Questions for Democrats From Me and The Times

To get an Op-Ed piece published in The New York Times you have to give the paper a three-business-day window to review your submission. The Times says it will contact you if they plan to use it. Otherwise, you’re free to publish it anywhere else it might be deemed worthy.

Last Friday night I emailed to The Times 10 questions that should be asked of each Democratic presidential hopeful during next week’s debates. Apparently, great minds think alike, because The Times had been working on a similarly themed idea which it unveiled Wednesday. The Times formulated 18 questions to which 21 candidates provided video responses (https://nyti.ms/2NbBe1Z). 

Having not heard back from The Times by Wednesday night, herewith are my questions (since expanded to a dozen): 

1. Will you support the eventual Democratic party nominee and not run a third party candidacy?

2. What will be your first five executive orders upon taking office?

3. Given what we now know about Donald Trump’s activities before and after the 2016 election, would you support a criminal prosecution of Donald Trump?

4. What action by the Trump administration has most enraged you and how would you counteract it?

5. If the Senate remains in Republican control, how would you counter Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s stranglehold on legislative affairs moving forward?

6. What steps would you take to improve our trade position vis-a-vis China?

7. How would you stem the flow of undocumented immigrants across our southern border?

8. Which country or entity or concept is America’s number one enemy today and in the future?

9. Should the Palestinians have their own state or should they become citizens of Israel and other Middle Eastern states where they reside?

10. What is your position on the impact and viability of technology companies, banks and investment houses that have grown “too big to fail.” Should they be broken up or more intensely regulated? 

11. Are some Afro-Americans entitled to reparations? How would you define reparations?

12. What steps would you take to improve health care?

For those who chose not to click on the link to The Times feature, here’s a list of its questions (added benefit: each question is linked to the candidate responses). You decide whose queries, mine or The Times, were more incisive. 

1. In an ideal world, would anyone own handguns?

2. Would your focus be improving the Affordable Care Act or replacing it with single payer?

3. Do you think it’s possible for the next president to stop climate change?

4. Do you think Israel meets international standards of human rights?

5. Who is your hero, and why?

6. Would there be American troops in Afghanistan at the end of your first term?

7. How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

8. Do you think illegal immigration is a major problem in the United States?

9. Where would you go on your first international trip as president?

10. Describe the last time you were embarrassed. Why?

11. Do you think President Trump has committed crimes in office?

12. Do you support or oppose the death penalty?

13. Should tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google be broken up?

14. Are you open to expanding the size of the Supreme Court?

15. When did your family first arrive in the United States, and how?

16. What is your comfort food on the campaign trail?

17. What do you do to relax?

18. Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?

The Trump Saga in Four Acts Continues

I am no fan of Attorney General Jeff Beauregard Sessions, but his treatment by the bully-in-chief is turning him into a sympathetic character. Even in the best of times Beauregard looks like he is about to spout a torrent of tears. But ever since he is being greased for a Trump dismissal, or resignation, he seems even more pathetic. 

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Keep in mind that though the attorney general is supposed to be the country’s top legal representative sworn to uphold the Constitution, Sessions earlier this year questioned how a federal judge on an island in the Pacific could thwart a presidential executive travel ban order. Apparently, he thinks Hawaii doesn’t have the same statehood standing as his native Alabama. Equally troubling, he must believe the judicial branch of government does not have review authority over presidential and legislative actions.

Sessions also showed a disturbing lack of memory in not recalling several meetings with Russian officials prior to his confirmation hearing. He is a former prosecutor. One can only imagine how he would have excoriated a witness who not once, not twice, but three times failed to recall pertinent testimony.

Trump’s pas de deux with Sessions shines a spotlight on the one-way loyalty the blowhard-in-chief practices. In simple terms, Trump is a “user.” And a bully who prefers to publicly humiliate a supporter rather than have the courage to fire him to his face. Running the government is not a reality TV show. There are real consequences to his actions. 

Transgender Service: I’m happy Trump has barred transgenders from the military. No, I do not support Trump’s decision. Rather, I am happy because it again exposes the duplicity and contradictions behind promises Trump and Republicans make and their actions.

The reversal of the policy promulgated under President Obama is another example of Trump reversing his predecessor’s actions not based on any study or open debate but rather on cold political calculation. 

These are self-inflicted wounds. By running his administration through tweets, Trump presents the impression (often accurately) that he does not weigh the issues deeply, that he fails to consult divergent views before letting his fingers do the governing. By saying he acted after consulting with unnamed “my generals and military experts,” Trump blindsided his own secretary of defense who weeks ago ordered a six month delay in a transgender policy review.

Sadly, we should no longer be surprised by Trump undercutting his own appointees.

No matter the outrage by the LGBTQ community and its supporters, some of whose members took Trump at his word that he, not Hillary Clinton, would be their advocate, the rejection of transgender military personnel will go down easy for his voter base of soul-less religious believers from the evangelical Christian, Jewish Orthodox and conservative Catholic communities. They’re soul-less in sticking by politicians who would cavalierly cut Medicaid from millions of the needy and infirmed.

History Repeating Itself? When I was in high school back in the early 1960s, my social studies teacher, Lewis Moroze, cautioned his students that the United States had a financial reason for fighting in Vietnam—offshore oil! 

Now, nothing came of it during the war years, but oil companies are there now. Why do I bring it up? Because the Trumpster is considering military options in Afghanistan—our longest war—based on the possibility rare-earth minerals could be extracted from that beleaguered country. His two predecessors also considered the mining possibility, but keep in mind that Trump once said he would have taken Iraq’s oil had he been commander-in-chief when our troops invaded that country. In case you missed it, here’s a New York Times article: https://nyti.ms/2tXFwuM

Montezuma’s revenge? Papaya from Mexico is being recalled because of an outbreak of salmonella linked to the fruit. Just wondering … how long will it take for the Twittersphere to say it’s Mexican retaliation for Trump’s disparagement of their country and people? 

2016 Mantra: It's the Supreme Court, Stupid

The reason establishment, conservative Republicans have swallowed their pride, eaten their words, and have held their noses at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency can be summed up in one acronym: SCOTUS. Supreme Court of the United States.

Forget about the wall and making Mexico pay for it. Or deporting 11 million illegal aliens. Or meeting with North Korean strong man Kim Jong-Un. Or scrapping Obamacare. Or permitting Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons. Or by sheer force of his personality making America great again. However bad Trump might be as the leader of the free world, as the next president he might pick one to three, or even four, Supreme Court justices, jurists who could guide the nation back to a time when prejudice and bias dominated employment, housing, electoral and education standards, while environmental, labor and safety safeguards were secondary to corporate profits.

In releasing his list of potential nominees last week Trump cunningly calculated the correct connection his candidacy posed to conservatives and the Republican establishment. The elites know a president has temporary powers, four to eight years, but a properly picked Supreme Court justice can wield influence and power for decades, for a generation or longer. So they are all in on their Faustian deal with The Donald. Even if Democrats unseat Trump in 2020 they wouldn’t be able to unseat picks he made for the court in the next four years.

Did you ever stop to analyze why Hillary Clinton is so hated by Republicans? She did, after all, vote with George W. Bush for the Iraq war. She’s generally as hawkish as they are. They blame her for the deaths of four Americans in Libya, but they say hardly a word about the thousands who have died and the billions of dollars squandered in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan based on lies by Bush and Dick Cheney. She is a capitalist, as her speaking fees clearly show. She is liberal, but less so than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. She showed strong family values by standing by her man when he was accused of sexual indiscretions. She hasn’t been accused of sexual infidelities as have numerous Republican politicians. She hasn’t been proven to be corrupt and criminal as have some GOP leaders, such as former Speakers of the House Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay.

No, the reason they hate her so is the threat she represents to their way of life. Hillary would place progressive justices on the Supreme Court.

Which brings up the most important theme Hillary and other Democrats must repeat over and over: the future of the Supreme Court and that of our country is at stake in this election. They need to draw stark contrasts from today’s rights and protections versus the rollbacks a conservative majority would impose.

Barack Obama must become the campaigner-in-chief for his legacy. This is no time to be an above-the-fray president. 

To paraphrase the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign mantra, the drumbeat for 2016 should be, “It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.” 

Your election witticism of the day, as provided by whowhatwhy.org:

George Washington is the only president who didn’t blame the previous administration for his troubles. —Author Unknown

Trump Channels Nation's Founders

A recent article by Politico’s national editor Michael Hirsh argued that far from being a boorish yahoo with extreme un-American views Donald Trump really is channeling the thoughts of the nation’s founders and some of its greatest presidents in their advocacy of few if any foreign entanglements (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/founding-fathers-2016-donald-trump-america-first-foreign-policy-isolationist-213873). 

It’s a piece replete with citations quoting Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, John Adams and John Quincy Adams to buttress the idea that foreign ventures would ensnare the country in affairs best left to people on the other side of the Atlantic, the Pacific, of course, being no point of reference to their late 18th and early 19th century minds.

Since the start of World War II, however, the United States has been globally engaged, first fighting the Axis Powers, then confronting Communist Soviet Union, China and Cuba in a Cold War, followed by a patchwork of alliances and adventures in the Middle East, the most recent being our tragic years-upon-years involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and our arms-length position vis-a-vis Syria.  

“But it is fair to ask, as Trump is, why we are simply continuing, through inertia and with little change, a system that was built up to thwart a set of threats that no longer exist,” wrote Hirsh. “Maybe this vast, expensive global order was necessary against Hitler, and later Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev—the very real threats of tyranny, totalitarianism and international communism in the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s—but is Putin’s Russia, or Xi Jinping's China, really enough of a threat to justify the same expense and effort? It’s also fair to ask—as Trump does, in his blunt way—whether U.S. allies have grown a bit spoiled and barely notice any longer who’s holding that defense umbrella over their heads, allowing them to continue massive spending on their welfare states.”

Trump’s advocacy of a reimagined United States relationship with our allies, and by extension our adversaries, has tapped a reservoir of innate American isolationism made all the more potent by a failed war in Vietnam (though the feared Domino Effect never transpired) and the twin disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

In the end, though, it should come down not to the electorate’s knowledge of historical admonitions but rather to the confidence Americans have in the knowledge, leadership and diplomatic skills they want in their next president. Trump has displayed little of those skills as he has rampaged through the Republican primary process, flipping positions as quickly as one changes gears in a sports car. He is not thought highly of in most foreign capitals. If he’s elected, heads of state will have to deal with him but they might never be confident his word would be his bond.

The closest we have to a Republican head of state is Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the second in line to be president should tragedy strike the chief executive and the vice president. Ryan has yet to endorse the presumptive nominee of his party, but with each passing day Republican office holders appear to be swallowing their scruples and lining up, however reluctantly, behind Trump. It’s only a matter of time before Ryan caves, and without extracting any implementable concessions.

It seems they are all more interested in winning than in protecting the principles of the republic and their party. Their professed animosity toward Hillary Clinton trumps (pun intended) the reality that The Donald is unfit to be president of the mightiest country in the world, a country that has been a symbol of equality and decency throughout the world but under Trump would be willing to discriminate against Muslims and would sanction torture. The damage to American prestige would be incalculable.

No criticism is more pointed than from within one’s family, so here’s an excerpt from Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist of The New York Times, describing the factionalism of the Republican party that led to Trump’s rise and his own failure to foresee his appeal: 

“So to catalog my wrongness: I overestimated the real commitment of both factions’ leaders to their stated principles and favored policies. (Even though I didn’t agree with many of those policies myself, I assumed from the party’s longstanding resistance to change that someone did!) I overestimated their ability to put those principles ahead of personal resentments. And yes, since to acquiesce to Donald Trump as the Republican nominee is to gamble recklessly with the party’s responsibilities to the republic, I overestimated their basic sense of honor.” (http://nyti.ms/1rZxgcB)

Symbol of Oppression

I can’t explain or understand why, but one of my father’s favorite shows when he was just a few years older than I am now was The Dukes of Hazzard. Friday nights after dinner, whether we were visiting my parents in Brooklyn or they were with us in White Plains, he’d watch Bo and Luke Duke do their shenanigans while riding around in the General Lee, their orange Dodge Charger with a Confederate battle flag painted on the roof. To enter and exit the car the Dukes had to climb in or out through the side windows.

Sitting next to my father during these TV times would be our son Dan, all of five years old when the series ended its six-year run. So it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to me that one day during his formative years, when Dan and I were riding around in my Chevy Vega hatchback, he asked if he could get out of the car “like the Dukes.” 

The General Lee is back in the news. After the massacre of nine Afro-American parishioners in Charleston, SC, by a white supremest who posed for pictures with the Confederate battle flag, professional golfer Bubba Watson has removed the flag from his copy of the General Lee, replacing it with an American flag.  

As a symbol of oppression, the Confederate battle flag ranks right up there with the Nazi swastika and the Communist hammer and sickle. And, if we’re going to be historically correct and objective, with the Christian cross and the crescent of Islam, both religious symbols used to subjugate and annihilate millions of non-believers down through the centuries, throughout the world. Perhaps in another posting I’ll delve deeper into the realm of religious conflagrations that continue to this day, in the case of Islam, for example, or the once daily strife in Northern Ireland, or the genocide in Bosnia. In the interim, you can look up the histories of numerous wars, invasions and mass murders done in the name of religion.

For now, let’s confine ourselves to the table talk discussion at hand, the meaning, and thus the fate, of the Confederate battle flag. Flying the flag, its supporters say, respects those who died fighting for the Confederacy, the heritage of the South, its history, its way of life. They reject any suggestion that it stands for racism, segregation and white supremacy. 

The flag went into battle, they say, in the War Between the States.

In not recognizing that conflict as The Civil War, they fail to understand and accept that the cause they so faithfully cherish was fought, and the soldiers who fell under its banner died, to preserve the right to own another human being! 

The whole foundation of the South was built on slavery. Today’s Republican electoral domination of the South is based on gerrymandered districts and restrictive voting rights laws that diminish the power of Afro-Americans. 

The Confederate battle flag has come to represent a distilled segment of disobedience, of rejection of the common good. Rebellion. A belief that majority rule does not apply if it undermines outdated, biased, principles. 

It is interesting to recall that during the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, or the resistance to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one, to my memory, ever rallied dissenters by waving the Confederate flag. Yet, when the nation finally started to recognize and do something about inequality in the 1950’s and into the 1960’s, the Confederate battle flag reappeared across the South. 

Coincidence? Hardly. The Stars and Bars were meant to send a signal that just as Afro-Americans were not equal citizens in the Old South their status would be no different in the New South.   

Anyone who defends the public showing of the Confederate flag except in a display inside a museum just doesn’t get it. And if they haven’t after all that happened in Charleston and around the country over the last year, they probably never will.

Equal Time, Arresting Walks, Front Lines

Before we embark on today’s missive an aside:

Do you think Republican presidential hopefuls will demand equal media time for all the TV and radio mentions of the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York? After all, as showman George M. Cohan observed some 100 years ago, “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right,” Hillary Clinton is enjoying daily impressions of her surname since two convicted killers escaped from the Donnemora, NY, facility. Moreover, if Mad Men taught the public anything it is that repeated mentions of a product’s name (in this case a presidential candidate) helps secure consumer acceptance.

Just wondering …

And while we are on the subject of incarceration, do you know the difference between prison and jail? Prison is where you go for any sentence exceeding one year and a day. Less than that and you’re confined to jail where you also sojourn pending your trial. Just thought you’d like to know. (And there’s no difference between prison and a penitentiary.)

I thought Gilda and I lived in a rather ordinary, common suburban neighborhood, if you accept the argument that a neighborhood encompasses your walking surroundings even if you cross the border into another community, as we do living just two blocks from Scarsdale. My fantasy world has been shattered two times.

Twice in the last six months or so police have arrested the residents of homes we frequently walk by in the evening (both are in Scarsdale, I hasten to say). The first arrest was of a woman allegedly running a marijuana mill in Queens. She was renting a rather stately, newly constructed home off of Saxon Woods Road just inside the Scarsdale line. Last week a Manhattan doctor and his office manager wife were arrested for allegedly running a “pill mill,” selling about $77 million worth of black market oxycodone prescriptions over a six year period. In their unremarkable second home along Black Birch Road in Scarsdale (they also have residences in Hawaii and Florida and are building a house in The Philippines), police found $600,000 in cash. One of the more fascinating aspects of the doctor and his wife’s story is their age. He is 77, she 79. 

Who knew drug dealing was a senior citizen activity? I always thought as you age you wind up taking, not dispensing, drugs. 

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And now a word from our sponsor, so to speak. Our second ConEd bill since we went solar arrived. For May it came to $19.78. Last year it was $231.49. After paying the monthly $92.97 fee to SolarCity, we saved $118.74 for the month. Two months’ savings: $210.09, and some 2,000 ConEd kilowatt hours. 

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Front lines everywhere: Recently, President Obama said the 450 support troops he is sending back to Iraq won’t proactively engage the enemy. They will not be on the front lines. 

If the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything it is that the “front lines” of today’s conflicts are fluid. They can be anywhere. Anywhere the enemy is, which is everywhere. Everywhere U.S. troops are. 

So let’s not pretend our soldiers will be shielded from harm. Our enemies have amply and repeatedly demonstrated—going back to Vietnam to Lebanon to the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen—that non traditional combat foes can strike even the most fortified and presumed secure locations, inflicting dozens, even hundreds, of casualties.

Ellen's Story: A Tale of Adoption

New Jersey governor Chris Christie signed into law Tuesday a bill to allow adopted children to obtain their birth certificates without first securing a court order (http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie-signs-bill-opening-adoption-records-1.1023805). The ability to find out information about a natural parent brought to mind the story of Ellen, one of our dearest friends from our time in Connecticut back in the 1970s.

While in college in the 1960s, Ellen had a child out of wedlock. Neither she nor the father wanted to wed, so the baby girl was placed for adoption with Catholic Charities. Several years later, after Ellen had married and had told her husband and their two sons about the daughter she had given up, she advised the charity she would be open to meeting her daughter should the girl ever seek her out.

Twenty-four years after her birth, the girl approached Catholic Charities, which reconfirmed Ellen's willingness to be contacted. When they met, Ellen was amazed at how much she resembled her natural father. In addition, the girl was an accountant; her father had been an accounting major in college. Turned out, she had been placed with a lovely family that lived near Ellen’s home. During their initial meeting, Ellen told her she was her birth mother but that the woman who raised her was her real mom.

Her daughter asked where her father was. Ellen said they had not been in contact since her birth but that she knew where his family lived. She found his family in a phone book of his home town. When Ellen called, a woman answered. Ellen asked for him, but was told he didn't live there anymore. The woman said she was his sister. 

Ellen identified herself as a college friend. The woman recognized Ellen's name. Her brother had told the family all about her and their child. She then told Ellen that he had served in Vietnam, had suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, had overcome it, and was now a counselor for veterans similarly afflicted. In fact, she related, he was about to go to Russia from his home in California to counsel soldiers affected by PTSD from their tours in Afghanistan. He was to make a stopover at JFK Airport in New York in a few days.

They had a satisfying reunion at the airport.  

Her private past now almost completely public, Ellen had one more revelation to make. She had never told her mother, a religious Catholic, about the daughter born 24 years earlier. She needn’t have worried. Her mother lovingly accepted her into their family.

Irony, Purple Power and Some Big Business Questions

I enjoy irony, especially when names are involved. Take, for example, a recent article in The New York Times Magazine. “A Tale of Two Valleys” related the entrepreneurial conflict between old and new techies in Silicon Valley. The first source quoted by the author was Sanjit Biswas, a nouveau techie whose last name cannot help but be a metaphor for the past as prologue in this rapidly evolving business segment.

Here’s another: An invitation arrived from the White Plains Historical Society to support its Historic Preservation Fund by buying raffle tickets. Grand Prize I would be a four-volume set of Carl Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln. 

Grand Prize II would be a four-volume biography of Robert E. Lee, a Pulitzer Prize winning effort by Douglas Southall Freeman. How deliciously ironic for the author of a biography of the general fighting to keep millions of Afro-Americans enslaved to have the surname “free man”! How further ironically amusing that his middle name would be an all-for-the-South rallying cry, if ever there were one.

Purple Power: How would you like to walk around with a target on your chest or back? Probably not, considering the trigger-happy country we live in today. On the other hand, despite threats from the Taliban, nearly 60% of eligible Afghani voters are walking around with purple ink on their forefingers, proof positive they voted in Saturday’s elections. 

Which makes me wonder, why don’t we in the United States dip people’s fingers into an ink well, or create some other visual sign, to signify involvement in the one political process where all of us are equal? In our free society we fail to vote in markedly higher percentages than the threatened populace of Afghanistan. A purple finger would mark for all to see the commitment each individual has to our democracy. Conversely, lack of a purple stain would be a sign of shame, assuming one is a citizen and has not lost the right to vote.

My suggestion does have some kinks that need working out. We have a high percentage of absentee ballots cast. We also have early voting in some states. How would we identify those who take advantage of these alternatives to polling station visits? Maybe we could issue packets with just enough purple ink to paint one finger, to be applied on election day? 

If Catholics are willing to walk around in public with blackened foreheads on Ash Wednesday, if observant Jews are willing to walk around wearing yarmulkes, if Sikhs walk around wearing turbans, if Amish, Mennonites and Hasidic Jews are willing to walk around in distinctive garb, then everyone who cares about democracy should be willing to display their allegiance to the Red, White and Blue (the combination of red and blue make purple; add white and you get lavender).

Here’s another (tongue-in-cheek) idea: If we can't vote in superior numbers, perhaps we can enfranchise people in other democratic countries to help us select our president, for, after all, he or she is the leader of the free world. 

Shouldn't, say, the British or the Australians or the Polish have a vote in whom our commander-in-chief is, considering those countries always seem to support our military initiatives?

Keep Reading: Democracy demands an informed electorate. Yet, I sense a growing percentage of voters agree with a sentiment expressed during a dinner party we attended last Friday. Our host lamented he has been so depressed and distressed by the news lately that he has curtailed his reading of the front page of The Times. 

Secretly, I thought I was in the minority by also doing so, but the consensus around the table was that our host was not unique. Though we were all liberals (to the best of my knowledge), I believe the trend spans political denominations, and is not restricted to shunning The Times. We’re also turned off by network news telecasts.

I’m a big believer that an informed electorate is a prerequisite for a strong democracy. But I am distressed by the bickering from both sides of the political aisle and the tendency to reject outright any suggestions from the other side. 

Here's what I don't understand. If Republicans are the party of Big Business, why isn't Big Business pushing them to pass more projects that would help industry and put more people back to work and thus give the masses more money to spend on the products of Big Business?

Take infrastructure, for example. We need to shore up our bridges and tunnels, our highway overpasses, our rail beds and airports.

We need to modernize our power grid, our telecommunications network, our water supply system.

Surely the captains of industry see this. So why are they flushing tens of millions of dollars into the vest pockets of GOP legislators who are voting against their vested interests? What Machiavellian purpose is achieved? I'm no fan of Sheldon Adelson, but at least his wants are out in the open. When Republican presidential wannabes kowtow to him, we all know what he is demanding in return.

Sure. We know the fat cats don’t want to be forced to pay higher taxes. Nor do they want to pay higher wages. Or pay for health care for their workers. They want less regulation, fewer labor safety laws. But let's be practical. Democrats won't give them that, especially when the president is a Democrat. So why doesn't the industry elite look long term and push for investment that will benefit them in the present and near future?

Hoping to Avoid Another Gas Attack

Apropos Bashar al-Assad’s Oscar-worthy portrayal in the Charlie Rose interview of an aggrieved head of state wrongly accused of killing his subjects by using chemical gas attacks, I can only refer him to an old American saying, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

Let’s not kid ourselves or anyone else. Assad gassed his people.

When I was a small child, my parents used to entertain some of my father’s relatives. One of them scared me. He looked like Lurch on The Addams Family. He was older than my father, probably around 60. He had wispy, blond hair. He had deep sunken eyes that had a faraway look to them. He was tall, even by a youngster’s perspective. His hands were large. His fingers never closed. Instead they were splayed out, lifeless.

I asked why he looked the way he did. He was gassed during World War I, my father explained. I was too young at the time to fully comprehend the meaning behind his affliction.

You might have noticed I have not mentioned him by name. I don't remember it. Like so many, I have put victims of gassing out of my mind. The world has a tendency to forget atrocities. It’s too convenient for our leaders and their citizenry to let incidents pass without repercussions, especially when they happen in distant lands and cultures.

Gilda sent me a commentary from Tom Friedman of The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-same-war-different-country.html?emc=eta1&_r=0). He's against any military action in Syria. Among other reasons, he cites the lack of results our might achieved in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Friedman believes lack of pluralistic-minded leadership dooms these sectarian conflicts to be catalysts of state destroyers. Just let the factions fight their own intolerant wars.

I agree bombing wouldn't resolve any part of the current crisis. But we wouldn't be bombing for regime change. We would be bombing to firmly define the limits of warfare, that gassing civilians cannot and will not be tolerated. That there be no next time.

Assad threatens retaliation. Are we seriously going to quiver? Does he seriously think his state can stand toe to toe with America, or has he determined that his best long term prospect is to lose a war with the United States a là The Mouse That Roared? (He does look like someone Peter Sellers could play, if he were alive today.)

President Obama’s firm resolve to punish Syria may have led to a diplomatic breakthrough, however inadvertently it appeared, courtesy of Secretary of State John Kerry's suggestion that Assad relinquish control of all chemical weapons (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/world/middleeast/kerry-says-syria-should-hand-over-all-chemical-arms.html?hp&_r=0). I hope this proposal takes root. But let's not be fooled. If it does, it is only because Assad was convinced of, and afraid of, Obama’s commitment to action. Otherwise, Assad would be gassing up again and again.

McChrystal Light in 2016

Twice in the last three days I have seen on TV the next Republican Party candidate for president. He is tall, slim, articulate, a young-looking 59, a man with vision, accomplishment and dedication. He commands, instills, inspires and practices loyalty.

He's a retired U.S. Army general, forced to resign for imprudent comments his staff made to a Rolling Stone reporter about their civilian leaders. But in the bizarro world of politics we operate under today, insulting Vice President Joseph Biden or President Barack Obama would be listed as an accomplishment on his résumé when read by the Republican elite. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next Republican candidate for president, General Stanley McChrystal.

As a nation we have a long history of electing generals and other war heroes to lead our country. Washington. Jackson. Tippacanoe’s William Henry Harrison. Taylor. Grant. Teddy Roosevelt. Eisenhower. Kennedy. Bush 1. McChrystal would slide in quite nicely with that list.

McChrystal is making a publicity tour to promote his book, My Share of the Task: A Memoir. He's a darling of corporate America. Executives pay top dollar to soak up his leadership mantra as they sweat together jogging around the capital, stopping at various monuments so McChrystal can impart some leadership lore. 

I'm not sure he's fully on board with the main GOP planks. Heck, I don’t even know if McChrystal is a Republican. He actually has come out for limiting public access to military style weapons. That would be a novel position for any Republican standard bearer. Perhaps he would offer a more common sense alternative to the crazies who have crushed the mainstream of the party during the last two presidential elections. 

Perhaps he’s not as dogmatic when it comes to GOP platform planks. Who knows if he is anti abortion? Anti taxes? Pro debt reduction? Anti social services spending? Pro big defense spending? Blindly reveres Ronald Reagan? As a military strategist, he’s had to maneuver assets based on resources and capabilities. He’d figure out quickly what are electable positions. We might actually get a Republican candidate not so intimated to admit science proves global warming, science proves the earth is more than 6,000 years old, Creationism is bunk, evolution should be embraced, infrastructure is important to the military and our economy and money should be invested to upgrade it.  

I can't foresee any right-minded Republican presidential hopeful man enough to challenge him in the primaries. Sure, they might be correct in saying he has no government experience, but that might be appealing to Tea Party faithful and independents who consider normal politicians to be most of the problem in Washington. Let him pick a vice president with congressional experience, someone like senator Marco Rubio, and we might be looking at the ticket that restores the Grand Old Party to the White House, with perhaps strong enough coattails to sweep majorities along in the House and Senate.

McChrystal believes all Americans should engage in national service, not just military service. Having commanded troops most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, he's fulfilled his military obligations. Now he's primed for public service at the highest level. There's no way Republican poobahs are not salivating at the prospect. There's no way Democratic strategists are not shivering at the possibility. Democrats will need a really strong counter-candidate, someone who can keep together the Obama coalition of women, minorities, East and West Coast liberals and independents. Are you up to the challenge, Hillary?

What I'd Like to Hear, Part II

Having been disappointed by Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, I thought it only fair to delineate what I expect from Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats this week during their national convention. Yes, Obama inherited a blown up economy, two quagmire wars and mounting deficits. It won’t be enough to recount his successes in bringing home the troops from Iraq and setting a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. It won’t be enough to say he ordered the mission that killed Osama bin Laden and many other drone strikes that have decimated the leadership of al-Qaeda. It won’t be enough to say he saved the auto industry. It won’t be enough to say unemployment would be a lot worse without the stimulus package he pushed through. It won’t be enough to say Obamacare was passed. 

It won’t be enough because Americans always choose to look forward with nary a glance in the rear view mirror. So, Barack, what will you do for us in the next four years? How will you work with Congress? Will you vigorously stump for a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, or will you fight just for the Oval Office chair Clint Eastwood parodied last week? How will you convince us you would not squander a majority in both branches of the legislature if you’re lucky enough to get them? How will you show us you wouldn’t be an emasculated president if Republicans win control of the Senate? Or even if they just retain their House majority? 

Let’s be brutally honest. The last two years amply demonstrated that being chief executive vouchsafed your war powers and your foreign policy visions. But Republicans in the House and Senate effectively stymied your domestic initiatives once Democrats lost working majorities in both chambers. So as they say in Texas Hold ‘Em poker, are you going to go “all in?” Will you appeal directly to the American public and make the case for Democratic congressional and Senate candidates? Congress’ approval rating is at an all-time low because nothing, nothing is being done under the present configuration. 

You need to sell the total Democratic package. You need to set forth a vision and a program, a specific program, to get more people back to work. To create more jobs. To reduce the deficit. To prosecute white collar criminals in the financial industry with the same vigor that ordinary people face when they violate the law. To rebuild the infrastructure of our country, not with lofty words but with real projects that put people on the payroll. Will you fight for an increase in the minimum wage so working families can gain some additional purchasing power? How will you protect the solvency of Medicare and Social Security? How will you project American strength versus China and Russia? Romney has chosen belligerency. You must show strength, not appeasement. 

Romney tried to sell disappointment in Obama offset by trust in a largely unknown challenger. Obama must emerge from his convention as a battler, a leader who will fight not just to retain his job but as someone who will champion the middle and working classes with specific programs. Programs to create jobs. Jobs. Jobs.

The Blame Game

So the Republican intelligentsia, if I may be so bold to use that descriptor for the Neanderthal-thinking men and women who gave us pre-9/11-ineptitude followed by nine years of tragic war in Iraq and 10 years of tragic war in Afghanistan, are now stumbling over themselves in their haste to criticize Barack Obama for ending our combat in Iraq as of December 31, 2011, conveniently ignoring the fact Obama will be enforcing an agreement forged by his predecessor, George W. Bush the Magnificent, a pact announced during that same memorable press conference in Baghdad when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoe at the leader of the free world. He missed.

Politics being what it is and always has been, it’s the spin that counts, so it’s not too surprising to find the GOP cranking up the latest stanza in its long-playing song, “Who Lost ?,” as in Who Lost China?, Who Lost Cuba?, Who Lost Vietnam?, Who Lost Iran?.

Safe to say, Republicans have no qualms tagging Democrats for all those losses. Moreover, despite their mismanaging the Iraq and Afghani wars from 2002 through 2008, they are sure to blame Obama and his Democratic cohorts for anything that goes wrong there, while conveniently ignoring any of Obama’s foreign policy successes such as the killings of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. How disingenuous of the Republicans to give credit to the French and British for the overthrow of Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi without recognizing the critical support America provided.

But why should we confine ourselves to chastising just our domestic politicians. How is it that under Bush we aligned ourselves with someone as duplicitous, so openly duplicitous, as Hamid Karzai? The president of Afghanistan told a Pakistani television station last weekend his country would side with Pakistan should it ever engage in a military conflict with the United States or India, both countries with strategic ties to Afghanistan.

Though he has now backtracked, claiming to have been “misinterpreted,” Karzai’s open display of ingratitude for the U.S. investment in lives and resources puts our continued support of his regime into question. Sadly, few if any Republican voices were raised in protest, as they were too busy blasting Obama for closing down the war in Iraq.

Listening today to NPR interview John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire and former chief of staff of the White House under President George Bush the First, I couldn’t stop wondering what political histories these guys read. In coming out for Mitt Romney, Sununu said the best presidents are former governors because they possess executive decision-making experience, unlike Obama who was just a senator and never had to make tough choices. Sununu cited Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as presidents who acted determinedly within their political beliefs.

It’s a nice theory, but doesn’t explain how two former governors—George Bush the Second and Jimmy Carter—screwed up royally, and how such non-governors as Harry S. Truman and three-quarters of those enshrined on Mt. Rushmore (Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln) are considered among our best presidents without having ever sat in a governor’s chair.

Bottom line: It comes down to the man or woman. You don’t have to be an ex-governor, like Bill Clinton, to be a good president. You must be a good politician who has deep beliefs and values that resonate with the American people.

Regardless of who is president, often their most enduring legacy comes from their appointments to the federal judiciary. It doesn’t always turn out the way they intended—Eisenhower thought he was appointing a conservative when he chose Earl Warren to head the Supreme Court. Nixon thought the same of Harry Blackmun, as did Bush the First of David Souter.

Obama’s two Supreme Court appointments, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, are quality selections, but he’s left some 80 vacancies on the lower courts. Unless he nominates some judges soon, and fights for their confirmations, any hope of balancing conservative bench strength on the circuit and appeals courts will be lost. That, to me would be the real tragedy of the Obama presidency.

(Editor’s Note: For those counting, this is the 400th blog entry since No Socks Needed Anymore began September 8, 2009. My thanks to all who have stayed with me for the entire run and to those who jumped on board mid-stream.)

Marching for Peace and Jobs

Some people grouse at the news of wars and national debt. Some listen to old protest songs. Sixty-three-year-old Alan Gilbert decided a more public demonstration was in order.

Late last fall he turned to his wife Barbara and said the only way to solve the mounting debt and budget crisis was to end U.S. involvement in the interminable double wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would organize a march and rally in their home town of Tucson to call attention to a plan to shift the dollars we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan to more fully fund American jobs, education, health care, environmental protection and other human needs. Both wars have cost more than a trillion dollars since their inception.

There have been public protests before in Tucson over Iraq and Afghanistan, but no one had taken the initiative to organize anything for 2011. Alan assumed the role. So on the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq—Saturday, March 19—Alan will lead a march and rally from Armory Park to DeAnza Park. Thousands are expected to follow his footsteps. Twenty community organizations have signed on as sponsors. The Tucson march will be one of more than 200 planned across the country to commemorate the date.

Hardly a rabble-rouser, Alan is a military veteran. In planning the demonstration, Alan appealed to the common sense of an informed public. “Remember that the true security of our country depends on well- funded education for our children, good health care, decent paying jobs, and a healthy environment. We must insist that our government fund human needs instead of death and destruction,” he said in an e-mail soliciting support from ordinary citizens.

I hope many will heed his clarion call.

Alan’s our brother-in-law. He’s married to Gilda’s sister, Barbara.

WikiLeaks, Fire and a Motto

How delicious an irony is it that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested today, December 7, the 69th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day?

Though arrested in London on suspected sex offenses in Sweden, Assange is reviled, or revered, for his public spillage of secret files that have undermined U.S. diplomacy around the world and war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Imagine, if you will, how history might have changed had Assange and WikiLeaks been active in 1941 and the years leading up to the Japanese sneak attack on our Pacific naval base. FDR’s secret efforts to maneuver the U.S. into the fight against Hitler might have strengthened the hands of the isolationists. The “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor might not have been so surprising.

But why stop at WWII? WikiLeaks would have been revelatory in the 1960s and the buildup of the Vietnam War. We would have found out what McNamara & Co. really thought without having to wait 40 years until The Fog of War. Or maybe we would have discovered that Nixon had no secret plan to end the war, just a secret plan to snooker the public to get elected.

Too bad WikiLeaks wasn’t around to warn us about the election of 2000, or the road to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don’t condone the wholesale release of secret documents, but it’s hard to condemn an action that has revealed the true nature of the diplomacy around us, domestically and internationally.


Fire: Am I being too sensitive, or did the major TV and radio news media mostly ignore the fire that killed 42 Israelis over the last week? When the fire broke out near Haifa there were radio reports in the morning, but as the day grew longer, those reports mostly vanished from the air waves.

Had 42 people died from a terrorist bombing, or from a military response to a demonstration, there surely would have been coverage. Put into greater perspective, the 42 Israelis who perished would be the equivalent of more than 1,000 Americans dying from a fire. It was a devastating blow to a small country.

One of the towns mostly destroyed was the artistic village of Ein Hod in the mountains above Haifa. Gilda and I visited Ein Hod in 2003. In one of the ceramic galleries we bought a flowered bowl we display in our dining room.


No Argument Here: I’m a pretty argumentative person. Gilda can attest to that. So can my kids. I enjoy a reasoned and respectful disagreement. But what’s going on in politics these days is anything but reasoned and respectful.

The latest absurdity is the back and forth over the country’s official motto. Is it “E pluribus unum” (out of many, one), or “In God we trust”? Both apparently are correct, except that people like Glenn Beck and his acolytes believe it is the latter and are attacking President Obama for saying in Indonesia that it is the former (http://mediamatters.org/blog/201012070024).

This type of silliness, linked as it is to the belief that Obama is trying to stifle religion, at least Christian religion, is prima facie evidence that there is waaaaay too much air time extended to agitators like Beck.

The Major, The Navy, and a Simple Word

The celebration of the late George M. Steinbrenner III continues, with some of his admirers advocating his immediate election to the Baseball Hall of Fame rather than making the legendary, controversial owner of the NY Yankees wait several years as other mortals must.

The last two weeks have been particularly sad for Yankee fans. Aside from Boss George, we lost Bob Sheppard, the longtime “voice of the Yankees.”

Equally poignant was the death of Ralph Houk, the Major, a true World War II decorated hero, who managed the pinstriped boys in The Bronx for 11 years, winning three straight pennants (1961-63) and two consecutive World Series (1961-62). Houk’s first three years as Yankee skipper spanned the last glory years of Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, and Roger Maris. He returned for a second stint as manager during the nadir of the franchise, taking over in 1966 and staying until the end of 1973, Steinbrenner’s first year as owner. It’s no coincidence Houk left the Yankee dugout when he did. His managerial philosophy could not have been more diametrically different than Steinbrenner’s.

“I don’t think you can humiliate a player and expect him to perform,” Houk was quoted as saying.

The bottom line is this: when Houk was given great players, the team won. When his roster had aging or mediocre talent, like Horace Clarke, the team failed. The same can be said for Steinbrenner’s bullying manners. When he paid for the right players, they won. When he bought the wrong players, they failed to win.


Ask Not...: It’s a very simple word. Only three letters. A-S-K. But this word is among the most mispronounced in the English language. Listen, not even too carefully, and too often you will hear someone say “aks” instead of “ask.” Education or socio-economic environment or race doesn’t typecast offenders. One of my former staffers made this egregious mistake, and believe me, when a reporter/editor says in an interview, “May I aks you a question?” it doesn’t reflect favorably on the publication or the writer.


The Navy in Afghanistan: It’s upsetting to learn two U.S. sailors ventured into harm’s way in Afghanistan, with one killed and the other taken prisoner by Taliban forces. First question that came to mind—why is the Navy represented in a landlocked country? Second question—why would these sailors voluntarily travel into a danger zone?

The NY Times tried to answer the first question with the following sentence in a Sunday article: “Although soldiers make up the lion’s share of American forces in Afghanistan, which is landlocked, most bases have a mix of service members, including from the Navy.”

My hypothesis for the second question is these sailors were part of a Special Operations unit. Otherwise, I can’t figure out why any sailors are there.

The frantic efforts to find and retrieve the captured serviceman will give Americans a greater appreciation for what Israelis are going through the last four-plus years, since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas and taken to the Gaza Strip.

Double Standards

The loss of any innocent life is to be regretted, but two concurrent protests against the use of force by U.S. and Israeli military forces raise some troubling double standard questions. Actually, it’s a double-standard squared problem, as I will explain.

I am all for democratic countries waging war under “civilized” principles that include safeguarding civilian populations and never knowingly setting out to harm non combatants. It’s a standard all too often ignored by their foes. But one reason we believe America and Israel engage in “just wars” is the manner in which they are prosecuted. Both countries try to avoid civilian casualties.

The U.S., according to CBS News sources, has killed more than 500 terrorists in Pakistan over the last two years. They include the third-ranking Al Qaeda leader, killed in the last week. All died without the loss of a single U.S. serviceman, thanks to the technological efforts of our increasingly sophisticated unmanned drone air force. But in killing those terrorists, 30 civilians also died, CBS reported. Scores of civilians have died in Afghanistan from drone attacks, as well. A United Nations report claims drone strikes “amount to a license to kill” without being held accountable since neither the U.S. nor the Pakistani governments acknowledge the drones are operating over Pakistani soil. Further, the rise in drone warfare could lead to its adoption by other countries that would not be as discriminating in its use, the U.N. said (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/03drones.html?ref=world).

The death of nine activists aboard a ship trying to pierce the blockade of the the Gaza Strip has once again raised voices protesting Israel’s right to defend itself. Hardly a whimper is heard when North Korea sinks a South Korean vessel, or when one Muslim faction blows up innocents praying at a mosque. But when Israel justifiably tries to determine if contraband and explosives are part of cargo bound for an enemy that has vowed its destruction, the world seems to awaken from its lethargy. Even the United States seems ready to castigate a reliable partner in the war on terror.

And yet, and here’s where the double-standard squared part comes in, read through the remarks made by a U.S. official justifying the drone attacks: “The United States has an inherent right to protect itself and will not refrain from doing so based on someone else’s exceptionally narrow—if not faulty—definition of self-defense.” Perhaps someone in the Obama administration needs to put that statement, substituting Israel for the United States, in front of the president and every other world leader and their respective staffs. No government in a state of war, as Israel is with Hamas, should be expected to sit by idly while its enemy arms itself with weapons that could penetrate major population centers. Hamas already has shown it does not wage “civilized” war. It purposely fires missiles into civilian areas.

I regret the loss of life on the Mavi Marmara. I regret Israel’s military precision failed to secure its objective without the loss of life. But I most regret the absence of a single, civilized standard adhered to by all combatants and the failure of the American government’s understanding that Israel has no room for slight miscalculations, that its existence depends on eternal vigilance. As candidate Barack Obama said during a visit to Sderot on the border of the Gaza Strip, "If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that."