#957: Operation "Swords of Iron"

On October 6, 1973, (the tenth day of the Jewish month of Tishri, known as Yom Kippur - the Jewish “Day of Atonement”) Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel. The ensuing battle, which we in the west know as the “Yom Kippur War” and those in the Middle East call “The Ramadan War,” lasted a mere 18 days, with Israel besting its Arab enemies and ultimately, their Russian backers.  Precisely 50 years and 1 day later, the terrorist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and is  funded largely by  Iran, launched more than 2,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, 

Needless to say, this murderous multi-pronged assault/invasion, which includes terrorist attacks from the ground, the sea and the air, is quite a bit different from the Yom Kippur War of 1973. True, both wars, (1973 and 2023) saw the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) caught dangerously flatfooted. One obvious difference is that in 1973, Israel was attacked primarily by two countries - Egypt and Syria; in this new war, Israel’s enemy is far more amorphous - a well-armed, well-funded terrorist militia. In 1973, Israeli deaths in that 18-day war amounted to 2,688 . . . none of whom were civilians. Hamas quickly named their invasion “Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge,” after the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s 3rd holiest site, and long a bone of contention with observant Jews, who hold that it is the same site that housed both the First and Second Temple, long destroyed. Jews refer to the area as הר הבית (har ha beit - “the Temple Mount”), Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary.” 

Mohammad Deif, the enigmatic, leader of Hamas' military wing, claimed that the specific flashpoint for launching Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge was Israel's continued aggression on the area occupied by Al Aqsa. "They [Israeli forces] consistently assault our women, the elderly, children and [the] youth; and prevent our people from praying in the Aqsa Mosque while allowing groups of Jews to desecrate the mosque with daily incursions," he said.

Deif’s reasoning is doubtful, at best, and for a couple of reasons. First, there is nothing new about his charges; second, for the most part, they are false. Muslims have had access to al-Haram al-Sharif for purposes of entering the mosque for years. And third, while it is true that a large gathering of haridim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) did enter al-Haram a week ago (the fifth day of the Jewish Fall festival of Succot) armed with decidedly non-lethal lulavim v’etrogim, the attack on Israel by the terrorists of Hamas was far too complex and well-planned to have been the creature of a few days pique and tension; they must have been planning this multi-pronged incursion for months and months.

The Israeli response, which P.M. Netanyahu officially named מבצע חרבות ברזל miv’tza kharvot barzel - “Operation Swords of Iron”) has already seen 500 deaths in both Israel and the Gaza Strip. (By the time this essay is posted and you read it, these figures will no doubt have greatly increased. IDF strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza have already reportedly killed at least  230 Palestinians; Hamas terrorists are currently holding Israeli civilians hostage in their homes. 

The timing of this horrific assault is notable, hitting Israel at one of the most difficult moments in its history. It comes after months of profound anxiety about the cohesion of Israeli society and the readiness of its military, a crisis set off by the far-right government’s efforts to reduce the power of the judiciary.  The conflict also jeopardizes a months-long effort by President Biden and his top aides to push Saudi Arabia to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, its historical adversary. Saudi Arabia has never recognized the Jewish state out of solidarity with Palestinians but had seemed ready to change its policy.  In its first public comment on the war, the Saudis called for de-escalation, but stopped short of blaming Hamas . . . a sign that the progress Saudi, Israeli and American diplomats have been making might now take a backseat to regional politics.

While governments the world over - with the notable exception of those in the Middle East - have voiced support for Israel’s right to defend itself and its people - and, for the part condemning Hamas - here in America, Republican response is both highly partisan and none too surprising.  Virtually the entire cast of characters vying for their party’s presidential nomination (a quest fraught with failure) have blamed President Biden Hamas’ attack on the Jewish State.  Republican presidential contenders immediately tried to pin a portion of the blame on Biden,  seeking to tie his recent decision to release $6 billion in blocked Iranian funds in exchange for freeing five Americans who had been detained in Iran to Saturday’s complex attack. The White House pushed back fiercely against the GOP criticism, noting that the money unfrozen last month in the prisoner swap has yet to be spent by Iran and can only be used for humanitarian needs.  While campaigning in Iowa former POTUS Trump criticized President Joe Biden for being a ““weak leader. The Israeli attack was made because we are perceived as being weak and ineffective and with a weak, a really weak leader,” he told a gathering of his MAGA supporters. 

By contrast, all Democrats from the most centrist to the most progressive, have expressed support for Israel while roundly condemning Hamas. Even Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar (herself a Muslim) took to X (formerly “Twitter”) voicing her concern: I condemn the horrific acts we are seeing unfold today in Israel against children, women, the elderly, and the unarmed people who are being slaughtered and taken hostage by Hamas. Such senseless violence will only repeat the back and forth cycle we've seen, which we cannot allow to continue. We need to call for de-escalation and ceasefire. I will keep advocating for peace and justice throughout the Middle East.”

Without question, the politician in the worst shape is Israeli P.M. Netanyahu, who is taking the brunt of the blame for his country’s lack of intelligence . . . despite having one of the very best cyber intelligence capabilities in the world. Haaretz opinion writer Yossi Verter hit the nail on the head in his first op-ed after the invasion: Israel was humiliated and routed on Saturday. A “small” terror organization exposed the nakedness of a regional superpower with intelligence and cyber capabilities that are among the best in the world. Even if all of the Gaza Strip is destroyed (and there is no need for this), and even if . . . Mohammed Deif, and his associates roll in the alleys, this will not make up for the biggest security failure since 1973. It will not sweeten the bitter taste of the debacle, and it won’t ease the shock of the number of those killed and kidnapped.”

Netanyahu is in such a political bind that he has reached out to centrist opposition parties Yesh Atid and National Unity to enter an emergency government. Netanyahu made the offer during a meeting with Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and National Unity party leader Benny Gantz held earlier today, saying such a government would be the same in format as the Levi Eshkol government then-opposition leader Menachem Begin joined before the Six Day War in 1967.

Gantz says he is considering entering such a government for the duration of the war but insists that government would “deal with security challenges alone” and in a manner that would allow “substantive partnership and influence over decision-making in relevant forums” for his party. Lapid said that he would join “a reduced, professional, emergency government” and says it would be impossible to manage a war with “the extreme and dysfunctional composition of the current cabinet,” essentially calling on the prime minister to remove the far-right Religious Zionism and ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit parties from the government in order for him to bring his Yesh Atid party into the coalition.

Regardless of how the government is restructured and who leads for how long, Israel is likely in for a long war . . . one that is as existentially challenging as any it has fought over the past three quarters of a century.   How the war will affect the future of a two-state solution, negotiations with Saudi Arabia, the “unstable stability” of the Middle East, the rise of anti-Semitism and a thousand other things is yet to be known, let alone to be seen.  

But know this of a certainty: the world is a better place for all, when Israel is both safe and secure.  Whether or not one agrees with everything the Israeli government or its people do (and I for one do not), it is still well worth our support.   As tiny as it is, as riddled with issues as it can be, Israel has proven time and time again what it can accomplish for the world when given the chance to live in peace. For when Israel succeeds, so too can the entire world.  

Stand with Israel, the iron fist inside the velvet glove . . . 

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#956: There Will Never Be Another Dianne Goldman Feinstein Blum

Woke up quite early yesterday, only to find out that the dean of the United States Senate, California’s Dianne Feinstein, had passed away at age 90. “It’s the end of an era,” many commentators lamented throughout the day.  That term ‘end of an era’ - doesn’t even come close. The senator was a throwback to a time when civility, bipartisanship and a touch of both elegance and eloquence pervaded its halls.  Senator Feinstein was, from a strictly political point of view, both a dynamo and a doyenne.  Just mere hours before her passing, she cast the final vote of her long, long career - an ‘aye’ vote on a procedural short-term government funding plan.  She was then helped back to her office, completed the days work, went home, and died in her sleep.

Already, there are some ancillary issues surrounding and clouding her passing: precisely whom California Governor Newsome will select to replace her, and the question of why she did not retire sooner, seeing that in the past year she was either absent at home, or hospitalized (due to a nasty case of Shingles that led to encephalitis, a rare complication that causes inflammation and swelling in the brain).  I for one hope that discussions based on that last year of her long, productive life won’t erase all that she accomplished.  For make no mistake about it: this elegantly-dressed, perfectly coiffed lady was a political superheavyweight.

Over more than a 30-year period (which encompasses 2 mammoth books published in 2000 and 2010), I interviewed her on numerous occasions; I will long remember her graciousness, her pluck and sheer class.  She was, in a infrequently-used phrase, the living embodiment of an “iron fist inside a velvet glove.”

What follows is based on the two biographic entries in my books, “The Congressional Minyan” and “The Jews of Capitol Hill.”  As much as I have written about her (and you will now hopefully read), my words don’t come within 50 furlongs of presenting Senator Dianne Goldman, Feinstein Bloom in toto.  She was and shall always be sui generis . . . one of a kind.

As the child of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Dianne Emiel Goldman was raised in two religious traditions. As a teenager, she attended the exclusive Convent of the Sacred Heart, where she was the only Jewish student, and went to synagogue on Friday nights. It was the Goldmans’ hope and expectation that once grown, Dianne and her two younger sisters would make their own choices as to religious affiliation. Speaking about her dual upbringing from the distance of more than forty years, Dianne Feinstein said, “I was brought up supposedly with some Catholic religion and some Jewish, and I was to choose . . . but I don’t think that works very well. You are what you are.” When she was twenty, Dianne Goldman decided what she was; she officially converted to Judaism. Born in San Francisco on June 22, 1933, the future Dianne (the unusual spelling is said to be in tribute to her late maternal aunt Anne) Feinstein was the eldest child of Dr. Leon and Betty (Rosenburg) Goldman. Her father, a prominent surgeon and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, was the son of Orthodox Jews. Leon’s father, born Samuel Gelleorivich, is said to have stowed away at the age of fourteen on a ship bound for Boston in order to flee a pogrom in his hometown of Griva, “in a region of Russian-ruled Poland.” His mother, Lily Kaflin, came from Vilna. In America, Samuel Gelleorivich became Sam Goldman. “A shoemaker by trade, he made his way west to Sacramento and, in 1895, moved south to San Francisco, where he opened a dry goods store on Market Street. He would eventually have 11 children.” Following the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, Sam moved across the bay to Berkeley and eventually wound up in Southern California, where he “speculated in wildcat oil wells and worked as a retail merchant before finally returning to the San Francisco Bay. Sam Goldman helped found several synagogues in California; his son Leon would become a prominent donor to San Francisco’s Mount Zion Synagogue. Leon, who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and earned his medical degree at the university’s campus in San Francisco, would be greatly assisted by one of his elder siblings, Morris, “a successful businessman and streetwise gambler.” Dianne’s mother, Betty, told her daughters that she had been born Pasha Pariskovia in St. Petersburg, Russia, and had fled the revolution with her family as a child. This was simply not true. The Rosenburgs—who had both Jewish and Eastern Orthodox sides to the family—came first to Eureka in Northern California, where there was a large Russian settlement. Betty, who in her younger years called herself “Bessie,” was a sickly child. By all accounts, she spent several years in a sanitarium, likely suffering from encephalitis (ironically, the same malady that was partially to blame for Dianne’s death many, many years later).

By the 1920s, the Rosenburgs had come to San Francisco, where Betty found a job modeling clothes at Maison Mendesolle, a boutique in the upscale Saint Francis Hotel. (n.b. Maison Mendesolle still exists in 2023 and specializes in vintage clothing and jewelry. It is no long housed in the St. Francis.) Leon and Betty’s marriage announcement did not sit well with her family. As a result, the couple eloped to Reno, Nevada, where they were married by a Conservative Rabbi on January 19, 1931. Dianne and her sisters did not know that their parents had been married by a rabbi; Betty always told her children she was Russian Orthodox. As Dianne would recount many years later, “My father thought my mother was Jewish. But she wasn’t.” Mrs. Goldman suffered from an undiagnosed brain disorder (likely encephalitis) . As her daughter, the senator, would reveal many years later, “She was prone to great bouts of hostility and irrationality that sometimes manifested themselves in really undeserved punishments for us.”

As a result of their mother’s unpredictability, Dianne and her younger sisters, Yvonne and Lynn, “lived in a great deal of fear.” Late in life, with the invention and perfection of the CAT scanner, the source of Mrs. Goldman’s problem was finally diagnosed as “Chronic Brain Syndrome.” (Generally speaking, C.B.S. is defined as a “Global deterioration in intellectual function, behavior and personality in the presence of normal consciousness and perception.”) Speaking of her childhood in a 1990 interview, Dianne Feinstein recounted, “It was not always easy with my mother, but she was still a good mother. She took good care of me and my sisters. I think I can say I was happy growing up.” (Dianne’s sister Yvonne was born in 1936, her sister Lynne in 1941.) Writing about Dianne and her sisters in a 1994 biography, Jerry Roberts described their lives: “They attended private schools, wore expensive clothes, were indulged with riding, tennis, and piano lessons, and were treated to white-gloved teas and luncheons at fine hotels and restaurants in fashionable Union Square.”

It is apparent that the two stabilizing influences in her young life were her father, a kindly man, and her father’s brother Morris, a clothing manufacturer with a passion for politics. Uncle Morrie was “a colorful San Francisco character in the style of Guys and Dolls.” Morrie lived at the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill, and held “informal membership in the ‘Third Base Gang,’ a fraternity of bookies, bettors and bagmen.” Where Dianne’s father was a Republican, Uncle Morris was often identified as a “frequent finance chairman” for local Democratic politicians. Morrie was connected to Arthur “Artie” Samish (1897–1974), who in his day was easily “the most influential and powerful individual lobbyist in California.” Morris Goldman introduced his favorite niece to politics by taking her to Monday-afternoon sessions of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which he derisively referred to as the Board of “Stupidvisors.” It was Uncle Morris who planted the seeds of Dianne’s political ambitions. “Dianne, you get an education and you can do this job,” he would tell her. One of her classmates at Convent of the Sacred Heart, Cynthia Arden Brown, was the daughter of then–California attorney general (and future governor) Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. (Fortuitously, her father also happened to be Brown’s personal physician.) Upon meeting Brown (1905–1996), Dianne Goldman “impressed him with her interest in political life.” He decided to keep an eye on the teenager.

In 1951, following her graduation from the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Dianne entered Stanford University. After a brief fling at premed—and after nearly failing a course in genetics—she changed majors to political science and history. While at Stanford, she modeled clothes on her uncle’s television show, played golf, taught horseback riding, and joined the Young Democrats. As a senior, she ran successfully for student body vice president. While campaigning at a fraternity house, she was severely heckled, picked up, and carried into a shower stall, where she was drenched. Rather than lash out, Feinstein took things in stride; she turned up the heat in her campaigning, and once in office used her newfound influence to deny the culprit fraternity a much-sought-after permit for an overnight party.

Upon graduating in 1955, Dianne became an intern at the San Francisco–based CORO Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing promising young adults with concrete experience in the realm of politics and public service. While on assignment to the San Francisco district attorney’s office, Dianne met and began working for a thirty-three-year-old prosecutor named Jack Berman. They eloped and were married on December 2, 1956. Just a few days shy of eight months later, July 31, 1957, Dianne gave birth to her only child, a daughter named “Katherine Anne.” The Bermans had “fundamental disagreements” over the role that a woman should play. “Berman wanted his wife to be a wife and a mother to their daughter. . . . She saw herself in this role but also wanted a career in the public sector.” The Bermans were divorced in 1959, leaving Dianne to raise a two-year-old child by herself. Jack Berman (1922–2002) would be appointed judge of the San Francisco Superior Court in 1982 by then–California governor Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, the son of his old boss.

For the next several years, Dianne Goldman Berman took care of her daughter, explored various career paths, and worked as a volunteer in John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign. She also studied the Stanislavsky method of acting. After a few less-than-stellar acting appearances and a trip to New York—where she had gone to “browse the want ads and check out jobs and apartment prices [while] attending eight Broadway plays in five days”—she put her acting ambitions out to pasture. In 1961, she approached Governor Brown about the possibility of working for the state. Soon thereafter, Brown appointed the twenty-eight-year-old to the California Women’s Board of Terms and Parole, the body that set prison terms and parole conditions for female inmates in the California penal system. Feinstein (known at the time as Berman, of course) served on the board for the next five years, reviewing more than five thousand parole applications and formulating her positions on such issues as abortion and capital punishment. While serving on the Board of Terms, Feinstein became vehemently anti–death penalty: “Though you may owe it to your fellow-man to put a criminal out of commission, there is no moral or religious ground that gives you the right to terminate the life of another human being.”

Years later, she would change her point of view and come to support capital punishment as a means of deterring certain types of heinous crime: “In those days I saw the criminal justice arena very differently than I do now [1990]. The nature of the problem has changed. . . . I began to see that there are people who have no regard for other people’s lives—and over time came to forge the view that by your acts you can abrogate your own right to life.” This change of heart, derided by her political opponents as waffling or mere opportunism, would be used against her in future campaigns.

On November 11, 1962, twenty-nine-year-year-old Dianne Berman married a forty-eight-year-old neurosurgeon named Bertram Feinstein. Feinstein (1914–1978), a native of Winnipeg, swept the young divorcee off her feet. He was “charming, warm and witty . . . every inch a distinguished gentleman.” Within a few years of marrying they moved into a thirteen-room house on Lyon Street in Pacific Heights, home of some of San Francisco’s wealthiest residents. In 1968, San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto appointed Dianne Feinstein to a blue-ribbon committee on crime. With her increased visibility, she decided to chance a run for the eleven-member San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Bucking the odds—no woman had been elected to the board in nearly half a century—Feinstein, spending an unheard of $100,000, put together a coalition of liberals, gays, environmentalists, and minorities. Bert aided his wife’s campaign by putting up hundreds upon hundreds of signs with “DIANNE” in large red letters. (As a result, to this day most San Franciscans refer to her simply by her first name.) Feinstein overwhelmed the eighteen other candidates, capturing more votes than any of them. In one fell swoop, she became both a member and president of the board of supervisors.

Dianne Feinstein went on to serve nearly nine years on the board of supervisors. Additionally, she served as its president from 1970 to 1972, 1973 to 1976, and again in 1978. Not having to work for a living, she became the board’s first full-time supervisor. Early in her career she evinced what can only be called “tone deafness” when it came to women not so well off as herself. Shortly after her first campaign, for example, she argued that women made superior public servants because they were untainted by the need to make a living: “A woman does not have to make decisions based on the need to survive. She can cut through issues, call shots as she sees them. Many bad decisions are made by men in government because it is good for them personally to make bad public decision.”

During her eight years on the Board of Supervisors, she gained a reputation for being its most knowledgeable authority on criminal justice issues. She pushed for an increase in the number of police officers patrolling the city’s streets and sought much-needed revamping of the entire criminal justice system. Rather than announcing what her solutions would be to the problems and challenges facing “The City,” she brought in experts who would investigate, summarize and then make suggestions. This was indeed something new. San Francisco has long been known as a wide-open city—one eminently tolerant of the aberrant, the wild, and the woolly. Over the years it has been the home of such “dens of iniquity” as the Barbary Coast, Haight-Ashbury, the Castro District, and North Beach. San Francisco is often called the City by the Golden Gate; locals refer to it either as “Baghdad by the Bay” or, as the late San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, would have it, “Fagdad by the Bay.”

In 1970, Supervisor Feinstein made the politically unpopular move of tightening zoning restrictions “in order to limit or abolish adult nightclubs and movie theatres.” Going against the prevailing political wisdom, which would have had her simply look the other way and maintain the status quo, she instead did what she thought was right. After visiting a local pornographic movie house with members of her staff, the supervisor reported, “We have become a kind of smut capital of the United States. . . . As a woman I feel very strongly about it, because part of what is happening, what is shown on the screens, works to the basic denigration and humiliation of the female.”

At the same time, Dianne Feinstein was developing quite a following in San Francisco’s gay community. “She conferred legitimacy on many gay activist groups by attending rallies during her campaign, authored and obtained passage of a measure to ban job and hiring discrimination against gays, and favored a state law that would legalize all private sexual conduct between or among consenting adults.” Soon, Dianne Feinstein was the most visible member of the board of supervisors. In 1971 and again in 1975, she ran unsuccessfully for mayor, placing third in both races. In the 1975 campaign, State Senator George Moscone (1929–1978) was elected mayor. By that time, San Francisco was going through a trying time of political upheaval. Those were the days of the Reverend Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford, the Symbionese Liberation Army (which kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst), and the New World Liberation Front. Feinstein herself was the target of two separate bomb attacks in 1976 and 1977. After the second failed attempt—this at her vacation home in Monterey— she took to carrying a .38-caliber pistol for protection.

            Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone

Feinstein’s personal life was particularly difficult as well. In 1975, her father—whose surgical students called the “Coach”—succumbed to cancer at age sixty-nine. In April 1978, her husband Bertram, who was director of the Neurological Institute at Mount Zion Hospital, succumbed to the same disease at age sixty-four. The violence of the era began cresting on November 18, 1978, when nine hundred members of the Reverend Jim Jones’ People’s Temple committed mass suicide in the wilds of Guyana. Nine days later, November 27, both Mayor Moscone and the city’s first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk (1930–1978) were gunned down in their city hall offices by deranged former supervisor Dan White. Just hours before the double assassination, Feinstein had told a reporter that she would be retiring at the end of her term. By the end of the day, Feinstein was the acting mayor of the City of San Francisco. She garnered high marks for the manner in which she led the city during its days of shock, anguish, and disbelief. An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle stated, simply: “She was poised. She was eloquent. She was restrained. And she was reassuring and strong.” Dianne Feinstein served as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988. Early in her first term, she married Richard C. Blum, a “lean and 6’4 self-made millionaire,” who was founder and co-chair of Mayor Moscone’s Fiscal Advisory Commission. Blum’s wealth (reported at somewhere between $40 million and $50 million) would become a source of difficulty a decade later. During her mayoralty, Dianne Feinstein (she maintained the name under which she had entered elective politics) was twice reelected and once subjected to a vicious recall drive. The latter occurred in early 1983, after she had angered the far left by not supporting tighter restrictions on handguns and vetoing a domestic-partners law “which would have granted some benefits such as insurance, to unmarried couples (straight and gay) who registered at city hall.” Feinstein easily survived the recall drive, receiving more than 80 percent of the vote. This victory all but guaranteed her winning her next election as mayor.

During her second term, Feinstein, although popular, angered gays and women by closing gay bathhouses and refusing to close off a street for an abortion rights rally. When questioned about some of her supposedly anti-feminist positions, she stated flatly: “I’ve lived a feminist life. I had to quit a job because there was no maternity leave. I raised a child as a single mother. I put together legislation. I haven’t been a marcher, but I’ve lived it.” By 1984, Feinstein’s popularity and respect among her colleagues had risen to the point where Walter Mondale seriously considered asking her to run for vice president with him on the Democratic ticket. Feinstein was eventually passed over for another woman, New York Congresswoman Geraldine A. Ferarro. It is likely that what ultimately kept Feinstein off the ticket was concern about her husband’s finances. Ironically, Ferarro (1935–2011 ) came under repeated attack during the 1984 campaign about her husband’s financial dealings. Dianne Feinstein left the office of mayor after 1988; San Francisco city law permitted only two consecutive terms. In 1990, she became the first woman to run for governor of California. She drew as her opponent Republican U.S. Senator Pete Wilson. Running on a “pro-environment, abortion rights platform that also [included] a plank in favor of the death penalty,” Feinstein was hard-pressed to say precisely where and how she differed from Senator Wilson. He attacked her for leaving San Francisco with a $172 million deficit. Feinstein countered that the shortfall was nothing out of the ordinary—a fact that Wilson, a former mayor of San Diego, would certainly understand. Republicans also questioned Richard Blum’s finances; he was underwriting a goodly proportion of his wife’s campaign. Feinstein angrily replied, “This is all his business. I have nothing to do with it. It’s his—and it was before we were married. . . . Clearly there’s a strategy here that’s really basically pretty sexist. It’s sort of implicit that somehow the woman can’t be doing all this by herself.”

With few issues dividing or distinguishing them, the campaign devolved into a series of personal charges and countercharges. In the end, Feinstein held Wilson to less than an absolute majority: 49 percent to 46 percent. 1992 will go down in American political history as the “Year of the Woman.” On November 10 of that year, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer were both elected to the U.S. Senate, thereby becoming the first and second Jewish women to serve in the upper chamber. Feinstein handily defeated (54 percent to 38 percent) Senator John Seymour, a wealthy political consultant and former state senator from Orange County, whom Governor Wilson had appointed to fulfill the final two years of his six-year term. In winning the election, Feinstein garnered more votes—5,853,621—than any senatorial candidate in U.S. history. By prior agreement, Feinstein was sworn in ahead of Boxer, thereby becoming both California’s senior senator and the first Jewish woman elected to that body. Feinstein got a seat on the Appropriations Committee, where she could watch out for California’s multifaceted economic interests, and Judiciary, where, after the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill debacle, it seemed prudent for Committee Chair Joseph Biden of Delaware to appoint a woman. (Feinstein thereby was able to add yet another “first” to her resume: first woman ever appointed to the Senate Judiciary Committee.)

Although Feinstein did not support the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and quietly opposed President Clinton’s health-care plan (which she had originally supported), she carved out a generally liberal position on most issues. In her first term she managed to append an assault weapons ban onto the Clinton crime bill. When Idaho Republican Larry Craig, who was against the ban, challenged Senator Feinstein’s knowledge of firearms, she froze him in his tracks by responding: “I know something about what firearms can do; I came to be Mayor of San Francisco as a product of assassination.” The assault weapons ban was enacted into law. In 1994, Senator Feinstein easily won the Democratic primary for the Senate, leading the field with 74 percent of the vote. In the general election, she squared off against multimillionaire Representative Michael Huffington of Santa Barbara. The Republican Huffington, who had spent more than $5 million of his own money to capture his House seat in 1992, spent nearly $30 million of his own funds in 1994, making their Senate race the most expensive in U.S. history. Huffington began the Senate race with an advertising barrage extolling former secretary of Education William Bennett’s Book of Virtues. In his commercials, he sought to take the moral high ground, arguing that California suffered from a moral malaise. Feinstein came under attack for casting the deciding vote for the 1993 tax increase, and for being a “career politician.”

The press had a field day with the Huffingtons, deriding Arianna for being the “Edmund Hillary of social climbing,” and publishing stories about her involvement in the Movement for Spiritual Awareness. Amidst the charges and countercharges, Huffington made a fatal mistake: he endorsed Proposition 187—a measure that would have banned all state spending on illegal immigrants. Feinstein opposed it. Less than a month before the election, it was revealed that the Huffingtons had employed an illegal alien as a nanny—a charge hurled against many people seeking office that year. Huffington offered proof that Feinstein had likewise employed an illegal alien; the charges failed to stick. Feinstein eked out a 47 percent to 45 percent percent victory. (In 1997 Huffington and his wife, Ariana, divorced. The next year he announced that he was bisexual. His wife became a noted liberal, and to this day runs the eponymous and widely-read Huffington Post. Her ex-husband became a film producer and chair of the Log Cabin Republicans.) This would turn out to be Feinstein’s last close reelection. In 2000, she defeated San Jose–area Congressman Tom Campbell 56 percent to 37 percent. Campbell (1952– ), a libertarian Stanford law professor, had nearly won the Republican nomination to run against Barbara Boxer in 1992.

In 2006, Feinstein overwhelmed former state senator—and author of the above-referenced Proposition 187—Dick Mountjoy 59 percent to 35 percent. In the latter race, it was shown that Mountjoy’s (1932–2015 ) Web site had erroneously reported that the conservative Republican had served in the Korean War aboard the USS Missouri. When ship records later confirmed that he had actually served aboard the USS Bremerton, Feinstein questioned her opponent’s credibility. It also helped that Feinstein outspent Montjoy by a better than forty-to-one margin: $8,030,489 as compared to $195, 265. Throughout her many years in the U.S. Senate, Dianne Feinstein maintained a moderate-to-liberal voting record. She supported repealing both the marriage penalty and estate tax, and voted for the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002 and President George W. Bush’s $87 billion supplemental appropriation in November 2003. Once she cast these votes she began having regrets.

In April 2004, she said that she was “misled into voting for the war by an exaggeration of the threat.” As a member (and eventual chair) of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she sponsored legislation that would have “required the CIA to use only non-coercive interrogation methods found in the Army Field Manual,” thus ruling out waterboarding and other measures. President George W. Bush vetoed the bill in 2008. Understandably, she has been an unrelenting supporter of gun control measures and, along with Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, got fifty-four senators to sign a letter calling for more embryonic stem-cell research. She was also the only Democrat on the Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of an amendment authorizing prosecutions for flag desecration. Overall, Feinstein voted with her Democratic colleagues nearly 95 percent of the time. The senator and her husband (who died from cancer in 2022, lived in a Tudor house directly across the street from where Dianne Goldman grew up. Feinstein’s daughter, Katherine (born 1957), a former assistant district attorney and San Francisco police commissioner, was, until recently, the assistant presiding judge of the San Francisco  Superior Court. She is married to real estate developer Rick Mariano. On September 18, 1992, Dianne Feinstein became a grandmother when Katherine gave birth to Eileen Feinstein Mariano. The senator also had three stepchildren: Heidi, Annette, and Eileen. In early 1996, Roll Call magazine estimated Feinstein and Blum’s net worth to be $50 million—the fifth-highest in Congress. Twenty years later Blum’s net worth had grown to an estimated $80 million.

Over the years, there has been much speculation that Feinstein would one day run for the job she “really, truly wanted”—California governor. Up until 2009, Feinstein still had not made up her mind if she was going to enter the 2010 race. “I’m not ruling it in,” Feinstein remarked on the eve of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. But she didn’t rule it out, either. “People will know within time,” she said. “I mean, this election is two years away.” As of mid-2009, the only announced Democratic candidate was—ironically—former California governor Jerry Brown, the son of her political mentor. Brown won - and wound up servimg 2 more terms.

Dianne Feinstein wound up running and winning her seat in 2012 and 2018 by wide margins.  In late 2022 she announced that she would  retire after her current term expired in 2024, thus setting off a race to replace her with 3 strong Democratic moderates, Representatives Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. 

Senator Dianne Goldman Feinstein Blum has led an extraordinary life.  She began breaking through glass ceilings long, long before writer Marilyn Loden (1946-2022) coined the term way back in 1978.  She has led a life that was at once charmed and privileged, honorable and haunting.  Throughout it all, she has given back to the people she served every ounce of strength, energy, grace, brains and courage she could muster.  

Sad to say, we may never see her kind again . . . 

Copyright©2023, 2010, 2000 Kurt F. Stone

#955: L’shana Tovah Ivanka . . . May We Ask a Favor Of You?

On behalf of my wife and family, as well as our chavurah (our “synagogue without walls”), please accept our best wishes for you, your husband Jared and children Arabella Rose, Joseph Fredrick and Theodore James a shana tovah u’mtukah - A Happy and Sweet New Year.  So where did you celebrate Rosh Hashana? With Rabbi Lookstein at Kehilat Jeshrun on the Upper East Side, or in your newish mansion in Miami Dade on Rock Creek Island (affectionately known to locals as “Billionaire Bunker”) I’ve occasionally wondered how far a walk it is from your place to the closest orthodox shul. Actually, it’s none of my business. I’m not casting any aspersions: if you walk on Shabbos and Yontuf, mazal tov; if not, that’s your decision.  I have long been in step with the concept of חזקת לאדם כשר (chezkaht l’adam kashair) roughly translated as, “if one says he/she is a ‘kosher Jew,’ who am I to question?”  In any event, our good wishes that you be both written and sealed in G-d’s Book of Life” goes without question.

I’ve longed wondered what your father thought when you announced you were going through an Orthodox conversion in order to marry Jared. I mean, despite the fact that your dad has long been associated with - and employed - Jewish people like Roy Cohn, Alan Weisselberg and Michael Cohen, and then more recently , the likes of Steven Miller and Steve Mnuchin, his background and upbringing weren’t precisely what one  would call “pro-Semitic” or “Jew-friendly.”  From what I understand about your grandpa Fred (and this according to your Aunt Mary), he was a thorough-going anti-Semite. ‘Tis a pity; but by now you know that despite what our detractors try to sell, we’re really a pretty kind and moral bunch, whose love of justice, mercy and humility are part of the very fabric of our religious and cultural being.

You well know that for Jews, this is a very, very important time of year; a period of reflection, atonement and spiritual growth.  What we do, what we say and indeed, what we confess to, are meant to make better, more honest and more caring people of us all.  These “Ten Days of Repentance”, as they are called, are difficult ones; they are far, far more difficult than the “resolutions” people make on December 31st and then forego by January 2nd.  One of the concepts you no doubt learned at the feet of Rabbi Lookstein during the year-and-a-half you studied with him for  conversion was that of תיקן עולם (tikun olam -literally “repairing the world”), which commands us to do everything in our power to bring truth, understanding and love to the world, and well as erasing untruths, bigotry and baseless hatred,  

At this point, we  come to the “favor” mentioned  in the title of this post.  As you well know, it is customary at this time of the year for people in the political arena - both those holding and those running for office - to release greetings to the Jewish people. 99% of these messages are cheerful, inclusive, positive, and politically non-partisan.  Your father, as again you well know, broke virtually ever rule of good taste and comity by choosing to attack and defame an overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community on Rosh Hashana. This past Sunday, as many of us were getting ready to lead or attend services for the second day of the Jewish New Year, he decided to put in his two cents by posting on Truth Social: “Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”

Sad to say Mrs. Kushner, that although your father’s Rosh Hashana post was both maddening and totally inappropriate, it really was not out of keeping with the anti-Jewishness that lurks in the recesses of his troubled soul. I mean, this is the man – along with his deputies (most of whom no longer work with/for him) who:

• Tweeted Hillary Clinton’s face next to a Star of David and the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever” 

• Closed his 2016 campaign with an ad that included the images of three Jewish people—George Soros, Janet Yellen, and Lloyd Blankfein—while warning that a secretive “global power structure” was to blame for economic policies that have “robbed our working class“ and “stripped our country of its wealth”

• Waited to specifically condemn the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally during which marchers carried Nazi signs and chanted things like “Jews will not replace us”

• Called Jews who didn’t vote for him dumb and/or traitors

• Declared in a tweet that Jewish voters “don’t even know what they’re doing or saying anymore”

• Suggested that Jews only care about money

• Baselessly suggested that Soros, a favorite bogeyman among white nationalists and neo-Nazis, was funding a migrant caravan

• Hosted a White House Hanukkah party that featured an evangelical pastor who once said Jews were going to hell

• Told a room full of Jewish people that Jews are “brutal killers” and “not nice people at all”

• Suggested Jews control the media

• Said that Jews are “only in it for themselves,” following phone calls with Jewish lawmakers

• Reportedly wanted his military leaders to operate like “the German generals in World War II”

• Reportedly told his chief of staff that Adolf Hitler “did a lot of good things” and shouldn’t be judged by that one genocide

• Kept a book of Hitler’s speeches next to his bed

His Rosh Hashana post touted the one thing he ever did for Israel: relocating the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  And for that one act (which had been mandated by the Jerusalem Embassy Act  in 1995) he claimed that he was “the best friend Israel ever had in the White House.” (Please don’t tell Presidents Truman or Clinton that). This is far from the truth and shows that your father believes that the only thing Jewish voters remember or care about is this single act. The fact that an overwhelming majority of  American Jews still vote for Democrats like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, as well as Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Chuck Schumer et al, shows how little your father understands about the American Jewish community.  It also shows that when all is said and done, he cares not a fig for anyone who questions or finds fault with him. Truth to tell, there is no truth for him to tell.

As you well know, Ivanka, your father has no consistent political philosophy. Rather, he adopts and adapts whatever will be best for his political career. Once a strong supporter of (and contributor to) Planned Parenthood, today he is as vehemently pro-life as any White Christian Nationalist. His positions on a wide array of political issues change with the political winds.  He judges things only to the extent that they will benefit him personally, and not, G-d forbid, to how they will affect the betterment of the country, the world or the planet.  His plans for the future - assuming the worst - is that all three branches of the federal government will be whittled down until those who remain in the federal bureaucracy will share but a single trait: blind loyalty to Trumpian nihilism and anarchy. 

So what is the favor we so humbly ask of you? Only that you speak truth to power and make it known that your father represents a clear and present danger to the vast majority of American Jews as well as anyone and everyone who firmly believes in the concept of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  At this critical point in time, few if any Republicans of stature have the guts or courage it takes to denounce DJT for the mean-spirited, plastic-political, autocrat-loving bundle of personal wounds who dares to present himself as the cure for all the challenges we face.  

Yael saving the people from Sisera - C. 1620 by Artemisia Gentileschi

And so, Yael bat Avraham avinu (if I may be so bold as to call you by your Hebrew name), perhaps the time has come for you to screw up your courage and sense of moral outrage - just like your Biblical namesake Yael, the wife of Chever (יָעֵל אֵשֶׁת-חֶבֶר) as found in the book of Judges (verses 4:11-22) - and become both a savior and a heroine.  No, not by driving a tent stake through the  forehead of Sisera, the murderous Canaanite general, but rather by standing up for the people who lovingly gave  you welcome into our ancient fold.  You must speak out against anti-Semitism and bigotry; you must fight against the powers that would seek to endanger your children’s future.  Should you speak, you will find thousands of your sisters standing alongside you . . . sort of a collective Yael and Deborah, the “Thelma and Louise” of the Hebrew Bible.  You are in a unique position to do a ton of good for the Chosen People, of whom you are part and parcel . . . I trust.

Wishing you and yours גמר חתימה טובה (g’mar kha-te-mah tova) that you be sealed in the Book of Life in this the New Year 5784. 

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#954: Hip, Hip Hooray Nate White . . . Whoever in the Hell You May Be

An introductory note: My Pal Al sent me an marvelously witty, totally on-point bit of satire about our twice impeached and four times indicted FPOTUS. Try as I might, I could not discover who the purported author, Nate White is. It seems to be some Brit’s nom-de-plume. So far as I can tell, what follows was originally published back in 2020. I just had to share it with you, because in my humble estimation, it is the very best summary of Donald Trump I have ever read. Enjoy!

Why do so many Brits hate Donald Trump?

Someone asked “Why do so many British people not like Donald Trump?”

Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response:

A few things spring to mind;

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.

For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.

I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.

And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.

Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.

Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.

He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.

He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.

That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.

After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.

He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W. look smart.

In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:

‘My God… what… have… I… created?’

If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

#953: The Pianists: A Parable

In the more than 18 years I have been writing these blog essays, the one weekly piece I've gotten the greatest number of positive comments about had nothing to do with politics. Rather, it was a parable that I originally made up off the top of my head one Friday night from the pulpit nearly 25 years ago. Eventually - after innumerable "public performances" - I decided to commit it to writing. It really didn’t take all that long; believe it or not, I composed the entire parable in just one sitting . . . remembering Madam’s (my mother - who was a pretty gifted writer herself) first rule for writing fiction: “There is no difference between acting and writing: just speak to the keyboard . . . make it your audience.” 

And so, after many years, "The Pianists: A Parable" makes a return engagement.  Its underlying "message" or "lesson" will likely be different for different people; that's just in the nature of parables.  And so, without further ado, let's venture off into the land where allegories reign supreme . . .

(Note: The following was discovered on a papyrus scroll in a cave. Due to its extreme age, estimated at not less than 3,800 years, there were many gaps (or lacunae) which made the text difficult to render . . . )

Once upon a time long ago, a group of weary wanderers received a Divine Commandment from on high. It forever changed their lives. The resonating basso voice of the Nameless Muse said: “Thou hast been chosen for greatness. Hear now this commandment which I command thee this day: Thou shalt become Piano Players and lovers of music. Throughout all thy generations, thou shalt diligently teach thy children to study and to practice, to play and to love, the music of the Piano. For Piano is thy life and the length of thy days. It shall add glory, meaning and contentment to thy lives and the lives of people the world over. Piano shall fulfill thy souls. I am thy Muse.”

To facilitate their lives, Co* [This pronoun means "he/she"] gave them a manuscript with explicit step-by-step instructions on how to build a simple, upright (spinet) piano. To further guide them along their path, the Muse also provided the Piano Players (or “Pianists”) with The Holy Score, which contained Etudes and Sonatas, Fantasies, and Concertos, Partitas, Trios and Quartets. Needless to say, those hearing the Muse’s Divine Directive were moved beyond compare; slowly they began seeking the means by which to fulfill Co’s awesome decree. This they did throughout their generations, as they continued wandering the wilderness, ever searching for their place in the sun.

After several generations of meandering (which included a 400-year period of enslavement), the nascent Pianists did find a permanent home in a land they called “Pastoral.” Once settled, they began devoting their lives to Piano and its attendant joys. Over many generations, they became renowned for the skill and artistry, the dedication and single-mindedness with which they fulfilled their Prime Command. They endlessly studied the Holy Score, adding variations and brilliantly original compositions of their own. They were a happy people living happy, creative lives. But there were dark clouds on the horizon. . .

Other peoples and cultures (whom they simply referred to as “Outsiders”) mocked them and scorned them. To the Outsiders, they seemed so different, so terribly odd. And in a very real sense, they were. For owing to the extreme discipline required in order to become players of Piano and lovers of music, the Pianists generally lived apart from most others. They even developed their own language with which to speak amongst themselves; they called it “P’santayr.” Not having been witness to the original Command on High, the Outsiders could not understand the commitment and devotion with which the Pianists lived their lives. They kept strange hours and seemed to do nothing but practice, practice, practice. They played pieces from the Holy Score religiously three times each day. And one day in seven they rested, doing nothing but attending the Odeon – their place of musical devotion. They dressed alike and all ate high protein diets. They rarely participated in activities that the Outsiders considered "normal," "necessary" or “important.” How, the Outsider’s wondered, could any people devote so much of their lives to something so frivolous and nonproductive as Piano playing and music?

Because of their uniqueness, they were often persecuted. In fact, many Outsider cultures tried to eliminate them. Against all reason many Outsiders came to believe that the Piano Players were a powerful, monolithic people bent upon taking over the entire world and forcing all others to be like them. Strangely though, many others found in the Piano Players an inherent weakness; one which made them easily susceptible to the will of the devil. Again, against all reason, the Outsiders became convinced that the Piano Players believed themselves to be better than everyone else, although this certainly was not the case. True, the Muse had long ago informed the Pianists that they were Co’s “Chosen People.” But that did not make them better – only chosen. But Chosen for what? Why, to be Players of Piano and devotees of music – not an easy task when you stop and think about it. No, they were not better, but they were different and unique. Unfortunately, many people could not (and still cannot) understand that people who are “different” or “unique” need not be feared.

After generations of living happy, exemplary lives in Pastorale, the Pianists were conquered by Outsiders and forced to leave their homeland. Before long, they were dispersed to the four corners of the earth. As the generations came and went, the Piano Players contributed greatly to the countries and cultures in which they found themselves living. Nonetheless, they continued to be persecuted and scorned for their uniqueness. To the Outsider way of thinking, they just didn’t fit in. Nonetheless, they did continue to provide both themselves and the entire world with sonatas, concertos and symphonies of dazzling brilliance and profundity. They created a body of musical literature that covered virtually every emotional aspect of life. No matter where they found themselves in the wide, wide world, they continued to study, to play, and to luxuriate in the heavenly music they had been commanded to create. It gave their lives meaning and purpose, just as the Muse had predicted. And, despite the fact that they were grossly misunderstood and even harmed, music continued to be the central focus of their lives – the driving force that kept them together as a people.

After 2,000 or more years, the Pianists lived in almost every country in the world. Never vast in number, they were nonetheless believed by Outsiders to be an enormous monolithic people. In a sense, one can readily understand how the Outsiders might reach this unwarranted conclusion. Because of their unique culture and common purpose, the Pianists felt themselves to be a single family. Theirs was a singular global connection. Since all Piano Players adhered to roughly the same daily ritual of practice and study, they understood each other’s lifestyles, needs and expectations. And since they all spoke “P’santayr,” they could communicate with one another whenever the need arose.

For countless generations, Pianists would only marry amongst themselves. This they felt to be their sacred obligation. Whenever or wherever a community of Pianists might suffer, their fellows could always be counted on to come to their aid. Additionally, when finally permitted to enter mainstream professions – law, medicine, banking and academics – the Pianists tended to become rather successful. This was due in great part to the tremendous discipline and love of learning that had been instilled in them throughout all their generations. Simply stated, they approached each and every challenge as if it were part of the Holy Score. The Outsiders – perhaps through jealousy, envy, or sheer civic ignorance – had a tendency to look upon their success as positive proof that the Pianists were international conspirators – evil people bent upon taking over the entire world. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

With the arrival of modern times, many strange things began to occur amongst the Piano Players. They found the pull of Outsider society to be increasingly strong and ineluctably alluring. The time they devoted to playing Piano and studying music began to dwindle. While most considered themselves devoted Pianists in the cultural sense, many turned away from age-old forms of study and practice. They no longer trained their children for a lifetime of practice, playing and love of music. Why? Many said that they were deeply concerned lest their children feel “odd” or “strange” around their Outsider neighbors. No longer did they play Piano three times a day, as had their ancestors. Rarely did they attend the Odeon on the Seventh Day. No longer did they steep their children in the musical culture of their grandfathers and grandmothers.

Rather, now they began sending them to twice-weekly lessons for three or four years in order to learn to play but a single piece of Piano music – and largely by rote at that. The parents rarely, if ever, took their children to the Odeon on the Seventh Day. In far too many homes, the children were unable to practice, for the parents did not possess a Piano.  Far too frequently, the message these Pianist children received was: “Piano must be important to you for the next several years.”

“Why?” their children would ask.

“Because we say so,” the parents would answer . . . a casuistic response with little persuasive power. 

Often they would add: “However, if after you have completed your lessons, you do not wish to continue, that will be your decision.” The children questioned why something that should be important to them was rarely seen or heard within their own homes. It was a very good question, a very good question indeed.

It eventually became the custom that at the age of thirteen, each child would play his or her single piece of music at a glorious recital that would be attended by family and friends. Plans for the recital (and the banquet which would invariably follow) began years before the child knew how to locate Middle C, or had ever heard of Bach, Beethoven or Brahms. The day of the recital was filled with tension and anxiety, lest the child not “perform” up to capacity. It became increasingly obvious that many of those who attended these recitals did not have the slightest idea of how to act or what to expect. They had become, in short, a musically illiterate folk.

Many of those in attendance would recalled their own recitals, and realized that it was really the last time they had ever played Piano, attended the Odeon, or devoted themselves to music. Some would remember their parents and grandparents, and how they devoted their lives to the pursuit of Piano and music. But these children – the ones who played the single recital piece – were different. Despite the fact that they might play their single piece with ability and skill, they were, for the most part, incapable of reading the musical score or recognizing its emotive worth. Moreover, few, if any, had the true love of music, which the Muse had long ago commanded. True to form, few would ever play Piano after their recital. This new generation merely went through the motions without much feeling or understanding. What they did understand, was that after the recital, they would receive gifts of money. After the performance, the family would throw a magnificent banquet that would last until all hours of the night. Quite often these festivities cost far more than the family could truly afford.

The elders grew fearful. “How silly it is to spent all that time and money just to teach our children a single piece of music,” they said. “And for what? For the sake of a single recital and a great feast? It is a tragedy. Our children no long truly know how to play Piano, speak ‘P’santayr,” or have that great love and devotion to music which has always been our heritage. Where will it all end?”

But the elders came to realize that they were, at least in part, to blame for this turn of events. They were the ones who took to speaking “P’santayr” only when they did not wish their children to understand. Then too, they were the ones who let the very culture of Piano slowly slip through their fingers, preferring instead the ways of their non-Pianist neighbors.

Fortunately, the elders, working in consonance with their children and grandchildren, came up with a solution that not only solved their growing problem, but actually caused a musical renaissance among the Pianists. In short, they . . .

(At this point, the manuscript suddenly ended, the moths having eaten through the remainder of the text, thus leaving posterity to ponder just what the solution was . . .)

©2009, 2017, 2023 Kurt F. Stone

#952: Running For POTUS From the Atlanta Penitentiary Ain’t Easy

Donald Trump, the nation’s 45th POTUS, is a person of many firsts:

• The first man elected to the nation’s highest office without having ever having been elected to anything, or at least serving in a high military position  . . . like Washington or Eisenhower.

• The only president to be twice impeached.

• The first president who was (supposedly) a billionaire.

• The only sitting or past president to be to be the subject of four indictments covering 91 criminal charges across four separate jurisdictions.

• The only president whose move to the White House constituted an act of downsizing.

• The first president to have been divorced (in his case, twice).

• The first candidate to admit having molested a dozens of women. - and then getting elected. 

• The first president who never owned a dog.

• The first president who lied so many thousands of times before, during and after his presidency, that he all but single-handedly created an online industry.

• The first president who fired the majority of his Cabinet secretaries - and in many cases, more than once.

Indeed, in terms of presidential history, DJT is the living, breathing example of sui generis (Latin for “of its own kind.” meaning, basically, that “there has never been anyone or anything like him in the past and [god willing], never will be in the future.”

 “But hang on just a minute there,” I can hear you say; “you forgot a very important first . . . the first person to run for POTUS (assuming he  wins the Republican nomination) while under criminal indictment . . . and perhaps the first presidential candidate to run while serving a prison sentence.”  The second point, of course, depends on just how long his various trials last. At this point in time, and with Trump’s years-long legal strategy of delay-delay-delay, it is highly unlikely that he will be ensconced in, say the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, anytime in 2024.  

But even if he were to be wearing an orange jumpsuit by then, he would not be the first incarcerated candidate in American history. Two men share that dubious distinction, although few know anything about it. The second was former Trotskyite, former Socialist, former Democrat and lifelong conspiratorial cult leader Lyndon LaRouche. Larouche (1922-2019) was a perennial presidential candidate who ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a candidate of third parties established by members of his cultic movement, the National Caucus of Labor Committees.

                        Eugene V. Debs: Presidential candidate, 1920

In the mid 1980s, LarRouche and some of his cultists were charged with conspiring to commit fraud and soliciting loans they had no intention of repaying. LaRouche and his supporters disputed the charges, claiming the trials were politically motivated. LaRouche was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. In 1992, while serving time at the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Minnesota (where one of his cellmates was former televangelist Jim Baaker), LaRouche managed to run for president, garnering less than 75,000 votes.

The first of the two was Eurgene V. Debs. In his day, Debs (1855-1926) was one of America’s best-known and foremost labor leaders. A native of Terre Haute, Indiana, Debs ran for president on 5 occasions (1900, 1904, 1908. 1912, and 1920) as candidate of the Socialist Party of America. One of the founders (along with the Western Federation of Miners “Big Bill” Heywood and the Socialist Labor Party’s Daniel DeLeon) of the International Workers of the World (“Wobblies”) Debs was tried, convicted and sentenced to federal prison for violation of the Sedition Act of 1918. The act, which was enacted during the time of the infamous “Palmer Raids,” forbade "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt.

Debs, was against American involvement in what would become World War I, spoke out against then-President Wilson, and Attorney General Palmer, urged men to avoid conscription at all costs and repeatedly expressed the view that the European War was truly being fought on behalf of Capitalists so as to crush the working class of all nations . . . all things which put him in Wilson’s political doghouse and in violation of the newly-passed law.  Debs presented his own defense (despite not being him attorney), calling himself as his only witness.  In his testimony he told the court he said, in part:

I ask no mercy, I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time they will come into their own.”  The then 64-year old Debs was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor, to be served at, ironically, the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, and was disenfranchised (had his right to vote canceled) for life. 

At his sentencing, when asked if he wished to speak, he gave a Christlike speech of a mere 70 words, “Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. 

As mentioned above, Debs ran for POTUS 5 times. Though he received increasing numbers of popular votes in each subsequent election, he never won any votes in the Electoral College. Although he was denied the right to vote in the 1920 presidential election, he did run from his cell; he wound up receiving 913,693 votes (3.4%), which remains the all-time high number of votes for a Socialist Party candidate in a US presidential election.  

Hard labor was not kind to a man nearing the age of 65.  Numerous attempts were made to get President Woodrow Wilson to grant him clemency, if  not an outright pardon.  Even A.G. Palmer urged him to do so as a humanitarian gesture; Wilson refused, making no public statements. On December 23, 1921, Wilson’s successor, the arch-Conservative Warren Gamliel Harding, commuted Debs’ sentence and invited him to come visit the White House, where they had a brief but cordial meeting.  Harding, a simple, kindly but none too sophisticated a man issued a brief somewhat confusing statement after their meeting:

There is no question of his guilt. ... He was by no means, however, as rabid and outspoken in his expressions as many others, and but for his prominence and the resulting far-reaching effect of his words, very probably might not have received the sentence he did. He is an old man, not strong physically. He is a man of much personal charm and impressive personality, which qualifications make him a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and affording excuse for those with criminal intent. Debs returned home to Indiana, where he attempted to have his health restored.  He died on October 26, 1926 at age 70 . . . the precise number of words he had spoken in his defense a few years earlier.

            inmate number. P01135809

And now we come to Donald Trump, who may or may not become the 2nd man to run for POTUS from a jail cell (well, three if one counts the truly kooky Lyndon LaRouche). The only thing Debs and Trump have in common at this moment in history is that both were/are presumed to be innocent until being found guilty. The differences between them are as stark as night and day:

• Where Trump’s favorite  pronoun has always been “I”, Debs’ was obviously “we.” 

• Where Trump has taken to falsely proclaiming that whatever he has done is and was for the  sake of his followers, Debs, a person of unsurpassed probity, was truly a man of the working classes.   

• To a great extent, what Debs stood for in both life itself and the political realm, was consistent, obvious, and  has largely become the law of the land; in  Trump’s case, no one really, truly knows what he stands for except personal power and self-aggrandizement. . . both of which are terribly difficult to legislate.

• Debs was well known by both disciple and enemy alike for being a gentle, humble man; Trump, on the other hand is either worshipped as the Second Coming or looked upon as a disciple of Satan.  

• Outside of being convicted for violating the Sedition Act, Debs’ legal record was without blemish; Trump already stands accused of 91 criminal counts.

• Debs was liked, loved and respected by many; Trump has few, if any friends. 

• Although he was incarcerated in one of the nation’s worst prisons - the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary - Debs continued to be of sound mind and continued his work; should  Trump be sentenced to, ironically, the same prison, his very raison d'être will be diminished to the point of absolute disappearance and dismemberment . . . 

. . . which brings to mind the final line of Richard Lovelace’s 17th century poem To Althea, From Prison:  

Stone walls does not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage . . . 

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone     

#951 Article XIV, Section 3: The Constitutional Equivalent of the Manhattan Project?

81 years ago this month (Aug. 13, 1942 to be precise) The United States - along with the United Kingdom and Canada - commenced on what would become known as the “Manhattan Project.” For those who don’t know much about mid-20th century history (or have not as yet seen the movie “Oppenheimer,” starring the Irish actor Cillian Murphey as the fabled yet troubled nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer), the “Manhattan Project” was the top-secret program to make the first atomic bombs during World War II. The project, which employed more than 130,000 people over a period of nearly 5 years, had profound impacts on world history.  It was a truly monumental effort created, crafted and accomplished in the darkest of all earthly shadows.  Without it, it is likely that the Allies would never have defeated the Axis in 1945; only G-d knows what the world would look like today, in 2023.

To a haunting extent, we are once again faced with an evil that threatens our very future: Donald Trump and the threat he and his MAGA cultists pose to the very future of democracy. In both political and psychological terms he himself is a freak of nature.

Despite having been twice impeached; currently facing 4 separate state and federal indictments totaling 91 different charges; having been found guilty of defamation of character against a woman who accused him of rape; having been caught spreading more than 30,000 lies and mistruths during his four years in the White House; getting his followers to pay his legal fees . . . etc., etc., etc., his supporters trust him more than their families or religious leaders. This essay is not the place to get into a discussion of either the nature of cult leaders and their rabid followers or the psychology behind conspiracies . . . though both deserve a thorough airing.

It seems pretty obvious that behind closed doors, a vast percentage of Republican office-holders despise Trump (who my friend Alan refers to as “The Orange Blob”) and wish he and his MAGA maniacs would just fade away. They know and understand (again, “behind closed doors”) that he represents clear and present danger to America. Sadly, most all of them - save former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie - lack the backbone to speak the truth in public. What they pray for is some sort of “magic bullet” that will do Trump in without their having to lift a finger or utter a discouraging word . . . and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Back in 1942, when the future of democracy was in dire straits, the “magic bullet” was underwritten by the FDR Administration, who turned to the sages of science . . . people like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe and Ernest O. Lawrence to create that weapon. (Do note that with the exception of Dr. Lawrence, the rest of these distinguished physicists who headed up the Manhattan Project were all Jewish immigrants.) Today, the magic bullet so many seek to put Donald Trump out of democracy’s pending degradation, may well come in the form of Article XIV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, which states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

     Prof. Laurence Tribe and Judge J. Michael Luttig

A couple of days ago, Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard Law and J. Michael Luttig, the longtime (1991-2006) Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, co-authored a remarkable article in the Atlantic entitled “The Constitution Prohibits Trump from Ever Being President Again."  The two august Constitutional scholars - Tribe a progressive and Luttig a conservative who has often been compared to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, began their article thusly: As students of the United States Constitution for many decades—one of us as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, the other as a professor of constitutional law, and both as constitutional advocates, scholars, and practitioners—we long ago came to the conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment, the amendment ratified in 1868 that represents our nation’s second founding and a new birth of freedom, contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the republic by a treasonous president.

“The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause. …

Tribe and Luttig are by no means the first to discuss - let alone conclude - that Article XIV, Section 3 can and should disqualify Donald J. Trump from ever again serving as POTUS.  Indeed, this legal/political thread has been a hotly debated issue among academics and political geeks since January 7, 2021.  The swirl of approval surrounding the use of XIV:3 to remove the “disability of Donald Trump" has been growing ever since. Many of the most vocal are conservative members of the Federalist Society.

Writing in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, members of the conservative Federalist Society, agree: “In our view, on the basis of the public record, former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from again being President (or holding any other covered office) because of his role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and the events leading to the January 6 attack.”   

This is not to say that there is total agreement ridding the nation of Trump via Constitutional mandate; some are uncertain that it can work.  Since when was there unanimous agreement on anything concerning “the Orange Blob?” And yet, this could be, as they say in Yiddish פֿון הימל קומט אַ מתּנה - “a gift from Heaven.” For Democrats, most Independents and all those Republicans who really, truly don’t want Trump to win the nomination - thus bringing a plague of frogs, lice, vermin and utter defeat at the polls raining on their political parade - this provides the perfect out: keeping quiet and letting the Constitution answer their “behind locked doors” prayers.

As journalist Bill Press, my long ago boss in Governor Jerry Brown’s “Office of Planning and Research” noted just the other day: The language (of article XIV, Section 3) is so clear, not even today’s conservative Supreme Court could read the Constitution any other way. Trump is not only unfit to be president, but he is also constitutionally prohibited from holding that office. Period.    For leaders of the Republican Party, the next step is clear. Follow the 14th Amendment. It’s time to stop entertaining Donald Trump and find another candidate.”

  One gigantic difference between the Manhattan Project and Article XIV, Section 3 of the Constitution is that the former was done under cover of darkness, while the latter is (hopefully) going to be concluded in the bright light of day.

Here’s looking to a better, more democratic tomorrow . . .

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#950: I Really Do Love Israel . . . However

There is an old tale (most likely originally told in Yiddish) about a Jewish man who got lost at sea and eventually made his way to an uncharted island in the middle of nowhere. After many decades, a passing ship noted smoke rising from the heretofore unknown piece of land, and thus sent a small launch in its direction to check it out and satisfy their curiosity. Tying up their launch, less than a half-mile from the island’s shore, they swam over and were amazed to be greeted by an elderly man with a long beard.

After exchanging pleasantries and learning how he had wound up being there - and that he really had no idea precisely how long ago that was - he asked if he could take them on a brief tour so that he could show them the beauty of his home. The visitors were amazed to discover that over the years the old man had created numerous vegetable gardens, a small patch of land devoted to growing wheat which provided him with flour, a lovely pasture with goats and sheep, and a hatchery for fish. He proudly showed them the grass hut he had built for his home, and then urged them to go with him to the other side of the island so that he could show them "the pièce de résistance.” Trekking to the other side of the island, they immediately spotted two beautiful huts standing proudly on their own mound of highly compacted sand.

“And what are these?” the launch leader asked, “and why are there two, considering that there are no other people living here?”

“Ah,” said the old man, “a good question indeed. Why two? You see, the elderly fellow told them, these are my two shuls.” Quickly seeing the lack of comprehension in their faces, he said : “My two synagogues . . . my places of Jewish worship.”

“But why two?” they asked once again. “Simple,” he told them.” Then pointing to the one on the right he proudly told them “This is the synagogue I go to religiously seven days a week, three times a day in order to pray.” "

“And the other one?” the leader asked.

“That’s the one I would never step foot in!” he said, spitting on the sandy ground . . .

“The Talmudic Argument” by Giuseppe Bonalini

This whimsical bit or irony is probably best understood by what we Jewish folk refer to as “M-O-T” - namely, “Members Of the Tribe.” You see, for as long as we’ve existed, despite being a single people (עם אחד - ahm echad - in Hebrew), we have had our arguments, disputes, and fallings-out with one another. Sometimes they have been vehement enough to cause one segment to walk away from another - e.g. building a shul to which no one goes, as in the story above. But in the long run, over many millennia, we have, more often than not, stood shoulder-to-shoulder when things got really dicey.

Another tale - this from the Talmud: Rabbi Eliezer was in an argument with five fellow rabbis over the proper way to perform a certain ritual. The other five Rabbis were all in agreement with each other, but Rabbi Eliezer vehemently disagreed. Finally, Rabbi Nathan pointed out "Eliezer, the vote is five to one! Give it up already!" Eliezer got fed up and said "If I am right, may God himself tell you so!" Thunder crashed, the heavens opened up, and the voice of God boomed down. "YES, RABBI ELIEZER IS RIGHT. RABBI ELIEZER IS PRETTY MUCH ALWAYS RIGHT." Rabbi Nathan turned and conferred with the other rabbis for a moment, then turned back to Rabbi Eliezer. "All right, Eliezer," he said, "the vote stands at five to TWO."

OK. I’ve - hopefully - gotten the point across that among Jews, arguing can sometimes be akin to sport, sometimes a matter of seriousness.  So let’s get serious . . .  

Over the past year or so, politics in מדינת ישראל (midinat Yisrael - the “State of Israel”) has become more than the subject of argumentation; they have become both unsettling and potentially earth-shattering.  In many ways, what’s been happening on the Israeli political scene is not all that much different from what’s going on in the United States: an increasingly right-wing, religion-driven minority enacting their other-worldly will over the will of the majority . . . as well as leaders whose greatest desire is to remain (or regain) their seat of power in order to stay out of prison.

        Israeli P.M. Bibi Netanyahu

Over the past two years, Israel has seen a number of governments collapse due to coalition partners being unable and unwilling to work with one another. Not even a so-called “Unity Government” could get along. To American observers of Israeli politics, their system is close to incomprehensible; it has aspects of British Parliamentarianism (from which the executive branch achieves its power) and the post-Ataturk Turkish Republic system of governance. Like the U,.K. (and New Zealand, Canada and Saudi Arabia), Israel has no constitution . . . which is part of their problem. Its heterodynamic (sometimes active, sometimes dormant) system makes political unity all but impossible. Case in point: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, the state’s longest-serving PM, in order to remain in that post, cobbled together a coalition which included two of the most ultra-orthodox parties in the business. In turn, these parties - which represent a small minority of the country’s voters and/or wishes, have the power to turn one of the world’s most modern, best-educated, and most technically advanced countries into a 8,560 square mile (approximately the size of New Jersey) shetl . . . the name for medieval Eastern European Jewish market town where rabbis ruled, women’s main tasks were to cook, clean and bear children, and there was no distinction between secular and religious.

This not having a constitution wasn’t the original plan. Israel’s Declaration of Independence explicitly called for a constitution, and the first Knesset (parliament), elected on January 25, 1949, was supposed to create one. They deliberated it for many months but the discussions reached a deadlock. It rapidly became clear that no constitution would be enacted; instead the Knesset would enact a series of Basic Laws that would in time be combined into a constitution. After nearly three-quarters-of-a-century, Israelis are still waiting.

Bibi Netanyahu’s current governing coalition is, as mentioned above, easily the most ultra-conservative and religious in Israel’s history. This is not to say that the various religious parties have remained on the political sidelines up until now. To the contrary: religious parties have always held seats within the 120 member Knesset and have been minor partners in various coalitions in exchange for which they fulfill their major goals. To wit, maintaining the Orthodox strangle-hold on marriages, divorces and conversions, receiving deferments for their young men from military service (so that they may spend their lives studying Talmud) and receiving monetary appropriations directed to the haredim (Hebrew for “those who tremble” - the most ultra-Orthodox) community. On May 23, 2023, Netanyahu’s Knesset approved a raise for Agudat Israel and Otzma Yehudit - the two most powerful religious parties - NIS 250 million raise, to be used for building additional settlements. Even this “chanukah present” came as the result of argumentation: the two party’s opening demand was for NIS 600 million. The cash handouts to the ultra-Orthodox have sparked anger as Israelis of all backgrounds contend with soaring prices and increased interest rates.

Netanyahu’s pandering to the religious parties in his coalition (there are five different parties occupying 31 of the 64-seats making up this session’s majority), has led him to pass legislation calling for a complete overhaul of the Jewish State’s Supreme Court. The 15-member court — which meets in a graceful building on a hill in Jerusalem alongside Parliament — includes secular liberals, religiously observant Jews and conservative residents of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. One justice is an Arab Israeli; six are women, including the court’s president.

  Protesting Netanyahu as a Threat to Democracy

The government has primed itself for battle against the court by portraying it as a bastion of a secular, left-leaning elite and a closed club out of touch with changes sweeping the country. Experts say that characterization has not been true for years.  On September 12, the Court will hold hearings on the overhaul legislation . . . putting them in the Orwellian position  of ruling on their own legitimacy. The legislation in question cancels the court’s ability to use the somewhat vague and subjective standard of reasonableness to overturn government decisions and appointments.  This has raised the hackles and the ire of Israel’s politically astute, mostly secular, majority.  Many believe that Netanyahu has pushed for this legislation as a means of circumventing his own legal problems. 

At the same time, Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox allies in the Knesset are seeking to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts, and to bar women and men from mixing in many public arenas.  As part of his agreement to give his ultra-Orthodox allies what they want in exchange for keeping him in power, Netanyahu has already made several concessions that have unsettled secular Israelis. Among them are proposals to segregate audiences by sex at some public events, to create new religious residential communities, to allow businesses to refuse to provide services based on religious beliefs, and to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts.  Israel’s laws have not been amended to reflect the concessions, but some fear that the changes are already coming, at the expense of women. The Israeli news media has been full of reports in recent months about incidents seen as discriminatory. 

Bus drivers in central Tel Aviv and southern Eilat have refused to pick up young women, because they were wearing crop tops or workout clothes. Last month, ultra-Orthodox men in the religious town of Bnei Brak stopped a public bus and blocked the road because a woman was driving.  As a response, members of בונות אלטרנטיבה (Bonot Alternativa,  Hebrew for “Building an Alternative,”, a  pro-democracy group, as well as a nonpartisan umbrella group of women’s organizations) show up at weekly antigovernment protests dressed in scarlet robes and white wimples that mimic those of the disenfranchised women forced to bear children in the dystopian television show based on Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

There are any number of similarities between Netanyahu’s obsessive need to maintain his premiership, and  Donald Trump’s need to regain his presidency: Both need to give in to their country’s most conservative supporters in order to retain (or regain) power; Both are narcissistic ego-maniacs; Both need power in order to stay out of prison.  

Why Trump needs to be reelected is obvious; everyone in the world knows of all the legal challenges he faces.  Unless he returns to the White House in January 2025, he’s going to wind up in Leavenworth; no Democratic POTUS would ever deign to grant him a pardon.

In the case of Bibi Netanyahu, not nearly so many people know that he has been charged with fraud, breach of trust and corruption. He has pleaded not guilty and says he is the victim of a politically orchestrated “witch-hunt” by the media and the left to remove him from office. (Sound familiar?) As a sitting Prime Minister, he cannot be forced to leave office. (BTW: Netanyahu is not the only member of the cabinet with a troubled legal past: Deputy P.M. Aryeh Deri was convicted of taking $155,000 in bribes while serving as the interior minister, and was given a three-year jail sentence in 2000; Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused an extremist religious Zionist ideology.)

There are those who, reading this post, will accuse me of being either a “self-hating Jew,” a “Jewish anti-Semite,” or a “radical anti-Zionist.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I really, truly love the people of Israel; I love its history, its language and literature (I speak, read and write Hebrew with passable fluency); I love its many, many achievements in the worlds of science, medicine, technology and the arts; of how this tiny country is, generally speaking, the first one to send emergency medical services to both friend and foe alike whenever and wherever the need arises.  I also love it enough to forgive those on the religious right who do not consider me a rabbi, nor will permit me to perform a wedding or effect a conversion within its borders.  G-d willing, some day that will change . . . if and when the people who see the Jewish state the same way I do, recognize that they/we are a majority.

What troubles me - and greatly so - is the direction its politics have taken over the past many years. The very nature of Israel’s national identify has been radically altered by a small faction that seeks to replace the Zionist-humanitarian-socialist democracy of Ben Gurion, Golda Meier and the founders, and turn it into an unrecognizable place based on a rigid Biblical/Rabbinic code of law . . . even if it means going against the will of the majority.

But make no mistake about it: one can be inalterably opposed to this wrenching right-wing turn and still be a patriotic מאהב ישראל (m’ahayv Yisrael _ a ”lover of Israel”). 

Debate, disagreement and divisiveness, after all is said and done, are all part of the Jewish genome.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#949 Mark & David

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Early this past Tuesday morning . . . at least an hour-and-a-half before the alarm clock was set to go off . . . my phone rang. As a rabbi who caters to a mostly senior community (look whose talking: I’ll be 74 in a couple of weeks and they still call me “young man”), I’m always rattled by early-morning phone calls; it usually means someone has passed on or been taken to the hospital. Squinting through one eye, I saw that the incoming call was was coming from my dear, longtime friend Mark (of “Mark and David” fame), who at this time of the year resides “Way Down East” in their summer home in Corea, Maine, (Their winter residence is in Ormond Beach, just about as far north as one can get on Florida’s east coast. My first thought was that something had happened to his mother Phyllis, whom I had first met more than 40 years ago while living at the fabled “Rose Hill” in Cincinnati, Ohio.

But no. Mark wasn’t calling me as either a rabbi or a person engaged in the medical arts. Rather, he was in need of the ear of a fellow political activist. Mark, whom I have written about at some length over the years, was calling to tell me - almost tearfully - that he and his husband David are increasingly worried, and nearing their wit’s end.  Why?  They both have their health, have no financial concerns and, along with their kitty Monica,” and their tons of friends, live life to the fullest.  What could be the cause of their feelings of impending doom? Simply this, in Mark’s words: “The level of intolerance and hatred going on in this country.  It’s gotten so spooky and frightening that we have even considered the possibility of moving to Portugal in the hope of escaping all the escalating lunacy.”     

Mark and David (more so Mark) aren’t the kind of people who live in life’s shadows; they are “out there” for one and all to see.  To a great extent, they are also bipolar opposites.  Mark is deeply and obviously Jewish.  His family history goes back to 19th century Montgomery, Alabama . . . not the easiest place to be a Jew.  David, on the other hand, is a Presbyterian from Indiana. Mark is a giddy combination of a loving, perpetual yenta and social activist; he simply cannot sit back and permit injustice to breath; he must put in his two cents – whether it’s writing an op-ed, organizing a rally, or making tangible contributions of time, talent and treasure. David, on the other hand, is far more laid back; he is a professional violinist who spent decades playing in the same world-class symphony orchestra.  David is both the glue and the tonic which fuels Mark’s freneticism.  Perhaps it’s their relative bi-polarity which has has provided the bedrock for an incredibly stable partnership/marriage now easily past 40 years.  And yet, having been together for more than 40 years, Mark is not like David and David is not like Mark; they are Mark-and-David . . . a single entity.

During our conversation the other  morning, Mark got into the specifics of what has been giving him so much inner angst.  I am certain that most of us can make the same list:

• Donald J. Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, and the entire “Freedom Caucus”;

• The utter cowardice of all the elected officials who, while despising him behind closed doors, remain silent in public;

• The stupefying growth of anti-Semitism and acts of anti-Semitic terror;

• The very danger of being an LBGTQ+ member of society;

• Of how so many conservatives have replaced platforms with a plethora of hurtful issues bundled together as “anti-WOKE”;

• The very future of Democracy and concomitant apprehension that it is being replaced by fascistic authoritarianism;

• That the greatest number of weapons are in the hands of those who support D.J.T

• .That outright lies, ludicrous conspiracy theories and utter inanity have all but replaced demonstrable reality in  the lives of many.

• That for those who are “different,” there are fewer and fewer places to seek safety.

I caught a segment on NPR’s All Things Considered the other day in which the subject was how fewer and fewer people are listening to, watching, or reading the news than just a year ago.  Can you blame them? It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish real headlines from fake ones, and real news from sheer propaganda.  Those of us who are “perpetual news junkies” somehow get around this by telling ourselves that we - unlike “them” - only consume news from “reliable” sources.  But alas, for everyone who gets their news from PBS, National Public Radio, The New York Times, Washington Post and other sources of status, there are tons of folks who “know beyond a shadow of a doubt” that these journalistic behemoths are nothing more, nothing less, then mouthpieces for the “organized radical far left.’  (As a hopefully close and watchful student of American political history, I can tell you that the U.S.A. has never had much of an “organized radical far left.”  Even America’s so-called “Communist Conspiracy” as unearthed by the likes of Rep. Martin Dies, Jr., Senator Joseph McCarthy and J.B. Matthews, was far less lethal than - or harmful to - American democracy than the K.K.K. or the John Birch Society.  But then again, I - like you - am incapable of getting “true believers” to understand this.  It is far better to remain healthy than succumbing to a severely injured brain by banging one’s head against the wall.)

A man like my friend Mark is understandably at his wits’ end; his political and physical malaise (and here I use the term in its medical sense) is not to be pooh-poohed.  He is, by both genetic and ethnic background, a member of several endangered groups in early 21st century America:

1.    He is a Jew whose roots are not in New York, but rather in the Deep South;

2.    He is gay, married to a wonderful man, and not the slightest bit uncomfortable with who he is;

3.    He is a progressive political activist who can neither sit still nor keep his mouth shut . . . and thank G-d for that.

 A person like Mark can best be summed up by 2 quotes from 2 distinctly different, though deeply memorable people: Winston Churchill and Robert F. Kennedy, Sr.

First, let’s quote Winston Churchill:

“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

The second quote comes from R.F.K., who likely “borrowed” the following thought from George Bernard Shaw:

  "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not." 

   As a rabbi, I have been trained to listen more than to speak when someone comes with a problem or a question.  After listening to Mark for quite some time, I fear that I had not given him an answer as to what he should do . . . or fear.  About all I could do was to quote Churchill and Kennedy, and tell him to keep up the good fight. 

By nature - and both training and genetics - I am an optimist.  I told him that what the world needs are more Marks and Davids, and to keep on maximizing their character strengths while not giving in to the minimalizing weaknesses of others.  I reminded him that we are both children of “the Chosen People,” and as such,  are here to bring greater health and happiness, safety and sanity to as many as people as possible.  

Keep on being yourselves . . .

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#948: Vivek Who?

Truth to tell, the chances are slim to none that any reader of this blog will ever be casting a vote for Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican presidential primary . . . let alone the general election itself. Despite being an accomplished young man (he was born “way back” in 1985), who possesses a truly impressive C.V., (B.A. magna cum laude Harvard 2007, J.D. Yale, 2011, by which time he was already worth more than $15 million from his work as a hedge-fund manager), the founder of a a big pharma company called “Roivant [R-O-I, standing for “Return on Investment], and Axovant Sciences, which purchased the patent to intepirdine, a possible treatment Lewy Body Dementia, from GlaxoSmithKline for a mere $5 million and then raised a staggering $315 million for its IPO. He quickly became a Wall Street darling; Forbes Magazine put him on its front cover in 2015.

Vivek Ramaswamy is also the author of 3 best-selling books, all of which spell out his  political and social  philosophy in bright, bold letters:

Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam (2021)

Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the                                                                                    Path Back to Excellence (2022) and

  Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For (2023)

It’s clear that Vivek Ramaswamy, the son of Indian Hindu parents V. G. Ramaswamy (who worked as an engineer and patent attorney for G.E.) in Ohio, and Geetha Ramaswamy, M.D. (who is a geriatric psychiatrist), is the embodiment of the American Dream.  Horatio Alger must be beaming.  The Ramaswamys are  Brahmins, the priestly cast within Indian and Hindu society (roughly akin to the Cohanym in Judaism. ) Their native language is Tamil.  Despite their religion, young Vivek, who attended the local Hindu temple in nearby Dayton (the family lived in Cincinnati), was a graduate of St. Xavier High School, where the 2003 graduate was both class valedictorian and a nationally ranked junior tennis player.

Despite all his accomplishments, it’s his political positions that will disturb Democrats the most; they reside, to borrow an album title from Pink Floyd, on “the dark side of the moon” (which, by-the-by, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year)  How could any progressive vote for a person who,  at the press conference announcing his candidacy, promised “As U.S. President, I will end federally mandated affirmative action - full stop. I will repeal Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 which mandates race-based quotas. Every Republican since Johnson had the opportunity to do it. I’ll do it on Day 1 without apology."

How could any progressive even consider voting for a candidate who has publicly proclaimed his  support for abolishing the Department of Education, the FBI, and IRS; who asserts that the president has the unilateral power to abolish these agencies by executive order despite the fact that under the Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse; and has pledged to fire "at least half the federal workforce” and dismantle federal civil service protections, turning federal jobs into “at-will jobs.”

On his campaign website Ramaswamy promises to “take America First further than Trump.” Much of the site is filled with aphorisms: “God is real.” “There are two genders.” “Reverse racism is racism.” “Courage is contagious.” “Excellence over politics.” And simply: “Truth.” In a couple of his most outlandish proposals, he baldly states

• “End civil service protections for bureaucrats: 8-year term limits instead”

• “Move >75% of federal employees out of Washington D.C. and

• “End pro-lazy “remote work” option”

Congratulations, Mr. Candidate: You’ve already kept these last two promises—exceeded it, in fact. Give or take 85% of federal employees already work outside the Washington area. The “pro-lazy” jibe at telework is a nice rhetorical flourish, though. Vivek has also promised to “Cut wasteful expenditures: White House, not individual agencies, will submit budget requests to Congress” I’m pretty sure this will come as news to federal agencies that they can submit their budget requests directly to Congress without the approval of the White House Office of Management and Budget. In virtually every one of his proposals dealing with bureaucratic reform (which, I am sure is not at the top of many MAGA Republicans’ “must list,” Ramaswamy seeks to one-up other GOP reformers. “I think a lot of well-intentioned folks focusing on bureaucratic reform will say that we need to be incremental about this,” Ramaswamy said in a February Twitter post. “I think the time and place for that has passed.”

From all I’ve learned doing research on Vivek Ramaswamy the man, the candidate, the Republican, I’ve neither seen nor heard much at all that would tempt Trump’s cultists to jump ship. Oh sure, he is gaining a bit of recognition as of late; there’s at least one in each presidential campaign cycle: the long-shot outsider who vows to shake up government and its workforce. But after a brief while, they fade into the heat-baked sunset . . . possibly to reemerge as a member of the Cabinet (can you say “Jeff Sessions” or “Ben Carson?”).

One of the things that will all but guarantee to keep the Republican nomination from going to Vivek - not to mention Nikki Haley (born Nimarata Nikki Haley (née) Randhawa - can be found in their genes: they are both children born to Indian families; Ramaswamy’s family is from  from Kerala, in Southwest India; Haley’s come from Punjab; the Ramaswamy’s are Hindu Brahmins and speak both Tamil and Malayalam, while Haley’s parents are Sikhs who speak only the latter.

(n.b. all Sikhs are Hindu, but less than 2% of Hindus are Sikh. Sikhism rejects the Hindu caste system, priesthood, image worship and pilgrimage, although it retains the Hindu doctrines of transmigration and Karma. According to Hinduism, the soul is immortal. The souls are reborn into another being as per their karma. Sikhs believe that heaven and hell are also both in this world where everyone reaps the fruit of karma.)

In 1996 Nikki married Michael Haley; they celebrated their vows in both Sikh and Methodist ceremonies. The next year she officially converted to Methodism. Vevik is married to Apoorva Tewari, a throat surgeon he met when she was a med student at Yale and he a law student at the same university. The Haleys are practicing Methodists; the Ramaswamys practicing Hindus.

Already, there are signs that many members of the Republican-base have already rejected both Ramaswamy and Haley, not due to their platforms or positions, but rather due to their family’s religions. This is a far greater problem for the former than the latter. As journalist Tim Dickinson noted in a July 28 article published by Rolling Stone, Ramaswamy has a "major stumbling block" when it comes to winning over the evangelical Religious Right: he is a practicing Hindu. "He's been on a charm offensive with these evangelical audiences," Dickinson explains, "but the outreach appears to be backfiring, at least among the Christian nationalist set."

There are millions of practicing Christians — both Mainline Protestants (Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians) and Catholics — who have no problem with candidates practicing a religion other than Christianity. But far-right evangelicals have a very different viewpoint. As the Religious Right and Christian nationalists see it, only evangelical fundamentalists should hold public office in the United States.

One such fundamentalist is Trump supporter Hank Kunneman, who recently said of Ramaswamy, "If he does not serve the Lord Jesus Christ, you will have a fight with God….I don't care how good someone's policies are or how good they sound if they don't profess the name of Yeshua. What are we doing even entertaining the fact?" Kunneman continued while receiving thunderous applause from the worshipers in his congregation. "You're gonna have some dude put his hand on something other than the Bible? You're gonna let him put all of his strange gods up in the White House and we're just supposed to blink because he understands policies?”

Kunneman is not al one; just one of the first to have the temerity to speak his hateful thoughts from the pulpit for one and all to hear. What Pastor Kunnerman and Christian Nationalists fear the most is that America is boing to become a “majority-minority” country. You know something pastor? It already has. Besides two Republican aspirants coming from Indian families, the United States already has a V.P. - Kamala Harris - whose mother, Shyamala Gopalan (1938-2009) was an immigrant from India, who married a Jamaican and whose daughter married a Jew. Wake up all you Christian Nationalists: this is America in 2023!

Vivek Ramaswamy is currently doing everything in his power to convince white evangelicals that a practicing Hindu can be a far-right culture warrior. As he recently said, "The real divide in our country is not between people of Hindu faith and Christian faith and Jewish faith. It's the people who believe in a one true God, and those who have replaced that vacuum with new secular religions instead."

Despite the fact that both Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley (not to mention Vice President Harris) are the American Dream, it should be their political dreams and proposals - and nothing else - which should be the defining factor as to whether or not they should receive any American’s vote.

Is that gonna be the case? Likely not . . . but hey, that’s one of the reasons why prayer - whether it be written right to left, left to right or top to bottom - was invented.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#947: A.I.'s Next Step: Bard+Google

  Kurt, Alan and Clint Eastwood in “Coogan’s Bluff”

Those who are longtime readers of this blog will recognize the name “Alan Wald.” Alan is one of the “Hollywood Brats,” my longtime friend; we originally met back in September 1961 in J.O. Ito’s homeroom class, and he was my lab partner in Mr. Falb’s chemistry class.  Over the years, Alan has always been the guy who picks me up and returns me back to  LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) whenever I come back home.  We share a ton of great memories, including the time we spent part of our Winter break from University acting as extras over at Universal Studios in the 1968 Clint Eastwood film “Coogan’s Bluff” (that’s me sporting a serape just in front of and slightly to the left of Mr. Eastwood; Alan is the bearded dude standing just underneath the fellow with  the upstretched arm).  We well remember the shoot; at one point during our lunch break, I donned Alan’s “Sgt. Pepper” red satin jacket complete with epaulets, and convinced members of the visiting Indiana Hoosier Rose Bowl team that I was John Lennon; I wound up signing a couple of dozen of autographs.  

Alan is one of the brightest, best-educated and wittiest people I have ever known.  His wit comes as no surprise; after all, he is the son and nephew of celebrated screenwriters. His father, Malvin Wald, wrote one of most iconic of all motion picture tag lines: “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” As part of his genetic inheritance, Alan has the trained eye of an editor; he has been catching my typos and errata for years.  We are in constant contact via email; hardly a days goes by without my receiving 4, 6, even 8 sparkling missives making comments on the day’s news. A day without an email is indeed like a day without the sun. Many of my weekly essays have their genesis in an idea placed in my head by my long-ago lab-mate.

Which brings us to the title of this piece:  A.I.’s Next Step: Bard + Google. . . .

 This past Wednesday, included in several emails Alan sent me over a 2 hour period was one which carried the title: Example of use of Bard - Bard likes your essays- not too shabby. It turned out to be one of several he sent me that day, introducing me to an experimental bit of A.I. (“Artificial Intelligence”) called Bard, which had received its public release this past March. Bard is best described as “, , , a conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Google, based initially on the LaMDA family of large language models (LLMs) and later the PaLM LLM. It was developed as a direct response to the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT.” It was initially released in a limited capacity in March 2023 to lukewarm responses, before expanding to other countries in May. So what does Bard do? Simply stated, it can do instant reviews of almost anything one can write (so long as it is under 4,000 words . . . (at least for the present).

Alan’s email (“. . . not to shabby) turned me on to the fact that he had copied and pasted my most recent post (Senator Potato Head) into Bard.Google and within less than a minute received 3 different summaries/ critiques, one of which read:

“The author of this article is highly critical of Senator Tommy Tuberville's decision to hold up Senate approval of military promotions. The author argues that this is a dangerous and unpatriotic move that is putting America's military readiness at risk. The author also points out that Tuberville's actions are motivated by his own religious beliefs, which should not be allowed to influence military decisions.

The author's arguments are persuasive. Tuberville's decision to hold up the promotions is clearly having a negative impact on the military. The Marine Corps is currently without a Commandant, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be without a chairman in September. This is a critical time for the military, and Tuberville's actions are only making things worse.

The author is also right to point out that Tuberville's actions are motivated by his own religious beliefs. This is a dangerous precedent to set, as it could lead to other politicians using their religious beliefs to influence military decisions. The military should be free from political and religious interference, and Tuberville's actions are a threat to that principle.

Overall, this is a well-written and persuasive article that makes a strong case against Senator Tommy Tuberville's decision to hold up Senate approval of military promotions. The author's arguments are clear, concise, and well-supported. I highly recommend this article to anyone who is interested in the issue of religious influence in the military.”

After reading this I thought: “I wonder what Bard would think about the rather “thumbs-down” essay [A Pandora’s Box of Existential Fears] I posted back at the end of January this year on A.I? Would it be particularly hard on me for being so damnably negative? And so, I copied and pasted it into Bard+Google and within less than a minute it presented a couple of review. Here’s one of them.:

In your article, you raise some important concerns about the potential impact of ChatGPT on education and democracy. You argue that ChatGPT could be used to cheat on exams, write essays that are indistinguishable from those written by humans, and even target key legislators and influencers with propaganda. You also worry that ChatGPT could be used to create a successful autocrat who is able to manipulate people with lies and deception.

I share your concerns. ChatGPT is a powerful tool that could be used for good or for evil. It is important to be aware of the potential risks of this technology and to take steps to mitigate them. For example, we need to make sure that students are taught how to critically evaluate information and to distinguish between human-generated text and machine-generated text. We also need to develop policies to prevent the use of ChatGPT for malicious purposes.

I believe that the potential benefits of ChatGPT outweigh the risks. This technology has the potential to revolutionize education, making it more accessible and effective for everyone. It could also be used to improve communication and collaboration, and to make it easier for people to access information and services.

However, it is important to use ChatGPT responsibly. We need to be aware of the potential risks of this technology and to take steps to mitigate them. If we do so, ChatGPT has the potential to make a positive impact on the world.

I agree with your suggestion that Congress should pass a law requiring a disclaimer averring something like “BEWARE: That which follows is the creation of Artificial Intelligence. Any resemblance to the human thought process or the truth is purely coincidental.” This would help to protect people from being misled by ChatGPT and would help to ensure that this technology is used for good.

Thank you for raising these important issues. I believe that it is important to have a public conversation about the potential impact of ChatGPT and other forms of AI. We need to be aware of the potential risks of this technology, but we also need to be open to the potential benefits. I believe that ChatGPT has the potential to make a positive impact on the world, but only if it is used responsibly.

At this, I decided to copy and paste Macbeth’s soliloquy upon hearing of his wife’s death in Act 5, Scene 5:

She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing

These are among the greatest 12-lines in all literature. They are both slippery and opaque; Macbeth is essentially asking himself if he’s still capable of feeling anything, specifically fear, In copying and pasting this passage into Bard-Google, I wonder if it will even know from whence it comes. And here is its almost immediate answer/review:

This is a famous soliloquy from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth, spoken by the title character. In it, Macbeth reflects on the meaninglessness of life and the inevitability of death. He compares life to a "walking shadow" and a "poor player" who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, only to be heard no more. He concludes that life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

This soliloquy is often interpreted as a reflection of Macbeth's own inner turmoil. He has committed regicide and is now haunted by guilt and fear. He is also aware that his days are numbered, as Malcolm and Macduff are approaching his castle to besiege it. In this context, the soliloquy can be seen as Macbeth's attempt to come to terms with his own mortality.

However, the soliloquy can also be interpreted more broadly. It is a meditation on the nature of life and death that is still relevant today. The words "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" have become a metaphor for the endless cycle of life and death. The phrase "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" has been used to describe anything that is ultimately meaningless.

The soliloquy is a powerful and moving piece of writing that has resonated with audiences for centuries. It is a reminder that life is short and that we should make the most of it. It is also a reminder that death is inevitable, but that it does not mean that life is meaningless.

Bravo! Bard is well aware that I did not write these words . . . and shows a pretty deft understanding of their meaning. And so, just to get an even better feeling for Bard+Googlel, I downloaded a recent essay on the many forms of pre-senile dementia entitled The Long Goodbye. My main question was not whether the program liked my essay or found it important or intelligent, but rather whether it could follow something largely written in a “foreign” language . . . namely, medical terminology. And here is what he/she had to share about a 1,650-word essay:

Thank you for sharing your essay. It is well-written and thought-provoking. I agree with you that we need hope, not hysteria, in the face of diseases like Alzheimer's. It is important to remember that no drug is 100% safe, but that the benefits of Leqembi may outweigh the risks for many people. I also agree that clinical research is not a "zero sum game" between patients and profit. There are many people who are dedicated to finding cures for diseases, and they deserve our support.

I am curious to know what you think of the way that the FDA has approved Leqembi. Some people have criticized the FDA for approving the drug, saying that it is not effective enough. Others have said that the FDA should have required the drug to be more affordable. What is your opinion?

I also wonder what you think of the role of conspiracy theories in the context of medical research. Do you think that conspiracy theories can have a negative impact on the development of new treatments?

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on these questions.

                       Eleanor Roosevelt  (1884-1962)

Although Bard-Google did not understand the purpose of this essay, it did realize that there are far more unanswered questions with which we must grapple in the near future.  The same can, of course, be said for A.I. - Artificial Intelligence - in general, and A.G.I. - "Artificial General Intelligence” - like   “Bard” and other newly emerging hypothetical intelligence agents in particular.  Whether one knows it or not, every time we institute a Google search or ask Siri or Alexis a question, we are using A.I.  A.G.I. is a type of intelligent agent.  The A.G.I. concept is that is that it can learn any intellectual task that human beings or animals can accomplish.  Unlike AI, which relies on ever-expanding datasets to perform more complex tasks, AGI, we are told, will someday be able to exhibit the same attributes as those associated with the human brain, including common sense, background knowledge, transfer learning, abstraction, and causality. Of particular interest is the human ability to generalize from scanty or incomplete input.

I rather doubt that Alan Wald and I will be around when “Bard” replaces “Shakespeare” or makes Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke’s character “Hal 9000” as quaint as an abacus.  But this I/we do know: technological advances always run at a far different pace than the concomitant ethical and moral challenges they create.   And by the way, I am certain that nothing in the realm of A.G.I. will ever approximate Alan’s brilliant wit!

 Eleanor Roosevelt - the greatest of all First Ladies - once noted that “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” By this, I believe she was suggesting that those who have a clear idea of what they want to achieve and a strong belief in their ability to make it happen are the ones who will be most successful in creating the future they desire.  Were she alive today, this most thoughtful and humane of all women might likely change her mind and restate her aphorism as “The future belongs to those who best conquer the challenge of their nightmares.”

 Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#946: Senator Potato Head

Were it not that Alabama’s senior senator Tommy Tuberville is single-handedly holding up Senate approval of virtually tens of dozens of Generals, Colonels and Admirals to lead the nation’s military, he might easily be the butt of every late-night talk show host not currently picking up a paycheck from Fox, Newsmax or OAN.  But what he is doing is far from funny.  In matter of fact, he is engaged in one of the most dangerous, mindless and thoroughly unpatriotic of all political ploys in the nation’s history.  What’s gotten the Alabama football coach-turned-senator particularly obstructive and petulant is the Pentagon’s decision to reimburse female service members for travel-related abortion expenses, as many of them are stationed in states that are hostile to reproductive rights. Not only that, he is demanding that these women be confined to base and be disallowed from traveling to another state where abortion is still practicable.

Because the overwhelming majority of upper-echelon military promotions are approved by unanimous consent in the Senate, if even one senator objects, the whole process is derailed.  Tuberville has flatly stated that if senators don’t like his unilateral move they can always vote on each separate officer . . . by on-the-record voice votes . . . which would take months to achieve. For decades, all these vacancies have been filled within a few minutes, thus saving time for the senate to engage in other serious business.

Because of the senator’s “feet-in-concrete” position - putting abortion ahead of America’s military readiness at a critical time in history - the United States Marine Corps will be without a Commandant for the first time in 164 years . . .  since before the Civil War.  The last time the Marine Corps was left without an acting commandant was in 1859, when Archibald Henderson, the fifth commandant of the Marines, died at 76 without a successor in place.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger officially retired on this past Monday, leaving Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith as the acting commandant and leader of the military branch until he is confirmed in the Senate.

It’s unclear when Smith could be confirmed. Tuberville’s hold on the Pentagon nominees, which he began in March to protest the Defense Department’s new abortion policy, shows no signs of weakening, even as the block has sparked bipartisan frustration. In addition to the Commandant’s position, there is that of Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Mark Milley, the current chairman, who retires in September. As of late June, Tuberville’s hold was nearing the beginning of its sixth month. Talk about obduracy!

In a piece he (or a member of his staff or one of his financial supporters) wrote and published in The Washington Post, the former Ole Miss (1995-1998) and Auburn (1999-2008) head coach tried to defend his much maligned move in stating “Acting officials are in each one of the positions that are due for a promotion. The hold affects only those at the very top — generals and flag officers. The people who actually fight are not affected at all.”  This statement all but proves that Tuberville is the dimmest bulb in the lamp, for not only are all those “who actually fight” without official leadership; they are denied the 5.2% pay raise guaranteed in the Defense Department appropriation bill, which is now larded with anti-abortion amendments, thus guaranteeing it will never pass the Senate.

  And what’s more, between 5,000 to 7,400 active-duty service members or civilians employed by the DoD (Department of Defense) have an abortion each year, according to the RAND Corporation. And following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, 40 percent of active-duty female service members live in states where abortion care is unavailable or severely restricted. That’s roughly 18 percent of the active duty military in this country. On top of that, the U.S. military is plagued by alarming levels of sexual assault. So if one happen to stationed in a state with an abortion ban—which may or may not have rape exceptions—the help with travel expenses could be life-changing.

The press has been reporting on Tommy Tuberville’s political shortcomings ever since he first threw his hat into the ring back in 2019. At his first post-election interview, he misidentified the three branches of the federal government (he said they were “House, Senate and Executive”), claimed erroneously that World War II was a battle against socialism, and wrongly asserted that former Vice President Al Gore was president-elect for 30 days. Up until defeating incumbent Senator Doug Jones, he was best known for having defeated in-state rival University of Alabama football team six times in a row and being named Walter Camp Coach of the Year in 2004.  But now, he is getting to be even better known for waging his one-man war against the Department of Defense - at what cost and what purpose no one knows for sure. 

Despite both his fame on the gridiron and infamy in the U.S. Senate, there is still some uncertainty as to the correct pronunciation of  his last name: is it "Tubber-ville” or Tuber-ville?” I’ve heard both. I rather prefer the latter, (Tuber-ville). The first doesn’t work so well; he is anything but physically out of shape. When it comes to mental acuity, he is more like the tuber - a potato or yam or huti huti. Hence the nickname with which I’ve chosen to endow him: “Senator Potato Head.”  

Despite this, the senior senator from Alabama (the junior being Katie Boyd Britt) is no laughing matter; he is a man to be extremely wary of. For not only has he chosen to place a partisan political roadblock in the path of the nation’s military; he has chosen to put service to a sectarian religious creed over service to an historic need . . . namely, keeping the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Merchant Marine far away from politics. And what’s worse, he has also declared that to be a White Christian Nationalist serving in the military is the sign of a patriot.

How very much like a greasy French fry.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#945: The Long Goodbye

It was my original intention that this week’s essay would be about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who as of about a month ago, is an announced candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. Towards that end, I read up on him, the place he occupies in his famous family, the books and articles he has published over the past 30 years, his work as both an environmental lawyer and “position” as one of the nation’s leading conspiratorial “anti-vaxxers,” and his stances on a wide range of political issues. My main interest in writing about him was trying to figure out how a person with his pedigree (not to mention troubled life) could even consider running as a political “outsider."  I mean, the dude’s a Kennedy for crying out loud.  Then too, I was (and still am) fascinated by how one moment Junior can come off as an ultra-right wing populist with a conspiratorial streak that would please the likes of a Roger Stone or Steve Bannon, and the next sound like a Kennedy - a progressive friend of the masses.

     Actor Bruce Willis: Now in the throes of FTD

But after reading journalist Rebecca Traister’s masterful piece, RFK’s Inside Job in the June 30th issue of New York Magazine, I changed my mind; Ms. Traister had written - and far, far better than I could ever hope - the piece I had in mind.  And so, wishing to clear my mind of RFK, I instead aimed my  brain towards my twice-weekly Institutional Review Board (medical ethics) material. And there, right before my eyes, was an announcement from the FDA that it has just granted full approval to Leqembi (l’-kem-bee), the  first drug to clearly, but modestly, slow the progress of Alzheimer’s Disease (A.D.).  And suddenly, it came to me: I would write about this medical mini-breakthrough . . . the very kind of thing that RFK, Jr. might well understand to be part of a conspiracy to endanger dementia sufferers while enriching “big pharma.”

Leqembi (LECANEMAB-IRMB), co-researched and manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Eisai in Tokyo and Biogen in Cambridge, Mass., is a monoclonal antibody (a lab-made protein), that targets amyloid beta in the brain.  (Don’t worry if you don’t know what amyloid beta means; there isn’t going to be a test at the end of this essay.  All you need to know is that A.D. is largely caused by the build-up of “plaque” in brain, and that plaque is largely made up of amyloid beta.  And by the way, all those drugs whose names end in mab .  . . this stands for “monoclonal antibody”).   

Dementia is an umbrella term used to describe a range of neurological conditions affecting the brain that get worse over time. As of today, none can be cured, let alone slowed. Of all the various forms of human dementia (estimated to be as many as 400), the very worst (and least-known) are:

• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) which causes a type of dementia that causes personality changes, anxiety, depression, and memory loss, usually within a few months.

• Dementia with Lewy Bodies: a type of progressive brain disorder in which Lewy bodies (abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha‑synuclein) build up in areas of the brain that regulate behavior, cognition, and movement. 

• Huntington’s Disease, (“Woody Guthrie Disease”): a progressive brain disorder caused by a defective gene. This disease causes changes in the central area of the brain, which affects movement, mood and thinking skills;

• Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD): One day this will likely be known as “Bruce Willis Dementia.” FTD refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss in the brain's frontal lobes (the areas behind the forehead) or its temporal lobes (the regions behind the ears). For many, the initial diagnosis is Aphasia, a disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language. Before he was diagnosed with FTD, Mr. Willis announced his retirement due to an inability to remember - let alone pronounce - the words of a movie script.

The type of dementia which afflicts the greatest number of people world-wide is Alzheimer’s.  According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 6 million people in the United States alone are living with the disease. 

Each of these forms of dementia (and oh so many others), have their own foundations which support research. Many of these afflictions have clinical trials in progress. They are  underwritten by these foundations, by wealthy family members of people suffering from these illnesses, by university med schools, by for-profit pharmaceutical companies, and the federal government.  According to Clinicaltrials.gov, the U.S. National Library of Medicine, there are currently 3,158 ongoing studies into A.D. alone. These range from Phase I to post-marketing studies.  All are seeking the same thing: to lessen, abate and eventually one day find a cure for this disease. The most sophisticated of these studies are randomized (subjects are chosen by a computerized “flip of the coin”), double-blind (neither the subject nor the medical investigators know which dose the participants are receiving), and placebo-controlled (in which a “dummy lookalike drug” is used in order to determine whether or not the drug being investigated is potent).

Returning to Leqembi, the newest FDA-approved drug for A.D. Studies show that it has slowed cognitive decline by 27 percent over 18 months compared with a placebo (a dummy, lookalike drug). This represents a five-month delay in progression — dismissed as negligible by some but hailed as a milestone by others for a malady that has, up until now, been largely untreatable. Not surprisingly in this day and age, there are naysayers who only talk about Leqembi’s potential side effects (“adverse events” in medicalese).  Skeptics also note that the drug’s effectiveness is limited — perhaps too subtle to be noticed by a patient — and that the medication can cause potentially dangerous brain swelling and bleeding. The drug is expensive — $26,500 per year. And Medicare is imposing conditions on coverage, a move fueling a bitter battle between government officials and advocacy groups.

At present, it appears that Medicare enrollees in the Original Medicare will have to pay a co-payment of 20% of the cost of the drug, after meeting their deductible. This means that people on Original Medicare could pay about $5,000 out of pocket annually for Leqembi, according to health-care research group KFF.  Medicare Advantage enrollees typically pay 20% of a drugs' costs, up to their plan's out-of-pocket maximum, KFF noted, which means that people on these plans may also face high out-of-pocket costs for the medication.

All drugs and procedures have potential side effects; by law they must be made known to subjects in clinical trials and when approved, to all those who will be taking the medication.  For a segment of society, the fact that Leqembi (or any other medicine) has side effects is unacceptable.  That’s where conspiracies come in.  (It should be noted that the most-cited of these Leqembi adverse events was “brain bleeding” (ARIA — amyloid-related imaging abnormalities).  Upon further investigation it turned out that many who had this problem (which is, generally has few - if any - visible symptoms) were taking blood-thinning medications such as Plavix (clopidogrel) and Coumadin (warfarin).  Once the blood-thinning dosages were lowered or eliminated, the incidence of ARIA lessened.    

Remember all those - including RFK, JR. - who claimed - against all credible medical proof - that the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine caused autism in children? Despite being  thoroughly disproven and discredited by medical researchers around the globe, there are still people who firmly believe that the vaccine is all part of  a  conspiracy.  The same is true with virtually every COVID-19 and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) vaccine approved for use over the past several years.  Let’s face it: no medicine, whether taken orally, injected just under the skin (sub-Q) or infused (IV) is 100% safe.  Why?  Because subjects and patients, like the people who do research, are human beings . . . less than perfect.  And many times subjects and patients have other things wrong with them (these are referred to as “comorbidities”) which may or may not cause a pill, shot or infusion to create a problem.  But even if a small percentage suffer a problem - such as diarrhea, hair-loss or even, God forbid, death, what about the nearly 95+% who find improvement?  Are we to put huge roadblocks along the path to improvement - if not eventual recovery - because of the very, very few?

Alzheimer’s disease and other pre-senile dementias are often referred to as “the long goodbye.”  It is an apt expression, which also happens to be the title of a 1953 Raymond Chandler novel starring his L.A. detective Phillip Marlowe. As anyone who has ever watched a loved one slip into the shadows of dementia, they know what it feels like to be left facing and caring for a stranger with a familiar face. It is a pain far worse than a spinal tap. In an era where people without a stick of real medical knowledge or a single unit of scientific study (save, perhaps a 3-unit class in Biology 1), there are many megaphoned maniacs getting a growing segment of the public to believe that clinical research is a “zero-sum game” between patients and profit. This is the last thing people suffering from HIV, dementia, cancer, or any of a host of horrifying diseases need.

What we need now, more than ever, is hope . . . not hysteria.

Perhaps I’ll write a future essay about RFK, Jr. after he’s gotten over his current manic obsession with becoming President of the United States.  Until then, I will pray for his health and for the health of all the doctors, nurses, pharmacologists, biomechanics, and medical ethicists who are daily engaged in the art and science of healing.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#944: Jefferson Monroe Levy, the 4th of July, and US

The Fourth of July 2023 isn’t even close to what it was - or even meant to be - back when Erica (my “slightly older sister”) and I were kids. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, what we nowadays simply call either “The Fourth” or “Fourth of July Weekend” (even if it comes around on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) meant going to the Van Nuys/Sherman Oaks War Memorial Park (where we learned to swim and dive as well as attend day camp in the summer) take a blanket, sandwiches and a thermos-full of lemonade - and watch the best-staged, most artistic fireworks display anywhere in the West. How did we know it was “the best in the West?” Simple: when you live within a couple of miles of the best “special effects” departments on earth, it’s bound to be great . . . and incredibly loud. Having the world’s tallest palm trees as a backdrop . . . well, it just couldn’t be any better.  And to top everything off, there would be the singing of the Star Spangled Banner by some star of the silver screen, usually backed by an orchestra from MGM, Paramount, Fox or even (G-d forbid!) RKO.  

Those were the days!  It was both patriotic (remember, there were veterans of WWI, WWII and the Korean  “police action” scattered throughout the crowd) and filled with pride for the country that our Founders had created.  Oh sure, we knew we weren’t perfect and not everyone was as acceptable as others (these were still the pre-Civil Rights Act days and Hollywood was not yet free of the horrendous “Black List”); but in the main, we still celebrated the dreams and ideals of our Founders.  We were still, for the most part “WE THE PEOPLE.”

Even as a kid of 8 or 9, I reveled in the thought that we, the Stone family, descended from the Schimbergs and Greenbergs of Maryland and Virginia, and the Kagans and Hymans of Minnesota and Illinois, were all part of the U.S., which we always pronounced as the single word: “us.”  We were among the few whose grandparents and great-grandparents neither spoke Yiddish nor had ever never set foot in New York.  And yet, we certainly never felt ourselves to be more of “US” than those who were of the first generation . . . either in America itself or Hollywood in general.

In the generations of our grandparents, great-grandparents and even more, the Fourth of July was far, far different than what Erica and I remember. While I have read about fireworks being a staple of 19th-century Fourth of July celebrations (signifying the “bombs bursting in air” at the battle of Ft. McHenry - a legacy of the War of 1812), it was the public reading of Jefferson’s magnificent “Declaration of Independence” which took center stage. These celebrations weren’t nearly as jingoistic (propagandistic) as those celebrations of a later age; rather they centered and brought to mind the words, thoughts and dreams of that most literate of all our Founders, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. And even after Jefferson died (ironically on the 4th of July, 1826, the very same day as his colleague/political nemesis John Adams), his words - among the greatest in all human history - were kept in the ears and memories of a grateful public . . . US:

                       Jefferson’s handwritten draft

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government . . .

Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924)

After serving two terms as POTUS (1801-1809), Jefferson returned to his estate at Monticello (Latin for Little Mountain), where he continued to live for the remainder of his life. For more than a quarter century, it was his habit to invite all the people from “down the hill” to attend his 4th of July celebration during which he read the Declaration of Independence from the very bookstand on which he drafted the original document. At the time of his death on the 4th of July, 1826, his estate was in severe disrepair; in 1831, the house and grounds were sold by Jefferson’s heirs (his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph and her son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph) to one James Turner Barclay, a Charlottesville pharmacist. Three years later (1834), Uriah P. Levy (1792-1862), the first Jewish Commodore of the United States Navy, bought the 218-acre estate from Barclay for $2,700 (equivalent to $79,100 in today's dollars). Commodore Levy then undertook to have the long-neglected home repaired, restored, and preserved. He also bought hundreds of additional acres that had been part of the plantation, to add to what was left. Levy, it should be mentioned, was part of one of the oldest and most prominent Jewish families in America.

Uriah P. Levy used Monticello as a vacation home.  Toward the end of his life, the Commodore also restored the Charlottesville Town Hall, built in 1852, as a theater, and renamed it the Levy Opera House. This bold Greek Revival 800-seat structure is still in use today.

From 1837 to 1839, Uriah’s widowed mother, Rachel Levy, lived there fulltime until her death; she is buried along Mulberry Row, the main plantation street adjacent to the mansion (making her the only Jewish person buried on the grounds of Jefferson’s estate).

17 years after the Commodore’s death, Levy’s nephew, the patriotically-named Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924), who was a successful three-term New York congressman, businessman, and lawyer, purchased Monticello at public auction for $10,500 (a little less than $312,200.00 in 2023 dollars. He owned, cared for and completely restored the mansion and its grounds until it was purchased by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation forty-four years later  (1923). During the years he owned Monticello, Jefferson Monroe Levy poured nearly half-a-million dollars (over $15,000.000 in todays money) into the restoration of Monticello. Despite only using it as an occasional retreat, Jefferson Monroe Levy revived Thomas Jefferson’s 4th of July custom; on that date, the former Congressman would be there, among all the townies from nearby Charlottesville,  to attend his reading of the Declaration of Independence . . .  from the very same stand-up writing table-cum-podium upon which Thomas Jefferson had originally composed it.

There is far, far more to the Fourth of July than fireworks, hotdogs and beer, or sales at the local mall hyped and hawked by the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al.  (BTW, July 4, 1776 is not the date upon which the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence.  In matter of historic fact, independence was formally declared on July 2, 1776, a date that John Adams believed would be “the most memorable epocha [sic] in the history of America.” On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the final text of the Declaration, but it wasn't signed until August 2 of that year.) 

To me, the Fourth of July should serve as something akin to a “refresher course” in the miracle that is America; its founding principles and ideals, its historic promise, highs, lows and the many challenges and stumbling blocks which have always stood in the path of our Democratic Republic. For many of US, the promise of America is best and most succinctly expressed by the 3 Latin words which make up our national motto: e pluribus unum . . . i.e. “Out of many, one.”

America is unique among the nations of the world when it comes to combining pluribus - people of virtually all ancestries, origins, tongues, religions, histories native myths to make something brand new . . . unum - one people. This has long been our ideality - even when not precisely our reality. Throughout our relatively brief history (247 years and counting), we have accomplished great things as a Democratic Republic. We have also fought with one another, treated “others” as our enemies, sought to bar entry to those we feared or did not understand. We have been through generations when rights were greatly expanded and enjoyed, and times - like now - when rights have been contracted.

No one ever said that being part of US was going to be easy . . . or inexorable; indeed, it has always been a challenge. This was best summarized by Dr. Benjamin Franklin in 1787. According to James McHenry (1753-1816) a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who throughout that convention, kept one of the best and most compendious journals of all the compatriots in Philadelphia. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin ‘Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy? “A republic” replied the Doctor . . . if you can keep it.” (McHenry’s journal, by the way, is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.)

And so it is: We are US; a most unique breed. Not necessarily the best . . . just the most unique.

May we continue attempting to live up to - and expanding upon - the very best of the ideals our Founders bequeathed to US.

May this Fourth of July be happy, healthy and most importantly, energizing.

E PLURIBUS UNUM

Copyright©2023, Kurt Franklin  Stone

#943: A Scintilla of Sanity?

           Reps. Adam Schiff & Anna Paulina Luna

The way things go these days of future passed (a reference to the Moody Blues, not the X-Men franchise which is, btw, “. . . future past), many hopeful, potentially ground-breaking news stories never make it into the headlines, but rather - as Grandpa Doc used to refer to it - “ . . . just beneath the truss ads on page 47.” Case in point: While virtually every network, cable, and print media outlet made loud, large headlines out of FPOTUS Donald J. Trump’s pleading innocent to 37 federal charges in a Miami court the other day, little to nothing was mentioned about the fact that 20 - count ‘em 20 - House Republicans refused to support Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna’s (née Meyerhofer) censure resolution concerning Democrat Adam Schiff.

Seeking to vault herself into the topflight rank of MAGA extremists (ala MTG, Boebert, Gaetz, and Higgins) the first-term Republican who represents Florida’s 13th C.D. moved to expel Schiff - the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee and lead impeachment manager (prosecutor) in the first impeachment trial of then-POTUS Trump. In addition to seeking Schiff’s expulsion from the House, Luna’s resolution also called for the California Democrat to be fined an astounding $16 million. In introducing H. Res 412, Luna told an empty House chamber: “Adam Schiff lied to the American people. He used his position on House Intelligence to push a lie that cost American taxpayers millions of dollars and abused the trust placed in him as Chairman. He is a dishonor to the House of Representatives . . . The Durham Report makes clear that the Russian Collusion was a lie from day one and Schiff knowingly used his position in an attempt to divide our country.”

(n.b. The “Durham Report,” which was named after Trump-era special counsel John Durham, who was tasked with reviewing the origins of the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Four years after his probe began, Durham concluded the Justice Department and FBI "failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law" about the events during the 2016 election. He also found senior FBI personnel "displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities." And he concluded the FBI had relied heavily on investigative leads provided by Trump opponents. 

But much of the information disclosed in Durham's report had already been revealed in a 2019 examination conducted by the Justice Department inspector general into the origins of the FBI's probe into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. That investigation identified several procedural errors, but overall concluded there was no "political bias" at the bureau.)

Outside of attempting to earn some street cred and score some points with her colleagues on the LUNAtic right, I can think of no other reason why the Florida fresher would ever take on a man of Adam Schiff’s stature.  Ever since the days when Schiff, then serving as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California won a major conviction in the trial of Richard Miller, a former FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union, he has been on virtually every political cognoscenti’s watch list.  In many, many ways, Adam Schiff has always impressed me as the living embodiment of John Cheever’s "Larry Crutchman” (from his brilliant 1958 short, short story The Worm in the Apple): too good, too successful, too even-tempered, too meritorious to be true  . . . at least for cynics.  But like Larry Crutchman, with Adam Schiff, what you see is what you get . . . he’s just that good.  So in what world could a political neophyte like Anna Paulina Luna ever believe she could bring down a congressional colossus like the gentleman from California’s 28th C.D.?

She must have been dreaming . . . or else taking nips from the bottle of MAGA merlot.

In his more than two-decade House career, Adam Schiff has as mentioned above, served as chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, manager of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and as one of seven Democratic members of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6, 2021 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. In comparison, Ms. Luna, in addition to trying to expel Mr. Schiff from the House and fine him $16 million, has cosponsored H.Res.113 - Ukraine Fatigue Resolution, (sponsored by Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, which would suspend all foreign aid for the War in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately. She was also among 52 Republicans who voted in favor H. Con. Res. 30, (sponsored by Matt Gaetz) which would remove American troops from Somalia. In baseball terms, Anna Paulina Luna is the Aberdeen IronWorks (the Oriole’s single-A affiliate) challenging the Los Angeles Dodgers and expecting to beat them hands-down.   

In addition to all his accomplishments in the public arena, Adam Schiff is also a truly great writer and a masterly orator . . . when the situation calls for it. (At one point he wanted to be a screenwriter. I personally have had the pleasure of reading some of his stuff through the generosity of his father Ed.)  Adam’s concluding speech before the vote on impeaching Donald Trump the first time has received some of the highest accolades imaginable. He began his speech  with a quote from a letter that Alexander Hamilton wrote to President George Washington, at the height of the Panic of 1792, a financial credit crisis that shook our young nation:

“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

He also quoted Abraham Lincoln’s message to Congress in December 1862: “Fellow citizens we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

The response to Chairman Schiff’s speech was - except on the part of Trump supporters in the media - overwhelmingly - even historically - positive:

• Greg Miller national security correspondent for the Washington Post who contended that Schiff is perhaps the most “underestimated” politician California has ever produced, predicted that the speech “will leave a mark on history, exceeding nearly all contemporaries.”

• Richard Stengel, the former editor of Time magazine declared: “When we get back to teaching civics in this country—as we must do—Adam Schiff’s sweeping, beautifully-wrought opening argument, should be on the syllabus.”

• The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin insisted that Schiff had delivered “the most brilliant legal presentation I have heard. None comes close. The tone, the facts, the anticipated defenses. I am in awe.”

• Former Mueller probe investigator Andrew Weissmann, said that Schiff’s speech reminded him of a quote (perhaps falsely) attributed to Lincoln: “’To sin by silence, when they should protest, Makes a coward of men.’ That’s the people who are thinking it’s better to stay silent and ‘I can do better by trying to do the right thing.’ This is really an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment where people really need to stand up.”

• Former Bill Clinton advisor Paul Begala, claimed Schiff’s oratory was, “Sweeping yet specific. Eloquent yet clear. Relentless recitation of damning facts, but with a tone more of sadness than anger. Rooted in our deepest traditions – opening with Alexander Hamilton – yet as current as Trump’s latest tweet. Brilliant.”

And yet, despite all the facts favoring Adam Schiff - at least on paper would have him retaining his seat - the odds seemed long that the MAGA-controlled House would permit Rep. Luna’s H. Res. 142 to go down to defeat.  

And then, something remarkable happened: a scintilla of sanity swept over the House of Representatives. When the final vote was tallied, (20, count ‘em 20) Republicans voted to block the resolution of censure! The final vote was 225-196-7 in favor of killing the measure . . . at least for now. Schiff, in comments after the vote, said he was “frankly surprised.” “And I think it showed a lot of courage for Republican members to stand up to the crazy MAGA folks,” he said “I’m astounded by the vote frankly; it was basically almost 1 of 10 Republicans voted against this resolution,” Schiff later added.  Rep. Luna, who up until the day of the vote Adam Schiff had never met, has promised to come back with another try.

 For the record, the 20 Republicans voting in favor of tabling the resolution were: Reps. Kelly Armstrong (N.D.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), Juan Ciscomani (Ariz.), Tom Cole (Okla.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Kay Granger (Texas), Garret Graves (La.), Thomas Kean Jr. (N.J.), Kevin Kiley (Calif.), Young Kim (Calif.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Mark Molinaro (N.Y.), Jay Obernolte (Calif.), Mike Simpson (Idaho), Mike Turner (Ohio), David Valadao (Calif.) and Steve Womack (Ark.).

Interestingly,  Rep. George Santos, the House “Liar-in-Chief” who hours earlier had posted a video on Twitter arguing that Schiff needed to be investigated, wound up voting “present” - certifying that he was there, but chose not to vote. Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, who voted in favor of tabling the resolution, proved that it is possible for one to do the right thing for the wrong reason. In his statement explaining his vote, he said he would vote against the censure resolution, aligning with Democrats

 “Adam Schiff acted unethically but if a resolution to fine him $16 million comes to the floor, I will vote to table it. (Vote against it) In fact, I’m still litigating a federal lawsuit against Pelosi over a salary reduction she imposed on me for my refusal to wear a mask,” Massie tweeted.

 In other words, Massie couldn't vote for this idiotic censure/expulsion/financial fine measure because it might complicate his equally idiotic lawsuit against Nancy Pelosi. Gift horses, you know. Mouths.

 Whatever their reasons, the fact that one-in-ten Republicans turned against Rep. Luna(tic)’s resolution is a very good thing. Could it indicate that a measure of mental health, a scintilla of sanity has, even if but for a moment, returned to the House of Representatives? Could it mean that for the first time in a long time, merely being opposed to a person’s politics need not mean that the person you disagree with should have their career, their life’s work emblazoned with a scarlet letter . . . or in this case, perhaps, a yellow star?

 One can only hope.

 Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

#941: Ulysses S. Grant, Donald Trump, Kari Lake, Andy Biggs, Voltaire, Isaac Asimov and Stochastic Terrorism

Move over President Grant: As of this coming Tuesday, you will no longer be sui generis . . . in a class by yourself. For the past 151 years you have held the dubious distinction of being the only POTUS to have been arrested. If memory serves well, it was back in 1872 that you were arrested and taken into custody for speeding on a street in the nation’s Capitol. Truth to tell, you weren’t the only one racing a horse-drawn cart that day; a couple of your friends were engaged in competition . . . they likewise were cited. Your bail was set at $20.00 (the equivalent of $500.00 in today’s money) and you were released back to your residence: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The day after your arrest, you didn’t show up in court to answer charges, and thus lost your $20.00. Case closed.

This coming Tuesday (June 13, 2023), fPOTUS Donald J. Trump, along with his ‘Diet Coke valet’ Walt Nauta, will appear in Federal Court in Miami to answer a 49-page, 38-count Federal indictment (read here)  including 31 counts under the Espionage Act of “willful retention” of classified records at his Florida estate and other locations after he left office on January 20, 2021.  The product of more than 6 months of investigation under the leadership of special prosecutor Jack Smith the indictment is extraordinarily comprehensible; a word rarely associated with a Federal indictment  It is also extremely nerve-wracking and makes one wonder just how well the fPOTUS is sleeping. It can’t be very well. I mean, in addition to this latest packet of legal pain, Trump is heading into Miami with two of his best attorneys no longer on the case. He has but one currently working for him . . . far too few for such a hydra-headed beast. Who knows what legal jeopardy all his former attorneys are themselves facing? (Methinks MAGA stands for “Making attorneys get attorneys”).

And he still has all his troubles in Georgia.

In great detail, the indictment recounts how Trump stashed hundreds of documents marked “confidential,” “secret” and “top-secret.”  It also recounts how on several occasions (some were taped) he waved a document around in front of a visitor to Mar-a-Lago, telling them “This is really secret and I know I shouldn’t show it to you but . . .”  Many contained highly classified military and even nuclear matters which, it they found their way into the hands of, say, Russia, China, Iran or North Korea, could be potentially catastrophic. The precise reason why Trump squirreled away all these documents is anyone’s guess:

• For future sale?  

• As a form of “good-faith currency” for future business deals in foreign countries?

• To feed his own ego?

 Last night, Trump addressed several thousand Republican stalwarts in Columbus, GA  at a brick building that ironically, was once an ironworks that manufactured mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army in the Civil War. In this, his first public utterance since the indictment was released to the media, he resorted to using apocalyptic language, tying together a litany of personal afflictions and affronts - his indictments by prosecutors, his utter disdain for the DOJ and FBI, and his bid for the White House - as part of a “final battle” with “corrupt” forces that he maintained are destroying the country. “This is the final battle,” he told his supporters. I use the word “ironic” in describing the building in which he and his acolytes were gathered, because he is, of course, speaking in unguarded terms about a civil war.  

      Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778)

What the fPOTUS is verbally engaged in is what some call stochastic terrorism. Coming from the Greek stochastikos, which means “skillful in aiming” or “proceeding by guesswork,” stochastic terrorism commonly defined as “The public demonization of a person, or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.” To the best of my knowledge it first appeared in an article in the August 9, 2016 edition of Rolling Stone magazine in which author David S. Cohen used the term to describe Donald Trump's suggestion that "Second Amendment people" could "do" something about Hillary Clinton:

Stochastic terrorism, as described by a blogger who summarized the concept several years back, means using language and other forms of communication "to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable."

Long before Donald Trump, there was Voltaire, the French Enlightenment writer and philosopher who understood stochastic terrorism vis-à-vis people like Donald Trump and his MAGAites when he wrote “Those who can make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities” ("Ceux qui peuvent nous faire croire à des absurdités peuvent nous faire commettre des atrocités").  Along these same lines, Isaac Asimov, one of our times’ greatest polymaths knew that “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” 

Try as I may, I cannot decide whether the fPOTUS’s mouthiest, seemingly most virulent cheerleaders - people like former Arizona newscaster (and failed 2022 gubernatorial candidate) Kari Lake, Arizona Representative Andy Biggs and Louisiana Representative  Clay Higgins, among others - are really, truly as fixated on the idea of breaking up the United States through violence as they seem . . . or are merely in need of staying on 45’s good side.  Speaking in lieu of former VP Mike Pence at the Saturday gathering in Columbus, Georgia (after Pence, at the last minute pulled out), she told the cheering crowd ““If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”  This is chilling  stuff, to be sure.  This is one wacky woman who has changed political affiliations and religions the way many of us change socks. She used to be a liberal Democrat (voting for both John Kerry and Barack Obama); now she is about as far right as you can get.  She grew up as a Catholic, at one time identified as a Buddhist  according to her friends, and as of 2022, she identified as a evangelical Christian

Then there’s Arizona Representative Andy Biggs, who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance (a most powerful position, considering what’s going on vis-à-vis Hunter Biden’s laptop).  He responded to the 38-count indictment with the words “Eye for an eye,” which he  wrote in a post on Twitter on Friday.  Perhaps the most unhinged stochastic voice out there belongs to Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins.  In a cryptic tweet that prompted thousands of angry responses – and confusion – online, Higgins called the arraignment "a perimeter probe from the oppressors." He also used language interpreted by one author as a call for right-wing militia groups to mobilize in support of Trump when he is arraigned Tuesday in Miami.  

In language that few (including yours truly) can translate, Higgins wrote: “President Trump said he has been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM. This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”  Though Higgins did not respond to a request for clarification, author, journalist and professor Jeff Sharlet took his words as a call for war. Sharlet is a scholar who knows of what he speaks: his latest book, "The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War," is an in-depth look at right-wing extremism. 

Parsing/translating Higgins’ highly jargonized tweet, Sharlet  wrote Friday on his Twitter account: “Take this seriously. ’Perimeter probe’: Higgins thinks indictment precedes bigger attack. ‘rPOTUS’: real POTUS, Trump. ‘Hold’: stand back & stand by. ‘Buckle up’: prepare for war. ‘1/50 k’: military scale maps (mostly publicly available that show nearby military installations). ‘Know your bridges’: militia speak for prepare to seize bridges.”

Indeed, we are living in extremely dangerous times. For many intelligent people, it is impossible to see how patriotic citizens could ever bring themselves to vote for such a flawed human being as Donald Trump for president. To understand how this could be, we return once again to the insights of Isaac Azimov:

“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti- intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone   # 🟦     

#940 Much Ado About Something #🟦

   Beatrice & Benedict:  “Much Ado About Nothing”

Without question, the past several weeks have put political brinksmanship (e.g. Politics as Chess) at center stage more than at any time in the past several decades. On one side: Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, whose hold upon his ceremonial gavel is as mercurial as a rock climber scaling El Capitan, while his fingers are bedaubed with olive oil; on the other, the nation’s 46th President, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the apostle of bipartisanship, whose half-century political career is nearly unmatched in all American history. At stake: whether or not the United States would, for the first time in history, be unable to meet its fiscal obligations.

Without question, McCarthy faced the longest odds in the negotiation; he is saddled with a substantial faction of what used to be referred in political circles to as “bomb-throwers.” These neo fascisti - people like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, George Santos, James Comer and Jim Jordan - never tried to hide the fact that they cared not a wit whether or not the U.S. defaulted on its financial obligations. Their admitted aim was to “hold the nation’s economy hostage,” and blame it all on Biden and the Democrats in order to be a leg up in the 2024 elections. Meanwhile, President Biden - the so-called “adult in the room” - who made it known even before the first day of negotiations - that “the issue of raising America’s debt ceiling has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with lowering the nation’s deficit,” and reminded the nation that Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling three - count ‘em THREE - times during the Trump years.

As things turned out, the bipartisan agreement reached by the president and Speaker McCarthy - with the mature, yet rather low-key assent of Senate Majority Leader Schumer and his minority partner, Senator McConnell - passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress: 63-36 in the Senate and 314-117 in the House. Most telling, the vast majority of House Committee Chairs (who obviously would never have received their gavels unless they supported McCarthy from day 1) voted IN FAVOR of its passage. Whether or not they held their nose as they cast their AYE votes is not known . . . and really not all that important. What DID and DOES matter is that the son-of-a-gun passed. (It is interesting to note that Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert was one of two Republicans who did not cast a vote. When queried as to why she missed the vote, she said that it was a no-show protest vote.” Several days later, a video surfaced showing Boebert running up the Capitol steps while the vote was already in progress. When informed that the vote was closed, she continued running up the steps.)

On the Senate side - and quite predictably - the entire Republican “brain trust” (McConnell and his leadership team) voted in favor of its passage, while those who make the most noise (Senators Cotton, Cruz, Graham, Hawley, Johnson, Rubio and the two Scotts (Rick and Tom), Tuberville and Vance), like trained seals, followed their vaunted leader and voted NAY. (I am of course referring to the FPOTUS who commanded his true believers to let the U.S. default before agreeing to a compromise on government spending cuts.)

On the part of the Democrats, there were members of both houses who voted against passage of the bill; once they knew that it would succeed without their votes. Most made it perfectly clear why they were voting against the bill, referring to the specific add-ons. pork and budget cuts they were against. In no case did any Democrat voice anything but utter scorn over the idea of the nation defaulting on its fiscal obligations. Most voiced muted contempt for their colleagues on the other side of the aisle from attempting to tie a raise in the Debt Ceiling with budget negotiations.

I was always taught that the definition of a bipartisan bill is one which both houses pass and is then signed into law by POTUS. However, it is one which again, by definition, neither side loves, but both sides will have to live with . . . and live to fight out another day. Without question, the minutia found in the 99-page Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (its official name) contains many things which are odious to different factions. For some it neither contains enough of an increase in military spending nor cuts the nation’s deficit by nearly enough; for others it stinks because it permits an oil pipeline to wend its way through Virginia, puts student loan repayments back on the monthly list of bills to be paid, and restores a work requirement for older people receiving government assistance . . . and dozens of other things. In short, the Fiscal Responsibility Act is a classic case of bipartisan legislation: something for most and nothing for all.

So who won and who lost this political chess match? To tell the truth (something increasingly rare in this era of raging mendacity), neither side . . . nor both sides . . . depending on how one looks at it. So far as actual deficit reduction goes, the bill won’t cure what ails us: a mere $1.5 trillion worth of debt over the next ten years will be removed. That works out to an average of $150 billion per year. I mean, Hell’s bells!; together, Elon Musk and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos are worth a lot more than that. And so far as radically cutting the federal budget, forget it; the Republicans, as an example, wanted to eliminate the $80 billion earmarked for adding tens of thousands of new IRS agents (whose job it would be to ferret out the dishonesty of the hyper-wealthy). It was cut by a mere 8.75% (from $80 to $70 billion). Spending on Social Security and Medicare were held in check (Hallelujah!) and the dismemberment of several executive departments was ignored. And yet, Joe Biden left just enough within the final bill to give Speaker McCarthy and his team of Republicans enough to campaign on back home in 2024.

Biden and his team played McCarthy like a Stradivarius. So much so that in a moment of weakness, the Speaker, untested and inexperienced in high-stakes negotiations, actually said a few positive thing about the president, which could get him in Dutch with his party’s biggest blowhards who want the public that to know that President Biden is senile, the most corrupt president of all time, and hasn’t got the slightest idea about what’s going on. Instead, in his remarks to the press, Speaker McCarthy said: “And I do want to thank the president’s team that he put together. Very professional, very smart and very tough. Very strong beliefs that are different than ours. And I think at the end of the day people can look together to be able to sign it in the House and the Senate.” For many Republicans this is sheer heresy and just might get McCarthy thrown out of office. (Remember, it takes only one member of the House Republican Caucus to put McCarthy’s head and gavel on the chopping block.)

From where I sit, McCarthy and his staff were simply outplayed and out-strategized by Biden and his team. Biden started out by staunchly proclaiming that he would never link raising the Debt Ceiling to considering anything budgetary . . . like cutting or eliminating social safety-net spending in future budgets. McCarthy and his gang assumed that they would be able to out-maneuver Biden and his crew to back down, unless they wanted to be universally blamed for the economic catastrophe their political stolidity would wreak. What McCarthy et al never understood was that they were being set up by a political chess master; one who eventually granted them a few budgetary crumbs in order to let them save a bit of face while all the while saving both America and the world from certain economic catastrophe.

Of course, there was a winner in all this: the American (and thus, the global) economy . . . at least for now.  It’s truly remarkable how much time, tension, and strategizing went in to completing this match.  What’s even more remarkable, perhaps, is how little (outside of taking debt ceiling talks off the table for the next 2 years) was truly gained.  One could sarcastically name this episode Much Ado About Nothing, the title of a Shakespearean comedy first performed in 1612.  While certainly not his best comedy (to my thinking it would be a tie between Twelfth Night and A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream), it is nonetheless most satisfying.  In a nutshell, Much Ado is based upon deliberate lies and deceptions to fool someone to believe something that is not true.  Sound familiar? 

In the play, which is set in Messina, Count Claudio falls in love with Hero, the daughter of his Sicilian host. Hero's cousin Beatrice (a confirmed spinster) and Benedict (an eternal bachelor) are each duped into believing the other is in love with them. Claudio is deceived by a malicious plot and denounces Hero as unchaste before they marry.  When you boil things down, all the falderol leads the principal participants no further than where they started.  Sounds quite reminiscent of the recent chess match between Biden and McCarthy.

Except for one thing: Shakespeare’s comedy is a commentary on the silliness of human nature and human mating rituals. While serious things do happen during the play, ultimately everything is cleared up and the couples end up happy together. But in the end, what happens to the two couples means next to nothing.  In our current situation, the much ado, while certainly putting the silliness of human nature on display, ends up with something which should always have happened, actually happening . . . keeping the U.S.’s  economic trustworthiness alive and well. When the history of this match is written, perhaps some future wit will give it its proper title:

Much Ado About Something.  

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone      # 🟦            

#939 A Majority of One #🟦

Besides being the title of both a superb Broadway play that ran for 556 performances back in the late 1950s, and an even better motion picture that garnered 3 Golden Globes in 1962, A Majority of One, as a concept, doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. I mean, when you stop and think about it, isn’t a “majority of one” a rather clunky way of saying “unanimous?” It seems to be the living-breathing definition of an oxymoron.  I mean, how can a single “yeah” or “nay” vote be a majority? Actually, there has long been one place where a single vote can defeat unanimity: the United States Senate. 

Ever since 1846, the nation’s upper legislative chamber has  operated under terms of what are called the "Unanimous Consent” agreements.  As the senate website explains, these agreements "bring order and structure to floor business and expedite the course of legislation.”  Anyone who watches CSPAN has repeatedly heard an individual senator begin the day’s work with the words "I ask unanimous consent that the Senate dispenses with the reading of the previous day’s minutes.”  Then, the chair will silently count “One Mississippi, two Mississippi,” bang down the gavel and move on to the next item on the agenda . . . which may or may not call for a unanimous consent agreement.  No minutes will be read, thus saving the body from wasting at least an hour-and-a-half of its supposedly precious time. 99.999% of the time, that’s the way things work.   Rarely in its history has a single member of the United States Senate availed him/herself of right to hold up legislative action by being the sole individual to object to the unanimous consent agreement. This more often than not was done by a Southern member seeking to slow things to a deadly halt during the Civil Rights era.  

Frighteningly, a new and utterly eerie form of “Unanimous Consent” has begun emerging in political society, wherein a single citizen objects to something going on in the state, county, or town that gets the powers that be to pay immediate heed. Two cases in point: both of which involve book banning in Florida, the state where I have resided (not truly lived) for the past 41 years.

The first involves Amanda Gorman, the 25-year old poet, Harvard graduate, the nation’s first “Youth Poet Laureate” and youngest person to ever read a poem at a presidential inaugural. That poem, The Hill We Climb, immediately went viral, thus marking her as a dazzling literary talent who, like Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath as well as Thoreau, Sandberg and Emerson could easily become, in her time the American poet. What all these great poets had in common was an ear attuned to their own time and station, as well as being the quintessence of America.  The two things they did not share with one another was that they were neither African American, nor visible to millions via YouTube.     

Ms. Gorman composed the poem on short notice; she was invited to serve as inaugural poet in late December 2020. During such challenging times this was no small task. Gorman, as befitting a Harvard alumna, conducted preliminary research by reading the poems of previous inaugural poets (and talking to two of them, Richard Blanco and Elizabeth Alexander) and studying speeches of famous orators such as Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Winston Churchill. As reported by The New York Times, Gorman had completed about half of the poem when the January 6 events unfolded at the U.S. Capitol. The events spurred her to finish the poem late that night, with several new lines alluding to what had transpired. 

Despite all her breath-taking talent, her having taken center-stage at both a presidential inauguration and the U.N, General Assembly, a single parent’s complaint about her inaugural poem resulted in her book containing that poem being pulled from the library shelf in a Miami-Dade County (Florida) school.  The parent making the complaint (Daily Salinas) alleged that the book in which the poem was included, ". . .  would cause confusion and indoctrinate children.”  What precisely it might "indoctrinate” them into was never stated.  The form Ms. Salinas filled out in her complaint/warning wasn’t even filled out properly: for one question, asking whether she has seen professional reviews of the materials, she replied, "I don't need it."  She also claimed that the book was both written and published by Oprah Winfrey! (In reality, Ms. Winfrey wrote the forward).  Nonetheless, the book was pulled from the library shelf at the Bob Graham Education Center, the school where her two children attend. Despite all the flaws in both Ms. Salinas’ thinking and  paperwork, the book was put under a ban; neither the principal, school librarian nor many of the teachers wished to place their careers in jeopardy.  And so, a majority of one had its way.

The second instance of a “majority of one” removing a book from a public school library shelf - by a single complainant  -  recently occurred when the Duval County (Jacksonville - the state’s largest city) Board of Education removed some 176 books from their libraries.  The list of banned books includes stories of people who are Hispanic, LGBTQ, Asian, Muslim, Black and Native American, among others.

And by the way, there is one more group: Jews who observe Shabbat. 

The censored book, Chik Chak Shabbat, by Mara Rockliff and Kyrsten Brooker has an intended audience of kids who are 7 years old and younger. (And from here, I owe a debt of extreme gratitude to my colleague Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin - a most enlightened scholar whose many online essays [Martini Judaism] are brilliant).

Chik Chak Shabbat is the tale of a woman named Goldie Simcha. Normally, she makes her famous cholent (stew) for the Jewish sabbath, but as the book opens, she is under the weather. Hence, the neighbors in her diverse apartment building find a way to help. The book is categorized by online booksellers as being appropriate for preschool through second grade.  

What could possibly be wrong with a book about making a Jewish stew for Sabbath? (Cholent is a stew that observant Jews eat on Shabbat. It is a mixture of meat, beans, potatoes and anything non-dairy one might find in the fridge or a kitchen cabinet. You light the fire on the stove before Shabbat, so as not to violate the prohibition of starting a fire on the holy day, and then let it cook. It continues cooking, slowly, of its own free will throughout Shabbat.

Cholent is the bipolar opposite of fast food. You cannot do it chik chak, (Israeli slang for “in the wink of an eye”).  I’m not sure what in the world the members of the Duval school board found to be SO damnably controversial about this book other than the fact that (a): the cholent was made by a bunch of diverse people all working together to help Goldie (nascent Communism?) and that (b), most of them - including Goldie - are immigrants . . . outsiders. Whatever it was that bothered the members of the school board (whether they had, in fact, read it or not), was enough to pull Chik Chak Shabbat off the school shelves. Another instance of a majority of one (in this case, one school board).

A Majority of One, written by Leonard Spigelglas, tells a gentle tale of a middle-aged Orthodox Jewish widow (played on Broadway by Gertrude Berg and in the film by Rosalind Russell) and a Japanese multi-millionaire industrialist who is a practicing Buddhist (played on stage by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and in the film by Sir Alec Guinness). The unlikely couple have two things in common: both widowed, and both lost children during WWII . . . her only son was killed while serving in the Pacific Theatre; his only daughter in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  Despite their deep-seated cultural aversions, they manage to become friends - and more - through learning the lessons of tolerance, kindness, and forgiveness.  Against all odds these vastly dissimilar people become “a majority of one.” A great - though nearly impossible - lesson for our present time of political, cultural and demographic insularity.

                        H.D. Thoreau (1817-1862)

The likely origin of “a majority of one” comes from a poet mentioned above: Henry David Thoreau. In his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, Thoreau argued that citizens must disobey the rule of law when the law proves to be unjust. Thoreau drew on his own experiences and explained in his essay why he refused to pay taxes in protest of slavery and the Mexican War. Thoreau wrote that there are two laws: the laws of men and the higher laws of God and humanity. If the laws of men are unjust, then one has every right to disobey them. He is, of course, referring to an eternal, universal moral law, not one which is either temporal or purely political. The most telling line in the essay - and the one best remembered in light of this blog article reads: " . . . any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already."

It should be noted that Thoreau’s “moral majority” has virtually nothing to do with that of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell; his “moral majority” was based not on universal principles, but rather a narrow view of American society as seen under the flawed microscope of fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity . . . for the sake of partisan political gain.

Banning books, making immigrants, refugees, members of the LGBTQ community and other “undesirables” the scapegoats of the present time is yet another form of a “majority of one.”  In this case, the “one” is the  “one way” to understand how society must be if it is to survive. And it matters not a fig if the vast majority disagree; the “majority of one” will always live, act and believe that they - and only they - have God on their side.

One of my all-time favorite British comedies is Are You Being Served? which ran on the BBC from 1972-1985.  It dealt with the misadventures of the staff of a retail floor at “Grace Brothers” Department Store.  Filled with stereotypic (at least for Brits) characters - the fey Mr. Humphries, sexy Miss Brahams, curmudgeonly Capt. Peacock and batty Mrs. Slocomb - the half-hour show was filled with hijinks, incomprehensible Cockney and more malaprops, double-entendres and catch-phrases than can be found in all the works of Sheridan, Shaw and Oscar Wilde. My favorite of all comes from the opinionated Mrs. Slocomb (Molly Sugden) who, whenever voicing her opinion, would conclude by saying "And I am unanimous in that!”

Sounds hauntingly like the cast and crew of MAGA . . . 

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone      #🟦

#938: Four Questions #🟦 (Copy)

It’s hard for the approximately fifteen to twenty percent of us - like readers of this blog - who are deeply involved in following “the chess game of politics” to believe - let alone grok - that an astounding 80%-85% of the American public follow it anywhere between “casually and not at all.” The New York Times’ editorial board refers to this as the “attention divide.” According to an astute - though deeply disturbing - editorial published back in October of 2022: “Most Americans view politics as two camps bickering endlessly and fruitlessly over unimportant issues.” If this is true - and I for one have no reason to gainsay their finding - is it any wonder that people like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are being taken seriously as presidential contenders; that more and more state legislatures have passed laws permitting the banning of books in public schools; that at least 14 supermajority Republican state legislatures have passed laws banning drag shows; and that despite more than 60% of those polled supporting a woman’s right to choose, more than 2 dozen state legislatures have already enacted laws banning the medical procedure?.

The precipice at which the American political process - and indeed, Democracy itself - currently lurches, has as much to do with the mega-billions now flooding the undertaking as the quality of its practitioners (at least on one side of the aisle), and the dumbing-down of its content. It’s not that the issues are too complex for the average citizen to follow; it’s more that the average citizen doesn’t feel they have any skin in the game. They don’t know what or whom to believe, and haven’t the slightest idea of what questions to ask of those soliciting their vote. For the 80%-85% who, in the words of the Times’ editorial, follow politics “casually, if not at all,” they can’t tell you why they support candidate X over candidate Y, except for the fact that the former is not the latter. If anyone contemplating suggesting that these folks are, in reality, supporting people who really don’t care a whit about their plight or needs, expect a concussion; this is the typical result of banging one’s head against a brick wall.

I for one long for the day when citizen voters can state positive reasons for supporting candidate X over candidate Y . . . instead of hearing “Well, at least he/she isn’t the other guy/gal.” Perhaps part of the problem is that neither citizens nor members of the professional press ever ask the right questions in such a way as to elicit a response . . . or make the pol at the mike come off as a first-class know-nothing.

Here are 4 questions that should be asked of every candidate at every press gathering or conference:

1. “According to almost every every recent poll - including - Fox News - a clear majority of the American public favors enacting a ban on assault weapons. While 45 percent of those surveyed said they would encourage more citizens to carry guns to defend against attackers, 61 percent said they favored banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. Where do you stand on this issue, and how would you vote on any form of sensible laws concerning lethal weapons in the hands of citizens? And by the way, how much money did you receive from the National Rifle Association in the last election cycle?”

2. “A recent survey found that nearly 60% of registered voters prefer political candidates who will take action on climate change — including more than a quarter of Republicans. Do you see this as a major issue affecting the future of the planet? And if not, why not? How much money did you receive from the oil and gas industry in the last election cycle?

3. Many political analysts have suggested that the Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the 2022 midterm elections — which were held about five months after the Supreme Court’s decision which overturned Roe V Wade— stemmed partly from public dissatisfaction with the justices’ ruling. And there’s evidence that Democratic voters in particular were energized to vote because of the change in abortion policy. In recent polling nearly three quarters of adults (74%) and 79% of reproductive age women say that obtaining an abortion should be a personal choice rather than regulated by law. Where do you stand on the issue of a woman’s right to choose? Will you vote to fine and/or imprison women who receive abortions and/or their physicians who perform them? At what age will you vote to cut off abortions?

4. A recent USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word “woke” as a positive attribute, not a negative one. And yet, Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on "woke.” According to this poll, a 56%-39%, majority, say 'woke' means being aware of social injustice, not being overly politically correct. Republican politicians and voters alike have differing definitions of wokeism — and some struggle to define it at all. The rallying cry has recently been used to denounce everything from climate change policies and socially responsible investing to transgender rights, critical race theory, which books must be removed from library shelves in public schools, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Please explain your definition of “woke,” and justify how legislating so many aspects of people’s lives, education, relationships and individual choices is consistent with the classical Republican agenda of smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

At this point in time, it is more than evident that the gap between Democrats and Republicans is of Grand Canyon proportions. How so? Well, agree or disagree with them, Democrats have a pretty obvious ethical and legislative vision upon which to run. They have pretty clear-cut strategy based on both a a set of ethical principles - such as the moral trinity of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and the furtherance of Democratic values - and concrete political goals such as saving planet Earth for future generations, keeping assault weapons out of the hands of everyone save members of the military, supporting our allies and changing tax laws so that the wealthiest individuals and corporations pay what used to be called “their fair share.” These are all things which can be given expression without having to resort to fear and name-calling. Ask the four questions - or five or six or more - and then demand answers.

On the other side of the political gap, it seems there are no answers to the basic questions - just rhetoric and buzz-terms such as “Socialist,” “Communist,” “Woke,” “anti-religion,” and a laundry list of villains like “George Soros,” “Adam Schiff,” “LGBTQIA+” and pejorative nicknames (“Brandon,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Pocahontas.”(  Of course, to those of us who love the history of political nicknames, these show little wit and even less tact. Take for example a couple of the best: “Martin Van Ruin” (after America’s 8th president, Martin Van Buren . . . given that nickname after presiding over the “Panic of 1837”); “Rutherfraud” (America’s 19th chief executive, Rutherford B. Hayes who, despite losing the popular vote in the election of 1876 to Samuel Tilden, still managed to win the Electoral College); and “Slick Willie” (obviously Bill Clinton).

I urge all lovers of Democracy and fearers of Führers - whether journalists or just plain citizens - to dig in and ask the four questions at every press conference, town-hall meeting and Passover seder, and not give up until you hear some answers.  And if the questions are avoided or turned into attacks on the other side, remember to ask the best, most obvious follow-up question of all: “Why won’t you answer the question he/she just asked you?”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone    #🟦

The Judge Who’s a First-Class Payne in the Tuchis #🟦

(Many thanks to Alan Wald, one of my oldest, wittiest and easily, most literate friends, for bringing Judge Robert E. Payne and the case he presided over, to my attention.

First the facts, then the commentary:

    Federal Judge Robert E. Payne

THE FACTS: This past Wednesday, May 10, 2023, Judge Robert E. Payne of the Federal District Court in Richmond, Virginia (the home of my father Henry’s alma mater), handed down a 71-page ruling striking down federal laws blocking handgun sales to buyers over the age 18 and under 21. In the case, John Corey Fraser et al v Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives et al, Judge Payne, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, ruled that statutes and regulations put in place over the past several decades to enforce age requirements on sales of handguns, like the semiautomatic Glock-style pistol, by federally licensed weapons dealers were “not consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” and therefore could not stand. A citizen’s Second Amendment rights do not “vest at age 21,” he added.

In his ruling, Judge Payne repeatedly cited the majority opinion in the landmark case New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen which, employing a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment, struck down a New York State law that put tight limits on carrying guns outside the home. At the time when this ruling was handed down (June 2022), legal commentators, including the New York Times’ Adam Liptak noted that “The decision is expected to spur a wave of lawsuits seeking to loosen existing state and federal restrictions and will force five states — California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey, home to a quarter of all Americans — to rewrite their laws.”

The Justice Department is expected to appeal Judge Payne’s ruling in Virginia, which, should it stand, would have a significant, if limited, impact on firearms purchases. The decision, which would not affect state age limits, will take effect when the judge issues his final order, which is expected in the next few weeks.

THE COMMENTARY: In my opinion Judge Payne’s ruling ranks right up there with Mr. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s  1857 Dred Scott decision (which a future Chief Justice, Chas. Evans Hughes, would characterize as the court’s "great self-inflicted wound”); Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision in the Citizens United case (which essentially opened the legal floodgates to all the corporate billions being contributed to political campaigns); and Justice Samuel Alito’s delivery of the Dobbs v Jackson decision (which overturned Roe v Wade) as one of the very worst, most short-sighted and asinine judicial renderings in all American history. Reading through Judge Payne’s decision, the one thing that sticks with you is his justification for ruling against the plaintiffs . . . about their position “not [being] consistent with our nation’s history and tradition.” In other words, what Payne was basing his decision on was a stagnant, motionless Constitution; one virtually immune from - and uncaring of - any historic change or growth made manifest through the reality of time and tide. His rendering of the 2nd Amendment (“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”) heeds only its first fourteen words, and virtually nothing of what follows (i.e. “. . . a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”)

Taking a single phrase from the U.S. Constitution without regards to a couple of centuries of court cases and decisions (“commentaries”) is akin to reading the Old Testament (also known as “The Hebrew Bible”) without engaging in the study of the so-called “Oral tradition.” Were it not for this oral tradition - debates, arguments and the parsing of both history and language of the Bible, we’d be stuck with such literal renderings as the so-called “Stubborn and rebellious child” (בֵּ֚ן סוֹרֵ֣ר וּמוֹרֶ֔ה) law (Deut. 21:18-21) which condemns an unruly child ”(one who will hearken not to the voice of its mother or father”) to death by stoning at the hands of the community elders.  Had not this section of the Bible been subjected to centuries of debate and commentary, all those youngsters who,  at one time or another, mouthed off to their parents, would have been sentenced to death.  Instead, centuries of sages turned the literal words into a frightful warning . . . thus abnegating a heartless punishment.

Imagine, if you will, if Judge Payne’s obiter dictum about “not [being] consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” were to be taken literally in a wide range of legal proceedings; to what might it lead?

(And here we return to my friend Alan Wald’s trenchant thoughts for which, once again, great thanks are proffered:

Next, will it be the re-imposition of slavery  because ending slavery is not consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” 

Or re-starting the Holocaust, because it was part of the German nation’s history and tradition

Or the paddling of elementary school kids by teachers in the cloak room:, for this too is part of our nation’s history and tradition.

How about giving smallpox and VD to the First Peoples of America by the first white settlers in America  which is part of many nation’s history and tradition?

Or taking away the right to vote from African Americans and women because this right is largely inconsistent with our nation’s history and tradition?

Feel free to add your own “How’s ‘bout’ to this list.

There is an old rabbinic tradition of never ending a sermon (a drosh) without a dash of uplifting compassion (n’chempta). Not wishing to ignore the sage advise of my early masters, I shall heed their admonition:

This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Santos-Zacaria AKA Santos-Sacarias v. Garland, unanimously  passed a decision that makes history not just for its impact on the law — but for its language about transgender people and non-citizens living in the United States.

Every judge — including the most conservative on the court — agreed with the court's ruling, and traditionally right-leaning justices co-signed the official opinion of the court, which uses proper she/her pronouns to describe a transgender woman who fled Guatemala after being assaulted and persecuted on the basis of her gender identity and sexual orientation.

The opinion also referred to the petitioner as a non-citizen, rather than an "illegal alien" (a dehumanizing term that has been in conservative opinions in the past).

Estrella Santos-Zacaria, the transgender refugee at the center of the case, had appealed a decision to deport her after she twice came to the U.S. seeking safety and a better life.

In a unanimous decision Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with Santos-Zacaria, allowing her another chance to fight the deportation decision and potentially remain in the U.S. if that bid is successful.

The decision is largely technical, but the language used in the opinion is historic, particularly considering the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ measures across the country.

For the moment, this news fulfills the need for ending with hope and compassion, gives us a bit of emotional respite from the inanity of the Federal Court’s gigantic Payne in the tuchus.

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone   #🟦