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.  

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.

Coming Out for the Good of the Country

He's been vilified as an opportunist, a politician who changed his position on same-sex marriage only after someone close to him made an impassioned appeal for the rights of gay couples to wed. No, I'm not talking about Senator Rob Portman (R-OH). I'm referring to Barack Obama, who only last year, only after his vice president came out strongly for it, publicly endorsed same-sex marriage. Obama shifted his position after failing to go all the way four years earlier when running for president. Back then he merely favored civil unions. That was his stance through the first three years of his presidency, till Joe Biden spoke up and forced his hand. 

Was it a political calculation? Of course it was. Do Democrats and liberals admonish him for it? A little, perhaps, but nowhere near the venomous reaction they have had to Portman’s about-face. 

Was Portman’s conversion from opponent to supporter of same-sex marriage a crass political maneuver motivated solely by his son’s coming out, or did he arrive at a more tolerant state of mind after deep reflection subsequent to learning of his son’s homosexuality? Should Portman be applauded for his change of heart or vilified for hypocritically altering his position only when he and his family were personally touched by the reality that affects maybe 4% of the population? Did Portman show leadership by changing his position based on new family data, or would it have been a higher form of leadership to be out front on this issue, without any personal motivating force?

One of the more ill-used terms in political dialogue is that of “flip-flopper,” used with devastating effect against John Kerry when he ran for president in 2004. Mitt Romney took many a hit during his recent campaign for his one-day-this, one-day-that rhetoric. But do we really want politicians to cling to outdated positions, to rigidly stick to dogma even when public sentiment has overwhelmingly shifted? Even before the public has changed its collective mind, don’t we want our leaders to lead? Don’t we want them to bring us along to a more enlightened world?

Yes, back in 1996 then congressman Rob Portman was one of the co-sponsors of the Defense of Marriage Act. It defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman for federal and inter-state recognition purposes in the United States. As president, Bill Clinton signed it into law. Just as Clinton has changed his mind (and Hillary Clinton just announced her support for same-sex marriage), so has Portman.  

Should it matter why Portman now believes in equality? I don’t think so. Even if it’s part of a new charm offensive by Republicans as part of their effort to woo minorities, women and independent voters, I’m all for it. I’m all for Republicans going on the record in support of progressive ideas. 

Why? Because I don’t believe hard core rank and file conservative Republicans will sit idly by as plank after plank of their reactionary party platform is torn away. The GOP hierarchy today released a report on why they lost the 2012 election and what needs to be done to win in the future. They have to reach out to blacks, to Hispanics, to women, to LGBTs, to those struggling to survive on an absurdly low minimum wage, to those who need Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare. 

At the state level, however, conservative Republicans will continue to push bills that deny women rights, that deny workers rights, that befoul the environment, that allow guns in schools, bars and other inappropriate places, that discriminate against everyone but the wealthy. 

We’ll be left with a bifurcated Republican party. And like the gay community they do not want to sanction coming together, the GOP will not be able to consummate a reversal of its out-dated, outlandish moral and political positions.

Some Common Sense Thoughts

Fourteen years ago this week my father died. It was on December 27 by the Gregorian calendar, this past Saturday, the 9th of Tevet, by the Jewish calendar. I lit a 24-hour yahrzeit memorial candle Friday night. It lasted 30 hours. 

Saturday morning while reciting the kaddish memorial prayer, as I have done several times every year since his death, I found myself for the first time really visualizing different scenes of my father—working in his factory; sitting in his office; his back straight, left arm extended, dancing a waltz with my mother; driving his Buick; giving his first grandchild, Eric, a horsey ride on his back. I can’t explain why such memories had never been evoked before.  

Common Sense: Perhaps I’m not fully tuned into the value of this research, but a team from Tulane University, Carnegie Mellon University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined patterns of heat-related deaths between 1900 and 2004. Lo and behold, they discovered in the absence of air conditioning more people died from excessive heat. 

When temperatures rose above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, about 600 more premature deaths occurred annually between 1960 and 2004. Those deaths were just one-sixth as many as would have occurred under pre-1960 conditions, before air conditioning became prevalent throughout our country, they reasoned (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-home-air-conditioning-cut-premature-deaths-on-hot-days-80-percent-since-1960/2012/12/22/5b57f3ac-4abf-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_story.html). Now, I ask you, did we really need to spend money to figure this out?

Sure, the researchers will tell you such a study could influence the adoption of air conditioning in tropical climates as in India or Southeast Asia, but again, I ask, wouldn’t common sense have suggested that? 

Today’s Hypocrisy Award goes to ... Senate Republicans. Eight years ago John Kerry was swift-boated by Republicans when he ran for president. Now, the GOP is seemingly forgiving his alleged anti-Americanism by declaring him suitable to be the top diplomat of the United States, succeeding Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Just another example of politics being one of the sleaziest and least trustworthy professions.

Giant Fall: As bad as the NY Jets have been this football season, the despair surrounding the NY Giants after a second consecutive humiliating defeat far exceeds that felt by any Gang Green fan. It’s difficult to repeat as Super Bowl champion, so realistically few Giants fans should have expected Big Blue to win again, even after a 6-2 start. But the team’s collapse over the last two months has far exceeded even the most level-headed fan’s expectations. Even if the Giants somehow make the playoffs they don’t really deserve to be considered an elite team. 

The winner of their division will be either the Dallas Cowboys, a team I loathe, or the Washington Redskins, a team I can’t stand, and not just because it’s my brother’s team (sibling rivalry) but also because of the obnoxious song they play after each of their scores during home games. The Cowboys play the Redskins in Washington this Sunday. Push comes to shove, I’m rooting for the ‘Skins.

More on Tyranny: The other day I lambasted Grover Norquist and Wayne LaPierre for being unelected officials who have imposed a form of tyranny in our land by restraining elected officials from mustering enough votes to pass needed tax increases on the wealthy and gun control laws. 

Today’s focus is international, not the tyranny of dictators such as Assad, but rather the tyranny of close-minded religious leaders in Israel and spineless government officials who have ceded them far too much authority over everyday life in the country, in particular religious practice at the Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem, the outer portion of the Temple grounds destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Their hidebound ideas are turning the Western Wall back into a Wailing Wall.

For those not aware, given jurisdiction over the area, the ultra-Orthodox segregate women from men at the Wall plaza. They further deny them the right to wear prayer shawls and other religious garments there. Women of the Wall, and their sympathizers, have been fighting these restrictions for decades, with the hope that a new review ordered by the prime minister will make the zone more egalitarian (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/world/middleeast/israeli-law-curbing-womens-prayer-up-for-review.html?_r=0). 

When Gilda and I visited the Wall in 1976, she was not shunted off to one side. She stood and prayed next to me. It is troubling that successive governments have since courted religious party votes by granting them authority to impose restrictions at historical religious sites, especially when one considers that at different parts of the Wall, near Robinson’s Arch and in the tunnel beneath the Wall (the closest point to the Holy of Holies of the Temple), women are allowed to pray without restrictions. 

Westerners often decry the reactionary practices (at least in their minds) of Islam. Judaism has advanced past lopping the hands off robbers or stoning adulterers, but the treatment of women by the ultra-Orthodox is still stuck in the Middle Ages, or earlier. 

Tales of Men from the Bible, WWII, the Election

It has taken me longer than I would have wanted, or care to admit, but I finally completed reading The Preservationist by David Maine at a most opportune time. The book is an imaginative re-creation of the story of the Noah and the flood, coincidentally the portion of the Torah read this past Saturday in synagogues throughout the world.  

The Preservationist is not a great book; it’s part of a genre, like The Red Tent, known as midrash that transforms Jewish Bible stories into extended prose, in this case beyond the 125 verses dedicated to Noah in the Old Testament. It allows the writer and reader to delve into the personalities of the family saved on the ark, of Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. It creates back stories for all of them, humanizes them, and gives only the faintest hint of what must have gone through their minds when the waters abated and they were left devoid of any other humans. They might not have had to worry about marauders or any others bent on the injustices that caused God to wipe out the rest of humanity, but they were all alone. Not even God talked to Noah anymore after He set the rainbow as a sign there would be no more all inclusive and destructive floods. 

Here’s how Noah’s wife interprets God’s silence: “The test doesn’t end when the flood does. It’s only the start. Without Yahweh whispering in your ear you’re no more nor less than anybody else. No special assurance that you’re blessed or that God gives a rat’s ass what happens to you ... Now you’re just like the rest of us.”

According to the Bible, Noah lived another 350 years as an ordinary man. 

George McGovern considered himself a prototypical American. “I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like,” the former South Dakota U.S. senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate told The NY Times in 2005, seven years before his death Sunday at age 90. “May dad was a Methodist minister, I went off to war (World War II). I have been married to the same woman forever. I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.”

Which got me to thinking that we have entered an era when most of our political leaders never experienced the horrors of war. Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan—none of them fired a weapon at an enemy combatant or was targeted by one. Not that it takes combat experience to lead a nation into battle, but it does seem that the strongest voices for peace, from Eisenhower to JFK to McGovern to John Kerry, were tempered by their time at war. 

Speaking of temper, what jumped out at me from watching the three presidential debates, and some of the Republican primary debates, is that Mitt Romney is petulant and does not have a high opinion of those who would question his judgment, whether it be Obama, Rick Perry, or the debate moderator. Time and again Romney displayed a haughtiness that transcended acceptable behavior. To be fair, I didn’t find Biden’s cheesy smiles too endearing during his debate with Ryan, either. 

I thought Obama did better than Romney in the last two debates, but Romney’s rapid salesman’s litany of negative commentary on the performance of the current administration no doubt scored points with those who favored his positions and, regrettably, with those who valued image over substance. When rehearsed, Romney has the gift of gab. He’s much smoother than the plodding, thoughtful Obama. 

The election will boil down to substance or sizzle.