Go Ahead, Investigate

Let’s assume for a moment that Joe Biden remains the frontrunner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination and becomes its standard bearer. All the while he would be subjected to a withering attack by Donald Trump and his henchmen about his alleged improper interference in Ukraine’s investigation of corruption.

Wouldn’t it be more advantageous to Biden and the Democrats to welcome an investigation of his activities in Ukraine, even if it is by a Senate committee chaired by Republican Lindsey Graham (https://apple.news/AE77c2J_rSMO7QmZAxgtyEg)? If Graham’s committee displays bias the Democrats could always convene a House investigation that would afford Biden a more evenhanded venue. Such a House probe could call witnesses Graham might not wish to testify.  

If Biden is telling the truth, that he did nothing improper, imagine how that would buttress his candidacy and undermine Trump’s. It’s a play he should be willing to undertake to squelch not the drip, drip, drip of Trumpian tweets but the deluge of misinformation and outright lies cast his way. 

Republicans also want to investigate Hunter Biden’s role as a director of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. For someone with no background in the energy field, Hunter was paid a ridiculous amount of money. Millions, it has been reported.

What Republicans are forgetting is what transpires in the Senate can be replicated in the Democratically controlled House. Donald Trump’s children can be investigated by multiple House committees for their international and domestic businesses. Just as Hunter Biden is maligned for trading on his father’s position as vice president the Trump progeny can be scrutinized for how their businesses benefitted from their relationship with the president.

Taking advantage of familial ties to our nation’s chief executive is nothing new. Presidents with siblings or children who created some embarrassing moments include Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan.  

Service to The Crown: If you are among the fans of The Crown, the fictionalized Netflix series on the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, you might have already seen episode two of the third season of the series. It is 1965 and the new government of prime minister Harold Wilson is facing a financial crisis. The country’s deficit is running some 800 million pounds. Its only hope of avoiding economic ruin is to receive a cash infusion from the United States. But president Lyndon Baines Johnson is no friend of Wilson (Wilson didn’t support the Vietnam War), so despite the special relationship enjoyed for decades by the two countries, Johnson is loathe to bail out the British.

Spoiler alert—The solution concocted by the Brits is to stroke LBJ’s ego, to soften him up to give them what they want.

All this maneuvering 55 years ago has a very current ring to it. The key to currying favor with Trump parallels the same path. The Saudis knew this and did their best to shower affection on Trump during his state visit. The British did as well. So did France. And China.

Ego enhancement and money in his pocket ignite affection from the grifter-in-chief. Politicians, foreign dignitaries and business executives with their lobbyists know this, too. They have eagerly paid top dollar at Trump hotels. In addition, Trump has squeezed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars from the U.S. treasury to pay for his frequent golf and weekend visits to his various golf courses and resorts. In just the first five months of his presidency, the Secret Service spent more than $250,000 at Trump properties (https://apple.news/AT-qUCIbxScC2kjjCdeh9lg). 

Though Trump was shamed into cancelling the G-7 economic meeting at the Trump National Doral in Miami, the Republican National Committee has jumped in to pick up some of the revenue slack by booking its winter meeting at the resort. 

Taking Credit: Even fabulously successful businessmen get caught up with Trump infallibility. In Texas Thursday Trump took credit for the opening of a plant that makes Apple computers. He did so while standing next to Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer.

Cook knew the plant had opened in 2013, during Obama's presidency, but he chose not to correct Trump, not to his face or in subsequent comments. 

It is speculated that truth-talking is less important than corporate profits which Trump could affect through his tariff policies (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/business/dealbook/trump-apple-tim-cook.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).

Dumb-ocrats Miss Revealing Kavanaugh's Inner Man

From police procedurals in film and TV, to real life criminal cases, we have seen how law enforcement can secure convictions by planting evidence. What we saw Thursday during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh committed a sexual assault as a teenager was an official decision to withhold testimony that could corroborate or refute the charge against a member of the white male establishment. By refusing to subpoena Mark Judge, an alleged eyewitness to the assault, and other witnesses, such as the administrator of the polygraph test taken by Christine Blasey Ford, the all male Republican majority on the committee ensured that justice would be blind as well as deaf and dumb. 

On Friday a semblance of fair play returned to the committee. Though a party line vote sent Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate for consideration, Arizona senator Jeff Flake said his aye vote would be contingent on the FBI doing an investigation of the charge, a request Democrats continually made Thursday. 

Mark Judge’s cooperation is not assured. Late Friday afternoon the president ordered a supplemental FBI probe to be completed within a week.

Meanwhile, what the divided nation is left to debate are the performances of Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford. Righteous indignation, even contempt, by the accused; anguish and trauma reluctantly displayed by the accuser. 

They were the star performers. But the senators also provided fascinating but not uplifting displays of statesmanship. Both sides grandstanded, though none as over the top as Republican Lindsey Graham. 

I’m most disappointed with the Democrats, or as I think we should henceforth call them, the Dumb-ocrats. With the whole world watching they allowed Kavanaugh to bulldoze them, to fire up his base while they failed to dig deeply into his psyche. 

The Dumb-ocrats kept asking him to call for an FBI investigation. The Dumb-ocrats kept asking if he was an excessive drinker, prone to blackouts. They kept asking if he sexulally assaulted women. Did they really think he’d surrender an “aha” moment and admit to being imperfect? 

Dumb-ocrats, rather, should have gently probed his character, his judicial reasoning, his family values. By exposing them they would have made it clear to any who had not already committed to his confirmation that Brett Kavanaugh was not the all-American judge, father and coach he tries to put across.

If the questions the Dumb-ocrats posed were insufficient, what should they have asked? I provided some in my last blog (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2018/09/nine-hours-of-she-said-he-said-leave.html), but a wider range of questions were submitted by New York Times readers from across the country (https://nyti.ms/2NNvgE7).

I liked the one from Lynda of Gulfport, FL: “Which actions in your life do you now regret taking but have learned from and have made you a better husband, father, teacher and judge? Have any of the mentors in your career been men you admired professionally, but that you had private concerns about with regard to their attitudes toward women in your workplace? As a father to two daughters, did you ever feel any responsibility to express a concern about the language used to describe women in any of your workplaces?”

I read somewhere the following question: Would you permit your daughters, when they are 15, to go to the type of parties you attended in high school? 

Answers to these questions were insight opportunities lost because of Dumb-ocratic obsession with trying to reveal a smoking gun. As the Trumpster would say, Sad.

Imagine If Trump Were Jewish and Had to Seek Forgiveness for His Offenses

Come Sunday at sundown Jews the world over begin a 10 day period of inner reflection. Starting on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and culminating on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the time is known in Hebrew as “aseret yemai teshuvah,” the 10 days of repentance. 

Just imagine if Donald Trump were Jewish. And orthodox. I know it’s farfetched, but who would have thought Ivanka would convert and be orthodox. 

Anyway, I bring this up because with the onset of Rosh Hashana many Jews engage in a repentance practice called “mechilah.” 

As no one is immune from a fall from grace, particularly as it applies to our dealings with other human beings, mechilah provides a custom to seek and obtain forgiveness from those you might have offended, knowingly or unwittingly, over the previous 12 months. 

Prayers and acts of repentance for transgressions against god’s commandments may secure divine forgiveness. But wrongs committed against another person require two-step absolution. God alone does not grant forgiveness for interpersonal failures. Only the person one has offended can absolve the transgressor before god may intervene. 

So Jews go around asking for mechilah, for forgiveness. 

Return now to the opening premise. Just imagine how peripatetic Trump’s next two weeks would be if he had to seek forgiveness from all he had offended in the last year. 

Where to begin? John McCain? Too late. But there are plenty more on his list from whom to solicit forgiveness. 

Jeff Sessions would be at or near the top of the list, as would Omarosa. Michael Cohen, for sure. Long time favorite target Hillary Clinton would be joined by his new Twitter and campaign rally foil, Maxine Waters. 

A special corner of his list would be dedicated to law enforcement and the intelligence community. Robert Mueller. James Comey. Andrew McCabe. Peter Strzok. Lisa Page. John Brennan. James Clapper. Bruce Ohr. Rod Rosenstein.

Politicians, both domestic and international, engendered Trump outrages in the last year: Jeff Flake. Bob Corker. Chuck Schumer. Nancy Pelosi. Theresa May. Angela Merkel. Kim Jong-un. Justin Trudeau. Of course, a special  measure of forgiveness would be asked of the as yet unknown administration insider and member of the “resistance” who contributed an anonymous, scathing depiction of the Trump presidency to The New York Times. 

Then there are the journalists who have vexed Trump to public insult: Carl Bernstein. Don Lemon. Jim Acosta. Joe Scarborough. Mika Brzezinski. Bob Woodward. 

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that corporations are people, Trump would also have to seek mechilah from Google and Twitter, from Amazon, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN. 

Mechilah is generally expected to be a one-to-one forgiveness ritual. But in Trump’s case, perhaps a communal approach might be in order as he seeks mechilah from all Mexicans and from all the Latino families he traumatized by forcibly separating children from their parents when they sought asylum entry into the United States. His disparagement of the Muslim community, at home and abroad, also calls out for forgiveness.

But perhaps the most deserving recipient of Trump’s mechilah plea would be the American people, their values and their institutions which Trump has dishonored and abused time and again. 

We cannot expect our leaders to be perfect. But as was said of John McCain in a tearful eulogy by his close friend Lindsey Graham on the floor of the Senate, “He taught me that honor and imperfection are always in competition. I do not cry for a perfect man. I cry for a man who had honor and always was willing to admit to his imperfection.” 

McCain would be considered a “ba’al teshuva,” a master of repentance. You don’t have to be Jewish to earn that honorific. 

Detonate the Nuclear Option

It's time Democrats faced reality. It's time they detonated the so-called Nuclear Option in the U.S. Senate by changing the rules to eliminate the ability of a minority—even one senator—to thwart the will of the majority. The nuclear option would empower a simple majority of senators to pass legislation or affirm presidential appointments (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/us/politics/senate-democrats-consider-move-to-curb-filibusters.html?ref=politics&_r=0). 

Under current rules, it takes 60 votes to cut off debate, to end a filibuster. As neither party has 60 members in its caucus, even one senator can hold the government hostage. For example, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has held up presidential appointments until he is satisfied he has all the information he wants on the Benghazi affair. Similarly, Republicans have stymied President Obama’s efforts to appoint three judges to the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Democrats have threatened before to change the rules. They demurred because they feared what would happen if Republicans ever gained control of the Senate. Here's what would happen: The GOP would not hesitate to employ the nuclear option. Any party that already has shut down the government, toyed with defaulting on the national debt, and blatantly said its mission is to thwart anything the president does would not hesitate to change the rules and emasculate a Democratic minority. Just look at actions Republicans have taken in state legislatures. They repeatedly have passed measures dear to Democrats. They have enacted laws to stifle voting opportunities for minorities, have curtailed a woman’s right to choose, have diluted the rights of unions, and have redrawn (gerrymandered) voting districts to ensure GOP majorities until after the next census in 2020. 

It is foolish to think the Yahoos in the Republican Party would not opt for nuclear political warfare should they succeed in securing a majority in the Senate. 

Haven’t the Democrats learned anything over the last five years of Obama’s presidency? It might have been nice to try to work with Republicans during the first two or three years, but being nice has merely emboldened Republicans. Perhaps, if Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) had shown some backbone the GOP would have sought common ground. As it stands now, Republicans have no problem testing the limits of their power, limits that Obama and Reid have not strongly enough delineated for them. 

Bottom line: Democrats have nothing to lose. Start the countdown now: 10, 9, 8, ...