The Profligacy of a Presidential Parade

                                  "Generals"  Wastemoreland & Hershey Bar

Upon reading that '45 was seriously proposing a military parade marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to showcase our strength and as a tribute to our troops, I found imagining him attending the parade in some ridiculous military uniform.  Suddenly, I found myself awash in long-forgotten visual memories from the 1960s of General "Hershey Bar" and General "Wastemoreland," two guerrilla-theater icons of the Viet Nam-era, left-coast, anti-war movement. Wearing outrageously ornate military uniforms, Generals "Hershey Bar" (Bill Maton) and "Wastemoreland" (Thomas Michael Dunphy) were as inextricably tied to the anti-Viet Nam, anti-draft years as Country Joe and the Fish, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

The very idea that '45 should order up a military parade replete with soldiers, sailors, marines, not to mention tanks, missiles and weaponry marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in 2018  is as repugnantly ridiculous as LBJ ordering the same in 1968 -- which he did not do.  Generally speaking, military parades are held at the end of a war, when there is something to cheer about.  At those times, it's the soldiers, sailors, marines - officers and non-coms - who are at center stage - not their Commander-in-Chief.  But should '45 actually go through with his plan, it will be all about him, not the troops. In matter of fact, a large proportion of warriors will still be in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and dozens upon dozens of nations where we continue having both an overt and covert military presence.

Goodness knows there is no need for us to show the world just how much firepower we have; the United States spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined.  Most of the countries holding these sorts of parades are "wannabes" - second-tier autocracies trying to prove to the rest of the world that they should be feared . . . if not respected . . . for their military might.  Think North Korea.  When goose-stepping soldiers accompanying bombs, tanks and assorted lethal weaponry march past the reviewers' stand in Pyongyang, it is partly for the benefit of the world, but mostly for the aggrandizement of their "Outstanding Leader," Kim Jong Un. While it is not all that difficult to fathom Kim Jong Un's (and North Korea's) pathological insecurity, one would need the analytic skills of a Freud or Adler to limn '45's lethal mixture of insecurity and narcissism.

According to official White House rhetoric, the purpose of this parade is ". . . a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation."  At a recent press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters, "President Trump is incredibly supportive of America's great service members who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe." Not mentioned in the briefing were two facts: first, that the real purpose of the parade was to show the world just how powerful the U.S. is, and second, to cast anyone who objects to a military parade through the streets of Washington as unpatriotic, cynical, or both.

It is possible that the parade will never come off.  Perhaps cooler heads and steadier hands will convince '45's handlers that the "benefits" of such an event will easily be outweighed by its cost and the misuse of work hours.  Estimates for the parade are already hovering above the $20 million mark.  Considering the fact that the federal budget has recently been hit with a double deficit whammy - the tax-cut-to-end-all-tax-cuts, and the additional $300 billion "sweetener" used to keep the government up and running - the last thing we need is a $20 million+ ego massage for the POTUS. I can think of a lot of ways that $20 million can be spent . . . such as providing veterans with post-military training or assisting them with PTSD-caused opioid addiction (both of which have been radically cut). 

It wasn't all that long ago that the term "tax and spend" was used by nearly every Republican to attack and stereotype nearly every Democrat.  The GOP was the party of fiscal sanity, lower taxes and less spending.  It would now seem that this term has been erased from the Republican campaign book; from now on every use of the "tax-and-spend" epithet will be repulsed by Democrats referring to their colleagues across the aisle as the party of "axing-taxes-and-profligate spending."  Not the sort of thing any professional politician wants hanging from his/her lapel.

If '45 really, truly wants to have his parade, I will be only too happy to put him in contact with Tom Dunphy (General Wastemoreland).  Now in his late 70's the general still resides in Berkeley where he writes poetry.  I'm sure he will be happy to loan you his uniform for the parade . . .

386 days down, 1,171 days to go.

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

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Death of a Beloved Blue Blood

                                             Senator John V. Tunney (1934-2018)

Coming from the Spanish term sangre azul, "blue blood" derives from the medieval European belief that the blood of royalty and nobility was blue. In more common usage "Blue Blood" also refers to old money families that have been aristocrats for many, many generations. In America, these "blue blood" families include the Rhode Island Pells Chaffees and Whitehouses, the Cabots, Lodges and Saltonstalls  of Massachusetts, as well as the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the du Ponts and the Carnegies. 

The last of these, Andrew Carnegie was a 19th century steel baron who, upon his death in 1919, gave away an estimated $370 billion (in 2017 dollars) to charity. One of his partners, George Lauder - who was also Carnegie's cousin -  held on to his money and bequeathed it to his children. One of these children, daughter Mary Josephine "Polly" Lauder, inherited an unfathomable amount of money. She would become a doyenne of high society,  marry the World's Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Gene Tunney (the "Fighting Marine") and bear several children. One of their sons, John Varick Tunney (born in 1934), who would become both a three-term member of the House of Representatives and a one-term United States Senator from California, died a week ago at age 83. Not only was he the living, breathing definition of a  Blue Blood; he was also a progressive, an important environmentalist, and both a friend and political mentor of mine . . .

When I first met John Tunney, he had just been elected senator after having served three terms as a Representative from a California district which included Riverside and Imperial County - about as far away from Blue Blood land as one could get. John Tunney was raised on a 200-acre estate - "Star Meadow Farm" - near Stamford, Connecticut, and was the product of prep schools (New Canaan Country School and Westminster Prep), Yale, and law school at both the Hague and the University of Virginia (where his roommate was childhood friend and future Senator Edward Moore (Ted) Kennedy. Despite this highly privileged background, John would become one of the most progressive senators of his era. In his first term ( 1970-72), Senator Tunney wrote and passed an unbelievable 38 bills - next to impossible for a freshman. And these bills weren't the normal kind of 1st year bills like the naming of post offices or a private bill guaranteeing benefits for a veteran.  These were bills dealing with environmental protection (he played a pivotal role in passing the original Endangered Species Act), civil and voting rights and noise pollution. He also took a leading role in keeping the United States from becoming entrapped in the Angolan Civil War.  Because he spent so much time working on - and passing - seminal legislation, voters in California concluded that he didn't really care all that much about them; as a result, Senator Tunney was defeated for reelection in 1976 by S.I. Hayakawa, a former president of the University of San Francisco and a political novice.  (It has long been presumed that Tunney was model for the Robert Redford roll in the 1972 film The Candidate).

Saying "There is nothing sadder than a 42-year old former senator hanging around Washington," Tunney returned to California where he joined the most politically prominent law firm in the state (despite the fact that he really did not need the money) and became involved in environmental causes such as Living with Wolves, an organization dedicated to raising consciousness of the animals' importance. For many years he headed the board of the Hammer Museum at UCLA. And spent time traveling the world and living variously at homes in Brentwood (CA), Manhattan and Sun Valley, Idaho.

At the time I first met John Tunney and his family (including his son Edward Marion "Teddy" Tunney, named after Senator Kennedy), I was helping a group of anti-war members of Congress prepare for the upcoming "March on Washington." A mutual acquaintance got me lodging at the senator's home on Tracy Place in Georgetown.  During my time with him, we spoke quite a bit about war and peace, books (his father the fighter was notorious for reciting Shakespeare in between sparring rounds) the nature of politics and the importance of forging alliances with "the people on the other side of the aisle."  He also strongly urged that if I eventually decided to make a career in politics, it would be best to remain "in the shadows" rather than run for office.  "In that way," he told me more than once, "you can at least go home at night, get more things done, and step into a restaurant without being besieged."  Of the many political folks I've  had the fortune to be associated with over the past 5 decades, Senator Tunney - despite his background - was one of the most down-to-earth. There was scarcely a hand-breadth between his public and his private personae. 

Despite being a political powerhouse, John Varick Tunney was truly humble.  He had it all . . .and gave the world his all.

Rest in peace Senator.

373 days down, 1,184 days to go.

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

Government Shutdowns Can Be Fatal

            Friedrich Trump (1869-1918

Note: I started researching and writing this essay late last week in anticipation of a government shutdown.  Well, as we all know, the government did shut down - for less than 3 days - which in a way, makes this piece a bit outdated . . . at least for the moment.  However, I  have decided to continue writing it and for two reasons: first, there is a good possibility that the government will shut down again after this coming February 8, and second, that the systemic political weaknesses and lack of what we might call civic maturity which led to the original shutdown, are still as firmly in place as ever . . .

 Precisely one hundred years ago (1918) more than a half billion people one-third of the people on earth) were infected with the "Spanish Flu." It is estimated that anywhere between 20 and 50 million people perished. This horrifying pandemic was no respecter of fame or fortune for among those who perished were:

• Harold Lockwood, one of the most popular and beloved movie stars of the late teens;
• The Dodge brothers, Horace Elgin and John Frances, who together founded their eponymous car company;
• Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the mother of William Randolph Hearst;
• Max Weber (pronounced "Vayber"), the preeminent German philosopher and sociologist, and
• Friedrich Trump, '45's grandfather.

Of a certainty, medical science, including the fields of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases, has made incredible progress over the past century. And of course, in 1918, there was neither the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the Communicable Disease Center; both would be founded in 1946.  And although what we now call the National Institutes of Health has a history which goes back to 1887, it was poorly funded and incapable of providing little beyond palliative care during the 1918 pandemic.

Ironically - and tragically, we are today - one hundred years later - in the midst of one the worst flu seasons in at least the past half-century.  And to make matters even worse, this year's flu vaccine, which is supposed to protect subjects from the H3N2 strain, isn't working all that well.  And so, both the CDC and NIH (not to mention the FDA) are working around the clock to come up with a better, more efficacious vaccine.  That is, so long as the scientists, physicians and lab geeks are permitted to work. But alas, government shutdowns lead to federal workers being furloughed; they are not permitted access to their laboratories, may not use their government-issued computers - they cannot even volunteer to come in and work for no pay. 

During the last government shutdown (2013), the CDC shuttered most of its annual seasonal influenza program. It largely stopped tracking disease outbreaks across the country.  According to then-CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden, the 2013 shutdown “. . . was this time in which that I felt I really couldn’t do my job, as CDC director, of keeping Americans safe, because more than 8,500 of my staffers had been told to go home, and they do important things that protect Americans . . . . It’s unsafe, it’s terrible for government, it endangers Americans, and it doesn’t save any money. So it’s a really bad thing to have happen.”

Without question, a government shutdown adversely effects hundreds of thousands of federal workers.  It also inconveniences millions of American and can - as in the case of  the current flu epidemic, endanger millions of lives. 

Truth to tell, it shouldn't have been that difficult to keep the government up and running; after all, our elected representatives are supposed to be our employees; we employ them to cobble together policies and programs which tend to benefit the greatest number of people. Most regrettably though, this ideal has become about as saccharine and unreal as Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  For generations, political leadership consisted of equal measures of skill, determination and the ability to compromise. But this is no longer the case.  We've gone from Emerson's dictum that "There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets the credit" to its modern incarnation which was first uttered by Sam Spade in Hammett's The Maltese Falcon: "We've got to have a fall-guy . . . a fall-guy is part of the price I'm asking . . . "

The politics behind the shutdown begin with assessing blame and end with trying to determine what capital can be made by either side.  Both Democrats and Republicans believe they can score big with the public in the 2018 midterm elections by pointing a finger - backed by memorable slur at - at the other side:

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: "If, God forbid, there's a shutdown, it will fall on the majority leader's shoulders and the president's shoulders.
• House Speaker Paul Ryan: “I ask the American people to understand this: The only people in the way of keeping the government open are Senate Democrats.”
• The President: “The Democrats want to shut down the Government over Amnesty for all.”
• Jesse Ferguson, former Clinton campaign strategist: "Everyone knows this crisis could be averted if Republicans would pass a budget that didn't give them power to eventually deport dreamers, but they refuse to give that up. Donald Trump is like the arsonist who hopes you come home and blame the neighbors for the blaze."

Strategically, the Democrats feel (felt) themselves to be in the driver's seat.  If a continuing resolution stands a snowball's chance in Hades of being passed, it will take quite a few Democratic votes; the House of Lincoln is in such radical disarray that despite owning the House, Senate and White House, they cannot get anything done without their "good friends" on the other side of the aisle. Both sides are banking on the short-term memory loss which plagues the American voting public.  All the talk about Michael Wollf's book took a back seat to '45's potty-mouthed rampage, which in turn has taken a back seat to the government shutdown. There will no doubt be at minimum another 150 issues and idiocies between now and the November elections, by which the strategy of finger pointing over the government shutdown will likely be minimized to the point of invisibility.

It is pretty damned sophomoric to say either "Well, the Republicans simply cruel, heartless and don't give a fig about anything which might upset their conservative base," or, "the Democrats care far more about illegal immigrants than they do about the security of America."  This is not a game of "go fish." Major league politics is far more akin to Chess . . . a devastatingly difficult challenge which is far, far more than a game. 

So why not just do the right thing?  For only are our "leaders" using this latest crisis for their own political benefit, they are putting lives in jeopardy . . .  due to deportation, an even more disgruntled federal workforce and, as a century ago, a potential pandemic. 

Mr. President ask yourself: what would grandpa Opa Friedrich have you do?   

367 days down, 1,190 days to go.

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

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Will He Or Won't He?

     Donald Trump and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller III

By now, it is well understood by most that truth is to '45 as lox and bagels are to peanut butter and Jalapeño peppers.  In other words, they are both strangers and bipolar opposites.   Indeed, the past few years have seen the emergence of a cottage industry which keeps track of every one of '45's exaggerations, mistruths, and outright lies. In comparison to his immediate predecessors - Obama, Bush and Clinton - '45 is in a class by himself.  However, in the same breath, it must be admitted that even before his election, the future POTUS told two major, major truths which we, the American public - ignore at our own peril:

• First, on January 23, 2016, nearly a year before his eventual inauguration, then-candidate Trump proudly Tweeted that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and not "lose any voters."  In a grotesque, off-the-wall way, this has turned out to be true; for regardless of whatever outrageous, puerile, mind-numbing things '45 has done, said or Tweeted over the past year or more, his most ardent supporters (his "base") have remained steadfast. In the main, they are as deaf, dumb and blind as Dr. Pangloss' most ardent disciples who believe - despite everything they've seen, heard or experienced - that this is indeed, "the best of all possible worlds."
• And second, as early as 2015, when pressed as to how we could expect him to deal any of the nation's most difficult problems - rising healthcare costs, climate change, the gross disparity of wealth and the Middle East to name but a few - Trump told Fox News that he wished to be "unpredictable."  The Latin response to this statement would be rem acu testigisti - namely, he "hit the nail on the head."  For in going over '45's actions, statements and Tweets during his first year in office he has been - as per his 2015 promise - completely unpredictable.  Regrettably, as we've learned, his unpredictability is more often related to his last source of information - generally Sean Hannity, the sage of  St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary high school, than to his Chief of Staff, members of his Cabinet or even his own family.

These two truths lead inevitably - and lamentably -  to a question which has, over the past several weeks been uppermost in the minds of many: will the POTUS fire special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III because his investigation is giving him both shpilkis and heartburn?  Although on this, the day before Christmas 2017, no one - including '45 himself - knows if the man insiders call "Bobby Triple Sticks"  (that's after the 'III' which appends his name) will be sacked . . . that's anyone's guess, it could very well happen. But then again, it might not. That's where '45's obsessive unpredictability comes into play. Of course, in order to get to the point where Mueller is actually canned, the president would likely have to first terminate Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein, appoint and anoint a replacement who would then act as lord high executioner . . . . unless he fools everyone and refuses to do the dirty deed. Virginia Senator Mark Warner has already warned '45 that "Any attempt by this President to remove special counsel Mueller from his position or to pardon key witnesses in any effort to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of executive branch responsibilities and authorities . . . . These truly are red lines and [we] simply cannot allow them to be crossed."

Would this potential "Saturday Night Massacre Redux" cause even a tiny tremor of rejection - let alone revulsion - amongst '45's most ardent fans?  Probably not. Remember, these are the very folks that '45 predicted wouldn't lose faith even if he "stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot somebody." And while reasonable, rational people can take comfort in the knowledge that the blindly "epoxied faithful" represent, at best, a third of the American public, this is still a large enough number to put a systemic roadblock in the path of public unity.  Do remember, that interwoven throughout this third are racists, anti-Semites, homophobes, highly-armed 2nd Amendment gun nuts, supporters of authoritarianism, Randroidian Objectivists (many of whom sit in '45's Cabinet) and people who want to secede from the Union. 

Another "Will he, won't he?" deals with '45's love of misdirection; of turning public attention - if only for a day or a week - away from the house of cards that is about to collapse all around him, his family and his presidency.  Remember such acts of temporary misdirection as Obama's having wiretapped Trump Tower? Or how about the canard concerning the Clintons, Russia and Uranium?  Or barring transgenders from serving in the military?  Or first declaring that shortly, America would be relocating its embassy to Jerusalem, and then threatening to take retaliatory action against any and every country that voted against us at the United Nations?  Then there's the issue of how reliable and amateurish the FBI has become. Is it possible that if things get so incredibly fraught and legally untenable that '45 will initiate some large-scale military action against North Korea? Unlike the other acts of misdirection, which have been largely buoyed by rhetoric and hot air, this one would be backed up with the largest, most lethal nuclear arsenal on the planet.  And what if, for the sake of supposing, the Joint Chiefs of Staff simply said "NO!  WE WON'T DO IT!"  What then?  A mass incarceration of admirals and generals?  Instituting martial law from Caribou to Carson City?  The mind simply boggles.

There is one "Will he, won't he?" that I can highly recommend to our Commander in Chief: that he, or Mrs. Huckabee Sanders, or his private physician, announce that most regrettably, as a result of an aggressive something or other, he must resign his office, give the keys to Vice President Pence (who could very well be in legal jeopardy himself) and return to Trump Towers where he will live out his remaining days in therapeutic splendor.

Sound impossible?  Perhaps . . . but then again, this is the season for giving gifts . . .

337 days down, 1,121 days to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

Cleaning Up What the Elephants Leave Behind

Having grown up in and around the movie industry, we got to know quite a number of actors, directors, choreographers . . . even a thespic animal or two.  One of my favorites was a broken-back horse named "Mickey," who appeared in a couple of dozen Mack Sennett flicks.  Being a devotee of "Roy Rogers," and "The Lone Ranger," not to mention that we,  as a family were friends of Bill Williams (née Hermann Katt, the star of "The Adventures of Kit Carson") and his wife Barbara Hale (Della Street on "Perry Mason") plus getting to spend an inordinate amount of time at Corriganville, (the Western movie set out in Simi Valley), I often found myself wondering whose job it was to rid the streets of all the horse manure.  Think about it: did you ever once see a speck of horse plop on the streets of Matt Dillon's Dodge or Roy Rogers' Mineral City?"  Obviously, there were people in Hollywood who made their livings shoveling tons of equine drek between takes. About the only Western star whose penchant for stark realism demanded horse droppings on his befouled sets was the greatest of them all, William S. Hart.

So what in the world do horse plop and classic Western movies have to do with this week's topic?  Actually quite a bit.  Just as as it required a team of devoted sweepers to sanitize the streets of Dodge (or Mineral or Virginia City) from the loads of crap left by all the horses, so too does it take a cadre of devoted  Donkeys (Democrats) to clean up all the dangerous droppings left behind by the Elephants (Republicans).  Take the Republicans' recently reconciled Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which few members of Congress have read and even fewer understand. This bill includes something for everyone to hate - unless you are incredibly rich or incredibly stupid. For besides drastically reducing the nation's corporate tax rate from 35% (which few currently pay) down to 21% and being a boon to the super wealthy, their bill would:

• Put a lethal stake into the very heart of Obamacare, taking health insurance away from 34 Million Americans who will go back to using the ER as their primary care physician;
• Repeal the Alternate Minimum Tax for corporations while letting it remain for individuals and couples;
• Repeal  the deductibility of home equity loans;
•  Nearly double the amount of inherited wealth exempt from tax to about $10 million from a current $5.6 million;
• Repeal the deductability of alimony payments, which will wreak havoc with low- and middle-income folks seeking a divorce while further lining the pockets or their attornies;
• Repeal the Johnson Amendment — a 1954 measure which prohibits houses of worship and other tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates;
• Eliminate the state and local tax deduction, which is taken by many people in high-tax (read "blue"), populous states to avoid double taxation. These states include New York, California, New Jersey and Massachusetts; 
• Eliminate employer-provided educational assistance, the student loan interest deduction, and other critical higher education tax provisions;
• Add between $1 and $1.5 trillion to the federal budget deficit over the next decade, which will necessitate deep cuts in such social programs as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to pay for it as well as drastically slashing the budgets of most every federal department and agency with the possible exception of the Department of Defense.

This then s the long-promised "major, major tax overhaul" which would

• Drastically cut corporate taxes;
• Lop thousands upon thousands of pages from the IRS regs;
• Simplify  tax filing to the point where one could submit their taxes on a single postcard;
• Put lots of money into the pockets of middle-class taxpayers,
• Be absolutely "revenue neutral," and
• Make America fiscally great again.

Never mind that at most, the Republican plan will put $20.00 a week back into the pockets of middle-class wage earners (at least for the first couple of years), take away any number of basic deductions for those earning less than $75,000 a year, and create new ways in which so-called "Pass-Through businesses," millionaires, multi-millionaires and billionaires can vastly increase their wealth.  And all this Congress has managed to shape, create, tweak and likely pass behind closed doors.  At 500-odd pages, it is by no means the longest piece of legislation in the history of the Republic; just the worst conceived cut-and-paste mean-spirited giveaway of all time.  For months, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin had been talking about  the painstaking analysis that hundreds of his employees were engaged in preparing twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.  Well, that analysis finally was released this past Monday.  It could easily have been contained on a single postcard.  Come to think of it, a single page or postcard is most fitting for this travesty, considering that the economic theory which underpins it all ("Trickle-Down," which was based on the so-called "Laffer Curve") was originally written on a single cocktail napkin.

One of the most devilishly clever aspects of this lobbyist-written plan is that all the changes affecting corporations and the hyper-wealthy are legislatively in perpetuity, while those which, at first blush may be helpful for the non-wealthy, have a life-span of only a few years.  That is when the draconian cuts begin - those additional revenues and fiscal savings required to make sure the tax code continues enriching the already rich.  For devotees of trickle-down this makes sense: once the rich get even richer, they will spend their newfound pelf on creating jobs here at home, thus putting more dollars into the pockets of American consumers.

Right . . . and there was never any horse crap on the ground at the OK Corral. Just ask Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, or Hank Fonda and Randolph Scott. 

It is left to the Democrats to pick up the brooms and shovels and clean up this Elephant-made mess.  But it will not be enough to merely explain and endlessly repeat what the pachyderms hath wrought. The Republican base - most of whom will suffer along with the rest of us - could care less; their leaders have told them it's a real mitzvah to help the rich get even richer. Those who know or even sense that the Republicans have legalized a ginormous game of Three Card Monty don't want to hear about it; they want to know what the Democrats are planning to do about it.  And not just some Huey Long "Soak the Rich!" cure-all.  No, in order to be successful in 2018, 2020 and beyond, Democrats are going to have to do a lot of soul searching, deep creative thinking and come up with specific proposals for how we're going to retake the future on behalf of America's working- and middle-class people.  We're going to have to talk about:

• Making major investments in education that will place far, far more emphasis on putting future skills into the hands of students than siphoning off dollars to put into the pockets of charter school pirates. 
• Committing ourselves as a nation to rebuilding our infrastructure and retrofitting our power grids: roads, national highways, bridges, dams, levees.  And not just for the sake of creating millions of jobs; infrastructure is as much a part of national defense as are bombs, bullets and counterintelligence. 
• Addressing and acting upon those things which truly matter to the American public, such as healthcare, retirement and gun safety rather than divisive, diverting dog-whistle issues like "religious freedom for White Christians";  putting more and more guns into the hands of already well-armed people; deporting millions upon millions of undocumented human beings and constructing an American "Maginot Line" specifically designed to keep them out; making sure that evolution and climate change aren't "rammed down the throats of our children."

It's a tall, messy, malodorous order; this cleaning up of what the elephants leave behind, but someone's got to do it for the sake of America and the future of the planet.

331 days down, 1,127 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

The Ever-Contracting Universe of D.J.T.

                  Pearl Buck, JFK, Robert Frost, Mrs.Kennedy

On April 29, 1962, President John F. Kennedy (who, as of this past Wednesday has - unbelievably - been gone for 54 years) hosted a lavish black-tie White House banquet honoring 49 Nobel Laureates from the Western Hemisphere. Prominent attendees included then-Canadian Liberal Party leader Lester Pearson, writer (and Nobel Laureate) Ernest Hemingway's widow Mary Welsh Hemingway, Poet Robert Frost, novelist John Dos Passos, literary critics Lionel and Diana Trilling, and two-time Academy Award winner Frederic March, who read excerpts from the works of Nobel Prize winners Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Pearl S. Buck and George C. Marshall. 

In his welcoming remarks to his august guests, President Kennedy (a month shy of his 45th birthday and himself a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer)  keenly observed  “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”  Although these words (likely written by Kennedy's Ted Sorensen) are generally well-remembered, what followed is not: “I think the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of peace, are very basic drives and pressures in this life of ours--and this dinner is an attempt, in a sense, to recognize those great efforts, to encourage young Americans and young people in this hemisphere to develop the same drive and deep desire for knowledge and peace."

Talk about a class act.  The Kennedy years - that brief interregnum between Eisenhower and Johnson - were frequently called "Camelot," a glittering kingdom where, in the words of C'est Moi:

 A knight of the Table Round should be invincible,
 Succeed where a less fantasticbman would fail /Climb a wall no one else can climb,
 Cleave a dragon in record time,
 Swim a moat in a coat of heavy iron mail.
 No matter the pain, he ought to be unwinceable,
 Impossible deeds should be his daily fare.

Turn the page, advance 54 years, and we now find ourselves in the midst of Camelot's dark and ugly underbelly, as in the words of Seven Deadly Virtues:

The seven deadly virtues, those ghastly little traps
Oh no, my liege, they were not meant for me
Those seven deadly virtues were made for other chaps
Who love a life of failure and ennui . . .
 I find humility means to be hurt
 It's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt
 Honesty is fatal, it should be taboo
 Diligence-a fate I would hate . . .

Nowhere does the difference between the Kennedy years and today reveal itself more starkly than in the matter of Nobel Laureates.  Where Kennedy delighted in dining with and basking in the aura of the crème-de-la-crème of brilliance and scholarly accomplishment, '45 has turned both a blind eye and a deaf ear to all of them. Simply stated, in 2017, there is no place at  today's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the best and brightest in the scholarly empyrean.  Why? Perhaps '45, who has on any number of occasions reminded his cadre of followers that he is "a very intelligent person" is simply cowed by their brilliance and fears that they would easily show him up for the brainless blowhard he is. (Actually, they probably would not; they are far too classy a bunch for such bad manners.) Not that such an unmasking would deter his ardent base from believing he is the Great Oz. Perhaps he is playing up to the solid, stolid anti-intellectualism of his political universe, which is largely made up of those for whom climate change is nothing more than a deceitful conspiracy, and the  only "Big Bang Theory" they've ever heard of is that which attaches to Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper, rather than Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble.  Then too, perhaps he simply does not want to suffer the unprecedented embarrassment of having his invitations turned down.  For truth to tell, more than one of the Nobel Laureates was relieved by '45's decision to not have a gala in their honor.  

Make no mistake about it: '45's universe, unlike that of Einstein and Hubble is constantly contracting: intellectually, morally and politically. America - indeed, the world - seems to be populated by an ever decreasing number of people and nations who have one thing in common: a need, desire and ability to idolize him no matter what he does or says;  no matter whether he is as inconsistent as a major league strike zone or as intellectually vapid are a flat-earther. During the past year or more, a lot of people have come to understand that '45's universe contracts every time an individual, group or cause changes its mind about him.  He possesses total recall when it comes to slights, challenges or personal affronts, and clinical amnesia when it comes to any - if not all - his yesterdays.  For so many, the only thing one must know about him is that he is rich . . . really, really rich (or so he says).

When I attended university nearly a half-century ago, I took just enough "Physics for Philosophy Students" courses to figure out how much I did not know about physics. I do recall learning something about Edwin Hubble's discovery (theory?) that the universe was not static . . . that it was constantly expanding. This was the find which revealed that the universe was apparently born in a "Big Bang." That when the universe was just ten-to-the-minus-thirty-fourth of a second or so old — that is, a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second in age — it experienced an incredible burst of expansion known as inflation, in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. During this period, the universe doubled in size at least 90 times, going from subatomic-sized to golf-ball-sized almost instantaneously.  As a student of philosophy, history and political science, I found this terribly difficult to grok.  And so, I found myself asking the professor, "If the entire physical universe was the size of a golf ball, what reality existed outside that golf ball sized orb?"  When he told me "nothing whatsoever," I tried to . . . as the modern expression goes . . . "wrap my brain around that one." After a sleepless night or two, I decided that there were simply some things better left to the astrophysicists, G-d bless them all. I was better off studying Hume than Hawking.

To the best of my knowledge (which is woefully slight), the question remains: "What reality exists outside a constantly expanding physical universe?"  With regards to this week's topic, it is far, far easier to answer the question "What reality exists outside a constantly contracting political universe?"  To be certain, the discards include ideals, programs, equality, humanity and long-term vision.  And if something is not done over the next several years, '45's "real America" - i.e. his universe - will consist of only those who are mostly white, Christian, highly conservative, terribly rich and highly autocratic.  And while I know that JFK was far from a saint (extra-marital affairs, an addiction to painkillers and being the son of a father who was a fascist and likely anti-Semite), at least he did his best to expand the universe in which he lived. And he made us proud to be Americans . . .

297 days down, 1,049 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone     

People Who Live In Glass Houses . . .

                                       Judge Roy Moore and '45

Don't know if former Judge - and current U.S. Senate candidate - Roy Moore and his supporters are fans of the great Irish wit Oscar Wilde.  I kind of doubt it; after all, Wilde was both flamboyant and gay . . . not to mention highly literate. (Sorry for being so snarky, but that's just the way I'm feeling.) Nonetheless, if any of them had indulged in his more quotable quotes, they would likely have come across this gem: "Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." Then too, they might have come in contact with an even better chestnut which says so much about the political reality we currently face: "Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike."

For examples that bear out the truth of Wilde's second bit of wisdom, one need only listen to (ugh!) right-wing talk radio or watch either Fox or One America News Network (OAN), both of which specialize in pro-Trump stories, anti-Clinton, anti-Obama chit-chat and anti-abortion reports, while steadfastly ignoring stories about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election or just about any and every outrageous thing the POTUS has done, said or tweeted.  In listening to a sampling of right-wing talk show hosts (Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, Savage and Pags to name but a few) I'm continually hearing that the entire Roy Moore episode is "Fake News," that in the United States one is "innocent until found guilty," and that the Bible-thumping, twice-removed Alabama Chief Justice is being railroaded by a bunch of disgusting pro-gay, anti-Christian liberals who make up the world of Fake News".  They've even gone so far as to cite Biblical precedent for what Moore is (falsely) accused of.  And yet, in the same breath, the so-called "true believers" have no problem proclaiming that Weinstein, Spacey, Halperin, Ratner, Kresiberg et al and others accused of taking sexual improprieties are guilty of both immorality and committing despicable acts (which they very well may be) . . . along with President Clinton and the late Senator Ted Kennedy.  

Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?"   How can so many on the right demand fairness for Roy Moore - despite five women coming forward to essentially tell the same story - and then convict any Democrat, show business liberal or non Bible banger  in the court of public opinion?  What Judge Moore and many - though certainly not all - of the Hollywood crowd have in common is that they have vehemently denied all charges.  What they don't have in common is that Roy Moore, who throughout his more than 40 years in the public eye, has proclaimed himself to be as moral as Jesus; as upright as Ward Cleaver, is running for the United States Senate; the rest of the bunch is not. In seeking the genesis of this incongruity, we return to the words of Oscar Wilde: "Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike."

Among Capitol Hill Republicans the first party-line went something like: "If these charges are true, then Roy Moore should drop out of the race.  But not until there's been a full investigation." This approach was and - for some still is - a case of straddling a partisan political abyss.  Anyone with even a dollop of real-world experience knows that any such "investigation" could likely take months if not years to conclude.  And by then, Senator Moore would be knee deep into his six-year term . . . continuing his decades-long assault on the forces of modernity and immorality.  (n.b. In the world of abnormal psychology, Moore, his Alabama acolytes and a hefty percentage of pro-Trump Republicans suffer from what is called "Metathesiophobia," namely, a morbid, ofttimes paralyzing fear of change.)   

Yesterday, out of the woodwork, a fifth woman came forward to accuse Roy Moore of molesting her when she was all of 16, and worked as a waitress at a restaurant or diner which the then 30-year old District Attorney used to frequent.  The Senate candidate once again denied all charges, said he had never met the women, had never been to the dining establishment where she worked, and once again proclaimed that all these women making charges against him were part of a liberal, 'Fake News' witch hunt meant to damage his candidacy in favor of the "radical, pro-abortion Democrat" Doug Jones.  At a press conference held later in the day, the now 56-year old woman, Beverly Young Nelson, not only told her story in minute teary detail, but produced her high school yearbook in which then-D.A. Moore wrote: "To a sweeter more beautiful girl I could not say Merry Christmas." He signed it "Love, Roy Moore, DA."  Then the New York Daily News and a slew of other media outlets reported that Moore was allegedly barred from the Gadsden (Alabama) Mall for "hanging around the mall and flirting with young girls . . ."  And yet, despite all this, an awful lot of Alabama Republicans are even more firmly behind Roy Moore and will vote for him in the December 12 special election.  Better an alleged child molester than any Democrat . . . 

These latest charges and revelations caused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and nearly a dozen of his Republican colleagues to urge Moore to drop out of the race.  This group included National Republican Senatorial Campaign Chair Cory Gardner (R-CO) to take things even a step further: "“If he refuses to withdraw and wins, the Senate should vote to expel him . . . he doesn't belong in the United States Senate."  The way things develop and progress these days, Moore could have dropped out of the race by the time you read this essay . . .

The one person who has yet weighed in on all this, not surprisingly, is the POTUS.  He isn't about to do or say anything that could revive stories about his sexual history.  After all, this is the man who bragged on tape about his sexual conquests, using gutter language to describe various parts of the female anatomy.  He is smart enough not to do or say anything which could put his throne in danger.  Then too, by not chiming in, he is likely bolstering the future throne of Roy Moore, who would be a solid vote and/or voice of support for anything '45 dreams up.  Remember, '45 originally supported Moore's opponent - Senator Luther Strange - in the recent Republican primary (he even campaigned for him) and then announced, even before the votes were tallied, that if Strange lost, he would gladly and enthusiastically support Roy Moore.  

Will Roy Moore drop out of the race?  Will Attorney General Jeff Sessions resign his post in order to become a write-in candidate on December 12?  Will enough Republican voters hold their noses and vote for Democrat Jones?  Only time will tell.  But one thing is certain: no matter who wins December 12, there are going to be at least two losers: Roy Moore and the POTUS.

If Oscar Wilde were still among the living, he might write something like "People who live in glass houses shouldn't store thrones . . ."

285 days down, 1061 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

Are We Really That Gullible?

                   Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke

Without question, there is a universe of difference between that which is coincidental and that which strains credulity to the breaking point.  Coincidence?  That's Thomas Jefferson and John Adams - the friendliest of enemies - dying within hours of one another on July 4, 1826 . . . the "Golden Anniversary" of American independence.  Coincidence?  That's Mark Twain being born on November 30, 1835 - the day Haley's Comet made its once-in-75-years appearance in the earthly skies - and then dying (as he predicted) upon its next appearance, April 21, 1910.  Coincidence? The first worker to die during the construction of Hoover Dam was J.G. Tierny on December 20, 1922. The last person to die during its construction was J.G. Tierny's son, who died on December 20, 1935 . . . thirteen years to the day.

Unlike coincidence, those things which strain credulity to the breaking point essentially test not only intelligence, but gullibility - which we shall define as "a failure of social intelligence in which people are easily tricked or manipulated."  Case in point: supply-side economics, which holds - against all proof or reason - that severely cutting taxes on corporations and the truly wealthy will foster far greater economic growth than anything ever dreamed of by Keynes, FDR or any Democrat who ever lived. This is, in essence, the philosophical foundation of the Reagan, G.W. Bush, and Paul Ryan economic strategies.  (It should be noted that the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s were so disastrous that he was forced to support what was at the time, the largest tax increase in American history.  Few remember that fact.) But despite the counter-intuitive nature of supply-side economics, it still has many, many adherents . . . especially among those it hurts most and helps the least.  Talk about straining credibility.  Just how gullible are we?

A second example of pushing gullibility to the very edge of reason is the current imbroglio over over the awarding of a $300 million contract to rebuild Puerto Rico's hurricane-ravaged electrical grid to Whitefish Energy Holdings, LLC, a tiny, two-year old, two-employee company based in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown. Whitefish, Montana (population c. 7,300), a resort town in the Rocky Mountains of northwest Montana, is a place, like the mythical bar "Cheers," where "everybody knows your name." The company's founder is one Andy Techmanski, described on the company's website as ". . . a trained journeyman lineman with over 22 years of experience completing critical utility infrastructure projects worldwide."  Not only does Zinke know Techmanski; the secretary's son worked a summer job at one of Techmanski's construction sites. That  both Secretary Zinke and Techmanski) deny anything fraudulent or collusive in the $300 million deal is, to put it mildly, straining credulity to the breaking point.  Just how gullible do Zinke, Techmanski and the Trump Administration think we are?  Coming on the eve of the first indictments in the Trump/Russia investigation being made public, this is unquestionably a controversy (scam?) the administration neither wants nor needs.

The controversy goes beyond the Zinke-Techmanski-Whitefish connection; much of it focuses on the high rates Whitefish is charging for labor. The contract shows labor rates which are well beyond pricey: $240 an hour for a general foreman and $227 for a lineman. The per diems are also expensive: almost $80 a day for meals, and $332 a day for lodging. Employee flights are billed at $1,000 each way. For subcontractors (the bulk of Whitefish's workforce) the prices go even higher: a general foreman costs $336 an hour and a lineman, $319.  (Anyone interested in wading through the contract, put on your glasses, park  your credibility by the side of the road, and click this link.)

Not surprisingly, Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told members of the White House press corps in no uncertain terms that “This is a contract that was determined by the local authorities in Puerto Rico," and that both her boss and Sec. Zinke discussed the controversy during their meeting this past Friday.  Moreover, Sanders said,  the interior secretary steadfastly avowed he had no involvement in Whitfish's being awarded the $300 million contract. In a statement coming out of his office Zinke said "Any attempts by the dishonest media or political operatives to tie me to awarding of (sic) influencing any contract involving Whitefish [Energy Holdings] are completely baseless. Only in elitist Washington, D.C., would being from a small town be considered a crime." In a grammatically challenged addendum, Zinke noted that “Neither myself nor anyone in my office has advocated for this company in anyway (sic). After the initial contract was awarded, I was contacted by the company, on which I took no action. All records, which are being made available to appropriate officials, will prove no involvement.”

To be certain, there is something rotten in Whitefish . . . heretofore famous for being the home of the late Dodger Rookie of the Year Steve Howe and former Bulls/Lakers/Knicks/ coach Phil Jackson. This just might be the straw that breaks the political camel's back for '45 and his flying circus. Already, several Congressional committees are launching investigations into the deal. As of this past Friday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee  became the latest panel to probe the business deal. Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and ranking member Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) asked the Department of Homeland Security to review the contract to determine whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] will be responsible for reimbursing PREPA (Puerto Rico Power Authority)  the cost of Whitefish Energy’s work. Of all the putative scandals, political blunders and treating the federal government as just another subsidiary of the Trump Organization, this one could well turn out to be the sinful siren song which ultimately strands an administration on the shoal of political ruin.  For here, '45 and his "drain the swamp" henchmen may have gone too far by treating the citizenry just once too often as gullible stooges. There just cannot be that much mindless gullibility existing in America; no supposedly free nation can be home to so many so willing to accept such bilge. 

Even as this essay is reaching its conclusion, it may well be out of date: just a few minutes ago Fox News (!) reported that Puerto Rico's Governor,  Ricardo Rosselló has asked the board of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to cancel the contract with Whitefish Energy. Perhaps finally . . . finally, the administration has gone too far; has treated American gullibility as a bottomless pit of credibility. Let's all keep our eye on the ball . . . and demand that we begin being treated as citizens of worth, not as gullible, guileless cretins. 

America's future is at stake.

270 days down, 1,076 days to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

Are We Living In a Dystopian Novel?

Literary scholars (of which I am definitely not one) have long debated what the first dystopian novel was.  Some claim it was Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726); others say the honor belongs to either French writer Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century (1863) or British author H.G. Welles' The Time Machine (1895); then there are those who swear the honor belongs to one of two American novel: either Ignatius Donnelly's Caesar's Column (1890) or Jack London's The Iron Heel (1908).  It is likely that some readers of The K.F. Stone Weekly have not yet read - nor heard of - several of these classic works,  and as such, are likely unable to define the term "dystopian." However a brief rendering of some of the most famous novels in the genre - Kafka's The Trial, Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games - should give at least a hint as to the definition of dystopia.  Simply stated, dystopian novels, stories or movie adaptations deal with an imagined future time, place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad - typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. In other words, "dystopia" is the bipolar opposite of "utopia."  

In light of the many changes that have radically altered civil society over the past generation or two - and especially since the advent of the Internet - and a populace conditioned to view reality through the lens of "optics" -many of the most dire and frightening predictions of great dystopian novels have come chillingly true.  Consider, if you will, brief summaries of a handful of dystopian novels; the pictures they paint are haunting:

• The Iron Heel (1908): Focusing on the breakdown of politics in a future American society, Jack London imagines the rise of an oligarchic tyranny which bankrupts the middle classes and rules over its poor subjects with a crass, uncaring iron heel;
• 1984 (1949): George Orwell creates a highly disturbing future world of "Newspeak," and "Big Brother," in which 2+2=5;  hot is cold, up is down, constant surveillance and a government-controlled media;
• Fahrenheit 451 (1953): America has become a society in which books are burned and intellectual thought is illegal. Ironically, when first published, Bradbury's book was itself banned for containing "questionable themes";
• The Drowned World (1962):  A vivid picture of a world irreversibly changed by global warming; the cities of Europe and America lie submerged in tropical lagoons, while a biologist cataloging flora and fauna is beset with strange dreams.
• The Handmaid's Tale (1998): Set in a totalitarian, post-nuclear world, Christian theocracy has overthrown the US government. Women are forbidden to read, and the few capable of having children are subjugated and forced to serve the wider needs of society by becoming breeding machines.

What makes these - and many, many other - dystopian novels so chillingly, mind-numbing is how closely they approximate the direction American society has been taking over the past several decades.  The rise of cyber reality, untrammeled, self-centered consumerism, instantaneous hand-held communications, creeping authoritarianism, a rising tide of religious and ethnic intolerance, a growing distrust of science, and a penchant for accepting the most outlandish conspiracy theories as reality, has changed society a thousand times over. Today, as in dystopian novels, there exists a sizable plurality which disdains those they view as effete intellectuals, derides those who hold different opinions on matters of race, politics or sexual orientation, and despises those who will not walk in lockstep with their anointed leaders.  These are people who have been conditioned to turning a blind eye toward provable facts, all the while claiming that these facts are nothing more than lies promulgated by elitist elements for their own purposes. 

Of all the many disabilities and outright lies '45, Bannon, Limbaugh, Fox News, conspiracists like Alex Jones and white supremacists like Richard Spencer and David Duke have foisted upon American society, perhaps none is quite so diabolic - or brilliant - as that of "Fake News."  For over the past several years, they have trained and conditioned their Pavlovian followers into believing that anything in print, on the Internet or broadcast over the airwaves which does not jibe with their preconceived notions of reality is a big fat lie; a lie spread by the Fake Media.  This is utterly brilliant.  All '45 or his lieutenants have to do to negate something in the news which questions their facts or veracity is to proclaim that they are part and parcel of the "Fake News" conspiracy. 

Sometimes the Fake News angle goes beyond belief. Take General Jon Kelly's press conference the other day in which he denounced Florida Congressional Representative Fredrecka Wilson  for having given herself credit for the construction of a new FBI building in Miami.  Turns out that a video taken of that event by the Ft. Lauderdale News Sun Sentinel proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rep. Wilson never said any thing of the sort. Turns out, that according to General Kelly and presidential press secretary Sarah Sanders, the Sun Sentinel video was a hoax; just another example of Fake News being perpetrated by the liberal mainstream media.  

Other examples abound - going back to that which got the future '45 his first political notice: "birtherism."  Polling done during the 2016 election showed that two-thirds of the Trump supporters knew for a fact that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, is to this day a practicing Muslim, and was sent here as a child for the purpose of eventually turning America into an Islamic nation.  Then too, '45's rabid base still "knows" that he scored the "biggest victory" in the history of presidential elections, and had more people attend his inauguration than any president in the modern era.  And how do they know these things when facts, photos and statistics prove them wrong?  Why their fearless leader told them so!

Oy!

And while one can easily respond with "Don't lose too much sleep over it; these crazy people represent far less than a majority," I say this: members of this "crazy plurality" represent some of the most heavily armed people in America.  Whether '45 knows it or not, the people who consciously created this Republican base (the very base which '45 and most of the cowards in Congress spoon feed) have their own frightening, dystopian agenda: to create a Civil War; a conflict which will pit the followers and descendants of the Old South, Joe McCarthy, Charles "America First!" Lindburgh and the Koch Brothers against the descendants of FDR, Kennedy, King and Obama . . . not to mention Richard Hofstadter who, while not a dystopian novelist, did, back in November, 1964, write one of the most important dystopian essays of all time: The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

I for one do not wish to live within the pages of 1984. The Chrysalids or The Running Man. My choices tend towards George Eliot's Middlemarch and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward  where at least idealism still has a chance.

264 days down, 1082 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

Where Once Were Giants . . .

Of late, our local PBS station has been rerunning Ken Burns' brilliant seven-part 2014 documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.  It has kept me in rapt awe - the backgrounds, accomplishments and vast range of interests and abilities of these two distant cousins whose family fortunes had been secured several generations before their respective births (Theodore in 1858, Franklin in 1881).  Patricians of the first rank, the interests and accomplishments of TR of Oyster Bay and FDR of Hyde Park (who, in matter of truth, did not know each other all that well and whose sides of the family had a natural aversion to one another), were both broad and awe-inspiring.  I remember watching the series, narrated by the gifted actor Peter Coyote (born Rachmil Pinchus Ben Mosha Cohon) back in 2014.  For some reason it didn't affect me in the same way as it has this time around.  After giving the matter some thought, I discovered the reason why.

But first . . .

                                                        The Cousins Roosevelt

Neither TR nor FDR ever had to do a day's work; they never had to earn a penny.  And yet,  despite all this - despite the private tutors, exclusive prep schools, summers in Europe and undergraduate years at Harvard - they worked harder than any wage-earning laborer,  devoting their lives to expanding their personal horizons by devoting themselves to the political arena. and public service.  These men were, in brief, the embodiment of that all but forgotten motivator known as noblesse oblige (the obligation of honorable, generous, and responsible behavior associated with high rank or birth). Indeed, it gives me increasing pride that my parents decided to give me the middle name "Franklin," after the recently deceased POTUS. 

Yes, I am more than aware of the fact that there are a lot of contemporary "movement conservatives" who deride T.R. for being "more concerned about parkland than profits," and Franklin for being "a Socialist in aristocrat's clothing" and the "founder of the national debt."  Then too, many liberals score Theodore for having "made far too many trophies of far too many big game animals" and his Hyde Park lantsman for "turning his back on the Jews of Europe." Wall Street hated both these American blue bloods for being traitors to their class, while Main Street loved these patricians for offering the American working-class people first a "Square" (TR) than a "New" Deal (FDR).  Sure, they had their faults: TR was both an egomaniac and perpetual child; FDR wasn't terribly loyal to his wife and frequently played fast and loose with the truth.  Both could be insecure and mother-fixated. Both overcame debilitating physical conditions - TR's childhood asthma and FDR's polio)  which would have permanently invalided most anyone else.  But true to their heritage, they came to see themselves as preeminently healthy men with "physical conditions."  Nothing more, nothing less. 

And yet, despite the shortcomings and character flaws, they were  giants; real honest-to-god giants.   In addition to being the youngest-ever member of the New York State Legislature, New York Police Commissioner, New York Governor, a Rough Rider in the Spanish American War,  Assistant Secretary of State, Vice President and President of the United States, TR found time to father six children (one of whom died in WWI, and one in WWII), be one of the best traveled men of his time, write more than 3 dozen books (histories, biographies, political essays,  flora and fauna) including several which are still in print.  Likewise FDR, who was married to cousin Theodore's niece Eleanor, served in the New York State Senate, was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, ran unsuccessfully for Vice President in 1920, was elected Governor of New York, and like his elder cousin, fathered six children.  Three of his sons would become combat officers in WWII.  Unable to walk or stand unaided due to polio, FDR nonetheless manged to stand and campaign in virtually every one of the then 48 states through 4 presidential campaigns. 

Unlike the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, neither of the Roosevelts - nor the Kennedys, Pells, Chaffees, Cabots, Lodges, Frelinghuysens, Rockefellers, Adamses Saltenstalls or Griswolds - sought political office as a lark . . . as just another quaint jewel-encrusted fob on a rich man's golden watch chain.  For the scions of American capital, politics was a calling, an urge - sometimes a necessity - to give something back.  And whether one agreed with their politics or not (I for one find little to recommend in the actions of say, the Cabots, Lodges or Frelinghuysens, but rather admire the Pells, Chaffees and Browns of California) the fact that generation after generation served the people is both noteworthy and laudable. Nowhere does the historic record find, say, a Griswold, Kennedy or Adams serving in office in order to benefit "the family business." Nowhere do we find them crowing over their family wealth, position or possessions. Though both TR and FDR had their suits tailored by Brooks Brothers, wore shoes and boots cobbled by Foster & Sons and ties handmade by Charvet, they were as comfortable in their own skin as a Main Street druggist.  Today, by comparison, we are led by a parvenu whose ego is far larger than his net worth, his manners those of a boorish brat, his braggadocio overpowering enough to make a battle-hardened marine wince.

Both TR of Oyster Bay and FDR of Hyde Park surrounded themselves with experts; men - and occasionally women - who knew more than they did about the one-thousand-and-one things a president must grapple with on a daily basis. They - the cousins Roosevelt -  were wise because they knew what they knew.  They were truly wise because they knew what they did not know.  They were exceptionally wise because they found - and listened to - people who knew one whole hell of a lot more about what they themselves did not know.  And in the end, it was they - TR or FDR - who made the decisions, embraced the applause . . . and when necessary, bore the blame.  Though as playful as pugnacious children and as intellectually appetitive as college freshmen, these men - like a majority of their predecessors and successors - represented the United States of America with both dignity and aplomb.  There was never the fear that through word, deed or spontaneous impulse that they would ever embarrass the nation they were elected to lead.

Yes, where once were selfless giants  now lives a selfish pygmy . . .

255 days down, 1,099 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt Franklin Stone

Channeling William Congreve

                  Wm. Congreve (1670-1729)

Between the ages of 23 and 30, William Congreve (1670-1729) was England's most celebrated playwright.  A writer who all but single-handedly created the English "comedy of manners," Congreve was known for " . . . his brilliant comic dialogue, his satirical portrayal of the war of the sexes, and his ironic scrutiny of the affectations of his age."  His major works - all completed by age 30, included The Old Batchelour (1693), The Mourning Bride (1697) and his last - and most frequently staged piece, The Way of the World (1700). A classmate and lifelong friend of the wonderful satirist Jonathan Swift, devoted disciple of England's first Poet Laureate John Dryden and, along with Philosopher John Locke a member in good standing of the Whiggish Kit-Kat Club, Congreve spent the second half of his life living off royalties before succumbing to the grave effects of a carriage accident at age 59.

Many of you reading this essay are familiar with Congreve's most famous bon mots . . . even if you're unfamiliar with the man himself, or any of the plays he wrote.  For if nothing else, the man was quote-worthy.  Two of his best-known phrases come from a play called The Mourning Bride (1697):

• Musick has charms to soothe a savage breast (frequently misquoted as "Music hath charms to sooth the savage beast") and 
• Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned, (generally rendered as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned).

Trust me when I tell you that this week's essay is neither about William Congreve, Restoration Comedy nor Whig political gatherings in 18th century England.  It's about "Graham-Cassidy," the Republican-controlled Congress's last-ditch effort to finally fulfill its 7+ year promise to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.  During the latter years of the Obama presidency, Republicans voted more than 60 times to repeal the ACA, fully believing that doing so wouldn't involve even a speck of political downside . . . and for several reasons.  First and foremost, they knew that should any repeal measure actually pass, the POTUS would veto it. Second, continually pushing ACA repeal scored points with their rabid anti-anything-Obama base.  And third, they knew there was little political harm in ticking off Democrats, because they weren't likely to vote Republican under the best of circumstances.

I've got to believe that some of the more thoughtful Republicans worried that someday they would actually have to put up a real replacement package - one which would not only pass both houses of a GOP-run Congress and be signed into law by a GOP president, but one which would have a snowball's chance of pleasing someone - anyone - outside their financial backers and faithful flat-earth birther Luddites. When that long prayed-for day finally arrived on January 20, 2017, Republicans began to realize - as said by the new POTUS a  mere five weeks  after his inauguration "Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated."  Really?  Hadn't you been paying attention to all the weeks and months, all the legislative hearings and the incredible hoops the Dems. had to jump through in order to get party-line passage of the ACA?  Where were you?  Out on the hustings claiming that the entire process from day one to day last was done in secret without so much as a single opportunity for debate.

This of course  is simply not true.  Although the final ACA bill was, to a great extent, masterminded by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), this only came about after 79 separate hearings, a ton of amendments and hour upon hour of open public debate.  Compare this to Graham-Cassidy, which has had virtually no hearings, less debate than a gathering of Trappist monks (who take a vow of silence), and virtually no reaching out to their colleagues across the aisle.  

While it is true that the final version of the Affordable Care Act came to slightly over 2,300 pages where Graham-Cassidy is less than 50, it would appear that neither its cosponsors nor the POTUS know precisely what its mandates mean, how much it would cost . . . or even what it says.  As but two examples of this phenomenon: In a September 20, 2017 interview on CNN's "New Day," Senator Cassidy (who in private life is an MD) said that under terms of his bill “We protect those with preexisting conditions. … The protection is absolutely the same [as under Obamacare]. There’s a specific provision that says that if a state applies for a waiver, it must ensure that those with preexisting conditions have affordable and adequate coverage.”  At best. the senator's statement is highly misleading; at worst, it is utterly untrue.  Then there is 45's recent (9-20-17) Tweet in which he wrote: "I would not sign Graham-Cassidy if it did not include coverage of pre-existing conditions. It does! A great Bill. Repeal & Replace."  Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel had the last word on 45's Tweet, saying "Can you imagine Donald Trump actually sitting down to read a health-care bill? It’s like trying to imagine a dog doing your taxes. It just doesn’t compute, you know?” 

The two things all Republicans know for a certainty are that Graham-Cassidy is not Obamacare, and that it would take most of the tax money accrued under the ACA and turn it into block grants for the 50 states . . . essentially permitting each state to figure out how they wish to spend their healthcare dollars. There are, of course, many problems with the "block grant" approach, the most obvious and overwhelming of which being that not all states are equal.  How so? Well, to begin with,  median household income is much higher in New Hampshire than in Arkansas; heart disease and obesity are much bigger problems in Mississippi than in Colorado; the opioid epidemic is much worse in West Virginia than in Nebraska. Relatively sparsely populated areas struggle with the closings of rural hospitals, leaving large geographic areas underserved, while urban areas have a high concentration of large hospitals, many of which struggle with overcrowding. With regard to the first certainty - that Graham Cassidy is not Obamacare, its repeal would represent one more move to remove anything having to do with Barack Obama from the public record. In this it is reminiscent of the Biblical injunction (Exodus 17:45, and Deuteronomy 25:19 concerning Amalek: "Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it (i.e., to blot out the name and remembrance).

The list of public officials (including Republican governors, mayors and state legislators) national medical associations (now above 75) and "just plain Americans" who are on record as strenuously opposing Graham Cassidy is growing by the minute.  And ironically, the number of Americans who are voicing support for Universal Healthcare is also growing.  Ever since Arizona Senator John McCain came out and stated for the record that he will vote against it (despite his closest friend, Senator Lindsay Graham being one of Trumpcare's eponymous sponsors), there is a pretty good chance the bill will crash and burn.  About the only ones who are totally upset about this possibility are the Republican Party's biggest financial backers . . . people like the brothers Koch who, like their fellow multi-billionaires, stand to lose out on one hell of a lot of cash (via tax breaks) if Graham-Cassidy fails.

The game is in the ninth; the home team is down by a run with the bases loaded, two outs and their best hitter coming to the plate.  Indeed, there is a good reason to keep open a hope for victory.  But hoping isn't the same as action. Get up from your seat, call, text or email your senator; make your voice heard. These men and women do pay attention to what their constituents have to say; especially if they are up for reelection. (By the way, if you do not know your senators' phone numbers follow this link. For those who prefer to communicate their thoughts and feelings via email, follow this link.)

We conclude with yet another quote from William Congreve. In  Act 5, Scene 8 of his first play, the above referenced The Old Bachelour the bachelour's best friend, a chap named Sharper, gives his mate the following advice:  "Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure: Married in haste, we may repent at leisure."

Taking a page from the Book of Chutzpah, I will slightly alter the famous part of Sharper's advice,  put the resulting barb into a cartridge, load the cartridge into a blow-gun, and taking deadly aim, send it directly into the heart of the Senate Republican caucus. To wit:

                                              They who legislate in haste must expect to be invalidated at leisure.

247 days down, 1,193 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F Stone

Notes From the Underground Or, Apropos of the Coming Storm

This essay was in the process of  contemplation and composition when, thanks to Hurricane Irma, all the lights, air conditioning and internet were lost. Consequently, it has had to be put off until just how. It's weird going a week without posting an essay.  So far as I know, this is the first week I've missed since February 2005.  In any event,  I am delighted to report that we are all well, suffered precious little damage, and now find ourselves with cool air, cold water and hot WiFi.  Who could ask for anything more? And by the way, if the title of this piece doesn't make a lot of sense, do familiarize yourself with the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, the father of Existential literature . . .  

Waiting for a hurricane to arrive exacts a crushing toll on one's nerves and psyche, not to mention putting one's kishkes into painful twisted knots.  As a Californian who has gone through several major earthquakes, I can tell you a simple truth: I greatly prefer severe quaking to interminable waiting. Earthquakes happen when you least expect them; one is spared the dozens upon dozens of hours of continuous television and radio coverage - of the countdown to  climatologic Armageddon.  True, one can take precautions and make preparations for Andrew, Wilma, Harvey or Irma; but in the long-run, they're going to exact whatever vengeance they choose.  There are also any number of precautions one can take against earthquakes (most in terms of construction), but again, in the long-run they're going to exact as much vengeance as they please.  The big difference, as stated, above, is in the waiting.  Waiting for Irma reminded me of the scene in Casablanca when Rick, Ilsa and Sam were hanging out at La Belle Aurore, waiting, waiting for the Nazis to reach Paris.  All they could do was wait, listen to the cannons, and drink champagne . . .

Even before Irma arrived, there were interminable tornado warnings . . . each extended by fifteen, thirty, sixty minutes or more.  In comparison to the bear which is a category 5 hurricane, a tornado is a mere bee sting.  When Irma finally arrived, we were hunkered down, listening to what sounded like a 10,000-mile long freight train whizzing past our the house at lightening speed for hours on end. This was, to say the least, both a frightening and a deeply humbling experience.  Frightening for obvious reasons.  (Heck, the only folks who wouldn't have suffered from fright were, like Rick, Ilsa and Sam, probably indulging in a bit of the grape). Humbling, to realize in CAPITAL LETTERS how utterly powerful and destructive the forces of nature and nature's God, can be.  

This show of immense, ineffable power makes all our petty pride and status-filled striving seem as utterly insane as the rantings of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov.  Nothing - not wealth, nor status nor connections - can  every hope to overpower the forces of nature.  And anyone who causes us to believe they can is an utter fool . . . and even worse, a self-deluded idiot. 

Coming on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, I thought to myself (while sitting in the dark near my wife and dog) "who in their right mind can still deny climate change and its role in creating not one but two massive blows in a single week?"  Well, in the weeks leading up to these latest hurricanes, Rush Limbaugh and his buds-with-mikes were coming across like Irma truthers. Limbaugh the loon actually had the errant chutzpah to tell his devoted fringe that hurricanes and massive tropical storms are simply part of a liberal conspiracy solely aimed at furthering the discussion on climate change,   And then, within 24 hours, he announced that he was evacuating South Florida . . . for reasons of "security."  Ah consistency; the hobgoblin of little minds! 

For those who are not aware, there is a single street in Palm Beach (S Ocean Blvd, Palm Beach, 33480 to be precise) on which live (at least during the winter) four of the world's biggest, baddest, boldest climate change deniers: Ann Coulter, the increasingly irrelevant Flush . . . eh, Rush, '45, and the Brothers Koch. These aren't just homes; they are palaces ranging in size from 20,000 to more than 62,000 square feet - not to mention the beach-front acreage.  One has to wonder if all that has happened to their princely abodes will change their minds about the state of the weather.  One can only hope.

So now we dig and dry out, decide whether or not to finally install those hurricane-proof windows and shutters, and await the next storm (perhaps Hurricane Melania?).  It all makes great fodder for the High Holiday sermons I shall begin delivering in less than a week.  One of points I shall do doubt be highlighting is how disasters such as Harvey and Irma tend to bring out the best, most humane aspects of an otherwise disparate and divided folk. One can see it in the patience and consideration that drivers show in going through intersections one car at a time; of neighbors going door to door to see if there's anything they can do - and then extending a hand, arm or leg in the cause of community. I've read and heard of Muslims helping Jews and rock-ribbed conservative Christians lending assistance to same-sex  couples.  It is, without question, a very, very good thing to learn that the folks next door are just as human, just as vulnerable, just as loving as you are.  

We will, without question, long remember Harvey and Irma - their power, their destructiveness and terrifying ability to totally destroy and uproot.  May they also be long remembered as having been the cause for us reaching out to our neighbors as if they were the closest of kin.  And may Harvey and Irma also teach the naysayers that hurricanes, tornadoes and tropical storms have as much to do with the misdeeds of man as with the power of the Divine. 

Be safe, be proactive, but above all be kind . . .

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

Shake Hands With the Devil

                        Mnuchin,  '45 and Cohen

OK, by a show of hands, is there anyone out there who remembers the last time we had a 24-hour news cycle without at least one breaking story guaranteed to shoot the old systolic up into the stratosphere?  Waiting . . . waiting.  Hmmm . . . by the absence of hands, I guess that means the answer is "no" - that for the longest time, every day brings at least one bulletin, one screaming headline, one hyper-dramatic (or hyper-inane) matter which is all but guaranteed to eclipse (or make us all but forget) yesterday's screaming headline. Now mind you, it's not just the White House and its current occupant who are totally shouldering the blame for this rise in cacophony; the media plays a huge role as well. After all, there are just so many sources and platforms for news (both real and fake) and views, and thus, so many ways to make a pile through selling ads. The competition for these ad dollars is intense.  In other words, '45 has been a boon-and-a-half to all those who book and sell ad time and space.

In the main, we've become unknowingly inured to the fact that today's front-page-above-the-fold, top-of-the-hour screamers (North Korea, the Mueller investigation, the pardoning of "Sheriff Joe") quickly gets pushed back a page or three until they are largely relocated to the file marked "ho-hum." Occasionally, a story comes along with so many aspects ("sidebars") as to possess what in show business is  called "having legs" -- that is, staying power.  One obvious example is the Charlottesville horror and what it says about the POTUS and the country he supposedly leads.  By now, everyone knows that there is a Grand Canyon of difference between the scripted and off-the-cuff '45. The former presents him as a man possessing a modicum of compassion and a desire to bring a fractured nation together. The latter unshackles him from these chains of sane moderation and permits the "loose cannon" of his soul to escape the censor of his lips.  

One day '45 (unscripted) blames "many sides" for the violence in Charlottesville, absolves himself of any blame by insisting that these sorts of incidents occurred when Barack Obama was POTUS and proclaims that there were "some very fine people" in attendance at the confrontation. Then, less than 48 later (and four days after the actual event) the scripted '45 states "Racism is evil -- and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans . . . . Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America."  Then, in another (unscripted) speech in Arizona, he goes back to his initial approach, in which he does not specifically condemn the KKK, neo-Nazis or white supremacists . . . and which draws ecstatic  reviews from the likes of  David Duke and the White Supremacist website The Stormer. 

That the POTUS does not find any moral difference between neo-Nazis, white nationalists, white supremacists and what he has been told to refer to as the "Alt-Left," is both highly disturbing and terribly frightening. That those Jewish people who support him - either as financial backers or actual employees - have remained mostly mum is disgusting.  Just the other day, '45, flanked by, among others, Gary Cohen (Director of the White House Economic Council) and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin came down to the lobby of Trump Tower for what was supposed to be a press event dealing with infrastructure. Instead, the two most visible and highly placed Jewish members of the administration (save Jared and Ivanka, who seem have been on an extended holiday in the "Land Beyond Denial") stood in obvious shock and discomfort as their boss (unscripted) once again proclaimed “There is blame on both sides. I have no doubt about it – and you don’t have any doubt about it either.”

Since that August 15th gobsmacking, much has been made over the fact that 45's Chief Economist Gary Cohen actually gave serious consideration to resigning his post.  To date, he has not.  What the former president of Goldman Sachs did do was  release a critique of the president in an interview with the Financial Times in which he stated “This administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities."  Giving some insight into the storm brewing in his kishkes (Yiddish for "guts") Cohen further stated “I have come under enormous pressure both to resign and to remain in my current position.  As a patriotic American, I am reluctant to leave my post . . . because I feel a duty to fulfill my commitment to work on behalf of the American people. But I also feel compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks. Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK."

Good for Mr. Cohen; his words make sense.  But if he is that disaffected, that disgusted and alienated, why in hell is he still working for a man and an administration which kowtows to racists, white supremacists and people who, given the chance, would gladly consign him, his family and all those he loves to crematoria?  And while we're at it, why are Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, '45's son-in-law Jared Kushner, '45's longtime personal lawyer Michael D. Cohen and billionaire backer Sheldon Adelson (among others) as mute as Marcel Marceau?  Sam Nunberg, a former campaign adviser came to '45's defense, rationalizing that “I have spent thousands of hours with this man. He does not have one anti-Semitic bone in his body.” Nunberg, who himself is Jewish condemned the neo-Nazi protesters as “a bunch of disgusting people. A bunch of people saying anti-Semitic stuff.”  Nonetheless, he had not a single word to say about his former boss's lack of response.

I'm sorry; this just doesn't cut it.  I find it difficult to swallow that a man who quietly accepts the plaudits of anti-Semites and racists isn't in some way either an anti-Semite or racist himself, or at best, an egregiously opportunistic fool.  From a political point of view, '45 - who has been campaigning for reelection since the day he was inaugurated - knows how badly he needs to hold on to his ever-shrinking base.  And, if in order to maintain that base - which includes the likes of David Duke, Richard Spencer, Sheriff Joe and all their jackbooted followers - he must be acquiescent . . .  so be it.

WRONG!  To my mind, it is the sacred obligation of any and every American - whether Jewish or not - who believes in equality and humanity to denounce '45 and those who persist in supporting him.  Obviously this is not the case; there are Jewish people out there who are willing to rationalize his actions and overlook his immoral recrudescence.  As a progressive political blogger who also happens to be a rabbi, I am frequently on the receiving end of nasty comments from readers informing me that they are more than willing to overlook '45's "shortcomings" because " . . . on the one issue that matters - Israel - he is the best thing that's every happened!"  Whenever I receive a comment containing this sentiment, I write back asking the correspondent to provide examples with which to under-gird  their contention; to tell me precisely what he has done for Israel that makes him such a great friend of the Jewish State. Generally, the answer is something like "Well, at least he's not Obama, who made an 'Apology Tour,' bowed down to the King of Saudi Arabia and had his Ambassador to the U.N. vote against Israel every chance she got." I'm sorry, but it's always been my strong belief that a POTUS who is not good for the country cannot be good for Israel.

In just a little over a month, Jewish people the world over will be observing Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, where we confess our sins, beg for forgiveness and search our souls for the moral strength we need in facing a new year.  

Are you listening Messrs Cohen, Mnuchin, Kushner, Adelson, Nunberg et al?

218 days down, 1,239 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

The Ever Shrinking Universe of Donald Trump

   A Group of Interacting Galaxies (Taken From the Hubble Telescope)

Quantum cosmologists - folks like Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Steven Hawking and Alan Lightman - study and theorize the origins of the universe.  Amazingly, the field is not a new one by any stretch of the imagination; as early as the 5th century B.C.E.,  the philosopher Democritus proposed that all matter was made of tiny and indivisible atoms, which came in various sizes and textures—some hard and some soft, some smooth and some thorny.  To be certain, there are significant disagreements between cosmologists about such things as the age of the universe, precisely when the "Big Bang" (BB) occurred, etc.   But then again, what could you expect when the two words making up the very name of the field (quantum and cosmology) are bipolar opposites? (quantum is the theory of the utterly small, while cosmology is the study of the unimaginably gigantic.)

One thing on which most every cosmologist agrees is the Big Bang theory, which posits that 14 billion years ago the entire observable universe was, in the words of MIT professor Alan Lightman “roughly a million billion billion times smaller than a single atom” and has been expanding ever since, to its current size of something like 100 billion galaxies.  When I first read that statement in Lightman's wonderful 2014 work The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew, I spent the better part of a week pondering the bit about the pre-BB universe being "roughly a million billion billion times smaller than a single atom."  The thing that truly revved my mental engine was contemplating what was outside that universe.  Intellectually, of course, the answer is simply "nothing" . . . for there cannot be anything outside the universe.  But from a "grand-scheme-of-things perspective," the query produces a profound mind cramp.  Nonetheless, I will pretend that I follow what these brilliant ladies and gentlemen are positing, and agree that the universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang. (Yes, there certainly are female quantum cosmologists; one of the greatest by far is Sandra Faber of the University of California, Santa Cruz,  co-inventor of the "theory of cold dark matter.")

Moving on from the mind-numbing realm of Quantum Cosmology to maddening world of big-time politics, we ask "What's outside a political universe when it starts shrinking?  And here, we are referring specifically to the current POTUS.  For over the past several weeks, his universe has been devolving at an alarming rate.  Consider that during a rather brief span - which for most new presidents would be a "period of good feelings," he has:

• Sacked his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn after a mere 2 weeks and 2 days on the job;
• Canned James Comey, Director of the FBI;
• Shown his Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, the door;
• Axed his Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci after a mere 10 days on the job;
• Fired his Chief of Staff Reince Preibus and Preibus' deputy, Katie Walsh;
• Disbanded both the American Manufacturing Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum after members began resigning in droves;
• Saw every member (minus 1) of the Presidential Committee on the Arts and Culture submit their resignations in a stinging rebuke which ended with the words "Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too." (BTW, the committee member who did not sign the letter was the committee chair, First Lady, Melania Trump); 
• Accepted the resignation (?) of chief political strategist Stephen Bannon, who has already met with Breitbart News' chief financial backer, multi-billionaire Bob Mercer, and is ready to go to war with "globalists," who apparently include '45, his former boss and protégé;
• Begun to be on the receiving end of some serious rebukes questioning his sanity, stability and moral integrity from leading Republicans including Senators Corker, Flake, Rubio and Hatch as well as a gaggle of former party leaders and professional media conservatives;
• Been utterly trashed by his Art of the Deal ghost writer Tony Schwartz, who  predicted that '45 is getting ready to "call it quits" - and that the resignation will happen soon; 
• And lastly (at least for purposes of this essay) has seen charity after charity, and cause after cause, cancel mammoth black-tie galas at Mar-a-Lago, thus putting a significant crimp in his income.

Indeed, things are not going well for the POTUS; his "base" is beginning to thin even while his world is imploding.  His universe is shrinking, leaving him more isolated than ever.  And what's worse, in the days following the neo-Nazi/white supremacist tragedy in Charlottesville, he has shown himself to be a moral albino; a man without a conscience or scintilla of shame.  And owing to his peculiar "mental makeup" (to be both kind and diplomatic) he has  become increasingly untethered.  I for one fear he is fully capable of launching a preemptive strike against North Korea as a means of expanding his deflated universe.

(n.b. The most recent issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists unequivocally states that the bellicose rhetoric of both North Korea's Kim and America's '45 has obscured a critical fact: to wit, that North Korea's Hwasong 14 ICBM is not nearly as powerful nor lethal as either side advertises, and as of now, is incapable of reaching the continental USA.  Much of what we are hearing and fearing is political hot air. Unquestionably, the misinformation serves both sides' political needs.)

One small sign of just how far his universe has imploded was Friday's announcement that he and the First Lady will skip this year's Kennedy Center honors "in order to allow the honorees to celebrate without political distraction."  Reading between the lines, what he's really saying is "I don't want to be booed by so many cultural icons on national television; my ego couldn't take it."   '45's decision to stay away from the star-studded gala means it will be just the fourth time in the program’s 40-year history that a president will not be in attendance. In 1994, President Bill Clinton skipped the event while on his way to Budapest for a conference. In 1989, President George Bush was preoccupied with a summit meeting in Malta with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. In 1979, Jimmy Carter did not attend because of the Iran hostage crisis.

In the seven months '45 has been POTUS, the moral authority of both Office of President and the country that the vast majority of the planet looks to for leadership has been both critically damaged and severely diminished.  How long it will take to put the brakes on this precipitous slide is anyone's guess.   Clearly though, there already exists enough evidence to impeach '45 on the grounds of abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

There is already enough evidence of mental impairment to invoke the 25th amendment.  Just the other day, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) did just that; she introduced a resolution asking Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to consider removing President Trump from office under terms of that Amendment. 

Simply stated, the man must be removed from office.

To those who shake their head and say "But if we somehow manage to do the impossible and get him out of our hair, that means Mike Pence will become President," I respond in the words of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: " . . . a principled right-winger is better for America and the world than an unhinged sociopath."

We conclude with a return to the world of science:

Some quantum cosmologists belong to a school of thought called the "two-headed theory" of the universe. This school sees the Big Bang as sort of a pothole in the long road of time, with the future pointing away from that moment in two opposing directions. In this theory, time moved in a way we would consider backward for billions of years — with the universe contracting all the while — until it shrank to subatomic size. Then the big bang occurred and time began to progress, and the universe expanded, in the way we see now.

So perhaps what we are going through these past 7 months is precisely that - albeit in miniature; a shrinking, chronologically retrogressive period in which our reality becomes too impossible to imagine, let alone wrap our heads around.  But remember, there is that second "head" . . . the Big Bang which causes the universe to progress, to grow, to - in terms of this essay - get us back on the path of political sanity and moral clarity.

It doesn't take an academy of quantum cosmologists or brainy theoretical astrophysicists to accomplish this task.  What it does - and will - take are elected officials with guts and principles and a citizenry that awakens to the realization that one need not be systemically predisposed to speaking out . . . just genetically incapable of remaining silent. 

Donald Trump must go!

211 days down, 1,246 (?) to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

This Is Serious . . . Very, Very Serious

                                     Indy and Short Round

Up until late yesterday, I was fully prepared to devote this week's essay to '45, North Korea and the insane rhetorical brinkmanship going back-and-forth between the two nuclear nations.  Of how the POTUS has, whether consciously or not, taken a page from Richard Nixon's "I'm madder and badder than thou" playbook in order to scare the pants off of Kim Jong-un, and how '45's North Korean counterpart has ratcheted up his rhetoric to proclaim that his ICBM is " a gift for the American bastards" even as he promised a missile launch in the direction of Guam. I was looking forward to comparing '45's oratorical flourishes ("fire and fury like the world has never seen," as well as "locked and loaded,") to those of his North Korean counterpart, and quoting Asian sources who are now wondering aloud just who is more dangerous - Donald Trump or Kim Jong-un?  I was even thinking about putting in a word or two about '45's wild and woolly threat to take military action against Venezuela. 

I even had what I thought was a pretty good title containing just a soupçon of satire: This Is Serious . . . Very, Very Serious," which as any Indiana Jones aficionado knows, was said  (in slightly abbreviated form) by cinema's favorite archaeologist/adventurer when he and "Short Round" (a.k.a. "Shorty") were trapped in a death room as long-bladed swords began slowly and ominously descending from the ceiling. This scene and quote was of course in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

And then along came the horrifying events of the past 24 hours in Charlottesville, Virginia, which shoved my original essay into the "maybe next week" column. The one thing I have salvaged from the North Korea/mutually assured insanity/utter chaos at the White House piece is the title, which works just as well . . . if not better.

This Is Serious . . . Very, Very Serious. 

At this juncture, there is little need to go into much detail about the "Unite the Right" atrocity which took place in the town along the Rivanna River; constant cable coverage has pretty much made any such recap unnecessarily redundant.   For certain, this is a story that will continue receiving coverage for many days, if not weeks to come.  And among the media sidebars we should expect will be pieces putting faces on the leaders and major perpetrators, as well as informative (and no doubt chilling) sketches about the roughly one-dozen jack-booted, tiki-torch and Confederate flag-bearing, armed White Power, pro-Nazi, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic groups that gathered in the shadow of the University of Virginia and Jefferson's Monticello.  Their goal? According to their leaders, to protest the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee from a nearby park. Their not so hidden agenda? To come to physical blows with any and all counter-protesters, thus sending a visual message to those who support their twisted, hate/fear-inspired Weltanschauung.  We know what they are and who they hate: Jews, African Americans, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, environmentalists, Democrats . . . indeed, anyone who doesn't look or think like them.  What they fear is that America is no longer "theirs."  In their rheumy eyes, America has been taken over by the dregs of society and must be stopped.  

What took place on the streets of Charlottesville was obviously not spontaneous.  Rather, it was the product of months of not-so-hidden prodding and planning and a couple of generations of growing, twisted psychopathology.  Seeing the torch-bearing hundreds wearing their various uniforms, brandishing guns, rifles and automatic weapons while chanting the old Nazi refrain Blut und Boden ("blood and soil") was - and is - a stark reminder that something serious . . . very, very serious . . . is taking place in the United States.  To wit, a growing and technologically savvy minority of miscreants who want to return to a time when America was controlled by White Men; when Jews, African Americans, women and immigrants knew their place and all heroes looked and sounded like John Wayne.   

Rhetorical responses to the Charlottesville massacre - in which, as of this writing, 3 have died and more than 2 been dozen injured - have ranged from the predictably outraged to the shockingly hateful to the toxically tepid.  A smattering of statements and Tweets:

• David Duke, former head of the KKK (who attended the "United the Right" rally) called is "a turning point" in the effort to help people like him "fulfill the promises of Donald Trump."
• Richard Spencer, co-editor of AltRight.com Tweeted "We came in peace. It was the police and antifa(cists) that used force against peaceful, lawful demonstrators. 
• The POTUS's brief comment to the press was, to say the most, less than room temperature: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, on many sides. What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives."  Among the questions he ignored at the end of his statement were  "Do you want the support of these white nationalists?" and "Do you think the violence in Charlottesville should be considered terrorism?"

Responses to 45's comments varied greatly:

• Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT): "We should call evil by its name. My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home."
• Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO): "Mr. President - we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism."
• Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL): "Very important for the nation to hear @POTUS describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists."
• Andrew Aglin, Founder of the Daily Stormer (a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, alt-right website): "['45] refused to even mention anything to do with us. When reporters were screaming at him about White Nationalism he just walked out of the room."
• Barack Obama quoted Nelson Mandela: " . . . for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."
• Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT): "No Mr. President. This is a provocative effort by Neo-Nazis to foment racism and hatred and violence.  Call it out for what it is."
• Even Anthony Scaramucci '45's former Communications Director (he lasted less than 2 weeks) insisted “I think he needed to be much harsher as it relates to the white supremacists, you have to call that stuff out.”

Hours after these responses to his public comments - both negative and positive, the Tweeter-in-Chief took to the internet and wrote "We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!"

Again, he did not specifically condemn the alt-Right, white supremacist or Neo-Nazi perpetrators. This is serious . . . very, very serious.

If '45 really, truly wants to "condemn all that hate stands for" he could start by immediately - and very publicly - firing:

• Stephen Bannon, his White House Chief Strategist  and former Executive Chair of the far-right Breitbart News and
• Sebastian Gorka, his far-right, anti-Semitic Deputy Assistant, who came to his boss's inauguration wearing a badge, tunic, and ring of the Order of Vitéz,  a far-right group listed by the State Department as having been " . . . under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany' during World War II." (It should also  be noted that Gorka's mother Susan worked closely as a translator with David Irving, the discredited historian described by a judge as a "Holocaust denier … anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."

Alas, there is every reason to believe that '45 would gladly fire Bob Mueller and/or A.G. Sessions before he'd ever let go of Bannon and/or Gorka . . . and for the same reason: he doesn't want to do anything that would possibly alienate his beloved "base."  For it's his base - which apparently includes white supremacists, neo-Nazis, racists and anti-Semites - that ultimately gives him the adulation and ego strokes which keeps his emotional/psychic furnace ablaze.  It's this base that that makes him feel real, feel alive . . . feel presidential.

And this is serious . . . very, very serious.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

Ironic? Definitely. Irenic? One Can Always Pray.

                               Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)

Like millions of Americans, I am praying for the recovery of Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip who was critically wounded by a deranged gunman during an early-morning baseball practice nearly two weeks ago.   In the shooting, in which four others were injured, Scalise was only struck once, far from his most vital organs. However, the bullet traversed his hip, shattering bones and unleashing concussive forces that caused severe internal bleeding and organ damage. When he was medevaced off the field, he was reportedly conscious and in good spirits. By the time he arrived at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, in the District of Columbia, he was in critical condition: unconscious, and on the brink of death.  One hopes that the relative dearth of daily news about the congressman's progress is a good sign . . . the "No News Is Good News" syndrome. Indeed, as of the middle of last week, after three surgeries (with the prospect of several more to come), his condition had been upgraded to "fair."

Through no fault of his own, Rep. Scalise has now incurred hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of dollars of future medical expenses.  Fortunately, he is covered by some pretty good health insurance and thus will likely wind up being responsible for only a tiny fraction of these costs.  Now, contrary to the widespread urban legend that members of Congress receive free health insurance for life, Scalise and his colleagues are, ironically, covered under Obamacare.  They sign up through the District of Columbia exchange; the Federal Government pays about 70% of their monthly premium.  It's a good deal; especially for a member like Steve Scalise.  For contrary to the notion that all members of Congress are multimillionaires, Rep. Scalise is, according to the most recent figures (2015), the 19th poorest member of the legislative branch, with a net worth of at least minus $20,999.00  (Actually, this is a vast improvement; in 2007, the year he was first elected, Rep. Scalise reported a net worth of minus $421,438.00.)  

And here's where irony comes in:  Like virtually all of his Republican colleagues in the House, Rep. Steve Scalise voted to (mostly) repeal and (just about totally) replace the very system of healthcare which will save him from even greater and graver financial disaster. For without many of the Affordable Healthcare Act's (Obamacare) best-wrought clauses, Rep. Scalise - like somewhere around 20-24 million other Americans would - were he not a member of Congress - be in dire shape.  The "American Health Care Act" (ACHA) passed by the House back on May 4th,  includes an amendment that would allow states to obtain waivers from certain insurance requirements mandated by the Affordable Care Act. States could get waivers to: increase how much insurers can charge based on age, establish their own requirements for essential health benefits that plans must include, and allow insurers to price policies based on health status in some cases. That last waiver could lead to higher premiums for those with preexisting conditions who don’t maintain continuous coverage.  An amendment — penned by New Jersey Rep. Tom MacArthur — specifically exempts Congress and its staff from the effects of such state waivers.  It must be admitted that this was done for procedural, not political reasons a bit too arcane to be gone into in this piece. A second, stand-alone bill proposed by  Representative Martha McSally (R-AZ) would strike the exemption of Congress from state waiver provisions should the AHCA be enacted into law.   Crazy, no?  But in any event, Representative Scalise - like so many of his fellow Americans - is going to be way behind the financial eight-ball should this hastily-drawn, monstrously conceived legislation get to the president's desk for final approval.

A reasonable political observer might expect the case of Rep. Scalise to be brought up again and again in the AHCA debate.  After all, it is an enormous elephant in the legislative room.  But as reasonable as this might seem, it is not likely going to happen; neither Republicans nor Democrats are going to be mentioning the name "Steve Scalise" - unless attached to the words "Our thoughts and prayers . . ."  Why is this?  Well, as The New Republic's Brian Beutler succinctly put it in a recent article, "Republicans are the governing majority, they have no interest in letting Scalise’s ordeal become a symbol of anything related to health policy . . . . Democrats have been reluctant to politicize the shooting for different reasons: Scalise is a colleague, the dead shooter was a former volunteer for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, and the media surely would have punished anyone who interrupted the Kumbaya moment on Capitol Hill. Fascinatingly, since the ball-field shooting, none of the normal post-slaughter debate over "More guns vs. Better gun control" has been heard; and I mean nary a peep.  Perhaps this Kumbaya moment  in the case of guns will extend to the current healthcare debate.  Then again, perhaps that's a bit overly Pollyanna.  At least while we are praying for Rep. Scalise's recovery, we can pray for a bit more sanity.

The recently released Senate version of the ACHA (now called The Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017) is - if possible - even worse than that which passed the House last month.  Like the House version, it is ruthless, soulless and vicious; it ensures that healthcare premiums are going to become out of reach for older, less healthy Americans as more and more younger and healthier Americans decide they simply don't need coverage.  It will gut Medicaid, which is a lifeline for a tremendous number of Americans.  Consider that

• 20 percent of Americans are enrolled in Medicaid;
• 39 percent of children in the US are enrolled in Medicaid;
• 49 percent of births are covered by Medicaid; and
• a full 64 percent, or nearly two-thirds of nursing home patients, are covered by Medicaid. 

In a world ruled by sanity, insurance costs and healthcare deductibles are kept in check by having the maximum number of people - people of all ages and stages of well-being - sharing costs.  Republicans of all stripes - and some Democrats - have long argued that requiring people to purchase coverage is wrong, unconstitutional and even Socialistic.  Make no mistake about it: even greater than their hatred of "individual mandates" and "shared responsibility" is their love of extraordinarily generous tax cuts for their already hyper-wealthy backers and benefactors.

And yet, beyond the irony of Rep. Scalise's perilous condition during the very time healthcare is a central focus, is the possibility of the irenic moment this irony could provide.  For those who do not do crossword puzzles, the word irenic may be unknown.  It comes from the Greek word ειρήνη (eirēnē), meaning "peace."  In theology, it specifically  connotes the process of reconciliation between different denominations or sects of a religion.  And that is what this ironic moment could be providing: ειρήνη - a coming together, a reconciliation between those who believe healthcare for all is a right, and those who hold that tax-cuts for the few is a given.  As The New Republic's Beutler wisely notes, "The best thing that could possibly come of Scalise’s shooting wouldn’t be some fleeting moment of political unity. It would be pulling Republicans back from the brink of trading American lives for tax cuts."

How ironic.

156 days gone, 1,301 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

Of Witch Hunts and Whiners

  Norman, Norma  & Cousin Mitzi  (c.2008)

About a month ago, '45 began characterizing his many woes as "The single greatest witch hunt of a politician in history"  To say this whine is childish and betrays an appalling ignorance of American history is putting it mildly. Perhaps even worse, it both demeans and utterly trivializes the debasing, life-shortening horrors of the real victims of American witch hunts - from Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba (the first of the so-called "Salem Witches"); to Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Eugene Debs and U.S. Rep. Victor Berger (victims of the post-WWI "Red Scare"  overseen by then-U.S. Attorney General A. MItchell Palmer); to John Garfield, Zero Mostel, Norman Corwin, Norma Barzman, Marsha Hunt and literally hundreds of members of the so-called "Hollywood Blacklist"; to the literally thousands of gay and lesbian government employees whose lives and careers were upended due to Senator Joseph McCarthy's so-called "Lavender Scare." (Eerily, one of the people most responsible for this "scare" was Senator McCarthy's chief counsel, the young Roy Cohn who, it turned out, was himself a closeted gay man and would, many years later, become '45's personal attorney.)

The history, reality and psychological underpinnings of conspiracy theories, witch hunts and blacklists have long been a personal political and academic passion.  Indeed, my senior thesis at University, written more than 45 years ago, researched the impact that McCarthyism had on the 1952 presidential election between Illinois Governor Adlai E. Stevenson and General Dwight David Eisenhower.  Talk about a real drubbing: Republican Eisenhower beat Democrat Stevenson by 6.7 million votes and demolished him in the Electoral College by a margin of 442-89. That year also saw the G.O.P.  recapture both the House and Senate. One big reason for this Republican sweep could be laid at the feet of McCarthy and his "reds under the bed" conspiracy, which Governor Stevenson refused to endorse.  His so-called "effete, Ivy League, blue blood" background (he was a Princeton grad, his paternal grandfather was Vice President of the United States and his maternal great-grandfather had been Abraham Lincoln's campaign manager) did not sit well the majority of American voters. They were in the mood for a witch hunt against anyone who had ever belonged to, supported, or made a donation to a group like "Committee For the First Amendment," "The American Civil Liberties Union," or the "Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions." (HICCASP)

The latter two groups - made up mostly of Hollywood progressives - were the special targets of Senator Joseph McCarthy, California state Senator Jack B. Tenney (who chaired a California version of HUAC and Hollywood film censor extraordinaire. Joseph Breen.  Together, they carried out out one of the nastiest witch hunts in all American history; by comparison, the current '45 imbroglio has as much to do with a real witch hunt as a jug of $10.00 moonshine has to a bottle of Armand de Brignac Brut Rose.  As a Hollywood Brat, I have gotten to know, interview - even befriend - a number of those who were blacklisted and exiled from what was once called "The Land of Mink-Lined Swimming Pools and Plastic Palm Trees."  

For several years, my late cousin Mitzi would invite a group of blacklistees to her house on Maple Drive in Beverly Hills to eat and share memories of times past.  (That's Mitzi in the photograph alongside the legendary Norman Corwin (1910-2011) and screenwriter Norma Barzman, the exiled wife of screenwriter Ben Barzman - best known for the 1948 classic "The Boy With Green Hair."  Now nearly 97, Norma is one of few surviving members of the Hollywood Blacklist. Their senior surviving member, my friend Marsha Hunt, will become, god willing, 100 this coming October 17.  The longtime honorary Mayor of Sherman Oaks, Ms. Hunt still lives in the same house (on the corner of Fulton and Magnolia), just around the corner from ours that she occupied when I was a kid delivering her papers for the now defunct Valley Times.

These artistic souls, along with hundreds and hundreds of their colleagues now deceased - understood the meaning "witch hunt" in a way that our current POTUS could never possibly fathom.  They all woke up one day to find that they were being reviled, hunted down and eventually stripped of every ounce of their creative worth just because certain people claimed they were traitors . . . or sexual deviants.  Most lost their jobs and livelihoods, some actually committed suicide and, if they chose to keep working as actors, directors, cinematographers, choreographers or set designers, had to either leave the country or - if they were screenwriters - to employ a "front" - a person who would put their name on a screenplay for which they had never so much as typed a single letter.  

This, my dear '45, is what a witch hunt is truly like.  These people did not suffer from persecution complexes; nor did they believe that the entire world revolved around them.  They - like the witches of Salem, the Native Americans of America's great heartland or turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe - were subjected to their contemporaneous witch hunts because they were "different," "foreign,"  or had beliefs and ideas that were out of the mainstream.  Then too, they frequently served as convenient scapegoats for ignorant, bigoted, amoral politicians seeking to better their lot in life.  The bulls-eyes were placed on their backs without their knowledge, without their consent, and generally speaking, without due cause.

On the other hand, it is you, Mr. '45, who have put the bulls-eye on your own back - by showing total contempt and disregard for the high office to which you were elected; by being both an enemy of - and stranger to - the truth; by offending far too many decent people and showing far too little concern for anyone or anything which cannot benefit you on a personal level. Yes, you still do have a cadre of  diehard, zealous supporters out there; men, women and children who still believe that everything you say is the god's honest truth and that anyone who disagrees is part of an evil conspiracy meant to bring you down. But please do remember something history teaches: that conspiracies are, far more often than not, built on foundations made of sand . . . and that demagogues are self-deluding builders of sand castles.  Quit whining about witch hunts; you haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. To paraphrase the late Senator Lloyd Bentsen, "I've known victims of witch hunts; some of them are - or were - friends of mine.  Believe me Mr. T.,  you are no victim of a witch hunt."

Mr. President: might I strongly urge that in place of whining, it might benefit you both personally and politically to engage in the study of history.  It has a lot of revealing things to teach . . . even to someone who thinks he's the smartest kid in the class.

148 days down, 1,309 to go.

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone

'45's Null Hypothesis & the Future of Planet Earth

Last week I attended - via teleconference - a daylong medical ethics workshop held at the University of Kentucky.  The topic for this year's gathering was "Human Subjects Protection: Changes." It was a phenomenal, mentally challenging day.  The first speaker was Dr. Craig Kundrot, a Yale-trained molecular biophysicist who is currently Director of the "Space Life and Physical Sciences Research & Applications Division" at NASA.  In other words, he's the person in charge of figuring out the long-term physical and psychological effects that long-term space flight has on the human body. Currently, NASA is working on our Mars venture, which will take astronauts away from planet Earth for a minimum of 18 months. The case study Dr. Kundrot presented dealt with our only set of twin astronauts, Scott and Mark Kelly.  Because the Kellys have virtually the same genetic material, NASA can study how long-duration space flight affects the body and mind, using Mark - who is now retired from NASA -  as the control.  

Needless to say, Dr. Kundrot's presentation had all those in attendance flying high with thoughts of Mars, the vastness of the universe and the courage and brilliance of those charged with turning this fabulous dream into an even more fabulous reality.

And then, 24 hours later, '45's announcement that he was pulling the United States out of the Paris Accord brought us all down to his version of reality.  In '45's view, the historic, non-binding 195-nation accord was agreed to for one reason and one reason only: to stick it to the United States. Or, as he described it, "The agreement is a massive transfer of United States wealth to other countries."  In his mind, the Paris Accord has nothing to do with saving the planet from the ravages of climate change; it is all about money, lost jobs and his "America First" brand of isolationism.  This should come as no surprise, and for two reasons:

• Our President sees reality through dollar signs, and
• He contends that climate change (global warming) is a hoax.

In the words of my former boss, California Governor Jerry Brown, " . . . Trump is the null hypothesis; he's demonstrating that climate denial has no integrity and no future.  And the exact opposite, that climate activism is the order of the day."  Governor Brown is, without a doubt, the best-educated, most philosophically adroit office holder I've ever worked for.   I mean, who else could use the term "null hypothesis" as if he were speaking about today's grocery list? [n.b. During his first stint as governor back in the 1970's, I worked in his Office of Planning and Research where I specialized in environmental ethics.]

Now, just to keep us up to date, a "null hypothesis" is  a commonly accepted fact that researchers work to nullify or discredit. Of course, what is the "commonly accepted fact" today, might become tomorrow's universally rejected twaddle.  That which nullifies or discredits a null hypothesis is referred to as "the alternate hypothesis."  

An example:  In centuries past, several scientists, including Copernicus, set out to disprove their contemporaneous "null hypothesis" that the earth was flat. This eventually led to the rejection of the "null" and the (almost) universal acceptance of the "alternate" - namely, that the earth is round. Most people accepted the alternate — the ones that didn’t created the Flat Earth Society! What would have happened if Copernicus had not disproved it but merely proved the alternate? No one would have listened to him. In order to change people’s thinking, scholars first had to prove that their thinking was wrong.  

In retrospect,  believing  the world to be flat way back when, was about as inane as the "climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese" lyric constantly chanted by '45 during the 2016 campaign.  

Today, although the vast, vast majority of scientists have thoroughly discredited the null hypothesis (that pernicious climate change is a hoax), there are still those (apparently including our POTUS) who think the vast majority of scientists are full of it.  (Never forget that more than 8 years ago, the future '45 and 3 of his children signed a letter to President Barack Obama calling for a global climate deal. Today,  no one working in '45's White House will answer the question "Does the President believe there is global warming?"  Oops!

Over the last several days, numerous "fact checked" transcripts of the president's climate change speech have appeared on the web. The number of untruths, misstatements and outright whoppers are numerous, to say the least.  But then again, the audience before whom the POTUS was speaking in the Rose Garden that day, was predisposed to believe that everything he says  is a pearl of truth.  Among the alternate bits of reality which escaped the fact checkers' attention were  the dire predictions of an organization called "The National Economic Research Associates" [NERA], whose chilling statistics and "what-ifs" of economic catastrophe '45 used to bolster his case for pulling out of the Paris Accord. To listen to '45, his decision was based on economics, his love of coal, and strong desire to keep the world from "laughing at us."   Turns out, NERA, an economic consulting firm founded by the neo-conservative Hudson Institute's Irwin Stelzer (known as "Rupert Murdoch's right-hand man) has long been a shill for the coal industry. Its statistics and warnings of doom have been used by climate change deniers for years . . . including the densest of all deniers, Senator James Imhofe (R-OK).  In other words, '45's null hypothesis - that climate change is a hoax - is itself a hoax backed up by "facts" and statistics which are full of - as Granny would have it- "canal water." That is to say, one hoax backed by yet another.

While '45 was correct about not wanting other countries "laughing at us anymore," his resolve was misplaced: they are laughing . . . at him.  This has been '45's modus operandi from the moment he entered politics: to convince a certain segment of American society that we are victims; that the world hates us, is taking advantage of us. and we should all be afraid. This is what an aged British friend of mine used to refer to as "the Poor Pitiful Pearl syndrome."

Despite all the negativity and predictions of doom the president used to justify pulling out of the Accord (and potential ceding of international leadership to the Chinese),  we are happy to report, that 45's political tone-deafness could actually prove to be a boon for both democratic activism and the future of planet Earth. Again, we return to Governor Brown and  the State California, which has the planet's 6th largest economy (just ahead of France).  The day after '45's speech in the White House Rose Garden, Governor Brown announced that he was leaving for China, where he would work with high-ranking Chinese officials to work on joint carbon-reduction projects.  Moreover, Governor Brown is already putting together a coalition of countries, states, cities and corporations that will work together towards the creation of new energy-efficient projects, millions of renewable energy jobs, and a universal lowering of greenhouse emissions.  He has more knowledge and experience about what we used to call the "theology of ecology" than any elected official in America. 

Already, some of America's most populous cities and states, most profitable corporations and countries around the globe, have shown a deep and abiding interest in joining this movement - regardless of whether or not '45 and the federal government will be a part of it. This is the living, breathing definition of "people power" - a force which has historically disproved more than one null hypothesis.  

Fear ye not. Do not give up.  For together we, the residents of Earth can and will save our planet from degradation. One day soon, humans will land on Mars, thus creating an alternate hypothesis:  that when people of good will, high ideals and abundant creativity work together, dreams can become reality.

138 days down, 1,319 days to go . . .

Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone.