Sein Kampf

This week’s essay was supposed to be about medical ethics; specifically whether or not it is ethical to expedite clinical trials for drugs dealing with such lethal diseases as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and Lewy Body Dementia. At about the time I had written the first 1,200 words of the piece (tentatively entitled Are Medical Ethics an Oxymoron?)  a story about the latest asininity coming from the mouth of our FPOTUS came across the wire (as we used to say in pre-Google times) which forced me to change intellectual lanes. Hopefully, the original piece will run next week. And so, instead of Are Medical Ethics an Oxymoron? we move to Sein Kampf (German for “His Struggle”).

Yesterday, the FPOTUS, Donald J. Trump. ,offered an absolutely foreboding message on his Truth Social  alt-tech social media platform warning “U.S. Jews” to “get their act together” and be more appreciative—“before it is too late.” He even claimed that his own approval rating is so high in Israel that he could “easily” be the country’s prime minister. “No President has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump said in the deranged post.  “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”   

What in hell does “. . . before it is too late” mean?  Too late for what?  Is he pissed because increasingly, more and more American Jews are reverting to their Democratic roots, and voting for pro-choice progressives and candidates who favor enacting gun safety laws and shoring up Social Security and Medicare?  Is he warning American Jews that because he moved our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, that we should support him through thick and thin?

"If that’s not an anti-Semitic threat, I don’t know what to call it," tweeted Laurence Tribe, law professor emeritus at Harvard.

Regardless of Trump’s specific meaning - as if even he knows the import of his own words - it is but one more addition to a repertoire of anti-Semitic stereotypes he’s tried to leverage against the Jewish people . . . something he no doubt learned at his father’s knee.  Makes one wonder what his Jewish son-in-law Jared, Jewish daughter Ivanka and Jewish grandchildren (Arabella Rose, Joseph Frederick and Theodore James) think about their זיידע - zeideh - Yiddish for “grandpa.”   

If this is not an anti-Semitic threat, I don’t know what to call it. This is not the first time that Trump has attacked Jews for not supporting him politically or financially, and saying they should back him over policies toward Israel.

A year before his failed reelection bid in 2020, Trump said: “I think any Jewish people who would vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty."

At a White House Hanukkah party in 2018, Trump told guests that Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, had great affection for Israel: "And they go there and they love your country. They love your country. And they love this country. That’s a good combination, right?” Of course, what was not said is that Christian Nationalists like Pence firmly believe that in order for the Messiah to return, all Jews must be gathered back to Jerusalem (aka “The Holy Land”) in order to either accept Jesus as their Lord or face immediate extinction. (I for one, will await the coming of the Messiah [for the first time] by doing as much as I can to make this world as sane, peaceful and holy a place as possible for the sake of all people of all religions.)

In going public with his loopy, potentially dangerous post, Donald Trump reveals an anti-Semitic, narrow-minded understanding (or lack thereof) of American Jews. He seems to believe that the single-most important (if not, indeed, only) issue American Jews care about is the safety of Israel; and that therefore, whoever is “best for Israel”, must be the person we will support. This shows a gross misunderstanding. While Israel is certainly an issue of great importance to the American Jewish community, it is by no means the only issue which motivates our vote. As I have been preaching for more than 45 years, check out candidates based on ten or twelve issues (healthcare, climate, voting and civil rights, women, and curbing gun violence among others) facing America. Whoever is, in your estimation, best for America and the world at large will, unquestionably, be best for Israel and the Jewish people.

Just as an anti-Semite can never be good for Israel, so too that individual can never be good for America and all she stands for.

For those Americans who are Jewish, please realize that our future cannot - and never will be - secure in the hands of any individual or party which is incapable of understanding us in the totality of our being and our history . . . that In going public with his moronic post, Donald Trump reveals an anti-Semitic, narrow-minded understanding of American Jews.

Never trust those whose understanding of American Jews is narrow or parochial. Our love, respect and support of and for Israel is just one part of who we are. Our concerns are not always your concerns; the political positions we take are not always the positions you assume we will take. This shows a gross misunderstanding. While Israel is certainly an issue of great importance to the American Jewish community, it is by no means the only issue upon which we base our vote.

To Donald Trump and those who believe that the only thing which concerns American Jews is Israel, remember one thing: המאבק שלנו אינו בהכרח זהה למאבק שלך, Hebrew for “Our struggle is not necessarily the same as yours.”

This is getting extremely serious. Former President Trump, who has made a career out of communicating with his core followers via dog whistles, has begun increasing the decibel level to that of a marching band. And what’s even more disturbing is that none, nary a single prominent Republican, has uttered so much as a sentence - let alone a syllable - of condemnation. How can they live with themselves? Is recapturing then maintaining political power more important than destroying our very system of government?

Is there not a single sane Republican office holder who remembers, let alone can (and will) quote the late Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller?

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

I Don't Care!

(Note: Lest any of you, my dear, constant readers, think that yours truly is in serious need of a frontal lobotomy, please understand that this week’s piece is serious [though silly] satire. Were it hand-written, the ink would be purely acidic . . . the penmanship of the anonymous troll, nearly indecipherable.)

 Herschel Walker (R) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D)

Less than a week ago, it was revealed that Herschel Walker the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from the great state of Georgia got a woman pregnant, and actually paid for her abortion back in 2009. At first, Walker, the former gridiron great, denied knowing the woman and categorically denied any and all charges. Then it came out that not only had he written out a personal check in the amount of $700.00 for the abortion, but that he actually has a child by this woman. Now mind you, Mr. Walker is a staunchly pro-life MAGA Republican who proudly carries an endorsement from none other than FPOTUS, Donald J. Trump. And you had better believe that ultra-left Democrats and their liberal media buddies have been calling Mr. Walker - who believes that life begins at conception - a hypocrite. They are doing everything in their power to convince Georgia voters that Walker should resign from the race . . . thus ceding victory to the incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock.

Well, as a staunchly anti-abortion MAGA Republican - one who firmly believes that abortion for ANY reason whatsoever is murder - I have but one thing to say about the Walker revelation: I DON’T CARE! It’s not that I think the lamestream media is making all this up about Herschel . . . I JUST DON’T CARE!! I believe deeply in the sanctity of life and oppose all abortions – except for this one, which I will accept to prevent it from costing my party control of the Senate. As a fellow writer noted the other day, “I don’t care if Walker oversaw the construction of a moon-size space station that blew up the 2-billion-person planet of Alderaan, then later got in an argument with his son and chopped his right hand off . . . We have to secure that Georgia Senate seat so we can stop President Joe Biden’s immoral agenda!“ I’m going to have to side with Walker on this abortion issue and give him a Mulligan, because I want my party in power and believe it’s a sin to use the word “hypocrisy.”

Back in the day when I was a card carrying Commie (well, actually a garden variety liberal), I remember reading the epic Anglo Saxon poem Beowulf and coming across a character known as “the monster Grundel,” who was described as “accursed of God, the destroyer and devourer of our human kind.” I’m sure that any of those accursed, overly-educated libtards who have read it will presume that Grundel is really Herschel in disguise . . . . “a walker in darkness," who is "wearing God's anger" and "lacking in joy" because he has inherited the curse the Biblical Cain. Shows you how much these educated twits think they know!

It bothers me not a whit electing Herschel Walker to the United States Senate despite the fact that even he has no idea of how many children he has fathered, has admitted to having a violent streak and having suffered from bi-polar disorder. . . or that he, like our once-and-forever POTUS doesn’t always tell the truth . . . . just so long as his election allows Mitch McConnel to replace Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader and elevates Marco Rubio to the Chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee (this assumes that he defeats Rep. Val Demings for reelection . . . and everyone knows that Demings, who was a uniformed cop for more than a quarter-century and served 4 years as Sheriff of Orange County [Orlando] supports defunding the police and is squishy soft on crime.

If there could be background music to this screed of mine, it would be that wonderful song sung by Judy Garland in The Good Old Summertime (MGM, 1949), simply entitled I DON’T CARE! Originally written in 1905 with words by John Lennox and music by Harry O. Sutton for Eva Tanguay (1878-1946), “The girl who made vaudeville famous,” its opening lyrics express to a “T” precisely how I am feeling about the seeming inconsistencies of such god-fearing MAGA Republicans as Herschel Walker, Marco Rubio, Matt Gaetz. Lauren Boebert and Lindsey Graham:

They say I'm crazy
Got no sense
But I don't care
They may or may not mean offense
But I don't care
You see, I'm sort of independent
I am my own superintendent
And my star is on the ascendent
That's why I don't care

I don't care, I don't care
What they may think of me
I'm happy-go-lucky, they say that I'm plucky
Contented and carefree
I don't care I don't care
If I do get a mean and stony stare
If I'm not successful
It won't be distressful
Cause I don't care . . . .

It really doesn’t matter one iota to us MAGA folks how many twice- and thrice-divorced, AK-47 toting, closet-hiding Republicans proclaim themselves to be to be the purest of the pure. I DON’T CARE! . . . just so long as they take back the House and Senate. We pine and pray for the day when the Speaker’s gravel is handed over to Ohio Representative “Gym” Jordan (who will be replacing that spineless, wimpy RINO Kevin McCarthy); we will cheer his first two acts: (1) making Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz committee chairs and (2) eliminating the Jan. 6th Committee.

Like the many Republicans who’ve rushed in to stick up for Walker in the wake of the abortion news, I DON’T CARE if the former football star is an ancient, trans-dimensional, shape-shifting entity of pure evil that takes the form of a clown named Pennywise and terrorizes a small town in Maine. I want control of the Senate, and I’m sure Walker regrets any past desire to feed on humans.

Listen up: there’s only ONE issue that  should matter this November . . . and November 2024: putting an end to the Democrat Party.  Winning at any cost is the thing.  And, if we lose, we will proclaim that victory was stolen.

Anything else . . . I DON’T CARE!! 

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

How Low Can You Go?

Although DeSantis, Abbott & Ducey may sound like the name of a high-tone law firm, it is of course, anything but. The three principals are, the MAGA-Republican governors of, respectively, Florida, Texas, and Arizona. They pretty much stand together on the major political issues of the day (they are all vehemently pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and anti-immigrant), and each harbors thoughts about someday running for POTUS. And oh yes, all three find the greatest amount of political comfort among the most ardent followers of Donald Trump. The mere contemplation of the lengths the three are willing to go in order to impress this growing gaggle of anti-(small d) democrats, is enough to make a good night’s sleep next to impossible.

Day-by-day, hour-by-hour, the story about how the three - especially Florida’s DeSantis, the man who seeks to out-Trump Trump - have, through trickery, been transporting mostly Venezuelan migrants to places like Martha’s Vineyard, New York City, and Vice President Harris’ own front yard in Washington, D.C., it grows and grows. The three have become exporters of migrant misery in order to put America’s border policy woes back on the front burner, thus reinvigorating the MAGA-Republican’s political playbook just in time for the 2022 midterm elections. The obvious political strategy is that when you haven’t got a positive platform to run on, stick to what you do best: label everyone on the other side of the political fence “radical libs,” “socialists” or “anti-Americans” and oh yes, don’t forget to blame the nation’s many intractable woes on “illegal aliens.”

Besides being what The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols correctly called “a sadistic political stunt,” DeSantis’ ploy could well get him indicted . . . which likely wouldn’t bother his political followers one iota. For a man who graduated magna cum laude from Yale and earned a juris doctor at Harvard, DeSantis loves coming across to his fan base as the reincarnation of “Lonesome Rhodes,” the raucous hayseed turned right-wing demagogue, played to haunting perfection by newcomer Andy Griffith in the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd.” In the film, “Lonesome,” who on mic or before the television camera regularly proclaims things like “The family that prays together, stays together,” is anything but a Bible-toting Christian. In reality, he is a truly mean-spirited miscreant who considers his adoring fans to be nothing more than cretinous fools and idiots. Eventually, he gets his comeuppance when Marcia Jeffries (marvelously played by Patricia Neal), the woman who made him a super-star, leaves the microphone on at the end of a broadcast, thus ruining Lonesome’s career when he is finally unmasked as a total fraud; a man motivated only by money and his own egotistical thirst for power.

In chartering 2 planes to take upwards of 50 Venezuelan asylees from Texas (not Florida as was at first mistakenly assumed) up North to Martha’s Vineyard, DeSantis found himself quickly becoming the butt of late-night jokes, inquiries into the legality of what he had done, and even the wrath of the FPOTUS. Mind you, Donald Trump’s outrage had nothing to do with moral revulsion at his protege’s using human beings as unsuspecting pawns for a political attack. Instead, Trump has been telling allies and confidants that he’s outraged that DeSantis seems to think he’s allowed to steal the ex-president’s mantle as both media star, and undocumented-immigrant-basher-in-chief. Trump and his advisors are smart enough to realize that DeSantis’ ploy is intended to be a shot across the bow of the Former President’s plans for running in 2024, and intend to do something about it.  What that “something” is, is unknown, considering just how full to overflowing Trump’s political dance card is these days.

As much as other Republicans may think poorly of just how low DeSantis has sunk, few - if indeed any - have gone public with their thoughts and/or condemnation. It is once again pointing out the moral and political bankruptcy of just about every Republican within range of a camera. Need an example? Here’s Texas Senator Ted Cruz - who like the highly-educated DeSantis is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law, proclaiming that the law is "clear" and a citizen could "easily be arrested" for moving migrants from one state to another, and yet still stating that he supports the Republican governors’ doing it: "I commend Greg Abbott for sending the immigrants to these blue cities, I commend Ron DeSantis for doing so, and they need to do more," Cruz said. "Tomorrow, Martha's Vineyard needs a hundred. The next day they need two hundred. The next day they need a thousand," he concluded. Got that? Harvard should rescind his law degree!

So far as I know, about-to-become-former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney is the sole Republican to utter so much as a single syllable against the likes of DeSantis, Abbott and Ducey. Have they no sense of what is moral, ethical or legal? Are they so fearful of losing the support of Donald Trump or the MAGA-Republican base as to remain mute in the face of gross inhumanity, not to mention the most vile form of  mendacity?

Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell − who's married to an immigrant, former U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao − acknowledged at a news conference ". . . there's been a good deal of talk about what some of the governors have done to transport illegal immigrants up to other parts of the country. I personally thought it was a good idea. If you added up all of the [immigrants] who've been taken to Chicago or Washington or Martha's Vineyard, it would be fewer than people down in Texas have to deal with on a daily basis."

If there is any justice left in America, Ron DeSantis should be in a world of legal - not to mention moral and ethical - jeopardy. There are questions aplenty to be asked and investigated:

• About DeSantis’ use of federal COVID-19 dollars to fund his Martha’s Vineyard (and now Delaware) stunt;

• About the relationship between the DeSantis-for Governor campaign and Vertol Systems, a Destin, Florida-based company which is a major Republican contributor, that was paid more than $615,000 to charter the two planes which flew the 50 migrants (lawfully awaiting their asylum hearings) from Texas (not Florida) to Massachusetts. (n.b.: The Vertol Systems website link is suddenly no longer operable.)

• About whether or not DeSantis conned the migrants into signing consent documents holding both him and the State of Florida harmless from any legal action.  (As a medical ethicist, I can tell you that unless an informed consent document is written so that anyone capable of reading can understand it, it simply is not legal.  It also has to be written in the language which the subject is most literate.) 

Bexar County (Texas) Sheriff Javier Salazar has launched a criminal investigation into DeSantis’ cruel stunt. The decision comes on the heels of immigration rights groups and Democrats accusing Republicans of exploiting vulnerable migrants for political points by promising them jobs and housing, only to fly them to an island off the coast of Massachusetts that was not warned people needing help were coming.

Salazar, sheriff for the county where San Antonio is located, said it is too early in the investigation to name suspects or know what laws were broken. But he said he is talking to an attorney representing some of the migrants who have already filed a class-action suit and trying to figure out what charges should be made and against whom.

“We want to know what was promised to them. What, if anything, did they sign? Did they understand the document that was put in front of them if they signed something? Or was this strictly a predatory measure?” Salazar said.

For all his efforts, it would appear that Ron DeSantis has wound up being on the wrong side of Donald Trump. According to a report from Rolling Stone, Trump felt DeSantis not only stole his thunder, but also his idea to ship illegal migrants into heavily Democratic areas of the country. Rolling Stone writers Aswin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley reported they spoke to two people in Trump’s orbit in the days after the migrants were flown to the ritzy resort island:

Trump has fumed over all the praise DeSantis’ action has been receiving in influential conservative circles lately - such as on right-wing media like Fox News - and has privately accused DeSantis of doing this largely to generate a 2024 polling boost for himself among GOP voters.

It seems to me that Ron DeSantis’ sights had better be on November’s gubernatorial race before he starts drooling over 2024; goodness knows how many Florida Hispanic voters are going to either vote for Democrat Charlie Crist or simply stay away from the polls, as a means for expressing their anger and outrage at the man who used to be called Trump’s ‘Mini-Me.’

Time and again, “Rambo” DeSantis has proven that he will do or say anything that can put him at the top of the MAGA-Republican list of favorites. He may be well-educated, but clearly is none too smart . . . and has an utter lack of scruples.

To paraphrase the old Chubby Checker song:

Every Rambo boy and girl
All around the Rambo world
Gonna do the Rambo rock
All around the Rambo crock

Ron be Rambo, Ron be thick
Ron go unda Rambo shtick
All around the Rambo rock
Hey, let's do the Rambo crock

Rambo lower now
Rambo lower now
How low can you go?

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

A Memo to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

TO: Marjorie Taylor Greene

FROM: Kurt Franklin Stone

RE: America’s Most Asinine Political Troll

Congratulations MJT: you’ve hit absolute rock bottom. Within hours of President Joseph Biden’s speech condemning MAGA Republicans and the danger they pose to the future of American Democracy, you had the gall to compare him to Hitler . . . and then run an amateurishly-doctored video of the speech with the president wearing a Hitler moustache along with a backdrop of Swastikas and a soundtrack provided by Der führer. Even for you - who have accused George Soros and the Rothchild family of causing forest fires in California via lasers from outer space, and proclaiming that the January 6 insurrection was the work of Black Lives Matter radicals (among many, many other conspiratorial whoppers) - this is going way too far.

We all know that you don’t believe for one second that Biden is Hitlerian . . . or that Democrats are pederasts involved in sex-trafficking children out of a Maryland pizza parlor. It’s all for show . . . and increasing your standing amongst your QAnon supporters. Tell me Marjorie: if Biden is Hitler how is it that you’re still receiving a biweekly paycheck in the amount of $6,692.30 (minus FICA) for your service in Congress? How is it that if Biden is Hitler you aren’t in jail . . . or a concentration camp, or that your family isn’t under arrest? Or that you are free to lie in public and post incredible, altered twaddle on the Internet? The answer is obvious: Biden isn’t a Nazi any more than the troops protecting the U.S. Capitol aren’t members of the “Gazpacho” police or that COVID vaccines are made in “Peach Tree” dishes . . as you so ignorantly called them.

Marjorie: a large majority of the American public has long known that you are an ill-lettered horse’s ass. But to liken the President of the United States to the most evil person in world history is going way too far . . . even for a miscreant like you. Has Joe Biden murdered 6 million Jews? Has his administration firebombed the House of Representatives, burned books he’s disagreed with or denied Christian children the right to attend school? (Herr Hitler did that to Jewish children.) Has the American President ordered the military to invade and take over both Canada and Mexico . . . as well as Central America? The answer, of course, is “NO!” But you wouldn’t know that for the simple reason that you learned world history not from your teachers at South Forsythe High School in Cummings, Georgia or at the University of Georgia where you earned a B.A.A. in 1996. You learned history through conspiracy theorists associated with QAnon.

Your accusing Joe Biden of being Hitler led an Israeli diplomat to condemn you to a reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency - something an Israeli diplomat would never do: "I am appalled by this cynical use of Nazi imagery and Hitler comparisons by a member of the United States Congress. As we face a rise in anti-Semitic incidents, in the US and around the world, rhetoric like this only fuels the persistent threat of hatred, extremism, and violence." (It should be noted that the agency had granted the diplomat anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, as it is extraordinarily rare for an Israeli diplomat to criticize an individual American lawmaker.

The American Jewish Committee (whose new leader, Rep. Ted Deutch will take over as President next month) also commented on Twitter that the doctored video was "vile, offensive, and completely unbecoming for a member of Congress." The AJC text also called for Republican members of Congress to condemn your attack. To date, none have had the guts to do so. Talk about cowardice! I hate to think of all the goodies they are going to bestow upon you should the Republicans recapture the House; you could easily become a committee chair!

Marjorie, I really don’t know what is worse, more reprehensible or most unsettling: that you do not believe what you say or proclaim, or that you do. If it be the former, then you are an immoral opportunist; if the latter, then you have the I.Q. and scruples of a carnivorous plant.

 Whether you care or not, Marjorie, you are never going to be anything more than a footnote in American history. Your entry will be nothing more than an example of a long-forgotten, thoroughly unqualified  backbencher who accomplished virtually nothing during her brief time in Congress.

If you believe I’ve libeled you, sue me. I will no doubt have my choice of the greatest First-Amendment attorneys, all offering their services pro bono.

Good luck in your next life . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Is FPOTUS Taking a Page From General Sickles' Playbook?

Beginning Note: This week’s essay is both speculative and meant to be taken with a grain of salt. Since no one knows when or if the FPOTUS will be indicted by the DOJ . . . or the state of Georgia . . . or the State and/or City of New York . . . any discussion about what trial strategy his “legal team” (the makeup of which seems to change with every passing hour) is pure fiction. The appearance of General Daniel Sickles - a real historic character - is meant to be used as a dramatic prop . . .

In going through the literally hundreds of classified, top secret and sensitive compartmented information documents stashed away at the FPOTUS’ Mar-a-Lago residence, D.O.J lawyers and investigators came across other miscellaneous items which at first glance, seemed to be of questionable value: “love letters” from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, as well as communiqués and birthday wishes from the likes of Vladimir Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Mihály Orbán. One of the items which at first seemed to be totally inconsequential was a long overdue novel borrowed from the Library of Congress written by the acclaimed Australian author Thomas Keneally (Schindler’s List, The Dickens Boy, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith) entitled American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Daniel Sickles. The fact that there was any book - let alone a novel - in the vast Trump treasure trove was weird. After all, the man has never been known to be much of a reader . . . unless it’s one of his own ghost-written best-sellers.  Precisely who it was that brought the Sickles biography to FPOTUS’s attention will likely remain a mystery.  What FPOTUS ultimately found so compelling about Sickles, a former member of Congress, Union General and U.S. Ambassador to Spain (among many other things) will be surmised further down in this post.

Ever since FBI agents in casual clothes and without their guns spent nearly nine hours at Mar-a-Lago on August 8 searching through the club’s storage room, FPOTUS’ residential suite and offices, Donald Trump has been making an unglued spectacle of himself. According to a property receipt they left behind, the FBI team collected more than two dozen boxes of documents, including 11 sets of documents with classification markings. A more detailed accounting in a later court filing indicated that the FBI seized more than 100 documents marked classified, from the confidential to top secret level. Seventy-six were found in the storage room. Others were found in Trump’s office, including three documents found in desk drawers .

Trump and his team - comprised of the latest incarnation of his “inner circle” and legal advisors - have come up with more than a half-dozen excuses, accusations and weaker-than-water strategies for once again portraying him as the victim of a conspiracy masterminded by President Biden, A.G. Garland and the F.B.I. to destroy him. He and his followers have accused the F.B.I. of planting top-secret documents in the boxes they removed from the Mar-a-Lago store room; of illegally “storming” his residence(they had a legally authorized warrant) and proclaiming that the people they should be investigating are Hillary (“Lock her UP!”) Clinton and Hunter (“We’ve Got His Laptop!”) Biden.

Say what you will, but ‘45 has been getting some truly rummy legal and political advice; with the exception of his hardest of hardcore followers, his optics are worse than execrable. Increasingly, many Republican office holders and candidates who have worked oh so hard to gain his endorsement, have begun maintaining a growing silence when questioned about the whole Mar-a-Lago imbroglio. FPOTUS is obviously becoming progressively fearful of just what the future may bring; possible indictments for obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and even treason. As he sees many of his circle receiving subpoenas and thinking twice about destroying their lives and reputations on his behalf, he is becoming even more unhinged . . . and thus laughable.

One of his latest and most breathtaking demands is that he be retroactively declared the 2020 presidential election winner or be allowed to hold a "new election," for which he has been mercilessly mocked. Of course, the chances of this ever happening are absolutely none . . . or less than that. Just the other day, FPOTUS began including QAnon conspiracy theories on his “Truth Social” website. NewsGuard, a media watchdog that analyzes the credibility of news outlets, found 88 users promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory on FPOTUS’ Truth Social, each to more than 10,000 followers. Of those accounts, 32 were previously banned by Twitter . . . as was Donald Trump.

Make no mistake about it: with each passing news cycle, Donald Trump is feeling more and more cornered; his many, many years of acting, evading and avoiding laws concerning his various businesses, paying taxes, and telling the truth are about to crush him. And, since he is changing lawyers like most of us change socks, his “moral albinism” (a term I coined many years ago meaning, roughly, a belief structure completely devoid of moral pigmentation), he is just about at the end of his rope. What legal strategy is going to keep him out of Leavenworth, Danbury or Ft. Dix?

Which leads us back to sordid life of Major General Sickles. . .

In his 94 year, the high-born Daniel Edgar Sickles (1819-1914) read law with former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Butler, and became a highly successful attorney-at-law; served as a member of the United States Congress from New York; a Major General in the Union Army who lost a leg and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Gettysburg (the Battle of Cemetery Ridge); was the American Ambassador to Spain; and, became a favorite of two of the worst Presidents in American history: James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce. In addition to all this, he was a notorious womanizer who, in 1859, killed United States District Attorney Phillip Barton Key the son of Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star Spangled Banner.” The younger Key was having an affair with Sickles’ wife Teresa Bagiolii (1836-1867), whom Sickles had married when she was all of 15years old.  Sickles found out about the affair, and on Sunday, February 27, 1859, intercepted Key at the corner of Madison Place N.W. and Pennsylvania Avenue, across the street from the White House. There, Sickles shot the unarmed Key twice, one shot directed at Key's groin. Key died about an hour later in a nearby house.

And here is where the story of Daniel Sickles may wind up playing a role in the future of Donald J. Trump: Sickles was actually acquitted of first-degree murder by a jury of his peers (all male, all white). How? He was the first person in U.S. legal history to plead innocent due to “temporary diminished capacity.” During the trial, his defense team repeatedly hammered home the fact that Key was "a confirmed, habitual adulterer" and stated that a cuckholed (a husband whose wife is unfaithful to him) has a God-given right to vengeance. Chief Defense Counsel John Graham brought up the notion of temporary insanity in his opening statement, which lasted two days, by claiming that "Sickles' provocation was so enormous that he was, from a legal point of view, insane." The jury bought it, and shortly after his acquittal, Sickles miraculously “regained” his sanity and continued living a life of privilege for another 56 years, eventually dying of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 3, 1914 in New York City.

Perhaps the mystery of why a copy of writer Thomas Keneally’s American Scoundrel wound up being amongst all the top-secret documents seized at Mar-a-Lago is as simple as this: FPOTUS and his legal team, running out of all rational options, are putting together a “diminished capacity” or “innocent by reason of insanity” defense for their celebrated client. Goodness knows, there are miles and miles of video and hundreds of thousands of journal inches to prove that for the past 40-50 years, Donald Trump has been madder than a hatter; has felt that he is completely immune from paying any and all debts . . . whether they be financial, judicial, political or the result of utter mendacity. Were he alive today, Sigmund Freud would be in a state of utter stupefaction contemplating the likes of Donald Trump.

Watch out DJT: the padded walls are closing in on you. And your legal team (whom you may or may not pay) are no match for the one that General Sickles paid most handsomely compensated; his was headed by no less a legal giant than Abraham Lincoln’s future Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. And believe me, your most current team - Alina Habba, Lindsey Halligan, and Christina Bobb - are already way over their heads.

I hope they insisted on an enormous retainer. If not, this could be the first trial in history in which both the accused and the attorneys entered joint insanity pleas . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Paul Simon's Timeless Tune

On January 19, 1977, the night before Jimmy Carter took the oath of office, thus becoming America’s 39th President, a strictly A-list pre-inaugural gala was held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Among the performers rocking the house were the “alpha and omega” of world-class musical talent: Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon. For her part, Franklin tore the house down with her megawatt version of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Although Berlin wrote the song way back in 1918, it wasn’t heard in public until Kate Smith sang it on her number One most popular radio show on November 10, 1938. Aretha’s Franklin’s version had the pre-inaugural crowd jumping and stomping and sweating.

By comparison, Paul Simon’s choice was a much quieter, more thoughtful, pensive - even prophetic - piece musically based on one of the greatest masterpieces of Baroque music: J.S. Bach’s sacred oratorio St. Matthews Passion (part 1, numbers 21 and 23, and part 2, number 54). Simon simply called it American Tune. It began with the words:

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused.

Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home
So far away from home

The song, originally released in November 1973, has been a personal favorite of both Paul Simon and his vast fan base ever since. Rolling Stone has rated it as high as #262 on its list of “The 500 greatest songs of all time.” (Somewhat ironically, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” came in at #1.) Upon his induction to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, Simon chose to sing American Tune.

In the song’s second verse, Simon amps up the feeling of civic dislocation and anomie - something which was and is as telling in 1977 as in 2022:

I don't know a soul who's not been battered

I don't have a friend who feels at ease

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered

Or driven to its knees

Oh, but it's all right, it's all right

For we've lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on

I wonder what's gone wrong

I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

I don't know a soul who's not been battered

I don't have a friend who feels at ease

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered

Or driven to its knees

Oh, but it's all right, it's all right

For we've lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on

I wonder what's gone wrong

I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

The song’s bridge conveys a dream of death and of the Statue of Liberty “sailing away to sea.”

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me, smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above, my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

In addition to Simon’s impeccable, pristine guitar playing, there is his voice . . . soft, semi-mournful and melancholic. During the many years of their partnership, it was Art Garfunkel whose voice received the greatest plaudits: often referred to as heavenly, crystal clear, and otherworldly. And yet, Paul Simon was as vocally adept as his high school friend and long-time partner.

I well remember watching “Rhymin’ Simon’s” performance the night before Carter’s inauguration; tears began welling up in my eyes as the full impact of the song was nearing its muted crescendo. “Where,” I wondered” would Simon’s mythic “flight” be taking us? Would it be a chimera . . . something to be hoped or wished for but in fact be illusory or impossible to achieve, or a catastrophic crash-landing? There are songs which resonate powerfully when first we hear them, yet continue to expand with meaning and poignance through the passing years. Few songs do this with the pointed poetics of this song. It was stunning back in 1973, magnificently poignant in 1979, breathtakingly prophet in 2011, and still speaking to this American moment in 2022 better than just about any other song ever written.

Simon’s third verse puts a capstone on what, for Americans, has always been, historic reality: tomorrow.

We come on the ship they call The Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune

Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest

At the time this song was included on Simon’s 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, he and Art Garfunkel had already broken up the act . . . although they would occasionally sing together at mass outdoor concerts over the years. On September 19, 1981, they reunited for what would become the historic “Concert in Central Park,” at which they sang American Tune as a duo. In his introduction, Garfunkel admitted that he truly regretted not having sung this song until this moment for indeed, “it is one of my very favorites . . . I truly love it.”

Much of the power of “American Tune” is in Paul Simon’s voice. It does not ring with the loud anger that runs through our time. It is mournful, as if unspooling in the candlelight of a day’s end, in the place where a person’s battles give pause until dawn. The song is searing in its tenderness, poetic in its indictment. It is political without being so. And its voices sound like truck drivers or factory workers, men and women who hustle for their daily bread while the world above them, the one of bankers and politicians, spins on indifferently.

Throughout its history, America has refracted its patriotism and its protest in music, including “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the African American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit,” Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Neil Young’s album “Living With War.”

In their new book, “Songs of America,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw write that American history “is a story of promises made and broken, of reform and reaction — a story fundamentally shaped by the perennial struggle between what Abraham Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’ and our worst impulses… Through all the years of strife, we’ve been shaped not only by our words and our deeds but by our music, by the lyrics and the instrumentals that have carried us through dark days and enabled us to celebrate bright ones.”

In American Tune, Paul Simon is tired but resilient. The American dream comes with both disappointment and loss. Each generation endures its sins and crises; its diminishment and cruel realizations. It is the job, though, despite the clamor and politics, that waits at first light with the hope of reward and the fear of resignation.

American Tune is the masterwork of a modern prophet . . . one who believes that regardless of the crises and fears of today . . . there will yet be another and brighter tomorrow.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Schadenfreude

72 hours ago, I posted a piece which expressed a bit of joy at the recent political winning streak on the part of both the Biden Administration and Capitol Hill Democrats. German speakers would call this relative joy freudenfreude, which roughly translates as “finding joy in the success of others.” Freudenfreude is not as nearly well known as its antonym, schadenfreude, [literally ‘harm joy’’] which refers to the uncanny giddiness people can feel upon seeing those they cannot stomach suffer harm or defeat.  Watching the Dodgers win 10-straight is ample cause for freudenfreude; seeing the gates of Mar-a-Lago thrown open in order to permit FBI agents to carry out a federal search warrant presents many with the opportunity to engage in a smirking bout of schadenfreude.   

One wonders how former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary (“Lock Her Up!”) Clinton must be feeling these past 72 hours. Is she struggling to contain herself from gleefully raising two thumbs upward . . . or simply smiling in the knowledge that “what goes around comes around?”  Having first been introduced to Secretary Clinton and her husband nearly 45 years, (and acting as a surrogate for her in the 2016 election) I think I know her well enough to put a dollar on the former and a fiver on the latter.  “How’s that possible?” you well might ask.  “After the tens of dozens of post-Benghazi hearings, the innumerable FBI-led investigations into her using a private email server, and the innumerable, incomprehensible, calls for her imprisonment . . . how could she possibly keep a civil tongue and not shout out for joy?”  In other words, where’s the schadenfreude?  Where are the explosions of mirth, the chorus of Munchkins singing the Harold Arlen/”Yip” Harburg song which begins with the words “Ding-Dong! The witch is dead . . .”

Don’t get Secretary Clinton wrong: like President Biden, Majority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi and all those raised with a touch of class - Secretary Clinton has neither the time, the temperament nor the taste for revenge. Justice? Decidedly so and coompleted merited.. Revenge? That comes from elsewhere. Clinton, Biden et al know - and pray - that Donald Trump will get his; that he will wind up being unmasked, sentenced, and becoming the foulest footnote in all American political history; that he will ultimately make Buchanan look like a savant, Harding a vestal virgin and Nixon a saint. .

For the past 72 hours, responsible mainstream media have been reporting on precisely what happened at Mar-a-Lago; of how the Department of Justice, after thousands of hours of investigation, went to a federal magistrate judge (now known to be Bruce Reinhart, a former federal prosecutor) for a search warrant that would give them the legal authority to enter the former POTUS’s residence in search of top secret materials which, according to the Presidential Records Act, he had no legal right to have in his private possession. We have learned that his response was to go after both the DOJ and FBI (whose director, the Yale-educated Christopher Wray was first appointed by the former POTUS ); and of how, when (not if) he is returned to office, he will seek to defund both institutions. We have seen how many of his Congressional supporters (the majority of whom wanted nothing to do with him at various times before he was elected) have prostrated themselves at his Berluti-shod feet, angrily proclaiming that he is the ultimate victim of what they have chosen to characterize as “the modern incarnation of the Gestapo” . . . or as Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert would have it, “The Gazpacho police.”

The FBI’s legal search of Mar-a-Lago has brought out tons of nasty, nasty threats and responses.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has likely dashed any hopes he has of becoming Speaker by warning A.G. Merrick Garland to " . . . get your papers in order and clear your calendar.”  What in the world does this mean? That should he become Speaker, he will run a House whose main concern is neither climate, economy nor COVID but revenge and “GOTCHA” politics.  He, like his cultish boss, is far more concerned about the past than the future.  Florida Republican Senators Rubio and Scott (the latter being the head of his party’s campaign committee) are desirous of nothing more than defunding both the DOJ and FBI. And they dare to refer to themselves as “The party of Law and Order.”  That is why I am supporting Democratic Rep (and former Chief of the Orlando Police) Val Demmings to take over Rubio’s seat: "If you don’t show up to work you get fired!”  So goes the tag-line to one of her recent campaign ads.

With each passing day, Donald Trump’s woes . . . along with his legal bills . . . continue to mount  He spent the better part of yesterday (Wednesday, August 10, 2022) taking the Fifth Amendment nearly 450 times in a New York civil court investigation into his business practices.  (The only question he did answer was “Is your name Donald John Trump?”) Upon arriving at N.Y. Attorney General Latitia James’ Manhattan office, Trump told the press: “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” the statement said. “When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.” The man is clearly scared to death.  Above and beyond the FBI search and the N.Y, investigation of his business practices, there is also the grand jury investigation into a minimum of 3 state laws he may have broken in Georgia.  Simply stated, he is a man with a mountain of problems. One wonders how much sleep he’s getting these days and nights.

It should come as no surprise that DJT is urging his most fervid MAGA supporters to continue contributing to his legal defense fund; only time will tell just how much more he can raise.  The most worrisome issue he faces, it seems to me, is the recent court decision compelling him to release his tax returns . . . which may well prove that he is not a billionaire and that he has played face and lose with his taxes for decades.

On October 2, 2020. Merriam-Webster.com reported that searches for the word schadenfreude had increased by 30,500% on the site, making it the most popular word of the day. Why? Well, that was the day it was announced that Donald and Melania Trump had both tested positive for COVID-19. One wonders how many searches for the untranslatable German word there have been in the past 72 hours.  One has a feeling that it must be in the tens – if not hundreds – of thousands.  And while it not all that surprising – in light of how many people truly despise Donald J. Trump – it may well be an emotional and/or psychological response we would do well to avoid.   While psychologists inform us that that there is nothing abnormal about feeling smugly joyous when we see or hear about wicked people “getting theirs,” it is not healthy. Or, to quote the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (one of the first 19th century philosophers to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place):

                                                                   “To feel envy is human, to savor schadenfreude is devilish.”

Let Congress, the DOJ,  FBI, DHS, I.R.S. as well as the states of New York and Georgia and his former freunde (friends) at Deutsche Bank - to mention but a few - lawfully saddle Donald Trump with the future he so richly deserves.  I for one look forward to a time when freudenfreude replaces schadenfreude as the most-oft used  - though miserably unpronounceable - German word in the English language.

 Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

It's Time to Pulverize PLCAA . . . Huh?

Even the most perfervid MAGA-ites have to know somewhere deep in whatever passes for their souls, that the past couple of weeks have been all that Democrats could hope or pray for. (And yes, despite what MAGA-ites believe, tons of Democrats do pray). I mean, consider that during the time that President Biden has been down with relapsing COVID-19, Congressional Democrats have managed to put together the required 50+1 votes needed to pass the “Inflation Recovery Act,” which will have an historic effect on taxes, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, climate change, inflation and ultimately lowering the national debt.  This passed within the  last hour - Sunday, August 7, 2022.  To make matters even more positive, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) convinced his counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch  McConnell, to get enough Republicans on board to finally enact PACT Act, a bill to expand health care benefits for veterans who developed illnesses due to their exposure to burn pits during military service.  Then there were this past Tuesday’s primary elections in which the good people of Kansas overwhelmingly voted against a measure which would make abortion impossible in the Sunflower State.  And while yes, a majority of Congressional Republicans who  voted in favor of impeaching Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 insurrection did lose their primary bids to Trump-endorsed MAGA crazies, this could likely mean that many Republicans will simply stay home (if not vote for Democrats) come November.    

By passing seminal legislation, Congressional Democrats have also forced Republicans to show their true colors just 15 weeks before the upcoming mid-term general elections. Voters going to the polls will have to choose between Republicans who are against lowering the cost of prescription drugs, against veterans suffering from life-threatening illnesses they contracted while fighting for their country in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, against doing anything to curb inflation or global warming and in favor of protecting the rights of those who manufacture and sell military-grade weapons to civilians or those who are far more in step with what a clear majority of Americans favor.

Another piece of legislation about to hit the floor of Congress is a bill cosponsored by Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA), Dwight Evans (D-PA) and Jason Crow (D-CO). Called the Equal Access to Justice For Victims of Gun Violence (H.R. 2814), this bill would repeal the 17-year old Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), ensuring justice for victims and survivors and removing barriers to holding irresponsible gun industry actors accountable.

PLCAA was a top legislative priority for the corporate gun industry when President George W. Bush signed it into law in 2005. It contributed to the gun violence epidemic by enabling the gun industry to evade accountability at the expense of victims and survivors of gun violence who are denied the right to hold industry actors accountable. Put in lay terms, it means gun dealers and manufacturers are immune from lawsuits, and victims can’t sue them in court. This unique immunity is like no other in our nation. Car manufacturers, food producers, and tobacco companies all have to meet a safety standard and act with due care — or else they run the risk of being sued.

So why are guns any different? Because some politicians, for decades, prioritized profits over people. That’s why they’ve bent over backwards to protect the NRA and any other gun lobbyist who will write them a campaign check or endorse them in exchange for legislation like PLCAA.

In 2013, Representative Adam Schiff put the original Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence into the Congressional hopper.  Today, after nearly a decade, it stands a chance of passage . . . especially in light of all the recent mass-shootings across the country.   In a recent email many received from  Rep. Schiff, he wrote: “Five of the largest gun manufacturers made over one billion dollars in the last decade from selling assault-style weapons to civilians. While our nation’s bloodshed has increased exponentially, their profits have also skyrocketed, and yet the industry has complete legal immunity from civil lawsuits by victims and families even when their negligence contributes to the problem, all because of PLCAA.  That must change, and it’s why I have repeatedly introduced legislation to repeal PLCAA, the Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act. The NRA is already attacking me and working to prevent this bill from passing, which is why I’m reaching out. Keeping our Democratic House majority is critical to ensuring this legislation not only gets passed, but makes it to President Biden’s desk.”

From recent polling, it is clear that a majority of Americans are in favor of a ban on Assault Weapons.  And yet,  just this past Tuesday (August 2), all the House could muster was voted 217-213 (an almost total party-line vote) in favor of H.R. 1808, which would ban these military-style weapons (all but 5 Democrats voted in favor of the bill; all but 2 Republicans [Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Chris Jacobs of New York] voted against it.  You had better believe that Democrats will be campaigning against those who voted against the bill.  The same goes for the upcoming vote on H.R. 2814.  Though it will likely pass the House and likely not even make its way to the Senate floor, if properly explained to the American public, it could bring additional voters to the polls come November.

Getting rid of PLCAA is terribly important; it could force manufacturers of assault and other military-style weapons to spend more and more of their inflated profits on those who have been maimed and murdered by their products, on paying compensatory damages to victims rather than stock by-backs for the sake of their shareholders.

Please, consider writing, emailing or calling your Congressional representative and/or senators and demand that they pulverize PLCAA by voting in favor of H.R. 2814. Let’s help take power back from the merchants and manufacturers of mayhem and return it to the people . . . where it belongs.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Vin Scully: Shakespeare With a Mic

Long, longtime Dodger play-by-play announced Vin Scully passed away yesterday at age 94. He was, hands down, the best at what he did. I mean, have you ever attended a baseball game in which the vast majority of the fans in the stands were listening to the game on radio? Vin could do that.

Nearly 9 years ago, at the time of his retirement, I wrote a blog essay entitled "Vin Scully: Shakespeare With a Mic." In observing his passing . . . and with tears in my eyes, what follows is a reprint of that post .from August, 25, 2013 . . .

 Benjamin Franklin famously opined that "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."  Well, I'm here to tell you that his list wasn't complete.  For indeed, if you are a Southern Californian there is a third eternal verity: that Vin Scully, the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is the greatest announcer in the history of sports.  Period.  And, mirabile dictu, this past Friday, the Dodgers announced that the 85 year old Scully will be returning to the broadcast booth for a record 65th season in 2014. For Dodger fans -- indeed for all Angelenos -- Scully is much, much more than the voice of the Dodgers; he is, without question, the most beloved citizen of that place Dorothy Parker once called "72 suburbs in search of a city." When, several years ago, team owners asked fans to vote for their all-time favorite Dodger, guess who won?  Hint: it was neither Sandy Koufax nor Don Drysdale.  It was L.A's favorite redhead. 

Vin Scully has been with the Dodgers longer than Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics, and longer than Joe Paterno coached the Nittany Lions.  In fact, the only person ever to serve a single sports team longer is another Dodger: Tommy Lasorda, who signed his first contract in 1948 -- one year before Vin came on board. 

I first heard the voice of Vin Scully on April 18, 1958 -- the first game the Dodgers ever played in Los Angeles.  They beat the San Francisco (formerly New York) Giants 6-5.  Carl Erskine defeated Al Worthington; Clem Labine got the save and third baseman Dick Gray was the first Dodger to homer at the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.  I remember being absolutely mesmerized by the dulcet tones of the Dodger announcer.  It was as if he was talking to me and me alone.  By the end of that first season -- in which they finished a miserable 7th, 23 games behind the Milwaukee Braves -- I had my own radio.  Since then, I would estimate that I have heard Vin Scully call nearly 8,500 games, which means that next to my late father, his is the male voice I've heard most often in my life.

As any Dodger fan knows, Vin Scully does far more than merely announce a game.  He is a walking, talking and breathing baseball encyclopedia.  His memories are priceless; his stories are sensational.  He not only tells mostly first-hand stories of the past 70-plus years of baseball, but also, when appropriate, tidbits about world and Broadway history, literature and music.  At the same time, this 85-year old might also remind listeners that AC/DC does "Hell's Bells" and that "Enter Sandman" is by Metallica. He does all this while calling a baseball game.  And best of all, unlike just about any other announcer, he knows when to be silent.  I guess the greatest proof of the Scully's genius is that almost everyone attending games at Chavez Ravine (Dodger Stadium) is listening to him on the radio . . . even though the game is going on right in front of them.

Over the course of his career, Vin has called three perfect games, 25 no-hitters, 25 World Series and 12 All-Star Games.  Among the iconic moments he has called:

• Don Larson's perfect game in the 1956 World Series: Got him! The greatest game ever pitched in baseball history, by Don Larson! A no hitter, a perfect game in a World Series ... Never in the history of the game has it ever happened in a World Series ... And so our hats off to Don Larson—no runs, no hits, no errors, no walks, no base runners. The final score: The Yankees, two runs, five hits and no errors. The Dodgers: No runs, no hits, no errors ... in fact, nothing at all. This was a day to remember, this was a ballgame to remember and above all, the greatest day in the life of Don Larsen. And the most dramatic and well-pitched ballgame in the history of baseball. ... Mel (Allen) you can put this in your ring and wear it a long time.

• Sandy Koufax's perfect game, September 9, 1965: And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flourish. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that "K" stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.

• Hank Aaron's 715th home run on April 8, 1974: What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron. … And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months.

Vin Scully is more than an icon; more than a living legend.  He is, simply stated, the best there ever has been.  Scully is to baseball announcing what Shakespeare was to English literature, what Bach was to music, Einstein to theoretical physics or Sir Charles Chaplin to cinema -- both sui generis and nonpareil.  Scully has taught baseball -- both the game and the "game within the game" to countless millions over the past 65 years.  He has been both a brilliant constant and a thorough-going gentleman in an ever-changing world where far too many idols have feet of clay.  To my ear, he sounds just as young, vital and resonant in August 2013 as he did that first time I heard him back in April 1958.

When Sir Charles Chaplin died on December 25, 1977, I felt a tremendous sense of loss. Although I never met him, I had seen just about every film he'd ever made, and read every book ever written by or about him.  He was -- and still is -- to my way of thinking, the greatest genius in the history of cinema.  I remember reading dozens upon dozens of eulogies delivered by the great men and women of his profession; heartfelt and wonderfully literate sentiments by the likes of René Clair, Lord Olivier, Jacques Tati and Federico Fellini.  The simplest -- and yet the most touching -- was spoken by Bob Hope, whose words best sum up not only the life, times and achievements of "the little fellow," but Vin Scully as well:

"We were fortunate to have lived in his time."

Thank you Vin for being the third eternal verity.  We are so very fortunate to be living in your time.

©2013 Kurt F. Stone

In Search of Lost Time

                                   “Them Versus Us” - People’s Park, May 1969

In mid-May 1969, the counterculture came into armed conflict with the California National Guard in Berkeley, California. On one side were thousands upon thousands of angry students from America’s premier public university, armed mostly with shovels, spades, potting soil and placards; on the other, stood soldiers armed with rifles, bayonets and tear gas. Over a three-day period, student protesters - long-haired, deeply anti-Vietnam, anti-military draft and pro-people power - stood up to the university’s regents, who had announced their intention to develop a parcel of university-owned land about four blocks south of the Berkeley campus and just east of Telegraph Avenue in order to build an athletic facility.

Furious at the proposed development, a angry gathering of students dragged sod, trees and flowers to the empty lot and proclaimed it “the People’s Park.” In response, UC erected a fence. The student body president-elect urged a crowd on campus to “take back the park” and more than 6000 people marched down Telegraph to do just that. A violent clash ensued, leaving one man (James Rector, who was visiting friends in Berkeley and watching from the roof of Granma Books) dead, a young carpenter (Alan Blanchard) permanently blinded by a load of birdshot fired directly to his face and at least 128 Berkeley students and residents admitted to local hospitals for head trauma, shotgun wounds, and other serious injuries inflicted by police.  Then-governor Ronald Reagan declared a state of emergency, thus giving him legal authority to summon nearly 3,000 troops. Upon being informed of Rector’s death and Blanchard’s blinding, Reagan explained to members of the press, "Once the dogs of war have been unleashed, you must expect things will happen, and that people, being human, will make mistakes on both sides."  

I well remember the extraordinary mix of anger, energy, fear, and youthful self-righteousness of those days now more than a half-century ago.  I remember a number of my friends and classmates hauled off to the Santa Rita Jail over in Dublin. According to their accounts, they were forced to lie face down in the yard while guards hit their calves with nightsticks, demanding that they, the protesters, scream out WE LOVE YOU BLUE MEANIES!  (The “Blue Meanies” were a fictional army of fierce though buffoonish music-hating beings and the main antagonists in the surreal 1968 Beatles animated film Yellow Submarine.  Ironically, it was - and still  is - the nickname of one of the most potent magic mushrooms on the planet.)  The protesters were all eventually released, just in time to finish out the Spring Quarter.   The university decided not to develop the land.  Indeed, it did become a people’s park, flush with flowers and vegetables, swing-sets and families, and with the passage of time, lots of homeless people. 

A month or so after the riots I found myself in Washington, D.C., about to begin an internship in the offices of U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska.  From the perspective of 53 years, I find it amazing that at the time of my arrival on Capitol Hill, Senator Gravel was a mere 38 years old . . . 3 years younger than my youngest child is today; then, he  seemed so old.  I well remember looking for a place to rent, and happened upon an area called “DuPont Circle” which today, is extremely pricey.  Back in 1969, it was pretty hip and mirabile dictu actually had a pharmacy called PEOPLE’S DRUGS.  I felt like the revolution had  been  won!  It took about 30 seconds to decide that this was the place to drop anchor.  (Back then, a spacious 2-bedroom apartment in a late 19th-century brownstone rented for under $200.00 a month. Today, the same space costs in the many thousands.)  2 months after my arrival, Woodstock happened . . . love and peace, pot and flowers were back in bloom - both in Berkeley and in Bethel, New York. I will be perfectly honest: I did not attend Woodstock, and am glad I chose instead, to attend the Berkshire Festival where I had the great joy of listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Erich Leinsdorf, play Beethoven’s Ninth. And there was neither a drop of rain nor a hint of mud.

So why am I writing about 1969?  Well, just the other day, an Alameda County judge named Frank Roesch ruled that UC Berkeley can begin clearing the historic park and starting site work on the construction of apartments and dorm space because the university’s plan does not violate the California Environmental Quality Act.  UC Berkeley and the city of Berkeley first proposed redeveloping the park in 2018, calling it a first-in-the-nation plan to build long-term supportive housing for homeless people on university land. The university would also build 1,100 units of badly-needed student housing and retain some of the park as open green space, while also erecting a monument to its storied history.

But two organizations — the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group and Make UC a Good Neighbor — jointly filed a lawsuit, arguing, among other things, that the university had other options for developing housing and had not adequately studied them, as required by state law. Two other groups filed their own challenges, which will be consolidated into the judge’s decision.  A UC spokesperson issued a statement stating  that university officials are “pleased with the judge’s decision and look forward to the court making it official early next week, just as we look forward to starting construction sometime this summer.”

City and university officials have hailed the plan as a model for other universities and a landmark solution to both California’s homeless crisis and the housing shortage at UC Berkeley and other UC campuses.  “It begins with partnership,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said earlier this spring. “And it also begins with the university’s accepting that this is our responsibility to address the tragedy of homelessness in our midst.”

In learning of the judge’s decision, I found myself recalling in pretty vivid detail, the events and feelings of 1969, and asking myself “On what side of the issue do you stand Doc?  Has there been a change in your worldview from when you were 20 and today, when you’re a few days away from turning 73?  Is there truth to  the old saw "If you’re not a liberal when you’re young you haven’t got a heart, but if you aren’t a conservative when you grow up you haven’t got a smart?”  In the midst of my pondering, I find myself remembering the title of Marcel Proust’s staggeringly long 7-volume novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu), originally translated as Remembrance of Things Past. Why?  Well for one thing, I  am myself “in search of lost time.” Then too, at the time of the People’s Park riot, I was midway through volume 3 of Proust’s masterpiece, The Guermantes Way (Le côté de Guermantes) and having my head filled with thoughts about politics and society, romance and reality. . . the greed and vacuousness of society . . . whether it be 19th century France or 20th century America.

In my search of lost time, I find that while I am perfectly sanguine with what I/We did in vigorously - and for some, violently - protesting the People’s Park evisceration 53 years ago, I am just as sanguine with having the University reclaim a hefty parcel of that park in order to build affordable housing for both students and the homeless 53 years later.  Back in 1969, things seemed so much more black-and-white; of those whose motivation was doing good, versus those whose motivation was doing well.  Back then, gradations of grey were difficult to discern; the young couldn’t wait to change the world for the better . . . to inject idealism into the body politic.  We were motivated as much by anger as by optimism.

Today, of course, anger is still a major motivator in politics. The difference, it seems to me, is that for far too many, optimism has given way to both pessimism and fear … fear of “the other,” fear of failure . . . a fear engendered by every conspiracy under the sun. Many find irrational comfort in anchoring their boots in the concrete of mindless dogmatism, and taking both their marching orders and worldview from those who often do not believe the bilge they spew.  (Of these spewers of bilge, Proust himself reminds us “It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying.”) To them I say “I’m not going to argue with you in an attempt to change your already made-up minds; I’ll be quiet and let you be wrong.”

Searching through the dustbin of lost time can be both beneficial and a bit bemusing, to say the least. As we age, remembering facts of past events can lull us into mental  haziness. But the search can also be empowering . . . especially when remembering how we felt during seminal events of our youthful past. If we discover that with age we’ve changed, so be it. But never forget that so long as we have breath in our lungs, ideas in our heads and ideals in our hearts, we can still help foster positive change.

 It’s what Proust brilliantly referred to as “. . . that translucent alabaster of our memories.”

 Copyright2022 Kurt F. Stone

Patrick Michaels Meets His Maker

Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D., who spoke out often and brashly against the prevailing view that climate change needs urgent attention, thus becoming a favorite of climate change skeptics and a target of criticism by those advocating action on greenhouse gases and in other areas, died on July 15 at his home in Washington. He was 72. Unlike many climate change deniers, Dr. Michaels had sterling academic credentials; he held a doctorate in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was for decades a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and Virginia’s state climatologist, and had published in scientific journals. At the same time, he was a staunch libertarian who worked hand-in-glove with both the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to spread the word that “The world is not coming to an end because of global warming. Further, we don’t really have the means to significantly alter the temperature trajectory of the planet.”

Michaels was the co-author of several books, including “Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media” (2004) Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know (2009) and “Lukewarming: The New Climate Science That Changes Everything” (2016).  Snippets from these books are frequently recited by climate-change deniers as “proof” that not everyone believes the earth is going to hell in a handbasket or that human beings are the proximate cause.

In short, Dr. Michael’s was to politically-charged climate change denial what such scientists as Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich and Rachael Carson were to such seminal climate change awareness works as The Population Bomb (1968) and Silent Spring (1962).  One huge difference, of course, is that Ehrlich and Carson are still read and quoted by the masses [Dr. Ehrlich, BTW, just turned 90 this past May] while Dr. Michaels is read and quoted almost exclusively by movement conservatives. Ehrlich and Carson are recognized as experts in their field; Dr. Michaels is largely considered an outlier.

What follows, briefly, is an imagined conversation between the recently deceased Dr. Michaels and his maker . . . the Master of the Universe.  In place of the term “G-d,” I have chosen to use the Divine Pronoun “CO,” which as longtime readers know is  to be understood as “He/She” ).

CO: Well, well, as I eternally live and breath; it is you, Dear Dr. Michaels. So sorry to meet you under these circumstances. Please accept my deepest sympathies to your dear wife Rachael and your children, Erika and Robert. It’s been a most impactful and melodramatic three score and twelve.

PM: And whatever do you mean by that?

CO: Well, in a nutshell, that I fully expected far more from you. I mean, you started out your career in Climate science with so much promise, and then, as time went by, you kind of . . . sold out to the highest bidder and turned the pursuit of scientific truth into the divertissement of politics. I well remember that piece you published back in the late 1990s when you predicted that hybrid vehicles, such as Toyota’s Prius, “. . . were in the process of finding out that gas is so inexpensive in this country (despite its 40 cents per gallon tax) that no one except die-hard technophiles and hyper-greens are willing to shell out several thousand dollars extra for a hybrid.” I hope you will admit, Patrick, that you were wrong, wrong, wrong.

PM:  With all due respect, I certainly will not!  I was, am and will always be ahead of the scientific curve!

CO:  Oh really? Then how do you account for the fact that the vast majority of your scientific colleagues find your conclusions on global warming to be sorely wanting, and  accuse you of having sold out to petroleum-backed and financed interests like CATO and the Competitive Enterprise Institute CEI)?  I well remember when you accepted a whopping $100,000 donation from a fossil-fuel interest, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, back in  the days when you first joined up with CTI.  I will admit that science can and does include advocacy, but you somehow found a way to profit by it all, for which I find you guity.

PM: With all due respect, dear CO, there have long been scientists who have stood firmly in place against the majority of their so-called colleagues, and were eventually proven to be correct.  Is that not so?”

CO:  Are you really trying to compare yourself to Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler or Semmelweis? To misquote the late Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, “Professor Michaels, I knew Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler and Semmelweis, and you, sir, are not they!”  Being eternal, omniscient and omnipotent, I can tell you I really, truly had a Divine Plan in creating the universe.  If you pay attention to the opening chapters of the Hebrew Bible (you called it the “Old Testament”), you will note, I hope, a certain unity of purpose spelled out in the creation the universe.  To wit, the order in which I created it.  I created the oceans before the seas, and the trees before the birds, and virtually everything else before humanity,  Which is to make obvious that neither the seas need the fish nor the trees need the birds.  Nothing which precedes depends on that which antecedes.  And since humanity comes last - the so-called “Crown of Creation” -  this obviously means that nothing depends upon  humanity, but rather that humanity depends on virtually everything.  In other words, dear Professor Michaels, you are wrong, wrong wrong . . . theologically, historically and scientifically.

PM: So what is it you’re trying to say?

CO: That you have placed a major - and G-d forbid fatal - stumbling block in the path toward saving the planet I created; that you have caused so many to ignore - or forget or misinterpret - my very First Commandment to “. . . be fruitful, multiply and act as responsible stewards of the good earth.” In the original, Dr. Michaels, this reads:

                                           פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ  (p’ru, u’revu, u’m’l’ooh et ha-aretz v’kheeb-shuah)

PM: I get the feeling that you aren’t terrible happy with me. Where do we go from here?

CO: See that elevator over there?

PM: Yes, what am I to do?

CO: Enter and wait for the doors to close . . . then press the button that takes you to the basement, where most regrettably, you will experience maximal universal warming . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Speaking of Senator Manchin . . .

Back in 1966, when he first ran for political office, Ronald Reagan, who was on the receiving end of a lot of ill will and jibes from California Republicans, announced that he would follow what he termed the unwritten Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” This made for smart politics, for following on the heels of the disastrous 1964 election when Lyndon Johnson destroyed Senator Barry Goldwater in the Electoral College (486-52) and won two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress, the GOP was in the finger-pointing mood. This “Eleventh Commandment” strategy worked well for Reagan, for not only did it fit his personality as “a nice man with a lose screw,” but led him to a 57%-42% landslide victory over the incumbent Democratic Governor, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. And, as they say, “The rest is history.”

For the next half century, Republicans pretty much heeded their Eleventh Commandment, which was, in fact, not the creation of Ronald Reagan, but rather of the long-forgotten Gaylord Parkinson, who served as state chair of the California Republican Party during the 1960s. Even during the worst days of Richard Nixon and Watergate, Republicans managed to put the screws to their president not by castigating him as a person, but rather by adhering to a tightly-constructed legalistic strategy. This all ended in 2016, when a ton of Republican “heavy hitters” (e.g. Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio et al) called Donald Trump virtually every name in the book . . . and then some.  Fat lot of good it did ‘em! Once “The Orange Man” became their official nominee, the Eleventh Commandment was reinstated and, in the words of Bing Crosby “. . . seldom [was] heard a discouraging word and the skies [were] not cloudy all day.” That lasted until January 7, 2022 when Republican leaders in Congress lambasted their leader for grave sins against the body politic.  Of course, their brickbats soon faded, and within less than 72 hours, most went back to honoring their Eleventh Commandment.  And ever since, institutional Republicans (with a few notable exceptions like Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as well as Senator Mitt Romney) have stood idly by with mouths shut and permitted their titular leader rant and rave as he pleases. Once again, they are - at least on the surface - a unified party.

Looking over at the other side of the aisle, it is obvious that Democrats have never abided by a commandment which forbids negative speech against one’s political compatriots. As far back as the 1930s, Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher, highest-paid Hollywood actor and political pundit joked, “I am a member of no organized party: I am a Democrat.” Back in those days, the Democrats were America’s party of dysfunction, an unstable coalition of urban Northern liberals and rural Southern conservatives. Occasionally, the two wings worked together, as during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term, but more often they clashed, right up until the party splintered during the 1960s, as Southern conservatives bailed out to join the Republicans.  For the past several years, there have been obvious, clear-cut factions within the Democratic caucus: moderates and centrists, progressives and near-socialists, and a hard-core conservative or two. 

Included in this latter listing is Joseph Manchin III, the Senior Senator from West Virginia.  Manchin, a multi-millionaire whose fortune comes mostly from coal and gas, is wealthy enough to drive a Maserati and live on a houseboat in the Potomac River when in Washington. He is, without question, the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill. How so?  Well, in order for Democrats to pass any legislation in the United States Senate requiring a 51-vote majority (as opposed to a 60-vote filibuster-proof "super majority”), every Democrat - plus Vice President Harris - must vote as a unified bloc.  That’s where Senator Manchin’s power comes in, for like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) he can all but single-handedly stymie any piece of legislation. Just this past Thursday, Manchin informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that he would not support a Democratic proposal for new climate change spending and higher taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.  This came after more than a year of negotiating (in what turned out to be bad faith) with fellow Democrats, always promising that he was “seeking a common middle ground” by which he could find a package which he could agree to vote for - a measure which would, in addition to allocating funds for climate change and lowering prescription costs, would be paid for it by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  His announcement caused extraordinary consternation on the part of his Democratic colleagues.  Truth to tell, the Democrats should not have been so shocked; after all, Manchin had already stymied earlier attempts to pass President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" legislation over concerns about the deficit and inflation. 

As Chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Senator Manchin can pretty much do whatever is best for him and his financial portfolio.  It should be noted that over the past several years, Senator Manchin has received the most funding from the oil and gas industry of any senator, including $1.6 million in donations from fossil fuel PACs alone.  This should come as no surprise, for not only is Manchin the Energy and Natural Resources Chair, he also represents West Virginia - the country’s largest coal-producing state.  In standing steadfast against anything green, Manchin is serving two masters at once: the mining industry and his own stock portfolio.  

Senator Manchin has drawn a lot of withering criticism from his Democratic colleagues for all but single-handedly limiting, then scuttling, his party’s attempt to enact legislation directly addressing climate change.  And then, within 24 hours of announcing that he could not go along with their latest proposal, he called in to a West Virginia radio show during which he suggested that in another month or so, he might see his way clear to salvaging the last bits of President Biden’s domestic agenda!  Is it any wonder that Democrats have had enough of (and with) Joe Manchin? While still in Saudi Arabia, President Biden was asked whether he thought Senator Manchin had been negotiating in good faith. The President demurred, saying he was not the one who had been negotiating with him. 

There seems to be next-to-nothing the White House and Congressional Democrats can do or offer in order to get Joe Manchin to cease being such a damnable political stumbling block. As New York Times writer Emily Cochrane noted in a recent piece, “On Capitol Hill, Mr. Manchin is something of a unicorn — the only national Democrat from his ruby-red state — and acts and votes accordingly. Set to face voters in 2024, he is unlikely to be threatened by a primary challenger in a state former President Donald J. Trump won by nearly 40 points in 2020.”  And so, it looks like the disorganized party of Will Rogers are stuck with him . . . unless or until they make his vote irrelevant.  How to do this?  Democrats have to put as much time, talent and treasure into flipping at least 3 or 4 senate seats this coming November.  The best chances will be in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.  The first 2 are open seats in which Republican  incumbents have decided to retire and have political crazies running in their stead (J.D. Vance in Ohio and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania); the latter two have incumbents carrying serious baggage (Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Marco Rubio in Florida) and running against smart, well-funded Democrats (John Fettermann in Pennsylvania  and Val Demmings in Florida).  If, like me, you receive fund-raising emails from most Democratic campaigns, consider chipping in a few bucks from time to time.

Democrats have the issues: abortion, guns violence, home-grown terrorism, climate change, and the Republicans refusal to abandon their so-called 11th Commandment. Can this be enough to overcome Party of Trump whose vocabulary will be limited to precisely 5 words: “inflation” and “the price of gas.”  

I have to believe it is.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone   

"Between the Hammer and the Anvil"

Later this evening, President Biden will depart on Air Force One for Israel, his first official visit to the Middle East since taking the oath of office nearly 18 months ago. After talks with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (who at the moment also serves as Israel’s Foreign Minister) and representatives of the Palestinian Authority, the President will get back on board his plane Air Force One and become the first POTUS to fly directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia.  During his brief stay in Jeddah, where he will be attending the GCC+3 summit on Saturday with leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, along with Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Biden will also hold private talks with both Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (generally referred to as “MBS”), the oil-rich kingdom’s de facto leader.

Diplomatic missions don’t simply pop up out of thin air; they require a loft of careful planning and frequently involve complex, interweaving back stories.  As regards Israeli P.M. Lapid’s preparations, he has, over the past several days had personal conversations with Jordanian King Abdullah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (the first in at least 5 years) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; Israel has long had diplomatic relations with the first, shares common interests with the second, and wishes to become closer diplomatically with the third. In a message to the Saudis ahead of Biden’s expected direct flight from Israel to Jeddah, Prime Minister Lapid called for all countries in the region to build ties with Israel. “From Jerusalem, the [US] president’s plane will fly to Saudi Arabia, and he will carry with it a message of peace and hope from us,” Lapid said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting.

For his part, President Biden’s preparations for attending the GCC+3 and face-to-face meeting with MBS) involve issues ranging from Saudi human rights violations to the brutal murder/dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who worked for an American newspaper. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden was pointedly harsh when it came to characterizing the Saudi track record on human rights abuses as compared to Donald Trump, who frequently treated the oil-rich kingdom as America’s 51st state. During a debate in 2019, Biden said, “. . . the present government of that country [has] very little social redeeming value,” and that he would stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and “make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.”

Now, of course, Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia has as much to do with oil and gas prices (which despite the daily dooming headlines has actually come down by nearly half dollar a gallon over the past several weeks). Considering how close we are to the midterm elections and how low the president’s ratings are - largely due to gas prices and inflation - he must be seen as doing something to help ameliorate the situation. Simply stated, that’s what politicians do.

As MSN op-ed writer Jonah Shepp noted in today’s Intelligencer column, “Whether or not one buys the justifications, global economics and politics have conspired to send Biden to meet with the Saudis whether he wants to or not. And from a moral standpoint, he probably doesn’t.”  Such are the exigencies of global politics, where idealism  and a nation’s historic sense what we stand for, of what is right and wrong must, from  time to time, take a deeply troubling backseat to economic necessity.  In going and - as some would have it - “groveling” at the feet of the Saudis, President Biden is nonetheless pretty much insulated from Trumpist and otherwise reactionary rhetorical brickbats.  Those who will most likely find fault with his hat-in-hand diplomacy at the doorstep of the House of Saud are those perched to his political left; who cannot and will not abide with lending credence to a kingdom ruled by ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabists.

(For the uninitiated, Wahhabi is to Sunni Islam what Dominionism is to fundamentalist Christianity: Taliban-like theocracy for the masses, but libertine lifestyles for the leaders.)  It’s the Wahhibi revivalists who keep women veiled and under the thumbs of their husbands and brothers, and issue lethal fatwas at the drop of a burqa. Likewise, it’s the Dominionists who demand that an impregnated 10-year old may not, regardless of circumstance, undergo an abortion . . . unless it’s their own daughter, sister or mistress.

The current Israeli P.M., former television host, journalist, actor and songwriter, Yair Lapid, who was until less than a decade ago widely ridiculed as a cocky and superficial political novice, is in somewhat the  same position as Joe Biden, one of the most experienced and long-lived politicians of the past half century. Like Biden, Lapir is in an electoral pickle; the Israeli government has pretty much collapsed, and he is facing yet another nationwide election. His political coalition, which runs the gamut from centrists, two-state enthusiasts and Arab parties, is once again taking on Bibi Nitanyahu’s Likud block. He senses that increasing Israel’s ties to gulf-state, oil-rich Arab states and sultanates makes good political sense; hence the recent reaching out to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E.

At the same time, this means that Lapid is all but giving his state’s imprimatur to countries and kingdoms whose record on human rights and the treatment of both women and religious minorities is the bipolar opposite of the Jewish State . . . the only democratic state in the Middle East.

Talk about being between the proverbial rock and a hard place! But then again no one ever said that hardcore politics and diplomacy were easy. Just how much civility, humanity and morality Lapid is willing to give up in order to secure greater, more powerful friendships is anyone’s guess. Selling the soul of a state to those who have spent generations promising the utter destruction of that state is a hard call. In an ideal world - whatever that is - Israel would tell Saudi Arabia and MBS to “stick it!” . . .. to begin treating women with equanimity and understanding . . . to finally abandon the 7th century and begin acting like modern men.

In Hebrew, the translation of “Between a rock and a hard place” is בין ההפשיט והסדן (bayn ha-pasheet v’ha-sah-dahn) literally meaning “between the hammer and the anvil.”  While I certainly do not envy P.M. Lapid for being in this position, I do understand that in reaching out to MBS,  he may well be positioned to help make Saudi Arabia - and indeed many of the oil-rich Muslim sheikdoms - better able  to enter the 21st century. 

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Federalists, Dystopians, and Extreme Nausea

Truth to tell, Friday’s 5-4* Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case centered on a Mississippi law that bars most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, didn’t come as that much of a surprise. Movement conservatives, including the Christian Right, the Federalist Society and their billionaire backers, have been pumping time, effort, energy and endless shekels into reversing Roe v. Wade for more than 40 years. Friday’s ruling has automatically jump started so-called “trigger laws” in 13 states as well as putting fear, loathing and extreme nausea into the minds, hearts and kishkes of an overwhelming majority of the American public. (* It should be noted that Chief Justice John Roberts did not join the majority, writing in a concurring opinion that he would not have overturned Roe, but instead would have only uphold Mississippi's law banning abortions after 15 weeks.)  Despite writing that Roe had been fatally flawed when decided back in 1973, Justice Samuel Alito tried to paper over the decision by stating that it was not intended to ban all abortions in the United States; merely to put the decision back into the hands of the individual states.  Can you say “disingenuous?” 

“Trigger laws” would effectively ban abortions almost immediately after a decision from the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.  These states include Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky and Alabama.  There are an additional 9 states which have already banned abortions: Wisconsin, Michigan, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.  In an interview on Face the Nation, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem defended her state’s trigger law, rationalizing that in cases of rape and/or incest she does not believe one tragedy is "a reason to have another tragedy occur."  Governor Noem said her state will now work to bolster resources for women who will now have to carry their pregnancies to term, including with more mental health counseling and family services.  "I would prefer that we continue to make sure we go forward and that we're putting resources in front of these women and walking alongside them, getting them the health care, the care, the mental health counseling and services that they should need to make sure that we can continue to support them and build stronger families far into the future as well," she said, adding, "The Supreme Court did its job: it fixed a wrong decision it made many years ago and returned this power back to the states, which is how the Constitution and our Founders intended it."  It should be noted that Governor Noem has made more than a handful of comments that she’s seriously considering making a White House bid in 2024. . .

For the first 15 years after Roe guaranteed women the legal right to control their own bodily destiny, Republicans were as likely as Democrats to support an absolute right to legal abortion, and sometimes even more so. But 2010 swept in a different breed of Republican, powered by Tea Party supporters, who locked in a new conservatism. Going into the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats controlled 27 state legislatures going in, and ended up with 16; Republicans started with 14 and ended up controlling 25. Republicans swept not only the South but Democratic strongholds in the Midwest, picking up more seats nationwide than either party had in four decades. By the time the votes had been counted, they held their biggest margin since the Great Depression. From that point on, Republican-controlled state legislatures began passing more and more restrictive laws which began the inexorable path toward the total dismantling of Roe v. Wade. Not that all the Republican state legislators were saturated with Biblical fervor. They did, in many cases, become increasingly more pro-life in order to grow their majorities and assure greater funding from well-heeled (and largely anonymous) billionaire backers.  This funding issue is crucial; were it not for the Court’s egregious 5-4 Citizens United v. FEC decision back in 2010, which eliminated the prohibition on PACS (“political action committees”) and corporations making unfettered independent expenditures, it is likely that Roe v. Wade would still be settled law today. 

Now mind you, Dobbs (the case which overturned Roe) wasn’t the only terrible ruling from the high court this past week.  Just the day before ruling that women no longer had any say in their bodily destinies, the court struck down a New York gun law enacted more than a century ago that restricts carrying a concealed handgun outside the home. The opinion changes the framework that lower courts will use to analyze other gun restrictions, which could include proposals currently before Congress if they eventually become law.  According to Justice Clarence Thomas, courts are required to "assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment's text and historical understanding,"   

For instance, Thomas wrote, if a gun law is addressing a societal problem that also existed in the 18th century, it is evidence that the modern law is unconstitutional if there was no similar regulation then. Likewise, he said, if that societal problem was historically addressed using a type of regulation different than the one now before a court, this is also evidence that the modern law is unconstitutional.

"When confronting such present-day firearm regulations, this historical inquiry that courts must conduct will often involve reasoning by analogy—a commonplace task for any lawyer or judge. Like all analogical reasoning, determining whether a historical regulation is a proper analogue for a distinctly modern firearm regulation requires a determination of whether the two regulations are 'relevantly similar,'" Thomas wrote.  Thursday's ruling means that for a court to find any type of gun law constitutional, it will have to be consistent with how firearms were regulated historically.  This means states and localities will run into legal trouble whenever they try to enact a gun law that does not have a historical parallel, particularly if the problem the law is trying to address is a problem that arguably has existed for generations.  

In other words, just as with the Dobbs decision, this one invites us to travel back into the past . . . to willfully ignore past decisions of the court.  To a huge extent, this is the work of the  Federalist Society, which wants nothing so much as to return to an America in which men rule over women, states have clear control of the law, black’s and other minorities legal rights take a backseat to those of White Christians, and the frontier is once again, just outside our front doors.

During times like these, my reading habits change.  To get away from all the angst, worry and bile, I tend read as much P.G. Wodehouse as time permits.  (For those not familiar with him, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE [1881-1975] was one of the funniest, most inane British writers of all time.  He is perhaps best known and most beloved for his series of novels starring Bertie Wooster (one of the dotty “idle rich”) and his sagacious valet Jeeves. My all-time favorite, by the way, is Ring For Jeeves). For more serious, mind-numbing fiction, I find myself turning (or returning) to such classic dystopian novels as:

• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895)

• The Iron Heel by Jack London (1908)

• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921)

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

• It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1936)

• 1984 by George Orwell (1948)

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1984)

Dystopia is an imagined community or society that is dehumanizing and frightening. “Dystopia” is the bipolar opposite of a utopia, which is a perfect society. The novels I have been rereading, most notably Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, take us into an American society/political culture in which democratic freedoms have been wrenchingly upended by brutal autocrats and hideous dictators. What makes these novels so compelling is that no matter how long ago they were written or published, they all seem to be talking about today. The one drawback in most of them is that they offer no solutions to the problems they all predict . . . short of moving away to another country.

                          Wedding photo of Clarence and Ginni Lamp Thomas in 1987

Although by no means a novelist, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a world-class dystopian.  In his separate, concurring opinion in last Friday’s Dobbs decision, Thomas wrote that this was undoubtedly “an erroneous decision.”  Thomas went on to write that the Court should “reconsider” such previous rulings as those that protect contraception access (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965), same-sex relationships (Lawrence v. Texas. 2003) and same-sex marriages (Obergefell v. Hodges,  2015).  Not surprisingly, nowhere did Mr.  Justice Thomas mention the court’s unanimous 1967 decision (Loving v. Virginia) decision which made inter-racial marriages legal.  At best, Thomas’s omission could be considered a case of inconsistency; at worst, utter hypocrisy.  But then again, hypocrisy and inconsistency have long been key ingredients in both bare-knuckle politics and dystopian literature.  

For all those who have been so vociferously in favor of over-turning Roe v. Wade, one has to wonder whether they are going to do anything about assisting all these newborns (even those who are the product of rape and incest) with food, housing, medical care and education, or just leave them floating in the breeze.  And do all those ultra-conservative cretins who have hopped aboard the “Replacement Theory” bandwagon understand that by outlawing abortions - which will most directly affect non-whites and the poor - will greatly increase the minority population of the United States . . . thus making their supposedly “worst nightmare” a far greater reality?  Not only are they both inconsistent and hypocritical; they are immoral. 

As mentioned above, dystopian novels rarely provide suggestions for remediation . . .  short of emigration. Not being a dystopian writer, permit me to conclude with a  couple of suggestions:

1. Increase the number of Supreme Court Justices from 9 to 13 . . .  the number of Federal Judicial Circuits there are in the U.S.A.

2. Elect a staunchly Democratic Congress which will get rid of the filibuster and enact a bill which codifies abortion as a federal right.

3. Start the process of overturning the Citizens United  ruling. 

4. Make sure that Roe v. Wade is on every ballot in every state and district in 2022.

Never give up hope!  This land belongs to the majority . . . 

Copyright© 2022 Kurt F.  Stone

Random Thoughts on the 80th Birthday of Sir Paul McCartney

OK fellow Boomers, how’s this for a dash of ice-cold water in the face? Yesterday, when my (our) troubles seemed so far away, Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, CH, turned 80. Can you believe it? 80! There are places I (we) remember some have gone and some remain. Without question, it’s been a Long and Winding Road since 4 Liverpudlian moptops reached these shores nearly 60 years ago . . . a time when many of us proclaimed “don’t trust anyone over the age of 30.” And yet, it was, by comparison to today, a pretty positive time where many believed that We Can Work it Out With a Little Help From My our) Friends.  As hippies (or “freaks,” as many of us called ourselves) we also believed that All you need is love, and that ultimately, we could Come Together. Looking to the future many wondered Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64.

Well, many of us are now more than 10 years past 64, and still finding both great meaning and memories in the words which Sir Paul and his long deceased (nearly 42 years) writing partner John Lennon created oh so long ago.  Many of us are now retired, no longer working Eight Days a Week and looking back realizing I Should Have Known Better.  There are days when many of us wish we could board Sir Paul’s Yellow Submarine, Get Back to where we once belonged, and once again Be Free as a Bird.  Of course, even though it’s not possible, we still have Sir Paul, the “cute Beatle.”  

On his birthday, Sir Paul - who is already selling tickets for his 2023 tour, received best wishes and glowing tributes from seemingly half the world.  Included in the greetings was one from the now nearly 90 year old Yoko Ono, which read: “Dear Paul, Happy 80th Birthday and many, many more! From a partner in Peace… love, yoko,”  He celebrated his birthday onstage at MetLife Stadium alongside the sprightly 72-year old Bruce Springsteen; 60,000 concert goers sang They Say It’s Your Birthday to their idol.  You’ve got to believe that the vast majority of them weren’t even born until long after the Beatles broke up . . . way back in September of 1969. 

Paul is not the only rock star to be knighted. The first was “Boomtown Rats” frontman and Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof. The singer and activist was knighted way back in 1986 because of his work on behalf of famine relief. The only catch is that he’s technically not “Sir Bob,” a title reserved for British citizens. As an Irishman, Geldof is allowed to follow his name with the initials KBE (Knight Commander of the British Empire).  Joining Sir Paul (who was knighted by his queen in 1997 for service to music, are the Beatles’  producer Sir George Martin who was knighted one year before Sir Paul, Sir Elton John (1998), Sir Mick Jagger (2003), Sir Paul David Hewson (Bono) of the Irish rock group U2 (2007), Sir Ivan (Van) Morrison (2016), Sir Rod Stewart (2016), Sir Ray Davies (“The Kinks”) 2017, Sir Barry Gibb, 2018, and Sir Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) 2019.  It  should be  noted that In 2003, David Bowie rejected knighthood honors for his cultural contributions, saying, “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. It’s not what I spent my life working for.” In so doing, the late Bowie (1947-2016) joined a long list of people who had rejected becoming knighted, from T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) and Rudyard Kipling to Albert Finney and Stephen Hawking.

As mind-numbing as it is that Sir Paul is 80 and still touring, that Sir Mick is still strutting, doing his rooster walk and is still 5’10”, 161 lbs. and sporting a 33 inch waist, the fact is that they are senior citizens.  The now 82-year old Grace Slick, lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane/Starship retired many years ago, proclaiming “All rock-and-rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire. You can do jazz, classical, blues, opera, country until you’re 150, but rap and rock and roll are a way for young people to get that anger out. It’s silly to perform a song that has no relevance to the present or expresses feelings you no longer have.”  Just don’t tell that to Sir Paul, Sir Mick, Sir Elton or the rest of the band of knights.

My feeling about aging (I am now 2 months shy of turning 73) has always been: Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.  In other words, just because the bones are a bit more brittle, the hair thinning (or gone) the waist spreading and the hearing in need of a boost is pretty much a matter of genetics combined with one’s lifelong habits.  Growing stodgy, stolid, sedentary or mostly set in one’s ways are sure signs that philosophically or psychologically, one has become old; has begun losing a sense of wonderment and the need for new challenges.  But that is purely optional.  What’s to say that we can choose, regardless of age, to continue exploring Here, There and Everywhere; of awakening in the morning and uttering a small prayer in which we acknowledge Here Comes the Sun and say I Will to the new day?  

Growing old is pretty much the way of nature; growing up is, to my way of thinking an option.  For that bit of wisdom - if wisdom it be - we have the likes of Sir Paul, Sir Mick, Sir Ringo and the Nobel laureate Bob Dylan to thank.  

Happy Birthday Sir Paul. Keep on doing what you’ve been doing ever since the days of the Quarrymen some 65 years ago, and do continue on your Magical Mystery Tour.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Guns, Guns, and More Guns

     Justus D. Barnes in  “The Great Train Robbery” (1903) . . . the first Western

Assigning attribution or “literary parentage” to a particularly well-known epigram rarely yields THE TRUTH. As a rule of thumb, the wittier the wheeze, the more parents there are. One of the greatest - and unquestionably snarkiest - epigrammatists of the past hundred years, Dorothy (Rothschild) Parker (“Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses”), best summed up literary attributions with a hilarious aphorism of her own: “If with the literate, I am/Impelled to try an epigram/I never seek to take the credit/We all assume that Oscar said it.”  The “Oscar,” to whom she refers is, of course, Oscar Wilde, generally considered, next to Shakespeare, to have been the most clever and skillful of all English-language scops.

Here in America, the four people who generally sit atop the “literary parentage” list are the aforementioned Parker, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. Parker generally comes in first, with Franklin second, Twain third and Jefferson fourth. My all-time favorite Parkerism is “You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.” One of Franklin’s best known quips is “A penny saved is a penny earned.” As for Twain, one his best was “A little lie can travel half way 'round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots” But it is Jefferson who is awarded attribution for a statement that will undoubtedly be heard over and over in the coming days and weeks as we proceed with Congress’s attempt to pass some sort of gun safety legislation: “Half a loaf is better than none.” (n.b. It is likely that the real originator of this expression was the 16th century British writer John Heywood who had been famous for more than 35 years before the birth of the “Bard of Avon”).

When it comes to Congress trying to enact a bipartisan bill dealing with gun control (some prefer calling it “gun safety”) Jefferson (or unknowingly, John Heywood) are hitting the headlines of news articles and and being quoted in speeches and newscasts with great regularity.  Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson published a recent op-ed piece which just about says it all: We’ll get less than half a loaf on gun control. We should take it.  A few days after Robinson’s piece hit the streets, Senate negotiators announced that they had struck a bipartisan deal on a narrow set of gun safety measures with sufficient support to move through the evenly divided chamber.  The deal (the specifics of which we will look at in the next paragraph) included far, far less than gun control advocates and nearly all Congressional Democrats would have wanted. At a time in our political history when the walls of political partisanship are taller and and more impregnable than those which surrounded the Biblical Jericho, it nonetheless represented a significant step toward ending a years-long congressional impasse on the issue.  Or, in other words, half a loaf . . . or even less.  

The agreement, put forth by 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats and endorsed by President Biden and top Democrats, includes enhanced background checks to give authorities time to check the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21 and a provision that would, for the first time, extend to dating partners a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns. It would also provide funding for states to enact so-called red-flag laws that allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous, as well as money for mental health resources and to bolster safety and mental health services at schools.  What it does not include are a majority of things a clear majority of the American public support: a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks. At the same time, it is nowhere near as sweeping as a package of gun measures passed almost along party lines in the House last week, which would bar the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under the age of 21, ban the sale of large-capacity magazines and enact a federal red-flag law, among other steps.

While Congress has not passed new gun-control restrictions in the wake of public mass shootings in recent years, hundreds of measures have passed in statehouse across the country during such moments. Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, high-profile mass shootings have been followed by a jump in state gun-control laws in the next year or two years, according to a Washington Post analysis of data on state legislation compiled by RAND, a nonprofit policy research group.

As much as the idealist in me rebels at the thought that this is the best 10 senators can come up with, the political and historical realist in me understands that this is likely the “new reality”, where even less than half a loaf is about as good as it’s going to get . . . at least for the foreseeable future. Unless and until the N.R.A. suffers a fall which even financial bankruptcy cannot touch, they will continue holding conventions, selling goods and continue working as hucksters for the weapons’ industry. They will continue getting their followers to mouth their disingenuous bromide about the only thing capable of stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, warning how the government is about to take away all their weapons, and willy-nilly buying up politicians left and (overwhelmingly) right.

To end on a positive note: the outpouring of public outrage after the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde has led to tens of thousands to take to the streets from coast-to-coast demanding that Congress - in the words of President Biden and so many others - “do something.” With this week’s announcement that the Senate might actually enact the “Half-a-Loaf” gun safety bill, perhaps it will light a spark which one day will see more fully realized measures passed into law - ones which finally resurrect the Assault Weapons Ban, rescind the legal immunity gun manufacturers currently enjoy (which makes it nearly impossible for them to be sued for crimes committed with the weapons or ammunition they sell), and put books and lesson plans back into the hands of the nation’s teachers instead of guns, guns, and more guns.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

The Fatuous Five

Unless you live in Utah, Kansas, North Dakota, Indiana or Montana (or are a hardcore  political geek), it is highly unlikely that you’ve ever heard of Republican Senators Mike Lee (UT) Roger Marshall (KS), Kevin Cramer (ND), Mike Braun (IN) or Steve Daines (MT). You really should know who they are and where they stand on social/cultural issues, for they represent an extraordinarily weird and wacky wing of the Republican Party . . . a wing that is on the rise.  The “Fatuous Five,” as I choose to call them, are uniformly against any and all abortions (and mind you, Senator Marshall is an OB-GYN), same-sex marriage, any and all restrictions on guns, gays in the military, the separation of Church and State, and are positive that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.  

While these political positions are hardly unusual for Republican members of the House and Senate, the Fatuous Five go even further down the path towards turning America into a blended theocratic/autocratic state. They are to the far-right what “The Squad” (the unofficial six-member [5 women, 1 man] progressive block in the House of Representatives are to the Congressional left. Unlike the Fatuous Five, which is made up exclusively of midwestern Anglo men, the Squad’s membership is exclusively made up of people of color; 2 are practicing Muslims.

Unlike Congressional Republicans, who tend to exile those who do not pay strict obeisance to their erstwhile leader to the political version of Elba . . . exempli gratia anyone who voted in favor of convicting Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial or publicly admitted that Joe Biden won the 2020 election . . . Democrats tend to work with most every member of their caucus even when or where they may disagree. Why is this so? Generally speaking, Democrats actually do believe that a party of inclusion is where it’s at, while Republicans tend to proclaim themselves to be a “Big Tent” while actually practicing behind a barricade of exclusion.  

Want further proof?

Last month, the “Fatuous Five” addressed a letter to the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board Chair Charles Rivkin. In their letter to Rivkin. who is also serves as CEO of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the five outlined their reasons for trying to create a new rating for television shows that feature LGBTQ+ characters and topics.  In their letter, the Fatuous Five thanked Rivkin and the monitoring board “. . . for empowering parents through the provision of tools that enable them to identify television content that is not suitable for certain ages. In recent years, concerning topics of a sexual nature have become aggressively politicized and promoted in children’s programming, including irreversible and harmful experimental treatments for mental disorders like gender dysphoria. To this end, we strongly urge you to update the TV Parental Guidelines and ensure they are up-to-date on best practices that help inform parents on this disturbing content.”

For a party so hellbent on complaining about “cancel culture”, the GQP (“Grand QAnon Party”) seems to be really obsessed with cancel culture.

In its own way, this is nothing new. Back in the early 1920s after the film industry went through a series of tragedies which gave the public a shocking look behind the virginal curtain of Hollywood (the morphine overdose of the “All-American” actor Wallace Reid, the murder of starlet Virginia Rappé at the hands of everyone’s favorite funnyman Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, and the murder of the urbane director William Desmond Taylor), Hollywood moguls hired President Warren G. Harding’s Postmaster General (At a salary $150k per annum (which is more than $2.5 million in 2022 dollars) to become the industry’s “moral’s czar.”  It was his responsibility to make sure that all actors, directors and producers toe the moral line.  Then, in 1934, a new code (called “The Breen Code”) came into effect which forced all gay actors to enter into “lavender marriages” (marriages arranged by Hollywood studios between gay, lesbian or bisexual people such as Rock Hudson and Phyllis Gates; Rudolph Valentino and Natasha Rambova; Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester; Judy Garland and Vincent Minelli; Janet Gaynor and costume designer Adrian, etc.), as well as creating a list of words which could not be said (“raspberries!” “So's your old man,” “nuts!” Damn!” and others, as well as such no-nos as:

• If a married couple were shown in the bedroom, they had to be sleeping in separate beds;

• No kiss could last longer than 3 seconds;

•  Miscegenation (interracial relationships) were not allowed;

• Scenes of childbirth were never to be shown;

• Illegal drug usage could not be presented;

• Words like "God," "Lord," "Jesus," "Christ," "hell," and "damn" could not be used unless it was in connection with religious ceremonies.

The Production Code came into desuetude by the end of the 1960s, when the “X-Rated” movie, “Midnight Cowboy” won the Academy Award for Best Picture.  Since then, movie ratings (”G,” “PG,” and “M”) have meant next to nothing.  But now they may be reemerging, thanks to folks like the Fatuous Five.  What they are most concerned about are cartoons and Disney pictures which have “ . . . dialogue [which] often involves the promotion of irreversible experimental treatments that involve surgical and otherwise invasive cosmetic procedures that are detrimental and life-altering, and do not evidence medical necessity. The motivations of hypersexualized entertainment producers striving to push this content on young audiences are suspect at best and predatory at worst.”  The senators added that “To the detriment of children, gender dysphoria has become sensationalized in the popular media and television with radical activists and entertainment companies. This radical and sexual sensation not only harms children, but also destabilizes and damages parental rights.”

What the Fatuous Five are  asking for are warning labels [⚠️] for the country's television ratings system to warn parents about "sexual orientation and gender identity content" on children's TV shows. As one of my dear, long, longtime (more than 40 years) friends, the supreme political activist Marc Kallick recently wrote me in an email, “This will obviously then lead to a prohibition of openly LGBTQ+ spokespersons, such as when TV programming has any LGBTQ+ content., teachers and the illumination of any openly LGBTQ+ spokespeople in our contemporary American society.”

Mark also noted, “ . . . one of these five regressive Senators, the reprehensible and repugnant Senator Braun of Indiana, has just announced that individual states should have the legal right to prohibit interracial marriages… overthrowing the established judicial precedent from the 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving V. the State of Virginia, which legalized interracial marriages. In order to stuff our American societies’ genie back into the bottle, will painfully require, taking a sharp knife to the genie… severely cutting away huge hunks of societal flesh, in order to stuff the genie back through the bottle’s narrow neck. This narrow minded approach, for the future of the world’s most open and leading democracy, will prove to be… bloody, painful and profoundly detrimental!!”

As what we would hope and pray is a free and open society, many of our leaders - and we, their constituents - have put our blood, sweat, tears and donations into protecting women’s reproductive rights, equality for minorities of all stripes and colors, and making healthcare available to all. Now, in what seems like the wink of an eye, many of these rights - and more - are slowly and inexorably being attacked and slipping through our fingers. We’ve gone from Indiana Senator Braun, suggesting the reversing of federal recognition, of interracial marriages to quickly following on the heels of the Fatuous Five demanding labeling for LGBTQ+ television content.

Until recently, I have never considered the “slippery slope” argument (“Today the government takes away our right to having unfettered access to guns or any sort, and tomorrow they’ll come to take all our guns away”) to be much more than the product of paranoid minds possessing little - if any - regard for history or reality.  Of late, however, I have observed the slope becoming increasingly steeper and slipperier. I have studied history well, and know that in the 1930s Nazis required labeling Homosexuals with a pink triangle to be worn on their/our clothing (while lesbians were required to be forcibly impregnated for the continuation of the, so-called, Aryan Race). Jewish Homosexuals were required to wear a pink triangle with an overlapping yellow triangle . . . thus forming the identifying Homosexual/Jewish Star.  

The explosive growth of homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and religious intolerance, coupled with highly-armed bigots who will believe next to anything just so long as it is broadcast by people who call themselves “patriots”  - makes me uncomfortably nauseous and deeply troubled.  

Is there an answer to what ails us short of taking a super strong emetic? Perhaps remembering the words of Dr. Benjamin Franklin will give a suggestive clue. The story is told that as Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”

To which Franklin supposedly responded, with a rejoinder at once witty and ominous: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

I wonder if the Fatuous Five and their priggish followers have the slightest idea of what the good doctor was speaking about . . . 

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Betwixt Optimism and Pessimism There Lies . . .

(Permit me to begin with a word of thanks to Rodger and Madeline Gobel, my friends and congregants who, without knowing it at the time, put a big smile on my face by providing me with an actuality which provided me with the germ from whence this essay evolved.)

Question: when was the last time reading page-one headlines or watching a cable TV news crawler was anything less than a task filled with angst or dread?  (Yes, I know, “angst or dread” is an overly-repetitive redundancy . . . so sue me!)  For those whose answer is something like “I honestly can’t remember” or “Seems like forever-and-a-day,” you are undoubtedly correct.  It’s all too understandable. I mean, consider the menu of malevolence which confronts us on a daily basis: Putin’s maniacal war against Ukraine; teenagers mowing down shoppers and students with AK-47s in Buffalo and Uvalde (which, by the way, has already  passed muster with “spell-check”); the damage done to American politics as a result of the “Big Lie”; our quondam POTUS and retrogressive SCOTUS; the dilatory nature of Congress; the daily gaffs and linguistic lunacies of such Luddites as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis; conspiracy theorists whose every off-the-wall inanity is as acceptable as Sinaitic truth by a growing minority of “true believers”;  higher and higher gas prices coupled with growing inflation;  and on and on and on . . .

 As one who has posted more than 900 mostly political essays over the past 17+ years, there are weeks when it is neigh on impossible to put another 1,000-1,500 words up on the screen.  Complaining, criticizing – even satirizing – becomes sheer drudgery.  And yet, going back to the very first essay (February 4, 2005 - when the blog was called “Beating the  Bushes”), I wrote that its overarching purpose would be “to hold up an honest mirror of the times in which we live, regardless of how complex, maddening or incomprehensible those times might be.”  The past several weeks have been far more complex, maddening, and incomprehensible than many, many others.

And so, this week I will resort to reportage of a more  hopeful sort.  Remember, the subtitle of this blog is “. . . & a Whole Lot More.”   

                      Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia: self-made billionaire and philanthropist

This past Wednesday, May 25, 2022, the senior class at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia, held their graduation ceremony.  Rodger and Madeline were in attendance, kvelling their hearts out; their grandson was one of the graduates.  The commencement address was given by Joe Gebbia, one of the three cofounders of Airbnb,  and a 2000 graduate of Brookwood.  (Gebbia is now chief product officer of Airbnb, the company’s in-house design studio, Samara, and is chairman of Airbnb.org, the company’s nonprofit arm.) His address contained the expected flourishes about following their dreams and never giving up.  The now 40-year old self-made multi-billionaire confided to the graduates that he wasn’t the  most serious of students while attending Brookwood, and admitted “I definitely don’t remember the advice I was given at my graduation. And I don’t expect you to, either.” 

And while few of the 890 graduates are likely to remember what Gebbia said, they will long remember what he did.  Towards the end of his address he said:  “I would like to give you a piece of my dream to help inspire yours and let you know that it is possible.”  He then went on  to inform them that each and every one of the graduates would be getting 22 (for 2022) shares of Airbnb, which works out  to about $2,400 worth of stock per graduate, based on that day’s closing price of $110.40 a share. Altogether it was a gift worth nearly $2.2 million.   

Turns out this gift was by no means Joe Gebbia’s first.  Last year he pledged $700,000 to help boost his school’s arts department and cross country team, both activities he participated in when he was a student. In 2020, he donated $25 million to two organizations in San Francisco (where he and his family live) combating homelessness. Gebbia and his two Airbnb cofounders, Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk, joined the Giving Pledge in 2016—long before Airbnb went public—promising to donate at least half their wealth to charitable causes.  

Though billionaires often donate to educational institutions, it’s becoming increasingly common for the wealthy to help students directly, especially if a billionaire is chosen as a school’s commencement speaker. Earlier this year, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel paid off the student loans for graduates of the Los Angeles-based Otis College of Art and Design, a gift of more than $10 million. Telecom billionaire Robert Hale Jr. gifted each graduating student at Quincy College in Massachusetts $1,000 each last year. The largest donation to graduating college students, though, comes from private equity tycoon Robert Smith, the richest Black person in America. He spent $34 million in 2019 to pay off the student debt for the entire graduating class of Morehouse College. Smith also gave 15,000 shares of stock from Vista Equity Partners’ portfolio companies to nearly 2,900 students, teachers and staff at Eagle Academies for Young Men, an all-boys school in New York City.

There are now more than 231 billionaires from 28 countries ranging in age from 31 to 98 who have pledged to give away more than 50% of their vast fortunes to charitable causes. Most of this pledging and giving has been done with far, far less fanfare or publicity than those who step on their tongues on an almost daily basis or shoot up schools, synagogues, supermarkets or gay bars. (Just the other day, as an example, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene garnered worldwide attention when she went off the rails, telling her supporters to beware of Bill Gates, who is planning to monitor their eating habits and “zap” them until they eat fake meat grown in a “peach tree dish.” (This is the same woman who, in accusing the Biden Administration of adopting Nazi tactics, accused him of employing “Gazpacho police-to monitor American’s bowel-going habits.

Is it any wonder that a pall of pessimism has enveloped so many otherwise hopeful people? The fact that the utter lunacy of a Marjorie Taylor Greene can garner or an ūber, over-the-top gun supporter like Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks so much more publicity than the generosity of a Joe Gebbia speaks volumes for where we’ve come as a society which is far more often glued to the lunacy of the brainless than the generosity of the accomplished.

Most are familiar with the expression “The pessimist sees the glass as being half empty, the optimist as being half full.” I have long believed that there’s got to be a third option: of being content with the fact that so long as there’s something in the glass that’s a good start. But what do we call these sorts of people (of whom I am proudly one)? I have long believed that laying somewhere betwixt the rosy-hued optimist and the dire, head-for-the-hills pessimist is the possibilist, a term first coined by the late writer/political philosopher/neo-liberal; Max Lerner. For possibilism is far, far better for the stomach than dire pessimism, and far less frustrating to the soul than rosy-hued optimism. And while both optimism and pessimism exist largely in the realm of  weltanschauung - “world view” - which is largely reactive It is the balance of which we speak - possibilism is energizing -  requiring action.  My slightly-older-sister Erica (Riki) just posted a marvelous photo of a heroic looking American Eagle stating what for me is the  possibilist’s creed:

  We are no longer accepting things we cannot change.  It is now time to change the things we cannot accept. 

Three  . . . or four or five . . . cheers for the Joe Gebbias, Brian Cheskys and Nathan Blecharczyks of the world . . . as well as the largely unknown, unsung possibilists of the planet.

Do remember that betwixt pessimism - which always sees the glass as being half empty - and optimism - which sees the glass as being half full - is possibilism - which avers that so long as there’s something in the glass we can throw a party . . . 

 Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Don't Find Fault; Find a Remedy

The late Senator/Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey (1911-1978) was, in many ways, his generation’s version of Joe Biden; accomplished, mostly - though not universally - well-liked and respected, decent . . . and not overly quotable. About the only quip he is remembered for in a public career spanning nearly 35 years is: To err is human. To blame somebody else is politics.  Sadly, Humphrey’s bon mot carries even more weight and truth in 2022 than it did back in the early 1960s when he first uttered it. 

Although finger-pointing has long played a noxious role in politics, it has never been as much a replacement for action as it has become in the past several years. In the same way, hardcore, steel-encased partisanship was never as much an absolute roadblock to passing legislation of any kind as it has become in the era of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. For most of American political history, certain Congressional measures were invariably guaranteed of passage: federal judgeships, names of courthouses, ambassadorships and resolutions of praise or condemnation, to name but a few.  Sadly, this is not so much the case today, when an historic nomination to the Supreme Court barely passes, a resolution condemning anti-Semitism or praising cops for saving the Capitol on January 6, 2021 finds naysayers or H.R. 7990, Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro’s Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act cannot attract more than 9 republicans voting in its favor.  (Please note that Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, who has become a bit of a fan-favorite amongst Democrats, actually voted against passage of the bill, which provides $28 million to address infant formula shortages.) 

Why ultra-partisanship should stand in the way of even the simplest actions being approved is not all that easy to limn, for their are a lot of disparate factors at play here. But to my way of thinking, one of the most obvious can be summed up in three words first used by Henry E. Peterson, an Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division at a 1974 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: “Follow the money.” (For film aficionados, the creator of the term would be novelist/screenwriter William Goldman, who put the three words into the mouth of “Deep Throat” [as played by actor Hal Holbrook] in the 1976 blockbuster film “All the President’s Men.”)

So let’s follow the money. . . . Ever since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision, Citizen’s United V Federal Elections Commission, which gave the green light to mega-wealthy citizens and corporations to flood American politics with unlimited $$$, politics has become a matter of doing what is best for the donor class. Doing their bidding has become far more important than doing what is right. Money has become the most impregnable roadblock in public life. That one judicial decision has had an immense impact on everything from the failure to pass gun safety laws and the successful banning of books in public school libraries, and from the inability to enact meaningful climate change legislation, to the emasculation of voting rights laws and the vast growth of self-financed, civically illiterate candidates for public offices ranging from local school boards and state legislatures to the very halls of Congress. Citizens United, which gave lucre protected speech status  under terms of the First Amendment and turned corporations into people, has also made it possible for political money to become both invisible and anonymous through the creation of hundreds of PACs - “Political Action Committees.”  These committees have the ability to bypass federal election laws, and contribute hundreds of  millions - even billions - of dollars to “causes” . . . which is a euphemism for both political candidates and corporate dreams.

Although we are only in the month of May, we are nonetheless up to our necks in midterm primaries; November 2022 is just around the corner. This means that as slow and relatively ineffectual as the current Congress (the 117th) has been, its going to become even slower and less effectual. Minority leaders McConnell and McCarthy are going to do everything in their power to bring all Congressional action to a virtual standstill. The Democrats are legislatively stymied; about all they can accomplish in the last months of this Congress is holding Republican feet to the fire by forcing them to go on the record through a series of votes and televising hearings of the January 6 Committee in the hope that the American public gets some notion of just how dangerously close we have come to losing our hold on Democracy.

In the upcoming midterm elections, the Democrats will run on a platform of issues and actions they seek to accomplish in the future. As for the Republicans, they have already admitted that they will not have a platform . . . outside of returning the Democrats to the minority by repeatedly harping on how the ultra-Left has caused historically high inflation and souring gas prices, as well as accusing them of being Socialists and Communists; of seeking to increase the flood of illegal immigrants in order to take away American job,s and then quickly giving them citizenship rights so that they may vote for Democrats.

Not much of a platform, is it?

And should they be restored to the majority, Republicans will no doubt hold hearings as a way of getting back at the likes of Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin and the gang for the actions of the January 6 committee.

In other words, they’re going to be doing the bidding of their well-heeled right-wing masters.  

Follow the money!

In the months leading up to the midterm elections, it will be the Democrats’ responsibility to get across the fact that although inflation is at a 40 year high, corporate profits are a 50 year high. Then too, whenever House and Senate candidates face each other in public debates (that is assuming that Republicans will agree to it in the first place), they must ask simple questions, such as:

“The price of gas is set by several factors:

• the price of crude oil and its availability

• refining costs

• the cost to distribute

• state and federal taxes

• the oil companies desire for profit

“Tell me: since none of these factors are controlled by the President of the United States, what are you going to propose that Congress do about it?   

What it all is going to boil down to in November is precisely whom the two parties’ candidates seek to serve: their donors or the voting public?  And what will they see as their most important challenge: to find fault or to  seek remedies?  

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Replacement Theory: Eugenics Refitted in 21st Century Rags

Of all the professional pursuits I have engaged in over the past half-century (Oy!), none has been more challenging or rewarding than the field of Medical Ethics. (Yes, I can hear the quip “Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?” for the thousandth time . . . and no, it is decidedly NOT). Medical ethics is the one field in which I truly feel I am making a difference in this world. At the same time, each day, each week, requires a tremendous amount of study, and a lot of learning. One of the things that takes up quite a bit of learning time is cramming tons of medical acronyms (such as ARDS, BPD, DVT or PML, to name but a teeny-tiny handful) and then translating them into understandable lay English for the masses. Please know that for purposes of this essay, we won’t  get into even a small sampling, lest you, dear reader, fear that any of the abbreviations or terms will become part of some final exam.

G-d forbid! 

Whether or not one knows the difference between “PK” (Pharmacokinetics) and PD (Pharmacodynamics) is not terribly important; it can easily be solved by asking a question or two from an expert.  However, in the world of modern politics, there are tons of terms (which may or may not have their own acronyms) which are terribly important . . . such as “CRT” (Critical Race Theory), “Let’s Go Brandon,” (a right-wing code for “F*ck Joe Biden,”) and one of the newest, “Replacement Theory,” which has come back onto center-stage as a result of this week’s massacre at a Buffalo-area supermarket which took the lives of more than a dozen African-Americans.

“Replacement Theory” (often prefaced by “The Great”), first came to public attention in July, 2017, when bands of White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis, attending a “Unite the Right” rally, marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, brandishing tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us!” and “You will not replace us!” Nearly two years later, two consecutive mass shootings occurred in a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The attacks were carried out by a lone gunman who entered both mosques during Friday prayer; 51 people were killed and 40 injured. Prior to going on his murderous rampage, the shooter, who was eventually sentenced to 51 life terms without the possibility of parole, issued a 74-page manifesto entitled The Great Replacement. In it, he expressed several anti-immigrant sentiments, including hate speech against migrants, white supremacist rhetoric, and calls for all non-European immigrants in Europe - who he claimed to be "invading his land" - to be removed.

In last week’s mass murder up in Buffalo, the eighteen-year old terrorist, like his counterpart in the Christchurch terrorist tragedy, posted a manifesto in which he accused “Jews, Democrats and Communists” of doing everything in their power to bring about “white genocide” - of “replacing” white people with “illegal immigrants, blacks, browns and Asians” who would then vote a straight Democratic ticket with an eye to eliminating “White Christians.” Somewhat lost in the shuffle was a murderous terror attack on a Taiwanese Presbyterian church in Laguna Woods, a community in Southern California’s Orange County.  Once again, the shooter - who was hogtied by members of the congregation with an extension cord - killed because he was a racist who wanted to get rid of as many “aliens” as possible.  (The one person killed in the attack was John Chen, a 52-year old doctor of Sports Medicine in nearby Aliso Viejo.  If not for the heroic Dr. Chen, more congregants would have been murdered. Hauntingly, he was one of my niece Julie’s physicians some years back.)

“Replacement Theory,” got its name from a 2010 work (Le Grand Remplacement) by the French writer Renaud Camus. In his book, Camus depicted a population replacement said to occur in a short time lapse of one or two generations. The French migrant crisis was particularly conducive to the spread of Camus's ideas, while the terrorist attacks accelerated the construction of immigrants as an existential threat among those who shared such a worldview. It didn’t take too long for his worldview to turn into a conspiracy theory and find fertile ground in the rest of Europe and the United States. When all is said and done, Camus’ theory is not all that dissimilar to the 19th-century atrocity known as “Eugenics” - a set of beliefs and practices which aimed to improve the genetic quality of a human population, historically by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior. The Nazis - particularly Dr. Josef Mengele (Der Todesengel, the “Angel of Death”) comes to mind. From Eugenics to Replacement Theory isn’t that great a leap.

Lest we sneer at “The Great Replacement” as the special provenance of political crazies, lovers of loony conspiracy theories, fans of Tucker Carlson and garden variety Neo-Nazis and racists, consider a few horrifying facts:

• About 1 in 3 U.S. adults believes an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains;

• About 3 in 10 also worry that more immigration is causing U.S.-born Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence. (Republicans are more likely than Democrats to fear a loss of influence because of immigration, 36% to 27%.)

• Replacement Theory has moved from the fringes into the mainstream among Congressional Republicans. With the exception of Representatives Liz Cheney (R-Wyo) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) who ripped their colleagues for not speaking out against White Supremacy which lay just beneath the Buffalo massacre (for which they have been roundly condemned) not a single member of the Republican caucus has said word one. Indeed, the number 3 member of the House Republican caucus (Elise Stefanik) chose to attack Democrats in general, and President Joe Biden in particular for the massacre: “Democrats desperately want wide open borders and mass amnesty for illegals allowing them to vote. Like the vast majority of Americans, Republicans want to secure our borders and protect election integrity.

Has the whole world gone crazy?  Why oh why do so many people get their news and views from conspiracy-mongers who neither believe nor give a rat’s rump about so-called “White Genocide?  Anyone who could come up with an answer to that question would be in the running for the Nobel Prize in either peace or medicine.  As to what we can do to stifle the voices, the violence and the virulence of these monsters is a bit less confusing, but a hell of a lot more cumbersome.  It is up to us, the masses of ordinary citizens - those who seek a saner and safer society in which to live, love and learn - we MUST banish the bigots, the lovers of totalitarianism, those who are more concerned with the freedom to own weapons of mass destruction than to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and live up to the nation’s slogan e pluribus unum - “Out of many, one.”

I can see no reason why we, the masses of the ordinary, cannot band together and send the haters of humanity back to their humdrum lives . . . far, far away from seats of power.   Put up lawn signs; go knocking on doors, drive neighbors to the polls, and always, always remember the words of Churchill:

“NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER GIVE UP!! NEVER, NEVER, NEVER,NEVER NEVER-NEVER-NEVER-NEVER!!!”

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone