Pandemic, Pandering and Partisan Politics

The story is told that back in 1957, Horace Stoneham (1903-1986), the longtime owner of the National League’s New York Giants, got it into his head that for economic reasons, it would be best to move his team from the Polo Grounds out west to Minneapolis. Stoneham confided this plan to his friend, Dodger owner Walter O’Malley (1903-1979), who in turn let his friend Horace in on a secret: O’Malley himself was already negotiating with the powers-that-be out in Los Angeles to move his team out West. O’Malley suggested that Stoneham ditch the plan to move the Giants out to Minnesota, instead contact San Francisco Mayor George Christopher, and move his team to the City by the Golden Gate . . . thus preserving their bitter rivalry. It was a brilliant idea; today, 63 years after their mutual move out west, there is still no stronger antagonism in all professional sports than that between the two teams . . . and their  respective fans.

Decidedly, rivalries and gross animosities exist in many areas of life.  In American politics, one can go all the way back to Jefferson and Adams; their personal and ideological antipathies were so great that the latter steadfastly refused to attend the inauguration of the former in 1800. The Roosevelts of Oyster Bay could not abide their kinsmen from Hyde Park . . . despite a mutual family member (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt) coming from one side of the clan and marrying into the other.  (BTW: they actually pronounced their family name differently: T.R. and his clan pronounced it “ROOS-e-velt,: while FDR and his, “ROSE-a-velt.”)  For the past several years, due partly to the growth of social media and partly to the - shall we say - “sportive” nature of politics itself, Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Progressives have become as lethally combative as fans of Dodger catcher Johnny Roseboro and Giant pitcher Juan Marichal (that’s them in the picture above, with pitcher Sandy Koufax attempting to play peacemaker).

When all is said and done, historic sports rivalries are nowhere near as serious or as lethal as those in the world of politics. Take the vast divide between conservative Republicans and even moderate Democrats when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines, the wearing of masks, social distancing and science versus conspiracy.  Today, there is a vast gap between those who are ready, willing and able to wear masks, maintain social distancing and get vaccinated just as soon as their name is called, and those who simply will not comply with any recommendation whatsoever.  These folks – mostly conservative Republican men – see in any governmental guideline or suggestion, an invasion meant to take away their First Amendment liberties.  Witness the following verbal contretemps between House Freedom Caucus founder Jim Jordan and America’s leading epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci:

The very idea - heatedly expressed by Rep. Jordan - that the entire COVID-19 protocol is nothing more than an assault on American freedom and liberty is, of course, utter twaddle. I would imagine that “Gym” Jordan, his Congressional colleagues and political partisans wear seatbelts when they drive and vaccinate their children before sending them to school instead of crying “FOUL” and warning of a loss of individual liberty.  I simply cannot accept they really believe that placing restrictions on businesses during a time of pandemy is nothing but the first step on the downward path to perdition; what they do believe is that loudly proclaiming such is a wonderful way to raise funds, get like-minded souls to the polls and get themselves reelected.  It is an obvious case of pandering for purposes of partisan political gain.  

Consider the following: 

• As of April 15, 2021, just over half of American adults have now received at least one inoculation; this according to a Monmouth University poll released 48 hours ago;

• Similarly, a Quinnipiac University poll, also released on Wednesday, showed that 45 percent of Republicans told pollsters they did not plan to get vaccinated;

• More than two in five Republicans said they would avoid getting vaccinated at all costs; thus suggesting that President Biden has not succeeded in his effort to depoliticize the vaccines;

• The states with the highest vaccination rates are now mostly Democratic-leaning, while the states with the lowest rates are deeply conservative.

  Democrats believe more strongly than Republicans in the power of government. Compare, for example, the chaos of the Trump administration’s virus response, to the Biden administration’s. Democrats belief in the power of government certainly doesn’t ensure they will manage it competently, but it may improve the odds greatly.

  Vaccine hesitancy has declined substantially, polls show. But it is still notably high among registered Republicans.

The relationship between vaccination and politics reflects demographics. Vaccine hesitancy is highest in counties that are rural and have lower income levels and college graduation rates — the same characteristics found in counties that were more likely to have supported Mr. Trump. In wealthier Trump-supporting counties with higher college graduation rates, the vaccination gap is smaller, the analysis found, but the partisan gap holds even after accounting for income, race and age demographics, population density and a county’s infection and death rate.

When asked in polls about their vaccination plans, Republicans across the country (especially men without college educations - have been far less likely than Democrats to say they will likely avail themselves of the free inoculations. As previously mentioned, Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University polls indicated that almost half of Republicans did not plan to pursue vaccinations. Only around one in 20 Democrats said the same. The question is why?  While it is possible that some of the differences in vaccination rates are driven by distribution issues and eligibility rules, most researchers find that hesitancy has more to do with which “team” one roots for.

                                         Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

There has been a tremendous amount of anti-science, pro-”Socialist” claptrap spread around the internet in recent months.  The messages stress that Democrats are urging vaccines, business closings, masking ordinances and social distancing in order to magnify and heighten the fear of the so-called “Socialist agenda” on the American public; of erasing the entire First Amendment. It has been bought hook, line and sinker by a near majority of conservative Republican men.  However, one should also be cognizant of there being a handful of prominent anti-vaxxers on the Democratic side as well.  Robert Kennedy, Jr., the son of the late United States Senator, has been a leading voice in the anti-vaxxer movement.  As far back as 2005, Kennedy wrote an article in Rolling Stone and Salon called "Deadly Immunity", alleging a government conspiracy to conceal a connection between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism. The article contained five factual errors, leading Salon to issue corrections. Six years later, on January 16, 2011, Salon retracted the article completely.  Most recently, Kennedy has promoted multiple conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 including false claims that both Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are trying to profit off a vaccine, and suggesting that Bill Gates would cut off access to money of people who do not get vaccinated, allowing them to starve.  What motivates an otherwise worldly, progressive environmental activist like Mr. Kennedy to immerse himself so publicly and utterly in conspiracy theories when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines?  I for one am mostly stumped, although I do know that one of Bobby, Jr.’s 6 children (son Conor) suffers from anaphylaxis peanut allergies. Kennedy wrote the foreword to The Peanut Allergy Epidemic, in which he and author Heather Fraser link increasing food allergies in children to certain vaccines that were approved beginning in 1989. 

Kennedy I can’t figure out.  However, with regards to conservative Republicans, I am convinced that their conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines and utter distrust for science has everything to do with pandering for the purpose of partisan political gain . . . plain and simple. Shame on those who promote this strategy. Whether they realize it or not all they can hope to accomplish in the long run is to significantly lower the number of conservative Republican voters they can count on to come out to the polls and support their fear-driven platform in 2022, 2024 and beyond.  

Go Dodgers . . . get your shots!

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

Matt Gaetz and Denver Riggleman III: The Craven and the Courageous

Back in the day, Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank’s congressional colleagues and writers at The Hill regularly voted him as being both the brightest AND the funniest member of the House. And this, despite the fact that Barney was far to the left of most Democrats and virtually every Republican . . . not to mention being one of the few proudly “out” gay members of that body.

Today, it’s anybody’s guess who would be voted the best and brightest in the lower chamber; Maryland’s Jamie Raskin? California’s Adam Schiff?  Florida’s Ted Deutch?  Who knows?  By the same token, the one member of the House who has the lowest rating among both Democrats and Republicans when it comes to collegiality, sincerity, honesty and professionalism is, without a doubt, North Florida’s Matt Gaetz, who as of the past several days, has become front-page news all over the country . . . so much so that even Saturday Night Live assigned one of its cast members, Pete Davidson, to skewer the  hyper-conservative Tallahassee blowhard in prime time. 

For those who have been vacationing on Uranus (pun likely intended), Representative Graetz is reportedly being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department over numerous allegations; the most oft-mentioned being that he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her travel, which would be a violation of what at one time was called the “Mann Act.” 

(n.b. A word about the Mann Act: Passed by Congress in June 1910, the Mann Act was named after its primary author, Illinois Representative James R. Mann. The act invoked the Commerce Clause to felonize the use of interstate or foreign commerce to transport women for immoral purposes. The Act was aimed at prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking. Congress appointed a commission three years before its passage to investigate into the problem of immigrant prostitutes. It was alleged that immigrant women were brought to America for sexual slavery and immigrant men lured American girls into prostitution (or “white slavery”). Over the years it was in effect, it was used to arrest such well-known people as African-American boxer Jack Johnson (arrested and convicted in 1913, pardoned by Donald J. Trump in 2018; architect Frank Lloyd Wright (arrested, tried and acquitted in 1926 - charges eventually dropped; Charles Chaplin (arrested, tried and acquitted in 1944); and musician Chuck Barry (arrested, tried and found guilty in 1960 - served 3 years in prison). The most famous history of the early days of this act was written shortly after its passage by the “notorious” anarchist Emma Goldman in 1910. She herself would be deported during the 1919 Palmer Raids aboard the “Soviet Ark” ).

Now, before anyone gets on the “it’s all the fault of the liberal Democratic establishment and the lame-stream media" bandwagon, please know that the investigation began during the Trump Administration where A.G. Bill Barr was still calling the shots.  Gaetz responded to the DOJ allegations alleging that he was the victim of a former Justice Department official seeking a $25 million extortion payment.  "We have been cooperating with federal authorities in this matter, and my father has even been wearing a wire at the FBI’s direction to catch these criminals," Gaetz wrote on his Facebook account. With every passing day the story gets seedier, more complex and less credible, the potential charges ever more damning. 

This past week CNN reported that Gaetz showed other Republican legislators nude photos and videos of women he claimed to have had sex with; he showed the photos while on the floor of the House chamber. Charges have also surfaced that Gaetz once led a group of Republican legislators in a game where they scored “points” for sleeping with staffers and interns—with bonus points for virgins—also resurfaced last week. Though this was not the first time. Or the second. Or even the third. 

 As of this past weekend, he is being investigated for whether or not he dipped into either campaign or Congressional office funds to pay for this and other alleged trysts. Then too there is a sidebar about Gaetz’s involvement with his new 26-year old fiancée Ginger Luckey (they became engaged at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club this past December) and her brother, 28-year old Palmer Luckey, a big name in the tech world who is currently seeking government defense contracts for his company (Anduril . . . named for a sword in J.,R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy) to build weaponized drones, thus taking the industry lead away from the Chinese.  It turns out that Rep. Gaetz has already sponsored legislation to ban federal funds from being used to purchase Chinese drones.  The measure did not pass. 

In light of the initial interest in the “sex-with-a-minor-for-hire” charge, one of the most chilling and ironic things to emerge is that Gaetz, the well-heeled scion of a longtime political family (his father, the onetime president of the Florida Senate sold Vitas Healthcare Corporation business for a reported half billion dollars in 2004; his grandfather Jerry Gaetz ran for Lt. Gov. of North Dakota in 1964) the irony turned out to be that Matt Gaetz cast the lone vote against a bill (S.1536) aimed at combating human trafficking.  In defending his vote against the bill - officially  known as the “Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act,” (which creates a committee within the Department of Transportation to develop “best practices for states and transportation groups to combat human trafficking”) Gaetz defended his vote in a Facebook broadcast averring that “despite the best intentions of the bill,” it represented "mission creep" at the federal level in creating the committee.

He further stated “Unless there is an overwhelming, compelling reason that our existing agencies in the federal government can't handle that problem, I vote no because voters in Northwest Florida did not send me to Washington to go and create more federal government . . . . If anything, we should be abolishing a lot of the agencies at the federal level like the Department of Education, like the EPA and sending that power back to our state governments." 

There is a pathetic irony at work here. In recent weeks, practically every well known official in the New York state Democratic Party, and not a few national figures, have called upon New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign following allegations of sexual harassment. As of forty-eight hours ago, the number of Republican officials calling for the resignation of Rep. Matt Gaetz since it was revealed he is under investigation stands at … zero. How in the world does this fit in with political tribe that refers to itself as “the party of family values?” Somehow they’ve managed to forgive and forget the sins of such party stalwarts as Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump while piling on - not to mention impeaching - Bill Clinton for his indiscretions.

Unquestionably, Matt Gaetz’s chances of being reelected are looking rather slim. It also seems to me that are at least four possible scenarios hovering about the future of this craven “son-of-Trump”

• He will resign office and become a media commentator . . . perhaps at NewsmaxTV or One America News (he has already hinted at this);

• He will face a tangle of well-heeled conservatives in the 2022 Republican primary and either lose or face a run-off;

• He will be expelled from the House of Representatives;

• He will face trial on who knows how many charges.

Regardless of what scenario takes center stage, one can only hope  that justice shall be done.

So much for the craven Matt Gaetz.  Let’s briefly turn our attention to the courageous Denver Riggleman III.  Denver who?  Riggleman (1970- ) a Virginia Republican, served but a single term in Congress (January 3, 2019-January 3, 2021), representing Virginia’s 5th District.  He was/is a mostly conservative (e.g. non-hard right) Republican who served 15 years as an intelligence officer in the United States Airforce, created, along with his wife, Christine Blair and 3 daughters, a 50-acre craft distillery in Afton, Virginia (outside of Charlottesville) called “Silverback Distillery.”  Former Representative Riggleman is not your typical Republican politician.  He is a longtime self-described “Bigfoot scholar” and, although he doesn’t necessarily believe in its existence, self-published a 2020 book entitled Bigfoot… It’s Complicated.  In July 2019 he officiated at the same-sex marriage of 2 friends; the next month he was censured by Republican Party officials who claimed that he had  “abandoned party principles.”  Riggleman was defeated after serving but a single term by Bob Good, a former associate athletic director at Liberty University . . . aptly described as a “reTrumplican.”  

But it wasn’t officiating at the marriage, owning and operating a distillery or his fascination with Bigfoot that got party officials to run and fund Bob Good; it was the fact that Denver Riggleman III showed uncommon valor on the floor of the House of Representatives.  No, it was having the guts to be the lone Republican House member to speak in favor of the passage of H.Res. 1154, a resolution “Condemning QAnon and rejecting the conspiracy theories it promotes.”  In speaking to his House colleagues about the threat of QAnon, then-Rep. Riggleman said, ““The grotesque nature of the tweets and Instagram posts and the anti-Semitic tripe spewed by QAnon adherents should cause concern for everyone . . . .  [The] death threats Tom Malinowski (D-NJ - the resolution’s main sponsor) received were a surprise and a shock,. This type of behavior is easily condemned.”  And for his courageous stance, Riggleman lost his seat. 

But that is not the end of Denver Riggleman’s involvement in the public arena.  He is now working for a group of prominent experts and academics at the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of disinformation in American politics and how to thwart it. The group has undertaken several extensive investigations into how extremists have used propaganda and faked information to sow division over some of the most contentious issues of the day, like the coronavirus pandemic and police violence. Their reports have also given lawmakers a better understanding of the QAnon belief system and other radical ideologies that helped fuel the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.  Three cheers for this former Republican who at one point belonged to the House Freedom Caucus and actually supported Donald Trump for President in 2016.

Being a craven blowhard like Matt Gaetz might be ego-fulfilling and sexually exciting; being a courageous public servant like Denver Riggleman III can lead to political dismemberment.  All things considered, I’ll take the latter over the former every day of the year.

 Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

The Talking Cure

                        Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Anyone who has spent even a bit of time learning about the history of Freudian psychoanalysis, is familiar with the term “The talking cure.” In a nutshell, the good Dr. Freud was speaking with a colleague of his, Dr. Josef Breuer one day and Breuer told Freud about a patient he called “Anna O” (in reality, Bertha Pappenheim), who was experiencing “hysteria.” Breuer excitedly told Freud he had discovered that if he hypnotized Anna, she'd reveal all sorts of information she didn't recall when she was conscious — and her symptoms would lessen afterward. Freud tried this “talking cure” in his own private practice, but found patients would talk pretty freely to him without hypnosis, provided they were in a relaxed position — specifically, lying down on a couch — and if they were encouraged to say whatever came into their heads, a process known as “free association.” Once a patient talked at length, Freud could analyze what the person said to figure out what past traumas were likely causing the patient's current distress. Thus was born Freud’s “Talking Cure.” It was a boon to the nascent world  of psychoanalysis . . . not to mention the sale of couches!

As important as the Talking Cure has been to  psychoanalysis, one must keep in mind that it is not - nor ever has been - a panacea; sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Let’s just say that it can be a valuable arrow in Freud’s quiver.

The United States Senate has its own version of the Talking Cure - a tradition which occasionally offers a helping hand to those in the minority, but frequently acts as a political hindrance or impediment to those in the majority.  Here, of course, we are referring to one of the most nettlesome of all legislative strategies: the filibuster.   

Likely stemming from the Dutch /ˈvrɛi̯bœy̯tər/ meaning either a “freebooter” or “a pirate,” the Senate website defines filibuster as “An Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions."  The term filibuster was first used in the 1850s when it was applied to efforts to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent a vote on a bill. In the early years of Congress, representatives, as well as senators, could filibuster bills. However, as the number of representatives grew, the House amended its rules placing specific time limits on debates. In the 100-member Senate, unlimited debate continued on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary on any issue. Prior to 1917 the Senate rules did not provide for a way to end debate and force a vote on a measure. That year, the Senate adopted a rule to allow a two-thirds majority to end a filibuster, a procedure known as "cloture." In 1975 the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds (67) to three-fifths (60) of the 100-member Senate.

                James Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes  to Washington” (1939)

For non-political geeks, the greatest exemplar of the term filibuster is Jimmy Stewart playing the young idealistic Senator Jefferson  Smith holding the Senate floor hour after hour so as to keep a handful of his more corrupt colleagues from destroying his dream - creating a national boys’ camp.  Most will recall the hoarse, reeling Smith collapsing on the Senate floor after setting some sort of record for “talking the bill to death.”  In reality, this is a tactic which actually did exist: the “talking filibuster.”  The all-time record for the longest filibuster of ‘em all belongs to the late South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who  spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, according to U.S. Senate records.

Thurmond began speaking at 8:54 p.m. on Aug. 28 and continued until 9:12 p.m. the following evening, reciting the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, President George Washington's farewell address and other historical documents along the way.  So long as he stayed on his feet, it  really didn’t matter what he spoke about. Using what might be called a “tag-team” strategy, Thurmond and several of his colleagues (all Southern Democrats) managed to hold the floor for an amazing 57 days (March 26 -June 19), the day the Civil Rights Act of 1957 passed.  Among the other filibuster champs, several were, believe it or not, progressives: Wisconsin Senators William La Follette, Sr. (18 hours, 28 minutes in 1908) and William Proxmire (16 hours and 12 minutes) who managed to stall debate on an increase of the public debt ceiling in 1981 and Oregon’s Wayne Morse (the “Tiger of the Senate”) who spoke for 22 hours and 26 minutes to stall debate on the Tidelands Oil bill in 1953.

Today, the “talking filibuster” is a remnant of the past.  Just calling for a filibuster on a given bill (most always by the minority party) makes it possible to stall legislative activity against a particular bill while continuing to be in session.  In 2003, Senate Democrats threatened a lengthy filibuster to block several of then-President George W. Bush’s nominees. Republicans discussed invoking the parliamentary move since, like a nuclear explosion, it cannot be controlled once it is unleashed. Former GOP Senate Majority leader Trent Lott coined the term “the Nuclear Option” because both parties saw it as an unthinkable final recourse, just like nuclear war. During a standoff over George W. Bush nominees in 2003, Republicans discussed invoking the parliamentary move by using the codeword “The Hulk" since it, like the superhero alter ego, cannot be controlled once it is unleashed. Senators who wanted to give the maneuver a more positive public image, call it “The Constitutional Option.”

Well, now that Democrats and Republicans are living and working in an equally divided Senate (where only V.P. Harris can break a tie), the idea of minority Republicans reverting to the filibuster has both sides wondering what to do.  Some - mostly the progressive left - want to get rid of the filibuster altogether; others want to go back to the days when cloture requires 60 votes; then there is President Biden, Majority Leader Schumer, his assistant, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, and  the so-called “institutionalists.”  They realize that they simply do not have the votes to change Senate rules (it only takes a majority vote).

If the Democrats managed to end the filibuster (as of today, they don’t have the votes) the first thing they would no doubt do is pass their voting rights bill, (S.1), which would counteract curbs Republicans are placing on mail-in and absentee voting, streamline national voter registration and end the partisan drawing of congressional lines. Voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has argued Democrats could possibly get around the filibuster for this one bill. But most people agree that once a party ends the filibuster for one bill, it'll be hooked and do it again and again.

President Biden is likely the lynchpin in this debate. He was a senator for decades and respects the institution, but he's now a president trying to get things done. Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos just the other day he'd like to revert to a "talking filibuster."

"I don't think that you have to eliminate the filibuster, you have to do it [like] what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days," he told Stephanopoulos. "You had to stand up and command the floor, you had to keep talking."

"So you're for that reform? You're for bringing back the talking filibuster?" Stephanopulos asked.

"I am. That's what it was supposed to be," Biden said, a la "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

There is already quite a significant debate over whether or not returning to the “Jefferson Smith” version of the filibuster will solve anything.  Shortly after the president’s sit-down with George Stephanopoulos, CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza wrote an analysis piece flatly stating that A 'talking filibuster' isn't going to solve the Senate's problems.”  Only time will tell.

I personally agree with the POTUS and a growing cadre of Democrats. By going back to the old rule, it would force Republicans to remain on their feet in front of all those cameras, showing themselves to the American public for what they are; obstructionists whose main issue is being against anything and everything the Democrats are for.  Period.  It would b e easy enough to change one aspect of the filibuster rule: mandating that all speechifying must be germane to the topic at hand. In other words, no more reading from the Bible, the White Pages, or Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham (as Ted Cruz actually did in September 2013).

Which brings us back to Dr. Freud who, although unbelievably gifted and insightful, was by no means political.  Nonetheless, he did understand the mind, heart and soul of the politician Fpr indeed, here are his thoughts:

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” 

Can we talk?

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

My Friend Marvin: the Once and Former Conservative Republican

More than 20 years ago, when I was dividing my time between Harvard’s Widener Library, Williams College’s Sawyer Library and the Library of Congress doing research on what would turn out to be the first of two books on the history of the Jews of Congress, someone - now long forgotten - sent me an email asking if I was aware that Oklahoma Republican Mickey Edwards likely came from a Jewish background. And so, dropping everything, I spent a considerable amount of time looking into this conservative Republican’s family history. It turned out that indeed, Mickey Edwards (née Marvin Henry Yarnovsky) was and is a former Jewish member of Congress who was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1937, the son of Isidore, the orphaned son of Polish immigrants and Rosalie, whose family had changed their name to Miller, and was the daughter of Lithuanians. Mickey would eventually move with his family from Cleveland to the southside Capitol Hill section of Oklahoma City, where his father, (now called “Eddie Edwards”), managed a shoe store. Mickey has long said that were he to have remained in Cleveland, he likely would have turned out a liberal Democrat.

Mickey eventually earned a degree in journalism, graduated from law school and was elected to Congress, where he became a leading Republican. During his 16 years (1977-1993) in Congress, he served variously on the House Budget and Appropriations committees and was the ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. He was also a member of the House Republican leadership, serving as the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, the party's fourth-ranking leadership position, He also helped found the Federalist Society and was one of the leading lights of the American Conservative Union.

Once leaving Congress, Mickey, a truly intelligent, well educated man, went into academia, where he spent more than a decade teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, then working as a Lecturer of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and as a member of the Princeton Project on National Security. He taught courses on "How to Win Elections" and "Congress and the Constitution." To this day, he is also a Vice President of the Aspen Institute, and Director of the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. In 2013 Mickey was appointed a National Constitution Center – Penn Law Visiting Fellow. But to me, what is most telling is that he gave up his affiliation with conservative Republicanism and eventually left the party altogether.. Why? Because he could no longer abide with the cultish nature (read: pro-Trump) of the G.O.P. In a radio interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Edwards said that he had voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 general election. He endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and left the Republican Party after the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6 of this year.

In another interview with KFOR, an NBC-affiliated station in Oklahoma City, Edwards said he could not understand how even after Republican, Trump-supporting governors and legislators confirmed it was a fair election, members of Congress continued to call it into question.

“The members of Congress knew better. They knew better. [Oklahoma Senator James] Lankford knew better. Members of the house delegation knew better,” Edwards said. “They knew the results, they had the information. They saw that it was Republican Trump supporters all across the country who were saying, ‘no, we lost.” He simply could no longer lend his name or talents to a Republican party that was devoid of values, issues or morality. “This has become a cult. It’s no longer a political party. It’s a cult. It’s the kind of a cult that when the leader of the cult does anything, no matter what it is, or how awful it is, they voted,” Edwards said. “They voted to question the election results even after people came into the Capitol, tried to kill them and killed a police officer who was trying to protect them. And they did that.”-

Now mind you, these are the words, sentiments and political actions not of what used to be referred to as a “Rockefeller Republican,” or even today’s far more conservation incarnation - a so-called “moderate” Republican - but rather, as mentioned above, a former member of Congress who was a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, national chairman of the American Conservative Union and at one time chaired the House Republican Policy Committee. In other words, this is a party which welcomes the loony likes of Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Rand Paul (KY) and Josh Hawley (MO), or Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Madison Cawthorn (NC-11), Matt Gaetz (FL-1) or Lauren Boebert (C0-3); it has no place for a legislator/thinker like Mickey.

I call Mickey every once in a while just to see how he is doing, get in a bit of mutual kvetching, and dream dreams about the future.

While we’re at it, let’s get a few things straight:

• First and foremost, the Republican Party, far from being a political party in the historic sense of the term, is a full-blown cult which cares not a whit or farthing about what a majority of voting citizens support or desire, but mostly what their cult leader supports or desires.

• Second, more and more, Republicans are far more easily identified by what they are against than what they are for. They are against abortion, gun safety legislation, taxation, federal spending (on anything but tax cuts) and all Democrats (from AOC and Bernie Sanders to Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin) . . . whom they want all Americans to believe are nothing more than a toxic gang of traitorous Communists bent on the utter destruction of this country

• Third, that besides taking back the White House and Congress from the hands of these “Communists,” they are only concerned with the money and the votes of quickly fading white Christian majority. And if to keep said majority they must put electoral stumbling blocks in front of all Democrats - suburban housewives, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, college students and the elderly - so be it.

To my way of thinking and understanding, this is not a winning strategy; it is a blueprint for a dangerously divided America. Think about this:

• Despite the fact that more than 70% of the American public supported passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package, not a single Republican in either the House or Senate voted in its favor.

• Despite the fact that the vast majority of Republican legislators want to see Roe v. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court, a majority of Americans (61%) continue to say that abortion should be legal in all cases (27%) or most (34%) cases. A smaller share of the public (38%) says abortion should be illegal in all (12%) or most cases (26%).

• Six percent more Americans say they were in favor of their senators voting to convict former President Donald Trump during the Senate impeachment trial than in his previous trial, according to a new poll. In the poll, conducted by Gallup, 52 percent of Americans said they were in favor of convicting Trump, while 45 percent said they' were in favor of their senators voting against conviction. And yet, when the final vote was taken on February 13, 2021, only 7 Republican senators voted in favor of conviction — and they are now on the former president’s “hit list” - Republicans whom he has sworn to see destroyed due to their lack of loyalty.

Is this any prescription for future electoral success?

Unlike many partisan Democrats I speak with on an almost daily basis, I do not wish to see the GOP disappear.  Any political system that relies on but a single political party to get things done is a system headed towards the land of autocracy.  For myself, I greatly prefer a two-party system in which both major parties campaign on – and can fully explain and justify – what they are for and what they are against.  A political system which exists only on what one party proclaims – and frequently in dishonest terms – what the other side is against, is none too healthy.

In other words, a system which cannot find a place for the likes of my friend Marvin is in deep trouble.  As always, I wish him well, pray for his health and energy, and wish him many, many more years of helping bring healing to his former party . . .  you know, the one created by a guy named Abe? I think I’ll dial him (Marvin, not Abe) tomorrow . . .

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

March 7, 1965

Fifty-six years ago today (March 7, 1965) the then 25-year old civil rights activist John Lewis (1940-2020) led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama and faced brutal attacks by oncoming state troopers. Lewis himself was one of 18 who were injured badly enough to require hospitalization. Footage of the violence collectively shocked the nation and galvanized the fight against racial injustice. In response, civil rights leaders planned to take their cause directly to Alabama Governor George Wallace on a 54-mile march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. Although Wallace ordered state troopers “to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march,” approximately 600 voting rights advocates set out from the Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday, March 7.

In the wake of the shocking incident, President Lyndon Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African American citizens the vote.

Within days, the number of people participating in the march - whose ultimate destination was Montgomery - had grown to more than 25,000.  Now led by John Lewis, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the horrific event which began on “Bloody Sunday” galvanized the nation.  So much so that Congress passed - and President Lyndon Johnson signed the “Voting Rights Act” on August 6 . . . a mere 5 months after “Bloody Sunday."  The purpose of this act was to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

Unfortunately, over the past several years, governors, state legislators and members of Congress (overwhelmingly Republican) have been doing everything in their power to undo or reverse the Voting Rights Act. The majority of those seeking this reversal are motivated by pretty much the same concern: putting as many stumbling blocks in the path of poor and minority voters, a sizeable percentage of who regularly vote for Democrats. Most readers of The K.F. Stone Weekly know that there are important aspects of voting which are protected by the 15h Amendment which in sum states that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Nonetheless, many state legislatures - especially those under Republican control - have been, as mentioned above - been putting significant roadblocks before the rights of minority voters.

Today, in memory and honor of the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” President Biden has signed an executive order to promote additional access to voting. The administration describes the executive order as an “initial step” to protect voting rights — one that uses “the authority the president has to leverage federal resources to help people register to vote and provide information,” according to an administration official. This move comes not just in memory of “Bloody Sunday,” but also as a strong response to Republicans in statehouses around the country who are doing everything in their power to advance voter suppression legislation, including a bill in Georgia that voting rights groups say targets Black voters. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed measures in recent days to increase voting rights, including HR1 -- a sweeping ethics and election package that contains provisions expanding early and mail-in voting, restoring voting rights to former felons, permitting voting on Sunday, and easing voter registration for eligible Americans.

Despite the fact that the decisions of 60 separate courts and Donald Trump’s own Justice Department finding virtually no voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election (the one which the previous president and his staunchest supporters claimed to be as true as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west) Republican lawmakers in 43 states have introduced 253 bills to restrict ballot access. The greatest activity has been in battleground states, especially Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Measures involve early voting, mail-in ballots, drop boxes, mobile voting facilities, and rules to disqualify ballots received after Election Day that cannot be overruled by the executive branch or the courts.

Some restrictions, however, are likely to be adopted in states in which the GOP controls both the legislature and the governor’s mansion. The Iowa state senate recently passed a bill shortening the early voting period. Although Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis declared that his state “did it right” in November 2020, Florida is poised to reduce the number of drop boxes. Texas lawmakers have submitted a slew of bills limiting voter access.  This week, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill whose motive Gwinnett County Republican election official Alice O’Lenick acknowledged was partisan: If House Bill 531 is enacted “at least we have a shot at winning,” she said. The legislation mandates that all counties have the same early voting dates and times: Monday-Friday, during business hours, one mandatory Saturday, one additional Saturday or Sunday. The elimination of early voting in the evening and all but one Sunday is aimed directly at working class Georgians and “souls to polls” initiatives, which usher African Americans to polling places after Sunday morning church services.

An Iowa bill aimed at limiting voting and making it harder for voters to return absentee ballots is headed to Gov. Kim Reynolds' desk this week, after passing both Republican-controlled chambers of the state legislature.

The bill, introduced by a Republican state senator, specifically would reduce the number of early voting days from 29 days to 20 days. It would also close polling places an hour earlier on Election Day (at 8 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.).

The bill also places new restrictions on absentee voting including banning officials from sending applications without a voter first requesting one, and requiring ballots be received by the county before polls close on Election Day.

The Republican-controlled Iowa House passed the measure on Wednesday night in a party line vote of 57-37. That vote came a day after the GOP-controlled Iowa Senate, where the legislation was introduced, also passed the bill on a party line vote.

One attorney representing Arizona before the Supreme Court went so far as to admit that these changes and restrictions had virtually nothing to do with guaranteeing that elections could neither be stolen nor rigged: “We are pushing for these changes for they guarantee the success of Republicans in coming elections.”  If anyone needs a new definition of chutzpah, here it is . . .

So what can be done?” Can or will President Biden’s executive order regarding the 15th Amendment put a horse collar around the Republican-controlled states that wish to turn back the clock?  The only thing that comes to mind on this, the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” is for everyone to work just as hard to overturn their state legislatures and replace their governors as they/we did to get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris elected in 2020.  

In other words, there’s no rest for the weary.  We simply must keep the spirit of John Lewis and Bloody Sunday alive.

Any takers?  Please let me know.

Copyright©2012 Kurt F. stone

The Clone

Politically speaking, Florida is one of the strangest states in the nation. How so? Because while the farther north one goes in the 50 states, the more liberal/progressive the state tends to become. Likewise, the farther south one travels, the more conservatives you run into. Not so the “Golden State.” Here, the farther north one travels, the more politically southern it becomes. And for those of us who live in the southern-most part of the state (Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties) we bask in the land of Democrats and anti-Trumpers. The Jewish members of our Florida Congressional delegation (Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Ted Deutsch, and Lois Frankel) all hale from the South, while the most ultra-conservative represent districts which abut Alabama and Georgia . . . in more ways than one.

Florida is a state with a lot of conservative political clout. Consider that among those giving serious thought about making a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 - that is, presuming the former President isn’t spending the lion’s share of his time and presumed fortune in court - three (Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio as well as Governor Ron DeSantis) are generating a lot of publicity and dollars. In matter of fact, of the three, the 42-year old DeSantis garnered 21% (good for second place) in a straw poll of possible presidential candidates at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) gathering held in Orlando.  (n.b. Donald Trump came in first with 55% of the vote, and both Rubio and Scott were in single figures.  Without Trump in the mix, DeSantis came in first with 43%, with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem hauling in 11% for second place and Donald Trump, Jr., coming in third with 8%.)  And unlike politicos like Senators Rubio, Scott, Cruz and Graham, who all went from being targets of some of then-candidate Trump’s most scurrilous, obnoxious, opprobrious barbs and then became among his most ardent supporters, DeSantis has, generally speaking, been a Trump acolyte since day one. (I guess that since DeSantis went to Yale largely on the strength of his prowess as a baseball player [at one time he was captain of the varsity], that would make him Trump’s earliest and biggest “athletic supporter.”  LOL) 

Interestingly, though in his final House race in 2016, then-Rep. DeSantis ran mostly against Democrats and rarely - if ever - mentioned his support for The Donald . . . despite having been one of the very first members of Congress to endorse him.  However, once he became Governor of Florida in early January 2019, he began acting, sounding - even breathing - like a clone of America’s Tweeter-in-Chief. This was especially true when it came to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The lion’s share of Governor DeSantis’ polling numbers deal directly with his handling (or ignoring) of the COVID-19 pandemic. While his mentor was either proclaiming that with the coming of warmer weather the virus would disappear, or overriding his medical advisors and urging that hydroxychloroquine and/or household bleach were the way to go, DeSantis was underreporting the number of COVID-19 cases in Florida; at one point during the presidential election, he simply stopped making daily reports so as not to make his mentor look bad. He also refused to close beaches or bars, and urged that public schools be immediately reopened since “as everyone knows, children don’t get COVID-19,”  and refused to institute anything close to the wearing of masks in public. It got so bad that in December of last year - after Trump lost the election - DeSantis went back to making statistical reports and urging that nursing homes and senior independent living facilities receive the lion’s share of vaccine; The New Republic named DeSantis its “Scoundrel of the Year.”

So what is DeSantis’ strategy vis-à-vis a presidential campaign in 2024?  Coming out of this past weekend’s CPAC gathering – where only 68% of those polled were in favor of Trump running again – DeSantis is likely putting his money on his mentor’s being either “overly occupied” (all those potential legal challenges) or legally debarred from, “beating the Democrats for a third time.” This means that at this early juncture, Governor DeSantis is running for “Mr. Congeniality,” rather than “Mr. America.” One can only wonder what Trump’s feelings were about his political future when he could only win the approval of 68% of his most loyal supporters. DeSantis is likely bright enough to understand that many Republicans are going to be looking at fresh faces in both 2022 and 2024. But for DeSantis, this will mean having to figure out who he is going to be - and what he’s going to be running on - in a post-Trump world. After several years of being the “Trumpiest of the Trumpeters,” he going to have to change both the key and the mode of his silly symphony . . . which of course carries a lot of political risk. For if there’s one thing hard-corps conservative Republicans truly crave it’s taking government back from the Democrats.  Trump lost it; politicos like Cruz, Rubio, Scott, Graham and DeSantis cannot reverse that trend without altering their tune.

 Coming from the ancient Greek κλώνος (klónos) meaning “twig,” cloning is a technique scientists use to make exact genetic copies of living things. Genes, cells, tissues, and even whole animals can all be cloned. Some cloning is actually done in nature; single-celled organisms like bacteria make exact copies of themselves each time they reproduce. Others, of course are made in a lab.  In the world of politics, clones are created self-consciously by organisms seeking to triumph by imitating the ideas, platforms and messages of others.  But just as in nature or the lab, political clones are subject to the same genetic defects, faults and flaws as their original host.

In other words: beware Governor DeSantis . . . the footsteps in which you wish to tread are filled with genetic glitches, gullies and gremlins.  

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

Dancing in the Dark,

                     Charisse & Astaire: “Dancing in the Dark”

Despite its title, this week’s post has virtually nothing to do with the sensual balletic piece essayed by Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the 1953 MGM classic “The Band Wagon.” Rather, this post deals with the second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump, which is winding up even as I write these very words. Up to this point, the 9 Democratic House managers have presented a tour-de-force - a prosecutorial masterstroke - which even gained the muted plaudits of Republican members of the United States Senate and the former inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. For those of us who watched their tag-team prosecution, it seemed inconceivable that anyone could turn a blind eye to the crime of the former POTUS, and vote for acquittal. Then came the presentation of Trump’s legal team which, in comparison to the triumph of Reps. Raskin, Liu, Castro et al fell as flat as a sheet of Saran Wrap.  And yet, even before closing arguments, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his colleagues began announcing that they would unhesitatingly vote for acquittal. 

How is this possible?  What fills their hearts and brains?  What do their eyes see or their ears hear? Do they suffer from some kind of collective Spondylosis which makes it impossible for them to stand erect and do the right thing?  Are they toadies or patriots?  Are they motivated by fear, greed or hatred? 

First things first: the chances of Donald J. Trump being convicted by a two-thirds majority of the Senate are impossible; he will be acquitted.  His 2016 prediction will once again be proven true: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible."  

(THIS JUST IN: THE SENATE, BY A VOTE OF 57-43, VOTED AGAINST CONVICTION. ONLY 7 OF THE SENATE’S 50 REPUBLICANS VOTED FOR CONVICTION WHILE 43 VOTED TO ACQUIT HIM OF THE SINGLE CHARGE; ALL 50 DEMOCRATS VOTED FOR CONVICTION.)

After listening to both sides - the prosecution and defense - and weighing both the facts and fantasies separating the two sides, I am absolutely astonished that the vast majority of Republicans could still vote against conviction.  Indeed, shortly after the final vote was tallied, Minority Leader McConnell gave —what at least for him - was the harshest and most scathing assessment of Donald J. Trump that any Republican outside of those affiliated with “The Lincoln Project” could give. He excoriated the former president for his legal, moral and political deficiencies, and went so far as to accuse him of violating the very oath he took on January 20, 2017 - the one in which he solemnly pledged that “. . . to the best of my ability,” he would “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. . . so help me God.” With his speech of extreme disapprobation (“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day . . .”), Senator McConnell hit the nail squarely on the head. And yet, he still voted against conviction on the scantiest and most sophistical of grounds (“We have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen.”)

To my way of thinking the Senate Minority Leader and the overwhelming majority of his (Trump’s?) party, are “dancing in the dark;” bumping into the political furniture, incapable of keeping up with the rhythm, “waltzing in the wonder of why we’re here,” to quote a line from Howard Dietz’s original lyric. Is it fear of Donald Trump that kept Senate Republicans in line? Could it be earth-bred hatred for progressives or the steadfast need to be reelected at any cost?  Or is it something else?  Let’s take a look at a handful of possibilities:

1. The fear of Donald Trump: Let’s face it: the first rule of politics is “get thyself reelected . . . no matter what the price or cost.”  A vote to convict (on the part of Republican office-holders up for future reelection - especially in 2022) could mean drawing an even more ardently doctrinaire Trumpeter in the next primary.  Simply stated, discovering that one is likely going to be challenged in the Republican primary by a Marjorie Taylor Greene or a Matt Gaetz just because they opposed Donald Trump has got to be a conservative politician’s worst nightmare . . . and biggest motivator. 

2. An earth-bred hatred for anything and everything that smacks of “progressivism”: Due to the nature of modern talk-radio and hyper-partisan cable news, social media politics and the often wacky views of donors with deep pockets, a politician must not only work against people from “the other side:” one must publicly abhor them with a passion. They are not just “the enemy:’’ they are the servants of Satin.  (It must be said that this goes for elected officials on both sides of the aisle, but far more so for followers of Donald J.) Do Republicans really, truly believe this about Democrats?  In private, possibly no; in public undoubtedly yes. One must not get in trouble or draw the ire of the Donald’s base. 

3. Cowardice: By and large, successful politicians like people - at least those who vote for them.  It’s nearly impossible for a misanthrope to make a go of it in the peculiar three-ring circus known as  politics.  There are so many people who want to grab your ear for a brief chat, take a picture, or tell you either how wonderful or woeful you are. Then there are those above you who, with a snap of the fingers, can start you on an upward trajectory or fill your socks with cement. As a result, not wishing to be offensive, many politicians take the coward’s way out.  I have to believe that many of the 43 Republican votes against conviction were the result of base cowardice.  Whatever happened to “profiles in courage?”

4. Something else: It has long been my belief that one of the smartest, most essential (though ultimately most difficult) things we could do to tone down - if not rid us of - all the fiery political partisanship and misfeasance would be overturning the  Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. In this atrocious decision, the court held that the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations. In a sense, this court decision turned politicians and their campaigns into the willing slaves of the אוֹגעשטאַפט מיט געלט (ongeschtupt mit gelt: Yiddish for “stuffed with money) class; always willing to do, vote or espouse that which their hyper-wealthy patrons and matrons command.  Although not an absolute cure-all, overturning this decision, which in my estimation was “Worse Than Dred Scott,” could be as powerful a curative as Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Although I’m sure that a sizeable percentage of the American public would have greatly preferred that the Senate had summoned up the political Stones to convict this mumzer, we can take consolation (without delving into the netherworld of schadenfreude) that Donald J. Trump is going to be attacked on all fronts; some legal and many financial. He will pay a steep price for being . . . well, Donald J. Trump.  And as for the Republican Party?  They are in need of a serious overhaul; no longer will they be able to bill themselves as the party of values, patriotism and law & order.

And who knows? Maybe in between depositions, future bankruptcies and growing isolation, the former president will hopefully come to understand just how difficult and painful it is to dance in the dark.

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

The Living Embodiment of Irony

ironic //īˈränik: happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this.

Anyone notice the extreme irony of Donald Trump’s last days as POTUS as compared to his first? Throughout the fateful 2016 campaign against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “Boss Tweet” spent a great deal of time promising to build a “big beautiful wall” between the U.S. and Mexico. He promised it would solve most, if not all our immigration problems by keeping out the violent, job stealing dregs of humanity stealing across our southern border. And the price? No object; Mexico was going to pay for it. He was so serious about this wall that beginning in late December 2018, he actually shut down the federal government for well over a month unless and until Congress gave him all the money he wanted in order to complete it. At one point, he even famously said he would be “proud” to own the governmental closure required to secure the funding . . . and then put the blame on Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats. (BTW: when asked about what happened to the Mexican payment, he simply denied ever having said a word about it and, true to form, blamed the “lame stream” media. about it.  

Four years later, as President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris are about to shed their respective title adjectives, we find that during his four years in office, Donald Trump has built precisely 15 miles of wall along our southern border.  And here’s where the irony comes in:  In the final days of the Trump/Pence administration, a virtually impregnable fence has been constructed all around the Capitol grounds to keep the very symbol of our Democratic Republic safe not from illegal immigrants, but rather from home-grown, home-sewn domestic terrorists.  In other words, Donald Trump accomplished what he promised . . . but in the most ironic way imaginable. 

The first blog I posted after Donald Trump’s inauguration came out on January 23, 2017 and was entitled Can Knowledge Be More Dangerous Than Ignorance? That was blog #629, and already evinced a weary, jaundiced feeling about the new administration and its leader. Today’s blog, which posts 3 days before the next inauguration, is #826. This post carries a degree of hope and energy a vast number of us have not felt for a long, long time. Ever since November 3, 2020, the Biden/Harris team has shown a greater degree of humanity, organizational smarts and political professionalism than anything we have experienced since the end of the Obama/Biden years. But let’s not kid ourselves: the country faces formidable challenges in such diverse - though ultimately, interlocking and tangible - areas as public health, economy, racial justice and international relations, not to mention such abstract necessities as empathy, civility, and trustworthiness. We as a nation must together relearn that just because the law does not forbid something, doesn’t mean that it should be done.

I for one have been both heartened and thoroughly impressed by the caliber, competence and experience of the people named to join the incoming administration. Unlike those they are replacing from the previous administration, these men and women are capable of hitting the ground running; they have no need to introduce themselves to their institutional constituency. Let us both hope and work for their acceptance by the United States Senate.  Now controlling the barest of majorities in the Senate, the Democrats should be able to manage this feat without undo exhaustion or political horse trading.  Then too, I urge senatorial Republicans to give the Biden/Harris team an opportunity to lead.  Try hard not to claim before your constituency that the Biden/Harris folks are “a bunch of  ultra left-wing communists and socialists.”  You know that’s not true, so why lie to them?  For the sake of an election in 2022 or 2024?  

Let us also urge the opposition not to waste time and precious energy pointing out each and every one of the incoming President and Vice President’s shortcomings, character flaws or supposed past vices.  They are both good and honorable people . . . who also happen to be human beings. By now, you should know that they consider themselves to be servants of the people.  After what we’ve experienced these past four years in terms of what one might call “private cupidity as public policy,” it will be next to impossible for anyone with an ounce of honesty or reason to accuse Joe Biden or Kamala Harris of being corrupt. Woodrow Wilson, likely the most academically sagacious of all presidents once said, “the difference between the two parties is that the Republicans are the party of property; Democrats the party of the people.”  For Republicans to support Donald Trump even after all he has done for himself and then turn around and accuse Joe Biden of essentially being the head of a crime syndicate is not only deeply ironic; it is the height of madness.

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and a Democratic Congress are not going to bring clear skies overnight. They will, I believe, do their very best to bring honesty, civility and morality back into politics. It’s not going to be easy. President Biden is facing the most divided nation since Abraham Lincoln . . . and he knows it. But unlike his predecessor, he has lived a real life devoted to making the lives and dreams of real people manifest. If ever a POTUS/VPOTUS need prayers said on their behalf, this would be it. Were I to have been honored with delivering the opening prayer (which I was not . . . no problem) I would quote the angriest, most insightful of all the prophets: Isaiah (61:1):                                          

        ר֛וּחַ אֲדֹנָ֥י יְהֶוִֹ֖ה עָלָ֑י יַ֡עַן מָשַׁח֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֹתִ֜י לְבַשֵּׂ֣ר עֲנָוִ֗ים שְׁלָחַ֨נִי֙ לַֽחֲבֹ֣שׁ לְנִשְׁבְּרֵי־לֵ֔ב לִקְרֹ֤א לִשְׁבוּיִם֙ דְּר֔וֹר וְלַֽאֲסוּרִ֖ים פְּקַח־קֽוֹחַ

(Ruach adonai eh’loheem ah-lye: ya’ahn mashakh adonai oh-tee l’va-sayr ah-na-veem sh’lakhani , l’ckhavosh l’nee’b’ray-layv, leekro l’ishvuyim d’ror, v’la-ahsureem p’kakh ko-akh.”

Namely, “The spirit of the Lord God was upon me, since the Lord anointed me to bring tidings to the humble, He sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to declare freedom for the captives, and for the prisoners to free from captivity.”

Of a certainty, this is a tall, tall order; but one I feel resolutely certain President Biden and Vice President Harris will carry out with every fiber of their being.

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

For What It's Worth . . .

                          The Buffalo Springfield, c. 1966

According to an urban legend, rocker Stephen Stills wrote the 1966 classic protest song “For What It’s Worth” as a response to the Vietnam War. As with many such legends, it’s simply not true. Rather, that which provided the motivation for his writing one of Rock’s all-time legendary protest songs was the long-forgotten Sunset Strip Curfew riots in 1966 - a classic countercultural clash between the L.A.P.D. and young people on the Sunset Strip in my hometown, Hollywood, California. This song, as recorded by the then 21-year old Stills and his band, The Buffalo Springfield, became an instant classic.  So much so that here in 2021 - 55 years after it was first recorded - it is just as vibrant and meaningful - even if misunderstood - as during the Capitol Hill invasion by President Donald Trump’s militant crazies just this past week.

There's something happening here

But what it is ain't exactly clear

There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

 I think it's time we stop
 Children, what's that sound?
 Everybody look, what's going down?

Many of you reading this blog will remember various marches on Washington, in which we came together in the late 1960s and early 1970s to protest the war in Vietnam.  I myself attended many . . . not as an angry protester, but rather as an “insider,” whose task it was to teach the many, many protesters coming largely from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago and Berkeley, to teach them the basics of decorum when meeting up with members of the Cabinet and elected officials in Congress.  (While they stayed on the floors of youth hostels, I had the great fortune of being put up at Averill Harriman’s home in Georgetown.)  We wanted to make sure that these largely teenage protesters,  regardless of their political pique, and addiction to both pot and Country Joe and the Fish, acted like civilized adults.  It must have worked; shortly after our “attack” on the nation’s capitol, LBJ announced that he would not run for reelection. 

There's battle lines being drawn
 Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
 Young people speaking their minds
  Getting so much resistance from behind

  It's time we stop
  Hey, what's that sound?
  Everybody look, what's going down?

Mind you, we did not storm the Capitol bearing weapons of harm and hurt;  we were content to have our presence duly noted, our voices and lyrics heard.  For the most part, we were a pretty literate, well-educated mass . . . so totally unlike the mob of right-wing insurgents who acted far more like criminal cultists than engaged citizens. We - yesteryear’s mass gathering of anti-war, anti-draft protesters - were just as angry back then as the largely White Supremacist, racist criminals who shot an arrow into the heart of democracy this past Wednesday.  We were against what a tone-deaf administration was engaged in; this new gathering - ironically made up largely of people  (mostly males) the age of our eldest children - were attacking and attempting to bring down an entire society.  We were armed with tons of facts, blamed LBJ for the war and General Hershey for the Selective Service System and had a lot of negative feelings about what was then collectively known as “The Establishment”; we were accused of being immoral Communists and Socialists. Today’s insurrectionists are motivated mostly by lies they believe to be the utter truth;  lies perpetrated  by their cult leader, the President of the United States.  The one thing that remains the  same is that we, the protesters of yore are still being called immoral Communists and Socialists.  One major  difference is that back during the “Days of Rage,” many of us actually knew what the difference between Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyites and Titoists were, whereas to today’s Trumpian seditionists, a lower-case “communist” is simply someone who has not bought into the lies, the fears, the conspiracies or stereotypes spread about by their beloved leader.

 What a field day for the heat (Ooh ooh ooh)
  A thousand people in the street (Ooh ooh ooh)
  Singing songs and they carrying signs (Ooh ooh ooh)
  Mostly say hooray for our side

It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what’s going down?

With each passing day, we are learning more and more about what this horrifying event: 

• About how it was all planned in plain sight;

• About how much culpability Donald Trump and  his many cowardly Congressional enablers possess;

• About what these craven thousands brought with them to Washington, D.C in terms of weaponry;

• About how far they were willing to go in their attempt to overturn the  2020 election;

• About the conspiratorial nature of the event;

• About just how lucky that things were not worse.

Without question, what  Donald  Trump and his hypnotized hooligans carried off was the absolute low-water mark in all American history. Drawing upon his childhood in post-World War II Austria, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, compared Wednesday's riot at the Capitol to Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, the rampage of violence by the Nazi regime against Jewish communities, synagogues and businesses in Germany and Austria in 1938. "Wednesday was the day of broken glass right here in the United States," he said, referring to broken windows in the Capitol building. But the mob also "shattered the ideas we took for granted" and "trampled the very principles on which our country was founded."  Not a particularly successful governor of the nation’s largest state, the “Governator” firmly placed the blame on Donald Trump for continuing to make baseless claims of election fraud and "misleading people with lies." 

"My father and our neighbors were misled also with lies and I know where such lies lead," the  former actor said. "President Trump is a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst President ever." 

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
 It starts when you're always afraid
 Step out of line, the men come and take you away

 We better stop
  Hey, what's that sound?
  Everybody look, what's going down?

It has long been clear that Donald Trump is a psychological train wreck; a person who never should have been elected president. Some of the harshest, most on the money criticism of him was voiced more than 5 years ago by people like Senators Rubio (FL), Cruz (TX) and Graham (SC) who of course are still in his enabling corner. In all, it turns out that 8 senators and 139 representatives voted to overturn the 2020 election results. And despite the fact that there were and are a tremendous number of anti-Semites among the most fanatic and delusional of Trump supporters, all three Jewish Republican members of Congress (Tennessee’s David Kustoff and New York’s Elissa Slotkin and Lee Zeldin) voted to decertify the electoral college returns. To my way of thinking not only these three - but indeed all 147 members of Congress should be held accountable in the next election.

As I write these words, Vice President Mike Pence - who is currently in his boss’s dog house - is visiting the White House.  Whether he’s there to convince Donald Trump to resign (in exchange, perhaps for a pardon), submit to being replaced by his #2 under terms of the25th  Amendment, or be impeached for the second time is anyone’s guess.  Two  things which are reasonably certain:

1. Donald Trump is in a very, very dark place; scared to death of what’s going to happen to him the moment he leaves the White House, and

2. He’s going to known throughout the rest of history as America’s biggest loser; the  man who, ironically is going to hear the words “YOU’RE FIRED!” every hour of every day for the rest of his life.

Then too, it is possible  that the movement he and his enablers have created is going to suffer a tremendous loss of political potency.  Historically, cults begin to fade once the leader leaves the stage . . . whether through imprisonment, mortality or suffering from the  “Wizard of Oz syndrome.”  President-elect Biden  and Vice President-elect Harris are going to have their hands full bringing America back from the brink and reintroducing what is best about this  country  to not  only our friends and allies, but our enemies  as well.  

We better stop
 Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down?

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

For What It's Worth lyrics © Cotillion Music Inc., Ten-east Music, Springalo Toones, Ten East Music, Richie Furay Music, Cotillion Music, Inc.

Politics As a Poorly Played Chess Match

Anyone who has ever been a student in any of my “All Politics All the Time” courses at Florida International University (now beginning their 23rd year), knows that I liken big-league, big-time politics not to a game of Texas Hold-em Poker, but rather to a chess match. Why? Because the former, as I understand it, is pretty freewheeling, while in chess, participants, in the main, have two different possible strategies by which to play: either ascertain your opponent’s next 4, 5, or 6 moves (in an effort to get you to play their game), or to force your opponent to unknowingly play your game. Either plan can lead to victory . . . or defeat. To my way of thinking, that’s the essence of hard-core politics . . . if played with intelligence, foresight and a first-rate crystal ball. My preference is to get my opponent to play my game . . . to fall into my trap.

The same goes with politics. Played correctly, few things happen accidentally or out of sheer luck. That’s probably why world-class campaign managers and political strategists are in such high demand; they know what they’re doing. Or at least that‘s the way things are supposed to go. In the age of Donald Trump - where the candidate/incumbent is also his own master strategist and chief political bottle-washer, things can be unbelievably confusing and tending to suffer from high levels of incomprehensible anomie (a term invented by Emile Durkheim, the French father of Sociology meaning “a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals”. Unlike with previous presidents and presidential candidates, Boss Tweet listens to almost no one but himself, rejects and dismisses those who disagree, and only uses the narcissist’s pronoun: the first person singular. 

Well before the November 3, 2020 election, Donald Trump was already telling his favorite entertainers at Fox, News Max and One America News that the only thing that could keep him from being reelected would be a massive act of fraud. More than 2 months after his defeat at the hands of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and California Senator Kamala Harris, he is still performing from the same script.  Whether or not he and his pigeon-hearted acolytes (whether on Capitol Hill, Fox News, or out in the American hinterlands) really, truly believe there was a massive conspiratorial fraud which  led to his defeat is absolutely irrelevant.  Each group has its reason for continuing to back his lunacy.  For  those in office, there is the constant dread that to oppose him - to call him out - would be tantamount to political suicide.  Take Texas Senator Ted Cruz as but one  example.  I mean, here is a guy who, despite his Harvard law degree and the fact that then-presidential candidate Trump accused his father, Rafael Cruz of being part of the conspiracy to assassinate JFK in 1963 and referred to his wife Heidi as “ugly,” is nonetheless  at the forefront of those looking to overthrow the Electoral College come January 6. Then there’s Missouri Senator Josh  Hawley who, despite his Yale Law School degree, was the first member of the Upper Chamber to support what The Atlantic’s  Eric Wehner called “an act of civil vandalism.” 

As of today (Monday, January 4, 2021) along with Cruz and Hawley, there are an additional 10 Republican Senators who will support overturning the Electoral College:  Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Mike Braun (Ind.), Steve Daines (Mont.), Ron Johnson (Wis.), John Kennedy (La.) and James Lankford (Okla.), as well four who were just sworn in yesterday (Sens. Bill Hagerty (Tenn.), Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Roger Marshall (Kan.) and Tommy Tuberville (Ala.).  Over on the House side, there are close to 12 dozen Republicans who have declared themselves in favor of overriding the already certified electoral votes from upwards of 6 different states. In other words, when faced with a choice between supporting Donald Trump’s quixotic quest for what at best would be a pyrrhic victory and protecting the Constitution (specifically Amendment 12) which each of them has sworn to “preserve, protect and defend,” they are bigger fans of Mussolini than James Madison.

Back in the late 1920s, Will Rogers - vaudevillian, movie star, essayist, humorist and honorary mayor of Beverly Hills - wrote “I am not a member of any organized  political party; I am a Democrat.” Had he an ounce of wit about him, I’ve got to believe that the (hopefully soon-to-be former) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell might turn Rogers’ bon mot on its head and sadly proclaim “I am not a member of any organized political party; I am a Republican.”  And he might be correct. For indeed, over the past couple of years, the G.O.P has begun splintering like a piece of old weather-worn balsa. The issues which have brought about this disorganization are not about their leader’s inability to lead, tell the  truth, or show concern for anyone but himself; no, they are more strategic . . . like spending every waking hour bellyaching about the vast conspiracy which denied him reelection, or threatening those who do not bow before him with political annihilation.  Indeed, as I finish writing this paragraph, it has just been reported that ‘45 has  targeted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) a day after the senator said he would not join Wednesday’s effort to object to the certification of Electoral College votes affirming Joe Biden as the next president.

"How can you certify an election when the numbers being certified are verifiably WRONG,” Trump tweeted, suggesting he would falsely claim during his rally in Georgia later this evening that he was a true winner of the election despite multiple audits and court cases confirming Biden had won and that Trump claims lacked standing.  At one point, the deeply conservative 43 year old Cotton (who is a graduate of both Harvard and Harvard Law) was thought to be a possible presidential candidate in either 2024 or 2028.  Through his tweets, Donald Trump has done his best to put an end to Cotton’s presidential aspirations: "@SenTomCotton” Republicans have pluses & minuses, but one thing is sure, THEY NEVER FORGET!” 

But the balsa is beginning to creak.  

Just the other day, the Republican-controlled Senate handed ‘45 the first veto override of his presidency.  More and more GOP institutionalists (including Leader McConnell, Utah’s Mitt Romney, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Nebraska’s Ben Sasse [who called those who refused to override the veto “institutional arsonists”]) have admitted that Joe Biden did win the 2020 election.  Now under normal circumstances this would be neither especially newsworthy nor a brilliant bit of political strategy.  But these are not normal times.  It’s not just one election that is being called into question.  The endgame here is not so much the reelection of Donald Trump (which no one - and I mean no one) believes for one second is going to happen.  Rather, it is the trashing and ultimate destruction of our representative democracy; it is the willful replacing of Trump with Putin and small-d democracy with capital-A autocracy. 

Just yesterday, ‘45 began his endgame.  The strategy?  Engaging in an hour-long phone conversation with Georgia’s Secretary of State in which he told the Republican Brad Raffensperger "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state." The phone call featured Trump, just days before he is set to leave office, pleading with Raffensperger to alter the vote total and launching into a barrage of discredited conspiracy theories about the election. He even suggested that Raffensperger may face criminal consequences should he refuse to intervene in accordance with Trump's wishes. During the conversation, Trump floated fragments of several baseless conspiracy theories that were primarily pushed by QAnon followers over the last two months, including a widely debunked theory about voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems.  Once a printed transcript of the phone call (accompanied by a full audio file) of what Trump had said became available, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking him to “open an immediate criminal investigation into the President,” citing statements from the call that suggest Trump was illegally “soliciting election fraud.”

Trump’s endgame strategy is so unbelievably warped that nobody seems to have asked themselves “Who would ever support such a fatally flawed creature again?  People like Senators Cruz and Hawley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis  (a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law) are clinging as tight as they can to their mentor in the hopes of becoming the G.O.P.’s 2024 nominee for POTUS.  That is probably the worst opening move anyone could ever play . . . short of pulling out a gun and shooting their opponent.  

Polls open in Georgia in just about 12 hours.

2 weeks and 1 day until the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

 Might I suggest beginning the match with 1e-4, the “King’s Pawn Opening?” It immediately stakes a claim in the center, and frees two pieces (the queen and the king’s bishop) for action.  Try it: it’s been known to work!

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

How Low Can You Go?

                                Charles Kushner: Trump’s Mechutan

Unlike a majority of Jewish  people (especially rabbis) residing here in South Florida, I was neither born nor raised in a Lower East Side family where the parents spoke Yiddish whenever they did not want the children to understand what they were saying.  Both I and my slightly older sister Erica (Riki) are 100% Californian. Neither our grandparents nor great-grandparents for that matter were Eastern-European immigrants who came through Eliis Island or Castle Garden and then settled a short distance from their  place of disembarkation. Rather, the earliest generations of Hymans, Greenbergs and Schimbergs were born in 19th century Virginia, Maryland and Minnesota. Their children - our great-grandparents - were native English speakers about as far removed from “Tevya,  Golda and the girls” as can be imagined. The next generation - our great grandparents - raised their families in places like Baltimore, Richmond, Virginia, Chicago and Kansas City. (Granny Annie, my mother’s mother, was born in 1896 in the same St. Paul neighborhood  where just a few days earlier, F(rancis) Scott Key Fitzgerald (F. Scott) had entered the world - not exactly a Yiddishe shetl). As such, neither our great grandparents, grandparents nor parents understood more than 5 words of Yiddish. (I myself did learn a bit of Yiddish with the late Professor Herb Paper out of an urge to be able to read Sholem Aleichem in the original) Indeed, today, whenever we want to speak in front of “Madame” (our soon-to-be 97 year old matriarch) in a language she won’t understand, we (meaning me and Annie) chatter away in Hebrew. (Unlike most America-born, Hollywoodish Jewish great-grandmothers of her generation, she does do reasonably well in French and Italian.) So what in the world does any of this have to do with “Politics & a Whole Lot More,” as the subtitle of this blog has proclaimed for going on 17 years? 

To wit: our purpose is to introduce a Yiddish word that takes a paragraph to explain - a word that soon may become as well known as schmuck, mazal tov, meshuggah, chutzpah, glitch, mensch, shtick and yente - all of which likewise take a brief  sentence or two to explain.  And that word is מחותן (pronounced m’chut’n for a male,  מחותנתטע (pronounced m’chutn’steh for a female, or מחותונים (pronounced m’chutonim in the plural.  Let’s, for the moment, pay attention to the male version (מחותן) of the term.  Derived from the Hebrew word for “groom,” a mchut’n is how one describes the relationship between you and your child’s father-in-law.  A simple example (and getting ever closer to the purpose of this little linguistic exercise) would be to explain the relationship between Donald Trump and Charles Kushner - Jared Kusher’s father . . . the one just given a presidential pardon.  Charles Kushner is Donald and Melania Trump’s m’chut’n, while Seryl Kushner (née Stadtmauer), Jared’s mother and Charles’ wife, is the Trump’s m’chutn’steh; together, they are Donald and Melania’s m’chutonim. (BTW: For those who speak/understand Spanish, the word consuegro/consuegra is pretty close  . . . “the father-in-law/mother-in-law of one’s son or daughter.”). In issuing a pardon to his m’chutan just days before he (please G-d) heads for the exit, Donald Trump has done something which has never happened before in American history and undoubtedly will never happen again.  

Ever since George Washington issued the first presidential pardon in 1795 (forgiving two Pennsylvania men sentenced to death for treason after participating in protests known as "The Whiskey Rebellion”) there have been some forgotten doozies. How many recall that in 1868, Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, fully pardoned every soldier who fought for the Confederate Army? Or that in 1989, Ronald Reagan pardoned George Steinbrenner, the loud-mouthed owner of the New York Yankees, who had been convicted in 1974 on 14 criminal counts for making illegal financial contributions to Nixon's reelection campaign two years earlier? 

Of course, up until just the other day, President Gerald R. Ford’s pardoning of his predecessor Richard Nixon had been the most notorious such act in all American history. Now mind you, ‘45 isn’t the only president to pardon a family member: Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger (who had pleaded guilty to cocaine distribution charges and served a year in prison). Roger’s pardon was one of 147 issued by the outgoing president on his very last day in office.  45’s pre-Christmas pardons were far, far more than mere gifts to loyalists such as Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and his m’chutan Charles Kushner; they were knockout punches aimed directly at core American principles.  For in addition to these particularly noxious characters, there were three former Republican members of the House of Representatives -  Chris Collins of New York, Duncan Hunter of California and Steve Stockman of Texas — who were guilty of, respectively, insider trading, stealing hundreds of thousands in campaign money and robbing a charity.  These pardons, in the words of columnist/constitutional law professor/professional whistleblower Harry Litman “. . . delivered an especially brutal kick in the teeth to the DOJ.” Generally speaking, in order to receive a presidential pardon, petitioners are supposed to have served their sentences, demonstrated genuine remorse for their crimes and led a productive life afterward. Such requirements are just one more joke to Trump — by a conservative estimate, more than half of his pre-Christmas pardons went to people who did not meet Justice Department criteria.

Ivanka Trump’s billionaire father-in-law Charles Kushner had pleaded guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering, and making illegal campaign donations. Moreover, he had confessed to retaliating against his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities, by hiring a prostitute to seduce him. He filmed the encounter and sent it to his sister, the man’s wife. Prosecuted by then U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, Kushner served 14 months of a two-year sentence in federal prison.  Christie, who recently referred to Kushner’s crimes as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney,” gained enough notoriety and positive publicity that he was eventually elected governor of New Jersey. His involvement in prosecuting the case also got him kicked off the Trump political jet.  I guess what they say is true: קיין גוטע מעשה ווערט נישט באשטראפט (keyn gute meshh vert nisht bashtraft - viz. “No good deed goes unpunished”) Prior to 2016, Charles Kushner was a major donor to Democrats in New York.  Once Donald Trump started his race for the White House, Kushner switched his allegiance - and donations - to the G.O.P.  And yes it is true, he has long been a major contributor to Chabad and other Jewish educational institutions.  

But Roger Stone?  Paul Manafort?  Michael Flynn? Have they shown or voiced any contrition?  What have they done to indicate any rehabilitation?  Former general Michael Flynn, who served about 2 weeks as Donald Trump’s first National Security Advisor, has, of late, been appearing on News Max and OAN urging his former boss to put the country under martial law in order to get the 2020 election overturned!  This is how one earns a presidential pardon?  Or, have the Stones, Manaforts and Flynns done something far more important: put cash into the Trump coffers?  Although there is as yet no hard proof that a crime has been committed by Donald Trump, the history is both clear and ever-present: the man has consistently used his office as a personal ATM. 

There will undoubtedly be more pardons between today and 11:59 a.m. on January 20, 2021.  And who knows, perhaps the  final pardons - which easily could be issued to many Trumps (Donald, Don, Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Jared certainly come to mind) won’t be signed by the man who, up until he left for Mar-a-Lago just other day, sat behind the Resolute Desk . . . but by Mike Pence who may well become “President for a day” just so he can pardon his former boss. Only time will tell.  (BTW: Anyone seeking to purchase a handsome replica of the Resolute Desk, it will set you back $6,118.49.  Ironically, the best venue for purchase is Overstock.com, whose former C.E.O., Patrick Byrne, plays a significant role in the conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.  And by the way, the Resolute replica is made not in the United States, but rather Indonesia.)

In pardoning his m’chut’n - another billionaire real estate tycoon who got his start because his father was very, very rich - Donald Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the truth of two things:

1. דאָס עפּעלע פֿאַלט ניט װײַט פֿון בײמעלע (Dos epele falt nit vayt fun beymele - “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” and

2. When it comes to Donald Trump, the answer to the question “How low can you go?” is נידעריקער ווי די נייַנט קרייַז פון גענעם (nideriker vi di naynt krayz fun genem) . . . “Lower than the ninth circle of hell!”

8 days until the Georgia election;

23 days until Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are inaugurated.

Be safe . . . See you next year!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Pardon Me?

At the outset, let me be clear: I am not an attorney, never attended law school and didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn last night. Nonetheless, I do have both a stepson and a son-in-law who are practicing attorneys and did take two challenging courses in Constitutional Law taught by a visiting faculty member of the Harvard Law School. Even after a half-century, I well remember such landmark cases as Marbury v .Madison, McCullough v. Maryland, Schenck v. United States, Plessy v. Ferguson and Schechter v. United States, not to mention the worst decision of all time (with the possible exception of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford. And it is possible - just possible - that before too long, there may be yet another infamous case brought before the nation’s highest court: that of Trump v. United States. The issue? Whether or not it’s legal for the President of the United States to grant him/herself a pardon.

Before getting to the issue at hand and predicting whether or not the outgoing POTUS - along with his family and most loyal toadies -  will, in fact receive pardons, let’s clear up one thing: I for one couldn’t care less whether or not he pardons himself, gets someone else to do it for him, gets Mitch McConnell’s hand-picked Supreme Majority to throw him a legal lifesaver,  or constructs a  piranha-infested moat around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No matter how the scenario  plays out, it’s going to ultimately be a lose-lose situation for him and his family.

First things first: according to the U.S. Constitution (article II, Section 2, Clause 1 the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” While the president’s power to pardon seems unlimited, a presidential pardon can only be issued for a federal crime, and pardons cannot be issued for impeachment cases tried and convicted by Congress. The way things work these days under this particular Department of Justice, Trump enjoys broad immunity from federal probes as president; there are currently no known federal investigations being conducted into possible crimes by him. That could all change at 1:00 on January 20, 2021, when he is no long POTUS. In any event, there are also a minimum of 9 state cases on the drawing board up in New York for which only Governor Andrew Cuomo could issue a pardon. And the way things stand, there are precisely 2 chances of that ever happening: absolutely none and a heck of a lot less than that.

So what choices does Boss Tweet have?

1. Pardon himself. (Trump recently retweeted a post from ultra-out-of-it GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz which said that the he should pardon "everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic if he has to.”) From the point of view of legal logic, pardoning himself would be a clear admission that he, Donald Trump, had committed crimes. Let’s face it: one cannot be pardoned for a crime one has not committed. There is precedent for people receiving a presidential pardon even before they have been convicted. But in the case of Donald Trump, he has long insisted that he has never done anything wrong or illegal; it has all been the product of a vast conspiracy created by his enemies in the “lamestream media,” or the entire Democratic Party or all those who are just plain jealous of his success.

2. Another possibility would be for him to his Cabinet to institute the 25th Amendment, thereby having him resign from office, thus turning the presidency over to Mike Pence, thus giving him the constitutional authority to pardon his former boss. One “huuuge” problem with this is that were Pence to pardon Trump, it would thrust a lethal political dagger into the heart of the Hoosier Hero, who has already expressed interest in running for president in 2024. Remember what pardoning Richard Nixon in 1974 did for President Gerald Ford in 1976?

President-elect Joseph Biden has, to date, made it fairly clear that he will not seek to use his Department of Justice to pursue federal investigations about his predecessor.  Whether or not this remains the last word remains to be seen.  It is more than likely that ‘45  still has a few things up his sleeve for his final 50 days in office; these may serve to change the new president’s and his DOD’s mind.  Without question, Biden and Harris are already receiving advice and pressure from a fractionated party as to what they should do.  

According to various anonymous sources within the Trump camp, the president has been seeking advice recently as to whether pardoning himself is even legal in the first place. There was a legal memo written by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel just days before Nixon's resignation in 1974 that argued a president could not self-pardon. The DOJ’s position was quite simple: "Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, it would seem that the question should be answered in the negative." That was, of course, a legal opinion, not law; but much like the opinion that a sitting president can't be charged with a crime, these things take on the feel of precedent. Instead, Nixon's successor and former vice president, Gerald Ford, as previously mentioned, gave his old boss an unconditional pardon a month later, thereby scuttling his own ambition of being elected President of the United States.

Of course, at the moment, Trump’s questions are largely academic (despite the fact that he is likely our least academic president since Warren G. Harding); as mentioned above, he has yet to be charged with a federal crime for which it would take a presidential pardon in order to keep him from being sentenced to living out his years at Club Fed. As things now stand, so long as he is POTUS, there is every reason to believe that he is incapable of being in this position: after all, attorney general, Bill Barr, has made very clear he'd follow existing Department of Justice guidance which prevents a sitting President from being charged with a crime. If Trump gets creative, perhaps he could a try to use a preemptive self-pardon to deal with a potential future federal tax judgment against him. The IRS, for instance, says he incorrectly claimed a $72.9 million tax write-off, according to the New York Times reporting on his tax returns.

But once again, a pardon - whether granted by a succeeding president (like Mike Pence) or the president himself, is, at base, an admission of guilt. And that sort of guilt can neither be lived down nor denied by calling it a hoax. A pardon would make a 2024 presidential redux next to impossible . . . no matter how many apostles still believe he walks on water and makes Abraham Lincoln look like an also-ran.

As I stated at the outset, no matter which path Trump chooses to take, he will find himself in the middle of a lose-lose predicament. Let’s pray for him like the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof prayed for the Tsar:

May G-d bless and keep Donald Trump . . . far away from us.

36 days until the Georgia election.

51 days until Biden and Harris are inaugurated.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"Not With a Bang But a Whimper"

Poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), who was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for literature, was one of the twentieth century’s truly great literary downers. Among his best-known downers were The Waste Land (“April is the cruelest [sic]  month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land . . .), The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock (“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be . . .”), and above all, The Hollow Men with its soul-stirring last lines:

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

To be perfectly honest, I‘ve never been all that enamored with Eliot’s poetry; it is too dark, too disheartening and goyish for my tastes.  And yet, The Hollow Men has been crawling up my spine for the past several days . . . ever since former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani made a hair-dyed fool of himself at a nearly two-hour press conference, only to then be followed by Sidney Powell - another member of the Trump “illegal team” - who crazily insisted that her boss’s “overwhelming victory” was ruined by the worst, nastiest, most bestial political crime/conspiracy in all American history. Against all sanity and logic, Ms. Powell, while somehow maintaining a straight face, accused Republican officials of being involved in a payoff scheme to manipulate voting machines. Her ramblings also included a mishmash of lunacy involving Venezuelan Socialists, German Communists and, of course, financial bogeyman George Soros. And all the while, Rudy’s hair-dye continued its drip-drip-dripping from temple to zygomatic arch.  If this had been classic cinema, it no doubt would have starred Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester.

By day’s end, the Trump legal team (including Giuliani himself) issued a tweet stating “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own.  She is not part of the Trump Legal Team.  [sic] She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”  Talk about one’s world coming to an end “Not with a bang but a whimper.” Within 48 hours, things got even worse in Trumpland: Federal Judge Matthew Brann (a former conservative Republican and member in good standing of the Federalist Society who nonetheless was nominated by President Barack Obama to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2012) issued a scathing order dismissing the Trump campaign’s futile effort to block the certification of votes in Pennsylvania, shooting down claims of widespread irregularities with mail-in ballots. 

Brann wrote in his order that the Trump legal team had asked the court to disenfranchise almost 7 million voters. “One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption,” Brann wrote, so much that the court would have no option but to stop the certification even though it would impact so many people. “That has not happened,” he concluded. Having been legally mauled by Judge Brann in Pennsylvania, Trump decided to turn attention towards Michigan, and issued an invitation to Republican leaders of the Wolverine State legislature to come visit him at the White House, hoping against hope that he could convince them to “take one for the team” by invalidating hundreds of thousands of mail-in votes. Another foray into Never Never Land, another failure; the Michiganders refused to beckon to their leader’s call and announced that they would certify Biden’s victory.  The same thing happened with Georgia.

And that’s when the whimpering began in earnest . . . 

For the past 4+ years, a heck of a lot of political practitioners, writers and geeks have wondered aloud how and why the vast majority of Republican offer holders have stood mutely by while their beloved leader has trashed, humiliated and torn asunder the very fabric of American democracy.  How, we have queried, how is it possible for so many supposedly intelligent, patriotic people to let him get away with all the lies, the mindless dismantling of the America we know and love?  Isn’t there, we have cried out, even a single heroic voice on the other side of the aisle that is capable of shouting out “You have done enough! Have you left no sense of decency?” like Joseph Welch of old? Those who know their political history will remember that Welch’s words (which he delivered on June 9, 1954) were aimed at then-Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, who had turned the nation upside down and inside out with his paranoid conspiracy theories about the Communist takeover of America. Within 6 months of Welch’s rhetorical joust, the senate would censure McCarthy; within another 2 1/2 years, the disgraced “Tailgunner Joe,” long an alcoholic, died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 48.  (n.b. It should be noted that back in the 1950s, McCarthy’s chief political advisor/amanuensis was a young New York attorney named Roy Marcus Cohn; a generation later, this same Roy Cohn would become chief political advisor/groomer for one Donald John Trump.)

As the whimpering grows ever louder, we now learn from Watergate journalist and CNN analyst Carl Bernstein that there has long been a sizeable number of Republican officeholders who privately despise Trump, even as they have remained faithful to him in public.  Bernstein has now published a partial list of 21 Republican senators who have “privately expressed their disdain” for the president: the list includes Senators Rob Portman, Lamar Alexander, Ben Sasse, Roy Blunt, Lisa Murkowski, John Cornyn, Mitt Romney, Mike Braun, Todd Young, Tim Scott, Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, Chuck Grassley, Richard Burr, Pat Toomey, Martha McSally, Jerry Moran, Pat Roberts, and Richard Shelby. In an interview with Vanity Fair staff writer Eric Lutz, Bernstein said: “We are witnessing the mad king in the final days of his reign, willing to scorch the Earth of his country and bring down the whole system . . . They know what's going on.” '

Finally, yesterday the whimper became manifest; the world as Donald Trump and his legions have known it, began its final descent into oblivion. Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, announced that the transition from Trump to Biden could finally commence. In a memorandum sent to White House employees late last night, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, wrote that Ms. Murphy had made an “ascertainment” about the results of the 2020 election “to allow the start of a presidential transition.” (Interestingly, Trump tweeted that he - and he alone - was responsible for passing along the transitional key card to the Biden team.  This, of course, is yet another lie; federal law assigns this task to the GSA administrator alone . . . not the POTUS).

Almost immediately, the Biden transition team opened up their first “.gov” website: https://buildbackbetter.gov/ - and started announcing nominees for the new Cabinet. If you get a chance, follow this link and see who the President Elect has already nominated.  Unlike with the Trump administration, these nominees (Secretary of State [Anthony Blinken], Treasury [Janet Yellen], Homeland Security [Alejandro Mayorkas], Ambassador to the United Nations [Linda Thomas-Greenfield] (back to being a Cabinet-level appointment), National Security Advisor [Jake Sullivan] Director of National Intelligence [Avril Haines] and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate [Former Secretary of State John Kerry] as well as his first appointment, Chief of Staff Ron Klain, . . . these nominees are a highly impressive group. The caliber of these men and women, the diversity of their experience, and the fact that expertise - not loyalty - is the bedrock of their collective appeal is the bipolar opposite of what we’ve been experiencing since January 2017.

Indeed, the whimper with which the Trump years are ending, will no doubt continue to be heard for years and years to come.  The whimper of a loser who now, for perhaps the first time in his life, must face up the consequences of his actions. 

For as T.S. Eliot wrote in Little Gidding, the fourth and final poem of his Four Quartets: 

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

42 days until the senate elections in Georgia;

57 days until the inauguration of the nation’s 46th President.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F Stone

There's Still a Lot of Work to Be Done

Last week’s theme song was “Dancing in the Streets” as immortalized by Martha and the Vandellas. And while people of a certain age undoubtedly remember Martha Reeves and her sisters (Lois and Delphine) for such classics as “Heatwave,” “Nowhere to Run,” “Jimmy Mack” (written by Phil Collins) and, “Quicksand,” very few are aware of the fact that Martha was also a “Motor City” political activist and an elected member of the Detroit City Council from 2005-2009.  Strong, proud and highly intelligent, Martha Reeves (who as of today is nearing 80 and still performing year round), always felt that there was more to life than simply entertaining . . . that “there’s still a lot of work to  be done.”

Yesterday’s “MAGA March” on D.C. didn’t come close to the million-man figure predicted by the White House or claimed by Presidential Press Secretary Kaleigh McEnany.  While the gathering was taking place, their once-and-always POTUS was playing golf in Virginia.  He has yet to concede defeat, grant the incoming administration key cards so that they continue the serious work of transition, and no doubt hasn’t given thought to whether or not he will attend Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021.  Let us all presume that he will not . . . and for any number of reasons.  His absence from the inauguration will put him in a most select and historic crowd: In all American history, only 3 other presidents have absented themselves from their successor’s oath-taking: John Adams (1801) who left town for Massachusetts at 4:00 a.m. rather than smile upon Thomas Jefferson; his son John Quincy Adams (1829) who absolutely despised his successor, Andrew Jackson, and Andrew Johnson, the first “accidental president” (following the much beloved Abraham Lincoln’s assassination) and couldn’t even get his party’s nomination for a full term, and was thus succeeded by another much beloved figure: General U.S. Grant. (I for one find it fascinating that these three had the same initials: J.A., J.Q.A. and A.J.  Soon we will add another set of initials: D.J.T.)

(n.b. The fact that the incoming Biden administration is being denied access to the reins of government, while incredibly nasty and utterly amateurish, is not the end of the world.  Joe Biden is likely the best-prepared future President in American history.  His staff is equally ready and able to hit the ground running . . . and, he has every world leader’s home phone number . . .)

One has to believe that the main reason why DJT will never concede to President-elect Biden is that to do so would represent a double Trumpian first: the first time he has admitted defeat and the first time the spotlight will no longer be shining directly upon his pancaked punim . . . his face.  In a matter of weeks, he will have to face the daunting prospect of being without an income, a shield of legal invulnerability, and the very real prospect of being under multi indictments without a legal team to help protect him.  (Legal talent the likes of which he will no doubt require does not work pro bono, and the once-and-future ex POTUS has a long, long history of not paying his bills).

But just as President-elect Biden, Vice President-elect Harris and their blended staffs are already hard at work preparing to hit the ground running, so too must we - the nearly 79 million (as of this morning) people who voted for the Democratic ticket get back to work so as to insure that the United States Senate will be controlled by the party of Biden and Harris. If this does not occur - if Mitch McConnel continues on as Majority Leader, there is every reason to believe that he will spend at least the next 2 years making life miserable for the 46th POTUS. I can actually see him ordering his fellow Republicans to vote against virtually every Biden Cabinet nominee . . . perhaps not even calendaring them for committee hearings or visits (remember what he did to Federal Judge Merrick Garland during the last year of the Obama Administration?) What does McConnell care if he looks like a colossal horse’s rear end? It’s not as if he’s going to be running for reelection in 2026 when he’ll be 84 years old. He simply does not care what happens to the United States; he’s played his role to the hilt by paving the federal court system for the next 3-4 decades with judicial luddites . . .

No, we need to roll up our sleeves and get back to work; we need to fill the 2 remaining senate seats with Georgia Democrats Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff. Then the senate will be 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking 51st vote, and turning majority leadership over to New York Senator Chuck Schumer (or whomsoever the Democrats wish to elect).

Can Warnock defeat Kelly Loeffler and Ossoff defeat David Perdue?  Considering that the Biden/Harris ticket defeated Trump/Pence by slightly more than 14,000 votes (49.5%-49.2%) and that Trump/Pence will not be on the ballot January 5, 2021, there is a reasonable chance that  the Democrats can take back the Senate.  However, hoping is not nearly enough.  Contributions certainly help.  Both incumbents, Loeffler (likely the wealthiest member of the U.S. Senate) and Perdue, can raise vast sums of money from their billionaire backers.  But so can Reverend Warnock and Mr. Ossoff . . . although their funding comes mostly from members of America’s middle class.  

Republican strategists have already attempted to block contributions from potential Jewish donors by claiming that the two Democratic candidates are both devout “tax and spend Marxists,” are anti-Israel (if not anti-Semitic) and will thus do everything in their power to destroy American Democracy. In other words, they are using the Trump playbook.  In one of her first ads, Senator Loeffler painted the Black pastor of the Atlanta church once led by Martin Luther King Jr, as a police-hating, Castro-loving Marxist. "This is America, her ad ran; “Will it still be if the radical left controls the Senate?" the narrator asks, while images show street riots.

Warnock has made climate change and environmental justice an important part of his campaign. Loeffler avoids talking about climate and boasts of being the senator most loyal to President Trump, who has led the nation out of the Paris climate accord and pursued energy policies that champion the fossil fuel industry. 

On Election day, Nov. 3, Warnock topped a field of 20 candidates running in a "jungle primary" special election that included Loeffler, who Gov. Brian Kemp appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by Johnny Isakson in late 2019. Warnock received 32.9 percent of the vote, while Loeffler got 25.9 percent. Her main Republican challenger, Rep. Doug Collins, received 19.9 percent.

Warnock has already begun attempting to preemptively inoculate himself from Loeffler's attacks in ads of his own. In one, he says: "Get ready Georgia. The negative ads are coming. Kelly Loeffler doesn't want to talk about why she's for getting rid of healthcare in the middle of a pandemic. So she's going to try to scare you with lies about me." 

He also told voters on election night that he plans to "lean in" to his biography—that he is one of 12 children; the product of public housing and federal programs that helped him become the first member of his family to graduate from college.

"If you need somebody who will stand up for ordinary people, here I am. Send me," Warnock said.

Loeffler and her strategists have also done their utmost to paint Warnock as being an anti-Israel and anti-Semite. They did this by repeatedly bringing up a May 2018 sermon Warnock gave at the time Trump moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in which he flatly asserted that the move was meant mostly to please the president’s evangelical supporters. Additionally, Warnock has been accused of being in favor of the BDS (“Boycott, Divest, Sanction”) movement and supports a two-state solution (as do a majority of Jewish Americans). In recent polling, Warnock is a clear favorite of Jewish voters in Georgia.

Warnock has the endorsement of Georgia’s only Jewish state senator, Democrat Mike Wilensky, as well as several Jewish US senators and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, a progressive pro-Israel group. This past Tuesday, he tweeted its support for Warnock.

Defenders of Warnock point to Loeffler’s affiliation with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the recently elected representative for Georgia’s 14th District who has advanced the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory. Loeffler campaigned with Greene just before Election Day.

“Reverend Warnock stands with the Jewish community, Jewish values, and stands with Israel; that’s why I support his candidacy to the United States Senate,” Biden organizer Ben Kanas tweeted on Tuesday. “His opponent stands against Jewish values and embraces those who favor the antisemitism of QAnon.”

During the other senate race - that between incumbent David Purdue and businessman/political activist/former/Congressional staffer Jon Ossoff, Perdue’s strategy centered around reminding George voters time and again that Ossoff is Jewish. During their one and only televised debate, Ossoff attacked his opponent, saying “First, you were lengthening my nose in attack ads to remind everybody that I’m Jewish; then when that didn’t work, you started calling me some kind of an Islamic terrorist And then, when then that didn’t work you started calling me a Chinese communist.”

“Instead of leading and inspiring, he stoops to mocking the heritage of his political opponents,” Ossoff, the Democratic nominee, said when sharing a clip from the debate on Twitter.

The video got a quarter of a million views within 48 hours. Another video grab from the debate, in which Ossoff accused Perdue of insider trading for buying stock in personal protective equipment after a private January briefing for senators on the potential for a coronavirus pandemic, has gotten more than 12 million views. Perdue denies insider trading accusations. That’s when he started referring to Ossoff as a “Chinese communist.”  He also announced that he  would no longer participate in any future debates.

In addition to contributing to Warnock’s and Ossoff’s campaign, we can assist by sending out postcards to potential Georgia voters. If you would like to take part in this simple yet highly effective campaign, please email Suzi Stoller (one of my ardent readers at suzi.stoller@gmail.com this is a postcard initiative. The postcards kits are supplied by Reclaim Our Vote (ROV). They are attention-getting fronts. ROV provides the words to be written. They ask that they be handwritten as sent. The scripts are put together by those familiar with what is comfortable and familiar to locals. If you choose to do this you will receive:

1. Postcards

2. The script-to be handwritten

3. A list of names and addresses-to be hand addressed

4. Last time (I assume this time, too) a sticker to be included which has specific information depending on the County it is going to.

You will be asked to put a postcard stamp on each and mail. I believe postcards should be mailed not later than Dec. 7. You will receive very specific information.

They ask that you also pay the postage for the packet that is mailed to you. If you do the work, just let me know, I will be happy to pick up the cost of the packets being mailed to you.

What follows is part of an email I received from Suzi Stoller.

If you would like to participate, please send me your name, addresses and the number of cards you would like. Packets are in sets of 30, so you request, 30, 60, 90, 120 or more, just always in packets of 30.

Let's all work together and turn the US Senate Blue.

Once I hear from you that you will participate I will order your packet. You should receive it in less than a week.

Last time my letter generated about 3500 postcards. Hoping to reach that goal again. If you know anyone who is interested, I'll order for them and send to them or you can order for you and your group.

Good Luck to ALL of US. Suzi Stoller suzi.stoller@gmail.com

Together, we can help change the world.

Remember, there’s still a lot of work to be done!

66 days until the inauguration.

51 days until the Georgia election!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Pass the Maalox . . . and While You're At It, Get Me Three Fingers of Glenmorangie Spios

One week to go - 7 days, 168+ hours until the polls close everywhere from West Quoddy Head, Maine to Cape Wrangell, Alaska, and from Point Barrow (again, Alaska) to Pago Pago.  This is not to say that we will know the final results of the presidential race 168+ hours from now.  Only the good Lord knows when the contest will be called; when “30” will be affixed to the bottom of the story and most importantly who the POTUS will be beginning on January 20, 2021. Both sides have their hopes and dreams; both sides fear what the nation - let alone the  world - will be like should “the other guy” win.  Without question, none of us have ever lived through such a presidential race . . . one that seems to have been going on for at least half a century.  Oh, the sleepless nights; the nasty invective, outright lies, the anger and the utter churlishness of the incumbent.  I for one have a medicine cabinet filled with Maalox and a personal stash of Glenmorangie Spios on the barroom shelf.  It’s been that kind of a political dual.  

On the bright side, there is a fairly good possibility that things are going to change; that the asinine Tweetstorms will abate; the unabashed nastiness and playground catcalls will diminish; that we will stop being treated like a swarm of gullible morons.  I know that for me - should my prayers and hard work be answered - that which I will miss even more than the constant polling, the chance to once again hear the name “Hunter Biden” come from the lips of the worst president in American history or the vomitatious claim that he has “done more for Black Americans than than any other president, with the “possible exception” of Abraham Lincoln.

Many of us remember the election of 1980, when Ronald Reagan gave incumbent President Jimmy Carter a shellacking: The Gipper won 44 states to the peanut farmer’s 6 (including the District of Columbia) and a 489-49 pasting in the Electoral College.  Those with decent political memories will remember long gas lines, super-high inflation and a 444-day crisis where the entire American diplomatic corps was held hostage in the American Embassy in Teheran.  It seems to me that we moderns have been going through our own long “hostage crisis” since January 20, 2017; unlike 1980, all of America has been held in thrall to Donald Trump, his massive ego, his march-in-step loyalists and the billionaires who underwrite and make possible his every deranged whim.  Should Joe and Kamala win, I for one will be overjoyed to no longer have to see, hear or be concerned with the likes of D.J., Trump, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Rudy Guiliani, the Kushners and whoever is the latest Chief-of-Staff.  

Without question, former Vice President Biden has higher personal ratings than Clinton, which is good news, but Trump seems to be campaigning much harder than Biden in these last several days. And when I see a reputable poll that puts Biden neck and neck with Trump in Texas - where no Democrat has won, let alone campaigned since 1994 - , it can mean only two things: Either we are headed toward the biggest electoral landslide in a generation, or pollsters are once again clueless about who is really going to turn out to vote.

It’s at this point that I renew the request to pass the Maalox and get us those three fingers of Glenmorangie Spios. Once we’ve medicated, we would do well to keep our hopes and dreams in check, lest like in 2016, we put a jinx on Joe.  But even if our favorite uncle does win, can we count on a normal transfer of power?  In a recent op-ed by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat bluntly headlined “There Will Be No Trump Coup,” Mr. Douthout argued that, as aspiring autocrats go, Donald Trump is too incompetent to pull off anything so ambitious as stealing an election.  Oh how I pray that Ross knows of what he  writes!

Come to think of it, successful strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan spend years carefully laying the groundwork for autocracy by first gaining broad public support, then by getting their allies to control the mainstream media, then by appointing their toadies to key positions in the military, and so on. Trump, by contrast, is despised by more than half the country, most of the media and his own secretary of defense. If someone ever uncovers his college transcript, I’m guessing he got a C- in the class on dictatorship, which is better than the D’s and F’s that I’m guessing he got in his classes on business analytics, financial accounting and management essentials. 

Like you, I am lousy at predictions . . . despite all the polls, interviews, advertisements and news clips.  All I know is that I long for the day when I no longer have to fear turning on Morning Joe at 5:00 a.m.; fearful that ‘45 did, said or commanded something overnight which will make the day another bloated belly terrible case of dysgeusia (a bad taste in the mouth). 

And so while we’re waiting, please bring on some more Maalox and crack open a new bottle of Glenmorangie Spios.  Who knows? Perhaps it will be in celebration! 

c. 175 hours to go . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"No Longer Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breath Free"

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There once was a time when every school child could identify the term “Mayflower” - the name of the first ship to arrive in the New World. To be the descendant of a Mayflower family meant that one was a “blue-blood.” The roster of passengers on that famous 1620 voyage contained names like Alden, Allerton, Bradford, Carter, Mullins, and Priest; Standish, Story, Wilder, Williams and Winslow. Among their descendants across many generations we find such famous (and infamous) people as Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Poet Robert Frost, the late Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, Barbara Bush, Helen Keller, Humphrey Bogart and even the Wright Brothers, Sarah Palin, Jane Fonda and John Hinckley, Jr.  Without question, the original passenger list of the Mayflower consists of some of the most successful families in American  history.  And although, as legend would have it, most came here in search of religious freedom, the truth is that just as many arrived on these shores looking for lower taxes and greater wealth.  I well remember a cartoon which adorned a wall in my cubbyhole of an office when I worked as “environmental ethicist” for California Governor Jerry Brown back in the mid-1970’s: Two pilgrims were standing on the bowsprit of the Mayflower.  One said to the other: “Religious freedom is a great thing, but I came here to get into real estate!” Whatever the case, to be part of the “Mayflower generation” has long marked one as a member of America’s aristocracy.

Not so well known was a ship that arrived in  Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan on September 22, 1654.  It was called the “Ste Catherine,” which had embarked from Recife, Brazil months earlier and has ever since been known as “The Jewish Mayflower.” The vast majority of its passengers were Sephardi - Jews whose ancestry could be traced to Spain and Portugal.  Non speakers of Yiddish, their native tongue was mostly Ladino (a linguistic blend of Spanish and Hebrew) or Judismo (sometimes referred to as “Judaeo-Arabic”).  Among its passenger list were families named Gomez, Seixas, Nathan, Cardozo and Lazarus.  One of the Cardozos - Benjamin [1870-1938] would become the second Jew to serve on the United States Supreme Court; another, Haym Salomon (1740-1785) was one of the two greatest financial backers of the American revolution); a third, Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) became one of early America’s most respected poets, and the author of the sonnet which adorns the base of the Statue of Liberty: The New Colossus, which reads in part:

                                                                                    "Give me your tired, your poor,
                                                                          Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
                                                                             The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
                                                                            Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
                                                                                   I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

For generations, immigrants to these shores - including, I would imagine - the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of many readers of this blog, entered the United States through New York Harbor . . . and this poem, sitting at the base of the “Lady With the Lamp,” was the first thing they saw . . . a message of heartfelt welcome.  My wife Annie, although she and her parents arrived at Kennedy Airport rather than Ellis Island when they came here from Argentina a half-century ago, were well aware of the welcoming arms which awaited them. Both sides of my family - with a single exception (Grandpa Doc) came in through either Charleston or Baltimore harbor long before “Lady Liberty” had been created by the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, built by Gustav Eiffel, and given a permanent home on Liberty Island. Nonetheless, their arrivals - around the time of America’s Civil War - were met with overwhelming optimism and pride . . . and the certain knowledge that at last they had found a home where being Jewish was neither an obstacle nor an impediment.  And so it has been for countless generations.  America welcomed generations of Schimbergs, Greenbergs, Hymans, Kagans and Zamosces with open arms and the promise a peaceful, prideful and productive future.

And it’s largely because of that inviolate promise that both my mother and my wife have devoted their time and energy to introducing newcomers to the mysteries of the English language, Democracy and the American way of life.  My mother – a long-time Midwesterner from Chicago, Kansas  City and Hollywood -  tutored a new generation of Russian-Jewish refugees back in the 1960s; she recently told me that one of her best teaching tools was “the good old Yellow Pages” (remember them?) My wife, an immigrant from Argentina who earned both a B.A. and M.A. in English as a Second Language, has spent decades serving as teacher and mentor to refugees and asylees from all over the world, teaching them not only English but how to shop, read maps and menus, vote, create a proper resume, find a job, and generally participate in civil society.

That is until just the other day . . . 

This past Friday, the Trump administration announced an exorbitant increase in fees for some of the most common immigration procedures, including an 81% increase in the cost of U.S. citizenship for naturalization. It will also now charge asylum-seekers, which is an unprecedented move. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a final rule in the Federal Register that details the new cost for dozens of immigration and naturalization applications, a further change in immigration policy to curb legal immigration of low-income foreign nationals.  In an accompanying press release announcing the drastic and unparalleled changes, USCIS claimed they were enacted  to "ensure U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recovers its costs of services.”  While it is true that unlike many government agencies USCIS is largely fee funded, the timing is more than suspicious.  The last time the agency raised its fees (by a weighted 21%) was in late December, 2016 - the very last days of the Obama administration.  Changes like these don’t happen overnight; they are, generally speaking, the product of months - if not years - of investigation.  But to publish and make manifest such draconian raises (which will go into effect on October 2, 2020), seems suspiciously political. The Trump team based an entire presidential campaign on the issue of immigration, dumping refugees, potential asylees - the “huddled masses yearning to be free” - into a cauldron bearing the legend “Go back from where you came; you are nothing but job-stealing, drug-dealing murderers and rapists who are intent on nothing less than living off the federal government for the rest of your lives.”  And while a majority of the American public never really bought into this Kafkaesque nightmare, there were enough to form a strong political base and buy into the “MAGA” master plan.’  

For months now, immigrants, refugees “the wretched refuse of your teeming shores” have largely disappeared from  both presidential press conferences and the nightly news.  And for obvious reasons which can be summed up in just a couple of syllables: impeachment, pandemic, job-loss ‘law ‘n order’ and 'massive voter fraud.’  But now that the national election is a mere 3 months away, it’s a great time to rev back up the issue of immigration; to make sure the Trumpist base is back on board.

And, as mentioned above, the fee hikes are without question, punitive to the max.  Here are just a few:

• The fee to apply for U.S. citizenship through naturalization will increase from $640 to $1,160 if filed online, or $ 1,170 in paper filing.

• Form I-881, Application for Suspension of Deportation. Current fee: $285. Final Fee: $1,810. Percentage change: 535%.

• Form ▪ I-929, Petition for Qualifying Family Member of a U-1 Nonimmigrant (Victims of Criminal Activity). Current fee: $230. Final Fee: $1,485. Percentage change: 546%.

It should be noted in passing that one of the main reasons why USCIS is in such perilous budgetary straits is that the current administration has so clamped down on refugees and those seeking asylum that now there are far fewer people paying fees. Somewhat surprisingly, this issue has received little notice in the mainstream media. At the same time, Trump’s political base is well aware of the “final rule” and all it entails.

The Lady With the Lamp must be shedding tears at this turn of events. That which has long made the United States so successful and unique - its melange of newcomers from the four corners of the earth - has been unalterably changed. Oh sure, we’ve had bouts of anti-immigrant lunacy across the centuries; but now, it’s become both codified and made the central focus of an entire political movement. Shame on all those who have clothed themselves in the garments of cowardice and permitted it to happen.

In 1982, four years before the Statue' of Liberty’s centennial anniversary, President Ronald Reagan appointed Lee Iacocca, the Chairman of Chrysler Corporation, to head the Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation. The Foundation was created to lead the private sector effort and raise the funds for the renovation and preservation of the Statue for its centennial in 1986. The Foundation worked with the National Park Service to plan, oversee, and implement this restoration.  At the time, Lady Liberty was badly in need of repair; she was falling apart and begrimed with nearly a century’s worth of grime and slime.  And yet, by the time of her centennial, she was back to being a gleaming shrine; a vivid exemplar of what makes America unique among the nations.  At its unveiling in 1986, one of the things that people most remarked on was the pristine and hopeful idealism of the words at her base  . . . the words of Emma Lazarus, seen here in her own hand:

“The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Copyright©1883 Emma Lazarus

Trump, Bezos and Ben Franklin: A Chess Game Played in Hell

On July 26, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed Dr. Benjamin Franklin Postmaster General of what would within a year be called the United States of America. Over the past 245 years, America has had 75 Postmasters. The first - and to far only - woman to serve as Postmistress General, Megan Brennan, is scheduled to retire shortly.  According to a survey last year by the Pew Research Center, 90% of the American public has a favorable view of the United States Postal Service (USPS), handily outdistancing even such other popular federal agencies as the National Park Service and NASA.

Not only is the Post Office widely popular: it is of immense importance to the well-being of the nation. Establishing “post offices and post roads” is one of the powers of Congress explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, right up there with the power to tax and borrow, declare war, coin money, establish federal courts and issue patents and copyrights. And yet, despite its vast popularity and historic centrality, there are those who have long sought to dismember and then privatize the USPS. Chief among them are the nation’s current Chief Executive and his most doting, most conservative acolytes and financial backers. The question is, of course, “Why? Why do they want to dismember the USPS?” In truth, IMPOTUS’s reasoning is quite a bit different - and more obvious - than that of his political allies. In order to get a grip on the political right’s modus operandi, we must go back in time to the year 2006, when the Republican-controlled 109th Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) which required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs . . . 75 years into the future. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation. PAEA must have been extremely important to those who introduced, supported and voted for its passage: from its initial introduction into the hopper to presidential signature was a mere 13 days (Dec. 7-Dec. 20, 2006).  

Writing in the journal of the Institute for Policy Studies, authors Sarah Anderson, Scott Klinger and Brian Wakamo noted: If the costs of this retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements, the Post Office would have reported operating profits in each of the last six years. This extraordinary mandate created a financial “crisis” that has been used to justify harmful service cuts and even calls for postal privatization. Additional cuts in service and privatization would be devastating for millions of postal workers and customers. Again, the question is “Why?” I’m not terribly sure what was behind the original bill and the speed-of-light alacrity which Congress used to get it passed and signed. For Republicans it is understandable: they have a tendency to want to see the federal agencies and programs shrink-wrapped to the point where they are eventually turned over to the private sector. That I can understand even if I am decidedly against it. However, two of the three co-signers of the PAEA (H.R. 6407) joining in with the bill’s author, Virginia Republican Tom Davis - were Democrats . . . one of whom was Henry Waxman (D-CA), one of his era’s craftiest and most universally respected progressives. So when I say “I don’t understand,” believe me . . . I don’t understand!

The part I do understand - minus the Democratic support - is that Congress was setting a future trap for USPS; making it possible to blame them for fiscal incompetence . . . for losing billions upon billions of dollars. Well, if it hadn’t have been for passage of H.R. 6407 in the first place, Ben Franklin’s great great, great, great grandchildren would have been showing sizable profits.

Just about a year ago (April 29, 2019 to be precise) Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio filed H.R. 2382, the “USPS Fairness Act,” which would eliminate the pre-funding requirement. Advocates claim that it could single-handedly put the Postal Service out of the red and into the black. (At present, it is estimated that unless something is done soon, USPS will run out of money by 2024). Supporters argue the bill makes financial sense, puts the Postal Service on an even footing with literally every other federal agency, and helps ensure the solvency of one the programs that most directly affects ordinary Americans. The bill garnered 301 cosponsors (61 of whom were Republicans, and passed the House on February 5, 2020 by a veto-proof vote of 309-106. It was then sent over to the Senate where it picked up 5 cosponsors and was assigned to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. It has gone no further since and likely will languish . . . especially in light of IMPOTUS’s recent involvement in the issue.

Then there’s IMPOTUS’ line of argumentation. This past Friday he threatened to block an emergency loan to shore up the U.S. Postal Service unless it dramatically raised shipping prices on online retailers, an unprecedented move to seize control of the agency that analysts said could plunge its finances into a deeper hole. “The Postal Service is a joke,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. To obtain a $10 billion line of credit Congress approved this month, “The post office should raise the price of a package by approximately four times,” he said.  Several administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said Trump’s criticism of Postal Service rates is rooted in a desire to hurt Amazon in particular. They have said that he fumes publicly and privately at Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, for news coverage that Trump believes is unfair.  Of course, raising postal rates “by approximately four times” would likely hurt rural Americans - heretofore among his strongest, most loyal allies - the most. 

Delivering packages has been a good business for the Postal Service, making up just 5 percent of the Postal Service’s volume, but accounting for 30 percent of its revenue. And package volume jumped 53 percent last week, compared with the same period in 2019, as a homebound nation dives into e-commerce for groceries, prescriptions and household essentials. As much as IMPOTUS believes this to be the start of a game-winning strategy which will end up in a fifteen-move “check mate,” he is actually playing his to opponent’s game plan.  What he likely does not realize is that should USPS raise its shipping rates by 400%, Amazon can easily save money by doing even more of its own shipping . . . which no doubt would be quite harmful to USPS.  But far from being able to blame Amazon for the post office’s further economic slide, voters will blame Donald Trump.  And there’s not thing one he can do about it.

‘45 has long claimed that he is “the most transparent president in American history.”  Goodness knows, he says it at  least one a week.  And it’s just possible that in this deranged bit of braggadocio, he is telling the truth without really knowing it. How so?  For as long as he’s been in the public eye - whether in real estate, on television, in the air at the head of some eponymous wine, water, airline or tie - he has clearly massaged those who massage him and attempted to pummel those who will not praise him.  Cases in point: his obsessive ridding - if not eradicating - virtually every accomplishment of Barack Obama and his administration.   His belittling, deprecating and re-tagging people who do not, will not and cannot go along with him.  In these things, he is both obvious and transparent.  (One of the latest is his renaming Amazon founder - as well as publisher of the  Washington Post and wealthiest person on the planet  - Jeff Bezos “Jeff Bozo.”)  It must really be galling for IMPOTUS to have to  play someone else’s game only to realize that he’s getting closer and closer to hearing the words “check mate.”  

189 days until the next election.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"Damnatio Memoriae" Or, When Was the Last Time Anyone Named a Kid Caligula?

Damnatio memoriae is a Latin phrase literally meaning condemnation of memory, the sense being a judgment that a person must not be remembered. It was a form of dishonor that could be passed by the Roman Senate upon traitors or others who brought dishonor to the Roman State. The intent was to erase someone from history, a task somewhat easier in ancient times, when documentation was much sparser. In ancient Rome, the practice of damnatio memoriae could be used to condemn Roman elites and emperors after their deaths. He/they could have their property seized, their names erased, and whatever statues, coins or friezes might exist, reworked. Then too, it was a sure sign that no one would ever again be called by those names; I mean, when was the last time anyone named a child Caligula, Nero, Domitian (that’s his effaced bust on the left) or Vespasian?

(n.b. the Romans weren’t the only ones into damnatio memoriae: centuries before the Romans, the Egyptians removed all mention of Queen Hatshepsut and Pharaoh Akhenaten (the husband of Queen Nefertiti) from royal history; as recently as 2011, Hosni Mubarak, the President of Egypt for almost 30 years, was deposed. After his deposition, the names of both Hosni and his wife, Suzanne, were removed from all Egyptian monuments. The Soviets under Stalin were also hip deep in this practice, becoming expert at eliminating enemies of the state from photographs in which they were originally posed next their “revered leader.” The most famous case was likely that of Nikolai Yezhov, nicknamed ‘The Vanishing Commisar.’ Then too, it is an ancient Jewish custom to “blot out the name of Amalek” - from whom the wicked Haman was descended “from under the Heavens” - by the sound of noisemakers on the joyous [some would say “frivolous”] holiday known as Purim (c.f. Deut. 25:15.)

Were it up to me, I would heartily reimpliment damnatio memoriae and not just for the current POTUS.  Indeed, I would gladly place under this umbrella of ignominy the names of Mike Pence (V.P.), Mike Pompeo (Sec. of State), William Barr (Attorney General), Steven Mnuchin (Sec. of Treasury), Wilbur Ross (Sec. of Commerce), Betsy DeVos (Sec. of Education), Ben Carson (Sec. of Housing and Urban Development), and Elaine Chaio (Sec. of Transportation, not to mention Senator Mitch McConnell (Senate Majority Leader) and Chief Congressional Enabler), and Rep. Devin Nunes (Ranking Member, House Intelligence Committee, not to mention Jared Kusher and Stephen Miller, (Senior White House Advisers).

Why these folks, one well may ask?  Because they have gladly, willingly and chillingly lent their wholehearted support to a president whose political raison d’être has had since day one far, far more to do with his ego and their personal interests than the needs of the people or nation they are supposed to be serving.   I cannot for the life of me understand why these supposedly well-educated, highly successful people could maintain such silence and servility in the face of so much psychopathy. Are they afraid of being fired or of being called names? Or  are they more interested in bringing about some sort of religious rapture for the very well heeled?

Of course, the mere exercise of those mentioned above, who in my humble opinion should be considered for a spot on our national damnatio memoriae list, is a bit of satiric wish fulfillment. Nonetheless, what’s been going on these past 3+ years - and especially the past several weeks - certainly qualifies the POTUS and his enablers to be part of this ancient ritual. The sins for which he and his clique should be eliminated from memory include far more than the tax bonanza granted the hyper wealthy, the steady stream of lies, and the utter incompetence and what The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols calls his “political glossolalia.” The worst of the worst it seems to me, is the sin of convincing a solid minority that the media can neither be trusted nor believed ever again; that they are consciously engaged in taking this administration down; that anyone who disagrees with the POTUS - and this list includes the likes of Speaker Pelosi, Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff and the likely soon-to-be-fired Dr. Anthony Fauci - is a traitorous conspirator bent on destroying not only the president, but the nation itself. And if for no other reason than the video-taped fact that ‘45 will not supply states whose governors aren’t “nice to” or “supportive of” the man in the Oval Office with respirators, surgical gloves, masks and gowns . . . makes him eminently worthy of being forgotten.  Oh, I forgot, all these medical necessities belong to him personally .  . . not the people. 

The time will come when well-heeled Trump supporters begin collecting gazillions of dollars in order to create a presidential library/museum in perpetual remembrance of a man they never truly liked in the first place. For those who believe in damnatio memoriae, I am happy to report that purchasing land for such a library will be next to impossible. Think about it: the price of empty space to build a presidential library in:

• Independence, Missouri (Harry Truman)

• Grand Rapids, Michigan: Jerald R. Ford)

• Simi Valley, California (Ronald Reagan)

• Atlanta, Georgia (Jimmy Carter)

• College Station, Texas (George W.Bush)

• Little Rock, Arkansas (Bill Clinton) and

• Hoffman Estates, Illinois (Barack Obama)

was and is far, far less pricey than 725 5th Avenue, New York, New York, where the Trump Library/Museum would likely be located. And despite the fact that none of America’s previous 44 presidents were  outright paragons of moral or political perfection, they all spoke and wrote English with greater facility, and knew more about the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Emancipation Proclamation than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  None, so far as I know, exhibited the mass of foibles, personal insecurity or contempt for both the people and the nation they were elected to serve as does ‘45.  It seems to me that the  greatest punishment the nation could mete out to this self-proclaimed “stable genius” would be a declaration of damnatio memoriae.

Just think: no more children named Caligula, Hatshepsut, Domitian or . . . Donald.

204 days until the next election . . . whether in person or via mail.

  Copyright©2020, Kurt F. Stone

The Psychology and Politics of Unfriending

As of 7:00 a.m. today, I have precisely 701 Facebook “friends.” For reasons largely unknown (perhaps the relative boredom of isolation), I decided to cull through this list and see how many of the 701 I could identify. I’m happy to report that easily more than half were known to me; a mixture of family, old school-mates, fellow “Hollywood Brats,” political people, students and colleagues from various universities, former synagogue youth group/summer camp chaverim (Hebrew for “friends”) and former and current congregants. Then too, there were literally dozens whom I had virtually no idea of who, how and why they were on my friends list, and more than a handful of people who were no longer alive . . . although their Facebook pages were still “idly active.” All this took somewhat a bit less than 2 hours. 

After (sadly) deleting the deceased, I started looking over the pages of people I couldn’t for the  life of me identify.  That’s when it dawned on me that if I checked  out who was on their friends list that might explain our “relationship.”  In many cases, it was but a single  individual we had  in common.  One such person - a writer who had one of my politics students on her list - had just posed a message stating, in part, “It's after midnight Sunday night, and I can't begin to think about getting to sleep. Listening to the things Trump said today has made that impossible. I know I have a number of "friends" on FB who support this man, and I have come to the end of my tolerance for you. Tonight I am unfriending all of you—and I don't care if we have been friends for decades or if we are related by marriage or blood. . . .You are no longer my friends or relations, on Facebook or in real life. Don't contact me to defend your position; I never, ever want to hear from you again. Goodbye.”

To be perfectly honest (unlike the POTUS), I’m not sure whether I agree or disagree with this Facebook friend. To unfriend or not to unfriend: that is the question. On the one hand, I really, truly hate the nausea and bile that well up every time I read the words of praise these otherwise intelligent, successful people heap upon their miscreant-in-chief.  But who ever said that just because a person is successful it follows that they understand thing one about civics, civility or sanity? Ridding oneself of the bile is as simple as pressing the “unfriend” button . . . one, two, three and voila!  They and their noxious nostrums have evaporated into the political putrescence. But it comes at a price: knowing that they are forever gone from my life.   On the other hand, there is a part of me that truly wants to believe that to unfriend those who are intolerably smug and small is to make me far less a mentsch - a decent human being - than I could cope with. But then I remember that quote from Winston Churchill: “Never give in, never, never, never–never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

This week’s essay is the 874th I’ve posted since February 2005 back when this blog was called “Beating the Bushes.". In all these years, I’ve received thousands upon thousands of comments . . . most praiseworthy, many thoughtful, and more than I care to remember nasty and vile. Since many are sent to one of my many email addresses, I have the ability to pre-screen and send the writers of vile drek directly into the various spam files. I must admit that every once in a while I do read what these folks write. Some are so strident as to be a stitch; others are threatening, horribly misspelled, and make me proud to have come from a bright, well-educated family. With Facebook it’s a bit different. If you want to keep the rest of your little world from seeing just how nuts and politically poisoned people can be, you first must unfriend them. But then I think: what do I care if the rest of my readers think they’re village idiots? That’s their - e.g. the village idiots - problem!

While I can certainly applaud my anonymous Facebook friend’s decision to unfriend all those who persist in being aggressively, aggravatingly pro-Trump – despite all the lies, the inability to accept the input of those far, far better versed than he, and that otherworldly egomania - I myself cannot push these folks overboard. Of course, I don’t have to read their screeds.    Sooner or later they will suffer loss, and may well come to grasp that there are more things under heaven and earth than can ever be blamed on Obama and Clinton, Pelosi, Biden, George Soros or even Dr. Fauci.

In the long run, unfriending those who annoyingly, flippantly oppose one’s political point of view and hate you for not loving Trump and all he stands for (and against) will, it seems to me, do next to nothing.  On the other hand, supporting those who agree can at least let you know that there are more sane people in the world than you ever dreamed of. Instead of grousing get cracking; there are candidates to support and elections to be won. There’s a country and a world to be saved . . .

“Never give in, never, never, never–never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

219 days until the next election.

Be well, read books and watch movies, be extra nice to those you are quarantined with and WASH YOUR HANDS!

Copyright ©, 2020, Kurt F. Stone

Is History History?

Among those who are reasonably well-educated, it is generally agreed upon that Herodotus (that’s him in the photo on the left) is “The Father of History.” Born and raised in Halicarnassus (modern-day Turkey), Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.E) is best known for his work The Histories, a straightforward account of the origins and execution of the Greco-Persian Wars, which lasted from 499 to 479 B.C.E. “Here is the account,” the work begins, “of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus in order that the deeds of men not be erased by time, and that the great and miraculous works–both of the Greeks and the barbarians–not go unrecorded.”  Most of what we know about the Battle of Marathon is from Herodotus. “The Histories” also incorporated observations and stories, both factual and fictional, from Herodotus’ travels.

Ever since, the writing, editing and reading of history has been of extraordinary importance. Across the centuries and generations, the study of history has been of paramount importance. “'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it” philosopher Georges Santayana. Speaking before the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill modified Santayana just a tad, changing it to “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.' Whichever is the true rendering, the truth remains; without knowing, understanding and caring about history, our mutual future is in dire jeopardy.

Over the past several weeks and days, national attention has been fixated on the United States Senate as to whether or not the Upper Chamber would vote to convict or acquit our impeached president of the United States (IMPOTUS), Donald J. Trump of abuse of power and contempt of Congress.  Among those Republicans in the political cross-hairs, none were more prominent than Senators Romney (UT), Murkowski (AK), Collins (ME) and Alexander (TN). All 4 had publicly spoken about their desire to subpoena witnesses for the senate trial. In the long-run, Senators Romney and Collins decided to vote in favor of subpoenaing witnesses like former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, Acting Chief of Staff and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Nick Mulvaney. and Michael Duffey, a senior official in the Office of Management and Budget. Senator Romney evinced a level of moral courage seldom seen among members of the Republican caucus.  As can best be determined, Senator Susan Collins was given a pass by Majority Leader McConnell: not only was her vote unneeded; had she voted against subpoenaing witnesses, voters in Maine would likely have voted her out of office.  In the meantime, Senators Alexander and Murkowski changed their minds stating, in essence, that although the IMPOTUS was obviously guilty of the charges against him, they did not add up to impeachable offenses. So far as Tennessee Senator Alexander, who is retiring and thus not running for reelection, his rationale is, to my way of thinking nearly incomprehensible.  On his official website, he (or his staff) wrote:

I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense. …The Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate. 

“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday. …Our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve with ‘the consent of the governed,’ not at the pleasure of the United States Congress. Let the people decide.” 

Likewise, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s logic was more than a bit skewed: 

“Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout. I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.”

What Senators Alexander and Murkowski - along with a lot of other Republicans (and a few Democrats) - are going to wind up with is a tainted reputation - an acidic asterisk - for the rest of time for being elected leaders who, for whatever reason, decided that despite the IMPOTUS’s obvious guilt, were not going to vote to support hearing from a single witness against him. Imagine that: a trial of momentous import without a single witness! This makes virtually no sense. It seems that in the long run, Senators Alexander, Murkowski et al care not a whit about the judgment of history; they are far, far more concerned about what the president, his henchmen and supporters care about them today.

In other words: to hell with tomorrow.

History has become history . . .

In this essay’s second paragraph, we presented the nearly identical aphorisms of Santayana and Churchill about those who forget history being doomed to repeat it. Pretty chilling stuff. Well, in this instance - the senate’s 51-49 vote against subpoenaing witnesses - the man of the hour is neither as wise as the former nor as politically adroit as the latter. In this case the aphorist of note was a legendary industrialist and multi-billionaire (about $200 billion in today’s $$$) who also happened to be one of most the hateful bigots of all time: Henry Ford.  Unlike Santayana and Churchill, Ford believed with every fiber of his being that “History is bunk.”  In a widely-reported 1916 interview with a journalist from the Chicago Tribune, Ford told the writer, one Charles N. Wheeler:

"Say, what do I care about Napoleon? What do we care about what they did 500 or 1,000 years ago? I don't know whether Napoleon did or did not try to get across and I don't care. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today."

(It should be noted that not only did Ford create the industrial assembly line and the world’s first affordable automobile, he also purchased a newspaper [The Dearborn Independent] in order to publish a multi-issue screed entitled The International Jew: The World’s Problem . . . which incorporated most, if not all of, history’s most vicious anti-Semitic tract: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  To this very day, Ford remains a god to White Nationalists, neo-Nazis and conspiracy addicts of all stripes.)

It is more than depressing to imagine people who are supposedly of accomplishment and rank, people who are in a position to play a significant role on the stage of history, having so little - if any - concern whatsoever about their future place on that stage. I guess so long as they maintain their political positions, not draw the fury or ire of their “highly stable genius” and live out lives of comfort and recognition, that’s all that matters. I for one cannot understand how so many people whose lives are both guided and guarded by deeply-held religious scruples and theological concerns of eternal life, can at the same time be so lacking in curiosity - so uncaring - about their place in the annals of history. Does it not matter to them that history - if not G-d co-self (my term for “him/herself”) - will have the final judgement. Has it not dawned on them that in five, ten, fifty years and more, historians will have uncovered just how corrupt, self-serving and traitorous this administration has been from even before day one? That in large part, it was due to their spineless lack of moral courage, their robotic need to put partisanship above patriotism that led to America’s no longer being the world’s “last great hope?” If history will remember them at all, it will not likely be for their greatness . . . but for their turning their backs on both the people they were supposed to selflessly serve and on history itself.

Tell me: has history, like Herodotus, himself, become history?

274 days until the presidential election.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone