How Low Can You Go?

                                Charles Kushner: Trump’s Mechutan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8 days until the Georgia election;

23 days until Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are inaugurated.

Be safe . . . See you next year!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

The Politics of Pandemics: a Primer

                                    The Black Death Hits Venice

In October, 1347, the Black Death, a variant of bubonic plague, arrived in Europe and began killing about half the population, thus changing the social order and transforming the European continent forevermore. Although it was no means the world’s first pandemic, it did carry with it the most memorable of all history's fatal taglines: “The Black Death.”

Despite being largely discredited by the vast majority of medical historians like the Swiss-born Iris Ritzmann, millions of central Europeans fervently believed that Jews were to blame for the plague, and as such gruesomely killed them off by the hundreds of thousands. Hey, if you’ve got to blame someone for being the cause of an otherwise inexplicable disease which wound up killing off more than 200 million men, women and children, why not make it the Jews?

The first of history’s horrific pandemics was known as The Plague of Justinian (541 C.E.). It was caused by a single bacterium known as Yersinia pestis, and hung around most of the inhabited world for more than a thousand years. The Plague of Justinian arrived in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 541 CE. It was then carried over the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt, a recently conquered land paying tribute to Emperor Justinian in grain. Plague-ridden fleas hitched a ride on the black rats that snacked on the grain. This plague decimated Constantinople and spread like wildfire across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia killing an estimated 30 to 50 million people, perhaps half the world’s population.

When the Black Death finally made its way to Venice in 1347 the Doges (city fathers), although possessing no scientific understanding of contagion, were able to fathom that it had something to do with proximity. As a result, forward-thinking officials in the Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) decided to keep newly arrived sailors in isolation until they could prove they weren’t sick. At first, sailors were held on their ships for 30 days, which became known in Venetian law as a trentino. As time went on, the Venetians increased the forced isolation to 40 days or a quarantino, the origin of the word “quarantine,” and the start of its practice in the Western world.

In England, the Black Death kept popping up every decade from 1348 and 1665; each decade found nearly 20% of the population succumbing to this plague. Then there was smallpox, which wiped out entire populations in Mexico, North Africa and parts of Asia. In 1801. British doctor Edward Jenner famously inoculated his gardener’s 9-year-old son with cowpox and then exposed him to the smallpox virus with no ill effect. Jenner’s vaccine was right on the money, but wouldn’t totally eradicate the disease until 1980.

The 1918-1920 “Spanish Flu,” the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide —about one-third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million men, women and children, including some 675,000 Americans. Here in the United States there were 2 waves; the first wasn’t nearly as lethal as the second, which saw the Wilson administration ordering U.S. citizens to wear masks, close and shutter schools, theaters and businesses; bodies piled up in makeshift morgues before the virus ended its deadly global march. There is little evidence that people declared these steps to be illegal obstacles to freedom . . . unlike what we see and hear today during our current COVID-19 crisis.

In brief, the history of pandemics has shown progress on many fronts including the superstitious, the social, the scientific and today, something rather new: the political. The progress with which biochemists, epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists have created, tested and vetted innumerable vaccines (two of which have just this past week received FDA emergency approval) is nothing short of the miraculous. In my work with the medical and scientific experts at Advarra (for which, by law, our primary mandate is to protect the rights and safety of participants in clinical trials), it has never ceased to amaze me how much distance there is between pharmaceuticals, procedures and just plain politics. From our side of the aisle, it has been both deeply tragic and utterly laughable to observe the countless roadblocks and phantasmagoric pronouncements of politicians who haven’t got the slightest idea of what they’re talking about. They have placed an altogether psychotic roadblock on the pathway to cure.

More and more, we read or hear the declarations of so-called community leaders who aver that COVID-19 is a “hoax” nefariously created and funded by the likes of the late Hugo Chavez, Bill Gates and George Soros; that vaccines created by the likes of Pfizer and Moderna have not been created to stem the tide of the COVID-19 pandemic but rather to implant microchips into those receiving vaccinations for the express purpose of tracking every human being on the planet. Further, these same people claim that the wearing of masks, observing social distancing and other sensible precautions represent nothing less than the death of liberty.

Then there are those who are scaring the daylights out of people by telling them that these vaccines are purposefully made to inflict lethal harm, not healing.

A couple of examples might be useful. Just the other day, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro criticized Pfizer, bizarrely warning that their BioNTech vaccine could result in such strange side-effects as women growing beards and people turning into crocodiles. He also announced that under no circumstances would he submit to being vaccinated.  And by the way, Bolsonaro is one of the autocrats that our current POTUS most admires.

Closer to home, just this past Friday, Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that he will not be taking the coronavirus vaccine, explaining that he is “more concerned about the safety of the vaccine” than the “side effects of the disease.” “It is my choice,” Rep. Buck told Cavuto: “I’m an American and I have the freedom to decide if I’m going to take a vaccine or not and, in this case, I’m not going to take the vaccine.” Then there are all those “super spreader” gatherings we see covered on the nightly news in which hardly anyone is wearing a mask or keeping their distance. It seems that for a troubling minority, refusing to wear a mask or keep six-foot distances are marks of all-American machismo or marianismo. (Do note, being a hardcore anti-vaxxer is by no means the exclusive purview of conservative Republicans and political lunatics; If you look at some of the places where opposition to vaccinations for children is highest, it’s places like Santa Monica, Marin County (just across the Golden Gate Bridge) and Seattle, none of which are part of the right wing.

Here in Florida (which, with a few exceptions is the reddest part of the Deep South)-, Governor Ron DeSantis (a.k.a. in umbra Trump (Latin for “In the Shadow of Trump”) has made it next to impossible for counties or municipalities to initiate their own pro-mask, pro-social distancing ordinances and has further mandated that restaurants, bars, gyms, nail parlors and other such businesses remain open so as not to interfere with the state’s supposedly reemerging economy. (It should be noted that DeSantis is giving serious thought to running for POTUS in 2024 should his revered leader not. As such, he is doing everything in his power to keep on the good side of Trump’s right-wing, Libertarian base.) DeSantis has also managed to distort both COVID-19 and COD (Cause of Death) stats so as to make it seem that deaths attributable to the pandemic are much lower than the more trustworthy stats provided by the Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center.

While the scientific/medical progress made in the pursuit of corralling COVID-19 has been nothing short of a breathtaking miracle, the politics behind it all have been as terrifying as any Wes Craven-directed slasher film. On the science/medical side of the pandemic, researchers and ethicists have done their jobs with tireless alacrity, going through tens of dozens of clinical trials in order to develop vaccines which are both relatively safe and more than reasonably effective. Are these vaccines perfect? No . . . no drug, vaccine or medical procedure is 100% safe. There is always the possibility of “adverse events” (side effects) depending on a host of issues like “comorbidities” (other medical conditions like HIV, diabetes, immune system deficits or advanced age). And of course, any medicine or vaccine must by law include the majority of these possible known side effects. Anyone who has ever watched drug ads on television knows that the majority of a 60-second spot is consumed with telling you all the possible things that could go wrong. Although both the legal and ethical thing to do, it’s nonetheless enough to keep many people from telling their physician to try the drug - although why a patient should be telling the doctor what to try has always seemed to me a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

Knowing that I have been working on COVID-19 protocols for most of 2020 (along with the “Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Project” for the past 5), I am frequently asked if I will be taking one of the various anti-COVID-19 vaccines. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes,” I tell them. “I will be doing it for me, for my family and friends, my students, neighbors, coworkers and congregants . . . for anyone and everyone I may come into contact with.”

I always conclude my answer with: “And always remember:  the acronym for “United States” is “U.S.,” as in “us.”

We are all in this together.

15 days until the Georgia Senate elections

30 days until the beginning of the Biden/Harris administration.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Where’s Smedley Now That We Need Him?

Back in 1852, Karl Marx published an essay entitled The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. The genesis for this brief essay was an event which occurred on December 2 1851 when followers of French President Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) broke up the Legislative Assembly and established a dictatorship. A year later, Louis Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III.

    General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940)

In this minor - though fascinating - work Marx traced how the conflict of different social interests manifests itself in the complex web of political struggles. In other words, as is stated in the Hebrew Bible (Koheleth [Ecclesiastes] 1:9), ““There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Unquestionably, the most famous (though frequently misquoted) statement found in The 18th Brumaire is still regarded as one heck of a truism even during the waning days of the Trump Presidency in 2020: that historical entities appear twice, "the first as tragedy, then as farce." Marx, of course, knew nothing of Donald Trump the man; he did, however, know tons and tons about autocrats like Donald Trump. In the 18th Brumaire, Marx was aiming his pen at - respectively - Napoleon I and then to his nephew Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III).

The haunting truth of Marx’s old chestnut came to mind yesterday, when SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States) gave the shortest of shrifts to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal brief (along with amicus briefs from 17 other states’ attorneys general and a majority of Congressional Republicans) to overturn - and thus invalidate - the 2020 presidential election. This legal kick in the privates came just days after the Roberts’ Court took all of one sentence to tell Trump et al to take a long hike on a short pier in their case against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Ever since it has been understood that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and Senator Kamala Harris will be the next President and Vice President of the United States of America, Donald Trump and his [il[legal team have filed more than 4 dozen cases in state and federal courts, seeking to have the 2020 presidential election overturned.  Their batting average has been near zero.  For this we can offer prayers of thanksgiving to the American judiciary which, for the most part, refuse to be drawn into any conspiratorial coup.  Come tomorrow, December 14, the 2020 presidential election will have become part of American history; Donald Trump will be a loser,  Joseph Biden a winner and the attempted coup will begin melting into the scummy slag of history. 

“So where,” you may well ask, “is the tragedy and the farce?”  The farce, to put second things first, is the attempted coup created by Donald Trump, his autocratic billionaire buddies, a gaggle of different Nationalist, Racist, White Supremacist, uber-libertarian and conspiratorial groups; and all those who wish nothing more than to  dismantle virtually everything ever done or dreamed by former President Barack Obama and his administration. These coup-masters are a frightening cult made up of folks who disdain Ivy League graduates, progressives, immigrants, scientists, most Jews, environmentalists and feminists; they are, for the most part, made up of all those Second Amendment-loving Americans who seek a return to the days of the Cold War when political correctness was unheard of, Ozzie And Harriet were the typical American family, and moms stayed at home in order to raise a family.  It is a “farce,” precisely because it is a misguided dream of yesteryear.  

So far as “tragedy” goes, let’s hop into the “Wayback Machine” and alight on the earliest days of the FDR administration. Shortly after his inauguration in March, 1933, a group of the wealthiest men in America started putting together and funding a campaign which they hoped and prayed would punish - and eventually remove from office - the most aristocratic of all American presidents. Their reason?  Because, as the most blue-blooded member of the Mayflower-Groton-Harvard-patrician breed, he turned out to be very much on the side of the working middle class; a progressive with deep ties to the Jewish/immigrant/rural community. To his classmates and club mates, he became nothing short of an anathema – a traitor to his class and culture. And that is why that group made up of the richest of the American rich sought to overthrow him through a coup in early 1933. They were also deeply afraid that he might raise their taxes. Although not necessarily widely reported in history texts, this group was at the epicenter of what historians have called either “The Business Plot,” or “The Wall Street Putsch.”

It was a dangerous time in America . . . much like the times we have been living through of late. Then along came FDR who soundly thrashed incumbent President Hoover in the 1932 election and then embarked upon an ambitious legislative program aimed at easing some of the troubles. But he faced vitriolic opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. During FDR’s historic “first hundred days,” West Virginia Republican Senator Henry Hatfield (a member of the “Hatfields v McCoys” clan) worriedly wrote a colleague that:  "This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not merely signed the death warrant of capitalism, but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom."

Times were extraordinarily tense.  According to historian Sally Denton in her excellent 2012 book The Plots Against the President, “. . . fascism, communism, even Nazism seemed like possible solutions to the country's ills. . . . Some people even called for a dictator to pull America out of the Great Depression.”  In addition to the bankers who underwrote the “putsch” (one of whom, Brown Brothers/Harriman partner Prescott Bush would eventually become a U.S. Senator from Connecticut and the father of future President George H.W. Bush) thought that they could convince Roosevelt to relinquish power to a basically fascist, military-type government.  It was, in the words of historian Denton, “a cockamamie concept.” The conspirators had several million dollars (and this was in 1933!), a stockpile of weapons and had even reached out to a retired Marine general, Smedley Darlington Butler, to lead their forces.

Smedley Darlington who?  General Butler (nicknamed “Old Gimlet Eye” due to his feverish, bloodshot eyes) was, in 1933, the most highly decorated Marine in American history - the only one to be awarded the Brevet Medal (awarded for “Extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force”) and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. Following “The Great War,” Butler quickly became a household name in America. People trusted him; his name and fame were right up there with Charles Lindbergh and General John J. Pershing. Butler would meet on quite a few occasions with the principles of this plot - including the aforementioned Prescott Bush, bond salesman extraordinaire Gerald MacGuire, Bob Doyle of the American Legion, members of the DuPont family and Singer Sewing Machine heir Robert Sterling Clark.  Their topic was, of course about overthrowing FDR and instituting a Fascist form of government. They then sent Butler out across the country, making speech after speech about the absolute necessity of getting rid of Roosevelt and his band of “communists, socialists, Jewish Marxists and anti-capitalists.”  They would eventually coalesce into “The America First” committee

But somewhere along the way, Butler became convinced that these bankers, heirs and white-shoe, blue-blooded Wall Street attorneys represented a vile danger to our form of government. When he finally got around to asking bond-broker MacGuire what specifically was wanted of him from the group, Butler was told he would be the ideal leader of a vast army of veterans, promising him an army of 500,000 men and all but limitless financial backing, so long as he would be willing to lead a march on the White House to displace Roosevelt.

With time, General Butler moved further and further to the political left, and actually became so anti war that he picked up a new nickname: “The Fighting Quaker.” Finally, unable to remain a part of the crowd of conspirators - let alone leading an anti-Democratic, anti-Semitic putsch - Butler decided he had to do something about it.  But who, he thought, would ever believe what he  had to report?  It was such an outlandish plot as to sound like a story-line from Mark Twain at his fabulist best. Increasingly troubled by MacGuire’s plans, Butler knew he would need someone to corroborate his story if he was going to stop the intended coup. Having previously worked as a police captain in Philadelphia, Butler reached out to a reporter from the Philadelphia Record named Paul Comly French, who agreed to meet with MacGuire as well.  (French, by the way, had gained fame for covering the Lindbergh baby kidnapping - one of the most sensational stories of the early 1930s). During this meeting, MacGuire told French that he believed a fascist state was the only answer for America, and that Smedley Butler was the “ideal leader” because he “could organize one million men overnight.”

Armed with French’s mutual testimony, Butler appeared before the McCormack-Dickstein congressional committee, also known as the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, to reveal what he knew about the plot to seize the presidency in November 1934. (The committee’s co-chairs were Massachusetts Democrat John McCormick [1891-1980], an Irish Catholic who would serve as Speaker of the House from 1962-1971 and New York Democrat Sam Dickstein [1885-1954], the Lithuanian-born son of an Orthodox rabbi who would eventually serve 9 years as a Justice of the New York Supreme Court.  The two men did not get along with one another at all.  Whenever McCormack wielded the gavel, Dickstein absented himself; whenever Dickstein led the committee, McCormack was nowhere to be seen.)  

Listening to General Butler, along with the testimony of both French, and the erratic MacGuire, the committee began to further investigate the plot. The final reports of the committee sang a different tune, finding that all of Butler’s claims could be corroborated as factual. However, they also stressed that the plot was far from being enacted, and it was not clear if the plans would have ever truly come to fruition.

Quickly becoming known as the “White House Coup” and the “Wall Street Putsch,” many major news sources derided Butler’s claims, as the committee’s final report was not made available publicly. Those implicated, ranging from the DuPont family to Prescott Bush, laughed off Butler’s claims; they believed that they were “above the law.” Evidence of the validity of Butler’s testimony was not released until the 21st century, when the committee’s papers were published in the Public Domain. No one was ever prosecuted in connection with the plot.  And yet, without General Butler, there is every reason to believe that some sort of coup would have occurred and likely succeeded.  When America needed what today we would refer to as a “whistle blower,” Smedley D. Butler was there, doing what he did best: being a hero.  (BTW: General Butler wrote a brief book in 1935 [still in print] that for years, was taught in American public schools: War is a Racket.  It is one of the most profound antiwar essays in all American history.

Despite the fact that Donald Trump will no longer be occupying the White House after this coming January 20, (fingers crossed, lucky Dodger socks pulled tight), he is likely not going to be leaving the American political scene.  He and his henchmen (which include Ivanka, Jared, Eric and Donald, Jr.) have already amassed more than a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in their own PAC - ostensibly to keep paying their attorney fees for cases they cannot win . . . let alone get on any court’s docket.  Mostly, the money will be used to fund the Trump lifestyle as well as keeping him on the campaign circuit supporting those who bow before him and destroying those who have seen through or had the chutzpah to criticize him.  He is by no means finished with his task of destroying America while selling the Trump brand and - who knows - creating his own media empire.  There are dire consequences for both America and indeed, the world - in having an unhinged, amoral narcissist go unchallenged.  The fact that a clear majority of all elected Republicans are either incapable of - or afraid to - stand up like Smedley Butler and tell the truth about this miscreant from Manhattan (actually Queens) is both a curse and a stain on the fabric of civil society.

To all those Senate Republicans who are hinting that they won’t be holding hearings for any of Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees until they are 100% convinced that Trump’s loss wasn’t a case of fraud (i.e. never), I have one thing to say: don’t ever refer to yourself a patriot. You are cultists driven to do whatever your dictatorial master commands - even if it will bring down the American political system. You actually see no danger in declaring the next POTUS illegitimate in the eyes of nearly half the American people. Do you have any idea of how foolish and robotically puerile you look to the rest of the world? Are you that feverishly  fearful of Donald Trump that you would eviscerate the body politic in the hopes that he won’t find someone to challenge you in the next Republican primary?  Where is your spine?

And so, permit me to issue a call for any and all true American patriots (in the real sense of the word) to step into the shoes of General Smedley D. Butler and tell it like it is.

Goodness knows, we need each and every one of you. NOW!

23 days until the Georgia elections.

38 days until the Biden/Harris administration gets to work.

Here’s wishing our Jewish friends a chag chanukah s’maycha! May your latkes (and/or sufgan’yot be delicious and calorie-free . . . And do remember: this is the season for miracles!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Of Soiled Doves and Yiddishe Nazis

155 years ago today (December 6, 1865), the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became the law of the land. Simply stated, it formally abolished slavery. It provided that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Without question, its enactment has long been a high point in American history. All it took was a war between the North and South which nearly wrecked a nation and cost more than 600,000 deaths. Sadly, there are still those who, despite being unable to identify precisely what the Constitution’s 13th Amendment outlaws, act as if it never came into existence. Sadly, the words of Irish statesman Edmund Burke (or Winston Churchill or Spanish Philosopher George Santayana) still ring true: “Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

I begin this week’s post in this manner because today, the 6th of December 2020, Colorado Governor Jared Polis chose to recognize this anniversary on his Facebook page. Governor Polis, who is a friend of mine (I wrote a lengthy biographic essay of him in my 2010 work The Jews of Capitol Hill), reprinted the Amendment’s 32 words and succinctly noted that “With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the Constitution.” Unsurprisingly, the Governor’s post received as many nasty putdowns as warm-hearted accolades. One nasty respondent wrote: “Great post, Jared. Now maybe you should read the parts about Freedom of Religion and the Freedom to Bear Arms. Might do you good to brush up on the First, Second, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments considering you've violated all of those being the good little Nazi that you are.”  

I rarely answer these Facebook tirades; responding to the diatribes of moral/political albinos is not my idea of a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  In this case, however, I made an exception due to both my anger and disbelief.  I wrote back to this fellow “I cannot imagine anything more vile or less civil than accusing a practicing Jew of being a Nazi. Shame on you, Mr. . . .” Thank G-d my response elicited dozens upon dozens of replies which backed up my pique, and agreed with my analysis. Another civic cretin stated with great certainty that Governor Polis was nothing short of being a communist conspirator being paid by George Soros!  (It should be noted that Jared, who along with his family founded such online behemoths as Pro Flowers and Blue Mountain Greeting cards is easily worth more than $300 million.) To this right-wing automaton I wrote “What planet do you come from? Do you really, truly believe the tripe you just posted?”  My response received lots and lots of “thumbs up” and heart emojis.  Nonetheless, despite all these very supportive reactions, I still found myself burning up inside.

Another online thread has been going on and on about President-Elect Biden’s having suffered a broken foot while playing with one of his future “first dogs.”  Through a bit of simple photoshopping, there are tons of pictures of him wearing a boot on either his right or left foot - which leads hundreds of thousands of cyber simpletons to conclude that he is either: a) faking it, or b) “a moron who needs his filthy wh*re of a wife to label his shoes right foot or left foot because he is both feeble and stupid.”  To this one, who turned out to be so utterly simpleminded as to get my obvious sarcasm, I wrote: “I never knew these things about the Bidens.  Please, could you provide me with the link to this information so I can share it with my online posse?”  Of course, I never received a reply . . .

Dr. Jill Biden a strumpet? (or “soiled dove,” “victim of frail sisterhood,” “pavement princess” “demimondane” or “skank” - there are tons of synonyms); The President-Elect a mental midget?  Governor Polis a Nazi?  Where in the world do so many people come up with such noxious tripe?  Do they really, truly believe that Dr. Biden is a woman of loose morals but that Melania Trump is a vestal virgin?  Do they really truly believe that “According to everyone in Joe Biden’s law school class, he was the dumbest student at the school” but that  “Donald Trump is a genius!” or that “QAnon people are true patriots,” but that Jared Polis is “a murderous Nazi?” Also, which would be worse? That they really, truly do believe these things or that they do not? What kind of world do they wish to live in? One in which assailing, threatening and browbeating those who have different backgrounds constitutes the gold (or in this case, the pyrite) standard of society? One in which fear is the fuel and ignorance the ideal? How did we ever wind up with so many cynical, shallow and utterly graceless citizens?

Over the past several weeks I’ve communicated with an awful lot  of people who I will lovingly refer to as “the political pompom brigade”; folks who, like the Munchkins of Oz, cannot wait to sing out “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead!” Sorry gang, as much as I share your joy and elation at the elevation of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the devolution of Trump and Pence, I do not believe that things are suddenly going to be doing a political 180. There are simply too many politically-charged incendiary devices buried beneath the nation’s surface. Need proof? As of 48 hours ago, there were a mere 27 of 249 Congressional Republicans who had found the courage to publicly admit that Joe Biden actually defeated Donald Trump. According to interviews with all the GOP members of Congress conducted by the Washington Post, two Republicans consider Trump the winner despite all evidence to the contrary. And another 220 GOP members of the House and Senate — about 88 percent of all Republicans serving in Congress — will simply not say who won the election. How shocking; how depressing; they might as well believe that Sandy Koufax was a right-handed reliever for the Yankees! And of course, there are other buried I.E.D.s . . . such as last-minute stacking of the Pentagon and Intel agencies with Trump/Pompeo loyalists . . . to what end, not even the good Lord knows.

And while it is indeed true that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and those they have named to staff and lead the incoming administration are far more competent, worldly and professional than those we’ve be putting up with these past 4 years, undoing what they have done (or doing what they have undone) isn’t going to happen in the first 100 or even 1,000 days. We’re still going to be dealing with the many interminable roadblocks which have been strewn across the path of progress, not to mention all those who are more than willing to sit on their hands until 2022 or 2024, and the Trump base which will continue believing that the new administration is illegitimate, the first Lady a "soiled dove,” and anyone who disagrees with them a Communist, a Nazi or a  traitor.  

Do keep in mind the (slightly altered) words of Bette Davis in All About Eve: “Fasten on your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy flight.”  

Let’s keep our chins up, our eyes on the prize and our collective energy level at full bore.  Together, we will make it!

29 days until the Senate elections in Georgia;

43 days until the Inauguration. 

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Pardon Me?

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

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

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

So what choices does Boss Tweet have?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

36 days until the Georgia election.

51 days until Biden and Harris are inaugurated.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"Not With a Bang But a Whimper"

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

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

42 days until the senate elections in Georgia;

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

Copyright©2020 Kurt F Stone

There's Still a Lot of Work to Be Done

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Postcards

2. The script-to be handwritten

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Together, we can help change the world.

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

66 days until the inauguration.

51 days until the Georgia election!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Biden and Harris: They Know Our Names

For the past 24 hours I’ve had an endless loop of the late Marvin Gaye’s Dancing in the Streets (as sung, of course, by the legendary “Martha and the Vandellas”) pounding out a beat in my head.  And to make matters even better, most cable and network stations are showing people doing precisely that: “Dancing in the Streets.”  The lyrics and televised actualities are in perfect sync:

They're dancing in Chicago (dancing in the street)
Down in New Orleans (dancing in the street)
In New York City (dancing in the street)

All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swinging, swaying, and records playing
Dancing in the street . . .

It's an invitation across the nation
A chance for folks to meet
There'll be laughing, singing, and music swinging
Dancing in the street

Philadelphia, PA (dancing in the street)
Baltimore and D.C. now (dancing in the street)
Can't forget the Motor City (dancing in the street)

All we need is music, sweet music (sweet music)
There'll be music everywhere (everywhere)
There'll be swinging, swaying, and records playing
Dancing in the street

And of course, all the ‘dancing and singing’ is because of Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ victory in the presidential race.  As I write this, Biden and Harris have 279 electoral votes to Trump and Pence’s 214.  It seems likely that the Democratic ticket will wind up with 306 votes in the Electoral College; precisely the same number that Trump/Pence scored in 2016.  Of course, 4 years ago, Donald Trump declared that those 306 votes represented “a landslide victory of historic proportions.”  One wonders if the soon to become former POTUS will ever accord the Biden/Harris ticket the same accolade?  Will it be of any consolation that he did wind up receiving the 2nd largest number of votes in American history?  Probably not; coming in second is simply not part of his psychological make-up.

Whether or not the GOP ran the nastiest, least truthful campaign in American history should best be left to the historians.  Ever since Joe Biden became the official Democratic Party nominee, the opposition has accused him of being the “most corrupt, least successful of all presidential candidates.”  They have accused both him and Senator Harris of being “Socialists” and “Communists” who have made vast fortunes for themselves and their families.  I even read a piece which flatly stated that  the former Vice President and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, have squirreled away so  much money that today, they own “the biggest mansion in Delaware.”  This is of course so much twaddle.  Upon reading this scurrilous bit of bilge, I wrote the author a brief reply: “Are you aware that Delaware has long been home to the du Pont family, and that among their many, many mansions within that state one finds Nemours Mansions and Gardens?  It is a 47,000 sq. ft., 110 room estate sitting on more than 300 acres with a jardin à la française formal garden? By comparison, Joe and Dr. Jill’s main residence is a 6,850-square-foot home in an upscale suburb of Wilmington, the land for which they purchased in 1996.  Whatever wealth he possesses (c. $9 million as of this year) has been earned since he left public office in 2017 - mostly from lectures and a book contract . . . 

So far as I recall, at no  time during the brutal 2020 election, did the former Vice President attack the  President or his children for making vast sums by trading in on his name and connections.  It is interesting to note that  the total amount of money Hunter Biden has been accused  of making during his several years with Burisma (for which he was slammed for not knowing anything about the oil industry) equals approximately 1 month’s earnings for Ivanka and Jared Kushner.  And at no time, so far as I recall, did the former V.P. attack them for the absolute lack of knowledge or experience they brought to their many advisory positions in the Trump administration.

So what is it that not only caused more than 75,000,000 people to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but largely reject every charge laid against him/them by Trump and Pence?

First, there were the obvious differences in personal presentations: Trump is an angry man who only uses that one one-letter pronoun: “I.” By comparison, Joe Biden fully understands that our nation’s most important, most compelling document begins in the plural . . . “WE the people.” Joe Biden, although certainly no shrinking violet, is, by and large, a gentleman who embodies civility, empathy and a commoner’s sense of what is right and what is wrong . . . unlike Donald Trump, who comes off as some sort of multi-generational aristocrat. Remember all those times Trump claimed that Biden had “abandoned” Scranton, Pennsylvania and likely didn’t remember thing one about it?

In one campaign speech in Scranton, Trump, speaking before a largely unmasked crowd said “"And don't forget Biden deserted you. He's not from Pennsylvania. I guess he was born here, but he left you, folks. He left you for another state. Remember that, please. I meant to say that. This guy talks about oh, I know Scranton . . . . Well, I know the places better. He left you for another state and he didn't take care of you because he didn't take care of your jobs." Do remember: Joe Biden is the fellow who took the train every morning and night from Wilmington to Washington, D.C., so that he could tuck his children in every night and make their breakfast every morning. He was, like all the other commuters . . . just a guy with a job. By comparison, Donald Trump never mentioned his family roots in Jamaica Estates Queens . . . he would have us believe that he was always a man from 5th Avenue.

Much has been made about all the toil, trouble and tragedy Joe Biden has  gone  through in his life:

• The death his first wife and daughter as well as the serious injuring of his two sons in a car crash on the very day he was originally scheduled to take the oath of office as a newly-elected United States Senator (he had to wait because at the  time of his election he was only 29 years old, and the Constitution requires a senator to be a minimum of  30  years old); 

• In 1988 he suffered two life-threatening brain aneurisms, barely escaping death;

• The death of his beloved son Beau (who served 2 terms as Delaware Attorney General), from brain cancer (Glioblastoma) at age 46.  (n.b. With the assistance of then-President Obama, Joe Biden turned the ashes of this tragedy into a blaze of hopefulness: the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative, “An Act to accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st century cures.” I am honored to be a part of the board which reviews the ethical standards by which the various clinical trials are undertaken.  We are making progress!). 

From all these tragedies - which would lead most people down into the pit of destruction and despair - Joe Biden has learned and grown.  Mostly, he claims by relying on his faith (he is only the 2nd Catholic to be elected {POTUS) and an indomitable spirit which makes him board that train every morning and every evening  in order to continue doing the work of the people.

But most importantly of all, I think the main reason why more than 75,000,000 people voted for him is that they see themselves in this kid from Scranton.

At the passing of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in April 1945, tens of millions of Americans gathered along the railroad tracks which took his body from Warm Springs, Georgia back to Washington, D.C. FDR, easily the most aristocratic, “blue blooded,” of all American presidents was first and foremost, a man of the people.  The story is told by political historian Judah Ginsberg about that final trek:

In Washington’s Union Station, a reporter asked a mourner, “Why are you here? Did you know Franklin Roosevelt?” The mourner replied: “No, I did not know President Roosevelt, but he knew me.”

“He knew me.” The squire of Hudson Valley, the closet thing this nation has had to an aristocracy, knew the mourner at Union Station and the thousands who stood for hours in the rain, watching for the train to go by.

This was the secret of FDR’s political success. He knew, he understood, the hopes and fears, the aspirations, worries, and concerns of the common man. More than any particular policies of the New Deal, most of which did not work anyhow, Roosevelt eased the trauma of the Great Depression by conveying that he cared, that he understood the suffering of Americans in those dark days.

In so many ways, the same can be said of both President Elect Joe Biden and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris: they know our names just as we know theirs.

May G-d bless them and keep them . . .

It's an invitation across the nation
A chance for folks to meet
There'll be laughing, singing, and music swinging
Dancing in the street…

And I am now honored to finally, finally be able to end a weekly essay with these words: 73 days until the Inauguration of the next POTUS.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

O Mio Babbino Caro

Last week’s essay strongly suggested that Maalox and expensive single-malt scotch were essential to keeping one from going stark raving nuts during the final 168 hours of the presidential race. Today, with just 48 or so hours remaining, might I suggest an elixir of a different sort: opera. Few, except family and my closest friends, know of the great love I harbor for this most delightful artform. And when it comes to the Hall of Fame of operatic composers, none, in my humble estimation, ranks higher than Giacomo Puccini (that’s him on the left.) Puccini (1858-1924), like his countryman, Giuseppe Verdi, had the G-d-given ability to tap into human emotion far better than just about any artist who ever lived.  Even if one doesn’t know più di poche parole basilari di italiano (“more than a few basic words in Italian), the loves, torments and emotions of his characters are still readily understandable . . . not so much because of the words themselves, but because of the heaven-sent scores he created. 

Of all his operas, my favorite - bar none - is one of his trio of one-act operas (il tritico - “The tryptych’’): Gianni Schicchi debuted at the Metropolitan Opera on December 14, 1918, along with the other two one-act operas: Il tabarro (“The Cloak”) and Suor Angelica (“Sister Angelica”).  Gianni Schicchi (pronounced “Johnny SKI-kee.”is a comic opera derived from a passage in the 30th canto of Dante’s Inferno,. That canto mentions, in an unflattering fashion, one Gianni Schicchi—who was an actual Florentine—as having been consigned to the eighth circle of hell with other forgers and cheats for disguising himself as Buoso Donati, a recently deceased Florentine aristocrat, in order to obtain Donati’s wealth for himself.

The high-point of the opera is the aria O mio babbino caro (“O my dear father”), sung by Lauretta, Johnny’s young daughter.  In the aria, she pleads with her father that if he forbids her from marrying Rinuccio, her true love, she will drown herself in the Arno.  Perhaps the greatest aria in the soprano’s lexicon, it has, over the past century, been successfully conquered by the  likes of  Dame Joan Southerland,  Montserrat Caballé, Maria Callas, Victoria de Los Angeles and . . . a brilliant Dutch South African named Amira Willighagen.  Amira’s version came to international attention when she was but 9 years old (today she’s 16 and even better).  And for those who have seen and/or heard her O mil babbino caro, there are tears to be shed, emotions to be felt and possesses the miraculous ability banish ennui, dread and weltschmerz a German word meaning “world weariness.”

Please give this tour-de-force a watch and a listen.  If nothing else, it might convince you that  in a world filled with pain, uncertainty, and the lack of what might be called the “artistry of humanity,” Amira’s singing of O mio bammbino caro may just well renew our belief in the possibility of beauty and redemption.  

Here’s to Tuesday . . . 

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

c. 175 hours to go . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

The Inevitable Law of Political Gravity

Could it possibly be true? Are we actually beginning to see Republican rats abandoning an inevitably sinking ship? Just the other day, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse - B.A. Harvard, Oxford University, M.A. St. Johns College, M.A., PhD Yale - unload on Donald Trump in a constituent call  saying a number of unflattering things about the President, including that he's "flirted with White supremacists" and "kisses dictators' butts.” The Republican senator went on to say “The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticized President Obama for that kind of spending I've criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with White Supremacists.” (As a response, POTUS has begun referring to the Nebraska senator as “Little Ben Sasse,” and has informed the world that “Sasse doesn’t have what it takes to be great.”

Ben Sasse isn’t the only Republican senator beginning to scurry down the gangplank. Just the other day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he hasn't visited the White House in two months because of how it has responded to the coronavirus. Among other things, he explained to a gathering in Kentucky, "[I] personally didn't feel that they were approaching the protection from this illness in the same way that I thought was appropriate for the Senate." Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been warning about a “Republican blood bath of Watergate proportions;” even South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham one of the president’s most vocal allies, predicted the president could very well lose the White House. It should be noted that Senators Sasse, McConnell and Graham, none of whom supported Trump during the 2016 primaries, have something else in common: they’re all up for reelection, don’t want to go down to defeat, and sure as hell are frightened to their very marrow about seeing both the House and Senate - not to mention the White House - under Democratic control.  As a result, many Republican office-holders are finally becoming aware that they are being dragged down by what one former COP member of Congress (Carlos Curbelo of Florida) insightfully  termed “the laws of political gravity.” They are finally beginning to speak up publicly against ‘45’s spending mania, his love affair with QAnon and white supremacist conspiracy theories, his dismantling of American influence in the  world and his classless disparagement of anyone and everyone who will not march in lock-step with him.  Why now?  Because they are terrified of losing their positions of power.  Why not sooner?  Because up until they recognized that the law of political gravity works, they were afraid of him - afraid of their leader taking reprisals against them.  But that no longer seems to be the case.  They simply cannot see themselves sinking into the hellish political abyss with him.

So what can we the people do?  First and foremost, I believe that with whatever time we have left before November 3, we must contact every Republican senator and let them know that if they are to redeem themselves in the eyes of their constituents, they must announce their change of mind and heart about the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  At the same time, we the people must make sure that video captures of these same senators firmly avowing that a presidential election year is the absolute worst  time to push through a Supreme Court appointment (as they did with Judge Merrick Garland back in 2016) - that these videos bloom like crocuses in the autumn.  Put their two-faced duplicity on public display and then let the voters decide.

It’s not just that Judge Barrett has refused to answer a single question posed by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee; we already know  where she stands on birth control, the repeal of Obamacare, same-sex marriage and a host of other significant issues.  It’s that she was nominated mostly to save POTUS’ political tuchas when political gravity drags him down to an inevitable defeat.  And she claims she has no knowledge about this! That’s about as believable as when POTUS claimed he really did not know Paul Manafort all that well or really didn’t know shinola about QAnon of the Proud Boys . . .

The public must be warned of precisely how much damage Judge Barrett will inflict on the people of this country.  Suddenly, millions of people with pre-existing conditions will be without access to health insurance - and in the middle of a pandemic which will be treated as a “pre-existing condition”; discrimination on the basis of religious scruple and who one loves will set us back at least a half century; ‘45’s filthy fingerprints will continue staining everything it touches for years and years to come through his hand-picked judiciary. . . even if  he is languishing in jail, living in exile or has shuffled off this mortal coil.

By now, after nearly 4 years in office, ‘45 has his base so well-trained that they seem totally ignorant of the fact that if he gets his way with Barrett and the American judiciary, that it will wreak havoc with real living, breathing human beings. Take, as but one example same-sex couples whose very status is likely to be endangered to the max. They are totally freaked out.

Mark Kallick and David Moore 2020

The other day, I received a brief email from Mark Kallick and David Moore, a loving couple I have known for more than 35 years.  Mark and David met on April 14, 1983 in Cincinnati, where David would spend 42 years (1972-2014) playing viola with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Mark teaching and selling real estate.  As happy and emotionally healthy a couple as anyone would choose to know or befriend, they have spent a lifetime working on behalf of progressive political causes; Mark especially, has never been one to merely sit back and permit discrimination, bigotry or outright stupidity to go unchallenged.  Even back in the early 1980s, we would hold “evening salons” in my rooms (we lived at the fabled “Rose Hill” in the North Avondale section of Cincinnati) and engage in heady political discussions with people of all stripes.  Some things never change: just this past February, Mark and David put together a panel discussion on the topic “Can Hate Ever Be Conquered?” up in Ormond Beach, Florida (where they winter) with the southern head of the ADL, former Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, leaders of the transgender and lesbian communities (among others) and yours truly.  By this time, Mark and David had finally become a legally married couple.

As Mark recounted in his recent email: “We had to wait for thirty years to become legally married on September 25, 2013. Additionally, we had to travel to the state of New York. The Federal Marriage Equality Act had still not been passed by the Supreme Court; there were still only a few states that had legalized same sex marriage . . . . During our first thirty years we celebrated many married couples anniversaries, went to countless weddings, sent endless cards and gifts...happily.”

“We were denied the opportunity to enjoy a marriage that was legally recognized by our fellow citizens.
We had to forego the family health insurance provided for us by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. I had to go out of my way to ingratiate myself to David’s doctors so that I could properly look after him during illness and surgeries; I could have been legally denied.”

I dedicated so many of my years working (even going door to door) for the betterment and furthering of the Nation’s LGBTQ community; being a founding board member of Equality Cincinnati, Fairness Kentucky, Carolcole House (an AIDS hospice) amongst many other endeavors; there were bitter setbacks and some hard fought victories.”

Mark concluded his missive with the following heartfelt thought: “On Tuesday I watched many hours of the senatorial hearings to replace the Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Ginsburg. The proposed nominee will render monumental decisions effecting profound facets of our private lives; including the fate of the marriage that David and I have been enjoying since September 25, 2013. One proposal is to make same sex marriage have less recognition and legal rights. I pray that we’ll be able to enjoy our legal marriage, in good health for all the years we have left together. This nominee will be confirmed and we will have to endure the challenges that will inevitably come before the United States Supreme Court, seeking to void our marriage. Other married couples may be wishing us well... but only same sex families will actually sit with baited breath... waiting and praying to G-d. I would not wish this indignity on another family.” 

When one puts real faces living real lives and telling real stories, it becomes far more  difficult to turn one’s back on them.  I heartily urge everyone reading this essay communicate with their senator (or someone else’s if yours isn’t up for reelection), and tell them in the strongest possible terms that their reelection hinges on standing with people like Mark and David . . . and those who are about to lose their healthcare, and those who are about to have their votes invalidated just so a racist, bigoted xenophobic homophobe with a penchant for lies and lucre can continue being president of a country whose citizens he cares not a fig for.

And  may the inevitable law of political gravity drag him and his colleagues down to Doggerland, the land beneath the sea.    

16 days to go until we change the future . . .
Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Nescience

Let us suppose - at least for the duration of this essay - that when all the votes are counted, the Biden-Harris ticket hands an electoral ass-whooping to Trump-Pence; that the Democrats maintain - and even expand - their majority in the House, and capture the Senate . . . as well as several more governorships and state legislatures. Although by no means a lead-pipe cinch, this outcome is within the realm of possibility. At the moment, no one knows what reaction to expect from ‘45 and his team should he succumb to a political bloodletting; will he reject it, lock the front, back and side doors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and call out the American military to protect him? Will he, in his last days in office declare war on China, Iran and/or Russia? Or will the leaders (?) and office-holders of his own political party finally, finally locate their “big boy, big girl” pants and tell him to באַקומען די גענעם אויס פון דאָ (pronounced bakumen di genem fune dah: Yiddish for “Get the hell out of here!”)?

Yes I know, the very thought of dismantling the current administration - along with all its corruption, lack of direction and cult-like devotion to one man - gives much of the American public - and indeed our once and (hopefully) future allies cause for cheerful optimism . . . a kind of “Ding dong the witch is dead” moment. But truthfully, dear reader, replacing Trump with Biden and McConnell with Schumer (as well as showing Miller, Mnuchin, Pompeo and Barr the door) is a mere first step on the path to recovery. For the current gang that couldn’t shoot straight is going to be leaving most of us with tremendous fiscal, medical and civil deficits, as well as systemic weakness and and grave doubts about ever again trusting anyone in power. Then too, there will be those who continue clinging to the staunch belief that’45 is, was and will always be the greatest, smartest and most capable of all American Presidents. Oh, it’s easy to deride them as fools and poorly educated drones. But do remember, they are far better armed than we, and lug about portmanteaus stuffed with resentment, bigotry and the certain knowledge that anyone on the “other side” is assuredly a communist, socialist or globalist. Case in point: the day after the Harris/Pence debate, ‘45 repeatedly referred to the California senator as both “a monster” and “a Communist.” By evening, those two terms could be heard on virtually every conservative and ultra-right wing talk show in America.

Yes, Trump and his tribe are leaving America in the throes of a lethal pandemic that will not go away, a job picture uglier than anything we’ve experienced since the Great Depression and a hell of a lot of people who stand defiantly against the country and government they wish to engage in a new Civil War.

Which brings us to the one thing which holds so much of this dire diagnosis together: nescience . . . our title word. Although hardly known and rarely used, nescience is a most useful word, meaning “ignorant or unknowing.” In all my years of reading novels and essays, I’ve only found it 3 times: In James Joyce’s Ulysses (chapter 17, in which he writes of “the lethargy of nescient matter”); W. Somerset Maugham’s The Hero (wherein the novel’s protagonist, James, is described as having been “. . .thrown into a blind rage by the complacency with which from the depths of his nescience his father dogmatised). and G.K. Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown (“In such a naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own”).

According to the great lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson, “There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would no rather know it than not know it.” Dr. Johnson teaches us that nescience evolved from a combination of the Latin prefix ne-, meaning "not," and scire, a verb meaning "to know." Dr. Johnson likely knew that scire is an ancestor of science, a word whose original meaning in English was "knowledge."

What this word has to do with our current POTUS and many of his cronies and appointees should be clear: both he and they are nescient when it comes to science, economics, foreign policy, conservation and a host of other subjects which are critical for leaders to know something about. In my experience, the wisest, brightest and best educated people need never brag or boast about how smart they are. And while Jefferson, both Adams, Lincoln, both Roosevelts and Obama were quite likely “the smartest person in the room,” there is virtually no record of them ever proclaiming this fact in public. Their books, essays, speeches and actions proved their worth. And what is more, they not only appointed people who were experts in their various fields; they actually listened to their advice, frequently incorporating what they had learned into their final decisions.

Compare this to ‘45, who throughout his presidency appointed (and fired) people mostly on the basis of their personal loyalty, not their expertise or experience in a given field. It has never really mattered; their boss has had neither the patience nor need to listen to others. From all indications, he doesn’t read any material his assistants may provide, and frequently diverges into self-congratulatory asides. The nation has heard him proclaim that he knows more than anyone about nearly any or every subject on which he speaks. All this from a world-class nescient whose sciolism (superficial knowledge) is largely responsible for the deaths of 212,000 souls, the rise of China and Russia on the world stage and the fading away of American exceptionalism. Merely wearing a baseball cap with the letters MAGA emblazoned across its top, or calling leading Democrats by nasty nicknames given them by the president, or refusing to wear a mask or keep a proper social distance, does not make a nation or even a segment of its populace great. What it does do is to separate a nescient minority from the rest of the people; to begin thinking about rebellion, revolution - even resurrection.  That segment is, for the most part, politically naïve, profoundly gullible, possessing a striking desire for strong authoritarian leadership . . . and heavily armed.   

The changing of the political guard may occur sometime in November or early December. Should this happen it does not mean that all that which has pained and ailed us these past several years will suddenly fade from view, only to be replaced with a growing sense of civility, empathy and the desired return to seeing the good in one another.  Alas, that’s not the way things generally work. 

But it can’t hurt.

23 days until the election.

If you have yet to mail in your ballot . . . what’s your plan?

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

An October Surprise to End All October Surprises

Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, C. 1862

It’s gotten to the point where it’s all but impossible to believe anything anymore. I’ve already chatted up at least a couple of dozen people who have grave suspicions that the President and Mrs. Trump’s (not to mention a lot of high-ranking Republicans and members of his White House staff) having tested positive for COVID-19 is an “October Surprise” - some kind of a hoax; a way of managing the news by trading in last week’s headlines for a new “page one above-the-fold” story. Let’s face it, after last week’s debate debacle and the New York Times front-page headlines about 45’s having paid only $750.00 in federal taxes in both 2017 and ‘18, the Trump team needed to do something - anything - to turn the tide from what’s increasingly looking like a electoral rout.

Around the time U.S. deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic went beyond the 100,000 mark (and well before ‘45’s “Stand back and stand by” charge to the white supremacist “Proud Boys,” I began making notes for a possible satiric piece in which several weeks before the November 3rd election, a desperate White House would announce that POTUS had contracted COVID-19, and the Cabinet, under terms of the 25th Amendment, would then turn the reins of authority over to VP Pence. Then, during the period that Pence would be acting POTUS, he would announce that he was granting transactional immunity - an across-the-board pardon - for Trump, regardless of whatever future federal charges might be waged against him. For reasons which no long matter, those notes never became manifest; the satire yet remains in a computer file. The title was to have been The October Surprise That Changed History.

In the meantime, I have done quite a bit of research on various “October Surprises” in American political history.  The earliest I could find went back to the presidential election of 1864, pitting incumbent Abraham Lincoln and former Union general George B. McClellan (1826-85).  In the spring of 1864 Lincoln was worried that he would go down to defeat.  This was grounded in Lincoln’s concern over Northern anger over the Emancipation Proclamation and the length of the war. Then, two “October Surprises” coalesced, handing Lincoln an overwhelming 55.03%-44.95% victory in the popular vote and a 212-21 swamping of  McClellan in the Electoral College.  What were the 2 surprises?

First,  the Democratic Convention, held in Chicago, nominated McClellan and adopted a peace platform, which called for a negotiated end to the war, as well as a repeal of the Emancipation Proclamation.  Quite a gift for Lincoln’s “National Union” ticket. Then, following quickly on the heels of McClellan’s nomination, was the increase in decisive Union victories: Admiral David. Farragut’s  capture of Mobile; two days after the Democratic convention General Sherman took Atlanta and began marching through Georgia, Ulysses S. Grant made progress at Petersburg, and General Philip Sheridan began his devastation of Virginia.  Goodbye to McClellan, the “Young Napoleon” (who would eventually be elected the 24th Governor of New Jersey in 1878) and welcome back Honest Abe.  This, of course, was not an “October Surprise” planned or prepared by Lincoln; that’s just the way things turned out.

Then there was the “October Surprise” of 1960 near the end of the Kennedy/Nixon joust. Two days before the final debate between Senator Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon, civil-rights leader Martin Luther King was arrested. King was jailed along with 52 other blacks who were trying to desegregate a Georgia restaurant. He was sentenced to four months of hard labor based on breaking probation (King had previously been charged with driving without a license, when he actually had been driving with an Alabama license in Georgia). King's wife, Coretta, was frantic and called Harris Wofford, a Kennedy campaign aide (and future one-term Pennsylvania senator), claiming that "they are going to kill him [King]." Wofford contacted Sargent Shriver, who was married to Kennedy's sister Eunice. Shriver convinced Kennedy that he should telephone King's wife, which he did, expressing his concern. Meanwhile, Kennedy's brother Robert (his future Attorney General) negotiated with the judge and secured a promise that King would be released on bail.

In contrast, Nixon consulted with Eisenhower's attorney general (William P. Rogers), who advised him not to intervene in the matter. The Kennedys' intervention gained JFK support from blacks, including King's father, an influential minister who had previously supported Nixon. The senior King told the press, "I've got a suitcase of votes, and I'm going to take them to Mr. Kennedy and dump them in his lap." As Evan Thomas writes in Robert Kennedy: His Life, "Just two phone calls -- one by JFK, one by RFK -- decided the outcome of the election, and determined the course of racial politics for decades to come." Kennedy won the close election, 49.7 percent to Nixon's 49.5 percent.

Lastly, there was the election of incumbent President Bill Clinton and Republican Senator Robert Dole. Clinton planned his own “October Surprise” in his re-election bid. In June, 1996, Clinton met with top FBI and CIA aides in hopes of organizing a successful sting against the Russian Mafia, which had been rumored to be interested in selling a nuclear missile. The operation failed to become a real October Surprise, however. Clinton also hoped he might be able to broker a last-minute deal between the Palestinians and Israelis. The two sides however only agreed to more talks. Clinton nonetheless won reelection, the first Democrat to do so since Franklin Roosevelt.

These are by no means the only “October Surprises” within American presidential history.  This current surprise - Trump’s sudden whisking away to Walter Reed Army Hospital due to a positive rendering on his most recent COVID-19 test, is unlike any other.  Coming on the heels of a failed impeachment, a disastrous debate and the discovery that he had basically skated on his federal taxes for more than a decade (among a plethora of other episodes and events) have put the future of his presidential reelection  campaign - let alone his very future as a supposedly wealthy free citizen -  in dire jeopardy.  Throughout his nearly 4 years in office, he and his staff/enablers have shown an almost genius-level ability to transform today’s nasty, negative headlines into the opposite side of the story. 

Even if it is true that ’45 is sick – as opposed to having made the entire scenario up – it is hard to see how it’s going to help him get reelected.  Then too, there is his moral/legal/ethical culpability - by his  very silence and mismanagement of the pandemic - of nearly 210,000 deaths and the recent spate of positive tests for his closest followers and family members. For months on end, he and his people have downplayed the seriousness of the COVID pandemic, making it abundantly clear that anyone who wears a mask or sticks to social distancing is a wuss . . . a weak-kneed, dastardly milquetoast who is likely a Socialist to boot. The fact that ’45 has continually derided both science and the very statistics involved in this pandemic isn’t going to do him a bit of good.  He has yet to utter a syllable of solace to any of the souls who have died from this disease (despite claiming during an ABC World News Tonight snippet that “To all the people who have lost someone, there’s nobody - I don’t sleep at night thinking about it - there’s nobody who’s taken it harder than me”) he’s spent the lion’s share of his time ignoring and deriding the very scientists charged with creating a cure and convincing the public that vaccines don’t work unless they are used to vaccinate the ailing.

And, to make matters even worse, it now seems clear that ‘45 has kept up a schedule of campaigning, speaking and fund-raising amongst hyper-wealthy, maskless donors inside stadiums, airplane hangars and the gardens  of the nation’s  home: the White House.  Will his having contracted COVID-19 change his outlook or force him to communicate in a more compassionate, understanding way?  As much as I wish it would, I fear the answer is “No, no, a thousand times no!”  He has created - either with full knowledge  or against his will - an  “October Surprise” to beat the band.  While his political opponents (Obama, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff et al) have ceased their negative political ads and publicly urged prayers and best wishes, Trump and his coterie have continued blasting the Democrats, still labeling them “far left ultra Socialists whose only wish is to destroy American society.” 

This is more than sad; it is an utter travesty. 

I for one hope and pray that he finds  his way back to health - diminished though it may be. (BTW: as a medical ethicist, I have been privy to many of the compassionate-use drugs he has been given and have a sense of what they can/may/cannot do.) I wish him all the best and also pray that wherever he winds up, they have world-class medical care like at Walter Reed. He will need it.

30 days until the election . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F.  Stone

"A Hot Mess Inside a Dumpster Fire Inside a Train Wreck"

For the past 36 hours or so  just about every pundit, columnist, newscaster and political creatures both insightful and ignominious have offered up their thoughts and opinions on the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden. Predictably, the Fox/Breitbart/National Review crowd found the president’s performance to be on a par with anything they’d ever heard or witnessed, and firmly believed that he had wiped up the debate floor with the former Vice President’s entrails. Likewise, much of the CNN/MSNBC/Daily Kos assembly awarded high marks for Biden’s clarity, and strength of character in standing up to - and making short shrift of - the Bully of Mar-a-Lago. Depending on which political bunker you were hunkered down in, moderator Chris Wallace was either found to be a traitor to the conservative right, a hero, or a fellow doing the best he could under the most trying of circumstances.  Few if any Republican office-holders or seekers had any comments to make about the manner in which their leader disported himself.  That few - if any - found anything objectionable in his unsportsmanlike, serial abuse of his opponent,  speaks volumes.  And while the former veep’s overall game plan won’t cause anyone to confuse him with the likes of FDR or Barack Obama, he did manage to stand his ground and maintain a strong-willed, if gentlemanly civility.

I came away from the 90 minute debacle with two immediate thoughts: 

1. There was but one person possessing presidential mien on the dais, and

2. Einstein was absolutely correct when he wrote that “politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.” (Then too, in a time when some rely on science and others scoff and mistrust it, one remembers another of his tongue-in-cheek bon mots: “Politics is more difficult than physics.”

Asked what he thought about the first debate, CNN’s Jake Tapper replied “It was a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck.” His colleague, Dana Bash had even sharper words: ““I’m just going to say it like it is. That was a s--- show.” Finally, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, a previous primary debate moderator, said “As one who has watched presidential debates for more than 40 years, that was the worst presidential debate I have ever seen.”

Regardless of whom one thinks won the debate, two things are crystal clear:

1. The biggest losers of the night were the American people. I cannot imagine what it must have seemed like to people watching the debate in Europe, South America, Asia and other former allies of the United States.

2. While the pundits zeroed in on Trump’s constant interrupting and talking over Biden and debate moderator Chris Wallace’s inability to gain control over the night, one moment in particular caused extreme distress for several commentators: Trump telling the far-right Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” when asked by Wallace whether he would denounce white supremacists.

Over the past 20 or so hours, there have been responses to this debacle ranging from rewriting debate rules to include the use of a “kill switch,” by which the monitor can cut off the mic of a participant if he keeps interrupting his opponent, and up-to-the-minute notifications of lies being told.  In the first-night debate, both sides uttered untruths or mendacious exaggerations.  The president, of course has, by far, the worst track record when it comes to straying from the truth.

As we get closer and closer to November 3, there’s only a tiny percentage of the American voting public who have yet to make up their mind as to whom they’re voting for.  This 4-5% of the voting public is the group that Republicans and Democrats are most interested in impressing and winning over.  Otherwise, all the speeches, commercials, placards, bumper stickers and interviews are directed towards the so-called “base” — those who will, without question, vote for the Democrat or the Republican.  With the way polling has been going for the past several months, it is Donald Trump who is most in need of expanding his base to include suburban women, African Americans and white college graduates.  Last night’s performance would lead one to believe that he simply does not care about adding new voters to his base.  He is so afraid of losing even a single vote from his base, that he cannot bring himself to put a “STOP!” sign in front of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, members of Q-anon and Proud Boys. Indeed, this is frightening stuff.

Then too, during the last moments of the debate, a question was posed as to whether the candidates would accept the election’s outcome regardless of whether they won or not.  Joe Biden quickly and unequivocally announced that indeed, he would.  By comparison, POTUS refused; in his world, the only licit election is one he wins.  Should he lose, he will declare that it was either rigged or stolen.   

As of this morning, it would appear that regardless of what Trump’s marching and chowder society says, he was the clear loser.  Overnight polls show that he has dropped more than 5% among all voters.  At the moment, he is down by more than 9 points; not a particularly comfortable place to be. I’ve been thinking over whether or not Joe Biden and his Democratic advisors and campaign staff should drop out of the debate schedule due to the president’s utterly atrocious behavior. I have concluded that the debates should continue.  Uncle Joe has shown himself a capable man who does not let his opponent turn him into a hypertensive idiot.  He is well controlled, possesses a guilt-edged smile and knows how to speak directly to the camera . . . to where American voters live, work and struggle.

Is Joe Biden the second coming of FDR, JFK or Barack Obama? No, he is not. What he is is a gentleman with a phenomenal track record, a thorough knowledge of the issues and governance, and a genuine love of people.  

After nearly 4 years of bombast, lies and near lethal egotism, who  could ask for anything more?

There are 33 days until November 3. Mail in you ballot today!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Like an Exclamation Point in the Heavens

According to an age-old Jewish belief, when a person passes away on Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) or a Yom Tov (a major Jewish holiday), it is as if the ribono shel olam (the Master of the Universe) has placed a shimmering exclamation point in the highest heavens for the one who has departed this world. Now, when that major Jewish holiday coincides with the Sabbath itself, that exclamation point - so we are told -not merely shimmers; it is radiates with a light that seems to last an eternity. I have to believe that is why Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg departed this mortal coil on what we call Shabbat Rosh Hashana - “The Sabbath which falls on the Jewish New Year.”  It permits G-d to express in the most obvious of ways, just how truly exceptional the good justice was, is, and always shall be.  

Without question, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the most stellar and consequential Justices in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States.  A thoroughgoing judicial progressive, she was also a great friend of the court’s most intellectually stolid conservative, the late Antonin Scalia.  What in the world could the two have in common? Opera.  That’s the way things used to be in politics and the judiciary; human beings getting along with one another because they discovered the humanity in one another . . . regardless of their disagreements.  Justices Ginsburg and Scalia also shared a love of the law despite viewing it from bipolar angles. 

(BTW: for those who might want to learn a  lot more about Ruth Bader Ginsburg the woman, I highly recommend the best book I have ever read about the Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: my good friend, constant lunch companion and fellow Californian David Dalin’s magnificent work, Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court From Brandeis to Kagan.  It’s a great read!).

Yesterday (September 21) it was announced that Justice Ginsburg will lie in state in the United States Capitol. It is an unusual honor for a Supreme Court Justice and one that has never before been granted to a woman. Had the decision been in the hands of ‘45, there is every reason to assume that this honor would never have been afforded America’s more revered and beloved legal lioness. But precisely who receives the honor of lying in state in the Capitol is a decision that rests squarely with the Speaker - in this case, Nancy Pelosi who was a longtime friend and admirer of Justice Ginsburg. In describing RBG’s death, Madam Speaker called it “an incalculable loss for our democracy and for all who sacrifice and strive to build a better future for our children.” Also out of the ordinary, Justice Ginsburg will lie in repose at the Supreme Court for two days - tomorrow and Thursday, and her coffin will be placed under the portico at the top of the building’s front steps. Her coffin will be placed on the Lincoln catafalque, which was used for President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin when his body lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda in 1865.

Such respect has rarely been shown for a Supreme Court justice. But then again, we’ve rarely been in the historic presence of such a diminutive giant . . .

Then too, RBG’s death - like just about everything these days - has already become the focus of a nasty political war of words and deeds. No sooner had justice Ginsburg’s passing been announced then partisan politics reared its terribly ugly head.  Within 2 hours, Georgia Republican Representative Doug Collins tweeted “RIP to the more than 30 million innocent babies that have been murdered during the decades that Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended pro-abortion laws. With @realDonaldTrump nominating a replacement that values human life, generations of unborn children have a chance to live,” Collins wrote.  (It should be noted that Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t take her seat on the nation’s highest court until Roe v Wade had been the law for nearly a generation and that for nearly more than 25 years, Donald Trump was one of NYC’s larger donors to Planned Parenthood.) Getting back to Rep. Collins, even Fox News nailed him for his extra nasty tweet.  Many conservative Republicans were terribly concerned lest the next Justice not be 100% in favor of overturning Rose V. Wade, putting the 2nd Amendment in jeopardy, or permitting the President of the United States from using his office to do whatsoever he sought fit to do.  And mind you, all this was made public hours and hours before Justice Ginsburg was laid to rest. 

Those who have long followed politics closely will well recall all the sturm und drang (turmoil) that arose in Mitch McConnell’s senate when then-POTUS Obama nominated Federal Judge Merrick Garland to the High Court more than 8 months before the 2016 presidential election. (Garland, then - and now - was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. whom Obama had nominated to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Back in 2016, you will recall, McConnell and virtually all his Republican colleagues refused to even consider the nomination of the progressive Judge Garland claimed that “voters should be given a say by way of choosing the next president. A sprinkling of quotes from 2016 will reveal how Leader McConnell and his Republican colleagues responded to the question “Should the Senate vote hold hearings or a vote on Judge Garland?

• Marco Rubio (FL): “I don’t think we should be moving forward on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term. I would say that if this was a Republican president.” (3/17/16)

• Chuck Grassley ( IA): “A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics. The American people should not be denied a voice. Do we want a court that interprets the law, or do we want a court that acts as an unelected super-legislature . . .?” (3/16/16)

• Mitch McConnell (KY) “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president..” (2/13/16)

• John Hoeven (ND): ““There is 80 years of precedent for not nominating and confirming a new justice of the Supreme Court in the final year of a president’s term so that people can have a say in this  very important decision.” (4/21/16)

• Lindsay Graham (SC): “I strongly support giving the American people a voice in choosing the next Supreme Court nominee by electing a new president.  I hope all Americans understand how important their vote is when itcomes  to picking a new Supreme Court justice. (3/16/16)  

• John Cornyn (TX): “At this critical juncture in our nation’s history, Texans and the American people deserve to have a say in the selection of the next lifetime appointment to the  Supreme Court. The only way  to empower the American people and ensure they have a voice is for the next president to make the nomination to fill this vacancy.” (3/16/16)

• Ted Cruz (TX) “This should be a decision for  the people.  Let the election decide.  If the Democrats want to replace this nominee, they need to win the election.” (2/14/16)

As of this morning, there are only 2 Republican members of the U.S. Senate - Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins - have announced that they urge waiting until after the 2020 election before taking up the matter of Justice Ginsburg’s replacement.  It seems clear that all those Republicans who kept Judge Garland from even getting a hearing because of some “Constitutional principle,” have now shown their true colors  . . . bright yellow.  And this, despite a report from NPR’s longtime legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg that Justice Ginsburg’s dying wish (made bedside surrounded by family members and her personal physician) was that  she wanted the winner of the November election to choose her replacement.  The POTUS and members of the Fox entertainment squad rushed to declare - without a scintilla of proof - that the dying Justice never made this final request.  Instead, ‘45 suggested (again, without evidence) that the dying wish was likely crafted by either Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer and/or Nancy Pelosi. Fox entertainer Tucker Carlson said flatly that he doesn’t believe Ginsburg actually dictated the message: “We don’t know actually what Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s final words were. Did she really leave this world fretting about a presidential election? We don’t believe it for a second.”  Rep. Schiff (whom ‘45 referred to as “Shifty” Schiff in his Tweet denying Ginsburg’s dying wish (which her granddaughter wrote down) issued his own tweet denying ‘45’s claim: “Mr. President, this is low.  Even for you.  No, I didn’t write Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish to a nation she served so well, and spent her  whole life making a more perfect union.  But I am going to fight like hell to make it come true.  No confirmation before inauguration.” 

Justice Ginsburg’s longtime friend, correspondent Totenberg said yesterday that she confirmed the dying wish with the Justice’s doctor.  Despite this, Trump and Carlson’s false claim spawned numerous conspiracy theories on social media, claiming that Ginsburg dictated the note to her “8-year old granddaughter.” (Far from being an 8 year old, Clara Spera  [who always called her grandmother bubbie attended Cambridge, graduated from Harvard Law in 2017, and is married to Shakespearean actor Rory Boyd.)  All this, and Justice Ginsburg has yet to be laid to rest. . .

It is highly likely that Trump and the Republicans will get  their way and make sure that SCOTUS finally becomes an impregnable bastion of Federalist Society judges; one easily capable of overturning Roe v Wade, of kicking the vast majority of people with preexisting medical conditions (which now includes COVID-19) off of Obamacare; of finding the constitutional “Emoluments Clause” unconstitutional; of outlawing the teaching of Darwinian theory in public schools and of giving the National Rifle Association whatever in the world it wants.

So what can be done?  To my way of thinking it is imperative that  Democrats recapture both the White House and United States Senate, expand Democratic victories to state legislatures and governors’ mansions, and give serious, serious consideration to instituting their own version of FDR’s “court packing plan.” There is nothing in the Constitution which states that SCOTUS must have precisely 9 members.  

And above all, let’s keep the spirit and strength of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg alive.  Just look up to the heavens, look for that celestial exclamation point and let her fortitude be our fuel.

42 days until the election . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"If I Am Not For Myself . . ."

Hillel the Elder

(As has been my habit for more than 15 years, I post my High Holiday sermons in place of my normal weekly political fare at this time of the year.  Otherwise, I would run out of time!  And so, what follows is my sermon for the first day of Rosh Hashana.  5781 . . . KFS)

Welcome to the Jewish year 5781, which of course corresponds partly to the Gregorian year 2020, but mostly 2021. I don’t know about you, but I rather looked forward to 2020 . . . mainly because in terms of vision it signified seeing the world with utter clarity . . . with visual perfection. To have 20/20 vision is really the ideal . . . unless you’re someone like baseball great Ted Williams who, according to his medical records from the military, came in at an unbelievable 20/15. No wonder he was such a fantastic hitter and even better fighter pilot in 2 wars. Whatever the case, the Gregorian year 2020 will long be remembered not for its clarity, but rather for its utter murkiness. It has been, to say the least, one of the most difficult, dangerous and distasteful years in a long, long time. Hebraically, today is the first day of the seventh month (Tishrei) in the new year 5781. Rosh Hashana, by the way, is the only Jewish holiday which begins on the first day of the month. Just thought I’d slip that in; don’t worry, it won’t be on the final exam. In Hebrew, the number 5781 is spelled out ת-שַ-פַ-א . . . with the numerical value, going from right to left, 400, 300, 80 and 1. All this adds up to 781 . . . the 5,000 being understood. In rabbinic scholarship, there is a field known as gematria, which consists of an alphanumeric code of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase based on its letters. Say what? Actually most of us who have had the benefit of a bit of Jewish learning are well aware of gematria -- at least on a subconscious level. If I ask what the numerical value of chai, the Hebrew word for “life,” is, most can easily answer “18.” That is why a typical donation in the Jewish world is generally based on a multiple of 18 . . . “Death” by the way, מוות in Hebrew, adds up to 452, which no one but a scholar with too much time on his/her hands knows.

Fascinatingly, the first set of words one can make of the four letters ת-שַ-פַ-א spell out “You will be amazed.” Fabulous! Could this be an omen for a new year in which we eradicate a pandemic, set aright an economy which has gone topsy-turvey and begin restoring honesty, civility, humility, humanity and equanimity? And how about a major lessening of anger, bigotry, racism and conspiratorial claptrap? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Indeed: ת-שַ-פַ-א: You will be amazed! As well-armed as modern-day Jewish warriors are - most notably, of course, in the State of Israel, historically, our weapons have far more often come from our minds, hearts and souls than from foundries. Our armaments are our ethics, the “אֱמוֹר מְעַט וַעֲשֵׂה "הַרְבֵּה (“say little but do much”) of Shammai; or the moral lesson of Rabbi Tarfon, which states לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמוֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה” ("It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either").

In comparison to most of the major religions we encounter in our corner of the world, Judaism is far more a religion, a people, a culture whose marching orders are based more on what one does than what one believes. “It’s the deed, not the creed,” is the philosophy that has always made us so terribly unique and successful . . . and frequently so terribly hated and mistreated. Some of the most important lessons for living a moral and ethically victorious life come from that section of Mishnah (the earliest code of Jewish law) called Pirke Avot, generally translated as “Ethics of the Sages.” It is the only part of the six volumes of Mishnah which did not find its way into the Talmud, for being largely about ethics and civility, it really did not require voluminous commentary. Every year as we prepare to turn the page on our ancient calendar, I review its many pages, retranslate its wisdom based upon what I’ve learned in the preceding 12 months, and feeling better armed for the coming battle, go out to face the new year. Permit me to share some of the most important of these verses - those which, to use the ancient expression, “gird my loins” for whatever may come my way. For years without end, my favorite lesson from Pirke Avot comes in the form of two tidbits from Hillel, the 2nd century sage, which, in my estimation, are more modern and needful than anything else in the Mishnah. The first, states simply, על תפרוש מן הציבור (namely, “Do not separate yourself from the community), and the second, .בה מקום שאין אנשים השתדל לוות איש. Namely: if you happen to be in a place where no one is acting like a mentsch (a moral human being), you strive to be a mentsch. These are both terribly important. We often find ourselves in situations where people - especially people in positions of leadership, acting like fools, ignoring the immoral acts and hateful, mendacious words of those supposedly above them. Frequently, instead of putting in their two cents and shouting out “But you are telling an outright lie!” or “The facts are obviously and completely against what you do or say!” they sit on their hands, and keep their collective mouths shut . . . thereby lending tacit agreement to the obscene, immoral deeds of others. In short, they are the exact opposite of what a mentsch should be and thus, separating themselves from the community. Although the ideal may well be, if at all possible, to stick to the status quo in communal events and activities, if the people supposedly in charge are a corrupting force, it is our obligation to raise our voices and strenuously object . . . in other words, to strive to act like a mentsch when others are acting just the opposite.

Last on my list of wise words to incorporate into our lives in this new year come from a sage named Ben Zoma: Who is wise? The one who learns from every person, as it is said: "From all those who taught me I gained understanding" (Psalms 119:99). Who is mighty? The one who subdues his impulses, as it is said: "Better is one slow to anger than a strong man, and one who rules over his passions than the conqueror of a city" (Proverbs 16:32). Who is wealthy? The one who is happy with his portion, as it is said: "When you eat the toil of your hands you are fortunate and it is good for you" (Psalms 128:2). Who is honored? The one who honors others, as it is said: "For those who honor Me will I honor, and those who scorn Me will be degraded" (I Samuel 2:30). Ethics of Fathers 4:1

Ben Zoma speaks first of wisdom, rather than knowledge or logic or intelligence. Wisdom is the application of the other four, the faculty of directing the power of the intellect and interpreting information to recognize its deeper significance, its meaning, and its relevance to daily life. One may possess encyclopedic knowledge or be able to perform lightning-fast computations, yet remain an utter fool. The qualities of wisdom are patience, judgment, and perspective. Many geniuses lack these, and many of average intelligence posses them to a high degree. The lessons of life are both great and small, and it is a fool who believes that wisdom trumpets itself from the rooftops. Many of life's most important lessons are broad, sweeping concepts of morality and self-discipline, but the subtleties and nuances that instruct us in applying these general principles to the mundane tasks of living are themselves found in life's subtleties and nuances. While it is true that we cannot easily control the actions or beliefs of others, we can - and must - set our sights on living up to what might be called “The mentsch’s creed”: אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי “If I am not for myself, who am I? And if I am only for myself what am I? And if not now, when?” What a brilliant series of questions to ask oneself at the New Year! To me, the first two parts are both powerful and obvious: If I cannot find the inner strength to make of myself a better, more moral and community-clinging individual, I leave much to be desired. But if I do not extend that lesson to others and help them to learn from the errors of their ways, what kind of a person am I? The hardest, least facile and most obscure question is the last one. When do I begin if not now? That’s much of what new beginnings are for . . . repairing, improving and healing both ourselves and the world we inhabit. And if we take these bits of wisdom to heart, who knows? Maybe 5781 (תשפא) will truly spell out

“You will be amazed!”

Copyright©2020, Kurt F. Stone

From "I Cannot Tell a Lie" to "I Shall Never Tell the Truth" is a Long, Long Journey

For the past several years, Madame (Mom), my slightly-older-sister Erica (Riki). nephew Adam, Madame’s special gentleman Fred, and the Pentagon have been conspiring to create a special birthday gift for yours truly. The only thing I knew about it was that Fred - a longtime Navy veteran and highly-skilled framer - and the rest of the clan had been working on some sort of “art project.” Having no idea of what they were doing, I decided to stop asking questions. Well, I celebrated my 71st (gasp!) birthday a couple of weeks ago, only to discover that over the past dozen years, they have been retrieving my late father’s war ribbons from WWII in order to put them into a marvelous shadow box, which now adorns the wall in my home.

Dad, who at the time he entered the Army Air Corps shortly before Pearl Harbor,  was known as “Henry E. Schimberg”; he  had yet to legally adopt his “Hollywood name.”  He remained in the service until 1946, serving mostly as a weather forecaster in the CBI (China-India-Burma Theatre), where his main task was keeping planes  from flying “over the hump, the name given by Allied pilots in WWII to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces based in China.  Although largely unsung, their role was crucial.  Without their highly developed technical skills - matched by good old-fashioned intuition - dozens, if not hundreds, of planes would have gone down in the Himalayans.

Dad’s medals and battle ribbons were next to impossible to retrieve, due to the fact that he served under his birth name; he wouldn’t legally change the family name to “Stone” for more than a decade. But for those who know Madame and Erica, you can understand: nothing is impossible; when they get their claws into a project, watch out!  

Dad rarely, if ever, spoke of his military service; he was both humble and an extraordinary gentleman.  And yet, he was  proud of serving his country.  He was definitely neither a loser nor a sucker.  Far, far from it. He served 6 of his first 31 years in the military, leaving behind his dream of becoming  a movie star, and emerging as as a newly-wed who eventually became a highly successful stock broker in Southern California.  Were he alive today Dad (1915-2002), would have been 65 kinds of P-O’d at the current POTUS: “How dare you call us “losers” and “suckers  . . . we’re the men and women who saved the world from fascism!” Dad wasn’t an overly political sort, spending his life as a moderate FDR-Democrat.  The one time he even suggested the possibility of voting for a Republican (Nixon in ‘68) Madame read him the riot act and urged him to recall Lysistrata - Aristophanes’ comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnese War between Greek city states by denying all the men of the land any sex.  Thank G-d Henry was literate enough to understand the illusion . . . he wound up voting for Hubert Humphrey.

Fast forward to a September 3, 2020 article in which the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported that ‘45, “the president who cannot tell the truth,” canceled a presidential visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 - the centennial of the battles of Belleau Wood and Chateau Thierry. (This cemetery, which sits at the foot of Belleau Wood, contains the graves of 2,289 American war dead, most of whom fought in the vicinity and in the Marne Valley in the summer of 1918.) According to the Atlantic’s Goldberg, Trump blamed rain for the last-minute cancellation, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

In  his astounding article - backed up by incontrovertible facts - Goldberg writes: Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed. 

Sir Nicholas Soames, a Conservative member of the British parliament and Winston Churchill’s grandson, tweeted his utter disapproval of Trump’s snub and lame excuse:

“They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen.”

True to form, the White House and Trump’s Twitter account found in Goldberg’s meticulously reported, well-crafted story,  a gigantic hoax perpetrated by the “left-liberal-socialist media.”  Even Fox News went back-and-forth on whether or not to find any truth in Goldberg’s article. When ‘45 learned that Fox New’s political reporter Jennifer Griffin supported Goldberg’s piece, ‘45 demanded that her employers immediately fire her.  For Trump, all this is, of course, “fake news.”  But then again, throughout his public career, Boss Tweet has been a volcano of untruths, misstatements and outright prevarications . . . many of which have actual video and/or audio backup . . . such as the number of times he said of the late Senator John McCain “he’s no hero,” due to his having been captured, tortured and imprisoned at the “Hanoi Hilton” by the North Vietnamese.  

I don’t like losers,” he repeatedly stated even before announcing his candidacy back as far as 2015. Trump went on to dismiss McCain’s war service: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”  45’s “McCain’s a loser” meme began when the Arizona Senator lost the 2008 presidential election to Barack Obama . . . again, “I don’t like losers.”  In her new book “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” (which sold more copies on the day it was released than her uncle’s The Art of the Deal has in nearly 30 years) presidential niece, Dr. Mary Trump (she earned a PhD in  Clinical Psychology from Adelphi University) clearly stated that what DJT fears and loathes the most is being called a “loser” or "a sucker.” She has also “revealed” what oh so many of us without doctorates in psychology have long suspected . . . if not fully known: that he is a psychopathic liar who is incapable of feeling empathy or compassion, and is imbued with an inferiority complex the size of the Grand Canyon.  

Listening to Donald Trump endlessly praise himself is a form of self-torture;  hearing him disavow any knowledge let alone familiarity of any indicted person who has ever worked for or served him (until the time comes for a pardon); or endlessly bragging about how much more he knows about medicine, history, economics, diplomacy or the philosophy of Edmund Husserl (the school of “Phenomenology,” which is generally defined as “the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view”) for all I know. To listen to ‘45, as POTUS he has accomplished more for blacks than Lincoln or Dr. Martin Luther King; more for women than Susan B. Anthony or Eleanor Roosevelt; more for Hispanics than Caesar Chavez'; more for the modern State of Israel than Theodor Herzl or David Ben-Gurion; and that “Veterans have no better friend than President Trump.”

To a majority of those with eyes with which to see, ears with which to hear or minds with which to think and remember, all these are demonstrable lies; the product of a man who is taking both our nation and our planet down into the swamp of delusion.

It wasn’t always this way. Indeed, our very first - and likely greatest - POTUS, George Washington. was once known by every school child in this land as a person who could “never tell a lie.” What could be more honorable, admirable and moral? Then there was Lincoln, our 16th president, whom every school child knew was nicknamed “honest Abe.” Today, our 45th POTUS has been saddled with an overabundance of monikers - none of which, so far as I know, is even slightly endearing.

It grieves me deeply that so many people in this land are willing to give ‘45 a pass and ignore his gaffs, his lies, his immoral nature . . . his very presence. What we need is not a self-proclaimed genius-about-everything but a person who seeks wisdom and guidance from those who truly know what they’re talking about. Not a blatherskite who blows his own horn, or a braggart whose only script is the one he provides himself. And certainly not a man who may one day be convicted, but rather a man of convictions.

Indeed, from “I cannot tell a lie” to “I shall never tell the truth” is one hell of a long, long journey . . . a journey into fear and damnation.

There are 56 days to go until November 3, 2020.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F.  Stone

Living the Dystopian Life

In the world of medicine, a substance or drug used to induce vomiting is called an emetic. Historically, the go-to emetic was an agent called syrup of ipecac; it is no longer the standard of care in either human or veterinary medicine, due to its cardiotoxic (having an adverse effect on the heart) potential. Today, the safest over-the-counter emetic is likely activated charcoal. Then too, there are so-called “cathartics” like Sorbitol, an artificial sweetener which is frequently used to speed up the emptying of the gastrointestinal tract [GIT].

These and other emetics are generally used to rid the GIT of poisons - caused by ingesting rancid foodstuffs, imbibing too much alcohol or a sequela (a condition which is the consequence of a previous disease or injury).  Regardless of the cause or emetic used, emesis (the medical term for barfing or upchucking) can indeed provide much-needed relief.  But what about the kind of extreme nausea which has nothing to do with ingesting or imbibing, but rather with overindulgence in the kind of dystopian politics many of us witnessed during last week’s Republican National Convention . . . aka publice coronum regalem Donald Trump (Latin for The coronation of Donald Trump)?  

I am sorry to report that I have been engaging in quite a bit of self-inflicted stupidity these past several weeks: reading - and in some cases rereading some of the most ghastly, hit-the-nail-on-the-head dystopian novels of all time.  For those who can define “utopian,” but become tongue-tied when it comes to “dystopian,” the former (“utopia”) was coined by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 book Utopia, which was about an ideal society on a fictional island. The latter, when applied to literature (as in “Dystopian literature”), refers to essays and novels which explore the dangerous effects of political and social structures on humanity’s future.  Generally speaking, dystopian novels break down into various types:

• Nuclear disaster

• Government control

• Religious control

• Technical control

• Survival

• Loss of individualism.

Included on my “Best Dystopian Novels of All Time” list are:

• The Trial (Franz Kafka, 1925)

• Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932)

• The Iron Heel (Jack London, 1907)

• It Can’t Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis, 1935)

• The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)\

• Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, 1953)

• The Time Machine (H.G. Wells, 1895)

• Do Androids Dream of  Electric Sheep? (Phillip K. Dick, 1968)

• The Wall (John Lanchester, 2019)

• Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)

• 1984 (George Orwell, 1948)

Without question, my three favorite novels culled from the above list are Jack London’s largely unknown The Iron Heel, Sinclair Lewis’ chilling It Can’t Happen Here, and my all-time favorite, George Orwell’s 1984, which was without a doubt the worst thing anyone could have been reading during last week’s RNC.  I know, because I was engaged in rereading that novel in the hours leading up to ‘45’s seemingly endless speech on the grounds immediately outside White House.

The number of mask-less mega-donors crowded together like sardines in a well-oiled tin approximated the number of people who expired due to COVID19 on the very day of  Trump’s coronum regalem.  And what got their digestive juices flowing in ever greater volume was the portrait of an America Trump warned against should the Biden/Harris ticket manage to win the election.  Fascinatingly - and may we say, ridiculously - the very apocalypse POTUS was sternly warning against should Democrats take back the White House (not to mention the U.S. Senate), is the very America that ‘45 and his cronies are currently overseeing during their time in office; in other words, they are essentially warning against themselves.   If this carries so much as a scintilla of logic or reality about it, then those of us who tend to support Biden/Harris and the Democrats are likely long in the throes of bilious political nausea, searching for a potent emetic.  Like Winston Smith and the proles of Oceania in Orwell’s 1984, Trump’s “maskless marvels”
live under the thumb of “Big Brother” and his henchmen who have proclaimed that in “Newspeak” “War is Peace,” Freedom is Slavery,“ and “Ignorance is strength.”  In Trump’s America,  though the slogans may be different, the message is largely the same: “Media is made up of liars,” “Autocrats are small-D democrats,” and “Scholars and intellectuals are ultra-liberal enemies of the state.”

During his acceptance speech, POTUS made a series of promises defying what he and his party have engaged in during the past 3 1/2 years:

• “We will ensure equal justice for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.”

• “We will uphold your religious liberty” (as if it is in danger).

• “We will protect Medicare and Social Security.”

• “We will always, and very strongly, protect patients with pre-existing conditions, and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party.”

Then too, in that same speech, Trump engaged in a liefest to beat the band, loudly proclaiming that:

• “The Democrat [sic] Party supports the extreme late-term abortion of defenseless babies right up to the moment of BIRTH.”

• “If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other Constitutional freedoms.”

• “Biden will defund police and bring violence to America’s cities . . .No one will be safe in Biden’s America.”

• If  the Democrat [sic] Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them.” 

The difference between the Republican and Democratic Partys’ political strategy for the 2020 election is as dissimilar as negative is from positive or zebras are from Croatian Coldbloods.  The Republicans (who did not see fit to publish a party platform) have largely based their electoral strategy on fear; the fear of left-wing Socialism, anarchy, Fascism (they can’t all go together!), endless taxes, governmental corruption, and the outlawing of “That Old Time Religion.”  Democrats, on the other hand, are pushing hope; the hope of better days if only we work together; the hope that grows when ceaseless lies are replaced with the telling of truth and taking responsibility for the mistakes we make.  Republicans, like Big Brother in 1984, communicate via Newspeak, which turns lies into truth, vigilantism into heroism and loyalty to the Supreme Leader into presidential pardons.  It is enough to make many a former Republican grab for an over-the-counter emetic. 

In Donald Trump’s dystopian world the POTUS has consolidated a circle of extremist advisers; hardline restrictions on immigration which include separating and caging children away from their parents; eliminating many Wall Street and environmental restrictions enacted by the previous administration and made it next to impossible for ordinary Americans to agree on simple truths, let alone politics. He has actually convinced a sizable minority of the American public that despite suffering more than 180,000 deaths from COVID19, he is absolutely correct in ignoring the advice of galaxy-class physicians and scientists and that despite more than 1 million people applying for unemployment insurance every weak for the past 3 months, the economy is booming. And perhaps the worst, he has sold his minions on the fact that voting by mail is the biggest con since Charles Ponzi. If all this isn’t dystopian, I don’t know what is.

(BTW: Since beginning this essay, POTUS has retweeted a conspiracy theory falsely claiming that only about 9,000 people had “actually” died from corona virus, instead of more than 180,000.  Twitter later removed the tweet, written by a user named “Mel Q,” who is also a believer of the QAnon conspiracy theory, saying it violated its rules.  In yet another series of tweets early this morning, Trump also embraced a call to imprison New York  Governor Andrew Cuomo; threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House; attacked CNN and NPR; embraced a supporter charged with  murder; and repeatedly assailed the mayor of Portland, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call demanding his resignation.  Vice President Biden put on his “big boy pants” and responded in kind: “What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters?  He  is recklessly  encouraging violence. He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong - but his failure  to call on his  supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he  is.”)

So what is the sole emetic to be taken for extreme political nausea? 

Simple:

Voting+campaigning+making financial contributions

It may not bring Sir Thomas More’s Utopia back to life . . . but what have we to lose?

There are 63 days until November 3, 2020

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

If You Ain't Indicted, You Ain't Invited

“Kiddo” Davis

Unless you are a really serious baseball fan you have no idea who George Wallace “Kiddo” Davis was. Who? Kiddo Davis (1902-1983), was the only man who replaced Babe Ruth in a baseball game.  It happend in the ninth inning of a losing game against the Cleveland Indians. Although Kiddo’s name made its way into the official box score for that game, which took place on June 5, 1926 Davis didn’t get up to bat, and wouldn’t play in another major league game until April 12, 1932 by which time he was a member of the Philadelphia Phillies. And although he did eventually play in parts of seven more seasons and went 7-18 in the 1932 World Series (won by the N.Y, Giants), replacing Babe Ruth was his single claim to baseball immortality.

Orson Welles

Then there was Orson Welles who, at age 24, wrote, directed, edited, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, considered by many (myself included) to be the greatest motion picture of all time. And to make matters even better, he brought the film in on time and under budget! What in the world would the young Welles’ next film be? How in the world could he compete with cinematic perfection? Well, his second film, The Magnificent Ambersons (adapted from a Booth Tarkington novel) was nearly as good — mainly before his bosses at RKO butchered it after Welles had been sent to South America on a ruse. Nonetheless, it is still considered to be in the top 50 of greatest motion pictures of all time.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his last,  unfinished novel (The Last Tycoon), “There are no second acts in American lives,” by which he likely meant “there are no second chances.”  We begin this piece with Kiddo and Orson, using the pair as a dual prelude to this week’s topic: the upcoming Republican National Convention, which begins tomorrow night. (BTW: It has just been announced that ‘45 will speak all 4 nights . . . something absolutely sui generis in the world of political conventions.)

Many of us watched virtually every minute of last week’s Democratic National Convention.  If you’re like me, you were no doubt transfixed by the words we heard, the images we saw and the messages those on screen delivered. Considering that up until quite recently, all systems were go for a typical flag-waving, balloon-dropping political coronation in a vast barn of a hall in Milwaukee, what the Democrats were able to create in such a short period of time was both technically brilliant and emotionally memorable.  I for one watched the convention with both the eye of a veteran political operative and the critical sensibilities of a Hollywood Brat.  One of the things which most impressed me was the manner in which those behind the camera were able to spot their shortcomings, understand what changes had to be made and then put them into effect within but a few hours. 

Case in point: Michele Obama’s first-night speech.  While it was absolutely stellar from a rhetorical point of view, it left quite a bit to be desired when it came to smoothly editing a three-camera shoot.  Going from camera one (front-on) to camera two (right profile) to camera three (left profile) was both clunky and amateurish.  But by the second night, those in charge had gotten the kinks out and produced smoothly flowing set pieces.  Pure Hollywood!

From the incredible presentation of the state-by-state, territory-by-territory vote – which reminded us of just how photographically beautiful and geographically diverse we are as a country – to the once gravely injured Gabby Giffords playing French Horn and speaking with great clarity, to Brayden Harrington, the teenage boy afflicted with stuttering talking about how much Joe Biden has done to instill hope, and the first-rate speeches of the Clintons, Mayor Bloomberg, Senators Sanders, Booker and Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, to former Mayors Pete and Bloomberg and oh so many others, this convention was worthy of both an Emmy, an Oscar and an overwhelming victory come November. (The difference between how V.P. Biden responded to Brayden Harrington to how ‘45 mocked a Washington Post reporter who has a disability says it all.)

To return to a baseball idiom for just a second, this virtual convention showed one and all that the Democrats are capable of fielding an extraordinary, multi-cultural team, and, at the same time, stocking a “bench” deep with talent which is second-to-none.

For as long as I can remember, whenever one of my students asks me to predict the future, I respond somewhat whimsically, explaining that “my crystal ball has yet to get back from the dry cleaner.” I answer in the same vein when asked about how I believe the Republicans are going to respond during next week’s national convention. Simply stated, I have no idea. HOWEVER, I do feel that they are in danger of getting themselves dangerously mired in both political and videographic quicksand. Simply stated, they have neither the team nor the bench to compete against the Democrats. Where the Democrats spent last week preaching love, unity and the ability to get things done if only we can do them together, the Republicans are stuck with negativity and the fear of both “left-wing socialism” (whatever in the hell that is) and minorities who they will no doubt depict as being the opposite of what they would have their base believe is “the real America.”  

So far as I can tell, next week’s convention is going to be angry, negative and filled with attacks against all those who do not represent 1950’s America. Their message will likely be aimed directly at those who are white, Christian, and mostly non-college educated. The number of front-line Republican pols who will not be speaking (nor likely be “attending”) will likely be obvious.  As of today, the “announced” speakers are Vice President Pence, First Lady Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Senators Tim Scott (SC), Joni Ernst (IA), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) as well as former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and likely Patricia and Mark McClosky, the  St. Louis homeowners who pointed guns at protesters earlier this summer.

The president is no doubt going to have a lot on his mind.  As much as he revels in giving political speeches, there won’t be any mass crowd giving him energy; due to the constraints of network television, he would be wise to what’s on his teleprompter.  The faces that may well be  flashing before his mind’s eye are those of the  recently indicted  Steve Bannon, the recently pardoned (commuted, actually) Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, his former “Mr. Fixit (and soon-to-be-author) Michael Cohen, his niece, best-selling author Dr. Mary Trump, and his eldest sister, former federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry. As he preaches about the evils of “left-wing socialism,” the duplicity of Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton, the various conspiracies (minus QAnon) created to bring him down, he is likely to come off far more like the Emperor in Hans Christian Anderson’s  Kejserens nye klæder (“The Emperor’s New Clothes) who got  exposed before his subjects, than the second coming of Theodore Roosevelt.  I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes . . .  

I for one feel truly sorry for those Republican functionaries who have been assigned the awesome task of putting their convention together at the last minute. They are facing a tremendous challenge; mostly from the leaders and campaign experts on the Democratic side of the aisle who put kindness, compassion, empathy and civility center stage.  By now, the Republican leaders and campaign experts know full well that they are incapable of putting any of the aforementioned traits on their campaign slate; their incumbent simply not made out of the same stuff as his opponent.  Simply stated, he neither knows nor can identify the soul of America. 

Democrats also understand that a preponderance of the Trump team is currently under indictment. And they will likely make it clear that those who ain’t indicted, ain’t invited.

Next week’s virtual convention  should  be a real lulu. 

72 days until Nov. 3, 2020

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Donald Trump

To say the least, my last couple of conversations with Madam (Mom) has been both depressing and oddly energizing. The issue at hand? The United States Postal Service and how the POTUS is doing everything in his power to dismantle it in order to win reelection. Now nearing 97, Alice finds herself with far more time on her hands than she would like or has long been accustomed to. And so, she reads newspapers from cover-to-cover, and watches MSNBC from dusk to dawn. She has long been a political animal (why do you think my middle name is “Franklin?”), has voted in every election since 1945, volunteered in her share of campaigns, and from time-to-time has actually received engraved invitations to presidential inaugurals. She also continues to harbor a profound hatred of Senator Joe McCarthy and the House un-American Activities Committee. And while it comes as no surprise to those who know her that this wise and totally “with it” woman should still be following politics, it is saddening to note that for perhaps the first time in her life, she is beginning to feel helpless. “Kurt, what can we do to keep this ‘j*rk’ from stealing the election and utterly destroying America?” she asked me yesterday. “Who can I call? Give me some addresses and phone numbers. I can’t just sit back and do nothing!” And so, I gave her the telephone number of her local member of Congress (Brad Sherman), Adam Schiff (whose district is next door) and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

Before ringing off, I reminded her to wait until Monday morning before making her calls.  “Any idea of what you’re going to say?” I asked.  “Hell yes!” she barked.  “I’m going to tell them that they’ve got to stop this mad man from taking America away from a 97-year old woman! And I’ll remind them who my son is . . .”

The Post Office Department is even older than the United States.  Indeed, Benjamin Franklin, America’s first Postmaster General, was appointed to his position in 1775; a full year before the Declaration of Independence.  Throughout America’s earliest decades, one’s postal delivery person was the average their closest - if not only - connection to the Federal Government.  The first stamps were issued in 1847; the Pony Express began 13 years later, and most soldiers fighting in the Civil War voted by mail.  For years and years, it was commonplace for the Postmaster General to be a close political ally of the President.  Two of the most famous were Warren G. Harding’s political henchman, Will (“The Deacon”) Hays (who would become the Hollywood film industry’s “morals czar” in 1922, and James A. Farley, FDR’s campaign manager.  Today, the Postmaster General appointed by President Donald Trump is currently residing in the eye of a political hurricane; Louis DeJoy (who was appointed just 2 months ago) is a major financial backer of ‘45 and, along with his wife, Dr. Aldona Wos (a former U.S. Ambassador to Estonia) have purchased significant stock options in Amazon (which the POTUS has falsely claimed is largely responsible for the U.S. Postal Service losing money) as well as a minimum   $30 million in stock in XPO Logistics, a contractor company that processes mail for USPS - a clear conflict of interest.

(n.b. The major reason why USPS has been running up a lot of red ink over the past 12-15 years is not because of Amazon and other mass package-mailing concerns.  Truth to tell, In 2019, the Postal Service reported a net loss of $8.8 billion, but the shipping and packages segment of its business increased revenue by $1.3 billion, or 6.1%, over 2018. No, the real culprit is a 2006 law passed by a lame-duck Republican Congress called “The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act” which law forced USPS to prepay its pensions for 75 years . . . something which no other corporation does. This was meant to bankrupt it so it’s business could be privatized for profit.) 

As most – including Madam – know by now, ’45 is doing everything in his power to defund USPS.  It is his contention that voting by mail will unquestionably benefit the Democrats whom he contends, are far, far more likely to engage in fraudulent practices.  Boss Tweet has warned of foreign governments mailing out tens of millions of counterfeit mail-in ballots (which are even more difficult to counterfeit than cash), of dead people and illegal immigrants voting tens of dozens of times apiece, and other fairy tales which have virtually no backing in truth.

Knowing little if anything about shame, just this past Thursday Trump frankly acknowledged that he’s starving the U.S. Postal Service of money in order to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worries could cost him the election.

In an interview on Fox Business Network, Trump explicitly noted two funding provisions that Democrats are seeking in a relief package that has stalled on Capitol Hill. Without the additional money, he said, the Postal Service won’t have the resources to handle an unprecedented flood of ballots from voters who are seeking to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.

“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.”

The President’s statements, including the false claim that Democrats are seeking universal mail-in voting, come as he is searching for a strategy to gain an advantage in his November matchup against the Biden/Harris ticket. He’s pairing the tough Postal Service stance in congressional negotiations with an increasingly robust mail-in-voting legal fight in states that could decide the election.  There is already visual proof that he’s dismantling the postal system; after-dark removal of blue mail boxes across the country and dismantling of mail sorting machines. 

The attempt to dismantle and even privatize the USPS didn’t begin with Donald Trump. Conservative Republican mega-donors have long sought to privatize everything from the military to America’s space program to, of course, healthcare. Trump’s hyper-wealthy backers convinced him that the reason why he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton was because of the inefficiency of the United States Postal Service. They further convinced him that mail-in votes were rife with fraud - a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence. It worked: Trump began complaining to senior White House advisers that Jeff Bezos — a presidential foe in part because he owns The Washington Post, whose news coverage the president thought was unfair and too tough on him — was “getting rich” because Amazon had been “ripping off” the Postal Service with a “sweetheart deal” to ship millions of its packages, one of them recalled. They explained that this was not true and that the Postal Service actually benefited from Amazon’s business, the adviser added, but the president railed for months about what he described as a “scam.”

In truth, the intricacies of voting laws are a matter for the states - not the feds. As an example, some states permit mail-in votes to be counted so long as they are post marked prior to Election Day. Others mandate that they be received by that date, and still others require that each mail-in ballot be notarized. ‘45 has threatened at least 46 states that they will be fined if they don’t complete counting mail-in ballots on Election Day itself. Whether or not this is legal is yet to be determined. But the Trump Justice Department knows full well that any legal case could take months - if not years - to wind up appearing before the Supreme Court.

Is it any wonder that Madam is deeply concerned?

What can we do? Everyone must contact their Congressional Representative and Secretary of State (for each of the 50 states) and express as simply and as tersely as possible why mail-in voting is provably honest and that the administration’s grand plan is could spell the end of Democracy. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. And above all, vote as early as humanly possible. Do not let these besotted egomaniacs steal away the presidential election so that they may continue to enrich themselves and their backers.

Madam deserves a good, sound, unencumbered night’s sleep. She knows and understands far, far more about politics than the current occupant of the White House and wishes only to cast this, her 38th presidential vote for a candidate who has read, understands, and fully supports the Constitution of the United States.

78 days until November 3, 2020.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone