This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This, remember, is one of five departments I run with a free hand to manage as I see fit, as would any management guru like me.

The others are the Department of Pet Peeves, the Department of Inquiring Minds Want to Know, the Department of Words Matter, and the Department of “Just Saying.”

So, here are more good quotes.

FROM WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL WRITERS:  Under this headline – “Maine Casts Its Ballot for Trump,” the writers said this:

“The Democrat secretary of state in Maine played into the former president’s hands by blocking his candidacy.

“This week’s huge in-kind contribution to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is from Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who announced Thursday that she will unilaterally delete Trump’s name from the presidential primary ballot.  Maine is now the second state, after Colorado, to declare him a January 6 insurrectionist under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  Paging the U.S. Supreme Court, alas.”

COMMENT:  It’s incredibly perverse that anything which goes against Trump becomes only another plank in his platform.  Which assumes that he has a platform other than his own, personal aggrandizement.  He doesn’t.

FROM MATTHEW HENNESEY, DEPUTY FEATURES EDITOR OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  “Unambiguously, slavery was a cause of the Civil War. It might even have been the primary cause.  But it wasn’t the only cause.

“History is complex and major events never have a single or simple explanation.  A short list of hinge points that fit the description:  The fall of Rome, the French Revolution, World War I, the Great Depression, the rise of Trump.

“The American Civil War belongs on that list.  You can obviously make a case for it, and many have done so.  But a Southern politician on the stump in New England (Nikki Haley) should know better than to try.  And if she’s going to try, she has to be sure she’s going to get it right.

“Sometimes it feels as if we’re living in a dream.  Does anyone else think it strange that, in the waning days of 2023, we’re debating the cause of the Civil War?  It seems even stranger that one candidate for the GOP nomination can casually suggest the public execution of public officials and seemingly pay no political price while another has to spend several news cycles explaining what amounts to a poor choice of words.”

COMMENT:  Haley, who must know that she “always on” as a presidential candidate, made a mistake and she is paying a price for it, no matter how hard she tries to make up for the error.

As for the public execution comment, obviously it’s Trump.  And, as usual, he pays no price for such an over-the-top, if not allegedly criminal, statement.  With the Journal editor, I say, “It seems even stranger that one candidate for the GOP nomination can casually suggest the public execution of public officials and seemingly pay no political price while another has to spend several news cycles explaining what amounts to a poor choice of words.”

MORE FROM WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL WRITERS:  “New York Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill that would have broadly banned employment non-compete agreements.  New York has a highly competitive economic climate and is home to many different industries,” she said in her veto message.  “These companies have legitimate interests that cannot be met with the legislation’s one-size-fits-all approach.

“Businesses use non-compete agreements to restrict employees from going to work for competitors for a specified period after they leave a company.  The purpose is to protect a company’s intellectual property and investment in worker development.  The agreements are most common in high-paying fields such as finance, tech, and bio-tech.”

COMMENT:  Hochul’s wise action reminded me of my involvement in non-compete issues when I was a lobbyist in Oregon.  As I represented the Oregon Association of Broadcasters, an antagonist, a former TV reporter who made it into the Oregon Legislature, proposed to ban non-competes in broadcasting.

Those clauses were used by many radio and television stations to protect their huge investments in high-profile anchor positions.  So, add the broadcast industry to the list above – finance, tech, bio-tech, and broadcast.

To the legislator involved in the issues in Oregon that I handled as a lobbyist, the truth didn’t matter.  He went to work to impose the ban and, with help from my broadcast clients, we managed to save at least part of the non-compete contract issue, so it can to be used by the industry in Oregon.