Was an AR-15 Under Your Tree This Morning?

Did you wake up this morning to find a shiny, black AR-15 assault rifle under your Christmas tree? Or maybe you opened the wrapping paper on a cute, cuddly Glock pistol? 

I know many of you don’t celebrate Christmas, but that’s beside the point. Ever since the San Bernardino shooting, the country has reverted to (bad) form. The inevitable has happened. Again. As after each prior mass murder shooting, calls for more gun control have been followed by a surge in gun purchases, followed by the explanation that people just want to be able to protect themselves, as if  owning a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle guarantees one’s safety. Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun is the foundation of this argument.

I’m going to take a break from writing my opinion on this issue. Instead, I’ll give you some extracurricular reading and viewing. First, an opinion piece from The New York Times. It should take you about two minutes to read. http://nyti.ms/1SK5sRw

A longer time investment is required for a two-part video courtesy of correspondent Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah: http://on.cc.com/1lA6ncU

and http://on.cc.com/1lA6ncW.

If you’re wondering why I’m highlighting segments of The Daily Show it’s because I believe Trevor Noah has hit his stride and is more than amply filling the departed seat of Jon Stewart. Yeah, he can appear fawning, even awestruck, when celebrities come to visit. And I don’t care for the music groups he puts on stage more frequently than Stewart did. 

But his satiric takes on news of the day have won me over. Of course, lots of credit must go to the writing staff that, for the most part, is the same that served Stewart. 

A more radical change happened after Stephen Colbert left the Comedy Central time slot after The Daily Show. After first not giving The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore a chance, I’ve recently found his commentary on national and world events to be spot-on. 

As for Colbert’s Late Show on CBS, I keep wanting it to be better. Colbert, as well, seems to be too taken by his guests. Most of the time I skip his interviews. I watch for the few minutes Colbert reverts to political and social pundit, reprising the acerbic wit that made him famous. And have you noticed that he only wears blue suits? 

How, you might ask, can I watch all those shows that air from 11 pm till 12:35 am? I DVR them and try to squeeze in viewing while eating breakfast or lunch. In a few weeks I might have to add another show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee on TBS. And there’s another show I will begin taping—Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC. Meyers has ramped up his former Saturday Night Live Weekend Update shtick to a nightly pace. 

For progressive political commentary must-see shows are Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, both on HBO, the former on Friday nights, the latter on Sundays.

Random Thoughts: Now that you know some of my viewing habits, here’s a tidbit of strange shopping news. While stocking up Thursday, December 24, for the weekend and a quick visit by Dan, Allison, Finley and Dagny, I patronized the Stop & Shop in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers where I bought two seeded Jewish rye breads. 

One of the bread labels said it was packed on 12/24/15 at 3:25 am. I could hardly ask for anything fresher, Until, that is, I checked the second bread’s label which stated the bread was packed on 12/27/15 at 2:06 pm! Only the looong line at the customer service desk kept me from complimenting the store on its efficiency.

Memory Failure: I can’t rightly remember what grade I was in when I first read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It was either eighth grade or maybe an early high school year. It doesn’t really matter for the point I want to make, which is, I grew up in a tolerant time.

I say that because I spent the first 12 years of my education attending yeshivas, Modern Orthodox Jewish day schools with rich secular education programs. I don’t know if such schools would include A Christmas Carol in their curriculum these days. For sure, the numerous Jewish academies, many from the Hassidic community, that have sprouted up in Brooklyn in the last several decades have placed limited emphasis on secular studies. 

Too bad. A Christmas Carol is a classic.

Dickens Almost Got Me Expelled: Spoiler Alert—In the movie Creed, as the boxer Adonis Johnson Creed awaits his first American bout, he anxiously demands his boxing gloves be removed so he can settle his nervous stomach and go to the bathroom.

My IBS moment came before an English test on Dickens’ David Copperfield early on in my freshman year at Yeshivah of Flatbush. Between periods, right before the test, I raced to the bathroom. When I re-entered the room, I was accused by the teacher, Dr. Harran, of consorting with students who had just taken the test in his prior class. Accused of cheating, I was sent to the headmaster's office where I was informed the penalty could be expulsion. My parents were called in, my IBS was verified and I was permitted to take a make-up exam. 

I still suffer from IBS, but at least I don’t have to take tests any more. I do, however, sympathize with anyone who suffers any form of bathroom urgency. So I was more than empathetic to Hillary Clinton when she came back late to the podium from a break during last Saturday’s Democratic Party presidential debate.

And I was appalled at the crude comments spouted by Donald Trump. Trump is a real-life Archie Bunker, spewing bias, insults and “ter-let” talk. It might be perverse fun to hear him, as Archie made us laugh in the 1970’s and beyond in reruns, but the thought of Trump leading and representing our nation is repulsive and repugnant. 

To their credit, Jeb Bush and John Kasich have identified Trump for the bully and blowhard that he is. Too bad others who would lead the Republican Party and our country have not denounced and repudiated Trump. Their failure conveys the message that leadership without principle is more important to them than honesty, dignity and human values.   

The Jerk May Have the Law on His Side

Jeb Bush is right. Hard to believe I find myself agreeing with the wannabe president, but there I was, reading a New York Times article under the headline, “Still Assailing Donald Trump, Jeb Bush Calls Him ‘a Jerk’.

“Donald Trump is a jerk,” Mr. Bush said to applause (The Times reported from a New Hampshire town-hall-style event).

“You cannot insult your way to the presidency,” he said. “You can’t disparage women, Hispanics, disabled people. Who is he kidding? This country is far better than that. The idea that he’s actually running for president and insulting people is deeply discouraging, to be honest with you, and I think we should reject that out of hand. I hope you’ll reject it by voting for me, but a guy like that should not be the front-running candidate of our great party.”

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/19/jeb-bush-takes-his-anti-trump-message-on-the-road-in-new-hampshire/?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone

Jeb is right. But his problem is that the GOP has morphed into a party of “no,” of “you-can’t-have-any-or-come-here-if-you-are-different,” a party of distrust, of bait-and-switch that promises benefits to middle- and working-class people but delivers benefits just to the elite. It’s become a party of exclusion, not inclusion. A party of dogma one dares not dissent from, a party of religious extremism, a party whose foreign policy is founded on the principle of “my way or bombs away,” a party repulsed by scientific discovery, a party more comfortable with the values of the Dark Ages than of the Enlightenment.

For the moment let’s not talk about the Republican Party as a whole but rather the Trump phenomenon. His appeal has confounded “experts” within and without the GOP. It might be instructive to view this clip by Jordan Klepper from a recent Daily Show with Trevor Noah. It’s an enlightening, if not frightening, piece on why everyday, normal-looking people are supporting Trump: http://on.cc.com/1lOYpwG.

Also consider the consternation arch conservatives are feeling about the current Republican front-runner. Here’s part of a commentary from Charles C. W. Cooke, a staff writer at National Review:

“… if the current Republican front-runner is any indication of things to come, large swathes of the party have already abandoned their talk of ‘constitutional conservatism’ and ‘limited government’ and embraced a flat-out authoritarianism, at least as preached by ‘The Donald.’ Whatever else he might be, the idea of Trump as a paladin of civil liberties should make one howl with terrible laughter. Since he announced his candidacy, Trump has threatened to ignore those who are carping about free speech and shut down parts of the Internet; he has promised to summarily deport those who are suspected of being illegal immigrants, without due process of law; he has endorsed extensive campaign-finance regulations that fly directly in the face of the First Amendment; he has vowed to restrict the Second Amendment rights of those on the terror watch list, again without due process; he has praised Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens, suggested that natural-born Americans can be deported against their will, and proposed that American Muslims be barred from reentering the country; he has described as ‘wonderful’ a Supreme Court ruling that obliterated the ‘public use’ limitations on the invocation of eminent domain; and he has refused to rule out registering Americans on the basis of their faith. Worse still, he has responded to the criticism that these positions have generated by channeling his inner Nancy Pelosi: ‘Are you serious?’

“And yet, despite all of these transgressions, 30 percent of GOP-primary voters still list him as their top pick. This is an unmitigated disgrace.” (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428208/trump-anti-constitutional-authoritarian)

Okay, so the left and right are against Trump, particularly his anti-Mexican and anti-Islam “throw them out” or “bar them from entering” stances. But what if Trump is not constitutionally blind? What if his rants are within legal, if not ethical, bounds?

Consider, if you will, the following from the Immigration & Nationality Act of 1952 US Code 8, Section 1182, Sub-Section F:

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. 

I’m no constitutional scholar, but it appears The Donald’s plan to restrict immigration could be within the law as long as he doesn’t define class by religion. Country of origin might be a way to define the class of alien he wants to keep out. 

That being said, Jeb is still right. Trump’s a jerk.

Speaking Factually and with a Little Perspective

I am no less guilty than anyone else, but I detect our collective ability to speak or write correctly—and by that I mean factually even more so than grammatically—has eroded to the point where we make casual mistakes that can shift the public dialogue. Take, for example, a comment from Monday night’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

While discussing the assault on the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs last week, Noah said, “If I had to imagine the type of person who would shoot up an abortion clinic …” 

Noah fell into the all-too-common trap of calling Planned Parenthood “an abortion clinic” instead of recognizing it as a women’s health clinic that provides reproductive health services including abortions. 

Robert L. Dear Jr.’s murder of three last week was an example of domestic terrorism, yet too few in the media have recognized it as such. 

Speaking of terrorism, and the threat thereof, is it not disingenuous of Republicans to want to prevent Syrian refugees from entering the country because they fear one or more of them may attack us while they stubbornly refuse to limit alleged security risks on the government’s No Fly List from legally obtaining firearms? They claim it would undermine Second Amendment rights even though it is far more likely those already deemed possible terrorists would kill Americans than the refugees seeking a peaceful life within our borders.

The debate on Syrian refugees has mostly focused on the quality and extensiveness of the vetting process. Here’s a link to an article written by Scott Hicks,  a longtime immigration lawyer, detailing the process: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2015/11/19/exclusive-longtime-immigration-lawyer-pastor-explains-the-refugee-process/

Founding Fathers and Other Disreputables: How to explain the Donald Trump phenomena and how long it might last—The Washington Post tried in a Thursday article which contained the following illuminating paragraphs:

“Trump is a loud­-mouthed person, yes, and he does sometimes just say things to women to hurt their feelings,” an Indiana woman said during a late-October focus group of GOP primary voters conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

“But I’m going to stick with my belief saying that he’s going to try his best to get the country back the way our Founding Fathers had it at one time” (http://wapo.st/1Sk2Glw). 

The scary part of this seemingly blind support for a racist, a bigot, a dissembler, a sexist, a nativist, an ignoramus when it comes to history and other topics, is that too many Americans share those beliefs. It only validates my belief that we are a nation with too many idiots.

Let’s consider her desire to get back to the way our Founding Fathers had it at one time. Does that mean she condones slavery? That Afro-Americans are to be considered three-fifths of a person? Is she okay with the idea that women were not entitled to vote? For that matter, many white men were not eligible either—in most states you had to be a landowner to earn the right to cast a ballot. Does she favor state legislatures picking U.S. senators rather than direct elections by voters? And should we vote separately for the vice president? 

The Founding Fathers got lots of things right. But they also left out lots of stuff. Do we want to abandon our national parks, for example? Or social security? Or the protections afforded by the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Drug Administration, the FBI and other agencies that protect us from enemies within and outside our borders?

Trump is not alone in his depiction of foreigners—Syrians and Mexicans, to name two groups—as being unfit for residence within the United States. Yet, the provenance of their remarks can be traced back to the 19th century. In her book Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin quotes U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) during one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas senatorial campaign debates of 1858: 

“The signers of the Declaration of Independence,” said Douglas, “had no reference to negroes at all when they declared that all men are created equal. They did not mean negro, nor the savage Indians, nor the Fejee Islanders, nor any other barbarous race. They were speaking of white men. … I hold that this government was established for white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men, and none others.” 

Apparently, even a president considered one of our greatest, Woodrow Wilson, shared some of Douglas’ beliefs and prejudices. In the words of a New York Times editorial, “He was an unapologetic racist whose administration rolled back the gains that African-Americans achieved just after the Civil War, purged black workers from influential jobs and transformed the government into an instrument of white supremacy” (http://nyti.ms/1OfBkxV). Our commander-in-chief turned out to be a discriminator-in-chief. It’s no wonder Princeton University students want Wilson’s name expunged from the school he was president of before being president of the United States. 

Discrimination against Native Americans, along with disregard for a Supreme Court ruling, stained Andrew Jackson’s presidency, though it is doubtful many of his contemporaries thought so. Jackson forced the Cherokee Nation off of its land in the Southeast and relocated it in the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. In doing so Jackson refused to uphold a ruling by the Supreme Court that “made the Indian Removal Act invalid, illegal, unconstitutional and against treaties previously made by the United States.” 

Little wonder then that advocates of placing a woman’s face on one of our currency bills favor removing Andrew Jackson’s visage from the $20 bill and not Alexander Hamilton’s from the $10 bill. It also doesn’t hurt their argument that Hamilton was the architect of our national financial system while Jackson fought against the national bank.

Speaking of nefarious characters within and without, the U.S. and the world is obsessed with ISIS, and who can blame them given the Islamic terrorist organization’s beastly activities in the name of religion, at least as its adherents see it. The barbaric actions of ISIS and other jihadists come roughly 1,400 years after Muhammad founded Islam. 

For the sake of comparison, let’s see what was happening some 1,400 years after Jesus? Oh yes, the Spanish Inquisition, which followed on the heels of various Crusades which attacked Moslems, Cathars and Jews in the Holy Land and Europe. Looks like 1,400 years is not a happy time for those who don’t scrupulously adhere to organized religions. 

(By the way, if we assume the formal Jewish religion started around the time of Moses, estimated to be around 1200 BCE, 1,400 years later would be just after the Jews twice lost rebellions against Roman rule in Judea.)

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

A favorite movie of mine is The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Regretably, I haven’t seen it in years, though I have a videotape copy I just came across. Perhaps I’ll pop it into the VCR in the next few days. But really, who needs to view a comedy about a mythical Cold War invasion of America by Russians when we have the real thing going on half a world away in Ukraine? 

But seriously, people, there is some humor to be found in this Cold War throwback. For instance, Russian president Vladimir Putin has justified the takeover of Crimea by his troops as simply a defensive move to protect Russians who live in the Ukrainian peninsula that belonged to Russia until 1954 when it was peacefully transferred to Ukraine. Which makes me wonder, if there are some Alaskans who can trace their roots back to the time when Russia owned that frozen state (okay, this winter Alaskan weather has been milder than temperatures in the Lower 48, but we’re talking historical records here, so give me a break), could Putin justify an invasion of Alaska if any of them feel insecure (even if that insecurity comes from worrying about Russia being just across the Bering Strait)? Does it make you feel any safer knowing Sarah Palin is on watch? Remember, she can see those Russkies from her window. 

I’d be worried if I were New York City mayor Bill  de Blasio. Could we possibly see a Russian submarine surface off the coast of Brighton Beach if police crack down too hard on the Russian Mafia reputedly at large at the southern tip of Brooklyn?  

It was also quite comical to hear Secretary of State John Kerry admonish Putin thusly: “It is not appropriate to invade a country and at the end of a barrel of a gun dictate what you are trying to achieve.” Comical that similar sympathies were not expressed and voted accordingly, by then-senator Kerry and his colleagues, when President George W. Bush sought and won Senate approval to invade Iraq in 2003.

Staying with the Bush Administration, how funny was it to hear Dick Cheney lambaste the Obama Administration for proposing a 5.9% reduction in size for the Army on budget grounds when Cheney, as secretary of defense in 1991, proposed a 25% cut in military forces as a means of balancing the budget? 

How not funny is it that the regular news media did not provide the context for that last fact. It came from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  

Lox vs. Locks and Tuesday Movies Go Dark

Your faithful correspondent and his wife returned home shortly after 3 am today from a week-long trip to California, first to visit my sister Lee and her husband David in Los Angeles and then to attend a wedding in Laguna Beach where the weather couldn’t have been better—the whole weekend a balmy 71 degrees with a slight ocean breeze. That compares quite favorably to the mid 80s and high humidity in White Plains today.

My only complaint about the trip was I never got an opportunity to watch any episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. Here’s an example of why I miss those two shows:

When you’re a Jewish comedian as Stewart is, you run the risk of telling an “inside” joke your gentile guest has no idea you’re making. During his interview with actress Ellen Page Monday night, Stewart couldn’t contain his positive feelings about Canada, especially Halifax, Nova Scotia, Page’s home town. He concluded his gushing by saying, “and by the way, the lox that they make ...” To which Page immediately responded, “I know, you can’t break the locks.”

I laughed at Stewart’s ethnic culinary joke and even harder at Page’s non sequitur response. To his credit, Stewart didn’t flinch. Though he tried to salvage the joke, the conversation quickly moved to another topic. No doubt, when he reviewed the tape of the show he mused and was bemused by the shmeared exchange.

It’s Tuesday Free Movie Day: Only until the end of May. My fellow senior citizens and I have been dealt a cruel blow. In the same week The NY Times came out with its summer movies preview section, we received notice that free Tuesdays and discounted-films-all-other-times at Clearview Cinemas we qualify for as part of our Cablevision Optimum Triple Play package will terminate by the end of the month. 

Cablevision has sold Clearview Cinemas. Until the company follows through on a promise of new movie deals, this will be a looong summer. Not just for me but for many seniors who took advantage of the free movies on Tuesdays. The promotion was not restricted to those in the sunset years, but we have been the major beneficiaries of the benefit. With everyone trying to stretch their bucks as far as they can, the free movie deal was a real bonanza. Consider this: Seniors normally pay $8 per ticket. You were entitled to two free tickets per week. If you went to the movies at Cleaview just one Tuesday a month, by yourself, you’d save $96. Go more often, or with a spouse, partner or friend, and the savings really added up. 

During the winter, the first screening started around 4 pm. But during the summer it was pushed up to around noon. Over the last few years I thought I’d take more advantage of the deal but something more important always came up. Now I’m feeling kinda disappointed I didn’t see more free films. 

News Updates: Gilda’s averaging a little more than 45 miles per gallon in her Ford C-Max. She’s even logged in a 50-plus mpg drive to work (the car informs you what your mpg was each time you turn off the motor). ... A quarter of the baseball season has passed and the NY Yankees are in first place. I readily admit it, I never expected this. Nor did I expect the Yanks to be among the American League team leaders in home runs, have the best earned run average and be ranked third in team defense. All this without a laundry list of high-priced veteran stars on the disabled list. Which should make Yankee fans wonder if our pursuit of top-dollar free agents might be a mistake going forward. Perhaps all we need are hungry-to-succeed players bolstered by a Robinson Cano who is having a monster of a year. ... Did you notice that American retailers did not join in the global effort to monitor and fund work and building conditions in Bangladesh. The plan was good enough for foreign-based retailers such as H&M, Inditex (Zara) and C&A to sign on, but U.S. companies like Wal-Mart and Gap resisted, believing their individual efforts would be better. Perhaps, as well, they feared being told what to do. It’s the same mentality that scuttled U.S. approval of a proposed United Nations treaty that would regulate international weapon sales despite the treaty’s specific language guaranteeing each country the right to maintain its own internal regulations, in our case the Second Amendment right to bear arms. ... JC Penney’s new/old boss Myron “Mike” Ullman has reinstated sales and pushed an aggressive advertising campaign acknowledging mistakes and asking disillusioned customers to come back. The ads have good production quality but the problem is they don’t reflect what’s going on inside the stores. Until Penney shifts its merchandise to match its customer profile, no amount of advertising will turn the battleship around. ... Here’s another example of Target getting a pass on a practice Wal-Mart would be crucified for: A new union election has been ordered for a Long Island store after it was ruled Target  acted improperly to stifle the vote, including threats to close the store if the union won certification. Wal-Mart’s constantly being harangued for its anti-union attitude. But few if any of the “sophisticates” who prefer “Tar-zhay” to Wal-Mart reconsider their patronage of the Minneapolis-based discounter.  

Second Looks at FDR, Trickle Down, Talk Radio and Yankee Playoffs

The calendar may read 2012 but take a look at this news clip from September 29, 1936 (courtesy of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart). You can speed through the first minute of the 2:30 minute video if you don’t want to hear Stewart’s cheeky analysis of Republican budget promises, but do view Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s biting sarcasm as he describes Republican interest in providing Social Security, work for the unemployed and saving people’s homes during the Depression: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-9-2012/democalypse-2012---vague-against-the-machine---the-numbers-guy. Oh how similar it sounds to today’s political discourse. 

Mitt Romney has been getting lots of mileage from his transformation of the anti-GOP phrase “trickle down economics” into an anti-liberal entitlement message of “trickle down government.” Are Barack Obama and Joe Biden going to be swift enough with retorts to point out all the trickle down government benefits one-percenters like Romney and Paul Ryan get from off-shoring their money while corporations get energy and farm subsidies and other tax benefits for locating businesses in specific communities? Obama blew his first opportunity during last week’s debate. There are three more head-to-head formats to challenge an ever-position-changing Romney.

It’s probably safe to say most leaders of big businesses favor Romney and his lower taxes, fewer regulations stances. But few corporate biggies, I would venture to say, are so openly blatant in their assessment of what would trickle down to their workers if Obama is re-elected. If he wins, David Siegel told his 7,000 employees, their jobs at Westgate Resorts would be at risk. "If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company," he wrote in a 1,400-word e-mail. "Rather than grow this company I will be forced to cut back. This means fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone."  http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/09/news/economy/siegel-email-employees/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Riding home from Massachusetts Monday afternoon, with Gilda reading from her iTouch, I listened to some sports radio. Eventually she wondered how I could listen to such drivel. She was right. It was quite banal. But I just couldn’t tolerate hearing more presidential politics from the talk shows. At least with baseball or football talk I could laugh off the stupidity and inanity of the callers and hosts. What’s the worse that could happen? The Yankees could lose the playoff series to the Baltimore Orioles. It’s not as if the nation would reverse gear and go back to the 1950s in its treatment of minorities and women. At least I hope it wouldn’t. Wait a minute ... in the 1950s the Yankees won eight American League pennants and six World Series; the NY Football Giants played in three championship games, winning one. Maybe the 1950s wasn’t such a backward decade, after all.

Seriously, all my fretting about the Yankees not making the playoffs this year is forgotten, though the reasoning behind my worries continues. Throughout the 162-game regular season the Bronx Bombers displayed an aversion to scoring unless it was by the long ball. But home runs are hard to come by in the post-season, and the first two games showed their vulnerability. With the exception of Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki, they all seem to be swinging for the fences instead of practicing situational hitting. 

Alex Rodriguez, as always, is the lightning rod for fan discontent. So many fans want him demoted, either taken out of the lineup for tonight’s game or moved lower in the batting order from his usual third spot. Manager Joe Girardi won’t grant their wishes. A-Rod is batting third, followed by Robinson Cano and then Nick Swisher. 

Swisher is one of my favorites, but he has been dreadful for many years in the playoffs when batting with runners in scoring position. He has one hit in some 33 at-bats. So don’t be surprised if Girardi has the left-handed hitting Raul Ibanez pinch-hit for the switch-hitting Swisher in a critical spot late in the game against a right-handed pitcher. Even if Baltimore countered with a left-handed pitcher, Yankee fans might feel there’s more of a chance for a hit with Ibanez swinging the lumber. He did, after all, bang two big home runs to tie ball games in the ninth inning and added a game-winning single in the last week of the season. If Swisher doesn’t want to be replaced when the game’s on the line, he has to produce earlier in the contest en route to a Yankee rout of the Orioles.

Slapping Down a Jester, a King, a Crowley

I’m a big fan of Jon Stewart, as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows. But someone needs to tell him that hosting The Daily Show on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, was unseemly. Though he’s not religiously observant, Stewart often refers to his Jewish heritage. Indeed, on his Thursday night show he bantered with Amar’e Stoudemire of the NY Knicks about fasting on Yom Kippur (Stoudemire has traced some Jewish roots). But to the casual viewer, seeing Stewart appear on his Tuesday and Wednesday night shows, both taped during the Day of Atonement observance period, was a discordant signal. Stewart should have emulated Sandy Koufax, and other professional athletes, who chose not to perform on Yom Kippur, even when it meant missing a World Series game. 

Perhaps Stewart’s guest list was limited Tuesday night because of the start of Yom Kippur, but I found it serendipitous to see King Abdullah II of Jordan sitting across his interview desk. Given Jordan’s strategic, or unfortunate, global position situated as it is on the borders of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the West Bank and Israel, and just a missile’s lob from Iran, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, King Abdullah could be expected to provide an insider’s perspective on the various conflicts in the region. He is considered a moderate among the Arab and Muslim community.

Yet, I was more than alarmed to hear him describe the root cause of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear program as a response to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. “The reason why they have a nuclear program is what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and the future of Jerusalem,” he said. He asserted if the Israelis and the Arabs solve their problems “then there’s no raison d'être for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” 

One problem with this reasoning is Iran is not an Arab state. Persians live there, Persians who have fought Arabs for some 3,000 years, including the recent 10-year war with Iraq. The Iranians have no love for Arabs. Now, the king might have couched Iran’s support for the Palestinians as one Muslim supporting another. But here again there is historical reason to question that argument: Iran is Shia; most Palestinians are Sunni. Those two sects don’t like each other. They keep blowing up each other, in their respective mosques, at funerals, in marketplaces. Anywhere. 

Furthermore, by King Abdullah’s reasoning, we would expect not just Iran but also other Muslim countries to want to nuke up their armaments to leverage a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Are we prepared for a nuclear Indonesia? Or Bangladesh? Or Albania? Or any of the other 45 majority Muslim countries of the world? 

Sorry, King Abdullah, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions have little if anything to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By implying they do, King Abdullah is following the example of dictators throughout the Middle East who have used the conflict as a pretext to keep their own people suppressed, economically and politically. King Abdullah might be considered a moderate, his British-educated accent pleasant to the ear, but his type of reasoning is what has kept tensions in the Middle East at the simmering point ever since Jews started reclaiming the land of their heritage.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing these days about the state of education in the United States. Apparently our educational standards have a long history of laxity. To wit, here’s what one of our Ph.D.s, with a degree earned from Columbia University, no less, recently wrote the day after our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked and four American foreign service officers, including our ambassador, were killed: 

“The Middle East is aflame, much of which is a result of Obama’s policies of helping to dislodge allies like Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Qaddafi and replace them with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. He may use the orchestrated violence as a pretext to act in order to get Americans’ attention off the economy.  I don’t know.  But in any case, Obama must be defeated on November 6 if we’re to have any hope of surviving as a serious world power. Maybe surviving, period.”

Could be I was sleeping through these last 30 years or so, but when did Qaddafi become an ally of ours, much less a “key ally,” as Monica Crowley further elaborated on her written comments during a sit-down with Sean Hannity of Fox News September 12. During the Bush II years America championed the idea of democracy in the Middle East. Now that a democratically elected leader (not to her liking) is seated in Mubarak’s old chair, Crowley is all agog, yearning for those good old days of tyranny and torture, all for the good of the U.S. of A, mind you. Let’s not pretend to care what the Egyptians get out of this change of circumstance.

I also didn’t know America was in jeopardy of losing its status as a serious world power. Can you think of any other country people around the world are clamoring to enter, legally or not? Can you think of any other country even remotely as powerful as we are? Yes, our economy is still in the doldrums, but so is almost every other country’s. Even China is in flux. 

Every time a Democrat is president or running for the office conservatives raise the specter of our own annihilation. Yet they remained silent when the Neocons dragged us into two wars (and ran up the deficit by not funding them on the books). I am despondent to think the viewers of Fox News don’t recognize the absurdities they hear from that channel. Here’s another example: recently Fox News polled its audience to ascertain their election choices. Guess what? 90% favored Romney, 10% Obama. Duh!

Finally, Some More Political Thoughts

You might have noticed (my ego hopes you have), lately new blog postings have not been showing up as frequently as in the past. There’s a simple explanation, having nothing to do with running out of topics to write about or opinions to discourse. Rather, it’s because five days a week I’m involved in educational pursuits that have eaten into my free time. I’m even finding it difficult to watch the recorded Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, causing me to make a conscious decision as to which source of news and commentary is more beneficial—the two Comedy Central shows or reading the NY Times.

Anyway, here are some thoughts that have been rolling around my brain the last few days...

How could anyone call her a “Democratic strategist”? I’m referring, of course, to Hilary Rosen, who made the asinine comment on Wednesday that Ann Romney, wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, was somehow unfit to comment on women’s economic issues because she never worked for pay outside the home.

Did she honestly believe stay-at-home moms provide no value to the household, that they don’t understand, in very real terms, economics, when the cost of peanut butter skyrockets, when the tab for filling up the car with gas for the soccer/Little League/ice skating/cheerleading practice isn’t gushing forever skyward, when home heating bills force her to swaddle the baby in extra blankets to keep fuels bills from exceeding monthly mortgage payments?

It doesn’t matter that Ann Romney might be rich enough to not worry about those problems. But anyone who has risen to the status of “strategist” should understand basic political talk, and that every comment made, no matter how innocent, might well be turned against them and used by their adversaries.

Rosen has apologized for her “poorly chosen” words, which have been repudiated by President Obama and his re-election staff. That’s not enough. Rosen should be summarily dismissed from any aspect of the Democratic campaign for not only poor judgment but also for giving Republicans an opportunity to carve into the substantial lead Obama has over Romney among women.

Let’s be clear: Even if she didn’t put her foot in her mouth, and by extension, give the impression she was voicing Obama/Democratic thinking, there would be many women who did not support four more years of an Obama presidency. What she did was rile up the opposition, giving it another talking point no matter how many times she (or Obama) apologizes or retracts her statement. An already difficult re-election has been made more difficult. Instead of focusing on other issues, Obama must now spend time cementing his appeal to Independent women (and any Republican woman who thinks for herself).


Don’t Get Sick: Only the most optimistic supporters of the Affordable Care Act believe the Supreme Court will uphold the law. Which means millions of Americans might find themselves without insurance coverage by mid-summer. Which begs the question, what will Republicans do to preserve some of the more well-received features of the so-called Obamacare, such as the provision that denies insurance companies the right to withhold coverage based on a pre-existing condition, and the ability to insure children until age 26 if they don’t have their own insurance?

If Congressional Republicans don’t pass immediate remedial bills in these areas when they return from their summer recess (under the assumption the Supreme Court will void the entire law and not just the mandate part), health care once again will become a core issue in the campaign. Romney should not be allowed to ask voters to wait until he’s elected to secure a new health care law. House Speaker John Boehner should have his staff working on a bill right now, given his stern belief Obamacare is unconstitutional.

I wouldn’t count on it, however. Just don’t get sick after June.


Speaking of Health Care ... Here’s a dilemma Romney will face at the GOP nominating convention in Tampa: To shore up his conservative credentials, how much face time will he give to his rivals? Actually, I don’t see that as too much of a big deal. No, the real dilemma will be, should he allow former vice president and new heart recipient Dick Cheney a turn in the spotlight?

So far, Romney has not embraced former president George W. Bush. He wants no link to the man who sent the country off to two God-forsaken wars after his staff ignored warnings about an Al-Qaeda attack, and who saddled the country in more mounting debt with a Medicare prescription drug plan. But Cheney is a neocon hero, a talk-tough pol who would cause applause to cascade down from the rafters of the convention hall. Could Romney withstand the comparisons to Cheney? More to the point, could he afford to remind voters that Cheney in great part bequeethed to the country a legacy of vitriol, war and debt? A Cheney speech would rouse the convention delegates and inspire the faithful at home, but most assuredly be so partisan it would turn off Independent voters.


Speaking of Vice President: To me, it’s almost a no-brainer—Romney will pick Marco Rubio, the first-term U.S. senator from Florida, as his running mate. The son of Cuban refugees will secure Florida in the Republican column, as well as help Romney close the gap with Obama among Hispanic voters in other states. He’s also more conservative than Romney, so the hard-core will feel better about voting for him for president.

Obama’s only chance of winning Florida again is if Sarah Silverman and her Jewish cohorts descend on the Sunshine State on election day and hold their collective breaths until grandma and grandpa (and maybe some mothers and fathers) vote for a man they repeatedly have been told is Israel’s worst enemy ever in the White House.

Instead of a Florida election, perhaps we should have a competition between ethnics. Let’s see, Dominoes? Pinochle? Mah-Jong? At least it would be a lot more entertaining than picking a president by counting hanging chads.

Mythbusters Edition

Davy Crockett, Illegal Immigrant? Disney’s “king of the wild frontier,” who preferred to be called David Crockett, and who, in the words of new biographer Chris Wallis, was “the lion of the west,” actually was an illegal immigrant to Texas who wound up at the Alamo not by choice but through assignment by those fomenting rebellion against Mexico, the rightful owner of Texas.

Speaking on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Thursday night (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-11-2011/michael-wallis), Wallis punctured some long-held myths about the folk hero. He was, for example, born in the State of Franklin, not Tennessee. At one time Franklin hoped to become a state of the Union, but was later absorbed mostly into eastern Tennessee.

Crockett was a not above self-promotion, even attending a play about his exploits. An Indian fighter, he served two terms in the U.S. Congress, only to be swept out of office after he broke with President Andrew Jackson for the latter’s treatment of the Cherokee Nation and their forced removal from Tennessee land granted them by treaty.

While the Cherokee were moved to Oklahoma, Crockett made his way down to Texas where American settlers sought to build plantations worked by slaves in a land where slavery was outlawed by Mexico. To be part of this illegal migration, Crockett had to join the local militia and was assigned to the mission in San Antonio where he died at the age of 49.


The American Dream: “Nobody understands the American dream today better than an Indian, a Chinese or a Mexican,” said Anthony Bourdain on last week’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

The chef and host of the Travel Channel’s No Reservations said there’s a “failure of will” in our society today, “we’ve become a lazy and entitled population.” He said in 20 years of running a kitchen he never once had an American-born kid ask him for a job as a dishwasher, cleanup person or even an entry-level prep cook.

“There’s a whole strata of jobs Americans don’t want, frankly haven’t wanted for a while, don’t think they should do and think they’re too good for,” said Bourdain.

His thoughts were echoed by Stephen K. Bannon, a Tea Party activist and filmmaker of the Sarah Palin bio-pic The Undefeated. Young Americans, he said, are competing with the upwardly mobile in China and India, (metaphorically) “their parents and grandparents.”


Corporation Are People: In defending his no new taxes position while in Iowa Thursday, Mitt Romney said corporations are people, too, as their profits go to shareholders and employees.

You can’t argue with that reasoning, but it does make one wonder if we should stop and do a quick asset check on anyone we might consider friending. You wouldn’t, for example, want to be BFF with someone responsible for, say, the housing debacle of the last few years. So ignore anyone who worked for Countrywide or any other mortgage lender. While you’re at it, strike off your friendship list anyone who works for Standard & Poors, Fitch or Moody’s, as those companies gave high ratings to all those mortgage-backed securities that got us all in trouble with our investments.

Don’t like paying high gas and oil prices? Then cross off anyone from any energy company. Angry at rising food costs? Look again at your LinkedIn and Facebook contacts and delete those who work for agri-businesses or any the processed food makers.

Under Romney’s rules, the rich and powerful, and that includes corporations, shouldn’t be taxed more. It won’t matter to them that you’ve dropped them from your social circle. They’ll be quite content to mingle with their own behind the gated walls of their communities that keep the rest of the world, like us, away from them.


You Read It First: While the rest of the world waited until Thursday to read a front-page NY Times article on a European test that charges drivers based on the miles they travel (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/science/earth/11meter.html?scp=3&sq=elisabeth%20rosenthal&st=cse), No Socks Needed Anymore readers were treated to my pay-as-you-go formula four days earlier (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/08/pay-as-you-go-government.html).

My idea incorporated passenger fees as well, including fares for fetuses (applicable only to right-to-life supporters).

It’s reassuring to know even in retirement I’ve not lost my ability to be on top of the news.

Springtime Musings

Is it true? Has spring finally arrived? Is it time to turn on the attic fan and replace the front storm door with the screen door? Sunday was a tease, Monday an encore, with temperatures in the 70’s. But I’m still a little leery about the actual arrival of spring. It’ll take several consecutive nice days to convince me.

Gilda and I did take advantage of the mild weather Sunday, before it poured, to walk around parts of nearby Scarsdale (for those unfamiliar with the burgh, Scarsdale is one of the more upscale communities in the country, let alone Westchester county). As we ambled along, admiring many of the enlarged and renovated houses, we kept up a running dialogue as to which older homes would be spruced up or knocked down and recast as mansions befitting the corporate and Wall Street elites who can afford a Scarsdale address these days. Somewhat perversely I also I also postulated the grown children of the parents living in those older homes can’t wait for them to move out or die off so the lots can be sold for tidy bonanzas. I guess it’s the cynic in me cultivated by years of reporting.

If spring has indeed arrived it came a few days too soon. How can I say that? Well, it’s purely a selfish response based on a purchase over the weekend of a heated mattress pad. Gilda and I are tired of subjecting our feet to cold sheets at night, so we invested in a heated mattress pad, as opposed to an electric blanket. We tried it out Saturday night, it worked fine, but one night is not a definitive test.


Cap Day: In his fourth season with the NY Yankees, Joba Chamberlain no longer looks like a kid brought up from the minors who didn’t have time to do anything but grab a new cap from the equipment manager. Fans might have noticed the dough-boy from Nebraska has shaped a slight arc into the bill of his cap, instead of keeping the flat-brim look favored by rappers from the 'hood.

Not that the new fashion statement helped his pitching Sunday. He gave up a 2-run home run to the host Baltimore Orioles in the seventh inning, enroute to Mariano Rivera’s second straight blown save in the ninth. We’d be talking about more important things than a baseball hat if the Yanks hadn’t come back to win in the 11th inning.


Scratch Me If You Can: I’m what I call a scratch golfer. That is, whenever I succumb to outside pressure to take club in hand, I prompt people, including myself, to scratch their heads wondering why this idiot is out on the golf course, hacking away to no avail, making an enjoyable round impossible for his foursome and for any playing behind him.

Now, some of you conversant with the nomenclature of golf might know the true definition of a scratch golfer is one who plays a round at par or better. By that definition I’m still a scratch golfer, at least in my mind, as I set par at 135 and dammit, I usually come close to beating it.

Of course, golfers at all skill levels reveled in the misfortune of Kevin Na, who carded a 16 on the par 4 ninth hole at the recent Valero Texas Open. Watch the YouTube video from the Golf Channel for this humbling experience. Keep in mind that Na is ranked 65th in the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWTXoNzuk8c

When I played golf semi-regularly back in the late 1970’s, I would wind up in the woods just like Na did. So did the rest of my threesome, but while Dave and I would own up to a (fudged) 11 or 12, Rudy would triumphantly report a 7. Pretty soon it no longer was pleasant playing with Rudy. Then Dave moved back to England and my playing days were over, except for an occasional corporate outing.

During one such adventure, I almost bonked one of our company's other publishers in the head with an errant tee shot. She thought she was safely standing to the right of me, about 15 degrees north of the tee. But my slice almost beaned her, much to the chagrin of her staff who intensely disliked her.


Act Your Age: I’ve often been told I was immature. Now here’s confirmation—I’m a loyal viewer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Since their target audience are 18-34 year old males, I must be younger than my 62 years, at least mentally. My friends will tell you that physically my body, at least my complaints about it, make me more of an octogenarian.

How Cold Was It?

Cold enough to freeze two of our water pipes. Fortunately, it hit the mid 30’s today, warm enough to thaw the pipes out before they burst.

Prior to remodeling the kitchen in early 2001, the hot water pipe serving our sink would freeze up several times each winter if we forgot to let it drip overnight. The original builder put it too close to the outer wall with insufficient insulation protection. Better insulation installed during the renovation generally took care of the problem, but just to be on the safe side, before going to bed Sunday I set the drip again. To no avail. Our hot water pipe froze up from the single digit overnight temperatures and even lower wind chill reading.

More surprising was the cold water pipe freeze-up in the master bedroom bathroom. Again, the culprit was proximity to an outer wall. This time a renovation in 2005 did us in, as we moved some pipes from an interior to an exterior wall.


Generational Divide: Watching Diane Sawyer’s Monday evening newscast on ABC, I was bemused by artwork she used to illustrate a story on rising employment prospects. She showed a made-up screen shot of a Help Wanted page.

It got me wondering, how soon before the future generation of job seekers has no visual context for a newspaper’s Help Wanted section? Given the use of job sites like CareerBuilder and Monster Board, and community sites like LinkedIn, it wouldn’t surprise me if many of them would be perplexed by what Diane Sawyer displayed. Of course, that’s assuming they watch the national news on ABC, or NBC, CBS, CNN or FOX, for that matter. They generally don’t. Surveys show they get more news from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart than from the heritage newscasts on broadcast and cable networks.


Stumped: During a recent family get-together, my grandnephew Harrison asked Ellie and me a question: “Is it weird being an adult?”

Twenty-nine-year-old Ellie and I looked at each other dumbfounded. Seven-year-old Harrison is very bright. That question is one for the ages.


Happy Birthday: It’s my sister Lee’s birthday today. I won’t say how old she is, but I am the baby of the family.


Gimme Some R-e-s-p-e-c-t: I’m beginning to think I get no respect. Or, am at the very least, underappreciated. Maybe just undiscovered.

The NY Times did an article a few days ago on ideas to rejuvenate suburbia. One suggestion was to transform “dead” malls into downtown areas that could be enjoyed by an increasingly aging society (http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/new-lives-for-dead-suburban-malls/?scp=1&sq=ellen%20dunham-jones&st=cse).

It’s a laudable proposal, but one I basically postulated 15 and a half years ago in my monthly Chain Store Age editorial. I opined several alternate uses for lapsed retail space including turning the square footage into senior citizens apartments, low or moderate income housing, community centers, and my personal favorite, low-risk detention centers.

Maybe I need a better PR agent?

A Day for Republicans

I watched Tim Pawlenty, the former two-term Republican governor of Minnesota on The Daily Show Wednesday night. Talking with Jon Stewart increasingly has become a de rigueur baptism under fire for politicians. Pawlenty’s performance impressed me enough to suggest he might well grasp the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. He’s articulate. Youngish-looking (he’s 50). Pleasing to look at. He’s tall (he towered over Stewart). Not incendiary, like Sarah Palin, et al. Seemingly willing to not be locked into conservative dogma (though that might hurt his chances in the primaries).

As a foil to Barack Obama, Pawlenty would be a formidable opponent. Dare I say it?—the Great White Hope. Unlike Palin, or for that matter Newt Gringrich, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, Pawlenty is not a divisive national force. He doesn’t start the campaign with sizable portions of the population questioning his intellect, his mean-spiritness, his religion or his capacity to project an image of service—unlike the rest of the current field, he doesn’t look like he’d do anything to secure the nomination. He doesn’t look desperate.

Nobody gets to be a governor without having sharp fangs or teeth. Pawlenty, to be sure, has them. But keeping them out of sight, for now, has made him attractive, as far as the Republican competition goes, to Independents and disenchanted Democrats. As the campaign progresses, it will be interesting to observe how he changes, if at all.

I noted with amusement last night Pawlenty tucked the tail of his suit jacket under his tush so the collar wouldn’t ride up as he was sitting, a homage to William Hurt in Broadcast News. Hurt, you might remember, played the fatuous though telegenically pleasing news anchorman in the movie, while the more erudite Albert Brooks had to content himself being an off-camera presence. One on-air trick Hurt tried to teach Brooks was the jacket-tail-tuck. It didn’t work for Brooks, but Pawlenty’s jacket collar was a model of comportment. By the way, so was Stewart’s, and he didn’t do the tail-tuck (for a full view of the extended 20 minute interview, here’s a link: http://www.thedailyshow.com/).

Native son politics might also play a part in Pawlenty’s possibilities. Electoral map arithmetic favors choosing him as the GOP standard bearer. To unseat Obama, Republicans need to shift just one or two states from Blue to Red status. Minnesota has not given its electoral votes a red tinge since 1972. Pawlenty might provide added incentive Gopher State voters need to send one of their own to the White House. Of course, had Al Gore secured his home state of Tennessee’s support in 2000, he, not George W. Bush, would have won that election. So, let’s not count any electoral votes just yet.


It’s impossible to ignore Sarah Palin. Try as I might, she’s an immovable force from my keyboard. Yes, I was offended she used the term “blood libel” when criticizing those who criticized her for incendiary remarks they (and I) say created a climate conducive to physical attacks on elected officials that culminated in the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the deaths of six and the wounding of 13 others last Saturday in Tucson.

In her seven-plus minute video released Wednesday (http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin), she shows no apparent regret or shame. She lacks the intellect to understand the nuance of her actions. Perhaps she should read Goebbels. Then she might come to understand how repeatedly attacking, dehumanizing, a foe with suggestive images and language, eventually leads to a society that permits despicable acts. Palin ignores—or just doesn’t get—how her own actions impact others. Instead, she wraps her political dissent in patriotic imagery.

Equally galling is that it took Palin four days!!! to condemn the shooting.


Candor. It’s a trait we don’t often get from our politicos. One of the the more refreshing remarks of the last few years was the way Obama categorized the November election results. He called it a “shellacking.” Few would argue with his wording, yet fewer elected, and non-elected, officials would dare utter such a realistic appraisal. I don’t mean to suggest we should vote for someone because they express themselves coherently and accurately. But I am sensitive to the hypocrisies that sometimes surface.

Consider that for many years conservatives have lambasted the entertainment media for being too permissive, for extolling violence and sex. Yet conservatives time and again refuse to place limits on the sale of assault weapons. They remonstrated against the fictitious Murphy Brown when she had a baby out of wedlock, yet issued nary a word of condemnation when Bristol Palin became an unwed teenage mom. They rallied behind her grit and advanced her as a paragon of virtue, endorsing her role as an apostle of abstinence.

Tie-ing Up Politics to Move Forward

What’s with all the grey ties Obama has been wearing lately? They may be beautiful, but to my eye, and those of some professional observers, they are sending the wrong message.

One blogger asked, “Is Obama trying to look like a mortician with his dark suit and grey tie get up?” Those who disagree with his stewardship of our country might agree he’s trying to bury us.

From Britain comes this generic analysis of color from Scarlet Pixel, the self-described “Internet leaders in online personal colour analysis”:

“The wearing of grey ties, or suits for that matter, can easily give out the robust message that you are a 'company' person, evasive and not open to commitment or ready to take a stand over any issue (http://www.scarletpixel.com/).” Ouch, that’s so spot-on, as the English say. It’s enough to make someone choke up because the knot is too tight around the neck.


Speaking of choking up, I don’t have any problem with incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner tearing up and crying as he recalls his bootstrapping history to live the good life and making sure “kids have a shot at the American dream,” as he told Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes last Sunday. Clips also showed Boehner choking up when he thinks about the safety and security of America.

I do, however, wonder about Boehner’s total judgment—how is it that we don’t see him crying when he thinks of all the people who are unemployed? Why does he appear dried-eyed and ready to cut off their jobless benefits unless he and his fellow millionaires get an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of our population? Does he shed tears over the millions without health insurance? Does his waterworks flow when he talks about the rights homosexuals are denied, or is he afraid he might be suspected of being gay if he showed compassion for another human being?

Crying in public is now okay, apparently, but let’s make sure our politicians do it because they care for their fellow man and woman, not because they’re overcome by their own good fortune.


Speaking of fortunes, and ties, Mayor Michael Bloomberg eschewed a red or blue tie, or a combination of the two colors, as he attended the launch of the No Labels party this week. He wore a purple cravat. For those not familiar with No Labels, it’s an attempt to defuse the partisanship found in the Democratic and Republican parties, a movement its founders hope will be a little more permanent than Jon Stewart’s recent Rally to Restore Sanity. Here’s how No Labels describes itself on its Web site, http://nolabels.org/: “We are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who are united in the belief that we do not have to give up our labels, merely put them aside to do what’s best for America.”

As an Independent (to express my objectivity when I began as a reporter in 1972, I chose not to affiliate with either party), I must admit I usually side with progressive, liberal politicians, the kind generally found in the Democratic party. Through the years I’ve occasionally voted for a Republican, but by no stretch of the imagination could my voting record be considered evenly split.

I agree with the idea behind No Labels. But anyone who believes electing a No Label president and even some senators and congressmen would change our political system is far from realistic. The last two years have shown that in the Senate it requires at least 60 fair-minded humans to accomplish anything. I doubt that among the 100 senators there ever again will be 60 fair-minded, bi-partisan humans who care more for country than party, who care more for the people they were elected to serve than the party leaders and lobbyists/special interests they truly serve.

I can’t pinpoint when we started to spoil political discourse—some say it began with the 1987 Bork Supreme Court nomination fight—but we’ve gone far astray from Frank Capra’s wonderful life celluloid image of America the beautiful and moral.


The new word in politics is “forward.” Just ask the media, as noted by Stewart on last night’s Daily Show. MSNBC started it with a new slogan—”Lean Forward,” countered by Fox News with “Move Forward,” and dissed by CNN’s “Moving Truth Forward.” No Labels trumped them all with its motto—"Not left. Not right. Forward."

Given the state of our national dialogue, it’s hard to believe we’re going anywhere except maybe backward. Tea Party members would like to take us back to a time when women and minorities had few if any rights, there was no income tax or health care of any kind, no social security, no regulatory federal powers, and, maybe, even to a time when not even the U.S. Supreme Court would deny the right of a white man to own a black slave.

Blockbuster Press

Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy today. Though the video rental store hopes to emerge reorganized as a more viable enterprise, it is doubtful it will be anywhere near as impactful as it was before Netflix and other digital alternatives intermediated its unique selling proposition.

Blockbuster was a ubiquitous store of the 1990s. By 2001 it operated nearly 8,000 outlets. I was a card-carrying Blockbuster member, but, in truth, I rarely frequented the chain. Instead of renting video tapes, I turned to Tommy, a mailroom employee at work, to provide what charitably can be described as bootlegged copies of films. Three films to a tape, for $10. Eventually, through Tommy’s efforts and my own taping off cable, I amassed a sizable cache of films, more than 500. I have nowhere near that many these days. That’s what happens when your kids grow up and out and there’s no longer pent up demand to watch Beaches or Superman or The Parent Trap upteen times.

Being no more than a casual customer of Blockbuster made it somewhat difficult to follow the nuances of one of the more dynamic companies of the last three decades. Good thing I had staff members who were more regular patrons. The same thing can be said for Starbucks. I’m not a coffee drinker; I probably can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been inside a Starbucks. Again, my coffee-caffeinated staff kept us up to date.

When I first shifted my career from newspaper journalism to business to business reporting for a restaurant publication based in Manhattan, none of the staff writers had been inside a Wendy’s. This was 1977. There were no Wendy’s in the greater NY metro area. Yet we were supposed to write stories about this fast-growing Columbus, Ohio-based chain that was seen as a real threat to McDonald’s, especially with young adults. Had the foodservice industry known about our knowledge deficiency I am sure it would not have entrusted us to report accurately and intelligently.

Of course, the press rarely lets you see behind its black curtains. We prefer exposing the foibles of others. Two amusing stories surfaced this week, both revealing how dumb people in business can be.

In launching its Canadian service Wednesday, Netflix staged a media event in Toronto. It hoped to show ordinary citizens excited about the video service. Trouble was, Netflix hired actors to play the part of ordinary citizens, to especially pretend to be excited if a member of the press approached them. Caught in the ruse, Netflix issued a red-faced apology.

Earlier this week, Assif Mandvi of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart reported on union efforts to picket Wal-Mart in Las Vegas. The United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 711, is fighting Wal-Mart’s use of non-union labor. According to Mike Giddings, a spokesman for the 7,000-member Local 711, the retailer’s workers receive minimum wage and have no protection should the company cut back their hours.

It was an argument sure to resonate with many sympathetic to the workers’ plight, especially when Mandvi noted the picketers walked the line in temperatures well above 100 degrees. It was then he dropped the “gotcha” as deftly as any Mike Wallace 60 Minutes piece. Turns out the picketers were not members of the union. They were hired, temporary non-union workers, earning minimum wage whose hours were summarily cut back from five to three days a week when the union’s treasurer left town for a few days. Tripped up by his own complaints, Giddings provided a human portrait of a deer caught in headlights. See for yourself in this clip http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-20-2010/working-stiffed (if the clip doesn't load on The Daily Show page, search for Working Stiffed.)

For nearly four decades I made my living asking questions. For 30 of those years I, in turn, was the voice of a national magazine on retailing, fielding questions from reporters from around the country, even internationally, about the retail industry. Occasionally I even appeared on television and spoke on radio. All those interviews, by far, were the most harrowing part of my job. Not because I had stage fright. Rather, it was because you really never knew how your responses would be used by a reporter. So every word I passed I first had to parse in my brain on seven second delay, to make sure I would not say something out of context.

Take my advice—if a reporter asks you a question, politely decline to answer. Trust me. It’s not worth your 15 minutes of fame, or infamy.

A Different Point of View

My Sunday post about Glenn Beck, Islamaphobia and demagoguery brought the following comment from one of my LinkedIn readers. Though she would like to remain anonymous, she has granted permission to reproduce her thoughts. I deeply respect her beliefs and greatly appreciate her contribution to a national dialogue that is so very much needed. Your thoughts and feedback are always welcome.

Hi Murray,

I followed the hyperlink on your LinkedIn posting and read your write- up regarding the Mosque and Glenn Beck. Since the issue involves both politics and religion, I considered not responding . . . then I reconsidered. I hope you don’t mind me sharing my thoughts with you.

My personal opinion doesn't matter, however I think it's important for you to realize that this is a highly sensitive issue for many people and it involves multiple layers and varied degrees of intensity. By your writing, it's clear that you are in favor of the mosque, however there are probably more people against it than for it and the argument on both sides is somewhat compelling.

As you know, we are currently at war. I'm not talking about the war with Iraq or Afghanistan; rather I am referring to the war against the global Islamic Muslim extremists who are fixed on destroying the USA and our way of life.

When at war, the enemy looks to find your weaknesses. Since we are a country with open and free borders that protects the religious freedom as well as the civil rights of our citizens—and even our non-citizens—we are left in an extremely vulnerable position. As a result, the enemy is free to use these rights and protections to move in, take up residence, recruit and train and plan their attacks. Whenever they are questioned, they simply cry racism and/or discrimination and they make demands for their rights and freedoms! The rest of us proceed to argue and debate among ourselves—which further breaks down our country. Unfortunately, even though the majority of Muslims in the USA are peaceful Americans, they have extremists among them and people of this country are scared.

Among the Muslim community in the U.S., you could say there are a few bad eggs that are ruining it for the rest. The larger problem is, people know about the Islamic Muslim extremist threat and when it comes to situations that may increase the risk, they would rather not take any chances.

Let's face it, if you knew that salmonella was found in some eggs but nobody is sure which eggs, where they came from or whether there are any more bad eggs out there, what would you do? Would you take your chances and order some sunny side up? Or would you pass on the eggs until the situation is cleared up? There are always some people who will take a chance, just as there are still people driving without seat belts and smoking cigarettes . . . but most people would give it a second thought . . . and many would pass on the eggs altogether. The idea of taking unnecessary risks is frightening to many people.

Unfortunately we are not dealing with bad eggs —we are dealing with bad human beings that are hiding among the good ones. The fact is that there is a very real threat, not a perceived one. Attacks have occurred in the past and continue to occur each week around the world. Several planned attacks in the U.S. have been averted and the threat continues. I would not call this "paranoia" since the thought process is not irrational. The unfortunate truth about this situation is, that the enemy is not only hiding among the innocent; he is taking root and growing his army there. To believe that is not the case would be irrational.

This is key to the mosque issue near ground zero. Other than respect for the thousands who perished at that site at the hands of the Islamic Muslim extremists, one of the biggest reasons people are against it is that mosques are used worldwide by the Islamic Muslim extremists to train and recruit terrorists.

Since 9/11 there have been tens of thousands of Islamic Muslim terrorist attacks worldwide resulting in six times as many deaths. Many people disclaim this issue and speak about the history of other religions and the number of people who have been killed in conflicts. We cannot even compare this to other religions in terms of who is more violent. The Islamic Muslim extremists are killing in the name of their God and training their children to do it as well. For example, in Lebanon, they are virtually repeating the process for teaching hatred toward Israel that was used by Hitler—spouting and distributing false propaganda, lies, manipulation, etc.. They are starting their teachings with small children who grow up being praised for their hatred. These anti-Semitic and anti-American teachings are so deeply rooted in some of these people that they know nothing else.

So, when people are concerned about a mosque opening near the location of the largest terrorist attack in history—I do not believe it should be discounted or ignored. We should question it thoroughly.

I would also caution against looking at Fox News like they are the evil empire protecting Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck is just a guy with an opinion that he is willing to share. He is very passionate about his opinions and his opinions are very conservative and very Christian. In his case, it just so happens that there are masses of people who can relate to what he is saying (approximately 750,000 attended his rally in Washington. As a matter of fact, Dr. Aveda King—the niece of the later Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—also spoke at his rally.

Additionally, I'm not sure that I have ever looked at The Daily Show or John Stewart as a reliable news source —the show is on Comedy Central. Al Sharpton was simply looking for another reason to complain, and while I am not a Glenn Beck follower . . . I do not see anything wrong with what he did.

I also think you have to be careful not to "cherry-pick" the "Freedoms" you support based on how closely they mold to what you agree with. I will admit that I was concerned by your comment regarding how Roosevelt dealt with Coughlin in the 30's and comparing it to Glenn Beck—I guess I am hoping that you were not suggesting that the government step in and try and limit his airtime simply because you do not like what he is saying.

I think this country is divided enough and we need to band together and fix what is wrong. Too many people drank the Kool-Aid during the last Presidential election . . . and we are in worse shape now than we were before. We went from the far right to the far left . . . it’s time to move to the center and away from extremists on all fronts.

Our Latest Demagogue

Time to catch up on some rants:

How revolting is Glenn Beck?

He’s accomplished the near impossible. He’s managed to make Al Sharpton into a sympathetic figure.


Before leaving for Russia two weeks ago, I read an article on the proposed mosque inside a community center proponents want to build two blocks from ground zero in Manhattan. No doubt you’ve heard about it. Back in early August the controversy was just simmering; it had not yet percolated into a national boil. The article in question noted the Anti Defamation League had come out against the location of the mosque.

For sure many Jews are against it. But I was appalled the ADL took a public stance. I was incensed the ADL’s position had been construed as blanket Jewish opposition. On this issue, the ADL does not speak for me, or, I hope, for anyone who truly loves and cherishes the values upon which this country was founded.

Thousands perished on 9/11. They should be publicly memorialized, in a positive fashion, not in a discriminatory one.

After WWII, my father abstained whenever possible from buying German products. He never voiced his boycott to his children. But we got the message. To this day none of us have bought a German car. He refused to travel back to Europe to receive the reparations he was entitled to. If the families of the victims of the terrorists want to honor their loved ones by individually harboring anti-Muslim feelings, that’s their right. But let’s not allow them, or demagogic politicians, or ill-advised organizations, to hijack our national heritage of tolerance.

It’s been pointed out that a mosque already exists within four blocks of ground zero, that the proposed construction does not front on the hallowed ground, that in the immediate vicinity there are strip clubs and bars that bring a less than sanctified presence to the area.

Perhaps, if we truly want to exact retribution on those who attacked our way of life, how’s about barring financial services companies from ground zero and its environs? It could be argued that the economic tsunami of the last three years has hurt more families than Al Qaeda has.

To get a better understanding of just how disturbed and disturbing Islamaphobia has become, watch last Wednesday’s Daily Show interview by Assif Mandvi of Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the leader of a mosque opposition group in Murfreesboro, Tenn.!!! The interview appears about five minutes into the broadcast— http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/wed-august-25-2010-drew-barrymore (when this loads make sure you are viewing the show from August 25 with Drew Barrymore as the guest. If it says Michael Bloomberg, simply scroll down and click on the correct link).

There is a paranoia sweeping our country. Tolerance, religious freedom are under assault, in the guise of national and defense interests. Racial and religious physical attacks occur daily. Regrettably, our nation has a history of demagoguery. Back in the 1930s, Father Charles Edward Coughlin attracted 40 million listeners to his radio programs. That’s roughly one out of every four Americans. In the guise of combating communism, he spouted anti-semitic diatribes. He was the Glenn Beck of his time. The Roosevelt administration took steps to limit his access to the airwaves and the mail for his printed screeds.

But Glenn Beck is protected by Fox News. We have to rely on our good senses to counteract his venom, misinformation, disingenuity and bigotry. I hope we are up to the challenge.