Lloyd and I meet for breakfast most Saturday mornings, and while we are eating we solve many of the world’s problems. Last Saturday, the topic was the sequester. How does the government cut a couple percent from spending without the collapse of Western Civilization? When viewed from the Pancake House in Oak Forest, IL, it should be very easy. The situation reminds me of my former employer, Amoco Oil, just after being acquired by BP. I had retired a few months earlier, and like many retired old men became an energy industry consultant. I kept in touch with the people…
Author: Jerry Levine
R. A. Dickey’s story is an inspiration that great books and movies are made of — a person from humble beginnings in the pursuit of perfection. For those living under a rock since Opening Day of the baseball season, R. A. Dickey is a 37-year-old pitcher who labored 15 years in professional baseball, mostly in the minors, with occasional brief, unsuccessful stints in the majors. He seemed out of baseball, but re-invented himself as a knuckle-ball pitcher. His performance for the New York Mets in the first half of this season has drawn comparisons to some of the most dominant…
President Obama isn’t the only one who got a numbers bump from the recent killing of Osama bin Laden. Books about Navy Seals have been flying off the shelves. One very good one is The Heart and the Fist by Eric Greitens, a Duke and Oxford educated Rhodes Scholar turned Navy Seal turned humanitarian volunteer. The Heart and the Fist is quintessentially American. Greitens combines the warrior ethos of toughness and courage with the compassion of a humanitarian. He starts with conversations with his grandfather, a decorated hero of WWII, and his reflections on the Holocaust, and the mantra of…