Who Needs a Moderator?, Trump Asks

Amid all the hullabaloo over Hillary Clinton’s health, perhaps you missed this latest ploy from Donald Trump:

He wants to change the debate ground rules. He wants to do away with moderators at the three presidential debates. He is trying to game the agreed upon system just like he shortchanged contractors out of their agreed upon compensation for work on his construction projects.

Trump is obviously afraid that moderators with more savvy, sense, intelligence and courage than Matt Lauer will point out his fabrications, inconsistencies and overt lies.

Let’s be clear. Both candidates fudge the truth, but Trump’s lollapaloozas are extreme. It does no one a service, other than Trump, to have him spout inaccuracies. Clinton’s misstatements, as well, need to be clarified and cleansed. An objective, informed, intelligent and courageous moderator should take up the challenge. 

Here’s another thing that needs to be clear: The Trump-Clinton debates will not rival the dignity of the hallowed Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Though they will pit a Republican against a Democrat, that’s where the similarities end. The format of those seven classic meetings was not a give and take of candidates answering questions posed by a moderator, each other or member of the public. Rather as explained by Wikipedia, “The format for each debate was: one candidate spoke for 60 minutes, then the other candidate spoke for 90 minutes, and then the first candidate was allowed a 30-minute ‘rejoinder.’ The candidates alternated speaking first.”

In seeking to remove the moderators Trump is suggesting they would be biased against him. He claims the format is rigged against him (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-no-debate-moderator-228016). 

A rigged election is a theme Trump has espoused for several weeks as a counterfoil to a potential loss on November 8. “I’m afraid the election’s gonna be rigged, I have to be honest,” Trump said last month in Columbus, Ohio. 

Perhaps no other comment—from his attacks on Mexicans, Muslims, prisoners of war, a Gold Star family, the military leadership—has been more troublesome as it undermines the credibility of our electoral system and the peaceful transition of power. 

Hardly an election goes by that does not engender cries of “foul.” But from Richard Nixon in 1960 through Al Gore in 2000, candidates who felt cheated out of the presidency have considered the consequences a legal challenge to the outcome would have on our democracy. 

Trump, on the other hand, is feeding a frenzied following fodder for physical dissent should he lose. From the outset of his primary run to now, his campaign has not been a combat of ideas and platform planks but rather one of invective and disdain for the truth. 

In case of defeat, Clinton supports half-jokingly talk about moving to Canada. Trumpsters talk about taking back their government, by force if necessary. Paranoia abounds (http://nyti.ms/2bVLlVg).

Democratic paranoia stems from the possibility that Russia might hack the results in key states to tip the election. Already Russia is suspected of hacking election files in Arizona and Illinois. Computer voting with no paper backup is an invitation to confusion, if not disaster.

For a diverting take on how a computer glitch could determine an election, view the 2006 Robin Williams film, Man of the Year. Williams played Tom Dobbs, a TV host-comedian whose acerbic jabs at politics and politicians not only provoked laughter but also propelled him toward a spontaneous populist third party candidacy for the presidency.

Asked during a debate why he was running, Dobbs sounded Trump-like prescient: “I’ve decided to run because I’m fed up with party politics. I’m tired of the Republican Party,  I’m tired of the Democratic Party. There’s no real difference. They’re all Mr. Potato Head candidates. Basically, you’ve got a figure where here’s the operative word, “party,” because behind closed doors, phew,  I think they’re just having a real good time…the bottom line is they’ve lost track of what they are responsible for. They’re responsible to the people and not party loyalties and definitely not lobbyists. That’s why I’m running for president.”

To no one’s surprise who views the movie, spoiler alert, he wins because of a computer screw-up. Watch the movie to find out what happens next.

By the way, did anyone else see the irony of Hillary Clinton’s failed attempt Sunday morning to keep her pneumonia secret coinciding with the Sunday night airing of Churchill’s Secret, a movie on PBS about the British prime minister’s attempt to keep the world in the dark about a life-threatening stroke he suffered in 1953? 

The movie is based on the book by Jonathan Smith, The Churchill Secret KBO. KBO stands for Churchill’s motto, “Keep Buggering On.” Is that not like what Clinton told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I thought that I could just keep going forward and power through it. And obviously that didn’t work out so well,” she said.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Uncle Murray

It’s a week before Thanksgiving. I’m still waiting for my invitation to your turkey chomp. What? You can’t recall adding me to your guest list? Apparently you’re not on Minnesota U.S. Senator Al Franken’s email list (neither am I, but my sister is even though she lives in Los Angeles), for he wrote: 

“This time of year I always look forward to the usual Thanksgiving things: turkey, Franni’s famous pies, stuffing, friends, family, and football.

“And of course, Uncle Murray.”

Long-time readers of No Socks Needed Anymore may recall my being less than enamored with the pleasure comedians have in casting my given name for misanthropic characters or dogs in their films and TV shows (i.e., Murray the policeman in The Odd Couple, or Murray the dog in Mad About You, or the numerous stories about Murray told by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner in their 2,000-year-old man skits). 

So it wasn’t too surprising that Saturday Night Live alumnus-cum-politician Franken jumped on the make-fun-of-Murray bandwagon. He did, however, redeem my namesake in the rest of his email:   

“Uncle Murray isn’t a real person. Uncle Murray represents the family member at the dinner table who inevitably brings up politics, every single year.

“Now, some people get annoyed by Uncle Murray. But I think at least some of the things Uncle Murray talks about at the table are important. After all, Senators like me are supposed to know what concerns families share with each other at dinner. Those are actually the issues that matter -- they are experienced by real people -- and they are the ones we need to focus on.

“So I want you to tell me what your “Uncle Murray” (or you) will be talking about at the Thanksgiving table this year. It can be as simple as corporations aren’t people or that women deserve equal pay for equal work. It could be that LGBT friends and family deserve equal rights. It could be that climate change is real and happening and a serious risk to the future of the planet.

“What issues are you and your family most likely to discuss this year? What problems are affecting your family the most? (Franken asked that responses be sent to http://minnesota.alfranken.com/e51118m

“Can’t wait to read your responses.

“Al”

As long as we’re on the subject of politics, let’s stick with an item culled from the newspaper:

I’ve fashioned myself into a slow, careful reader. You might say slow reading is an occupational hazard of being an editor—if you are going to review other people’s writing you best do it carefully. Without haste. 

My snail-like pace reading all things from books to newspapers might explain why I find so many anomalies, mistakes and interesting items in the stories I read. I’m often disappointed when I fail to uncover a miscue. On the other hand, I exult in discovering a mistake or contradiction. Take, for instance, the Talk interview of David Brat in last Sunday’s New York Times magazine.

A 51-year-old Tea Party Republican congressman from Glen Allen, Va., Brat is a former college professor who took over Eric Cantor’s seat. Asked what he has learned in Washington, Brat said, “It’s hard. I like Plato’s maxim to start politics at 50 because you’re near death and the appetites are —whatever. You’re past the wine, women and song.”

Oh, really? Perhaps a visit to Wikipedia’s page entitled “List of federal political sex scandals in the United States” is in order for the ol’ professor. From 2000 through 2015, there have been 22 sex scandals, of which 14 involved politicos 50 years or older!

Seems to me the evidence is overwhelming that age is no barrier to a male politician seeking sex with women or men, and, in some cases, even boys.

Traveling Through Budapest

How ironic!

Budapest is serving as the transit point for Middle Eastern refugees fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other parts of the Muslim world.

How ironic that Hungary is the clearing house of humanity caught up in the savagery of war. How ironic that the human tide wants to flee to Germany (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3217584/Angela-Merkel-hints-bringing-border-checks-Syrian-refugees-boarding-trains-Hungary-chant-Germany-come.html).

Hungary, specifically Budapest, possesses an infamous history when it comes to exporting casualties of war. During World War II Hungary was aligned with Nazi Germany. Yet, through 1943, Jews were relatively safe within its borders. It was only after the government was replaced by a more Nazi-sympathetic regime in March 1944, after Hitler’s troops took control of the country, that mass deportations of Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp began.

As per Wikipedia,  “On March 19, 1944, German troops occupied Hungary, prime minister Miklós Kállay was deposed and soon mass deportations of Jews to German death camps in occupied Poland began. SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann went to Hungary to oversee the large-scale deportations. Between 15 May and 9 July, Hungarian authorities deported 437,402 Jews. All but 15,000 of these Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 90% of those were immediately killed. One in three of all Jews killed at Auschwitz were Hungarian citizens.” 

In all, an estimated 600,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the war. Most of the dead came from the countryside, not Budapest.

When our family visited Budapest during the summer of 2008, we learned first-hand the logistics behind the deportations. Budapest served as a way station for the doomed who were brought in from all parts of Hungary.

Budapest was a central railway hub because of the oddities of the European rail system. Located in central Europe, Budapest had two rail systems with different track gauges and separate railroad terminals across the city, one to serve passengers and freight headed west toward Poland and Germany, one for travel east toward Russia. When Jews would arrive from the eastern provinces of Hungary, they would be marched cross-town to the western-oriented station for immediate transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau. An estimated 12,000 souls were shipped out each day with the enthusiastic help of Hungarian Nazi sympathizers.

For centuries Jews had thrived inside Hungary but the country fostered deep anti-Semitic prejudices which linger unto today. It is ironic to see Arab refugees— Semites—flocking to Hungary for a chance to escape oppression. It is ironic to see them trying to reach Germany for a chance for a better, safer life.

Fiorina Matters Only in the Bizarro World of GOP Politics

In the bizarro world of Republican politics, a candidate who almost destroyed an iconic American company and was forced out (albeit with a $20 million golden parachute severance package) can be considered a presidential hopeful because she has a tart tongue. Carly Fiorina left Hewlett-Packard tarred and feathered for multiple sins, yet she dazzles on the GOP hustings because she has the wit to voice critical, funny soundbites about Democrats, mostly Hillary Rodham Clinton ( http://nyti.ms/1HE0pAa). 

My guess is she’s likely to gain traction as a vice presidential standard bearer, a woman much smarter than Sarah Palin. She doesn’t need to see Russia from her house (a phrase Palin never actually said). She’s been there and has even met Vladimir Putin.

But while too many Americans have short memories or are too young to have experienced history (or didn’t learn it in school), it is incumbent upon journalists to enlighten them (sadly, the soon to be departing Jon Stewart of The Daily Show was among the only mass market political watchers who resurrected a pol’s previous utterances and actions. Who will emerge as his truth-be-told successor?).

For those who merely hear that Fiorina was the head of HP, once considered the most powerful woman in business, the first female CEO of a top 20 U.S. company, it would be instructive to also hear that, according to Wikipedia, “CBS News, USA Today and Portfolio.com have ranked Fiorina as one of the worst American (or tech) CEOs of all time. In 2008, InfoWorld grouped her with a list of products and ideas as flops, declaring her tenure as CEO of HP to be the sixth worst tech flop of all-time and characterizing her as the ‘anti-Steve Jobs’ for reversing the goodwill of American engineers and alienating existing customers.”

Sure she has her supporters, which means she is a divisive, not an inclusive, personage. It doesn’t help that she laid off 30,000 HP workers during her five and a half year tenure as CEO. 

Also according to Wikipedia, “Fiorina frequently clashed with HP’s board of directors, and she faced backlash among HP employees and the tech community for her leading role in the demise of HP’s egalitarian ‘The HP Way’ work culture and guiding philosophy, which she felt hindered innovation. Because of changes to HP’s culture, and requests for voluntary pay cuts to prevent layoffs (subsequently followed by the largest layoffs in HP’s history), employee satisfaction surveys at HP—previously among the highest in America—revealed ‘widespread unhappiness’ and distrust, and Fiorina was sometimes booed at company meetings and attacked on HP’s electronic bulletin board.” Hardly a ringing endorsement when running for an office that is supposed to bring all the people together.

Fiorina is not the only Republican who seems to be hiding something. None of the announced and soon-to-announce candidates appears able or willing to articulate what they would do differently in the Middle East. They criticize President Obama but are short on specifics they would embrace to thwart ISIS and stabilize the region.

It reminds me of 1968. Richard Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War, so secret that it cost the U.S. another 21,195 deaths during the next five years that American combat troops served in Vietnam. 

Obama has not been the greatest commander-in-chief. But let’s not forget that it was George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisors, led by Vp Richard Cheney, who bungled the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Let’s also remember that it was under the Republican watch that our economy tanked. Under Obama the country has enjoyed prosperity, though too disproportionally tilted toward the wealthy, which makes it rather amusing that so many of the one percenters favor Republicans. But then again, Republicans live in a bizarro world.

Explosion in the Chemistry Lab

Did you hear about the NYC public high school science teacher who blew up her lab in an experiment gone wrong on Thursday? (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/nyregion/chemistry-lab-fire-injures-2-at-a-manhattan-high-school.html?_r=0)

The excitement brought to mind a similar foul-up during my junior year at Yeshivah of Flatbush High School in Brooklyn. I wasn’t there. The incident happened in one of the other classes of my grade. They were studying the reaction of sulfuric acid with water. 

Now, there is a proper way to mix sulfuric acid and water, and there is a wrong way to mix the two. The proper way is to add the acid to water. Then there’s the other way. As explained by Wikipedia, “Addition of water to concentrated sulfuric acid leads to the dispersal of a sulfuric acid aerosol or worse, an explosion.”

Guess which way the teacher conducted the experiment? 

Yes, and no. At first, Mr. Nash, the chemistry teacher, who, it should be noted, really was a biology teacher pressed into chemistry service at the last minute, did the experiment the right way, adding acid to water. But the intended result, a rise in temperature in the glass beaker, was inconsequential. That’s when Mr. Nash made his monumental mistake. He listened to some of his students egging him on to add some more water to the mixture. 

Not being a true chemistry teacher, Mr. Nash was not acquainted with the consequences of his action. The resulting explosion, with glass shards flying about, injuring several students, taught him and the class a lesson they would not quickly forget. 

Car Talk

Barring any last minute complications, we’re picking up Gilda’s new car early this evening, a ruby red Ford C-Max hybrid. It will be my third red car, Gilda’s second.

My first was a used, fire engine red, 1966 Mustang, bought in the fall of 1967. I shared it with my sister but considered it more mine than hers. We kept it for two years, long enough for it to be rear-ended twice while I was behind the wheel, once even while stopped at a red light, both times resulting in a broken trunk lock. Though I liked the Mustang it clearly had bad karma. It also had a front end bang-up before we bought it, something we found out only when a mechanic asked my sister when the collision happened.

My favorite memories of that car included stuffing 10 of my house plan (like a fraternity) brothers into the front and back seats as I drove from one party to another. As the driver, I didn’t have to share a seat so I was indifferent to the squeezed bodies surrounding me. 

The second memory also involved my Knight House friends. We were trying to find Lenny David one school night. Several cars descended on the Brooklyn College campus. We thought he might be in the library. I jumped out to search for him, then returned to my car to go to the next possible spot where he might be. In my haste, I didn’t notice the car had been moved from its original parking spot. 

You might ask, how could it have been moved? Surely your friends had not become supermen, lifted it up and moved it some 100 feet? By some quirk of manufacturing, the key to my 1966 Mustang exactly matched the key to Brian Berman’s 1965 Mustang. As a practical joke he moved my car, assuming I’d realize the shift when I didn’t find it parked where I left it. 

Okay, the story doesn’t end there. My Mustang had a slight mechanical problem. The gas gauge always read “empty.” My sister and I agreed we’d always fill the car with gas whenever we used it to avoid unsuspectingly running out of fuel. We also agreed we’d never engage the emergency parking brake because no red light appeared on the dashboard when it was on. When I got back into the driver’s seat and started to pull away from the curb I was jolted by the bucking bronco motion of the Mustang. I figured Lee had failed to refill the gas tank earlier that day and this was the car’s way of belching out its near-emptiness. The car kicked and fought for the two blocks to the nearest gas station. I told the attendant to fill ‘er up. 39 cents. Roughly two gallons back in 1968. I was flabbergasted, unable to comprehend why the car was behaving in such an uncharacteristic manner when I noticed the emergency brake had been deployed. I realized Brian had been inside my car but it was not until I confronted him that I was apprised he had also moved it to a different parking space. Total embarrassment. 

To replace the Mustang several months later my father bought me a Buick Skylark, red with a black vinyl top. Gilda learned to drive in that car which she named Bertha. Just recently I became aware of the significance of the name Bertha to automotive history. Seems Karl Benz was a better inventor than promoter. He was reluctant to show off his car-making handiwork. His wife Bertha, however, was no shrinking violet. Without asking his permission, on August 5, 1888, accompanied by their two teenage sons, she took Benz’s creation out for a spin, a 66-mile spin from Mannheim to Pforzheim. As explained in her Wikipedia biography, the trip, aside from being the maiden long distance trip in any automobile, achieved several other firsts:

“On the way, she solved numerous problems. She had to find ligroin as a fuel; this was available only at apothecary shops, so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel. A blacksmith had to help mend a chain at one point. The brakes needed to be repaired and, in doing so, Bertha Benz invented brake lining. She also had to use a long, straight hatpin to clean a fuel pipe, which had become blocked, and to insulate a wire with a garter. She left Mannheim around dawn and reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram. She drove back to Mannheim the next day.”

Gilda hasn’t indicated what she might call the Ford C-Max. Perhaps she’ll name it Thrifty or some other name to connote the savings the hybrid will provide. Its rated at 47 miles per gallon, city and highway, an important factor given Gilda’s 50-mile daily commute to and from Manhattan. Even if we get 20% less efficiency, at 37 mpg it would be three times more than what we managed from the Jeep Grand Cherokee we are replacing. 

We could have had a C-Max almost two months ago if we wanted any color but red. But when in a parking lot Gilda did not want to be lost amidst a sea of white, black, grey and blue cars. Ruby red will stand out. 

It’s supposed to rain in a short while. It rained when I picked up my Buick Skylark. My father used to say rain is a sign of good luck.