Hillary Time, A Correction and More Debate Thoughts

It’s almost time Tuesday night for the beginning of two weeks worth of Hillary Time. Here’s what I’d like to see from Hillary Rodham Clinton during the first Democratic Party presidential debate and as the key witness in the interminable Select House Benghazi Investigation committee hearing next week.

During the debate, Hillary—by the way, I am as guilty as other sexist commentators who refer to her by first name instead of her surname as opposed to using her family name as is usually done for male candidates, except, of course, when referring to The Donald—anyway, Hillary needs to be assertive and engaging. She needs to clarify her differences with Bernie Sanders without antagonizing his supporters. She must explain how she would accomplish more than Barack Obama did when working (or should I say trying to work) with a Republican controlled Senate and House. 

I have nothing against Sanders except the belief that he is unelectable (as are the three other announced candidates: Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb—you’ll notice I did not provide any description of their past titles. If you don’t know what offices they held you can understand why I am skeptical about their chances. I’m not going to spend the time mulling over Joe Biden’s entry/non entry into the race. Back to Bernie—can you imagine what the Republicans would do with his self-confessed claim of being a Democratic Socialist? No amount of explaining the concept would mitigate the extreme slurs that would be imprinted on the electorate’s psyche. Shades of Willie Horton, for those old enough to know the reference.). 

That said, here are some questions I hope to see asked and answered during the debate: 

*Given the very real prospect that both houses of Congress will be controlled by Republicans in 2017-18, what specifically do you feel you can accomplish legislatively?

*How would you balance income inequality given the GOP congress?

*Will you run on the Obama record?

*What changes, if any, would you like to see in the Affordable Care Act?

*What specific piece of enacted legislation are you most proud of having been the primary sponsor?

*Specifically asked of Hillary—Given polling data, how will you build trust with the American people?

*Many of the questions I posed after the second Republican debate would be applicable, so here’s a link to that post: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2015/09/questions-for-next-debate.html

Time to Testify: Next week Hillary cannot allow the select committee to manhandle her. She must not equivocate and must not allow committee members to interrupt her testimony. 

Recent news events have made it obvious the committee is political hackery to the extreme. Hillary should take a page from history and vigorously defend herself the same way Joseph Welch, chief counsel for the U.S. Army, rebutted Senator Joseph McCarthy’s assault on the integrity of the Army and the suspicion it, and his law office, had been infiltrated by Communists.

“Have you no sense of decency,” Welch’s acerbic rebuke of McCarthy, entered the lexicon of American politics. 

If the committee hearing devolves into a one-sided inquisition, Hillary should sternly state her unwillingness to participate any further and walk out, even if the committee threatens to hold her in contempt.  

How ironic that the congressman who exposed the political intent of the select committee, to undermine Hillary’s candidacy, shares the Wisconsin senator’s last name—McCarthy!

Correction Time: I was tripped up in my religious reporting. Pope Francis gave Kim Davis a rosary, not simply a crucifix. A rosary encompasses a cross which dangles at the end of beads.

More Debate Thoughts: And now more words about The Great Debate—was Chase Utley guilty of an illegal slide that broke the leg of NY Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada? 

First, a confession: I’m a NY Yankees fan. I don’t like the Mets. My bias notwithstanding, I believe Utley played old fashioned hardball, the type played by Pete Rose, Frank Robinson, Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson. 

They played to win, not injure. It’s unfortunate Tejada sustained a season-ending injury. Let’s keep the play in perspective. The most often printed baseball picture for many years was a shortstop or second baseman leaping to avoid a baserunner’s slide meant to plant him in the left field bleachers if a double play relay throw could be averted. 

Utley did his job. Major League Baseball should let the players police themselves. Utley plays second base. He will have to watch out every time he cover the base, especially when it’s a Met barreling down on him. 

My Tom Hanks Moment and Other Odds and Ends

Did you see the article or hear about Tom Hanks finding in Central Park the lost student ID card of a Fordham University undergraduate and then tweeting his discovery, “Lauren! I found your Student ID in the park. If you still need it my office will get to you. Hanx.”? 

The tweet included a picture of Hanks holding the photo ID card (http://strib.mn/1Lh7Mhv) (http://www.today.com/popculture/tom-hanks-finds-fordham-students-lost-id-wants-give-it-t48601)

Though we live during a social network age largely populated by the young, believe it or not Lauren did not have a Twitter account. She was thus oblivious to her star-savior until one of her professors sent her a link to Twitter. Now she’s into her 15-minutes of fame and has appeared on television.

I bring this to your attention because of my own quest to return a picture of a comely looking college student I found as I walked across the quadrangle of Brooklyn College one day in the fall of 1969. She appeared attractive enough to ask out (this transpired just weeks before my Gilda Days began, so please don’t think I was two-timing my future wife). 

Back then not everyone could marshall the resources required to find the pictured coed, whose name was either Judy or Linda—both monikers were written on the back of the photo. I, however, was editor-in-chief of Calling Card, the newspaper of the House Plan Association. I had the means and the moxie to print the head shot on the front page of our next issue under the headline “Lost & Found.” 

Sure enough, my scheme produced the intended result. Judy-Linda showed up a few days later at the Calling Card office. Alas, I didn’t ask her out. Her picture did her more than justice. 

No word on what she thought of how I looked.

Time to catch up on some recent newsworthy events:

Our long (two years, a looooong time for Yankee fans!) national nightmare is over. We are back in the baseball playoffs. Well, by the time I got around to actually posting this brief, our time in the playoffs was mercilessly brief. We succumbed 3-zip to the Houston Astros. 

Our beloved Bronx Bombers were flawed in more ways than I care to recount. But we still won more games than 11 other teams in the American League and 10 in the National League and that is good enough for me. Twenty of those other teams failed to make the playoffs.

Did anyone else see a similarity between the head of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, when she testified before Congress recently and Claire Underwood, the wife of the fictitious Frank Underwood of House of Cards? Tall, with short blonde hair and a self assurance that refuses to fade when confronted by men of intolerance and ignorance.

As the saying goes, it is hard to put the cat back into the bag once it is out.

It doesn’t matter who arranged the meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the rogue Kentucky county clerk who has denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Plenty of ill-informed people will believe the pontiff endorsed Davis. Like corrections buried deep inside a newspaper, the story line too many people will remember is the pope greeting Davis and giving her a crucifix, not that he was duped into meeting her by his representative in Washington. 

The lesson we can all take away from this affair is that even the Vatican is not off limits to political machinations (of course we knew that already but this was a very public display of a subjective agenda meant to undermine and embarrass a popular pope while advancing rigid church dogma not sufficiently supported in public by the leader of the Catholic faith).  

Let ’em Go: Government officials have admitted it is hard to stop American zealots from traveling to ISIS-controlled regions to join the Islamic terrorists. I say, “Let ’em Go.”

But with a caveat—revoke their American citizenship so they can’t return easily to the United States, or, at the very least, incarcerate them if they show up on our shores. 

Let them go to get killed in the desert. If they find living in this country so terrible, let them discover what life in the caliphate will truly mean. Let them go inflict mayhem on other Muslims if they can, not as some sleeper terrorist on unsuspecting Americans inside the U.S. I am not anti-Muslim. It’s just that it is time for the vast majority of Muslims to stand up for their religion and exterminate the cancer from within. Outsiders cannot do it without fomenting anti-Western civilization hatred.  

In the U.S., Man's Law Outweighs God's Law

Are we free to choose which man-made laws we will or will not follow?

Yes, as long as we accept the consequences of non compliance (the same may be said for God-given laws, assuming one believes in an Almighty).

As all of you probably do, I have been known to drive faster than the posted speed limit. I do so with the hope I won’t be caught by a policeman; if I am, I further hope he would be kind and lenient and not ticket me. But if he does, I must be prepared to pay a fine even if a judge reduces the violation to a charge less than speeding.

Few people like paying income taxes. But most pay what the government says they owe. Those who choose not to pay do so at the risk of prosecution even if their inaction is based on a conscientious dissent. Quakers, for example, cannot withhold taxes based on their objection to war and the government’s funding of armed conflict around the world, be it a just war or not.

Public servants like Kim Davis, the county clerk of Rowan County, KY, who has chosen jail over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are in unique positions. They may have to act in opposition to their personal beliefs. Policemen, for example, must honor the civil rights of protesters even if their first instinct is to bash some heads with a billie club. If they succumb to instinct they run the risk of prosecution and loss of their job.

Federal Judge David Bunning had to subsume personal beliefs on gay marriage to uphold the law as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

No one is permitted to inject their beliefs in deciding which laws may be followed without accepting the consequences of their refusal to accept laws duly upheld by the courts.

It has been argued that Kim Davis was adhering to an authority higher than the Supreme Court. She was following God’s laws. I would, at this juncture, usually cite the relevant biblical text. The Bible lists many prohibited unions in Leviticus, such as a man marrying his sister, but is silent on same-sex marriage other than to say it is an abomination for men to lie together as a man would with a woman. 

But what about a platonic relationship? If we accept that a man and woman could join in marriage without sex being a part of it, as would happen if one were paralyzed or impotent because of age or other medical condition, why could we not accept that two men or two women want to live together in a legal union without the necessity of intercourse. 

Marriage does not require a sexual act. It is a human construct that marriage must be consummated by intercourse. First night blood-on-the-marriage-bed was not decreed by God. 

Marriage, according to Isaac Klein in A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, also is “a contract between two parties of equal legal capacity, creating mutual rights and duties that terminate either with the death of one of the parties, by mutual consent, or at the insistence of one of the parties following the breach by the other of one of the warranties or fundamental conditions of the contract.” 

Gays just want the same rights accorded to straight people.

Elsewhere in Leviticus, God commanded his adherents not to eat pork. Pagans could, but not God’s followers. As a practicing Jew, Jesus would not have eaten pork. 

Seems to me lots of pork is eaten in this country. How is that? Why don’t Christians follow these words of God and other commandments, such as tithing, or leaving fields fallow every seven years, or returning property to its original owner every jubilee year, the original income redistribution plan sanctioned by God? Because men, in their infinite wisdom, chose to amend them. Or ignore them. Or reasoned they no longer applied. Or needed more modern interpretations in keeping with the values and mores of the times.

The West decries fundamentalist Islam and its Sharia law as outdated. Cut off a man’s hand for stealing? How repulsive! Stone an adulterer? How barbaric! Blow up a pagan antiquity because it blasphemes one’s idea of religion? God forbid the intolerance!!!

Which brings us to the Founding Fathers and the brilliance of their work. They devised a system wherein freedom of religion was paramount to an individual’s rights but the practice of one’s religion was never intended to infringe on the rights of others. There would be no state-sanctioned religion, no bias for or against one’s beliefs. 

Elected officials swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. They aren’t given the choice of which laws they may enforce or circumvent. They aren’t given the choice of selective adherence to the decisions of the Supreme Court. 

They can disagree. They can dissent. But they cannot reject by their actions the consequences of those decisions. So Kim Davis and all who agree with her can only bite their lips and follow the law, unless they can mount a successful constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. 

Trump Turns US into Chumps; Not a Principled Stance in KY

Let’s be honest about Donald Trump’s appeal to too many Americans—Republicans, Independents and even some Democrats.

Some of it may be attributed to his anti-politician stance. Some to racism. or nativism.

But the bottom line to me is that too many Americans are just flat out dumb. Stupid. Too ignorant to realize they often vote against their best interests. Why else would they choose to elect candidates from a party dedicated to keeping the rich rich and making them richer at the expense of the majority, those mired in the working and middle classes?

Trump makes outrageous statements. Who among us doesn’t? But the consequences of private comments pale in comparison to the polarizing, often inaccurate and bombastic views expressed by a candidate who hopes to lead not just our country but the civilized world. 

The Donald speaks his mind, no doubt about it. His fans, I believe, care not that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. After all, they too probably couldn’t differentiate between Shia and Sunni Muslims, or know the names of leaders of different terrorist factions, as Trump failed to do on a Thursday radio show with conservative host Hugh Hewitt (http://nyti.ms/1UvMtJR). His fans just want someone to voice their frustrations with a system that does not seem to be working for them.

That alone doesn’t make them dumb or stupid or ignorant. What crosses the line for me is that they don’t see beyond the façade. His vision of leadership is that he would be able to do it all himself. As he told Hewitt at the end of their interview, “I will be so good at the military, your head will spin.”

My head is spinning in disbelief not just at Trump but at the chumps he has made of so many of our fellow citizens.

Principled Stance? I Don’t think so: Our country was founded on several principles—that no one was above the law; that religion would not supersede government; that opportunity would be available equally to all.

What we have witnessed in Rowan County, KY, has been an elected official who tried to impose her religious beliefs on others in direct conflict with the adjudicated, constitutional law of the land. 

One may disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the legality of same-sex marriages, but failure to adhere to its determination is a usurpation of someone else’s rights.

Kim Davis’ denial of a marriage license to gay couples because it violated her religious beliefs was not a principled defiance of an unjust law. She was not practicing freedom of religion. She was the incarnation of religious extremism no less severe than that practiced by ISIS and other Muslim reactionaries who choose to exercise religious intolerance rather than inclusion. 

Taken to the next level, Davis or some other fanatic could come up with religious beliefs that would deny rights to any class they disapproved of, such as Hispanics, Jews, Afro-Americans or Jehovah Witnesses. Her resistance to changing times and mores is personal, not to be countenanced in an elected official. 

Or by an elected official. Which leads to the more troubling reaction of some Republican presidential candidates who profess allegiance to the Constitution but apparently not if it conflicts with their views. Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz and others want a government defined by Christian values as contained in the Bible. 

So tell me, if you substitute the Koran and Sharia law for the Old and New Testaments, how is that different from what ISIS wants in its mostly Muslim sphere?