Sincerity (#1,010)

                                                           Alan Alda (Capt. “Hawkeye Pierce”

For those whose memories will permit them to remember back to last week’s essay (a mere 168 hours ago), you will, I pray, remember that my topic was the loss of truth in political campaigns . . . both on the part of the Democrats, but far, far more on the part of what used to be known as the G.O.P.  In that piece, I posited that outright, clear-cut lies have so inundated our political campaigns that perhaps now is the time to pray for the resurrection of the truth.  I regret to say that sometimes, the answer to an outright plea to the Master of the Universe is “no”; despite our heartfelt supplication, this past week has seen IT proclaim before a crowd of Maga Maniacs in Aurora, Colorado that that city was “overrun by Venezuelan gangs” . . . despite the city’s Republican Mayor, Mike Coffman proclaiming  that the city was “absolutely, positively not a war zone overrun by Venezuelan thugs.”  Moreover, Hizzoner the mayor said concerns about gang activity had been “grossly exaggerated” and that “incidents were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents.”  And just yesterday, out in Nevada, IT called Democrats and others who have opposed or investigated him "the enemy from within" describing them as more dangerous than major foreign adversaries of the United States, including Russia and China. Speaking in a state that borders California, he specifically singled out "lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff," who will likely move up to the Senate come November (he is current ahead of his Republican opponent, former Dodger Steve Garvey by more than 30 points).

OK. So much for what former Minnesota Senator Al Franken called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them; lets move on to another human virtue of inestimable value which, like truthfulness, is in increasingly short supply . . . more so on one side of the political aisle than the other: SINCERITY.  That wisest of all Americans, Ben Franklin, reminds us that sincerity is a virtue, or a character trait to strive for.  “A genuine sincerity moves us in the direction of the Golden Rule - treating others the way we’d like to be treated.”  (Or, in the Jewish version, “Do not treat others the way we would wish not to be treated.”)  In his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) lexicographer Noah Webster (1758-1843) defined sincerity as:

1. Honesty of mind or intention; freedom from simulation or hypocrisy. We may question a man's prudence, when we cannot question his sincerity

2. Freedom from hypocrisy, disguise or false pretense; as the sincerity of a declaration of love.  

This past October 1, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz squared off against Ohio Senator JD (Vantz) Vance in the first and only - Vice Presidential debate for 2024.  Who won?  It all depends on your political affiliation and/or from whence you get your news and views.  Predictably, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post ran a piece beginning with the words Blundering Tim Walz dragging down Harris campaign - while brilliant JD Vance helps Trump surge. The New York Times, on the other hand, gave an honestly balanced assessment of the debate, congratulated the two candidates for their “largely civil tone and serious focus,” and declared that Governor Walz won . . . largely by speaking to the issues and being the same person on camera than he is in his private life. The Times did give Vantz Kudos for having the “bravest fashion choice . . . his patterned fuchsia tie . . . and took him to task for providing the “most blatant nonanswer; when asked by Governor Walz whether he accepted that his running mate lost the 2020 election, Vance replied ‘I am focused on the future.'“

While watching the debate in real time, I found the word sincerity bouncing around my brain.  Governor Walz, whose political career I have closely followed ever since his first campaign back in 2007, when he defeated six-term Republican Gil Gutknecht capturing 53% of the vote in the decidedly Republican 1st congressional district.  Over the years, he has always struck me as a sincere, feet-on-the-ground mentsch . . . the kind of fellow who would pull off the road to help change the tire of a stranded motorist. That was precisely the man who came to that debate. Vantz, on the other hand - neither sounded nor acted like the man best-known for referring to “childless cat ladies,” contending that even if Haitians were not stealing and eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio it nonetheless was fair game, and had in the past repeatedly referred to IT as “an American Hitler,” “a moral disaster,” and “cultural heroin.”  Instead, he came off as the class valedictorian . . . and a cheerleader for a far more reasonable, far more moderate former POTUS.  I found him to be a man trying his damnedest to come off being sincere.

Suddenly, I was reminded of one of the last episodes of M*A*S*H (“Foreign Affairs”) where the blue-blooded Major Charles Emerson Winchester falls in love with “Martine,” a French Red Cross nurse. Hawkeye, the eternal sheik also has his eye on her.  When Martine invites Charles (David Ogden Stiers) to sit with her after rebuffing Hawkeye at the officer’s club, the disbelieving surgeon asks his buddy B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell) "What did he try that I didn’t?”  B.J. suggests "Maybe sincerity?” to which Hawkeye replies "Sincerity?  I can fake that!”  

Over the course of the next several days, two other quotes came to mind, the first from Roger Stone (no relation, thank G-d), the worst, most cynical of all Republican strategists of the past half-century, the other from the dean of all classic American playwrights, Eugene O’Neill. Stone, who rarely ever tells his clients or counsels any Republican to tell the truth once said “Unless you can fake sincerity, you’ll get nowhere in this business.”  In his 1922 expressionist play The Hairy Ape, O’Neill has a woman known only as “the Aunt” matter-of-factly tell her niece, the haughty Mildred, “You seem to be going in for sincerity today.  It isn’t become to you, really - except as an obvious pose.  Be as artificial as you are, I advise. . . “

 To tell you the truth, this pseudo sensitivity thing scares the living daylights out of me.  As much of a moral albino and narcissistically-driven dictator-in-the-making as It is, I fear that Vantz, ITs mini-me, is far more dangerous.  And considering how quickly the 78-year old IT is deteriorating before our very eyes, should he be elected in November, חס ושלום, (pronounced chas v’shalom - Hebrew for G-d forbid) chances are that his mini-me would likely serve out the majority of his term . . . and then run for a full four years in 2028 and again in 2032.  Remember: “Project 2025” wasn’t really written with IT in mind; it was written for JD, the guy who wrote the forward to a book (Dawn’s Early Light) by Kevin Roberts, the man who oversaw Project 2025.  In much the way that the Federalist Society finally got their kind of justices installed on the Supreme Court, so too would the Heritage Foundation have their kind of autocrat ensconced in the White House.

I really, SINCERELY hope this prospect terrifies you as much as it does me.

There are a mere 22 days until November 5.  That’s not a heck of a lot of time to change the future.  But it is enough time to make a final push, make a contribution, make some calls, donate some dollars, and above all, make sure you vote to keep progress, hope, sanity and SINCERITY in our midst.

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

Saying Kaddish for the Truth (1,009)

                Philosopher Anna Arendt (1906-1975)

Today, Monday October 7, 2024 (5 Tishri, 5785 on the Jewish calendar) marks the 1 year anniversary of the deadliest day in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust (shoah in Hebrew) . . . an historic catastrophe which, for reasons beyond human comprehension, millions upon millions refuse to believe ever occurred. One year ago, more than 1,200 Israeli men, women and children were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists. Many victims were raped, and over 250 were taken hostage, 35 of whom are known to have been killed while 101, including seven Americans, remain unaccounted for.  With many of the bodies mutilated or burned beyond recognition - including entire families in their homes - it took forensic doctors weeks to identify them all.  Israel’s response to the massacre was swift, overwhelming and astonishingly lethal. According to the official Palestinian Health Ministry, as of September 29, the official count of Gazans killed - non-combatant men, women, children as well as members of Hamas, totals more than 41,595.  And within recent weeks, the Israelis have taken the battle into Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed Hezbollah functions as a parallel government.  They have been lobbing missiles, rockets and drones into northern Israel for more than a year. 

 This coming Shabbat (The Jewish Sabbath), October 12, Jews the world over will observe Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement,” during which we fast for more than 24 hours, and admit and atone for a long list of sins . . . the majority of which deal with either what we put into or what comes out of our mouths.  At one point in the service, we recite the Kaddish - inaccurately referred to as “the Jewish prayer for the dead” (it is, in reality, a paean to G-d and life itself).  This comes in a part of the service called Yizkor, Hebrew for He shall remember.  Not only will we be saying this prayer on behalf of all our deceased relatives, family members and friends . . . but collectively for the millions upon millions of nameless victims of war, famine, flood and other natural and man-made catastrophes.  I for one will encourage those sitting before me to include in their prayers those Ukrainians and Russians, Gazans and Lebanese who have also lost their lives in the early stages of what I fear shall become a larger regional conflict.  Not all will agree with my sentiment, and that’s OK, but I for one  refuse to limit my tears . 

As strange as it may seem, I am giving thought to including truth (אֶמֶת - emet)  in my kaddish prayer. How’s that? How can one say recite this prayer on behalf of a concept; isn’t it meant only for mortal creatures? I suppose so, but it seems to me that for the past many years, we have been witnessing the death of what is true. I mean, it’s gotten to the point where the distance and difference between that which is demonstrably true and that which definitely false is obscenely small  - what scientists refer to as the Plank Length - about 10-20 times the size of a proton.  Indeed, the truth’s terminal condition has made it possible for tens - even hundreds - of millions to believe that victims are aggressors, that 0.2% of the world’s population (i.e. the Jewish people) are powerful enough to rule the entire planet;  that a presidential election was stolen away (despite innumerable legal findings to the contrary); that there are more Communists in Washington D..C. than there are in the Kremlin; that Vice President Kamala Harris had, in her role as "Border Czar” (?) "let in 13,099 convicted murderers into the United States”; that “illegal Haitian immigrants” (who all had Green Cards) have been "kidnapping and eating” dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, despite a retraction from the woman who started the rumor in the first place.  And most recently, IT has been claiming (against all fact) that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) can’t respond well enough to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene because it’s diverted so much money to helping migrants. This is a bald-faced lie told in the waning days of the presidential election.  The truth is as obvious as the nose on your face: FEMA’s funds for handling disaster relief efforts are separate from money given to immigrant communities.  Not to outdone in lunacy, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene asserted that Washington used “weather control technology” to steer Helene toward Republican voters in order to tilt the presidential election toward V.P. Kamala Harris!

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Is it any wonder that I am likely going to be including ha-emet (“The Truth” in my kaddish prayer?

When it comes to tearing apart and explaining the history and power of lies in the public square, none has been more understanding (and understandable) than the late philosopher Hannah Arendt (that’s her in the photo at the top of this blog.  In the 1960s, Arendt’s major work,  The Origins of Totalitarianism was a must-read for any student of political science and political history (yours included).  A Jew by birth and psychological makeup, Arendt was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.  Influenced by the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger, Arendt explored the relationship between truth, lies and authoritarianism.  In one of her more trenchant essays during the rise of authoritarianism in 1930s Europe, she wrote;

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act, but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."

 The key point in Arendt’s statement is that as lies multiply, the result is not that the lie is believed, but that people lose faith in the truth and are increasingly susceptible to believe anything. When cynicism about truth reigns, lies operate not because they replace reality, but because they make reality wobble–a phrase Arendt employs in her essay, Truth and Politics. In that essay, Arendt argued that mass lying undermines our sense of reality by which we find our bearings in the real world: 
 

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.    

Long, long ago, the rabbis taught a signal lesson about the difference between lies and the truth.  As mentioned above, the Hebrew word for truth is emet

 אמת

They noted that the word begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph), ends with the last letter of the alphabet (taf) and has the 13th letter (mem) in the middle.  They also pointed out the obvious: all three letters are exactly the same size.  From this they posited that When one tells the truth, they are on solid ground from beginning to the end.

Not so with a lie.  The Hebrew word for “lie” is sheker

שׁקר

The 3 letters of this word, shin, quf and resh are 3 of the last 4 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  Unlike emet, the 3 letters making up sheker are unbalanced; they cannot stand firm, because the middle letter (quf)  causes the lie (or liar) to eventually topple over.   

As I put the final words to this essay, I have decided that I will definitely say kaddish for the truth . . . and then pray for its eventual resurrection.  Hear this liars of the world: your time is short.  We shall not permit you to continue filling the world with half-, mis-, or untruths just for the sake of power. Hearken unto this journalists, writers and bringers of news: learn well Kant’s and Arendt’s dictum that there are no conceivable circumstances in which outright lying is morally acceptable; morality is rooted in our capacity to make free, rational choices. Broadcasting lies is, or even worse, accepting them as just another form of free speech is, in effect, an assault on morality because it aims to undermine this capacity.   

To my Jewish readers:

אני מאחל לכם גמר חתימה טובה בשׁנת תשפ"ה

I send wishes that you to be completely sealed in the Book of Life in the New Year 5785.

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,008: Putting in My 2¢ On 6 Ballot Amendments

For readers of The K.F. Stone Weekly who do not live or vote in the Sunshine State (Florida), this week’s post may not be of particular interest; it deals with the 6 Constitutional ballot amendments we are going to be voting on starting in just a few days. 2 of the 6, however,  will draw interest all over the country:

• #3, which would allow people ages 21 and older to “possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption,” and the biggie:

• #4, which says, in part: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Please note at the outset that Florida boasts the greatest number of ways to amend its constitution of any other state. There are five ways to get a proposed amendment on the statewide ballot: (1) joint resolution by the Florida Legislature; (2) Florida Constitution Revision Commission; (3) Citizens’ Initiative; (4) Constitutional Convention; and (5) Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. In theory, proposed amendments are required to be clear and straightforward. I say “in theory,” because all too frequently, amendment language has gone through so many different partisan hands that by the time an issue winds up on the November ballot, it is about an comprehensible as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English.

And so, without further ado, let’s delve into these 6 different amendments. Reading them once, twice, even thrice before either filling out and mailing a ballot or going to your local polling place on Tuesday November 5 is a good idea. If you would like to ask me any questions or challenge my conclusions as whether to vote “yeah” or “nay” on any of the ballot issues, feel free to email me at kfstone@kurtfstone.com. I don’t claim to be any kind of expert . . . just a fellow who has devoted more than a half-century to both the study and practice of politics .

AMENDMENT #1 Ballot Language: PARTISAN ELECTION OF MEMBERS OF DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARDS.— Proposing amendments to the State Constitution to require members of a district school board to be elected in a partisan election rather than a nonpartisan election and to specify that the amendment only applies to elections held on or after the November 2026 general election. However, partisan primary elections may occur before the 2026 general election for purposes of nominating political party candidates to that office for placement on the 2026 general election ballot. (This amendment reached the 2024 ballot via a vote of the Florida State Legislature, which is overwhelmingly Republican in makeup):

Supporters of passing this amendment say:

• This amendment could provide voters with clearer information about school board candidates’ political affiliations, “aiding informed decision-making.

•  It reflects the existing political nature of school board races.

Opponents of passing this amendment say:

• Decisions may be more influenced by political affiliation than by the best interests of students and educators.

• Educational policies and content could be shaped by political ideologies, thus undermining the quality of education and freedom to learn.

• Reverse the amendment designed to protect educational governance from political interference. 

• Could lead to closed primaries, excluding independent voters.

Something to consider: Nationally, most school boards are nonpartisan. Only a handful of states (Alabama, Louisiana, Connecticut, most of Pennsylvania and Florida) hold partisan elections.

MY RECOMMENDATION: VOTE NO

AMENDMENT #2 Ballot Language: “Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to preserve forever fishing and hunting, including by the use of traditional methods, as a public right and preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife. Specifies that the amendment does not limit the authority granted to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission under Section 9 of Article IV of the State Constitution.”  (This amendment reached the 2024 ballot via a vote of the Florida State Legislature.

Supporters of passing this amendment say:

• Passing this amendment enshrines hunting and fishing as Constitutional rights recognizes their importance in Florida culture and economy.

• Supports activities that contribute significantly to the state’s economy through tourism and other industries.

Opponents of passing this measure say:

• We prioritize hunting and fishing over other wildlife strategies, potentially impacting conservation efforts and jeopardizing the safety, of our wildlife, residents, and communities.

• It would codify lethal force as the state’s primary method for animal control and removal - - overriding protections for vulnerable protected fisheries or wildlife populations.

More to Consider:

 Florida statues already recognize the right to hunt and fish.  Current hunting and fishing regulations would still apply. The amendment does not limit Florida Fish and Wildlifre Conservation Commission’s authority.

 MY RECOMMENDATION: VOTE NO

AMENDMENT #3: BALLOT LANGUAGE:  “Allows adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise; allows Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other state licensed entities, to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute such products and accessories.” (Unlike amendments 1 & 2. Amendment 3 reached the balled as a Citizen-Initiated measure).

What it proposes in plain language: Proposes to legalize adult personal use of marijuana in Florida.  If passed, individuals aged 21 and older would be allowed to possess up to 3 ounces of marijuana and up to 5 grams of cannabis sativa concentrate.

Current Status:  Medical marijuana is already legal in Florida; it was approved by voters in 2016. This amendment seeks to expand the legalization to include adult personal use of pot. 

Supporters of passing this amendment say:    

• Passage will generate significant tax revenues and create jobs within the state;

• It will represent a step towards reducing the burden on the criminal justice system by eliminating penalties for personal use and possession;

• A regulated market will ensure safer products for consumers and eliminate illegal sales.

Opponents say:  

• Worries about the potential public impact, including increased usage among minors, and the possibility of impaired public driving incidents;

• The amendment is too broadly written, and could limit the state’s ability to effectively regulate marijuana industry. 

More to Consider:  The campaign has raised most of its funding from Trulieve,  the state’s largest medical marijuana operator.  Trulieve is known for  trying to establish monopolies on the marijuana industries in other states. 

MY RECOMMENDATION: VOTE YES

AMENDMENT #4: BALLOT LANGUAGE: No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion. As with Amendment 3, this amendment reached the ballot as a Citizen-Initiated measure.

In plain language, this amendment proposes limiting government interference in Florida. If passed, it will nullify the current Florida 6-week abortion ban and go into effect on January 7, 2025.

Current status: Florida currently has a 6-week abortion ban in effect, making it illegal for most women to access an abortion 6 weeks from the first day of an individual’s last menstrual period, or 2 weeks after a missed period. It is a third degree felony for doctors to perform an abortion outside of this time schedule, punishable by fines and imprisonment for a period of 5 years. There are no exceptions for cases of rape, incest or human trafficking after the 15th week of pregnancy.

SUPPORTERS SAY: 

• Abortion is a personal medical decision that patients and their doctors should have to make for themselves;

• The current law bans abortion before many women even realize they are pregnant without any real exception for rape, incest and human trafficking;

• This amendment will not change any of Florida’s parental protections or healthcare providers’ scope of practice and ethics.

OPPONENTS SAY:

• The amendment is extreme and misleading;

• It would allow any healthcare provider to determine if an abortion is necessary and eliminate parental consent.

MY RECOMENDATION: VOTE YES

AMENDMENT #5 BALLOT LANGUAGE: “Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to require an annual adjustment for inflation to the value of current or future homestead exemptions that apply solely to levies other than school district levies and for which every person who has legal or equitable title to real estate and maintains thereon the permanent residence of the owner, or another person legally or naturally dependent upon the owner is eligible. This amendment takes effect January 1, 2025.” (This amendment reached the 2024 ballot via a vote of the Florida State Legislature

This amendment proposes adjusting the homestead property tax exemption value annually for inflation.  This change would apply to the portion of a home’s value that qualifies for the homestead exemption, ensuring that the exemption amount keeps pace with inflation.

Currently, Florida homeowners benefit from a homestead property tax exemption which reduces the taxable value of their primary residence. The exemption is set at a fixed amount, which does not account for inflation.

 Supporters of Amendment 5 say:

• Passage of this amendment could protect homeowners from the eroding effects of inflation, ensuring that their tax exemptions maintain real value over time;

• By adjusting the exemption value annually, homeowners could see more substantial property tax savings, making homeownership more affordable.

Opponents of Amendment 5 say:

• Adjusting the exemption for inflation will decrease property tax revenue, thus affecting local governments budgets and their ability to fund services such as public safety, education and infrastructure.

•  People who are not homeowners will likely be the ones made to bare the burden of the tax shift.

• A legislative analysis estimates a reduction in non-school local government property taxes by nearly $23 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year, with losses potentially reaching $112 million within a few years.

 MY RECOMMENDATION: VOTE NO

AMENDMENT #6 BALLOT LANGUAGE: “Proposing the repeal of the provision in the State Constitution which requires public financing for campaigns of candidates for elective statewide office who agree to campaign spending limits.” This amendment reached the ballot by a vote of the Florida State Legislature.

 Purpose of this amendment: #6 proposes to repeal the provision of public financing for candidates running for statewide offices in Florida, including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, chief financial officer, and commissioner of agriculture.

Currently, Florida’s public campaign financing system, enacted in 1986 and enshrined in the state constitution following a 1998 amendment, provides matching funds to eligible candidates for these offices.  Candidates must meet specific fundraising thresholds and agree to spending limits to qualify for public funds.

SUPPORTERS SAY:

• Passing this amendment could save taxpayers money, which could be redirected to other essential government services.

 OPPONENTS SAY:

• Public financing helps create a level playing field for candidates who may not have access to large private donations, thus ensuring that elections are fair and competitive;

• Public funding is seen as a way to reduce the influence of wealthy donors and special interests in politics, promoting a more democratic electoral process;

• A similar repeal effort in 2010 failed to pass, indicating significant voter support for maintaining public campaign financing.

MY REECOMMENDATION: VOTE NO

BTW: I hope you are registered to vote.  If you are unsure do remember that the deadline to register is October 7, 2024 . . . just a week from now. 

If you are not sure, you can go online to check your status at:

Registertovoteflorida.gov

See you at the polls!

Copyright2024, Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,007: Oh What a Night!

                      Dodger Shohei Ohtani and "Decoy"

As I ready myself to put fingers to keyboard and begin composing blog #1,007, I am sitting in my library. It is adorned with thousands of books ranging from the complete works of Shakespeare, Boccaccio and Thucydides, Dickens, Dostoevsky and Mark Twain. There are countless shelves containing biographies of classic movie stars (Chaplin, Keaton, Henry Fonda, the siblings Barrymore, and Humphrey Bogart); directors (D.W. Griffith, Sir David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder); and screenwriters (Ben Hecht, Herman Mankiewicz, Dalton Trumbo, and Dorothy Parker. There are also shelves filled with hundreds of history books, the Hebrew Bible, Babylonian Talmud, and Shulchan Aruch (the medieval Jewish code of law) as well as the complete works of P.G Wodehouse . . . one of my absolute favorite writers of all time. To my left, wedged in between Arnold Bergere’s sculpture of Moses cradling the Ten Commandments and a marvelous framed photo of the “It Girl” Clara Bow, there is a metallic sign that proclaims that there are precisely 2.694 miles between this library and Dodger Stadium (a gift from my “slightly older sister” Erica) and autographed baseballs signed by Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills, Duke Snyder and . . . Ted Williams.  And oh yes, I am wearing a brand new Dodger jersey (#50 Mookie Betts  - likewise a gift from my slightly older sister Erica, who is now the matriarch of the clan), and a beat-up Dodger cap from the mid-1960s.

As you may have guessed, this week’s blog has nothing to do with politics.  I think we all deserve a break . . . at least for a couple of days. 

Ever since 2005 - the year I began writing this blog - at least 1 out of every 52 essays has been devoted to MY L.A. Dodgers. (One of my most popular was from August, 2013 about longtime Dodger broadcaster Vince Scully, called “Shakespeare With a Mic”). Ever since 1958 - the year the Dodgers arrived in L.A. - the Stone family has, as we say in Tinseltown, “Bled Dodger Blue.”  We went to lots of games; first at the Los Angeles War Memorial Coliseum, which had a capacity of over 95,000, and then, after 1962 at Chavez Ravine.  I/we had the privilege of watching Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch; of kvelling over the only Jewish brother battery mates in MLB history (Catcher Norm and Pitcher Larry . . . the Sherry brothers), of cheering on Maury Wills as he stole an amazing 104 bases in 1962, and the infield of Garvey, Cey, Russell and Lopes who played an amazing 8 seasons together . . . a major league record.  We got to see such immortals as Stan “The Man” Musial, “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron, Willie “Say Hey!” Mays, Warren Spahn (the winningest left-handed pitcher of all time), experienced “Fernandomania,” “Moon Shots,” and a thousand-and-one other great plays and players.  

While it is true that I never saw Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Mel Ott, Hank Greenberg, Ted Williams or Bob Feller play, I did, just the other night, get to a game here in South Florida in which we saw the young man who just may turn out to be the greatest player of all time: Dodger pitcher/outfielder/designated hitter Shohei Ohtani. For quite a few years, whenever the Dodgers come south to play the Marlins, my friend “Pal Al” Blake treats me and my son-in-law Scott to a night of great seats, lots of cheers and a chance to see the Dodgers (generally) beat the pants off the hapless Marlins.  We were especially revved up for the game this past Wednesday . . . a chance to see the Ohtani bat!  (Like Babe Ruth, Shohei Ohtani is both a brilliant pitcher and an even better slugger; unlike the Babe, he can also steal bases with the best of ‘em.) 

Most of the people attending the game were wearing Dodger shirts and caps, many blazoned with the number 17 and the name “Ohtani” on the back.  There were about 17,500 people in attendance; great for the Marlins who average less than 10,000 a game. Most were rooting for the Dodgers.  The first Dodger to come to the plate was . . . you guessed it . . . Shohei Ohtani.  He got a standing-room cheer and then singled.  Despite stealing second and then moving over to third on an error, the Dodgers failed to score.  It was a pretty good game; Dodger Catcher Will Smith hit 2 homeruns, and the visitors won 8-4.  

If only we had been there the next night . . . 

The next night, Thursday September 19, 2024 was a night for the ages.  How so?  Well, to begin with, Shohei Ohtani went six-for-six, meaning that he had six hits (3 home runs, 2 doubles, and 1 single in six at-bats.  In the entire history of Major League Baseball, only 43 players have have achieved this goal. Not only that: Ohtani also stole 2 bases and had 17 total bases.  The final score was 20-4; moreover the victory guaranteed the Dodgers a spot in the post season . . . they have won the National League’s Western Division.  What Shohei Ohtani has accomplished this season, not to mention his entire professional career going back to his days in Japan, is beyond breathtaking.  Generally speaking, players who are great pitchers do not know the first thing about hitting.  Next, players who are “sluggers” (capable of hitting many, many long homeruns) generally do not steal bases . . . they are physically too large to be that quick afoot.  Up until the time of Ohtani, only 5 players had hit 40 home runs and stolen 40 bases in a season . . . and 3 of those (Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez) were found to have been using performance enhancing drugs (PET) when they accomplished the feat.  Now, Shohei Ohtani has become the lone member of the "50-50 club.”  Moreover, as of this afternoon, he has hit 53  home runs and stolen 55 bases to go along with a .301 average and 123 RBI. 

Most baseball cognoscenti (I immodestly include myself in this group) consider his achievement in the September 19 game between the Dodgers and the Marlins to be the single greatest game by any hitter in the history of Major League Baseball.  You hear that Babe?

Not surprisingly, Ohtani is the highest-paid professional athlete in the history of sports: $700 million over 10 years.  And that’s despite Dodger management knowing he would be unable to pitch during the first year of the contract due to his recuperation from “Tommy John surgery.” (Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction Surgery).

Beyond being a once-in-a-lifetime baseball player, and the highest-paid athlete of all time, he seems, by all signs, to be a genuinely nice, humble and hugely philanthropic human being with a great love of dogs.  This latter issue has taken the Los Angeles crowd by storm.  Everyone in L.A. knows that “Showtime” Ohtani has a beloved dog . . . a Dutch duck-hunting Nederlandse Kooikerhondje named “Decoy.”  In fact, Decoy (pictured above) is so well-known that on the recent Ohtani Bobblehead night,” the pooch was part of giveaway doll.  Dodger fans started lining up at 8:00 AM that day just to be assured of being one of the lucky 40,000 to get a statue of their own.  Talk about popularity!  The icing on the cake that night came when Ohtani came out of the dugout to throw out the ceremonial “first-pitch” - a tradition that goes all the way back to President William Howard Taft, who threw out the first pitch at a Washington Senators game on April 14, 1910.  To see what Ohtani and Decoy did to make the first pitch one of the most memorable of all time, check out the video capture:

At a time when so many of our leaders, idols and “heroes” turn out to have lying lips, feet of clay, and the morals of an alley cat, it is both heartwarming and  essential to have a universally admired super-human to root for. Though only 30 years of age, Shohei Ohtani has long wowed the hearts and minds of baseball fans wherever the game is played. After his record-setting night, his name and fame have now spread to people (whether baseball fans or not) in North America, South America, Europe and Asia . . . where they’ve already known all about their 6’4” 210-lb dog-loving native son for many years. I for one find it entirely refreshing that a young man born and raised in Oshu, Japan, is now both an American and a global icon. And though his English isn’t that good (he generally speaks through his personal interpreter), he knows how to communicate in the international language of mind-numbing accomplishment, nobility and civility.

Thanks for giving us someone to honestly applaud.

Take good care of Decoy!

Copyright2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,006: 51 Days and Counting . . .

How many different synonyms can you come up with to describe what Vice President Kamala Harris did to FPOTUS IT at last Tuesday night’s nationally-televised presidential debate, watched by nearly 70 million Americans . . . not to mention people around the world? Was it “a drubbing,” “a shellacking,” or a whupping”? Did she “annihilate,” “trounce,” “route” or “destroy” him? Will it be known to future generations as “IT’s Waterloo?”

Indeed, V.P. Harris came across as being composed, intelligent, articulate, deeply knowledgeable, and - daresay we - PRESIDENTIAL, while IT was his normal self: petulant, puerile, waspish, racist and filled to overflowing with half-truths, mistruths and absurd - not to mention “dangerous” - fabrications. From the very moment the 5’4 1/4” Harris (wearing flat shoes) confidently strode across the debate stage, firmly grasped the hand of the 6’3” IT and introduced herself (“Good evening, I’m Kamala Harris”), one sensed that she already had him in her hip pocket.

Besides the obvious disparities in their physical height, Harris proved to be the bigger, taller candidate . . . and the most truthful.  This is not to say that the Vice President was spot-on honest throughout the full 90 minutes.  Several small fibs or disparities did manage to pass the V.P.’s  lips:

• Harris: “Economists have said that that Trump sales tax would actually result, for middle-class families, in about $4,000 more a year.”  This may be a high estimate.  IT suggested he wants to impose a 10 percent tax on every imported good entering the United States and a 60 percent tax on every imported good from China. The pro-trade Peterson Institute for International Economics has estimated that this would cost a typical U.S. household in the middle of the income distribution about $1,700 in after-tax income. That’s because tariffs are typically passed on to consumers by importers — a standard economic concept that IT rejects.

• Harris: “What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025, that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected.”  to which IT responded “I have nothing to do as you know, and as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025 that’s out there.”  Project 2025 is not an official campaign document, and Democrats, including Vice President Harris, have been called out for sometimes falsely suggesting policies that are not in it, such as on Social Security and the definition of family. It’s a Heritage Foundation report called “Mandate for Leadership,” a 922-page manifesto filled with detailed conservative proposals that is popularly labeled Project 2025. But there are definitely Trump connections.

• Harris: “Let’s talk about fracking because we’re here in Pennsylvania. I made that very clear in 2020, I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of United States. And in fact, I was the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.”  This is “spin.”  What Harris said in the vice-presidential debate in 2020, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. He has been very clear about that.” Later in the debate, she reiterated that “the American people know that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact. That is a fact.”  In other words, V.P. Harris was stating Biden’s position — but not making clear her own. When she was still running for president months earlier, Harris took a firm stand against fracking.

By comparison, IT, immediately put on the defensive by his opponent, and  largely abandoning his pre-arranged debate strategy, made more than four times more false or suspect claims than the Vice President.  Some of them were outright whoppers:

• IT: “I have no sales tax. That’s an incorrect statement. She knows that we’re doing tariffs on other countries. Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world, and the tariff will be substantial in some cases.” IT is flat wrong to claim that the entire tariff is paid by a foreign country.  There is no controversy among economists, who agree that tariffs — essentially a tax on domestic consumption — are paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, which in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who may use imported materials in their products.

• IT: "You believe in things like we're not going to frack, we're not going to take fossil fuel, we're not going to do things that are going to be strong, whether you like it or not . . . . Germany tried that, and within one year, they were back to building normal energy plants."  This was such an undeniably false statement that Germany’s Federal Foreign Office took the unique  step of issuing a rebuttal:  “Like it or not: Germany's energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables, and we are shutting down – not building – coal & nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest."

• Harris: “I’m going to tell you that I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States, and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump.” ITs response drew blank stares around the globe: “Let me just tell you about world leaders. Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men — they call him a ‘strongman.’ He’s a tough person. Smart. Prime Minister of Hungary. They said why is the whole world blowing up? Three years ago it wasn’t. Why is it blowing up? He said because you need Trump back as president. They were afraid of him.”

• IT speaking on crime during the Biden/Harris years: “They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in, drug dealers to come into our country. And they’re now in the United States and told by their countries like Venezuela, don’t ever come back, or we’re going to kill you. Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down?”  This is false. There is no reliable data on crime in Venezuela — the government stopped publishing official data in 2015 — but at campaign rallies, IT says crime has dropped “a staggering 67 percent” in Venezuela, while at other times he has put the drop in crime at “72 percent in a year.” It’s unclear where he gets these numbers.

Then there is the one big fat lie that will outlive It, his running mate Vontz, as well as their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren:

• Speaking of the perils of “unbridled immigration: “A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” IT is channeling right-wing social media sensations. On Springfield, Ohio, he is referencing a ridiculous social media hoax, supposedly centered on Haitian immigrants eating cats and other animals, that has spawned thousands of memes across right-wing social media. There is no evidence that Haitians are doing this.  And yet, despite  a welter of proof that this charge is utter hogwash,  bomb threats have closed down Springfield schools and forced to local hospitals - Kettering Health and Mercy Health - to go on lock down.  Threats have continued to come even after the woman who started the rumors acknowledged to  NBC News that they were unfounded and publicly apologized. 

  This past Friday, President Biden lashed out at IT during a White House event celebrating Black excellence, stating “I want to take a moment to say something [about the] Haitian American community that’s under attack in our country right now.  It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America. This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop!”

Here in 2024, IT has pledged that on “day one,” he will deport the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio “back to Venezuela”; in September 2016, then-Republican presidential candidate IT came to Miami’s Little Haiti and told an assembled crowd: “I’m running to represent Haitian-Americans.  I really want to be your greatest champion, and I will be your champion.” I guess IT presumes that those who eat cats and dogs, suffer from acute memory  loss.

Not surprisingly, a vast majority of the legitimate media proclaimed Kamala Harris the winner in a landslide.  It immediately proclaimed himself the overwhelming victor and declared that as a result, he would no longer consider engaging in a second debate.  In making his declaration, he used a boxing metaphor: “When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, “I WANT A REMATCH.  Polls clearly show that I won the debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate (sic).”

Despite the relative boost Kamala Harris received among independent and undecided voters as a result of her formidable debate victory; despite the greater polling numbers she is receiving among women and some minorities (such as Haitians and South Asians) she is still pretty much in a statistical dead heat with her Republican opponent. DO NOT PAY TOO MUCH ATTENTION TO DAILY OR EVEN WEEKLY POLL NUMBERS, I beg you.  Many pollsters are paid to report what a candidate wants them to report; there are but a few reliable and scientifically accurate polls out there these days.  Among those I find most trustworthy are:

• The New York Times/Siena College

• ABC News/The Washington Post

• Marquette University Law School

• YOUGOV

• Monmouth University Polling Institute 

• Maris College and

• Suffolk University.

  Among the worst are:

• Florida International University/Univision

• The Florida Poll and

• University of North Florida/Bob Graham Center for Public Service.
  

The way things go nowadays, people who support the Harris/Walz ticket cannot believe for one moment that anyone - knowing what we know about IT/Vontz - could ever support them come November. Then too, those who are ardent supporters of the latter - again, despite what they know about them - could ever in a million years vote for Harris/Walz. In politics, things are never that cut and dried. The path to victory is never paved with prayers or pronouncements; rather, they are the product of door-knocking, phone ringing, postcard writing and $$$. The path to loss is paved with people who give up, convincing themselves that their vote won’t amount to a hill of beans. I’ve lived and practiced politics long enough to know generally speaking, this is not true.

We have 51 days to go . . . 51 days to make our voices and our dreams a reality.

Do remember the words of Louis D. Brandeis, the greatest of all Supreme Court Justices: “The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.”

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,005: A Critical Insight from John Cheever

                                           John Cheever: the "Chekhov of the Suburbs"

Vice President Kamala Harris and FPOTUS IT will be far away from the public eye for the next 36 hours. Instead, they will be spending their time huddled with their closest debate advisors, putting the final facts and strategic flourishes in place for Tuesday’s first - and perhaps only - nationally televised face-to-face rhetorical joust hosted by ABC News.  The bell will ring at precisely 9:00 PM. EDT.  After much behind closed doors sturm und drang,  the debate rules will be the same as when IT and President Biden debated on CNN back on June 27: an empty hall, mics which are automatically muted at the end of each candidate’s allotted time; Democrat on audience right, Republican on audience left. 

It is a fool’s errand to bet heavily on whether IT or Kamala Harris is going to win. From the point of emotion and innate political bias, I of course believe Harris has all the tools to force IT to look and sound less stable than an inmate of the Asylum of Charenton (think of the notorious provocateur the Marquis de Sade). In order for her to win, she must call out every one of ITs lies, be both brief and succinct on policy proposals, and leave him to do what he normally does best (which is, of course, worst) . . . rant, rave and call names. 

The V.P. seems to have more room for growth than Trump. According to the New York Times’ Lisa Lerer: Twenty-eight percent of voters said they feel like they need to learn more about her, compared to 9 percent who say the same about Trump. It’s a reminder of how even though she is vice president, she remains less defined as a candidate.  From a point of adding new voters, Harris is in much better shape than IT.  He has long been stuck at a maximum of 47% of the electorate: in 2016 he received 46.1% of the vote (62,984,828) to Hillary Clinton’s 48.2% (65,853,514); in 2020, although receiving 74,223,975 votes, his share of the vote only rose to 46.8%, as compared to 51.3% (81,283,501) for Joseph Biden. In other words, as he enters Tuesday’s debate, IT needs to either impress new groups of voters to support him or give a reason for heretofore Democratic voters to switch their votes.  The only place where Kamala Harris  currently trails IT is in the number of people who have developed some knowledge about who she is and what she stands for. The first rule of presidential elections is to gain new voters; to open wide the tent flaps in order to admit a greater array of people.  From what I’ve seen over the past several weeks, this is precisely what the Harris/Walz campaign has been doing . . . and tirelessly so.  By comparison, the IT/Vontz/MAGA crowd doesn’t seem to want the support of anyone who hasn’t been a member of the cult all along .  How much more counterintuitive can you get?

                                                             And in this corner . . . 

What viewers are most likely to see this Tuesday night are the vast differences between Harris and IT in presidential style, deportment, humanity and intelligence.  We will see the difference between a genuine smile and a hurtful smirk.  We will also likely be witness to two utterly different portraits or visions of America.  In one, we will be presented as a land of endless possibilities that has managed to grow its economy, lessen unemployment, lower major crime, take a generous bite out of inflation, grow wages and once again improve its leadership role in the world of nations . . . a country doing its best to meet its challenges by calling on the best within all of us.  In the other, we will be portrayed as a defeated nation caught in the throes of economic chaos; one being overrun by the dregs of humanity who steal into our shores in order to steal away our jobs, raise our crime rate and ultimately destroy the world we once knew.

 This second approach is utter civic neurosis; making victims of the masses and insisting that our enemies are everywhere.  It afflicts not only the politics that come from one side of the aisle; it has infiltrated and become endemic in a wide swath of society.  IT and the MAGA maniacs are consistently “discovering” the “flaws,” “evil inconsistencies’ and “less-than-human weaknesses” of virtually everyone who is not loyal to their cause, who does not look like, act like or agree with the “true believers.”  They simply refuse to see goodness in others . . . 

Which brings us to the late writer John Cheever (1912-1982), often called the “Chekhov of the Suburbs.  One of the best and most entertainingly literate of all 20th-century American novelists and short story writers, Cheever’s WASPY fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; old New England villages, and based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born.  And although his world and his characters are pretty much foreign to this Jewish Hollywood Brat, I have always found great universal wisdom and understanding in his entire oeuvre. 

  In one of Cheever’s best short stories, “The Worm in the Apple,” the narrator fixates on the seemingly perfect Crutchman family. The narrator suspects they must have flaws beneath their idyllic suburban existence, represented by the hidden ‘worm’ in the apple. The story satirizes the portrayal of perfection in American life, particularly in the 1950s, that golden period of American expansion and confidence.

(BTW: Por those who do not wish to read the entire story [approximately 750 words] I have recorded a version which you may listen to below)

The story’s opening paragraph sets the stage:

The Crutchmans were so very, very happy and so temperate in all their habits and so pleased with everything that came their way that one was bound to suspect a worm in their rosy apple and that the extraordinary rosiness of the fruit was only meant to conceal the gravity and the depth of the infection. Their house, for instance, on Hill Street with all those big glass windows. Who but someone suffering from a guilt complex would want so much light to pour into their rooms? And all the wall-to-wall carpeting as if an inch of bare floor (there was none) would touch on some deep memory of unrequition and loneliness. And there was a certain necrophilic ardor to their gardening. Why be so intense about digging holes and planting seeds and watching them come up? Why this morbid concern with the earth? She was a pretty woman with that striking pallor you so often find in maniacs. Larry was a big man who used to garden without a shirt, which may have shown a tendency to infantile exhibitionism.

The setting, as often in a John Cheever story, is well-heeled American suburbia: the neighborhood is called, suggestively, Shady Hill. The narrator discusses the Crutchmans, a ‘very, very happy’ American family comprised of  husband and wife Larry and Helen and their two children, Rachel and Tom. Through the course of the short narrative, the narrator dissects the Crutchmans’ meticulously decorated home, their expensive car, and their seemingly harmonious family life. Each detail is scrutinised carefully in the hope of finding ‘the worm in the apple’: the one corrupt flaw in the family’s otherwise happy life.

For example, the narrator wonders if the fact that Helen, the wife, is far richer than her husband is a cause of resentment for Larry, who could easily lose his sense of purpose when he is not the breadwinner of the family. But the narrator admits that no proof of such resentment can be found. The narrator also combs over other details of the family’s life: does the husband have a drink problem, or are there issues with their children? But every line of enquiry yields a dead end.

As the narrative progresses, the narrator’s attempts to uncover this ‘worm in the apple’, this hidden darkness in the Crutchman family, becomes increasingly desperate. In the end, the narrative voice shifts from the present tense to the future imperfect: he imagines whole futures for the two children, which contain unsavory or unhappy elements.

The story ends with the narrator confessing that the Crutchman family continues to live happily, with no indication of any worm in the apple of in their lives or their relationships. Despite the narrator’s intense scrutiny, the Crutchmans remain an enigma, leaving the reader to ponder the nature of appearances, hidden truths, and the human desire to find flaws in others.

  Without question, Cheever provides a critical insight - both for his own time (the story was first published in 1958) - and, perhaps, even more so for ours.  For today today, there is so much societal insecurity and civic neurosis that many people are intent upon finding flaws (both potentially fatal and decidedly human) in neighbors, leaders and just plain folks.  While this intention doesn’t provide a whit of cure for whatever it is that ails us, it does seem to lower the social, academic or political playing field by enveloping us in the knowledge that nobody’s perfect . . . something we should have known all along.  If you want to view human imperfection, look into your own mirror. 

What Cheever chose to get across through both irony and satire is a kernel of knowledge that can be of great use in our present time of collective ennui: that most people are shaped as much by their achievements and good intentions as they are by their frailties and failures. 

I fully expect IT to be overwhelmingly guided during tomorrow night’s debate by the latter: turning the Vice President’s  every human flaw, inconsistency or misstep into the embodiment of evil . . . all the while putting on display for the ten thousandth time the fact that he is a thoroughly damaged, deraigned soul who should be kept as far away from the seat of power as a rabid dog from a playground filled with children. 

Like Cheever’s narrator who is initially fixated on finding the worm in the apple of the Crutchman family, far too many are entranced by “discovering” the worst in those who seek to lead, uplift or inspire. Let IT go on and on about the sins, flaws and failings of all those who dare to disagree with him; those who refuse to see in him either the messiah or the ultimate victim. It goes without saying that he is neither; to be either one or the other or both, he would have to be delusional.

As we watch tomorrow night’s debate, let’s keep our feet up, cuppa tea at the ready and John Cheever’s narrator in our frontal lobes. . . .our emotional and behavioral control center.

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,004:Thoughts on Labor Day, Turning 75, Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney, Rita Moreno, Al Pacino . . . and Retirement

          A Labor Day Parade in New York City - September 1894

On June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal federal holiday, to be called “Labor Day.” Nearly a decade before Congress got into the act by making Labor Day a federal holiday, it was recognized by labor activists and individual states. After municipal ordinances were passed in 1885 and 1886, a movement developed to secure state legislation. New York was the first state to introduce a bill, but Oregon was the first to pass a law recognizing Labor Day, on February 21, 1887. Congress’ aim was to establish a federal holiday for the purpose of honoring and recognizing the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements in the United States. 

For decades, the first Monday in September was celebrated by holding parades and outdoor events like large-scale and municipal barbeques. It also came to symbolize the end of summer, the beginning of the school year, and—once every four years - the quasi-official beginning of presidential campaigning.

Today, Labor Day (and the weeks preceding it) is a time for sales at shops, stores, and malls.  The end of summer?  Forget it; with climate change who knows when (or if) summer will end?  The beginning of the school year?  Here in Florida, our grand kiddies have been back in class for nearly a month.  The official start of the presidential campaign season?  Are you kidding?  It never ends; there are already political pros starting to think about 2028. 

This Labor Day It and Vantz are pretty much laying low, with the former liming himself to a single virtual Michigan Rally and the latter staying home and licking his wounds after having been widely booed by a firefighter union audience in Boston just the other day. On the other hand, Vice President Harris is being joined by President Biden for a live joint event in Pennsylvania.  While It will undoubtedly speak about how close to economic collapse this country is (plus his normal assortment of grievances), Harris and Biden will be talking up how much economic progress the economy has made on their watch.  And they have some stats to prove it:

·      On Jan. 20, 2021, unemployment was 6.4%; as of the end of July 2024, it is 4.3%.

·      The annual inflation rate was 2.9% for the 12 months ending July 2024; on January 20, 2021, it stood at nearly 7%. 

·   The Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation number, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index shows that yearly inflation was 2.5%, meaning we can expect a drop in the prime interest rate later this month.

And yet, on this Labor Day, the MAGA maniacs are still insisting that the nation’s economy is heading off a cliff.

Ever since I was a wee sprat, I’ve known that Labor Day comes less than 2 weeks after my birthday.  I used to consider it a slightly belated national holiday in honor of little old me.  Well, this year was no different . . . except it’s finally beginning to dawn on me that at least from a sociodemographic point of view, I am no longer a kid . . . I have just turned (gulp!) 75 years old.  It is really hard to think of myself as a senior citizen.  Yes, I have been collecting Social Security for almost a decade and am a card-carrying member of Medicare (which in some circles makes me a willing Socialist).  And yet, I haven’t cut back on my working hours; between my Institutional Review Board (medical ethics) work and university lectures both of which require hours and hours of research), as well as a minimum of 10 hours of blog preparation and writing per week and officiating at 2 weekly religious services, and the occasional wedding, funeral and/or unveiling, I’m far busier than I was at age 50 . . . and haven’t given any thought to retiring. 

Why is this?  It’s not that I can’t afford to retire.  Or is it?  I mean,  if I were fully retired, what would I be doing? Fishing?  No, I have fished precisely once in my life.  Attending Lifelong Learning classes?  Heck no: I greatly prefer teaching them than taking them. Playing cards or golfing?  No, and no.  I’ve lived on several golf courses in my life, and the only time I went out on the green was to throw a frisbee to my dogs . . . most of whom were far better at kvetching than fetching.  I think I’ve never considered retiring precisely because if I did, I would still be doing the same things I’ve always done.  I’m extremely lucky; where others have jobs, professions, and/or careers from which they retire, I have art forms that I truly enjoy.   Heck, if people are willing to pay me to engage in what I love, why would I consider retirement?

                                        Sir Mick Jagger

Come to think of it, I am not alone; there are an increasing number of people older than yours truly who likewise have no intention of retiring. Want a few stellar examples? How’s about:

• Sir Mick Jagger: Now 81, Sir Michael and his mates have already been out on tour in 2024 in support of their newest studio album, Hackney Diamonds.

• Sir Paul McCartney: A year older than Sir Mick, Sir James Paul McCartney will be commencing a new tour (Got Back) next month, which will take him throughout South and Central America, Mexico, France, and England.

• Rita Moreno: Soon to be 93, the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy-Award winner just completed 12 episodes of a TV series called Princess Power (in which she played Princess Pussyboots) and is in pre-production of a new film (her 173rd) called Theirs.

• Al Pacino: Recently turned 84, the Oscar-winning actor (1993’s Scent of a Woman) is in post-production for an amazing 9 different films to hit the silver screen in the next 2 years.

• Mel Brooks: Now 98, Brooks, whose career goes back to 1951, when he was on the famed Milton Berle Show, has completed a new film, Fairy Tale Forest, and has  2 in production.

• Anthoney Fauci. M.D.: the 5th Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes for Health, at age 83, Dr. Fauci, who oversaw the creation of the various vaccines that ultimately saved millions of lives from the Covid-19 pandemic, continued to serve as Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden until shortly before his 82nd birthday.  In retirement, Dr. Fauci joined the faculty of the Georgetown University School of Medicine as a distinguished professor in both the School of Medicine and  the McCourt School of Public Policy.

But do you know something? It’s not just the fabulously famous, fabulously accomplished, or fabulously well-heeled seniors (or yours truly, who cannot be placed in any of these categories save being a senior) who are either postponing or turning a blind eye toward retirement.  Why? They simply don’t want to quit.  From a national economic point-of-view, there is a downside to this: the U.S. workforce is now packed with five generations — from the silent generation(which includes President Joe Biden, IT, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi to name but 4) ) down to Gen. Z (those born between 1997 and 2010). 

There are benefits to having so many experienced workers still active, but for younger people, it can be a major hurdle. The career ladder has become crowded at the top, and this dims professional prospects for those at every rung below. Young workers find it harder to launch their careers and to get promoted. The demographic traffic jam also harms societal cohesion by leaving younger groups behind, according to economists Gabriele Guaitoli and Roberto Pancrazi, who study the issue.

For most of history, a worker’s “retirement plan” was simple: death. This began to change in the 20th century when growing American wealth and the creation of Social Security enabled workers to leave the labor force earlier.

Beginning in the 1990s, however, the trend reversed. The age at which Americans could access their full Social Security payments was raised to 67 in the 1980s, and many companies stopped offering pension plans. Workers often had to stay in their jobs longer to make ends meet. But many also did so voluntarily. Longer life expectancies and easier working conditions made this choice more attractive. In 1990, about 10 percent of the labor force was made up of workers over 55. Now, this share is about 23 percent, and it is expected to stay around there over the next decade.

                              Al Pacino, age 84

As older workers stay in their jobs longer, younger people start off in comparatively lower-paying positions and move up more slowly. They often have to wait decades for promotions. In academia, for instance, young professionals now spend years in fellowships and postdoctoral programs waiting for professor jobs to open. No one wants to force older workers out of jobs. (All generations enjoy Al Pacino movies.) But a better balance needs to be struck between retaining older workers and nurturing younger ones. This won’t be easy, but here are a couple of ways to start.

The first is to encourage more start-ups. In new businesses, younger workers move up relatively rapidly to leadership roles. Just look at Silicon Valley’s 20-year-old CEOs. On this front, the recent post-pandemic boom in Americans starting businesses is encouraging. There aren’t a lot of levers that policymakers can pull to incentivize more start-ups, but it would help to make it easier to obtain small-business loans and to further reduce regulatory barriers. It’s good to hear that Harris/Walz are on to this issue and willing to put American tax dollars to work creating small-business startups as well as a $25,000 tax credit for young people purchasing their first home. They have also backed this up with a proposal to construct 3 million new homes by the end of their first term. This ambitious program is not a sure thing (what, in politics ever is?) If nothing else, it will cause the not-so-loyal opposition to shed gallons of sweat and expend millions of syllables contesting it.  Nonetheless, it  is a hopeful step and, as the Chinese philosopher Lau Tzu noted a long, long time ago, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

You will note that I did not manage to post this essay on Labor Day.  After completing about half, I decided to take a long, long walk, watch a baseball game, and share a marvelously slow meal of Caesar Salad and pasta with Annie.  

And then get back to work . . . 

I feel younger already!

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,003: Neurodivergence, Empathy and Teachable Moments

          Hope, Gus, "Coach" and Gwen Walz

Without question, the just-concluded Democratic National Convention has set a new standard for televised political extravaganzas. I mean, it had everything: the best, most gifted, and thought-provoking political speakers on the planet; flawless - and I mean absolutely FLAWLESS - direction and choreography; the most imaginative, toe-tapping, hip-hopping roll call of the states ever experienced; a level of exhaustive energy not felt for decades; spot-on video clips; boundless joy, innumerable hugs, hope, laughter, and empathic tears; a billion-and-one red-white-and-blue balloons . . . and, of course, Coach and Gwen Walz’s two children, Gus, and the perfectly-named Hope.  Who will ever forget Hope making a heart shape with her hands and Gus pointing with unbridled happiness and tears in his eyes, repeatedly shouting out “THAT’S MY DAD!!” as they watched their father give his acceptance speech.

Remarkably, within the span of a mere 4 televised evenings, the Democrats managed to steal much of what had long been the Republican brand: becoming the party of “freedom,” “family values” and “patriotism.” This left many MAGA-ites – from IT on down – deeply shaken, angry, perplexed and much farther back on their political heels than they might have imagined even a week earlier.  So how has the Party of IT responded? Simple:  When you are in doubt and the polls are beginning to turn against you, lace up your gloves, toss out the Marquis of Queensberry Rules (a set of guidelines for fair, stand-up boxing matches), and revert to type, rabbit-punching, hitting well below the belt, and generally replacing gentlemanly fisticuffs with dire falsehoods and classless calumnies.   As for IT, he doesn’t know what to make of - or do about - Kamala Harris. He’s tried to play around with how to pronounce her name,  and what nickname to saddle her with (the most recent being “Comrade Kamala”); he’s called her “stupid” and claimed that all the crime in San Francisco is due to her having been The City’s D.A. (that was a long, long time ago). BTW: I prefer calling Kamala by the name her children call her: Mamaleh, which is Yiddish for “little mother.”

Perhaps the weirdest of all weirdnesses coming out of the convention stemmed from the National Assembly of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) which has been citing one of the most reviled Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decisions in American history (1857’s Dred Scott v. Sanford) to justify its case that Vice President Harris should be deemed ineligible to run under the U.S. Constitution.

        Chief Justice Roger Taney & Dred Scott

An attorney associated with NFRA cited Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 5 of the Constitution, which pertains to only natural-born U.S. citizens being eligible to serve as president. The NFRA argued that the phrase "natural born citizen" is defined as "a person born on American soil of parents who are both citizens of the United States at the time of the child's birth."  Egads!  The serious application of this clause would have made multiple U.S. presidents ineligible to hold office, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among others. The NFRA attorney, Dallas-based Santiago Reich. pointed out that because those presidents' parents were born on land classified as British colonies at the time, they would not meet the standard the NFRA set to define as natural-born citizenship.

It should be noted that the Dred Scott decision was overturned entirely by both the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution and its text cannot be meaningfully cited for any reason whatsoever . . . especially for doing a “birthing redux” over Kamala Harris.  And by the way, IT, in addition to claiming that V,P, Harris is employing a.i. to  make her “empty” rallies look like they are standing-room only (!),  has also, of late, claimed “I am better looking than Kamala.”

Might I make a suggestion?  Take a long look in the mirror.

Getting back to the Chicago convention:  One aspect that will shore up and outlive any mistakes or miscues which might occur in the campaign’s final weeks (for they are inevitable) is its celebration and presentation of the loving Emhoff/Harris and Walz families . . . all of whom . . . children, parents, nieces, nephews . . . onstage and in the audience, hugging, smiling, tearing up and cheering on the two candidates.  Perhaps the biggest star of the entire convention was 17-year old Gus Walz, who melted millions of hearts. Already, there are tee-shirts, campaign buttons and banners emblazoned with simple messages like  “I’m voting for Gus’ Dad,” “Coach Walz: That’s My Dad!” and "Team Gus!”  In addition to capturing all those hearts with his obvious ingenuousness, he has created a learning moment for millions: learning about what makes him both different and truly special.  Gus has already put the words neurodivergent and neurodivergence into numerous vocabularies.  For those who have yet to do their research, you should know that neurodivergent isn’t a medical term. Instead, it’s a way to describe people using words other than “normal” and “abnormal.” That’s important because so far as I know, there’s no single definition of “normal” for how the human brain works. Like a person’s fingerprints, no two brains — not even those of identical twins — are exactly the same. Because of that, there’s no definition of “normal” capabilities for the human brain. (BTW: The word for people who aren’t neurodivergent is “neurotypical.” That means their strengths and challenges aren't affected by any kind of difference that changes how their brains work.)

People like Gus have different strengths and challenges from people whose brains don’t have those differences. The possible differences include medical disorders, learning disabilities and other conditions. The possible strengths include better memory, being able to mentally picture three-dimensional (3D) objects easily, the ability to solve complex mathematical calculations in their head, and many more. From what we saw of Gus, especially on the night his father gave his major address, one obvious  aspect of his neurodirgence is that he wears his heart on his sleeve; he is incapable of pretense . . . what he feels, he shows. 

 Alas, not everyone found Gus’ status (it’s not a condition) and tears to be a teaching/learning moment. Conservative mouthpieces/influencers Ann Coulter and Jay Weber, among others, saw fit to mock and deride the young man. Coulter, writing about the Democratic National Convention on her X (formerly Twitter) account railed on and on about Democrats referring to Republican V.P. candidate JD Vance as “weird.” “Talk about weird,” Coulter posted in reference to Gus on her X account. After tons of negative responses, she did remove it. Then there’s conservative Wisconsin radio host Jay Weber, whose offensive response posted on X was widely condemned: “Sorry, but this is embarrassing for both father and son," Weber wrote. "If the Walzs represent today's American man, this country is screwed; 'Meet my son, Gus. He's a blubbering bitch boy. His mother and I are very proud.'" As with Coulter, Weber’s post was also deleted. His apology? "I didn't realize the kid was disabled, and have taken the post down."

                 IT and Reporter Serve Kovaleski

Of course, these two insensitive cranks were only following in IT’s footsteps; back in November 2015, IT mocked Politico reporter Serge Kovaleski during an interminable speech in which the then-candidate was defending the contention that "thousands and thousands of people" cheered the September 11th terrorist attack in Jersey City, New Jersey.  Turns out that Kovaleski was one of the reporters who had disproved IT’s batty contention.  “Written by a nice reporter, IT began. “Now the poor guy. You ought to see this guy."  He then "into an impression which involved gyrating his arms wildly and imitating the unusual angle at which Kovaleski's hand sometimes rests," according to Politico. (NB: Mr. Kovaleski suffers from arthrogryposis, which according to the National Organization of Rare Disorders, can affect the function and range of motion of joints and can cause muscles to atrophy.)

Weird leader, weird followers. Or, as we used to say back in our schoolyard days: monkey see, monkey do.

Is it any wonder that more and more people are questioning IT’s humanity, let alone lucidity?  One need not agree with a presidential ticket’s every position or proposal (and for those who say that Harris/Walz did not present anything of the sort in Chicago, do remember that in the main, that’s not the purpose of a national convention) in order to support it.  Many voters seem to have forgotten that character, humanity and magnanimity of spirit are just as important - if not more so - than what Plato would have called “The shadows on the cave wall.”  Just because someone proclaims him or herself to be “pro-family values,” “pro-life,” “pro-freedom,” and a host of other seemingly positives does not make it so.  The presentation of self often provides the greater keys - the more critical teachable moments - than bluster or bombast. Everyone on earth has something to teach . . . even if it is just what not to  be or what not to say.

In sum, doing justice, loving mercy and walking with humility (to paraphrase Micah 6:8) is the key . . . not mockery, mendacity or  malevolence. 

I don’t know  about you, but I’m voting for Mamaleh and Gus’ Dad, 

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,002: The Theology of Ecology

  General Sherman: 2,700 years old & 275 feet tall 

By a show of hands, how many are increasingly finding themselves needing a slug of scotch  - or a ginormous bowl of chocolate ice cream or whatever floats your impulse boat -  in order to merely watch, listen to, read about, OR even contemplate the current (and potentially future) state of the world vis-à-vis politics? As I type this opening line, I am hunting and pecking with my left hand because my right is being held aloft; I agree with me. (BTW, my poison of choice is a glass or two of Cinzano Rosso Sweet Vermouth.)

I must admit that now that V.P. Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are at the top of the Democratic ticket, I am beginning to drink more Earl Grey and less eau-de-vie. Before their ascension, I was feeling pretty damn helpless; something generally foreign to me.  I have somehow managed to look to the future with hope and enthusiasm for most of my political life. But over the past several years there’s been this gnawing feeling growing within me that many of today’s most noisome animals in the political zoo could care less than a fig about the future. And here, I am referring almost exclusively to IT, VONTZ, DeSantis, Cruz, and the ward filled with all the MAGA Maniacs, both large or small, rich or poor, well-educated or unlettered.  If the first two on the list (IT & Vontz) crash and burn in November, that will be great . . . although far from perfect.  We’ll still be saddled with the rest of the crazies in the House and Senate, state legislatures, and town councils . . . not to mention the deep-pocketed lunatics who pay them to push their apocalyptic nightmares.  

It seems to me that any political party – or its supporters – that really, truly cared about the nation’s (not to mention the planet’s) future, would place democracy over autocracy, individual rights of the many over the perquisites of the few, and make itself as colorblind as is humanly possible. I am so ready to watch this evening’s Democratic National Convention for a shot of joyful adrenaline. I mean, to have watched last month’s Republican National Convention (which added yet a 3rd glass of Vermouth to my daily intake) would have one believe that the followers of IT/Vontz firmly agree that:

• American voters agree with the Supreme Court that abortion should be kept illegal;

• A majority of Americans are against anything that keeps guns of any sort out of the hands of Americans;

• That a vast majority of Americans favor increasing reliance on oil and coal as the primary sources of American energy (despite America being  the largest single  oil producer on the planet);

• That the support of same-sex marriage and gay rights goes against the literal dictates of the Christian Bible;

• That a vast majority of American Christians firmly believe that America should be officially recognized as a “Christian Nation”’

• That Americans will be happy to get rid of Social Security in order to bring down the national debt;

• That a clear majority believe that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is pure Socialism, and

• That Climate Change is a hoax being perpetrated on the world by progressives and liberals for the purpose of killing the gas, oil, and coal-mining industries.

 Those who pay attention to the news will recognize all the above as playing a large role in the spiritus mundi (world spirit) of Project 2025 . . . the “fascist fever dream"  which currently passes for the GOP platform, and which as recently as 2 weeks ago, IT claimed to know nothing about.  (In reality, more than 140 current and former IT associates have had a hand in creating this monstrously retrogressive document.)  IT’s proclamation that he didn’t know shinola about Project 2025 is on par with his claiming to have never met E. Jean Carol, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted barely more than a week as White House communications director, former porn star Stormy Daniels, or his former campaign director Paul Manafort.

I would hope that after so many years, people have come to realize that the words “reality,” “IT” and “MAGA” should never be in the same sentence; that a majority of the American public:

• Supports: congress to restore Roe v. Wade protections nationwide;

• Favors stricter gun laws;

• Support same-sex marriages and gay rights in general;

• Less than 15% of American Christians support Christian Nationalism.

• About 8 in 10 Americans are willing to pay more to keep Social Security strong; 77% say it is critical to preserve Social Security even if it means increasing the Social Security taxes paid by working Americans. An even higher percentage (83%) say it is critical to preserve Social Security even if it means increasing the Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.

• More than 60% of those polled support Obamacare, and lastly (and at least for me, most importantly)

• An overwhelming majority of those polled not only believe that climate change/global warming is real, but firmly believe that it is the most important issue of our time.

So once again, IT and his MAGA maniacs stand firmly against the thoughts, feelings, and wishes of the majority, all the while selling them snake oil by blaming “illegal immigrants,” “liberals,” “socialists” and “Christian haters” for all the world’s ills.

It is painfully obvious that there are so many critical issues facing voters this election season - issues that separate Americans into two disparate camps.  It has long been my belief, however, that there is precisely one issue that should unite us all: climate change which, if we continue doing nothing about will ultimately cause the death of our planet; everything from amoebae to zebras. 

For those who say “Doc, you’re being a damn drama queen,” consider the following snippet of a medieval folk tale:

          Planet Earth: THE Issue Facing Humanity

The proprietor of a vast estate asked 3 of his overseers to assemble in his library for a challenge.  “I going to ask each of you a question.  Whoever answers correctly will not only be rewarded with a rent-free cottage for the rest of his life but will receive 50% of the proceeds from the estate’s forests, ponds, or hothouses, depending on which he serves as manager. And I will tell you up-front: I do not know the correct answer.  So far as I am concerned, there can be one - and only one - proper response.  And by the way, whoever answers incorrectly, will immediately lose both his job and the cottage that  comes with it.  Two of the three overseers, who had high opinions of their worth and wisdom, asked for - and received permission - to go in on 1 answer.  The 3rd, a simple man remained silent, fearing that he would soon lose his livelihood.  The tandem quickly answered: “The biggest thing in the world is your heart, master . . . for truly, you are the most generous soul in the world.”  The lord of the manor quickly shouted “YOU ARE WRONG!  What kind of a fool do you take me for?  Get off my estate!”  Turning to the simple man, he asked “And what is your answer?”  Swallowing hard and beginning to shake, he said in a faltering voice: “I guess the biggest thing in the world would have to be the world itself.  Am I correct?” Smiling broadly, the lord said “You are 100% correct!  Your question is filled with both wisdom and logic.  For not only is the biggest thing in the world the world itself . . . it is also the most important thing of all . . . where would every living thing - from amoebae to zebras be without our planet?”

This little sketch says it all; we have been vouchsafed a world, a planet, to protect . . . for the good of every living creature. How is it possible that anyone can deny we live in a time of rapidly changing climate, dangerously rising seas, and a historic rise in the extinction of the beasts of the field, as well as the seas beneath and the skies above? One would have to be either utterly blind to reality or the victim of toxic gullibility foisted upon them by a class of moral albinos who haven’t the slightest problem putting today’s profits ahead of tomorrow’s existence. The overwhelming majority of Republican members of Congress refuse to vote in favor of any climate legislation so as not to ruffle the feathers (or shut tight the coffers) of corporations that explore and drill for oil or dig and mine for coal. As for the hyper-wealthy, their very obdurance when it comes to most things ecological seems to indicate that they don’t care a whit for anything that may happen to the planet after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.  To those who live their lives as if they are, in the memorable words of the Jefferson Airplane, “The Crown of Creation,” I say YOU ARE WRONG!  We have all been placed on this earth to be stewards, not subjugators. 

    Should Trees Have Standing?                     

Nearly a half-century ago, while researching an environmental strategy plan for then-California Governor Jerry Brown, I happened upon a book by Professor Christopher D. Stone (the son of the late muckraker I.F. Stone, the patron saint of this blog).  It was entitled Should Trees Have Standing: Law, Morality and the Environment.   It turned out to be, in my opinion, one of the most important books of all time.  It turned out to be a rallying point for the then-burgeoning environmental movement, launching a worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.  More than a half-century later, the book is still in print, still serving as the definitive statement as to why trees, oceans, animals, and the environment as a whole should be bestowed with legal rights so that the voiceless elements in nature are protected for future generations. In its own way, Stone’s brief (248 pages) work is as important in 2024 as Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was when it was originally published back in 1854.

Without question, there are all kinds of critical issues to consider this election season . . . and which candidate(s) are most able to address them in ways that are closest to our beliefs.  These issues range from the “kitchen table” variety (inflation, prices for food, energy, medicine, and healthcare) war and peace, democracy versus autocracy, and fiscal integrity versus political cupidity.  But without a sustainable planet, none of these issues really matter.  Everything begins with the earth.  G-d (or the forces of nature) has placed us here to exercise guardianship.  To me - and hopefully to you - this is as much a matter of theology as it is of ontology, hydrology, or climatology.   

This time around, vote as if the future of the entire planet is at stake, for it really, truly is.  Everything - from the teeniest, tiniest quark to the tallest tree depends on us.  Everything else is secondary.

 Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,001: How Do You Say "Bedbug" in Yiddish?

                                 JD Vance

For people whose knowledge and familiarity of Jewish culture is based largely on Fiddler on the Roof and The Jazz Singer, Yiddish is nothing more than a quaint jargon spoken by men who wear fur-trimmed hats (streimelach - שטרײַמלעך) and married women who cover their hair with wigs (sheitln - שייַטלן). They are, of course, wrong. Yiddish is a real, honest-to-G-d language. Hell’s Bells, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Twain, de Maupassant . . . even Raymond Chander . . . have been translated into Yiddish, although it is beyond me why anyone would want to pal around with Feivel (Phillip) Marlow in Mama Loschen (the “mother tongue”). Linguistically, Yiddish is considered middle-high German (מיטל הויך דייַטש - mit’l hoych daytsch) an 8th-century language that provided the nascent Ashkenazi (German-Jewish) community with a vernacular fused with many elements taken from Hebrew and to some extent Aramaic, written in Hebrew letters.  Over many centuries it adopted and adapted words derived from whatever European country Jews might find themselves living.  Today, it is spoken mainly by the Orthodox.

Without necessarily knowing it, a lot of non-Jewish, English-speaking people freely use Yiddish words in everyday speech.  Many of the words are pejorative:

• shmuck, (a foolish or contemptible person); 

• shmendrick (a hapless fool);

• putz (an idiot);

• nosh (a quick bite);

• shmegegge (a sycophant);

• chutzpah (overweening self-confidence, grossly nervy);

• mentch (a wonderful human being); 

• glitch (a minor malfunction) and

• klutz (a supremely clumsy person). 

  This is just a minute sampling.  Most Jewish Baby Boomers know little if any Yiddish beyond these kinds of words; their parents and grandparents only spoke Yiddish when they didn’t want their children or grandchildren to understand what they were talking about. In the Stone household, this was never a problem: neither our parents nor grandparents on either side of the family knew or spoke Mama Loschen . . . they were all American-born, hailing from such places like Minnesota, Chicago, and Baltimore going back to the 19th century.  (I did manage to learn a bit of Yiddish myself while attending rabbinic school, in order to read Sholom Aleichem [the “Yiddish Mark Twain”] in the original.  My mentor and guide to learning Yiddish was a professor with the delightfully Dickensian name of  “Herbert Paper.”)

                  Cimex lectularius Linnaeus,

So what all does this have to do with the Yiddish word for “bedbug,” or JD Vance, the Republican nominee for Vice President, whose picture is at the top on the left?   Well, in Yiddish, וואַנץ (pronounced “vontz’) is the “bedbug” . . . entomologically the Cimex lectularius Linnaeus, a blood-feeding parasite of humans, chickens, bats and occasionally domesticated animals.  This is the definition one stores in the brain.  Yiddish words and expressions, however, are often best “understood” in the kishkes . . . one’s stomach or guts.  And it is in the kishkes where the parallel between “Vance” and “vontz” becomes clear.  In Yiddish, to refer to someone as a  וואַנץ is akin to calling them a disgusting, crazy person . . . as in “crazy as a bedbug.” It seems to me that any- and everyone who can go from calling IT “The American Hitler,” “The ultimate conman” or “insane” to becoming a blindly loyal MAGA straphanger is unquestionably a vontz.  

Not only that: Vance/vontz is also, to teach yet another Yiddish word, טשודנע - tshudne - a weirdo. Unquestionably, JD Vance (a.k.a. “James Donald Bowman,” “James David Hamel,” “J.D. Vance” and [without the periods] “JD Vance) has belly-flopped his way on to the national political scene with less aplomb than  Sarah Palin. While Vonts has attacked Democratic V.P. candidate Tim Walz for everything from being an “unabashed San Francisco-style Liberal” (he’s a Nebraskan who never so much as visited “The City” until recently) to being a “coward” after serving 24 years in the National Guard and becoming the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer ever to serve in the U.S. Congress.  Moreover, Vontz has seen his favorability rating plunge to a record low minus 15 points . . . the worst in modern political history.  Add to that Vonts’  comment about "childless cat ladies,“ his anti-democratic opinion that families with children should get more votes than the childless, and his having written a gushing forward to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ far, far right tome “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America,” which spells out precisely what IT is going to do to America in his next term, and you have the living, breathing example of a וואַנץ - a bedbug.  (It should  be noted that “Project 2025” is so utterly frightening and un-American that IT has disavowed any knowledge of it - one of the biggest and most obvious whoppers he has ever told.)

There are several well-known rules for selecting a vice presidential running mate, the most basic of which is “First, do no harm.” IT and his advisors have obviously broken this rule . . . presuming that he even pays attention to them. Had they done serious vetting of the man who made his tens of millions in San Francisco and then returned to Ohio to run for the United States Senate, they would have discovered his many liabilities, inconsistencies, and prior questionable comments about his running mate, women, mixed-race people, democracy itself. Many have come back to haunt him. It is doubtful Vontz will be able to attract any new independent/ undecided voters. He is doing quite poorly among suburban women and educated people in general. As a result, the Republican campaign has of late adopted a new strategy about Vontz: downplay his importance to the Republican ticket. In the words of It himself, “Historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact, I mean virtually no impact.” How’s that for a less-than-ringing endorsement? Then again, what can one expect to come from the mouth of a man (i.e. IT) who is currently undergoing the worst public psychological/political meltdown in the history of Presidential elections?

Permit me to close with a slightly altered blessing/curse from the mouth of טבֿיה די מילכיקע (Tevya the Milkman): “May G-d bless and keep Senator Vontz . . . far away from us.”

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,000: IT

                                  IT

This past week President Biden, Vice President Harris, Sec. of State Anthony Blinken, White House National Security Advisor Jacob John (“Jake”) Sullivan, and the foreign affairs apparatus of a half-dozen countries including Slovenia, Turkey, Norway, and Germany managed to pull of what is being recognized as “the most far-reaching exchange between Russia and the West in decades.” Details of the swap are beginning to emerge. We now know that more than 2 years went in to putting it all together - and amazingly, without a single leak. Among those freed from Russian prisons were Evan Gershkovich Alsu Kurmasheva, and Paul Whelan.

Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was detained in March 2023, and accused of spying for the United States. Whelan, a security consultant and former Marine, was arrested by Russian authorities 5 years earlier, in December 2018, and convicted of espionage in 2020. Kurmasheva, an editor with the U.S.-funded, editorially independent Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was detained last year and sentenced this summer to 6½ years in a Russian penal colony on a charge of spreading false information about the Russian military. The final hurdle President Biden had to surmount in order to make the swap work, was getting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to agree to President Biden’s heartfelt plea to include Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov in the swap. Krasikov, a former high-ranking FSB colonel serving a life sentence in a German prison, was found guilty of a murder committed on German soil. He was on the very top of Moscow’s list of Russian prisoners it wanted back.  At first, Chancellor Scholz was firmly reluctant. Finally, he agreed to include Krasikov in the negotiation because of his warm personal friendship with President Joe Biden.  Over his half-century in politics, Joe Biden has gotten to know and befriend nearly all the major leaders in the world.  Let’s face it: he is a likable man.  And in the art of diplomacy, personal relationships are everything.

This swap will likely be a capstone on his more than half-century political career . . . at least in the eyes, hearts, and minds of those who research and write about American political history, as opposed to merely responding with partisan kneejerk reactions.   The former POTUS, who once predicted that Evan Gershkovich wouldn't be freed under President Biden, questioned and criticized the terms of the prisoner swap: "So when are they going to release the details of the prisoner swap with Russia? How many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash? . . .  Our 'negotiators' are always an embarrassment to us! I got back many hostages, and gave the opposing Country NOTHING – and never any cash."  Trump went so far as to call the prisoner swap “. . . a win for Putin.”  Not to be outdone, Trump’s “mini-me,” J.D. Vance, actually suggested that his boss and BFF - the man he once called “an American Hitler” - that the successful swap was a “testament” to his boss’s strength and skill. 

Regardless of how many moronic takes on the prisoner swap these guys disgorge, it isn’t going to gain them a single new vote . . . and may even turn off some of  their most ardent supporters.  This complex swap provided ample testament to just how savvy a politician/diplomat “Uncle Joe” Biden is.  You had better believe that when political  historians issue their next rankings of the various presidents, Joe Biden will enter the list near the top . . . and Donald Trump will still be dead last.

Above, I referred to Biden as “Uncle Joe.”  To date, I believe this is the closest writers and journalists have come to giving him a proper and fitting sobriquet.  Whether or not it will stick - like “Honest Abe,” “T.R.” (or the “Bull Moose”), “JFK,” “LBJ.” “Give ‘em Hell Harry” (Truman), “Tricky Dick” (Nixon), “His Fraudulency” (Hayes) or “No Drama Obama” - only time will tell. 

              Echo & Narcissus From Ovid’s Metamorphosis (Book III)

It gets me to thinking: what nickname will history give to Donald Trump  - the man who saddled more prominent politicians with nasty, puerile nicknames than any politician in American history?  Of course, early on in his business career, he tagged himself "The Donald.”  My dear friend Alan Wald (one of the wittiest people I have ever known and loved) has long referred to him as "The Orange Blob.”   I’ve heard a few people refer to him as “DonOLD.” Let’s face it: there is an infinite number of possibilities.  Loving Greek mythology as I do, I’ve given thought to calling him “Son of Liriope”, the nymph who bore Narcissus, the eponymous ancestor of all narcissists - people afflicted with a mental condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. Generally speaking, people with this disorder lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others.  

While trying to come up with a Trumpian epithet for the ages, Annie made me aware of an interview ‘45 had on Fox News (?) in which host Laura Ingraham mentioned that Vice President Kamala Harris has “she/her” in her social media bio to indicate her pronouns.

“What are your pronouns?” Ingraham asked Trump.

“I have no — I don’t want pronouns,” the Republican nominee said.

“So, you’re fluid? What is that?” Ingraham replied.

“Nobody even knows what that means. Ask her to describe exactly what that means,” Trump added.

Clearly, that’s not true. Pronouns are a crucial part of the English language, helping people describe things without repeatedly using names or nouns. 

  “Cousin ITT”  (Played by Felix Silla)

Then it came to me: the 45th (and worst) POTUS of all time should be called by his pronoun . . . IT. Strange, isn’t it? I mean here’s a man who once claimed to “know the best words,” yet doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea about what a pronoun is.  It is the most complex pronoun in the English language.  Among its tens of dozens of possible usages, one of my favorites was when the popular 1920s British romance novelist Elinor Glyn named silent screen actress Clara Bow “The It Girl.”  And what was “It?”  Sex appeal honey, don’t you know?  Add a second “t” (ITT) and you get a character (“Cousin ITT”) from “The Addam’s Family.  ITT is a diminutive, hirsute being, his visible form composed entirely of floor-length hair. He is often attired in a bowler hat and round sunglasses, and speaks in a high-pitched gibberish that is understood only by his family, who are equally weird.  This character has a lot in common with the former president: the worst hairdo in the history of television (and movies) and an inability to make sense to anyone other than his equally weird family. 

Using IT (double capital letters) as a presidential nickname introduces another use or tone of the word: to refer to a general situation, such as “It hasn’t been the same since IT came down that damned golden elevator back in 2015.”  In this sense, IT has a certain nauseating nebulosity that IT so richly deserves.   

At the top of almost every historian’s list of the best POTUS is Honest Abe.  Perhaps my epithet will catch on, and the worst POTUS will simply be known as IT . . . the hairy creature that inflicted so much pain and insanity as to be eternally unpronounceable. 

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#999: In Sanskrit, "Kamala" (कमल) Means "Lotus"; In America, It Means "POTUS"

It’s simply amazing how much the world can change in a mere 168 hours (1 week). A week ago, Trump was riding high on the iconic moment when he rose bloodied and with a defiantly raised fist from an assassination attempt, pulling away in the polls. President Biden, meanwhile, was struggling to recover from his dire late June debate against the Republican nominee and an unconvincing performance in the days since. Then, on Sunday, July 21, President Biden’s press office sent out a brief message telling the world that he would be leaving the 2024 presidential race. In the note, which many of us received via email, he wrote, in part:

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.

Within a few more hours, he would publicly endorse Vice President Kamala Devi Harris for the Democratic nomination to face off against former POTUS Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. The Vice President hit the ground running: by the next day, the Harris campaign had raised in excess of $50 million in smallish donations, and sent a massive steroidal infusion into the body politic. As of today the campaign is still in the deliriously happy “Honeymoon” stage, and has raised in excess of $200 million. (As an unexpected side benefit, viewership of the 2012-2019 cable TV show “Veep” has gone up more than 300 percent within a week.) For people all across the country, Vice President Harris’ entry into the race put smiles on faces, tears in eyes, and hope - until recently, a pretty rare commodity - into souls.  Her polling numbers began creeping upward.  At the same time, her entry into the race - along with an avalanche of endorsements -  sent MAGA-world scurrying in anger, fear, and resentment, the resurrection of racist and birther memes, and above all, dire uncertainty. Suddenly, the campaign they were oh so comfortably running - the one against “Sleepy Joe” - had to be revamped;  they would have to create a new game plan containing a new strategy, along with new lies and brand-new epithets.   

Within the past 168 hours, Trump has called Vice President Harris “a bum”, “lazy,” and a “crazy liberal,” accused her of wanting to “defund the police,” claimed she was a “terrible prosecutor who never won a case,” and most recently, in a rally held in St. Cloud, MN, roared “she has no clue, she’s evil.” He told a rally in South Florida he “couldn’t care less” if he mispronounced her name, (he repeatedly proclaimed that there were “at least seven different ways” to say Kamala). Obviously, he was becoming even more unhinged than the norm; at a rally in Florida this past Friday night organized by the far-right Christian advocacy group Turning Point Action, Trump not only went personal against the Veep, but once again appeared to threaten American democracy:

“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it anymore. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” he said at the event in West Palm Beach, not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence. Trump also promised to create an anti-Christian bias federal task force, as well as to defund schools "pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the lives of our children."  Madame would have called this “crapola.”

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post got into the anti-Harris attack by claiming that the V.P.’s step-daughter, Ella Emhoff, had personally raised more than $8 million for Hamas, and “does not  consider herself to be Jewish.”  A bit of research shows that Ella Emhoff did not raise $8 million to support Gaza. She did share a link to a fundraiser created by the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. That fundraiser has generated more than $8 million from hundreds of thousands of donors, including one donation from Ms. Emhoff herself.  The Trump campaign  has used this untruth - along with Harris’ public position vis-à-vis Israel’s response to the October 7th attack, to “prove” that the V.P. is an  “anti-Zionist, anti-Semite.”

The same Republican sources have reported that Harris “refused to attend” Israeli P.M. Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress. What they of course left out is that both President Biden and Vice President Harris had a private meeting with the Israeli P.M.  As such, Trumpsters are doing everything in their power to wrest Jewish votes away from the Democrats.  I for one (who, despite being both an ordained rabbi and a Hebrew-speaking practicing Jew) have been accused of being both an “anti-Semite” and “anti-Israel”) because I refuse to condemn  those who cannot or will not approve of  each and every pronouncement of the Netanyahu government.  Likewise, Kamala Harris - like Joe Biden - is, and will long remain, a strong supporter of Israel . . . despite - like yours truly - not agreeing with Bibi Netanyahu or his war cabinet on everything they do.   

Ed Luce, the observant and perspicacious US editor and columnist of the Financial Times notes the rapidity with which Kamala Harris’ “capture of the Democratic crown has changed the political weather. A funereal Democratic party has rediscovered its zest.”  I for one applaud her for also bringing a sense of “fun” to an election campaign that felt, until 168 hours ago, like a “death march.”  Can Kamala Harris and whoever she taps to be her running mate win in November? Without jettisoning our current and much-needed gush of giddiness, we must leave room for political reality. The Harris campaign has quickly outlined the content of their campaign strategy: the seasoned prosecutor versus the convicted felon; the youngish forward-looking progressive versus the oldest presidential candidate in American history who wants to eliminate virtually every bit of progress since the New Deal; a candidate with a full slate of issues and proposals versus one whose strategy is nothing more than the denigration of his opponent; a woman who wants to expand human rights versus a man who wants to make America a land of and for white Christian males.

Kamala Harris, Democrats, Independents and lovers of freedom and democracy everywhere face 100 days of the most serious political knife fight in all American history. MAGA-world knows and follows the famous line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: “There are no rules in a knife fight.” Want proof?

Already, we have seen Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter, which I abandoned the day he announced his purchase) break his own rules by retweeting a parody Kamala Harris campaign ad without labeling it as misleading. Segments of video in the altered content — such as Harris speaking to crowds, and general videos of her supporters — were used in a recent Harris campaign video on YouTube. Most notably, the altered content used a voiceover that sounds like the vice president, making it seem she is calling President Joe Biden senile and herself an incompetent presidential candidate.  There has also been a carload of false claims about Vice President Harris ranging from her not being eligible to run for POTUS due to citizenship issues, to having an affair in the 1990s with the then-married Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown (he had been separated from his wife for nearly a decade before they saw one another) to her not really being Black. Each of these claims (and more) has been fact-checked; all have been found to be total fabrications.

And lest we forget, in the eyes of MAGA-world her biggest negative is SHE LAUGHS TOO MUCH!  When, I ask you, was the last time we ever heard the Sir Donald of Queens laugh?

                 Nelumbo nucifera

In Sanskrit, Kamala, a very popular Indian name, is the lotus flower. Despite their delicate nature, these resolute plants can survive being submerged under ice and can even bloom in extreme heat. Some lotus plants can live for nearly a century! They symbolize both rebirth, (due to its blooming pattern of opening with the rising of the sun and closing as night falls), and persistence (because they're most commonly found in swampy, difficult terrain and emerge from the dark, muddy water looking pristine and beautiful).  

For the sake of our future as a freedom-loving democratic republic, let’s do everything in our power to ensure that 100 days from today, LOTUS will become POTUS.

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#998: The Patriot

From time to time I have had to put a nearly completed blog post into cold storage because history beckons. Such is the case this week. This week’s essay-that-was, The Theology of Ecology, may or may not be revived in the coming weeks or months. Obviously, President Joe Biden’s announcement that he is no longer running in 2024 and instead, wholeheartedly endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, is an event of epic proportions that must, of necessity, put anything else on the back burner. In thumbing through my mental files, I find that Biden’s selfless act - putting country and party above himself - finds but a single parallel in all American political history: G. Washington’s decision not to run for a third term . . . which was his for the asking. (Indeed, one of the truly inspired documents in all American history is Washington’s Farewell Address, a letter to the people co-written by Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.)

Like President Biden, the “Father of his country” decided that running for reelection (in Washington’s case, a third term) would simply not be the right and proper thing to do; it would set an undemocratic precedent. Unlike George Washington, of course, President Biden’s reelection was anything but a sure thing.  Similar to Washington, Biden decided that what is best for democracy and the country’s future is Donald Trump’s not winning the 2024 election. After more than half a century serving the American people as a Senator, Vice President, and President, Biden is both an idealist and a realist - a man who can read the tea leaves.  Once again, he has shown himself to be a class act.  It could not have been an easy thing to do.  He has long been both a leader of consequence and a man whose faith is apparent not so much through his words, as by his deeds.  

The differences between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in both temperament and personal makeup are about as stark and bipolar as any two people who have ever occupied the American political stage. Biden is as he has always been: a gentleman who was likely the first to call the former president upon hearing that he had been shot. Trump, on the other hand, shortly after learning that Biden was ending his re-election campaign, posted on social media a forceful attack denouncing his rival, calling him ignorant, mentally unfit, and the “very worst president in the history of the United States.” Over the next hours, he posted several more.  And just this morning the FPOTUS wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, “It’s a new day and Joe Biden doesn’t remember quitting the race yesterday!”  Who could ask for anything less? 

Although Joe Biden is going to continue his presidency until noon, January 20, 2025 (despite virtually every Republican urging that he resign today) I firmly believe that his place in history is assured; future historians will be very kind to him, his administration, and what he was able to accomplish in an era of bullies and bitter partisanship.

During his 3 ½ years as Chief Executive, Biden has revived the American economy to where it is the envy of the world. He has passed the most significant infrastructure legislation since the New Deal and a climate-change package that is unparalleled.  Our energy production is at an all-time high and we are, for the first time in G-d knows when, a net exporter of oil.  This is not to say that he has accomplished everything he set out to do; far from it. Part of the blame rests on the shoulders of the MAGA maniacs in Congress who, following their cult leader’s command, refuse to give Joe Biden any victories lest he and the Democrats be given credit in the next election.

As I near the end of this brief post, Vice President Kamala Harris has just arrived in Delaware for  her first visit to the national headquarters for what, until yesterday, was the Biden-Harris campaign.  In the first 24 hours since Joe Biden endorsed V.P. Harris for the Democratic nomination, dozens upon dozens of leading Democrats have also endorsed her (one notable exception: Barack Obama, who has a history of not issuing endorsements).  In those first 24 hours, the Harris campaign has raised more than $80 million.  Precisely what Donald Trump and his staff think about Harris becoming their opponent is anyone’s guess.  What we do know is that even before President Joe Biden’s long-speculated withdrawal from the presidential race, Trump floated the possibility of suing to block Democrats from having anyone other than Biden on the ballot in November.  But election administration and legal experts said the timing of Biden’s exit on Sunday makes it unlikely that any Republican ballot access challenges will succeed, with some calling the idea “ridiculous” and “frivolous.”  I have to wonder if the second debate will ever take place.  Imagine the scene: a former District Attorney and Attorney General debating a convicted felon . . . 

I doff my cap to Joe Biden for all he has accomplished; for significantly lowering the decibel level of public life and above all, for showing people from Maine to California what it means to be both a gentleman and a true patriot.    

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#997: A Brief Moment in Time

Come Sunday, August 4th, or, at the latest, Monday, August 5th, I will, G-d willing, be posting the 1,000th The K.F. Stone Weekly blog essay. (In reality, there are already more than 1,050 postings on this website - don’t forget my other blog, Tales from Hollywood & Vine). By the time I officially posted my first essay on February 5, 2005, I had already given the enterprise much thought, such as its name (some will recall that for the first several years it was entitled Beating the Bushes), its purpose, intellectual parameters, and what the range of events, issues, and personages might be included in each posting. The one thing I knew of a certainty - even before I had figured out what its masthead would read - was its basic purpose: to be a hebdomadal (weekly) witness to contemporary history.  Looking back over the years, many of the people and events that made headlines and now - even less than 20 years old - have already found a place in the dustbin of history.

On a personal level, one of my main interests in creating a weekly blog was - and still is - a matter of personal discipline; of knowing that week in, week out, I would commit myself to researching, writing, editing, recording, and then posting an essay of anywhere between 1,250 and 6,000 words.  In short (or long) I was giving myself the task of recording a brief moment in time.  And time is so incredibly brief.  Imagine that from Tuesday to Friday, I was researching and writing the first draft of a piece about the current state of the Biden Campaign and here, on Sunday, I am writing about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.  The latter - the attempted assassination - knocked the former off my schedule, not to mention the front page - as well as pages 2-5. And by this time next week? Who knows?

 Earlier this morning I was scouring through various online sources, checking out responses to this horrifying event.  Many Trump supporters publicly - and unsurprisingly - laid blame for the failed attack at the feet of President Biden and the “extreme left-wing, of which he is the leader.”  Georgia Republican Representative Mike Collins wrote on X that “The Republican District Attorney in Butler County, PA, should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination.” Speaker Mike Johnson blamed “the usual suspects” for the shooting: “Biden, social media and Hollywood.” Within minutes of the shooting, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who apparently has made the final cut in the race to be Trump’s V.P., wrote "Today is not just some isolated incident," Vance wrote on X. "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."  This goes counter to statements made by both Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump on Truth Social, calling for unity. By mid-afternoon, more and more Republican notables began taking that tack.  But the rhetorical damage had already been done; there continues to be a groundswell of conspiratorial fables on the internet.

 As for the Democrats, many expressions of outrage mixed with prayers were delivered on the Sunday morning talk shows.  President Biden has called for a heightened investigation by a consortium made up of the Secret Service, FBI, and Homeland Security agencies. President Biden, has already spoken to Donald Trump (who is currently at his residence in  Bedminster, New Jersey) and plans to speak to the nation shortly (as I write this it is Sunday, 5:05 EDT).  Predictably, President Biden has called for the passage of a new Assault Weapons ban; something he knows a great deal about;  as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he sponsored and largely shepherded the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law in 1994. That law, among other things, included an “assault weapons” ban, which prohibited the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms and large-capacity magazines that could accommodate 10 rounds or more. This is par for the course for Democrats; whether it will do any good is anyone’s guess.  I regret to say that I recently dropped my crystal ball into our washing machine; ever since, it has been cloudy and grimy, offering no answers.

The first email I received after news of the failed assassination attempt was was from a long-time reader of this blog (who, BTW, has rarely - if ever - agreed with me on anything).  He opined “What better image can you have of a candidate, bloodied and fisted, defiantly in the air, immediately after being shot, if you needed a hero. This has to be worth a number of conflicted voters, to believe they have a Spartacus, Robin Hood,  Rocky, or "gladiator" in their midst.  A million advisors and publicity personnel couldn't have planned an event greater than this, and Democratic strategists have to be thinking up counters to the picture of a fisted, bloodied Trump, which will appear worldwide.”

     Teddy Roosevelt, 1912 Campaign

 If Donald Trump (and my friend who wrote the above-referenced email) knew their American political history, they would realize that the last (and only) time a former President was shot while seeking a comeback turned out rather badly for him. One hundred and twelve years ago, Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning to return to the presidency when a would-be assassin opened fire (ironically in Milwaukee, tomorrow’s RNC convenes). TR gave his 90-minute speech with a bullet lodged in his chest. Despite his heroics, TR nonetheless, managed to hand the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. It makes for a fascinating piece of political history.  Where after being grazed Trump lifted a fist and shouted "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!,=” Teddy stood erect.  To this day, his bloody shirt is on display. 

Another reader sent me an email asking if there was any possibility that the whole Trump assassination scenario might have been planned by his staff in order to win over undecided voters.  I did my best to disabuse the reader of this notion . . . not because I had any evidence one way or another, but because I refuse to sink that low.  

To my way of thinking, history has - and always shall have - the final word.  Perhaps I am naïve, a fool, or even worse.  But from where I sit and write . . . as a fairy well-educated patriot with a moral compass that manages to find due north more often than not, I have no other choice than to find the potential for goodness in many of humanity’s grimiest gutters.  

In Fiddler on the Roof, the rebbe was asked if he had a prayer for the Tzar.  Taking a breath, he chanted: “May G-d bless and keep the Tsar . . . far away from us!”

That’s my belief. . . and that’s why I continue writing this weekly blog!

From one moment in time to the next, that is my quest . . .  

Copyright © Kurt Franklin Stone, 2024

#996: Is There "Good News Tonight?"

Back in the days when the biggest voices in radio (both before and behind the microphone) were Orson Welles, Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, and Norman Corwin (who actually befriended me when he was in the last decade of his long, long life), there was the Mutual Radio Network’s Gabriel Heatter. Like Corwin (1910-2011), Heatter (1890-1972) was the child of Jewish immigrants who knew from earliest childhood, that he wanted to be a writer.

Like all radio news reporters of the time, Heatter developed a slogan by which his broadcasts could be immediately identified.  His was “There’s good news tonight!” During the darkest, most dangerous days (and nights) of World War II, Heatter’s task was to bring a ray of optimism to an otherwise petrifying world. Now mind you, Heatter wasn’t just blowing smoke; his genius came in identifying strands of optimism within the fabric of impenetrable darkness, thereby giving his millions of listeners the one thing they needed most: hope for the future.

Sad to say, there are few - if indeed any - Gabriel Heatter’s around anymore. Let’s face it, as good as Lester Holt, Ali Velshi are, and Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric were, putting one’s trust in any journalist is a tough task. Perhaps it’s due to corporate America putting mega-profits ahead of Fourth Estate principles; then too, perhaps the rise of social media (the modern-day version of the “Shoot-out at the OK Corral”), the 24-hour news cycle . . . the very nature of world events . . . have made honest, illuminating reportage as incomprehensible as an Ibsen drama. (BTW: my use of the term “24-hour news cycle”) is not about the fact that news goes on 24 hours a day. Rather, it is that quite frequently, today’s above-the-fold page one headline is, as Grandpa Doc would have had it “pushed back to page 37 just beneath the truss adds” by the end of the day.)

Nonetheless, if Gabriel Heatter was alive and announcing the news yesterday, today, and even tomorrow, he might honestly begin his newscast with his signature line about there being “Good News Tonight!” Then again, he just might end his program with an expression taught to him by his Yiddish-speaking parents, Henry and Anna (Fischman) Heatter: Vey iz mir!

First, 3 news stories that should give us a bit of encouragement about the future:

     Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian (1954- )

Voters in Iran have given a decisive win to reformist candidate Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian in the runoff election to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash in May. Iranian president-elect Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and lawmaker who ran on a moderately reformist platform, was a relatively little-known candidate. But voters turned out in larger numbers than in round one, giving him more than 2.8 million votes over hard-line conservative Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator with strong anti-West views. Dr. Pezeshkian campaigned on a promise to engage more with the outside world. He is also likely to appoint moderate cabinet ministers. But overall, the newly elected president's proposals are modest, showing no inclination to push for significant changes to a government that leaves all important matters of state to Supreme Leader Ayatolla Ali Khamenei. “Dear people of Iran, the elections are over and this is just the beginning of our cooperation,” the doctor wrote on the social platform X, which is still banned in Iran. “The difficult path ahead will not be smooth except with your companionship, empathy, and trust. I extend my hand to you and I swear on my honor that I will not leave you alone on this path. Do not leave me alone.”

In France, the country’s far-right National Rally (RN), lead by the 28-year old Jordan Bardella, was widely expected to win a “snap election.” Instead they were beaten into third place. The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) won 182 seats, while President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance won 163 seats. National Rally (RN) won the first round of this election, and all the opinion polls since then predicted victory in the run-off round.

Instead, France now faces a hung parliament with no party having anything like a majority.

     French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal (1985- )

RN leader Jordan Bardella blamed "unnatural political alliances" for stopping their rise to power. 34-year old Prime Minister Gabriel Attal (the son of a French-Tunisian Jewish father), who was appointed by President Macron only seven months ago, said he would hand in his resignation in the morning, although he pointed out that his Ensemble alliance were on course to win three times the number of seats that had been forecast.  (As of 10:00 EDT, President Macron has asked his young P.M. to remain in office at least for now, in order to maintain political stability.)

Does that mean the NFP “won” the election? Not quite. Although the coalition has the most seats, it fell well short of the 289 seats required for an absolute majority, meaning France now has a hung parliament. If this was a victory for anything, it was the “cordon sanitaire,” the principle that mainstream parties must unite to prevent the extreme right from taking office. (BTW: Here in America, somewhat unsurprisingly, MAGA loyalists  lashed out at the shocking results of the French parliamentary elections, saying the far right was "cheated" out of victory.)

And then there is the U.K., where official election results this past Friday showed a landslide victory for the country’s center-left Labour Party — its first victory in 19 years, since under the leadership of Tony Blair. The incoming Prime Minister Sir Keir Rodney Starmer, KCB KC, hailed his win as historic, saying early Friday: “Change begins now.” Later Friday, he gave his first speech outside the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, saying, he will lead a “government of service” on a “mission of national renewal” and promised to "rebuild Britain." For the Conservatives — the party of Margaret Thatcher, Boris Johnson and outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — it was the worst defeat in their party’s nearly 200-year history. Prominent lawmakers including former Prime Minister Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Penny Mordaunt lost their seats in Parliament. Sunak retained his seat but resigned Friday as Conservative Party leader, and apologized to the country. “I am sorry. I have given this job my all but you have sent a clear signal, that the government of the United Kingdom must change,” Sunak told reporters as he and his wife left the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street for the last time. “I have heard your anger, your disappointment and I take responsibility for this loss.”

Oh that we could have such gentility and civility here on our side of the pond!

So much for “There’s good news tonight!” Now on to our final - and most fearfully challenging development . . . the one that would likely garner that Vey iz mir! from the long-departed Mr. Heatter.

Let us turn our attention to that which will pass for the GOP “non-official-official” Party Platform for 2024:

PROJECT 2025

Giving a terse explanation of precisely what “Project 2025” is, what it contains, what its aims are who created it, and for what purpose, is about as easy as defining the one-syllable Yiddish word mentsch to a person who knows virtually nothing about Jews, Jewish culture or Yiddish.  Broadly speaking, “Project 2025” is a political manifesto created by the “sages and scholars” of MAGA Mania, the not-for-profit Heritage Foundation. Founded slightly more than a half-century ago (1973 to be precise), the Heritage Foundation describes its mission as “ . . .  formulating and promoting conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”  So far, so good; sounds pretty benign.  But it is so very, very much more . . . and very, very much less.  Founded and funded during the latter Nixon Administration by the likes of Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, and beer baron Joseph Coors. had long played a leading role in the rightward turn in American politics over the last many decades. 

The Heritage Foundation has been a fervent opponent of the Kyoto Protocol and its online database of “policy experts” includes many climate change skeptics such as Patrick Michaels, Sallie Baliunas, Thomas Gale Moore, Robert Balling, and Fred Singer.

The Heritage Foundation has had overwhelming influence over Republican politicians. It is estimated that two-thirds of the policy recommendations it made in 1981 were adopted by the Reagan Administration. The Heritage Foundation has been described as “the most effective media operation in American politics,” and is a fervent opponent of the Kyoto Protocol and has long worked to privatize the federal government.

History has long been shaped and misshaped by manifestos such as Thomas Paine’s all-time best-selling tract Common Sense (1776), Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (1848), Animal Farm by George Orwell (1946) and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962). Each, in their own time, spearheaded a major change in modern human history. And now we have - for better or for worse, Project 2025, written by not by a single man or woman, but rather, by hundreds of people engaged in the fields of political science, economics, religious history, and other assorted fields. Indeed, Project 2025 (officially known as A Mandate for Leadership) is an immensely long and wordy read: more than 920 pages . . . which I am sure Donald Trump has never read.  Not surprisingly when asked if he was familiar with Project 2025, Trump claimed he had never heard of it . . . which hardly passed the smell test. Then too, he has, when asked, claimed to have never had any knowledge of - or contact with - Paul Manafort, Stormy Daniels, or dozens of other people who have played significant roles in his life.

In essence, Project 2025 seeks to greatly enhance Executive Branch powers even as it greatly diminishes that which the legislative branch can do:

• Changing how the FBI operates. According to the plan, the agency is "completely out of control," and the next conservative administration should restore its reputation by stopping investigations that are supposedly "unlawful or contrary to the national interest." Also, the document calls for legislation that would eliminate term limits for the FBI's director and require that person to answer to the president. 

• Eliminating the Department of Education. The plan explicitly proposes, "Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated." The report also calls for bans on so-called "critical race theory" (CRT) and "gender ideology" lessons in public schools, asking for legislation that would require educators who share such material to register as sex offenders and be imprisoned. 

• Defunding the Department of Justice. Additionally, the document proposes prosecuting federal election-related charges as criminal, not civil, cases. Otherwise, the document says, "[Voter] registration fraud and unlawful ballot correction will remain federal election offenses that are never appropriately investigated and prosecuted." 

• Reversing Biden-era policies attempting to reduce climate change. The document's authors call for increasing the country's reliance on fossil fuels and withdrawing from efforts to address the climate crisis — such as "offices, programs, and directives designed to advance the Paris Climate Agreement." 

• Stopping cybersecurity efforts to combat mis- and disinformation. The document recommends the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to stop its efforts to curtail online propaganda campaigns, arguing the federal government should not make judgment calls on what's true and what isn't.

• Changing immigration policies. Authors want the federal government to deprioritize DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), the program that temporarily delays the deportation of immigrants without documentation who came to the U.S. as children; phase out temporary work-visa programs that allow seasonal employers to hire foreign workers; impose financial punishments on so-called "sanctuary cities" that do not follow federal immigration laws, and divert tax dollars toward security at America's border with Mexico. (While the Biden campaign claims Project 2025 calls for "ripping mothers away from their children" at the border, there's no explicit mention of separating families. Rather, it calls for stronger enforcement of laws governing the detainment of immigrants with criminal records and restricting an existing program that tracks people in deportation proceedings instead of incarcerating them. In some cases, those changes could possibly play a role in border control agents detaining a parent while their child continues with immigration proceedings.)

• Restricting access to abortion. The plan wants the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop promoting abortion as health care. Additionally, Project 2025 recommends the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to stop promoting, and approving, requests for manufacturing abortion pills. "Alternative options to abortion, especially adoption, should receive federal and state support," the document states.

• Removing LGBTQ+ protections. The plan calls for abolishing the Gender Policy Council, a Biden-created department within the White House that aims to "advance equity in government policy for those who face discrimination." Also, the proposal wants the federal government to remove terms such as "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" from records and policies, as well as rescind policies that prohibit discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics."

The Democrats, acutely aware of what the Heritage Foundation has in mind for creating an imperial presidency, has launched a task force to start fighting the proposal and stop it from taking hold if the Republican former president returns to power.

      Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA)

Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California is unveiling The Stop Project 2025 Task Force last June 11 on Tuesday, the latest sign that congressional Democrats and outside groups are treating Trump’s campaign seriously in the expected rematch against Democratic President Joe Biden this fall. “The stakes just couldn’t be higher,” Huffman told The Associated Press. Huffman said the Project 2025 agenda will hit “like a Blitzkrieg” and lawmakers need to be ready. “If we’re trying to react to it and understand it in real time, it’s too late,” he said. “We need to see it coming well in advance and prepare ourselves accordingly.”

Before you go jumping off the sidewalk please know that an increasing number of Republicans - although not joining Rep. Huffman’s taskforce - are distancing themselves from the Project 2025 manifesto.  Even they sense that this could lead to utter defeat - bringing what transpired in French, British and even Iranian elections - to American in November 2024.  Do remember, regardless of whatever party or persuasion you pay fealty to, there is one overarching principle: you must be reelected if you wish to continue playing a role.  This nefarious project must be kept before the public every minute of every day from now until November.  It is a manifesto no one can abide . . .  even those who think Donald Trump is the second coming.

In sum, as bad as things may seem - and they are quite foul - it is just possible that this past week can help turn vey iz mir into es iz gut nayes haynt bay nakht“ namely,  “There’s good news tonight.” 

Gabrielle Heatter would be proud . . . 

Copyright2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#995: Box Office Poison?

There can be little doubt that this past Thursday contained the most memorable evening of Joe Biden’s half-century in politics . . . and for all the wrong reasons.  The long-anticipated presidential debate between Trump and Biden turned into a clash between optics and reason whereby the latter was easily trounced by the former. There is no denying that Joe Biden looked and sounded old; his raspy functional dysphonia (common in nearly half the people over age 65) turned out to be no match for Trump’s irksome hyperkinetic dysarthria.  Because optics play such an overwhelmingly important role in 21st-ceutury televised political encounters, Biden’s perceived loss to a man who managed to tell more than 40 out-and-out lies without breaking stride, shouldn’t be considered all that mystifying.  But the Democratic response to Biden’s perceived failure is.  Truth to tell, this one debate has, in the eyes and minds of many Biden supporters, made him what we Hollywood Brats would call "Box Office Poison.”   

Newscasters of all stripes and persuasions seemed far more interested in talking up Biden’s vocal and mental blunders and lapses than the wall-to-wall lies told by Trump. My g-d . . . Biden was even chided for choosing the wrong side of the stage to stand on; camera right, which had him looking at where the moderators were seated rather than directly into the camera(s). Trump, a former television star, knew to stand on the left, which permitted him to look straight away into the camera, thus making it seem, by comparison, that Biden was staring off into space. Biden’s blunders and miscues had Democrats questioning whether or not he was up to the job; whether Biden should drop out of the race in favor of, say, Governors Gretchen Witmer (MI), or Gavin Newsome (CA) or Josh Shapiro (PA) or Roy Cooper (NC); or VP Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo; New Jersey Senator Cory Booker or even former First Lady Michelle Obama.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one, to the best of my knowledge, called upon Donald Trump to bow out of the race . . . either because he is a convicted felon (34 counts) or a serial liar (30,573 lies during the 4 years he served as POTUS) or because he has - in the words of President Biden - “The morals of an alley cat.” The debate was so debased and unprofessional that this statement would turn out to be the most memorable line of the evening. As for Trump, who ever dreamed that the memorable rebuttal would be “I did not have sex with a porn star”? I for one could care less who can drive a golf ball farther or who has a lower par. I for one am far, far more concerned with who can surround himself with wiser, more fully experienced advisors . . . and then keep them for the whole 4 years. BTW: did you catch Trump’s turning Biden’s ability to keep his cabinet and staff together into a negative? He actually criticized him for not firing more people!

And yet, Biden is now, in the minds and fears of many Democratic office-holders, major financial backers, and political influencers “box office poison.” At first glance, the very term “Box Office Poison” seems incongruous in the vast world of competitive professional politics. It seems a better fit from the place called Hollywood . . . both the literal city composed of 3.51 square miles ((9.1 km) and the figurative term for a vast world of dreams . . . and the place I was born three-quarters of a century ago. To be certain, politics has long had a show-business aspect to it. Ever notice how nearly every Warner Brothers film of the 1930s and 40s (save Westerns) had at least one kitchen scene in which there was a framed photo of FDR on the wall? Or that Hollywood stars came out in force to raise funds during both world wars and signed on to give up-and-coming stars pointers on proper diction and deportment?

I don’t know if President Biden is a movie fan, let alone knows much Hollywood history.  If not, I am here to tell him that he is in good company . . . this “Box Office Poison” nonsense. Let me explain.  Back on May 4, 1938, the Independent Theater Owners Association prublished a red-bordered, full-page ad in the Hollywood Reporter bearing the title WAKE UP! Hollywood Producers. The hit job, written by the association’s president, Harry Brandt, began:

              Kate Hepburn in 1938

Practically all of the major studios are burdened with stars—whose public appeal is negligible—receiving tremendous salaries necessitated by contractual obligations. Having these stars under contract, and paying them sizeable sums weekly, the studios find themselves in the unhappy position to having put these box office deterrents in expensive pictures in the hope that some return on the investment might be had. This condition is not only burdensome to the studios and its stockholders but is likewise no boon to exhibitors who in the final analysis, suffer by the non-drawing power of these players. . .

The article went on to provide a list of major motion picture stars who, in Brandt’s opinion, were “Box Office Poison.” Among them, unbelievably, were such fan favorites as Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John Barrymore and Fred Astaire.  While it is true that several of these actors had starred in relative “stinkers” in the preceding year or two

• Hepburn in Quality Street and Holiday;

• Garbo in The Painted Veil and Conquest; 

• Fred Astaire in A Damsel in Distress and

• Joan Crawford in The Shining Hour and Mannequin 

They were all able to quickly bounce back and remain at the top of their game for decades to come:

               Fred Astaire in 1938

• In 1939 Garbo starred in Ninotchka, for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination;

• Hepburn would return to Broadway, starring in The Philadelphia Story, buy its rights, sell the rights to MGM, star in the film and continue acting with her “name above the  title” for another 50+ years

• Within 8 years, Joan Crawford would win a Best Actress Oscar for Mildred Pierce and then continue acting for another 30 years

• Fred Astaire would make another 40 films including Easter Parade, On the Beach, and Finian’s Rainbow.

What these stars had in common - besides G-d-given talent - was indefatigable drive, a work ethic to beat the band, self-confidence and what today might be termed a “posse” . . . people who believed in them with all their hearts and souls.  They also had proven track records of accomplishment and the ability, when seemingly down and out, to, in the words of Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields song sung by Fred Astaire in his 1936 hit Swing Time: “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”  

At a time when many of the nation’s editorial boards and everyday voters are urging Joe Biden to throw in the towel and hand off the Democratic nomination to another, younger, more appealing candidate I urge extreme caution.  This would be foolhardy . . . and for several reasons.  First, to wait until August 19 - the date the Chicago convention begins - would mean going 8 weeks without a standard bearer.  It would also mean that during those 8 weeks, a handful of potential replacements would be spending the lion’s share of their time raising hundreds of millions of dollars, introducing themselves to the American voting public, and fending off all the lies being spread about them by the MAGA machine. Then too, they would all have  to be hiring  staff on contingency, working 24/7 on putting together a platform , and putting their daytime jobs on hold.

But most - and worst - of all, it would be virtually benching the one candidate who has the best chance of saving democracy from autocracy.  My recommendation to President Biden (such unmitigated chutzpah on my part!) is that he raise the temperature by continually reminding the public that the alternative that America faces is a country led  by a man who does not know the first thing about governing; a man who is a convicted felon; a man who demands not advisors and aides but toadies and sycophants;  a man who is in  thrall to the world’s worst despots and covers  up all his failures by blaming them on others.  At the same time, President Biden must continue telling the truth about what he and a divided government have been able to accomplish on behalf of the American people and indeed the world.

Believe me, when I tell you that I haven’t slept much since the debate.  I have been going over and over in my mind whether to recommend finding a new nominee or sticking with Joe Biden.  I know there will be plenty who disagree with me, but I’m going to redouble my efforts on behalf of Uncle Joe. No one else has the knowledge, wisdom, and experience as Joe Biden.  No one else has a team as dedicated to making government work for all of us as Joe Biden.  No one else can defeat the Felon of Fifth Avenue, the Misanthrope of Mar-a-Lago.

So far as what we, the Democratic base and those who are yet undecided can do is first, to make a small contribution to the Biden/Harris campaign (https://joebiden.com/donate-by-mail/). Each contribution provides a bit of money and a vote of confidence.  The money is reportable; the vote of confidence is invaluable.  Second, don’t give up on Joe Biden.  He is not box office poison.  He is a man who has devoted most of his life to working with and on behalf of the vast majority of Americans who take promises seriously, believe wholeheartedly that a return to the past cannot and will not improve the future, and greatly prefers a gentleman to a rank bully.   

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#994: Let the Games Begin!

As I begin writing this blog article, It is currently 6:20 EDT, Wednesday evening June 26, 2024. I plan on finishing, editing, recording, and posting it by about 9:00 AM tomorrow. This means it will be posted about 12 hours before Thursday night’s first presidential debate between FPOTUS Donald J, Trump and his successor, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. There are so many “what ifs” surrounding this debate . . . the first of which must certainly be “What if Trump doesn’t show up?” It is possible. He and his team have already spent quite a bit of time and money proclaiming that the debate is rigged to favor Biden. And in a sense, they are correct . . . at least from their point of view.

How so?

Well, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are both practicing Jews who come from well-educated families; Jake’s father Sam (“Ted”) was a Harvard-trained pediatrician; Dana is, the daughter of long-time ABC news producer Stuart Schwartz.  Next; they are both real, honest-to-god journalists, which means that to MAGA Maniacs, they are fatally flawed when it comes to Trump, and should be more than willing to give Biden a pass on anything and everything he has ever done. 

Trump supporters have argued that the debate rules have been skewed to favorite Biden (microphones shut off when one debater is not responding), despite the fact that both sides’ teams agreed to the rules weeks ago.  Trump’s team has already suggested that the only way Biden is going to beat Trump is by being loaded up on drugs like Adderall (amphetamine and dextroamphetamine), which is used to treat narcolepsy and ADHD, and that the POTUS cannot manage without wearing an earwig or employing a teleprompter (disallowed by debating rules for both candidates). It would seem that Trump’s main argument is going to be that Biden is too old to be POTUS and thus must be, deeply in senescence’s loving embrace.  Did none of these MAGA Maniacs watch Biden’s most recent State of the Union?

Yes, President Joseph R. Biden is 3 years older than Donald Trump.  Nonetheless, Mr., Biden jogs every day, where Mr. Trump plays an occasional round of golf perhaps twice a week. Biden does occasionally stammer and mispronounce words; it is a lifelong disability that he has spent more than 80 years dealing with.  By recent comparison, Donald Trump seems to be in the throes of dysarthria (slurred speech), a motor speech disorder. which happens when brain or nerve damage changes the way one’s muscles work. It can be mild to severe.  Considering some of the former president’s recent verbal blunders and incomprehensible gaffs, I would encourage him to make an appointment with a good neurologist.  Regarding President Biden, a family truism comes to mind: Growing older is inevitable; growing up is purely optional.

 The two men are as different in mood and mien as a gentleman is from a boor.  Biden has spent the last week going over issues, and doing practice sessions with his closest debate advisors (including the best of them all, former Chief of Staff Ron Klain); Trump, on the other hand, has been out campaigning before his adoring, unquestioning followers.   This doesn’t bode well for Trump; the man does not do well in a speaking format (such as this evening’s televised debate) unless he can hear laughter and applause.  He also doesn’t do well without a teleprompter.  Heck, even with a teleprompter he goes off the rails more often than not.  Add to this the fact that neither Biden nor Trump has been in  a debate for several years, and you have to wonder on whom is the rust going to be the most obvious.

Biden’s strategy is likely going to deal first with issues and programs he intends to put into action in the next 4 years, and second, with democracy versus autocracy. Trump, on the other hand, is likely going to be Trump: an abrasive, condescending, revengeful victim who has few concrete plans for the future . . . short of remaking the government in his own image. Pay particular attention to Trump’s use of the first person singular (“I”) versus Biden’s “We.” I can recommend a self-deprecating bon mot to President Biden to get under Trump’s skin when he makes an obvious blunder: “I am old enough to have known and studied with Demosthenes; you Donald are no Demosthenes!”

So who’s going to win this first debate?  I would say the smart money is on President Biden.  His half-century of successful public service has taught him the importance of deportment, presence, and communication.  It also helps that he has 50 years’ worth of experience and accomplishments . . . as well as one of the broadest, most honest smiles in the business. He is a winner. Donald Trump, on the other hand, despite the image he likes to present to the public, is a man of vast insecurity.  Biden receives loyalty from his advisors . . . and knows how to take advice.  Trump demands loyalty and winds up doing only what he wants to do. 

So who will win?  Both: Biden will win the debate itself;  Trump will win (at least in his own mind) because the debate was rigged from the start.

So tune in this evening at 9:00 sharp and watch, listen and learn.

  Let the games begin! 

 Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#993: Far, Far Worse Than Smoot-Hawley?

Hopefully, by the time you finish reading this week’s post, you will be able to answer the following  3 questions:

Willis Hawley (1864-1941) & Reed Smoot (1864-1941)

1. What are the 3 ways the federal government can raise revenue?

2. Who were Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley (that’s them in the photo), and what’s the only thing they are remembered for?

3. What is the definition of “stagflation?”

If, by the end of this post you can successfully answer these 3 questions, you will know a hell of a lot more about American political history and economic theory than the Republican Party’s putative presidential nominee.

As MSNBC news anchor Stephanie Ruhle says every weeknight on her 11:00 pm show, Let’s get smarter! But before we do, permit me to confess that I am neither an economist, nor anything more than an amateur when it comes to macroeconomics or monetary theory. Rather, I have spent a lifetime being unceasingly curious about all things intellectual, and had the good fortune to study with a couple of masters in my early years at university: Daniel Burbidge Suits, professor emeritus of economics who specialized in the field of Economic Growth Theory and Models, as well as renowned American political history professors  Page Smith and Laurence Vesey. Then too, I have, over the years,  devoured just about every word the exalted Richard Hofstadter, Michael Beschloss, and Doris Kearns Goodwin ever wrote. 

(I guess that makes me a librarian’s best friend . . . one of the only advantages of being afflicted with Crohn’s Disease.  How’s that? Well, in Hebrew, the answer to that question is    רק הנאורים יבינו  - namely, “only the enlightened will understand.”)

 And so, without further ado, let’s roll up our sleeves, don our eyeshades, and get down to the business of learning something about taxes, tariffs, and Trump . . .

 First and foremost, the federal government finances its operations with taxes, fees, and other receipts collected from many different sectors of the economy. In the last fiscal year, federal receipts totaled about $4.4 trillion, or 16.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The largest sources of revenues are individual income taxes (49%) and payroll taxes (36%) followed by corporate income taxes (9%).

Another source of revenue comes from tariffs. Tariffs are a form of tax applied on imports from other countries. Most economists say the costs are largely passed on to consumers. Countries have used them to protect domestic industries, such as agriculture and renewable energy, as well as to retaliate against other states’ unfair trade practices. And, if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, thus giving him the power to (among many, other heretofore unthinkable things) make his economic vision a reality: instituting an "all-tariff policy" which would enable the U.S. to get rid of its income tax. Egad! The man actually wants to replace individual and corporate income taxes with tariffs!

Almost every country imposes some tariffs. In general, wealthy countries maintain low tariffs compared to developing countries. There are several reasons why: developing countries might have more fragile industries that they wish to protect, or they might have fewer sources of government revenue. The United States, for instance, maintained high tariffs for decades, until income taxes supplanted tariffs as the most important source of revenue in the 1930s. After World War II, tariffs continued to decline as the United States emphasized trade expansion as a central plank of its global strategy.

Trump’s insane quest for a policy of “all-tariffs-all-the-time,” (which he floated at last week’s gathering of the spineless on Capitol Hill) garnered nary a snicker - let alone a raised eyebrow - from the confederacy of dunces wildly applauding their leader. I’ve got to wonder if any of them - even if but for a nanosecond - heard a voice whispering “Smoot-Hawley . . . remember Smoot-Hawley. It was an unmitigated disaster back in 1930; it will be worse than a catastrophe in 2025.”

        Senator Reed Smoot (R-UT)

Smoot what? Hawley who? Reed Smoot (1862-1941) was a Republican Senator from Utah from 1903-1933; was also the first apostle of the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormon) to be a national political figure. In 1930, he was chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Smoot's election to the Senate in 1903 by the Utah legislature sparked a bitter four-year battle in the Senate on whether Smoot was eligible and should be allowed to serve. Many Americans were suspicious of the LDS Church because of its earlier polygamous practices. In addition, some senators thought Smoot's position as a Mormon apostle would disqualify him from representing all his constituents. Many were convinced that his association with the church disqualified him from serving in the United States Senate.

            Rep. Willis C. Hawley (R. Ore)

Willis C. Hawley served as a Republican Representative from Oregon from 1907-1933.  Although not what one might call a “shining star” within the House, he somehow rose to the Chairmanship of that chamber’s most powerful committee,  Ways and Means, for the 70th and 71st Congress. From that powerful perch, he joined with Senator Smoot to coauthor the eponymous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930.  Signed into law by President Herbert Hoover against the advice of almost every titan of industry (including Henry Ford, who stayed overnight with President Hoover to repeat his belief that the bill was “an economic stupidity,” and Albert Henry Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank of New York), Smoot Hawley (the last consequential tariff measure Congress ever passed) contributed mightily to the early loss of confidence on Wall Street and signaled U.S. isolationism. By raising the average tariff by some 20 percent, it also prompted retaliation from foreign governments, and many overseas banks began to fail. Within two years some two dozen countries adopted similar “beggar-thy-neighbor” duties, worsening an already beleaguered world economy and reducing global trade. U.S. imports from - and exports to - Europe fell by some two-thirds between 1929 and 1932, while overall global trade declined by similar levels in the four years that the legislation was in effect.  It was also but one more nail in the political careers of Smoot, Hawley and President Herbert Hoover, all of whom were roundly defeated for reelection in 1932.

Historically, Smoot-Hawley would become to American economic legislation what Dred Scott v. Sandford  and Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization  are to Supreme Court Decisions: the worst of the worst. In 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, reducing tariff levels and promoting trade liberalization and cooperation with foreign governments. Some historians have argued that this particular tariff, by deepening the Great Depression, may have contributed to the rise of political extremism, enabling leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to increase their political strength and gain power.

             Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)

As noted above, Smoot-Hawley was the last time major tariff legislation was enacted by Congress. Ever since, tariff policy has moved from the legislative to the executive branch. Ironically, another Hawley, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, the MAGA Maniac from Missouri, recently introduced S.1537,  the “Raising Tariffs on Imports from China Act of 2024,” legislation. According to a report from Reuters, Senator Hawley’s proposal would raise the base tariff rate on Chinese cars by 100% (especially “EVs” - electric vehicles) from the current 2.5%, effectively putting a 125% tariff on imported Chinese vehicles. It also seeks to apply a 100% tariff to cars assembled in Mexico by China-based automakers. Besides being a disciple of “Trump’s Tariff Czar” Robert Lighthizer, the man who never met a levy he did not love, Hawley’s gambit is that this legislative ploy (which to date hasn’t signed up a single cosponsor)  might get him a Vice Presidential nod.  Just what is it about the family name “Hawley?”

 Now, what Donald Trump proposes is, in my relatively untutored opinion, far, far worse than Smoot-Hawley. Suggesting that this "all-tariffs-all-the-time” bilge would put dollars into the pockets of the middle class is, like his tax cut, both a fraud and an outright lie . . . not to mention something which could easily pull the rest of the developed world into economic chaos. As I understand it, tariffs hike consumer prices because companies pass on the cost of the tariffs they pay. Tariffs currently account for $88.3 billion of the $4.4 trillion in revenues the U.S. government reported in fiscal year 2023. Income taxes brought in about $2.2 trillion, the Treasury Department reported.  To bring tariff revenues even close to income tax levels would require a dramatic spike in import taxes, much, much higher than Trump’s proposed 10%. 

His proposed 10% tax on all imports, and 60% tax on all imports from China, specifically, would also raise costs for average Americans, according to the analysis, amounting to a $2,500 annual tax hike for the typical family. That sum includes annual tax increases of $250 on electronics, $160 on clothing, $120 on oil and $110 on food.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has also said he would use revenues from import taxes to extend his 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, which are set to expire. That would mean the top 0.1% of Americans would experience a tax cut of about $325,000 a year while middle-income families, after extending the tax cuts, would see a $1,600 net tax increase.

Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and a Nobel Prize winner in economics, did some quick math and posted on X that a "first-pass estimate" suggests Trump's proposal "would require an *average* tariff rate of 133 percent.”  If Trump had his way, taxes on middle-income households would rise by $5,100 to $8,300 a year, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal advocacy group. By contrast, the top 0.1% of households would see their taxes cut by about $1.5 million a year, per the analysis, which notes that it would not be mathematically possible to replace all income taxes with tariffs alone.

Former Treasury Secretary (1999-2001), President of Harvard University (2001-2006) and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government flatly stated that Donald Trump’s proposal, besides being the worst in all American history, is “. . . a prescription for the mother of all stagflations.”  What is “stagflation,” and why is it so incredibly dangerous? 

“Stagflation” is a not easily achievable economic amalgam of stagnant (zero) economic growth combined with high inflation and high unemployment all at the same time.  The U.S.'s last memory of stagflation was in the 1970s when double-digit inflation and unemployment rates scarred the economy. To combat it, then Fed Chair Paul Volker hiked rates to 20 percent, a drastic and unprecedented move that forced the U.S. economy into a 16-month recession through November 1982. And this is what Trump’s economic plan is for America should he be reelected?  In the (supposed) words of that master of the malaprop, Sam Goldwyn, “Include me out!”

There are tons of reasons why Donald J. Trump must be kept far, far away from the White House.  The entire alphabet argues in favor of putting him in a padded cell: A(ttitude), B(igotry), C(upidity), D(emeaning). E(gomaniacal), F(atuous), G(ross), H(ateful), I(nsufferable), J(ejune),  K(ooky), L(ethal), M(endacious), N(oisome). O(bnoxious), P(eurile), Q(uisling), R(epugnant), S(hifty). T(errifying), U(nstable), V(icious), W(hiny), X(enophobic), Y(obbish) and finally,  Z(ombielike).

Class dismissed!

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#992: I'd Swap MTG, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, Matt Gaetz and the Rest of the Congressional Clown Car For Florence Kahn Any Day of the Week. . .and Twice on Sunday

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer 

Back in the early 1980s, when Chuck Schumer was an unknown, very junior member of the House of Representatives, a savvy political journalist glimpsed into his or her crystal ball and prognosticated: It won’t be long before the most dangerous place in American politics will be the 5 or 6 feet between a television camera and the very young, very brash freshman representative from Brooklyn’s 16th Congressional District.  

It turns out, of course, that the journalist hit the nail on the head.  For not only has Chuck Schumer been one of the most oft-quoted members of Congress for the past forty years; he is the Senate Majority Leader -  the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in all American history. Over the past half-century (Schumer was originally elected to two terms in the New York State Assembly starting in 1975), Schumer has been far, far more than a show-horse; he has long been a doer. He has long been a successful legislative leader whether in the majority or minority. Schumer’s fingerprints are easily visible on some of the most important bills enacted over the years including the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (1993) and the Violence Against Women Act (1994), as well as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka “Obama Care” 2010), which he played a decisive roil in steering it through committee and on to passage. Throughout his career, he has sponsored or cosponsored more than 2,300 pieces of legislation.

Schumer has long evinced the kind of mind, work ethic, collegiality, and understanding of the political process that easily sets him apart from the current crop of fatuous third-stringers currently striding the Halls of Congress . . . people like Senators Tuberville and Britt, Hawley, and Johnson, as well as Representatives Greene and Boebert, Gaetz, Luna, and Donalds, Gosar, Good, and Mace. 

        The “JK” Playground in San Francisco

Over more than 3 decades, I have researched, written and published more than 215 biographic sketches and articles on the nearly 225 Jewish men and women who have served in the United States Congress. One of my very favorites, without question, is Florence Kahn, who represented what would eventually become Sala Burton’s, Barbara Boxer’s and Nancy Pelosi’s District in San Francisco. In interviewing the three for my biographic works The Congressional Minyan (2000) and The Jews of Capitol Hill (2010) they all remembered with great fondness the many hours they had spent with their young children (and now grandchildren) at the Julius Kahn Playground and Clubhouse which was named after Florence’s late husband Julius, himself a member of Congress for 24 years. Located at Jackson and Spruce, the “JK” was, until its name was officially changed to the “Presidio Wall Playground” in 2019, the nation’s largest urban park. (The name change came because Julius, it turned out, was also one of the members in Congress who helped extend the racist Chinese Exclusion Act [originally passed in 1882] to 1902.  As a result of this, in 2019, the citizens of San Francisco demanded the name change.) 

       Rep. Julius Kahn (2861-1924)

Florence’s husband, the German-born Julius (1861-1924) was originally a pretty well-known actor who trod the boards in his new country for a number of years.  His wife Florence encouraged him to go to study law; by the early 1890s, he was a practicing attorney and, with his wife’s guidance got himself elected to the California State Assembly in 1892. She managed his first Congressional campaign in 1899 and worked as his Chief of Staff and campaign manager until he died in 1924.  During his quarter-century in the House, Kahn became an expert on foreign affairs and, although a Republican, became President Woodrow Wilson’s guaranteeing American  involvement in what was then called “The Great War.” 

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 9, 1866, Florence’s parents, who had emigrated from Poland, were actually friends with the Mormon leader Brigham Young. Florence Prag Kahn lived a life of firsts:

• The first Jew born in Utah

• The first woman to graduate from Berkeley (class of 1887)

• The first woman to manage a congressional campaign (for her husband Julius, in 1899)

• The first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives

• The first woman to serve on both the House Military Affairs and Appropriations Committees.

Additionally, she was largely responsible for the funding of both the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay Bridges, and was so instrumental in the early funding of the FBI that its director, J. Edgar Hoover, always referred to her as “The mother of the FBI.”

  Florence Prag Kahn (1866-1948)

Politically adroit, fearless and frumpy, Rep. Kahn also had a dry sense of humor and was known to possess the quickest wit on The Hill. Once, when asked how she was able to pass far more significant legislation than most of her male colleagues, she famously responded: “Don’t you know? It’s my sex appeal, honey!” When assigned to the Committee on Indian Affairs, she flatly turned it down, telling then-Speaker Nicholas Longworth III (the husband of T.R.’s daughter “Princess Alice” Roosevelt) “The only Indians in my district are made of wood and sit outside cigar stores . . . and I can’t do a damn thing for them! Put me on Military Affairs!” Then there was the time that New York Representative Fiorello LaGuardia accused her of being “. . . nothing but a standpatter, following the reactionary Senator Moses of New Hampshire.” Mrs. Kahn is reported to have wriggled loose from her chair, jammed her nondescript hat over her nose, and bellowed: “Why shouldn’t I choose Moses as my leader? Haven’t my people been following him for ages?” The House erupted into gales of laughter, LaGuardia - himself the son of a Jewish mother - included.

My favorite Florence Prag Kahn quip - and one which likely wouldn’t get a laugh from members of the current Congressional “Clown Car Caucus” - comes from the time when the House’s most ultraconservative - and least liked - member acidly asked her, “Would you support a birth control law?” Without taking time to draw a breath, Rep. Kahn answered, “Yes I would . . . if you personally make it retroactive!”

I remember doing my initial research on Mrs. Kahn back in the early 1990s. I was occupying a tiny cubby on the top floor of Harvard’s Widener Library. When I came across this line I cracked up and almost fell out of my chair . . . so much so that there quickly erupted the sound of a couple of dozen people “shushing” me. Believe me, it was hard to stop laughing . . .

Frequently, Mrs. Kahn used her rapier-like wit as a cover for her revulsion or distaste; call it the verbal version of Bonaparte’s “iron fist in a velvet glove” . . . firmness being couched not with outward gentleness, but rather with wit. Alas, such is rarely the case within the halls and walls of Congress. Today, instead of wit and double-entendre zingers, we hear catcalls and shouts of “YOU LIE!” as well as inanities such as “a stepmother really isn’t a mother at all,” or “Women who support abortion rights are too ugly to need them. Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

The various members of “Clown Car Caucus” who make these sort of comments - comments which drip with animus and ignorance - are perfect examples of the sorts of people to whom Florence Kahn was referring - those who would have made far greater contributions to society by never having been born in the first place. Think of the Frank Capra/James Stewart classic it’s a Wonderful Life . . . but in reverse. In the 1946 classic (the best film never to have won an Oscar), Stewart’s character, George Bailey, sees his life fall apart so quickly that he contemplates suicide . . . that his family - indeed, the entire world - would be better off with him dead. But the prayers of his loved ones result in his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody, (played to perfection by Henry Travers who’s in the photo alongside Stewart) coming to Earth to help him, with the promise of earning his wings. He shows George what things would have been like if he had never been born. And of course, being a Frank Capra film, everything comes up roses, sweet tea and scones.

Now let’s reverse that by implementing Rep. Kahn’s sarcastic quip, and granting retroactivity to the births of people who are daily making the world more dangerous, less civil, and stupefyingly more intolerant by march, marching to the beat of their dictatorial drums. These are the merchants of mayhem, whose chief wares are fear, fanaticism provincialism, and bigotry . . . four things the world can definitely do without.

Oh, if only they had never been born!

I’ll take the likes of Florence Prag Kahn over the clowns any day of the week . . . and twice on Sunday!

Copyright©2024 Kurt F. Stone

#991: Contraception and the Future of Medical Research

Of all the many “hats” I have worn over the past half-century - rabbi, political historian and speech-writer, author, blogger and essayist, occasional actor, professional “Hollywood Brat,” and medical ethicist - it’s this last one which has always given me the greatest sense of purpose, pleasure, and pride. Why? Well, simply put, it’s the one pursuit that has always given me the feeling that perhaps - just perhaps - I’m making a difference. I mean, week in, week out for more years than I can remember, I have been charged with the task of vetting medical research “informed consent” forms (ICFs) whose purpose is to safeguard the rights of men, women, and children who might well become volunteer participants in serious clinical trials.  It is my job - along with a host of brilliant medical specialists, surgeons, scientists, and bioengineers who work for the Institutional Review company called Advarra - to further the aims of medical research in fields ranging from oncology and infectious diseases to gynecology, gastroenterology, and dozens of other ologies in the pursuit of progress.  Indeed, it is the greatest of all honors to be the enemies of those who reject science . . . who believe that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a criminal who should be put in jail for crimes against humanity.  We who gladly labor in the vineyards of medical ethics are the ones, after all, who were instrumental in making sure that various COVID-19 vaccines got into the veins of people in record time . . . thus saving tens of millions of lives.

 This past Wednesday (June 5, 2024), while spending the better part of the day vetting several Informed Consent Forms (ICFs) dealing with trials concerning various diseases and syndromes, I was keeping an eye on a computer “crawler” keeping me up-to-date on a particular vote in the U.S. Senate; one dealing with the future of contraception. In order to understand just what it was that the Senate was voting on this past Wednesday, one must first recall something Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion overturning Roe v Wade (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization et al ): “[The Court] should reconsider” all three decisions, saying it had a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents (Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 decision that declared married couples had a right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 case invalidating sodomy laws and making same-sex sexual activity legal across the country; and Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case establishing the right of gay couples to marry.) Then, Justice Thomas wrote, after “overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions” protected the rights they established.

The bill the senate was voting on this past Wednesday, was the Right to Contraception Act (S1999), sponsored by Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey and cosponsored by nearly every Democrat in that body. Its purpose in being brought to the floor for an up-or-down vote at this particular time was as clear as clear can be: to force Senate Republicans (as well as those in the House where there is a companion bill) to go on the record as to whether they are for or against permitting women to have legal access to virtually any form of birth control (sans complete sexual abstention). From a political point of view - and in an election year - it was a great idea: make Republicans accountable. According to the national poll 538, “, . . . around 90 percent of Americans said condoms and birth control pills should be legal in “all” or “most” cases, and 81 percent said the same of IUDs (intrauterine devices). And, there is very little difference in support for the legality of each of these contraceptives across party lines.’ It seemed like a slam dunk for the Democrats.’

But what did the Republicans do? Instead of voting against Senator Markey’s bill and exposing themselves as a bunch of retrograde Luddites, they voted to block action on the legislation. Senate Republicans, aware that contraception access is overwhelmingly popular even with their own voters, pretended their “no” votes were meaningless. “This is a show vote. It’s not serious. It doesn’t mean anything,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. More than 20 GOP senators signed a statement from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., declaring “There is no threat to access to contraception… and it’s disgusting that Democrats are fearmongering on this important issue to score cheap political points.” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., baselessly claimed the bill could be applied to protect access to abortion pills. He also scoffed at the notion that Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that struck down state criminal bans on the sale of birth control to married couples, is in danger. “Nobody’s gonna overturn Griswold,” he said. “No way.”

 What’s that old retort from childhood? Liar, liar, pants on fire . . . “  I have to believe that those Republicans old enough to remember this verse also remember its response: I don’t care, I don’t care; I can buy another pair.  The final vote was 51-39 on this procedural issue that required at least 60 senators in order to move forward. But they are unwilling to go on the record; to put their votes where their mouths are, thus facing the political consequences of their cowardice. In the main, GOP lawmakers said the measure was too broad as well as unnecessary. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, both Republicans, broke with their party and voted to advance the legislation. Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. JD Vance didn’t vote.

At the precise moment the crawler on the bottom of one of my computer screens flashed the news about the failed vote, I was vetting an informed consent document on the efficacy of administering an injection of a particular drug SubQ (into the fatty tissue just beneath the skin, as opposed to IV -  directly into the vein) for subjects with Multiple Sclerosis - a long-lasting (chronic) disease of the central nervous system which is thought to be an autoimmune disorder . . . a condition in which the body attacks itself by mistake.  The object of the study I was working on was to see if a SubQ injection is as safe and clinically efficacious as the same drug when infused or injected into a vein. 

As my eyes moved over to the screen with the crawler, I was reading through the section dealing with pregnancy; both the inclusionary and exclusionary criteria, and what forms of birth control must be used by women (and men) if they are going to be participants in the study.  (n.b.: there are currently more than 1 million people living with MS in the United States; women are three times more likely than men to be diagnosed with this potentially debilitating condition.)  

Just about any and every Informed Consent Form (ICF) contains a rather lengthy and all-encompassing section dealing with pregnancy.  In most cases, pregnancy (or the ability to get a partner pregnant) is an exclusion . . . unless the potential subject of the trial or study uses one or more forms of birth control.  Then the form will continue with a long list of various acceptable methods of control.

As I was scanning this section, half my brain was thinking about the vote just concluded in the U.S. Senate.  Then it dawned on me: if birth control is (G-d forbid) outlawed, it likely lead to the utter dismantling of most future medical research.  How so? Well, if one cannot prevent pregnancy (except via total abstinence) one cannot participate in most - if not all - clinical trials; and without the ability to conduct ethical, well-monitored medical research, few if any new drugs or treatments will ever see the light of day.  I wonder if any of these “pro-birth” (my preferred term for what has heretofore been called "pro-life”) conservatives and anti-science conspiratorialists have considered this chillingly ironic political sequela (a medical term defined as “A pathological condition resulting from a prior disease, injury, or attack.”)  As much as I would like to give the anti-birth control, anti science crowd the benefit of the doubt - i.e. that they haven’t considered the very serious real-life consequences of their political actions - I cannot; the fact of the matter is that the further they progress, the more medical science - and thus all of us - retrogress. 

Not a day goes by without hearing that in 2024, Democracy, freedom, and the right to choose are all on the ballot.  Those making this breathless statement are telling the truth.  Now we can add another truth: in 2024, the future of both science and medicine are also on the ballot.  Think wisely; be proactive; the future is ours to protect, so that we may all be protected in and from the future. 

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone