Trump Pitches Gun Control. Is He Going Progressive?

With an executive order that unilaterally banned bump stocks and simultaneously earned him the wrath of the National Rifle Association, are we witnessing the emergence of Donald Trump, progressive president?

The candidate-supported-by-the-NRA-who-became-president told the group’s national conference last April, “The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end. You have a true friend and champion in the White House.”

But that was before the massacres at Parkland, FL, and Las Vegas. Trump told the NRA he was “going to come through for you,” (https://nyti.ms/2pb8wjr), but he’s a master at reading the public mood which appears to be in favor of reining in unbridled gun ownership. He seems to now favor allowing states to raise the legal age to buy assault style rifles like the ones used in Las Vegas and Parkland. His proposals on guns control may be released Sunday.

Trump knows that no matter how stiff the restrictions he would place on the sale and possession of guns, Democrats would impose tighter prohibitions, leaving him as a distasteful but still the only viable choice of the NRA. 

He probably also feels he no longer needs the $30 million the NRA posted for his election campaign. It would be nice to have, but no longer a necessity. He does, after all, have the power of the presidency to supplement his already proven power of publicity to transmit his message to the public.

As noted in The New York Times article last April,  Trump was a “supporter of restrictions on guns before he entered politics.” Is he going back to his “natural” tendencies, his, in the words of Ted Cruz, “New York values?” Is he truly a progressive, ready to come out of the conservative closet?

Not so fast. 

If there has been one underlying tenet of the Trump Doctrine of governance it is to overturn any vestige of Barack Obama’s presidency. If it were within his power to remove Obama’s and Michelle’s portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, I am convinced he would do it. 

Rather than have beliefs grounded in thought-out principles, Trump is an opportunist. His seeming shift on gun control comes from tragedy. One wonders if it will take another Deepwater Horizon-like catastrophe to reverse his administration’s lifting of safeguards for off-shore oil and gas drilling (https://nyti.ms/2DgK2Jo).

There have been several articles on how regulations protecting people and the environment have been scaled back or eliminated under Trump. Here’s a list The Times compiled as of January 31, 2018: https://nyti.ms/2xVTnW9

Around the same time—the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration—the Intelligencer section of New York magazine published a piece on how he has tainted our country (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/trump-inaugural-address-one-year-later.html). Here are three salient paragraphs:

“The elegant simplicities of campaign rhetoric—or, in Trump’s case, the brutal simplicities—never align with the ugly and complex reality of governing. But Trump’s presidency has presented an especially jarring contrast, since the rhetoric has borne no relation whatsoever to what followed. It’s not that he overpromised but that his promises were fundamentally a con. He and his loyalists possessed not the faintest idea how to address the crises he identified, not even a theory that could lead to a detailed response. Trump’s program has instead defaulted to the preexisting desires of his party’s ideological and funding base, resulting in a regulatory and tax agenda virtually—and in some cases literally—dictated by the business lobby.

“For instance: The federal government will no longer withhold subsidies from for-profit colleges that fail to give their students meaningful skills or educations and saddle their graduates with overwhelming debt. Restaurant owners stand to legally take for themselves tips intended for their servers. Financial advisers will be able to knowingly steer their clients toward investments that benefit the adviser’s firm but not the client. Environmental Protection Agency investigators must now obtain permission (from their fanatically anti-regulation administrator’s office) before even asking companies to track the pollutants they emit. Nursing homes and banks will be allowed to force their customers to sign mandatory arbitration clauses that leave them unable to sue if they are abused or cheated. And on and on. The party’s political messaging has increasingly consisted of ignoring the costs of these measures (higher deficits, lax regulation of risky or antisocial business activity) while highlighting whatever fractional benefits trickle down to the non-business-owning public.

“Employment has grown no faster under Trump than it did at the end of his predecessor’s term. The economy produced slightly fewer new jobs in Trump’s first year than it did in Barack Obama’s last. The primary evidence of the “success” of Trump’s pro-business policies has been to rebrand the essentially continuous conditions of the recovery he inherited as dazzling prosperity rather than bleak misery.”

Progressive? No. A most emphatic, NO! 

Waking Up The Morning After in a Different Country

I always knew I lived in a different America than the rest of the country, an America perhaps best illustrated by the iconic March 29, 1976, New Yorker magazine cover of how the country west of the Hudson River looks to Manhattanites.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton, forged to the west of the Hudson, I am left to wonder if, in the words of his one-time Republican adversary, Ted Cruz, “Trump has New York values”?

Does he have compassion for the needy? Does he welcome the immigrant striving for a new, better, pluralistic life? Does he respect all religions? Does he value education? Does he recognize the benefits of diversity? Does he favor mass transit alternatives over the stranglehold of the automobile industry? Does he accept climate change and the need to combat its effects? 

The record from his campaign suggests he does not. But Trump’s persona has been shaped by living all his life in New York City. He’s brash, for sure, not afraid to display his emotions on his sleeve, or in his case, through his Twitter feed. As president he will have to learn to reign in his feelings lest he trigger a response that could have national or international repercussions. 

In his victory speech he promised to be the president of all the people. Let’s see if he can stem the violence in the Afro-American community without infringing on constitutional rights, and if he can reduce unemployment among Blacks. He’s promised to repeal and replace Obamacare. But can he do it without reducing the number of people enrolled, for less money, for at least the same level of coverage?

Voting patterns across the country revealed deep chasms. As the Associated Press noted, “Exit polls underscored the fractures: Women nationwide supported Clinton by a double-digit margin, while men were significantly more likely to back Trump. More than half of white voters backed the Republican, while nearly 9 in 10 blacks and two-thirds of Hispanics voted for the Democrat.”

The Trump campaign unleashed dark voices long subdued but never eradicated. Racists. Neo nazis. Anti-Semites. Misogynists. Xenophobes. All now have a president who will enter the White House largely because of their votes.

One wonders if Trump will be able to bridle his natural tendency to lash out at detractors. Nixon had his enemies’ list. Will Trump? Will he follow through on his campaign threat to name a special prosecutor with the ultimate aim of jailing his election opponent? Will he sue the women who asserted he physically invaded their privacy? Will he seek a softening of libel laws to punish the press? Will the voices of late night talk show hosts who lampooned him and editorial boards and columnists be muted?

Of course, not everyone in the country is apoplectic about the election. No doubt, couture designers are ecstatic they will have Melania to drape. She, after all, has more eye appeal than Bill Clinton would have had as first spouse or Hillary as president.

But comparing Melania to Michelle Obama in intellect is laughable. Consider her statement within the last week that she would like to work to eliminate bullying, especially cyber-bullying. Perhaps she might start with her bedmate who ran his whole campaign as a slur-a-thon on stage and on Twitter.

It was nectar to the masses who believe Trump can change market and global forces. Do they really believe, as he does, that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese? Do they believe he truly can revive Rust Belt industries when corporate chieftains shift jobs overseas because lower paid global workers no longer produce shoddy products? They chanted along with him “drain the swamp,” but do they truly want Washington to stop being the watchdog over food and drug safety, worker safety, and water and air quality, to name just a few vital tasks of government?

With Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House the country’s pivot to the right is a given. The Supreme Court will again have a conservative majority, as it has for decades.

Perhaps the most important person in the next four years will be Justice Anthony Kennedy. In several cases on personal freedoms, he has provided a decisive vote in decisions expanding gay rights to the rights of the accused. He’s by no means a sure vote for liberal causes, but he’s not doctrinaire conservative.

I woke up Wednesday morning after barely 90 minutes of stressful sleep to a changed world. During the night I avoided reading post-mortem articles, instead playing solitaire over and over again on my iPhone. Though I did read one article, from Politico, which enraged and convinced me not to read any other (for now).

Entitled “Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming,” the article described how her staff knew for weeks the campaign was in trouble (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-loses-2016-election-214439).

I felt annoyed, annoyed they allowed complacency to set in as the public took for granted that an unqualified Trump would lose to a more seasoned Clinton. 

Trump won because he was perceived as real. Really angry. Really mean. Really for change. Really for the forgotten man and woman. 

Forget the reality. Voters opted for the perception.

Question of the Day: Will the New FBI Probe of Clinton's Emails Matter?

The question of the day is: At this late date, 11 days before Election Day, with early voting already underway in many states, will any minds be changed by Friday’s revelation that the FBI has reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails?

Against any candidate other than Donald Trump the answer would be an emphatic, “YES!!!” But these are never-before (and hopefully never-again) political times with a Republican candidate anathema to a larger swath of the American public than the Democratic standard bearer. 

What can be said, without equivocation, is that if, as many polls now say, Clinton will be elected our 45th president, it will be a historic achievement, but one that may ring hollow for at least two possible reasons. 

First, without at least a majority of Democratic senators—it is too wild a dream to expect the House to be flipped to the Democrats— Clinton’s presidency would be stymied even more than President Barack Obama’s last six years. She would be hard pressed to advance any of her legislative agenda. She will be forced to govern by executive action, which will generate lawsuits from Congress and/or affected state and municipal governments.

Moreover, without a Democratic controlled Senate, Clinton will most certainly be tied up with investigation after investigation launched by the GOP House, regardless of the findings of the latest FBI probe. Republican congressmen are itching to file impeachment charges. As it would take 67 Senate votes to ratify impeachment, a conviction is unlikely, but the time spent defending her presidency would take its toll, especially during a period of Russian aggressiveness and the still constant threat from Islamic extremists here and abroad. 

A second reason a Clinton return to the White House would be submarined would transpire if Democrats fail to secure control of the Senate. Already three Republican senators—John McCain of Arizona, Mike Lee of Utah, and Ted Cruz of Texas—have indicated they would hold up any nominations to the Supreme Court made by Clinton. Can Majority Leader Mitch McConnell be far behind?

Their recalcitrance stems from wanting to deny Clinton the opportunity to recast the Court in a more progressive mode. While Republicans say the Court in the past has functioned for years with fewer than nine justices, they are not so coyly gambling the health and welfare of the Supreme Court against the health of aging justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. 

It is a lurid tactic waiting for a death or retirement among the liberal leaning justices to secure a conservative majority lost when Antonin Scalia died in his sleep almost a year ago. It goes far beyond loyal opposition and their stated explanation that they haven’t acted on the nomination of Merrick Garland because they wanted to wait until the people chose the next president. 

If they proceed to deny any nominees from a Democratic president, the GOP would have hit the trifecta in undermining the validity of each of our three branches of government. It is a parlay a quarter century in the making.

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich shut down the government in 1995 and 1996; Republicans shut it down in 2013, as well. For years Trump led a birther movement that questioned the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency. By not even granting hearings to Garland Republicans have shown disdain for the constitutional process of advise and consent.

Is it any wonder, then, public confidence in government is at historic lows?

Trump's Attack Tactic: What Have I Got to Lose?

A few weeks ago Donald Trump’s closing argument in his appeal to Afro-Americans for their vote was, “What have you got to lose?” After years of not achieving a better life under Democratic presidents, he reasoned, blacks should switch allegiance and vote Republican. “What have you got to lose?” 

Apparently Trump is intent on taking his own counsel when it comes to confronting his latest setback, the release Friday of an inflammatory, sexist, degrading 2005 tape of his comments and behavior toward women. Already lagging in their support, particularly from suburban housewives in key battleground states, Trump seems poised to blast away at Hillary and Bill Clinton for the former president’s infidelities and his wife’s aggressive defense of him and attack on his accusers, some of whom, in the end, proved to be aggrieved parties. 

Trump is casting Hillary as a bully who attacked, shamed and intimidated her husband’s “victims.” He might well level those charges against her during their debate Sunday night.

It’s a risky tactic, given his low ratings among female voters. But Trump might reason he has nothing to lose by sharpening his assault on the moral code of the Clintons at a time when his own compass has been tossed topsy-turvy beyond what he has already said during his campaign about Megyn Kelly, Rosie O’Donnell, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz’s wife, Gold Star mother Ghazala Khan and former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. 

Trump might further reason that his Republican base doesn’t want him to retreat. A poll released by Politico Sunday morning found “just 12 percent of Republicans — and 13 percent of female Republicans — agree. 

“As of now, GOP voters largely want the party to stand behind Trump. Nearly three-quarters of Republican voters, 74 percent, surveyed on Saturday said party officials should continue to support Trump. Only 13 percent think the party shouldn’t back him.” http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/politico-morning-consult-poll-229394

It’s not uncommon for viewership of presidential debates to drop off after the first one (the initial debate was the most-watched in history—some 84 million tuned in). Given the exposure of Trump’s powderkeg tape, which obscured the release by WikiLeaks Friday of troubling Clinton emails, the audience for the second debate could equal, if not top, the first.  

They’ll be tuning in to see how far Trump will go over the line of decency and, equally intriguing, how Clinton will respond. It makes for “must-see TV,” but not on NBC (which originated that phrase back in the 1990s) because the peacock network will be televising the football game between the New York Giants and host Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin, one of the battleground states. For the sake of most marriages, not just among fans of both teams, I hope households have more than one TV or will do as I do—DVR the football game for later viewing. 

In Search of Edward R. Murrow and the Truth

When it comes to correcting the record of candidate misstatements and outright lies during presidential debates, journalists are treating the public to a debate among their peers about their proper role in calling out untruths. 

Call it the Candy Crowley Conundrum. You may recall Crowley, CNN’s chief political correspondent, corrected Mitt Romney in 2012 after he said during a debate that President Obama had not initially declared the attack on the consulate in Benghazi “an act of terror.” Obama, backed up by Crowley, said he had. Crowley came under intense criticism from Republicans for inserting herself into the dialogue (http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/18/politics/fact-check-crowley-critics-debate/index.html).

Four years later, Chris Wallace of Fox News, chosen to moderate the third and last presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, has said he doesn’t believe it’s the job of a moderator to fact-check the candidates in real time. Like most liberal media folk, I don’t agree, but I can understand Wallace’s position of opting to let the candidates duke it out. After all, it makes for entertaining, unexpected, live television, good ratings, and Fox News itself has a history of shading reality, so why not see if Clinton has the cohones to stand up to Trump for a job that will require her to match muscles with the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. 

In truth, it is not Candy Crowley TV journalists should be daring to channel. They should be aspiring to follow the example of Edward R. Murrow. On March 9, 1954, Murrow devoted his entire CBS show, See It Now, to exposing the lies, deceptions, innuendos and evil spewed by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis). 

“Using McCarthy’s own statements, Murrow painted a picture of a man whose recklessness with the truth and ugly attacks on his critics had contributed to a climate of deep fear and repression in American life,” wrote Jack Mirkinson, senior media editor, The Huffington Post, back in 2014 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/edward-murrow-joseph-mccarthy-60-years-later_n_4936308.html).

Sound familiar? 

Fourteen years later, another CBS legend, Walter Cronkite, ended a 1968 special report on the Vietnam War with editorial comments that clearly portrayed the futility of American involvement in the conflict. Afterwards, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was reported to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite I’ve lost Middle America.”

Murrow and Cronkite understood the power of their position, the power of their words on the public. Today’s television audience is more fragmented than during their heyday, but the devotion to journalistic principles and enterprise should not be diminished (though executives in the suites of the major networks might fear financial repercussions if correspondents or anchors today acted so boldly as to challenge the veracity of candidates. After all, look what happened to Dan Rather in 2004 when he questioned President George W. Bush about his military service in the Air National Guard—he lost his job at CBS.)

Matt Lauer’s performance as moderator of Wednesday’s forum on national security on NBC revealed how a democracy is poorly served by a journalist who allows a candidate to blatantly falsify the record. It’s one thing for a candidate to mislead when delivering a staged stump speech. It’s wrong, but understandable, and the damage usually is confined to a few thousand or so within earshot. But letting a candidate lie in front of millions of viewers is quite a different story. 

In a democracy, politicians and journalists are engaged in an adversarial relationship (the same is true of the relationship between journalists and business executives, the military, the healthcare profession, indeed all walks of life in a free society). It is not enough to just air or print a politician’s daily screed. Truth serves the American public.

Progressive print journalists have been spilling ink by the barrelful in their condemnation of Trump’s lies, by the man who promised he would always tell the truth and who planted the label of “lyin’ Ted Cruz” on one of his Republican opponents and who now calls his Democratic foe “lying Hillary” (http://nyti.ms/2bYlDzv).

But let’s face it: Unless a major television network, with reach vastly beyond that of the print media, sees its role as a defender of freedom and responsible journalism, unless a major network chooses to channel the likes of Murrow, Cronkite and Crowley, and even Rather, we as a nation have to accept the loss of truth in our political process.  

Winners and Losers in Politics and Religion

The winner of the Wisconsin primary earlier this week was … the media!

Forget Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. They might have corralled the most votes in the Badger State, but the real victor was the supposed-to-be-impartial media, you know, those telegenic talking heads who care about ratings more than substance, the sizzle more than the steak. With Cruz and Sanders gaining momentum, the airwaves are guaranteed to be filled with paid commercials for the candidates in the biggest media markets of all (New York and California) and, most crucially, the national conventions of both parties this summer probably will command “huuuge” ratings and corresponding ad time rates.

Far from being neutral, the media have fanned the rhetorical fires by focusing on provocative statements from the candidates and their surrogates rather than on the substantive differences between the contenders. Earlier this week, for example, one broadcast network’s evening news program showed Sanders about to describe the policy divides between him and Hillary Clinton. But just as he was about to give specifics, the network cut away to air catfight comments from each candidate. 

Soundbites rule our national conversation. The media have been complicit in the dumbing down of our political system. And there’s nothing we can do about it. While the rest of us cringe at the spectacle unfolding before our eyes, media moguls are padding their bank accounts. 

Here’s what Leslie Moonves, chairman, president and CEO of CBS Corporation, had to say about Donald Trump and the media’s fascination with him during a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco in February, according to The Hollywood Reporter: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” 

“Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? ... The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” he said. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464)

Whose Side Is God on, Anyway? It’s quite common in sports for teams and players to invoke the help of God. It’s a quaint custom, making God an interested observer to, nay a participant in, the play by play transpiring around Him (or Her).

Darker are pronouncements by some clerics that natural and man-made disasters are unleashed by God as punishment for perceived sins, such as past illicit behaviors that have become accepted, or at least tolerated, acts between consenting adults in many localities. 

Which brings me to wonder, was God sending a message to North Carolinians Monday night when He/She guided Villanova University’s last second three-point shot through the basket, thus giving the Wildcats the NCAA basketball championship and sending the Tar Heels team back to a state that recently chose to deny equal rights to the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender) community? 

On the other hand, did Villanova, a Catholic school, benefit from a favorable Pope Francis bounce? Of course, the game was played before the pope offered little if any substantive comfort to the LGBT congregation in his 260-page treatise “Amoris Laetitia” (The Joy of Love), released Friday.

Are trailer parks disproportionally populated by sinful people, or is God just having fun feeding them and their belongings to twisters? 

These are not glib queries. Keep in mind America is a fairly religious country compared to other Western nations. Earlier this week I received a media pitch to review a new book, Righting America at the Creation Museum, by William and Susan Trollinger. 

For those who have not heard of the Creation Museum, it’s in Petersburg, Ky. Since opening in May 2007, the museum is said to have attracted millions of visitors to its displays intended to scientifically demonstrate the universe was created less than 10,000 years ago by a Judeo-Christian god. The museum is said to be “an extended brief for the Bible as the literally true and errorless word of God, and a powerful and unflinching argument on behalf of the Christian right.”

There’s even a “Culture in Crisis Room, where videos depict sinful characters watching pornography or considering abortion,” which brings us back to the modern day inquisition states are mounting against the LGBT community. 

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 21 states have passed laws that allow businesses to refuse service to people that offend a business owner’s religious beliefs. Yes, many of the states are in the Bible Belt, but Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as Illinois, are on the list (http://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/state-rfra-statutes.aspx).  

Mississippi is said to have gone further than any other state in defense of religion. Its recently signed law denies LGBT people marriage, adoption and foster care services from those religiously offended by their lifestyle. They can also be fired or refused employment, while property owners may decline to rent or sell to them. 

It’s all very disconcerting. The Bible is being used to discriminate at the same time it is being used to proclaim tolerance and love. Both sides draw inspiration from it. 

A recent CBS News poll, however, found a less than overwhelming number of people familiar with all that is contained in the Bible. Just 23% said they have read all of the Good Book, 21% have read most but not all, 16% have read about half and 9% have read none of it. Unreported was the status of the remaining 31%.

  

Trump Says It Was All a Joke, Says He Really Is a Liberal with New York Values

Donald Trump revealed today his candidacy for the Republican Party presidential nomination was an elaborate April Fool’s hoax to show how bigoted and xenophobic the majority of GOP voters were.

The leading vote getter in the 29 primaries and caucuses already held, Trump said he could not believe how gullible Republican officials and party members were in their desperation to win back the White House. Each time he tried to torpedo his candidacy, as when he dissed senator John McCain and all prisoners of war for being captured, or when he advocated waterboarding and more extreme measures of torture, Trump said he was surprised to see his poll numbers go up. Even when it was revealed he had donated thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s campaigns and invited her and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, to his daughter’s wedding, he was able to hoodwink the public into believing it was just business as usual for an entrepreneur like him to curry favor with politicians of both major parties.

In fact, Trump said he was a proud progressive imbued with “New York values.” He said his true colors almost came out when he acknowledged that Planned Parenthood is a valued healthcare provider to many women. Fear of exposure before April Fool’s Day prompted him to double down on anti-abortion rhetoric with his assertion that women should be prosecuted if they obtained illegal abortions. His wives, he said, always underwent legal abortions. “That’s one of the benefits of being rich,” he mused.

Now that the big reveal has been revealed, Trump had another surprise. He’s staying in the race to win it. Who knew, he said, that it would be so easy to vanquish a field of more than a dozen contenders? Who knew how gullible voters were? Who knew how bigoted and just plain dumb they were? 

“There’s nothing in the party rules book that would mandate my dropping out,” Trump said. “Sure, at the convention party leaders could change the rules to deny me the nomination, but they were going to do that anyway, so why not expose the hypocrisy of the process and party faithful now,” he argued. 

Even after admitting it was all a joke Trump said he believes he will still win primaries in New York, New Jersey, California and other states to give him sufficient delegates to win a first round nomination at the Cleveland convention, assuming no changes are made to convention rules.

Trump also revealed he would pick Chris Christie as his vice presidential running mate and, if elected, would designate him as attorney general, as well. “There’s enough of Chris to go around for both jobs,” Trump said.

As expected Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich along with Democrats Clinton and Bernie Sanders, along with leaders of both parties, denounced Trump’s duplicity, but, as in the past, their criticisms fell on deaf ears and brainless minds as Trump’s poll numbers rose in instant surveys run by the media.

It was further revealed that far from feuding with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly Trump was having an affair with her, having ended his secret relationship with Rosie O’Donnell. He also admitted that he is not “really, really rich,” that he is, in fact, close to filing for personal bankruptcy and that his two best friends are a Muslim in charge of security at Trump Tower and an illegal Mexican immigrant who is one of the gardeners at his Mar-a-Lago resort who also trims his hair.

Danger Ahead: Trump Isn't the Only One Pivoting

The great pivot has begun.

Confident he has the Republican Party presidential nomination sewn up, Donald Trump has begun to moderate his positions to make his candidacy more attractive to establishment Republicans plus independent and Democratic voters who are a) ignorant, b) forgetful, c) forgiving, or d) just plain anti-Hillary.

That racist-, misogynist-, nativist-, fascist-sounding candidate of the last eight months? Oh, Trump would have you believe that character was just the opening gambit in a negotiation to become the next person to lay his hand on a bible and recite the oath of office administered by chief justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, the same chief justice Trump has vilified as a “nightmare” and “disaster” for conservative values.

Trump says he is the best negotiator and this deal, to be successful, will truly require an artful play. But as much as The Donald may pivot to the center to modify his positions on building a wall and having Mexico pay for it, restricting entry into the country by all Muslims, rounding up and kicking out of the country 11 million illegal immigrants, and other extreme ideas including ordering the military to commit war crimes, Trump has miscalculated one vital aspect of his Mephistophelean plan.

Having unleashed the devil inside his followers, Trump is powerless to restrain the evil that resides in the hearts of the beastly mob. They’ve been riled up by cursing and gutter talk of mugging protesters, of bombing Muslims back to the Stone Age, of ridiculing political opponents not for objections to their ideas but rather because of their physical attributes. Trump has galvanized his acolytes to the point where they endanger the physical lives of protesters as well as our nation’s treasured right to peacefully protest.

So the grand pivot to the center has little chance of succeeding in this Internet age when everyone’s cell phone makes them, as Mitt Romney found out four years ago with his infamous 47% speech to what he thought was a sympathetic audience, an instant muckraker.

But there’s another pivot underway that is equally discomforting. It is the pivot of thoughtful Trump detractors who reason that Trump is not as bad as Ted Cruz and given the choice of the devil from New York or the devil from Texas, the former is more tolerable than the latter because of his unorthodoxy, because of his “New York values,” because he is known to compromise or, in his jargon, negotiate, and not be rigidly doctrinaire like Cruz.

Probe deeply into all the Republican candidates—those still running and those who have fallen away—and you will find, even inside teddy bear, hug-worthy John Kasich, extreme conservatives who believe in trickle down economics, who reject climate change reality, who care not for women’s health or their equal status, who would undermine the civil rights of minorities, and who believe the best foreign diplomacy is combat-based.

On the other hand, they believe inside Trump resides a man that can be controlled or at least reasoned with. He’s a businessman, as he often relates. He’s only after the best deal.

So they pivot their contempt for all things Trump. They don’t see, or don’t want to see, the parallel to what the intelligentsia and commerce-crowd believed in Germany in the early 1930s in their desire to see the Fatherland become great again. 

Marcomentum Assaults the Constitution

Next January 20th the president-elect will swear the following oath of office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Does anyone see a conflict with the following statement?:

“We are clearly called, in the Bible, to adhere to our civil authorities, but that conflicts with also a requirement to adhere to God’s rules. When those two come in conflict, God’s rules always win (emphasis added). In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin, violate God’s law and sin, if we’re ordered to stop preaching the gospel, if we’re ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it, we are called to ignore that. We cannot abide by that because government is compelling us to sin.”

Pundits are calling his surge in the polls “marcomentum,” but, to my way of thinking, with that statement, handsome and wholesome-looking Marco Rubio has disqualified himself from being president by asserting that God’s laws—if there is a God—supersede man’s. That might hold true in a theocracy like Iran or the ISIS caliphate but here in the United States we have always valued separation of church and state. 

Until now, apparently. Besides, who’s to say who gets to interpret God’s law? Catholics? Jews? Muslims? Protestants? Hindus? Shintos? Mormons? Which of their respective sects gets to adjudicate what God meant, which of the laws must still be followed? The Bible and Koran condoned slavery, prohibited the eating of pork, permitted multiple wives and admonished believers to live according to rules modern cultures consider barbaric. 

The Framers of the Constitution were quite clear in creating a separation between church and state. No pope, no ayatollah, no cleric would be supreme above the law. Neither would a president. 

Sadly, Rubio is not alone among Republicans who would place their religion above executing the law. Among candidates still in the race, include Ted Cruz. And through his comments on restricting Muslims from entering the country, even U.S. citizens, count Donald Trump among those who would violate the Constitution. 

Also sadly, acceptance of religious diversity is fading in our land. During his visit to a Baltimore mosque Wednesday, President Obama appealed for tolerance. But derision greeted his visit from quarters that have reviled almost all of his actions during the first seven years of his presidency. How could it not when almost three out of 10 Americans (43% of Republicans) think he is secretly a Muslim, according to a CNN/ORC poll last September? 

Once Election's Over, Here's What to Expect

If you’ve ever wondered if I have a warped mind, here’s proof in the form of strange post-election scenarios that drifted through my mind as I tried to fall asleep Sunday night. Each one-step-before-absurdity prediction is not dependent on any other for it to come true:

*Michael Bloomberg’s third party candidacy will prevent Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump from securing the required 270 Electoral College votes to become president. As directed by the Constitution, the choice of president will be left to the House. As Congress is dominated by Republicans, the GOP representatives will promote their own Speaker of the House—Paul Ryan—to the presidency!

Fooled ya—Ryan is ineligible, as are all but the three highest polling candidates in the Electoral College election. Given the choice of Trump, Clinton or Bloomberg, the House will choose Trump.

*Hillary and Bernie Sanders will not make it through the nomination process. Hillary will be indicted for the classified email scandal and choose not to continue her campaign while Bernie will suffer a medical setback and have to withdraw. An open convention will select vice president Joe Biden as the Democratic Party candidate. Biden will tap either Missouri senator Claire McCaskill or Texas congressman Joaquin Castro or his brother, Housing & Urban Development secretary Julián Castro, as his running mate. Biden et al will win. 

*Showing how magnanimous in victory he could be, and in his desire to channel Abraham Lincoln’s “team of rivals” cabinet strategy, President Donald Trump will make the following appointments:

Secretary of State: Bombs away Lindsey Graham;

Attorney General: To return the nation and the Constitution to the late 18th century, Ted Cruz;

Secretary of Transportation: A governor of a state millions travel through every day, with lots of experience making poor bridge and tunnel decisions, Chris Christie;

Secretary of Energy: Who better to protect the coal industry than Kentucky’s own Rand Paul;

Secretary of Labor: Mr. union-buster himself, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker;

Secretary of Health & Human Services: A difficult choice from among a plethora of right-to-lifers and personhood advocates but Rick Santorum wins over Mike Huckabee;

Secretary of Commerce: Let’s see if Carly Fiorina is the face of America Trump wants to project to the world;

Secretary of Homeland Security: Trump wanted to keep this portfolio for himself but was talked into appointing Ben Carson as the perfect symbol of the danger of appearing to be sleeping on the job of protecting America;

Secretary of Agriculture: Bobby Jindal needed a job now that he’s no longer governor of Louisiana. Maybe being in charge of the nation’s food supply will fatten him up a little;

Secretary of Education: Rick Perry. Oops, I forgot. Perry wanted to kill this department when he ran the first time for president. 

Secretary of Interior: She wasn’t running but Sarah Palin’s endorsement should be worth something, especially since she’s such an avid hunter, even from aircraft. And let’s not forget her “drill, baby, drill” pro-oil, anti conservation battle cry.

Secretary of Treasury: Marco Rubio couldn’t handle his own finances, but let’s let him try balancing the nation’s books;

Secretary of Veteran Affairs: Another candidate from 2008—Trump considered him a loser for getting captured, so why not saddle John McCain with one of the biggest headaches in the country that will surely have more veterans to service given The Donald’s desire to increase our military involvement in the Middle East;

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Not a very sexy cabinet post, perfect for Jeb Bush;

Finally, a new cabinet post will be created—Secretary of Religion, headed by Mike Huckabee who has proclaimed, “Exercising Religious Liberty should never be a crime in America. This is a direct attack on our God-given, constitutional rights.”

*Hillary Clinton will be sworn in as president only to become not just the first female commander in chief but also the first to become part of the first husband-wife team of presidents of the United States to be impeached. 

I have no doubt the Republican-controlled House of Representatives would vote to impeach Hillary over the alleged misuse of classified emails contained on her personal computer while she was secretary of state. The Senate, however, will once again rise to the defense of a Clinton by failing to muster the required 67 votes to convict. The toll of the impeachment proceedings, however, will hamper Hillary’s first two years in office.

Uh-oh, this one could actually come true.

What's at Stake In Iowa and New Hampshire

Let’s get down to brass tacks. For Democrats the presidential election is not going to be about a revolution. Rather, it will come down to protecting the domestic legacy of Barack Obama and the myriad of progressives who preceded him and extended equality and opportunity to millions of minorities, be they of color, religious sects or gender, not to mention the tens of millions of middle class families of all backgrounds created by legislation and regulations that supported and protected workers. A Republican victory, whomever is the GOP standard bearer, would roll back 80 years of progressive legislation and enforcement.

So the question boils down to, which Democrat has the best chance of keeping the Oval Office blue: Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton or Martin O’Malley?

O’Malley might be a good man. He has not aroused any semblance of passion behind his candidacy. On the other hand, as much as Sanders engenders passionate followers his phenomenon is reminiscent of the debacles fostered four decades ago by anti-Vietnam War candidates Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. Perhaps it is because too many Democrats are too young to remember or have not been taught the consequences of a quixotic candidacy, they are ignorantly eager to adhere to Sanders’ banner. They would follow him to sure defeat in a presidential election even against a divisive Republican such as Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. I’m sorry, but the country is simply not ready for a Social Democrat, a Jewish Social Democrat, born in Brooklyn, to be president.

Clinton is not an ideal candidate. But her pluses outweigh the minuses. Last time out in 2008 her campaign engendered more passion. Fatigue might have set in this time among many of her supporters, but as November grows nearer I believe they will be re-energized by the prospect of electing the first woman president, especially someone who has the wide-ranging experience she possesses.

Her challenge once securing the nomination will be to bring into her tent disaffected Bernie-backers. Otherwise, as Hubert Humphrey and the nation found out, a less than solidly unified Democratic Party will result in a Republican victory and this time the winner would be much more regressive than Richard Nixon.

Nixon had to work with a Democratic Congress and Senate. Both houses will be Republican in 2017. Imagine the social network legislation, the worker-consumer-environmental protections and the civil rights laws that would be gutted by a triumvirate of conservative Republicanism. (Are you shuttering at the prospect? I did when writing that sentence.)

Most importantly, the next president may well have the opportunity to nominate two to four Supreme Court justices and countless lower court judges. If you cherish the advances of the last 80 years you cannot countenance the prospect of a judicial system tilted to the right for decades to come.

So as Iowans go to their caucuses Monday and New Hampshirites troop to the polls eight days later let’s hope they have perspective. Bernie has been a useful diversion, especially in this age of Trump when crazy passion seems to be restricted to Republicans.

Hillary doesn't need a coronation. But the party, the nation, will not benefit from sidetracking her nomination.

The Political Blame Game: Obama, Hillary, ISIS

So I watched the Republican debate Thursday night. What did I learn? Not much as to specifics of what the candidates would do if elected, but I did learn that all of our problems can be summed up in three words—Obama, Hillary and ISIS. Oh, and it was confirmed again that debate moderators are more interested in he said-he said schoolyard squabble questions than asking candidates to outline in detail their plans to govern. They let the hopefuls get away with plugging their Web sites for their full position statements, as if the average voter will spend much time rummaging through the BS to be found there alongside calls for donations. The moderators let the candidates evade questions and only once, by my count, did they follow up an answer with another question.

The world, at least the United States, would be a better, safer place if a Republican sat in the Oval Office, they said, not daring to remind voters it was a Republican president in the White House when we were attacked on September 11 and subsequently when we began two destabilizing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention it was that same Republican president who presided over the cratering of the U.S. economy. 

Primaries are times to duke it out, so let’s consider attacks a valued, if sometimes demeaning, means of assessing how a candidate responds to criticism. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were the targets of most of the barbs. Neither distinguished himself as presidential material. They obfuscated their respective positions on fixing the illegal immigration dilemma. 

As for the other five men on the stage, they were almost afterthoughts, though I wonder how a seemingly solid thinker like John Kasich would have fared in a less vitriolic campaign season. 

Local boy Chris Christie apparently decided his best tactic would be to smear Hillary Clinton’s qualifications any time he was called. It was hard to tell who he thought endangered the republic more, ISIS or Hillary. 

It also was not startling to hear the pretenders castigate the outgoing incumbent president. But, like many a political representation, inaccuracies abounded. Consider the Associated Press’ fact-checking on several claims by Cruz:

“CRUZ: ‘We have seen now in six years of Obamacare that it has been a disaster. It is the biggest job-killer in this country. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, have been forced into part-time work, have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have seen their premiums skyrocket.’

“THE FACTS: Lost jobs? Since the time Obama signed the health care law in March 2010, the nation’s jobless rate has fallen from 9.9 percent to 5 percent. The economy has added more than 13 million jobs over that period.

“Lost insurance? The share of Americans without coverage reached a historic low of 9 percent last year, according to the government’s National Health Interview Survey. More than 16 million people gained coverage since 2013, just before the law’s big coverage expansion got underway.”

Ah, well, let’s chalk it up to politics as usual.

On the other hand, there’s a feeling going around that President Obama deserves a lot of blame for the sorry state of Democratic head counts in the Senate and House of Representatives (http://nyti.ms/1ORWjFM). 

Yup, he earned his fair share of responsibility by not working hard enough for his party’s candidates during the mid-year congressional elections. But let’s not pin all the blame on him. 

As a party Democrats failed to project the positive aspects of the car industry bailout, the passage of Obamacare and the resurrection of the economy. 

More importantly, Democrats—leaders and rank and file party members—have failed to see the small picture, the importance of winning elections on the state and even more local levels. Losing governorships and majorities in state houses has left them vulnerable in national elections. Based on the 2010 census, GOP-controlled state houses have redistricted (gerrymandered) congressional seats to give Republicans an almost insurmountable majority in the House through 2022. Thus, even if a Democrat wins the presidency, he or she will be stymied by Republican majorities in Congress. We are in for stalemated government for at least the next six years. 

Obama can be blamed for lots of the problems Democrats face. But as Cassius explained in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” 

Spoiler Alert and Snowmageddon Update

Spoiler Alert: Former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg is considering an independent run for the presidency.

Can he win? If not, who might benefit from his third party candidacy?

The New York Times says Mayor Mike might jump into the race if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz captured the Republican Party nomination and if Bernie Sanders secured the Democratic nod. Or if he believes Hillary Clinton is too damaged to win the general election after winning her party’s nomination.

Doubtful Bloomberg could win outright. His pro-choice and anti-gun stances make him an unlikely choice in most southern and western states that generally vote Republican. He would have to lock up all the true blue states Democrats usually secure and some swing states, such as Ohio and Florida. That would be hard even against a weakened Hillary. Splitting the vote with Hillary would shift those states into the GOP column.

Best case prospectus is that none of the three major candidates would garner the required 270 Electoral College votes to be named president, thus throwing the decision into the House of Representatives where each state delegation gets to cast one vote. Such an event would be more traumatic than the 2000 election decided by the Supreme Court. 

If enough state delegations controlled by Republicans are turned off by the prospect of a Trump or Cruz presidency, Bloomberg just might squeeze into the White House, but that’s a real far-fetched scenario. What probably would happen is that Republicans would believe they wouldn’t be able to control Bloomberg so they’d take their chances with Trump or Cruz.

It must be nice to have a billion dollars available for an independent run to save the country from itself. If Bloomberg were running as the standard bearer of either the Democratic or Republican party I would seriously consider voting for him. But as an independent, he’d be a spoiler, not just in the election but for the country he so very much wants to save.  

Snowmageddon Update: During Saturday’s snowstorm I asked Gilda if she were pregnant. She laughed, knowing I was referring to her puttering around the house, cleaning the front of our stand-alone freezer, reorganizing the pantry, and in general engaging in nesting activities commonly associated with child-bearing time.

Outside our side yard windows where I have hung bird feeders, stocked Friday with extra seed, there was a frenzy of activity. Blazingly red cardinals, bright blue jays, red bellied and downy woodpeckers, along with female cardinals and lots of chickadees and sparrows—nearly 50 in all—competed for access. Surprisingly, few squirrels roamed the top of the snow looking for spilled seed. 

One of our patio tables had a mound of snow close to a foot high. The other, more exposed to the wind, was covered by less than an inch. 

I ventured into the mud room. Gilda had thrown out nearly half of the literature (my biased word for the assortment of paper reminders and magnetized business cards) that has obscured the front of the freezer for decades, literally decades. She was obsessed with cleaning. I’m a hoarder. We engaged in civil, comical discussion. Why, she wanted to know, would I keep outdated MetroNorth train schedules when it’s easier to look up online current timetables? Why? Because I’m a hoarder. 

Don’t get the impression I just sat around doing nothing. I did two loads of laundry. 

During a lull in the blizzard around 3 pm I spent 45 minutes clearing the driveway and front walkway. Nine inches of soft powder, good for snowblowing, bad for snowball making, had fallen. Truth be told, the real reasons I went outdoors was to see if The Times had been delivered (it had) and to replenish the bird feeders.  

No sooner did I sit down to input my toil in this blog but Gilda informed me the buzzer had sounded—it was time to take my clothing out of the dryer. I tell you, there’s no end to a man’s work around the house.

In case you’re wondering, the snow blocked out any energy production from our solar panels. 

The Great (Pizza) Debate. And the GOP, Too

OMG! Did you see the latest news from the debate? No, I am not talking about Thursday night’s Republican Party presidential gabfest (okay, maybe later in this post I will, but not now). More importantly, The New York Times reported Friday the decades-old epicurean debate as to which pizza shop serves the best pies in New Haven, nay, the world, might be drawing to a conclusion.

Sally’s Apizza has an uncertain future. You can’t say you’ve ever been to New Haven if you have not tasted and gone to gastronomic heaven gorging on Sally’s pizza, though some would argue (incorrectly) that Frank Pepe Napoletana down the block in Wooster Square serves the best pies. For details on what might bring this cousinly rivalry to an unsatisfying conclusion read The Times—http://nyti.ms/1TZ9FkF.

It wasn’t because I wrote this blog around lunchtime that I waxed nostalgic about Sally’s and the other eateries Gilda and I frequented when we lived two years in New Haven (1975-1977) and two more before that in Seymour, some dozen miles away, while I reported for The New Haven Register as she earned her nursing degree at Bridgeport University and then worked in the newborn intensive care unit at Yale-New Haven Hospital. 

On my reporter’s salary of $7,800 to $10,000 a year we didn’t have much spare change back then. Though expenses were far lower than today’s (gas was about 33 cents a gallon until the oil embargo of 1973 jacked it up to about a dollar, while home heating oil soared from 5 cents a gallon to 50 cents), eating out was a luxury. Even McDonald’s was a treat not to be indulged in too often (btw, back then McDonald’s and Friendly’s had almost exclusive fast food coverage where we lived, though I vaguely remember one of the first Subway stores in nearby Ansonia). 

My salivary glands do get a workout when I recall three restaurants we patronized when we wanted to splurge or celebrate, especially after Gilda started bringing home a paycheck. For seafood we’d go to Jimmies of Savin Rock in West Haven. Sundays we would dine at the Bar B Q-Rest in Milford along Route 1 for a lobster special dinner—a one pounder for just $2.95. 

If we were feeling really flush with cash, or maybe on our way back from a family visit in Brooklyn, we would stop along the New England Thruway at Valle’s steak house either in Stratford or West Haven. Valle’s often ran a double lobster special. Gilda liked the prime rib dinner, but my favorite part of any meal was dessert, a large chunk of devil’s food cake smothered in whipped cream. Alas, the Valle’s chain closed in 2000. 

Okay, enough about food. Let’s get to the real red meat, Thursday night’s GOP debate. But first, here’s a truism reporters learn early on in their careers, but upon retirement and writing a blog it gets less and less important—never sit on a story!

I relate this bromide because Thursday afternoon I started typing a posting on Ted Cruz’s crude attack on Donald Trump and his “New York values.” Instead of pouncing on the subject I deferred, thus allowing Trump and other pundits to rise to the Big Apple’s defense. Ah well, you’re not paying me to be first with news and analysis. Besides, I was enjoying my time with Gilda during her day off.

Anyone who thought ISIS or some other foreign entity, such as Iran, Russia or North Korea, posed an existential threat to America should have come away with a clearer perception of who really could take down the United States—Barack Obama and his co-conspirator Hillary Clinton or any other progressive who might get the opportunity to break our economic system by imposing higher taxes and more regulations and by getting the opportunity to nominate three or four left-leaning supreme court justices.

All right. This was classic campaign rhetoric. What struck me most was the almost complete absence of understanding of the complexities and nuances required of a successful presidential candidate. Take, for instance, Cruz’s opening salvo (no doubt he could not believe his good fortune to be asked the first question). Though it was about jobs and the economy, Cruz launched into a diatribe meant to raise the boiling point of every red-blooded South Carolinian in the audience and anyone else listening who believes gunboat diplomacy is preferable to respectful communication. 

He excoriated Obama for not mentioning in his State of the Union speech the 10 sailors captured by Iran after they meandered into Iranian waters. Cruz promised if he were president a country that captured any of our servicemen or servicewomen and forced them to kneel in humiliation would “face the full force and fury of the United States.” Oh boy, are we ready for cruise missile launches to resolve situations that peaceful diplomacy could diffuse within 24 hours? 

Ben Carson at times exhibited a sense of humor but, to my thinking, not enough understanding of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Carson wondered how rancor and name calling had become so commonplace in our society. Surely, he opined, it did not come from our Judeo-Christian roots.

Huh? Is he ignorant of American history? Puritans, who came to this land seeking religious freedom, denied it to anyone who failed to practice religion as they did. That’s why Roger Williams was forced to leave Massachusetts to found Rhode Island on the principles of religious tolerance and separation of church and state, as well as respect for the land rights of Native Americans.

Did Carson not realize that our Judeo-Christian value system was a foundation of slavery? 

Did Carson not realize that our Judeo-Christian values failed to open the doors to millions of would-be immigrants from the Far East and eastern Europe, many of the latter group who were Jewish?

Yes, there are many good Judeo-Christian values, such as communal help for the poor and underprivileged, but most Republicans prefer bootstrapping rather than government assistance programs or increases in the minimum wage (which they’d really prefer to do away with altogether as they would Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare). 

I’ve worked myself up enough so I won’t dissect the rest of the GOP field.  Have a good weekend.

  

Mythbusters Needed at GOP Debate

MythBusters, the Discovery Channel series that proves or debunks long-standing scientific theories, will end its14-year run at the conclusion of the current television season. One can only hope that among its planned segments is a feature inspired by Ben Carson’s hypothesis that the Egyptian pyramids were grain storage facilities, not burial tombs of the pharaohs. 

Okay, enough of the tongue in cheek. Wednesday was a day of myth-busting among Republicans, if any were in fact listening. 

Let’s start off as I did, fascinated by an NPR interview with Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey and once an Environmental Protection Agency administrator in President George W. Bush’ administration. Interviewed on The Takeaway radio program, Whitman bemoaned the opportunities her party has failed to capitalize on in the areas of environment and climate change, women issues including the right to choose, and acceptance of minorities. 

Teased she might be a good presidential candidate, Whitman acknowledged, “My party wouldn’t have me in the door, I’m too far out there,” as the only ones voting hold extreme positions. For revealing insights into the state of Republican politics, listen to this near seven-and-a -half minute interview:  https://www.wnyc.org/widgets/ondemand_player/takeaway/#file=%2Faudio%2Fxspf%2F546951%2F

John Kasich and Jeb Bush, and even Rand Paul, tried to instill some reality into the mythology of GOP politics Wednesday night during the main presidential debate, but succeeded very little given the war-mongering, bloodthirsty, anti-government live audience that favored no increase to the minimum wage and massive deportation of 11 million illegal aliens.  

Kasich even raised the specter of the blessed Republican icon, Saint Ronald, granting amnesty to five million illegal immigrants, but the Reagan touch did not extend to him even after his impassioned argument to think about the families that would be disrupted and the impracticality of rounding up and shipping 11 million people across the border. Bush fared no better. Donald Trump’s get-them-out-of-here approach carried the day, as did Ted Cruz’s admonition, “If the Republicans join Democrats as the party of amnesty, we will lose.”

Similarly, Paul didn’t win his argument with Marco Rubio about huge investments in the military. Paul said it would not be the conservative thing to do. To much applause Rubio countered, “I know that the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world.” Regrettably, no one asked which country is the strongest these days if the U.S. isn’t. 

What is it with Texas politicians who can’t remember all the government agencies and departments they want to eliminate? Like Rick Perry who couldn’t recall the third department he wanted to axe four years ago, Cruz had a problem listing the five departments he would eliminate. He twice said the Department of Commerce along with the IRS, the Department of Energy and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Perhaps fittingly, he left out the Department of Education. 

Unfortunately, the moderators from Fox Business Network and The Wall Street Journal didn’t follow up by asking if he envisioned any oversight at all on such endeavors as nuclear power facilities or fair housing opportunities, or the collection and auditing of taxpayer money under his revised tax code. 

Try as he might, Bush failed to gain traction, though he was consistently the only one to tie in attacks on President Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner. He was playing the long game, but who knows how much longer he can linger at low single digit poll numbers. 

Carly Fiorina came on strongest as the non politician, far surpassing the belligerent Trump and the wishy-washy Carson. She had command of concepts and specific tactics. The scowl on her face transmitted a sign of resoluteness. She was ready to tangle with Russia’s Putin, a reality sure to come to pass if she were to implement all the military buildups in Central and Eastern Europe she advocated. 

I didn’t notice anyone sweating during the debate. Perhaps the Milwaukee Theatre was cooled to the 67 degrees Fahrenheit the candidates wanted. Or maybe the podiums had small fans in the alcove under the lectern? During their last debate I observed a fan in the podium at the far left of the television screen. It was “strategically” aimed at crotch level. I’ll resist making any editorial opinion on the significance of that positioning …

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? 

Good Morning Sunshine, But Another Painful Day

Let the Sun Shine In: After receiving the go-ahead from ConEd this morning, at 3:45 pm Friday, we went solar. Naturally, it’s been an overcast day, but I have confidence the sun will come out tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that and we will get the bulk of our electric power from solar panels. I’ll keep you updated on the SolarCity system’s efficiency.

False Hope: My hope to be kidney-stone free has been dashed. After days without pain a slight twinge poked my back Tuesday afternoon as I drove around. The pain has not returned again but my doc says the stone probably is still there, so keep peeing into the strainer and hope it shows up.

Meanwhile, I am beset by a different excruciating pain. I’m a teeth grinder. I wear an appliance while I sleep to protect against a loss of enamel from the grinding. I’ve been wearing a mouthguard for more than 20 years. I even wore it while commuting on Metro North. My friend Lloyd always knew it was time to stop the banter when I slipped the appliance into my mouth on the ride home from Manhattan. 

Grinding also puts excessive stress on one’s jaw muscles, resulting, in my case, in temporomandibular joint  disorder (TMD). Pain starts in the middle of my lower right jaw and travels up beside either the front or back of my ear to the top of my skull. I’m not sure why TMD has suddenly flared, but the pain can come, and go, at a moment’s notice. The pain can last for hours. Our dentist (a reader of this blog so I’ll have to be careful what I say—just kidding, Mitch) is taking a conservative approach. We’ve eliminated the idea the pain is tooth-related. We’re hoping a slight adjustment to my mouthguard will, over time, reduce and eliminate the cause.

If you’ve gotten the impression I bounce from one pain to another, imaginary and not, let me assure you you would not want to suffer from these real aches. Still, Gilda has challenged me to keep a pain log for one month. Today’s entry has TMD.

Pain of Another Sort: If you think my pain is stressful, imagine how Ted Cruz must feel if any of his would-be supporters clicked on the following link: tedcruz.com.

There’s a presidential candidate not ready for prime time in this digital age. His chances of being the second bi-racial, Harvard-educated, two year-freshman United States senator to mercurially climb to the presidency is more remote than my going through a full month painless.

"Nothing Is Dearer Than a Daughter"—Euripides

Every pundit is talking about the inevitability of a Hillary Clinton Democratic party presidential run, if not election, so I thought I might as well give my take on her chances of securing the nomination and who would be her Republican opponent. 

With Euripides’ quote in mind, that “to a father waxing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter,” I researched the offspring of the last 12 presidents. During the 2012 election cycle, I determined that candidates with daughter(s) had greater opportunities to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2012/06/political-offspring.html?m=1). Six of the last 12 presidents, including the last three, restricted their fatherhood to daughters. Only Dwight D. Eisenhower had exclusively male progeny. It was thus a no-brainer to predict Mitt Romney, father of five boys, would fail in 2012 to unseat Barack Obama and send him and his two daughters, along with Michelle, back to Chicago. 

Hillary has only one daughter, Chelsea, whose magic might have been used up to elect her father in 1992, leaving her mother to be double-teamed in the 2008 primaries by Malia and Sasha Obama. 

Fast forward to 2016: Now, Hillary faces the prospect of running against the three daughters (no sons) of Andrew Cuomo and the two daughters (plus two sons) of Joe Biden. My money, nonetheless, remains on Hillary, especially if Chelsea rewards her with a granddaughter later this year (it wouldn’t hurt Chelsea’s own chances in, say, 2036, if she delivers a girl).

Clinton, Biden and Cuomo have the early star power, but if they falter or choose not to run, pundits see these other Democratic wannabes: Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, two girls, two boys; Virginia senator Mark Warner, three daughters; Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, one daughter, one son; New York senator Kirstin Gillibrand, two sons; and Minnesota senator Amy Klobucher, one daughter. 

Clearly Warner has the advantage in the second tier grouping. 

On the GOP side, Rand Paul strikes out. Not one of his three children is a girl. And my dark horse candidate of retired general Stanley McChrystal comes up short. He has but one son. 

For sheer numbers of offspring, Rick Santorum can’t be beat. Nine, count ’em, nine children, four of whom are girls. But Santorum’s a wacko only the far right, besides his wife, can love, which doesn’t automatically eliminate him from primary contention but surely does from the general, thinking, electorate, assuming there still is a majority of those voters around in a sufficient number of states to electorally elect Hillary.

Another wacko, with one daughter out of two spawns, is Rick Perry. No “sane Republican” (hopefully, that is not yet an oxymoron) could vote for him. 

With one daughter out of their respective three children, Congressman Paul Ryan, ex-Florida governor Jeb Bush, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and former Arkansas governor and current talk show host Mike Huckabee just didn’t try hard enough during their family formative years. 

Chris Christie and Marco Rubio each have two girls among their respective four children. They could be serious contenders for the Republican nomination and the general election. But the clear, focused winner for the nomination is Texas senator Ted Cruz. Cruz’s cruise missile twice bombarded his wife with Y-chromosomes. The result: Two daughters.

So there you have it—it’ll be Hillary Clinton vs. Ted Cruz, a pairing that will make both sides shutter at the possibilities. 

Transformative Week: Person of the Year and 50 Years of Mustang

Who would you pick as the Person of the Year? Before you start to rack your brain for a worthy choice, here is Time magazine’s 10 finalists for the declaration it will make Wednesday. Listed alphabetically, they are:

Bashar Assad, President of Syria;

Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder;

Ted Cruz, Texas Senator;

Miley Cyrus, Singer;

Pope Francis, Leader of the Catholic Church;

Barack Obama, President of the United States;

Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran;

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services;

Edward Snowden, N.S.A. Leaker;

Edith Windsor, Gay rights activist.

Keep in mind that to be the Person of the Year a candidate need not be a do-gooder. Evil can win as well, and I’m not referring to Barack Obama in the eyes of too many deranged-thinking folks.

Hands down, in my opinion, the winner will be Pope Francis. I’m not a Catholic, but he has transformed in his short reign the way the Catholic Church is perceived, or should be perceived. True, he retains some of the more rigid dogmas, such as being anti-abortion and against women as priests. But he has instilled a renewed sense of purpose to aid the needy and not be overly materialistic. His influence travels well beyond his papacy. 

My second choice would be Jeff Bezos. Retailing, one of my mentors (David Mahler) taught me, has been a continual evolution in streamlining the distribution of goods, from the individual shop to the five and dime to the mail order house to the department store to the discount store, the specialty store, the shopping mall, the category killer store, to the Internet. With Amazon.com, Bezos has set the gold standard for Web retailing. Amazon won’t destroy store retailing, much as Wal-Mart did not wipe all other stores off the retail landscape. But Bezos has been a transformational thinker in the way product is distributed, not just in the United States but abroad, as well. 

All the others on the list, except for Obama, are temporary figures on the scene of current events. 

Only Mustang Makes It Happen: Back in 1968, I drove a fire engine red Mustang. It was a 1966 model, but I identified with the snappy advertising lyric hyping the current year model:

Only Mustang makes it happen,

Only Mustang makes life great!

Mustang warms you, and transforms you.

Mustang, Mustang, '68!

The car that transformed the Ford Motor Company under Lee Iacocca will be 50 years old Thursday. Last April I wrote about my red Mustang, so I’ll just provide a link (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/search?q=mustang) and instead tell you about the last time I drove a Mustang, an aquamarine convertible rental on the island of Maui, some 20-plus years ago. 

Gilda and I traveled to Maui for the annual convention of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Normally, just one editor from my staff, Marianne, covered the event, which alternated between Hawaii and Palm Beach. We’d already been to Palm Beach, but not Maui, so I asserted some executive privilege and we accompanied Marianne. The NACDS, at that time under the direction of Ron Ziegler, President Richard Nixon’s former press secretary, spent lots of money on their annual get-together. The convention feature appearances by William Safire of The New York Times, Benizar Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, Liza Minnelli and Bob Hope.

But I didn’t need a car to see them. The Mustang was to get around the island, especially to drive up the road to Hāna, known for spectacular waterfalls along the 52 mile highway, and beyond Hāna to visit the gravesite of Charles Lindbergh. The climb to Hāna passes through tropical rainforest. Its mostly a switchback single-lane road, with some 620 curves. Without traffic it takes almost three hours to get to Hāna.

Our trip turned out to be an excursion to hell and back. On the way up the mountain we got stuck behind slow moving cars we could not pass because of the numerous curves. Maui had been suffering from a drought. Ergo, there were no waterfalls to behold. There also were no restaurants along the way, no rest stops to relieve ourselves. We finally arrived in Hāna a few minutes before 2 pm. We had hoped to eat lunch in the only sit-down restaurant in Hāna, but discovered it closed sharply at 2. The only open food shop was a greasy spoon shack we reluctantly patronized. 

We had to get back to our hotel for the conference evening event so we had to forego visiting Lindbergh’s grave. On the way down the mountain, Gilda and Marianne got car sick from all the sharp turns mixing with our greasy lunch. On numerous occasions they opted out of the car to walk a half mile or so in the mist that was now swooping in off the coast. We didn’t get stuck behind any cars or trucks, but our pace going down was significantly slower than when we went up to Hāna. Happiness was reaching the straightaway at the bottom of the road and opening up the throttle of the Mustang to whisk us back to our hotel.