The No Kool-Aid Zone Blog

I don't drink the Kool-Aid. For Anyone.

All My Heroes Are Gone Now

September 5, 2025

Tomorrow morning, we head out for a few days getaway to celebrate my 65th birthday…boy, writing those words feels really, really weird. Dawned on me this week that there are likely no more senior discounts for which this guy won’t qualify. Yikes. One of the things that I try to do–and hope to do more–is…

Paths and Destinations

March 2, 2025

The past ten years or so have been a turbulent time in our nation’s politics, and have introduced divisions that few would have imagined at the outset. It would take a long time to catalog each of these; my purpose is to talk about just one of these divisions, one that touches me directly: though…

Buy a Ticket Like the Rest of Us: Why Eli Manning does NOT Belong in the Hall of Fame

January 4, 2025

Let’s get this out of the way first: as a person, I like Eli Manning. Cool guy, nice foil for Peyton, would probably be fun to hang out with. But this is getting serious: Eli Manning is a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame…and it’s an utter travesty. Utter to the uttermost. There…

I Refuse to Cast a Dishonest Vote

July 7, 2024

It’s election season and once again, we as Americans will be asked to make a choice; this time, as every four years, we will not only select all the members of our House of Representatives, and a substantial number of Senators, but we will choose our next president (not to mention an assortment of officeholders…

Clifford Pauley: A Memorial

May 27, 2024

Odin remembers. For a young airman named Clifford, this was it, the fiftieth and final run his country would ask of him, the final mission of his second 25-mission hitch. Statistically, the chances of making it through one full complement of twenty-five missions were about 25% in 1943. Three of every four airmen had their…

The “Stolen Election” Hoax, Revisited

May 6, 2024

A little over three years ago, I wrote a piece in which I made the claim that, not only DID I not believe the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, but that based on the things I had learned over the course of 60-plus years of living, as well as both the utter implausibility…