it's no big loss, we couldn't keep him and Carey Price and Charlie Lindgren...", and that's entirely missing the point. I'm not saying that Mike Condon was about to win the Vézina Trophy, just that he held some value that we didn't realize, we didn't cash in on, but the Penguins did, when they traded Mike after a mere month or so for a fifth-round pick to the Senators.
Some will shrug and say "Win some, lose some...", and point to Paul Byron as a huge win that cancels out the losses, but I'll reply to that that you don't win a Stanley Cup by staying even, by holding a .500 record. You have to pile up the wins.
Marc Bergevin, when questioned by a journo last year about Brandon Davidson, who he'd lost on waivers to Edmonton, who then in turn flipped him to the Islanders a few weeks later for a third-round pick, had dismissed this as an artifact of timing, that when he waived him there had been no demand on the trade market for his services, but later on nearer the trade deadline, with injuries piling up on various rosters, now there was. Which to me is not an explanation or excuse but rather a smoking gun, an inculpatory statement. Of course timing was a factor, and of course we should have used timing to our advantage, it's not something we should figure out in the post-mortem, in hindsight, it was plainly written in the stars at the time.
If you sell your car in the spring and now have a set of winter tires, barely used, that you don't need anymore, you don't ask around a couple times, fail to find a buyer, give up, and take them to the dump. You use time to your advantage, you adapt, you stash the tires in the garage, in your basement, in your shed, in the backyard under a tarp, anywhere really, and wait it out until September and then hit Kijiji and Craig's List and now you get $150 back for your troubles, that's working-class dirtbag 101. And that's our social status right now, we're not Nouveau Riche or aristocracy, we're on the welfare rolls, or barely off them, in terms of our talent futures. We can't turn up our nose at the cost of an ugly tarp in our backyard, not for $150. That'll buy a lot of no-name brand spaghetti.
I'll repeat that I'd understand how, if we were the Nashville Predators or the Tampa Bay Lightning, a stacked team and organization replete with prospects and young players and draft picks and an AHL team running rampant, that with the limits imposed by the salary cap and the 23-player roster and the waiver rules and the expansion draft and the 50-contract limit, that you can only juggle and contort yourself in so many ways until at some point, a Teuvo Teravainen or a Jonathan Drouin must be dumped, a Calvin Pickard and Curtis McElhinney shake loose.
We are not in that situation though. We are not a powerhouse chock-full of prospects and phenoms. We don't have a huge pile of poker chips stacked in front of us with which to wheel and deal. We should be trying to scratch and claw and amass these chips. If we drop a dollar chip off the table onto the floor, we're not in a position to let it be, we need that dollar, we bend down and pick it up. That'll be our ante in a couple of hands.
Do I think Nikita Scherbak is a world-beater who will scored hundreds of goals in the NHL? Do I disagree with the Canadiens development staff who have the vantage point to evaluate him, fault him for his lack of focus, his poor conditioning a few seasons back? Do I disagree with Claude Julien's decision-making to make him a healthy-scratch in every game so far this season? Not individually, no, but the sum total of these little decisions and evaluations add up to another squandered asset, another player we with faint hubris ended up walking away from, instead of biding our time, like Brian Burke with Tomas Kaberle, letting him dangle for seasons on end until he got the price he wanted. Like Joe Sakic with a malingering Matt Duchene. Like the previous incarnation of Marc Bergevin, taking a depreciating Sebastian Collberg and packaging him in the nick of time with a second-rounder to land a couple months' worth of Thomas Vanek and a better chance at a deep playoff run.
Because it's not like we had no other option. Again, like last season when we burnt Brandon Davidson on waivers, when Noah Juulsen and Victor Mete were available to send down to Laval for a couple weeks without need of waivers, like when Jacob de la Rose walked the plank while Tomas Plekanec was spared, we had other less costly options this time around. Michael Chaput and Kenny Agostino are on the roster, were callups from the Rocket, and would have probably sailed through waivers back to Laval. Their being claimed would have been a negligible impact, you get those guys for free every August, to pad your AHL roster.
But no,
Holy crap, the Canadiens have waived Nikita Scherbak.
Look, I'm an asset-protecting nerd, and I cut the cord way way too late on most prospects/players, but this is almost passive-aggressive no? You have Michael Chaput and Forgethisfirstname D'Agostino on your 23-player roster and Nikita Scherbak is the guy you waive?
There was a little bubble of an article/vignette earlier this year on the Canadiens' site, where he showed the New Media arm of the website cameras his modest apartment, with his girlfriend proudly standing alongside him, and I thought it was a little premature, to showcase him like that, like he was an established player. And I know for a young lady intent on growing her Instagram brand instead of, you know, studying up to be a doctor and contributing to society, dating-landing a Canadien is a good get, but I did have the thought that she'd hitched up her wagon to the wrong horse maybe.
So blah blah blah, cross your fingers hope nobody takes him skill size patience, blah blah blah, but if they do this instead of the sensible step of returning one of the AHL callups back to Laval, it speaks volume that they pretty much prefer a clean break, no? That they hope someone takes this contract and failed pick off their hands and be done with it and move on to other things?
The rumour at the 2014 Draft was that the Canadiens really wanted David Pastrnak, missing vowel and all, that he was the next guy on Trevor Timmins' list, and they were deflated when he got picked by the Bruins one selection before ours, and that Nikita was a plan B pick, the other, lesser option if you look to add a talented winger-scorer to your prospect pool. At that point, I set up a mental comparable in my mind, kind of like I did with Noah Juulsen and Jérémy Roy, where I'd evaluate Nikita's progress through the prism of the Dirty Bruins' player. It hasn't gone well so far.
So Nikita Scherbak is claimed by the Los Angeles Kings. The very first team in waiver-order priority snatched him up, and we'll never know how many other teams put in a claim and were ready and willing to accommodate him on their 23-player roster. Yet I was told by the Canadiens' press flacks that Marc Bergevin had been burning up the phone lines trying to trade him, with no takers. I scoff at this.
The Canadiens, with a very shallow prospect pool, and a very disappointing AHL farm team for years now, instead of hoarding somehow bleed prospects like you wouldn't believe. My offhand list of recent losses:
Mike Condon
Mark Barberio
Brandon Davidson
Jacob de la Rose
Nikita Scherbak
Please correct me and add to the list if I've forgotten anyone that was sloughed off recently.
I'll bring up the bungled cases of Sven Andrighetto and Jarred Tinordi, as waiver-wire-adjacent losses, players that got squeezed out and brought back precious little in return, but if I'm being consistent, I can't really fault the Canadiens brass for. They actually traded them for something, instead of outright losing them on waivers, as little as that something was. That's clearly what I advocate for. I just wish that the timing, the juggling had been done better, more expertly, that the trigger had been pulled at the right time.
But yeah, another former first-rounder, another prospect cremated by our organization, instead of being a Rafaël Diaz-like heap of slag transmuted into a Dale Weise. That list is much too long, in a mere three seasons.
And I'll often hear or read "Well, Mike Condon sucked, it's no big loss, we couldn't keep him and Carey Price and Charlie Lindgren...", and that's entirely missing the point. I'm not saying that Mike Condon was about to win the Vézina Trophy, just that he held some value that we didn't realize, we didn't cash in on, but the Penguins did, when they traded Mike after a mere month or so for a fifth-round pick to the Senators.
Some will shrug and say "Win some, lose some...", and point to Paul Byron as a huge win that cancels out the losses, but I'll reply to that that you don't win a Stanley Cup by staying even, by holding a .500 record. You have to pile up the wins.
Marc Bergevin, when questioned by a journo last year about Brandon Davidson, who he'd lost on waivers to Edmonton, who then in turn flipped him to the Islanders a few weeks later for a third-round pick, had dismissed this as an artifact of timing, that when he waived him there had been no demand on the trade market for his services, but later on nearer the trade deadline, with injuries piling up on various rosters, now there was. Which to me is not an explanation or excuse but rather a smoking gun, an inculpatory statement. Of course timing was a factor, and of course we should have used timing to our advantage, it's not something we should figure out in the post-mortem, in hindsight, it was plainly written in the stars at the time.
If you sell your car in the spring and now have a set of winter tires, barely used, that you don't need anymore, you don't ask around a couple times, fail to find a buyer, give up, and take them to the dump. You use time to your advantage, you adapt, you stash the tires in the garage, in your basement, in your shed, in the backyard under a tarp, anywhere really, and wait it out until September and then hit Kijiji and Craig's List and now you get $150 back for your troubles, that's working-class dirtbag 101. And that's our social status right now, we're not Nouveau Riche or aristocracy, we're on the welfare rolls, or barely off them, in terms of our talent futures. We can't turn up our nose at the cost of an ugly tarp in our backyard, not for $150. That'll buy a lot of no-name brand spaghetti.
I'll repeat that I'd understand how, if we were the Nashville Predators or the Tampa Bay Lightning, a stacked team and organization replete with prospects and young players and draft picks and an AHL team running rampant, that with the limits imposed by the salary cap and the 23-player roster and the waiver rules and the expansion draft and the 50-contract limit, that you can only juggle and contort yourself in so many ways until at some point, a Teuvo Teravainen or a Jonathan Drouin must be dumped, a Calvin Pickard and Curtis McElhinney shake loose.
We are not in that situation though. We are not a powerhouse chock-full of prospects and phenoms. We don't have a huge pile of poker chips stacked in front of us with which to wheel and deal. We should be trying to scratch and claw and amass these chips. If we drop a dollar chip off the table onto the floor, we're not in a position to let it be, we need that dollar, we bend down and pick it up. That'll be our ante in a couple of hands.
Do I think Nikita Scherbak is a world-beater who will scored hundreds of goals in the NHL? Do I disagree with the Canadiens development staff who have the vantage point to evaluate him, fault him for his lack of focus, his poor conditioning a few seasons back? Do I disagree with Claude Julien's decision-making to make him a healthy-scratch in every game so far this season? Not individually, no, but the sum total of these little decisions and evaluations add up to another squandered asset, another player we with faint hubris ended up walking away from, instead of biding our time, like Brian Burke with Tomas Kaberle, letting him dangle for seasons on end until he got the price he wanted. Like Joe Sakic with a malingering Matt Duchene. Like the previous incarnation of Marc Bergevin, taking a depreciating Sebastian Collberg and packaging him in the nick of time with a second-rounder to land a couple months' worth of Thomas Vanek and a better chance at a deep playoff run.
Because it's not like we had no other option. Again, like last season when we burnt Brandon Davidson on waivers, when Noah Juulsen and Victor Mete were available to send down to Laval for a couple weeks without need of waivers, like when Jacob de la Rose walked the plank while Tomas Plekanec was spared, we had other less costly options this time around. Michael Chaput and Kenny Agostino are on the roster, were callups from the Rocket, and would have probably sailed through waivers back to Laval. Their being claimed would have been a negligible impact, you get those guys for free every August, to pad your AHL roster.
But no,
George H.W. Bush, 1924-2018
I’m surprised at the sometimes vitriolic responses on social media to Mr. Bush’s passing, which is a little surprising to me. Don’t speak ill of the dead and all that, sure, civility, family, etc., but I think he and is legacy is being swept up by the polarization we’ve seen in U.S. politics over the last ten years or so.
To begin, Mr. Bush was an achiever, an accomplished man, which used to be a given when referring to U.S. Presidents, that they were the best and the brightest who could even hope to run for and win the Presidency. From there, a lot of luck and skill was needed to win the race, but anyone at the starting line needed to be a superbly qualified individual.
To me, the highlights speak volumes: Yale, Navy pilot in WWII, a succession of high-level government posts. There’s no denying the merit. It’s even more starkly defined by his idiot son’s funhouse mirror of a career. Whereas the elder was a war hero who got shot down but lived to fight and fly another day, his son was a draft-dodger whose political connections got him a cushy position in the Air National Guard, and even at that there are big questions whether he even fulfilled the requirements to avoid going to Vietnam. Whereas the elder played football and baseball at Yale, Junior was a dim-witted legacy student who was a literal cheerleader on the sidelines, watching the big boys play.
George H.W. Bush was not my cup of tea, I was frequently outraged when I read of his political decisions, but I figured that was par for the course, he was a Republican, I didn’t expect to agree with his worldview. The way the U.S. could and should project its power and interests was to him very different than it seemed to me, but what else did I think would happen with a former CIA head at the helm? I just figured he’d eventually get voted out of office and the Democrats would steer the ship back on course, no big deal.
But despite the different political tack, I never doubted Mr. Bush’s intentions or ability. His idealism might be ill-directed, but he had ideals, and the knowledge and skills to helm the ship, which was a refreshing change from the Reagan presidency. And to me, that’s the biggest reason I have some admiration for Mr. Bush, being that while I disagreed with his views, I never doubted his suitability for the job.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I didn’t fret that we had a buffoon in charge, surrounded with a coterie of hangers-on who are at least distracted by the task of making their leader function, if they weren’t actually second-rate staff or worse by dint of being on that team in the first place. I felt that the best possible decisions would be taken, within the context of a former oil man being in charge, among other factors, but still. It’s exactly the opposite of the way I felt when Ronald Reagan was blabbering, unfocused, or when September 11 occurred on Dubya’s watch, and how I feel now with Putin pushing Ukraine around and Saudis dismembering their citizens on foreign soil, with the corrupt imbecile the U.S. elected in 2016 now in charge.
So yeah, to me, Mr. Bush was the last of the ‘good’ Republicans, a budget-slashing war hawk sure, but a competent reasonable man, which does not apply to the last couple fools the party foisted onto the U.S. citizenry.
To begin, Mr. Bush was an achiever, an accomplished man, which used to be a given when referring to U.S. Presidents, that they were the best and the brightest who could even hope to run for and win the Presidency. From there, a lot of luck and skill was needed to win the race, but anyone at the starting line needed to be a superbly qualified individual.
To me, the highlights speak volumes: Yale, Navy pilot in WWII, a succession of high-level government posts. There’s no denying the merit. It’s even more starkly defined by his idiot son’s funhouse mirror of a career. Whereas the elder was a war hero who got shot down but lived to fight and fly another day, his son was a draft-dodger whose political connections got him a cushy position in the Air National Guard, and even at that there are big questions whether he even fulfilled the requirements to avoid going to Vietnam. Whereas the elder played football and baseball at Yale, Junior was a dim-witted legacy student who was a literal cheerleader on the sidelines, watching the big boys play.
George H.W. Bush was not my cup of tea, I was frequently outraged when I read of his political decisions, but I figured that was par for the course, he was a Republican, I didn’t expect to agree with his worldview. The way the U.S. could and should project its power and interests was to him very different than it seemed to me, but what else did I think would happen with a former CIA head at the helm? I just figured he’d eventually get voted out of office and the Democrats would steer the ship back on course, no big deal.
But despite the different political tack, I never doubted Mr. Bush’s intentions or ability. His idealism might be ill-directed, but he had ideals, and the knowledge and skills to helm the ship, which was a refreshing change from the Reagan presidency. And to me, that’s the biggest reason I have some admiration for Mr. Bush, being that while I disagreed with his views, I never doubted his suitability for the job.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I didn’t fret that we had a buffoon in charge, surrounded with a coterie of hangers-on who are at least distracted by the task of making their leader function, if they weren’t actually second-rate staff or worse by dint of being on that team in the first place. I felt that the best possible decisions would be taken, within the context of a former oil man being in charge, among other factors, but still. It’s exactly the opposite of the way I felt when Ronald Reagan was blabbering, unfocused, or when September 11 occurred on Dubya’s watch, and how I feel now with Putin pushing Ukraine around and Saudis dismembering their citizens on foreign soil, with the corrupt imbecile the U.S. elected in 2016 now in charge.
So yeah, to me, Mr. Bush was the last of the ‘good’ Republicans, a budget-slashing war hawk sure, but a competent reasonable man, which does not apply to the last couple fools the party foisted onto the U.S. citizenry.
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