July 31^st

George Will is posturing again. A few columns ago George mentioned the “clerisy” in his column. For George words allow him more often to preen than to communicate. Today he claims that “With the Iran deal Obama makes bad history.” Yes, it’s all about the agreement with Iran. In disparaging President Obama George ignores some facts.

Will claims that the Iran agreement, “…comprehensively abandons the original goal of dismantling the infrastructure of its (Iran’s) nuclear weapons program.” It does no such thing! The number of centrifuges is reduced to a fraction of the current level and similar restrictions apply elsewhere as well. He goes on to deride the CIA’s record of countries going nuclear. One they didn’t miss, and Will never mentions, is Israel’s development of nuclear weapons. “US News and World Report” claims that Israel ranks just behind India in the number of nuclear weapons available. Their conventional army and air force are far superior to any combination of Middle East forces too, poor Israel!

Will finally shows a glimmer of understanding. He recognizes that the population of Iran is young and cannot be isolated so perhaps the agreement will keep the peace long enough for the political change in Iran we all hope for, Will says,  “…technologies make nations porous to outside influences; intellectual autarky is impossible.” (Will is at it again; Autarky is an economic term from the 1930s meaning self-sufficient. I looked it up.) Will claims that this is a “slender reed” and indeed it is but it is much better than more thousands of dead people and that is the alternative.

Will believes that the best reason for rejecting the agreement is, “Obama’s long record of disdain for Congress—recess appointments when the Senate was not truly in recess…” There were all of three of those and SCOTUS disallowed them. So the best reason for risking a bloody war is to “rebuke Obama?” I realize that the right has tried many ways to “rebuke Obama;” they have claimed he was foreign born (Indeed the current leader of the race for the Republican presidential nomination accused the president of being foreign born.) Forty-seven Senators signed a message to Iran claiming any agreement with the President is futile because they will reject it…and Will asserts “Obama’s long record of aggressive disdain for Congress,” Oh, who is disdaining whom?

Will should learn some very recent history. Here is the record:  Recess appointments made: Obama 32, Reagan 232, and G.H.W. Bush 171. Then consider Executive orders: Obama 205, Reagan 381 and G.H.W. Bush 291. Perhaps Will would like to defend the Senate’s taking 167 days to confirm Loretta Lynch’s appointment as Attorney General. Was it because she was black? Was it because she was a woman, or was it because of the greatest of all right wing sins, she was a black woman? However it was, it will require some explanation, probably during the next Presidential debate.

 

July 30^th

Today we’ll look at the antics provided by the Reverend Mike Huckabee in his quest for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. What? You say you’ve seen quite enough of Huckabee’s performances? I can understand that, but please bear with me for a few hundred words.

Huckabee is a Christian of the fundamentalist persuasion. This means that, when he can’t avoid it, he accepts everything written in the Bible as literal truth. Jonah was swallowed by a large fish; Lot’s wife looked back and did become a pillar of salt; the ark did contain two of every living creature and enough food to feed them for forty days and nights; God made the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. That last has caused Huckabee to weasel just a little bit. I recall a debate stage occupied by Huckabee and some other aspiring Republican candidates some years back. The moderator opened by asking how many of the candidates believed the earth was less than 10 thousand years old; every hand but one went up. The one that didn’t was Ron Paul who claimed he wasn’t sure about that. Now Huckabee says he isn’t sure either, he says he wasn’t there at the time. Most Christians see these descriptions as metaphors useful for teaching purposes. Most people are by now well aware the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and one fervently hpes aren’t willing to tolerate a president who accepts biblical metaphors as fact.

Huckabee has had some harsh words for recent SCOTUS decisions as well. He, among others, loves to dwell on the obvious fact the Court is appointed and not elected. This allows him and his friends to claim that the court doesn’t represent the people. Indeed it doesn’t, its job is to determine if laws are constitutional or not and not to determine if the laws pass a popularity contest. Huckabee and others disgruntled by the Court’s recent decisions don’t know that, or perhaps would prefer to rewrite the constitution.

Now it is apparent that Huckabee has bought into the Fundamentalist view that the second coming of Christ just awaits the gathering of all the Jews into Israel. Eventually, after the rapture, wars and other events predicted by particular biblical verses, Christ will return to reign for a thousand years. Fundamentalists like Huckabee are very protective of Israel at least until all the Jews are gathered there. This is why he is livid about the agreement with Iran and why he claimed that the agreement was tantamount to “marching the Jews to the oven door.” He doesn’t want to delay the “rapture.”

In 1955 a U-2 spy plane flying over Israel determined that they were developing atomic weapons. They were confronted with this evidence but nothing was settled. Many people believe that the mideast arms race has been over for some time and that Israel has won it. It is assumed that they now have about 80 nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Israel is not Czechoslovakia but Huckabee doesn’t know that.

July 29^th

Thomas Sowell has generously solved the problem of unemployed black youth. You’ll never guess how easy it was. From his column today it appears that the minimum wage is raised entirely too high. Sowell shows that as the minimum wage rose over many years so did the unemployment of black youth. It must surely follow that if the minimum wage is eliminated black youths will find more jobs. Well, maybe not.

There is a little something from the logic place that might not have been emphasized at the University of Chicago’s graduate school of economics. That something is called “post hoc ergo propter hoc” If that is de-Latinized it reminds us that because A follows B we should not assume that B causes A. Sowell didn’t get to that part of whatever logic course he took…if he took a logic course. He is, after all, 85 years old which means that his graduate school days were close to the middle of the last century. Who knows what they taught economists back then. (I can make these ageist remarks because I’m older than he is and similar ones apply to me as well.)

Sowell really does claim that black unemployment is caused by increases in the minimum wage. Here’s a quote, “Liberals, of course, wanted the minimum wage raised to keep up with inflation. The result was that ten years later, the unemployment for black 17-year old males was 27.5 percent…as the minimum wage kept getting raised so did the unemployment rate for black 17-year old males in  1971 it was 33.4 percent –and it has never been under 30 percent since then.”

In 1971 the minimum wage was $i.60 an hour and now 44 years later in 2015 it is $7.25 an hour, four and half times as high. Black teenage unemployment is presumably increased by increasing the minimum wage, according to Sowell, so what has it done in those 44 years? According to Sowell it has remained stuck at 30+ percent over that time. If you want to make a case that A causes B, then when you increase A, B should increase too, or at least not remain dormant, because if A jumps by a factor of 4.5 and B doesn’t budge, it just ruins your argument.

It is obvious that many other factors than the minimum wage influence the unemployment rate of unskilled labor and how can anyone classify 17 year olds of any ethnicity as other than unskilled labor? Sowell even tries out the old chestnut about minimum wage jobs being for “young and inexperienced workers.” That’s nonsense! A visit to any fast food emporium or big box store will find many older people working there, trying to survive because their pensions have been cut or eliminated.

Sowell began his rant by accusing liberals of imposing policies without testing them. “Whether you really care about what happens to the supposed beneficiaries of the policy is indicated by whether you bother to check out the empirical evidence afterward.” Yes, that’s how he started a column which concluded that raising the minimum wage caused teenaged black unemployment.

 

July 28^th

In this morning’s Record Eagle the editor has devoted a two column editorial to the recent scandal of Planned Parenthood (PP) officials haggling over the sale of baby body parts; this while buyers and sellers are “enjoying” lunch no less! The writer of the editorial is vastly upset by the whole thing.

This is the second of three nicely edited films done by the “Center for Medical Progress” (CMP) that apparently physician-less outfit I described in yesterday’s blog. A new name has surfaced which wasn’t on their website yesterday; it is the founder and chief conspirator David Daleiden. Up until pulling this scam on Planned Parenthood, the Center for Medical Progress had devoted itself to fighting the Affordable Care Act, now we know their true target.

The undercover scam has worked very well. Even a sophisticated newspaper editor has fallen for it. In fact he’s so upset he has not been willing to attach the honorific “Dr.” to Dr. Gatter’s name the first time he mentions it. The PP physicians are said to “dance around” restriction on procedures. If he had said “violate” he could have been sued, dance around is safer and conveys what’s necessary. Then much is made of the two PP physicians willing to “discuss” altering abortion procedures.  Altering is illegal; discussing isn’t. Then another incriminating insinuation; one physician says that she will talk to a surgeon to see if he will alter his procedures. Saying that, of course, proves that the physician will indeed do exactly that. (This fine car will never leak oil!)

This con by Deleiden is well planned and designed to outrage just the sorts of people who have been outraged. He makes sure the discussion takes place over lunch. Indeed the editor has us picture a physician thinking about harvesting a body part, “she muses as she enjoys her salad.” Think about how bland this discussion would have been had it taken place in a conference room, “she muses as she twirls her pencil.” That won’t do at all.

This has had two major effects: first is a drastic reduction of fetal tissue available for research. The U. of Colorado president has already been harangued by his local congressman wanting to know if the University uses any fetal tissue for research and if so they should stop it immediately. This is a state school which lives or dies on government funds; guess what they’ll do. Second, tomorrow the Congress will vote to defund Planned Parenthood. That will probably carry thanks to Daleiden. This means a reduction in various cancer screenings provided by PP as well as a reduction in contraceptive counselling and then a likely increase in the need for the abortions that PP will have a reduced ability to provide as well.

July 27^th

Cal Thomas is delighted today because the “Center for Medical Progress” has trapped some Planned Parenthood Physicians into talking about selling fetal tissue. I checked out this “Center for Medical Progress” and guess what? The “Center for Medical Progress” doesn’t employ any physicians. There are three names listed: Paul Howard who has a Ph.D. in political science, there is Peter Huber who has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and there is Avik Roy who has “studied” at MIT and Yale but for whom no degrees are listed. Most of the “medical progress” this center is pushing consists of denigrating “Obamacare.”

Thomas tells us that “Republican presidential candidates denounced the practice of fetal organ harvesting.” Yes indeed, and so they should, much better that this tissue be discarded as medical waste rather than use it to help save a life. it’s so much more ethical to just throw it away because that way there won’t be some Cal Thomas to pass judgment about it. Cal, you see, is a big time judgment passer; he is past vice president of the Moral Majority and those folks are some of the most awesome judgment passers this country has ever seen.

Like most of the virulent anti-abortion types, Cal Thomas is certainly not in favor of contraceptives. This is in spite of the obvious fact that available contraception will certainly reduce unwanted pregnancies and thus reduce abortions. In fact, abortions have dropped 12 percent in the last five years. Those who have made abortion more difficult to get as well as Planned Parenthood want credit for this drop. The data favor the Affordable Care Act, because now long term contraceptive help is available to many women who previously could not afford it. There is also a substantial drop in teen pregnancies and in teen abortions. Cal Thomas doesn’t discuss this decline. I wonder why.

Thomas becomes quite incensed about all this; he tells us that “It is the inevitable outcome when moral boundaries are removed…if we are of no greater moral value than a hamburger, and if human value is to be assigned by the courts, then we are all potentially at risk of extermination should we become inconvenient or too expensive to sustain.” …This man can be nudged toward hyperbole by a gnat on his nose. As an example of his occasional lack of control he recently said that Rachel Maddow, a liberal commentator, was “the best argument I know of for birth control.” He seems to have reconsidered that remark and subsequently apologized to Rachel Maddow for having made it. Controlling himself to start with, I guess, is not an option.

 

 

 

July 26^th

Some of the Republican Presidential candidates are getting desperate for attention. The way to get attention, as shown by Donald Trump, is to make outrageous statements; that works and works very well. Trump is leading in all the polls and most of the remaining field is far behind him. The answer to Trump is for some of the folks back in the pack to start being outrageous too.

The Reverend Mike Huckabee has presented the public with a nicely hyperbolic comment designed to get himself lots of attention. Huckabee claims that “This President’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naïve that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people. I read the whole deal. We gave away the whole store. It’s got to be stopped.” As you can see the man is sputtering!

My, my; “march them to the door of the oven;” that will certainly get Huckabee some publicity. This was from an interview on Breitbart Radio where the President is referred to as President “Hussein” Obama. Of course he was, what else would you expect from Breitbart!

There is little point in asking what Huckabee would suggest as an alternative. None of the right wingers are able to do anything but criticize what has been done without offering any suggestions about how it might have been improved. Notice that Huckabee criticizes only the President in this rant; he has nothing to say about the other five countries that were party to this agreement. Huckabee’s only interest here is to get some publicity for himself by raging against the President

July 25^th

Mona Chare has an entire column devoted to Donald Trump; she scampers away from him as fast as she can. She tells us that Trump got 24 percent of a recent poll “but Jeb Bush and Scott Walker together got 25 percent.” Coming within a point of the next two highest candidates combined is heartening for Ms. Charen. That’s really whistling past the graveyard. Then she says that “54 percent of his views do not represent the values of the Republican Party.”  (How in the world did she come up with “54 percent of his views?”)

She claims that “the very worst way to broach the topic (illegal immigration) is to smear all illegals as ‘rapists’ and criminals” but then acknowledges that talk radio has a consistent “drumbeat about illegal immigrant criminals.” I wonder if that drumbeat represents “the values of the Republican party;” if it doesn’t why hasn’t she said anything about the talk radio hosts?

She says that Trumps balloon ride is fading but is “disturbing nonetheless.” There is no evidence that it’s fading but plenty that it’s disturbing. Mona finds it disturbing because, “It’s evidence that political intemperance is not limited to the left.” The very next sentence has Mona writing, “Thanks to the execrable leadership of the Democratic Party and its allies we have witnessed several years of stoked racial hatred in America.” Later she writes, “Barack Obama rose on a promise of harmony, and has used power to rend the nation along all of its weakest seams. This brand of leadership has left his followers not happier, but more bitter. As for his opponents, they are disbelieving at the… damage he has been able to inflict.” This rant is, of course, not “political intemperance.”

After writing that Trump has demonstrated that political intemperance is not limited to the left, this woman, apparently forgetting what she has just written, proceeds to produce the most intemperate political remarks it is possible to utter in a family newspaper. We are to understand that racial hatred is not the result of a black man running away from a white policeman who murders him for target practice or the murder of nine black worshippers in Charleston by a white racist, that these and other racial outrages are the result of “the Democratic party stoking racial hatred in America,” Reading this, one is inclined to believe that Ms. Charen must be suffering from a mental disorder!

Then she says that “the only answer to hatred and division on the left is …inclusion on the right.” (Did she just give us an interesting example of that inclusion?) She recognizes that the party which “lost the Hispanic vote, the black vote, the women’s vote, the youth vote and the Asian vote has an image problem” Ms. Charen, as long as you and your party believe you have only an “image” problem you will continue to lose these voters. Your problem is not simply image, until you realize that your image reflects reality you will continue to lose elections.

 

 

July 24^th

 Today we’ll talk about the Trump phenomenon. Only in America can money and bombast produce a viable candidate for the Presidency. There are about 500 billionaires in this country, many of them richer that Donald Trump, none of them as wiling to brag about their wealth and none of them, except Trump, running for office. There about 1500 people with a net worth of more than 500 million dollars; they can also be described in the same terms Mr. Trump uses to describe himself, “really, really rich!”

It is the nature of capitalist free-enterprise systems, so the economists tell us, to increase the difference between the ends of the wealth continuum. The average salary for the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies is about 10 million dollars annually.  My paper this morning advertised a number of jobs paying 18 thousand dollars a year, .0018 of the top CEO’s pay. Once before the country was at the mercy of wealthy individuals, people who controlled various trusts. Then President Theodore Roosevelt began his “trust busting.” Vertically integrated trusts had achieved a stranglehold on the economy and Roosevelt released that stranglehold.

Money now controls our government; there are seventeen registered lobbyists for every legislator. These lobbyists sometimes write the legislation which their employers want enacted. If the legislator behaves himself, cooperates and does what he’s told, he can eventually look forward to his own lucrative career as a lobbyist. The system is set up to perpetuate the system; the result even includes an insistence on a pledge of no new taxes. This pledge is required of new legislators by Grover Norquist, a powerful if unelected factotum. The pledge increases the protection of the wealth of the already wealthy and requires the government to go ever deeper into debt; it guarantees that the wealthy are immune from any debt repayment obligation. Any criticism of the system raises the cry of “class warfare.”

The current spectacle is hardly surprising; the result is that a wealthy real estate mogul, who admits contributing to every politician who might be able to increase his wealth, is now claiming that he will do great things if elected. He has already said that he would build a wall along the border with Mexico…and make Mexico pay for it. When asked how he would make Mexico pay for it he says his questioner must wait and see. He claims that Mexico is “sending” its felons and “some good people” to this country. How Mexico can “send” any of their citizens anywhere he doesn’t say.

He has the trappings of wealth and the bluster of arrogance and that combination has enormous appeal to many on the right…and some on the left. He also takes pains to criticize his Republican opponents as well as his Democratic ones. This also appeals to his audience who rarely hears anyone lashing out indiscriminately at politicians. His wealth allows him ignore the normal rules of political combat. Those in politics are now reaping what they have sown. Heaven help us all!

July 23^rd

Thomas Sowell goes on record today as wondering if President Obama really has this country’s best interest as his top priority. Naturally, it’s all about the Iranian agreement. Sowell proclaims that “Back in the days of our nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union some of the more weak-kneed intelligentsia posed the choice as to whether we wanted to be ‘Red or dead.’ Fortunately there were others…President Ronald Reagan persevered in a course that critics said would lead to nuclear war. Instead it led to the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War.”

I am amazed that Sowell is too dense to see the parallels between President Obama’s diplomatic efforts to avoid war and President Reagan’s efforts to do the same. There were critics, then and now, who insisted that the other side could not be trusted; Sowell is not only blind to this similarity, he is one of the leading critics of such diplomacy now, just as  the “weak kneed intelligentsia” were  in Reagan’s time.

There is an interesting disconnect between the concerns of the national press and Thomas Sowell, Mona Charen and Cal Thomas—the conservative columnists I’ve been jousting with. These columnists are obsessed with the Iran agreement.  The rest of the commentators are talking about Donald Trump, the murders of our servicemen at a recruiting station, the apparent suicide of a woman jailed after being pulled over to allow a police car to pass her.

These commentators are all listed by the Jewish World Review a publication devoted, so it claims, to various cultural understandings. The review lists all of the above conservative columnists on its roster and, in addition, Ann Coulter, George Will, Charles Krauthammer and others. The editor claims that “it is hard to understand a religious person who votes Democrat.”  You get the picture. It is apparent that pro-Israel and Republican are linked at the hip!

Now there is a full court press by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to lobby congress against this agreement. This outfit has 100 thousand members and many of them are converging on Washington to lobby their legislators to kill this deal. There are already ads on television hinting that if the agreement is passed we will be at grave risk of nuclear war. Thirty million dollars will be spent on this advertising. Rarely, if ever, has another country so brazenly intruded itself into our country’s political affairs and we are paying for it. Our one-sided support for Israel does not play well in any part of the Middle-East. Maybe it’s time for these right wing columnists to tell us just where their allegiance lies.

July 22^nd

Cal Thomas titles his column today, “Obama, you’re no Ronald Reagan.” He’s right of course, and we can be eternally thankful for that. He goes on to call President Obama “the president of self-regard” because he has linked himself to Reagan in that both men sought agreements with their enemies. Thomas then cites several Iranian acts that support Iran’s history of aggression against the United States. He goes back nine years to claim that Iranian factories were “mass producing bombs to kill soldiers in Iraq.” Is it news, or is it column worthy, to point out that the Iranian leaders despise the United States…but those are the leaders; the ordinary citizens, many under thirty, despise their leaders almost as much as their leaders despise us.

After expending several hundred words describing the awfulness of the Iranian regime Thomas,  in horror says, “These are the people who  can supposedly be trusted not to cheat on a deal with a government they regard as ‘satanic’ and worthy of every tactic they can employ to eradicate it? These are the people who will not stop pursuing whatever weaponry they need—conventional or nuclear toward their stated objective…” OK Cal, we get the idea that you don’t trust the Iranians to keep their agreement with us nor with the other five countries that are also party to it. Of course you only find yourself condemning our President for trusting Iran on this agreement; I guess you aren’t paid to bash the negotiators from Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, the other five countries that signed on too.

Of course we don’t trust the Iranians; there are a variety of safeguards in the agreement to catch most of the cheating that might occur. Is it foolproof? Of course it isn’t foolproof; neither were our inspection/treaties with the Soviets, but you were happy about them because they were negotiated by the Reagan administration.

Then you write that the President’s claim that our only choices were the agreement or war left out the possibility of increased sanctions. You apparently don’t realize that the other five countries involved must also increase sanctions. Getting the agreement we did was a remarkable accomplishment. And then as I wrote yesterday, the Ayatollah Khamenei is not particularly happy about this deal either, nor are his advisors. The Iranians might not be willing to sign on to it. Wouldn’t be interesting if Netanyahu, the Republicans and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were all on the same side in this kerfuffle?

July 21^st

Pat Buchanan’s column today concerns “The Republican Party’s big dilemma with Iran.” I always like to see the Republican Party have a dilemma; I prefer that it be big but I’ll take what I can get. I must say that I would never have thought I’d agree with Buchanan about much of anything but his comments today strike me as being exactly right.

Buchanan points out that even if Congress votes to deny President Obama the authority to lift US sanctions on Iran,  Kerry will still vote with the rest of the Security Council to lift the sanctions. If Congress votes to kill the Iran deal it will humiliate this country with most of the world, Israel and the Saudis excepted of course; if Iran honors all the terms of the agreement, who will join us in any continuing sanctions? If Iran is sticking to the terms of an agreement, which we signed but Congress refused to ratify, how do we bomb their facilities which will then be swarming with inspectors? These are all points made by Buchanan in his column; it’s hard to disagree with him.

There is another side involved here and that is Iran: approval by Ayatollah Khomeini is decidedly iffy.  He is not happy with this deal either. The leader of the Red Guards is as violently opposed to this treaty as is Prime Minister Netanyahu. So we now have Brigadier General Mohammed ali Jafari, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Congressman Boehner, Senator Leslie Graham, the entirety of the Fox News editorial staff and Bibi Netanyahu all on the same side. I tell you this is a spectacle to treasure!

Buchanan points out that our primary enemy in the region is ISIS and al-Qaida, and that they have been aided by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The only one of those that should concern us is Turkey. Turkey was a secular state for years but that has begun to change. Normally when a fundamentalist Muslim group asserts itself in Turkish government the Army squashes it. This time that hasn’t happened…yet.

Now that could change: An ISIL suicide bomber blew him(?)self up in the Turkish border city of Suruc killing 32 people and wounding an unknown number of others. This is the first attack on Turkish citizens in Turkey by this terrorist group and the Turkish government is not yet doing much about it. There is no day of national mourning and no vow of military action. The result will probably be more ISIL attacks and those attacks will finally force the government’s hand. ISIL may have over-reached; an upset Turkey could be a major problem for them.

July 20^th

Today Mona Charen is busy finding new ways to insult the President and, of course, support Bibi Netanyahu. She begins with the premise the President Obama’s policies are just awful. She asks, “Did he (Obama) intend harm, or was he so blinded by ideology that he could not see the damage his policies were creating? The Iran deal provides the answer.” Then she calls the President, “Our duplicitous leader…” because she believes this treaty will allow Iran to develop the bomb “eventually.” Really? And who cannot get the bomb “eventually?”

Then we have her references to the President: not even once in this entire rant can Mona bring herself to call him President Obama: he is always just “Obama.” On the other hand there is “Prime Minister Netanyahu, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, even Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.”(The AP style sheet requires the title on the first reference and from then on the last name is OK. I guess furious Mona isn’t paying attention.) Charen claims, after mentioning various alternatives, “if all of the above failed he could have deployed strategic bombing to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.” I’ll bet Bibi would have just loved that alternative. At this point the Iranian population has a high percentage of people under 35 who are not happy with the religious restrictions imposed on them by the theocracy. Any military attack will solidify that group behind their leaders and it would be an incredibly stupid move. Moreover, that option isn’t going away so why use it now?

Let’s look at the other “damage his policies were creating:” Since the President took office twelve million new jobs have been created. Of course Democratic Presidents get no credit for recovering economies, only Republican Presidents are entitled to credit for that. Then the stock market has more than doubled and the country’s deficits have dropped by two-thirds, just more of that “damage his policies have created.”

There is more: Health care inflation is the lowest in 50 years. The manufacturing industry and the auto industry are coming back; Ford stock was at two dollars a share and now is over 14 dollars a share. Clean energy has more than doubled. The unnecessary war in Iraq is over and Afghanistan’s hostilities will soon no longer involve us. Osama Ben Laden is dead on Obama’s direct order. None of this matters to Charen, possibly because the benefits are to this country and not to Israel.

Her diatribe against the President culminates in the following quote: “The dishonest core of the president’s pretense is this: That the choice was between war and diplomacy. Every schoolchild knows that diplomacy without the credible threat of force is a nullity. Obama knows how to frighten and intimidate when he wants to.  See his conduct towards Republicans or Netanyahu or the Supreme court.” What incredible nonsense! What other choices except war and diplomacy were there? And then to suggest that the President intimidated the Supreme Court is ridiculous. How could he possibly do that? Charen gives no hint. The evidence that he has intimidated Congress or Netanyahu is exactly what?

Finally, a Pew Research Poll asking which threats are of concern for each country finds that 62 percent of the US citizens are concerned about Iran getting the bomb while that drops to 53 percent of Israelis.  This poll shows more people are concerned about ISIS than are concerned about Iran developing the bomb. Although it probably won’t help, will somebody please tell Mona Charen?

July 19^th

Hold the presses! Donald Trump may be in the process of self-destructing. It’s too early to tell because his recent gaffs haven’t had time to affect his polls. I’m sure there are pollsters all over this so we’ll soon know how much “oomph” The Donald has lost.

Here’s what happened (In case your TV has blown a fuse). Trump was asked about John McCain’s negative comments concerning him and him and his enthusiastic Arizona audience. He replied that he didn’t think McCain was a hero because his (Trump’s) heroes were those who didn’t get captured. The real heroes were the guys who fought and came home without all the publicity.

I am no great fan of John McCain’s; he certainly was a war hero but when he came back he quickly used up the good will he had accumulated in service. Then he picked a certifiable air-head, Sarah Palin, as his running mate for the Presidency. That demonstrated for many of us that his ego was stronger than his concern for his country. Even so McCain is a military hero to the far right and that is Trump’s primary constituency. They won’t be happy with his comments.

When commentators asked Trump if he planned to apologize to McCain he did what any good narcissist would do; he not only said, “No,” he said that McCain should apologize to him!  McCain has five serious military medals and Trump has five happy deferrals from service in Viet Nam, and Trump wants an apology from McCain? Trump claims the apology is because McCain called the people who turned out to hear Trump in Arizona “Crazies.” That’s what McCain should apologize for.

The Republican Party has been waiting for an excuse to hammer Trump and now they have it. All the candidates were quick to support and praise McCain and denounce Trump, all but one. Ted Cruz praised McCain but refused to condemn Trump and so he tries to have it both ways. The Republican central command commented that no Republican will tolerate the denouncing of any of our military heroes. They have forgotten the swift-boating of John Kerry when he ran for President. I think they meant that they wouldn’t tolerate the denouncing of any Republican war hero.

Not content with putting one boot deep in the muck with his McCain comment, Trump went on to insert the other one. He was addressing the Iowa Family Leadership Conference, a very serious religious group of evangelicals. He was asked if he ever sought forgiveness from God. Trump, said that he “Wasn’t sure;” that if he had done something that needed forgiveness he would try to make it right himself and not bring God into it. Then he said that in church he has his “little wine” and his “little cracker” and does that as often as he can.  No word has emerged from this group about Trumps description of the Sacraments. Stay tuned!

July 18^th

Today the local paper has some material from Factcheck.org about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and various politicians’ misleading comments (lies?) about it. The liar-in-chief is Ted Cruz. In a Yahoo news interview Katie Couric asked Cruz what would happen to the 16.4 million people on Medicaid if the law were repealed as Cruz had recommended. Cruz claimed that they would be better off because “health outcomes are remarkably worse when people get on Medicaid. And in fact people’s life expectancy goes down when they get on Medicaid.” The evidence from a study co-authored by a member of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors about the difference between mortality in states that expanded Medicaid coverage and those that did not is exactly the opposite.

Cruz has a very difficult time with the truth when the truth is inconvenient for him. His comments about the IRS are a case in point: Cruz claimed that the 110 thousand IRS agents should be sent to guard the border. But Ted there aren’t 110 thousand IRS agents; there aren’t even 110 thousand IRS employees, there are just 82 thousand IRS employees. Of these 82 thousand employees just 14 thousand are IRS agents. That comes to about one agent for every 17 thousand tax returns.

Then we have Ted’s comments about his wife’s attitude toward the family’s finances and their allocation toward his campaign. In an interview Ted was asked about his wife Heidi’s willingness to use the family finances in his presidential campaign. He claims that he asked his wife if they should convert all of their family assets to cash and contribute that to his campaign and that he “was astonished when she said absolutely.” On the other hand Heidi describes the situation very differently. Heidi, you understand, is no financial patsy. She gave up a very promising career at Goldman–Sachs to help with her husband’s campaign. She claims that she insisted that they first solicit financial support from others to see if support of a Cruz candidacy existed. Then if the family finances were required to guarantee the nomination they would contribute it. Gee, why isn’t Heidi running for President?

When Cruz’s utterances are Factchecked he has the highest “pants on fire” rating of any candidate except for Ben Carson. Cruz is at 56 percent. Many observers are not convinced that Cruz even knows that he is lying. There are mental mechanisms that convince the very passionate that what they want to believe is, in fact, the truth. There is no tabula rasa for these folks; every belief is preprogrammed.

July 17^th

No right wing columnists in today’s paper so it’s a free day for the detritus; so many targets, so little time. The topic pro tem seems to be this potential agreement with Iran that has all of the conservative honchos near apoplexy. Why in ten or fifteen years Iran could have the bomb; meanwhile even if the agreement goes through and sanctions are lifted Iran can start shoveling all matter of weapons to some very naughty actors…and besides all that, Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby are very pouty about this deal.

This is nowhere more true than at AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. This is Israel’s ultra-powerful lobbying group. These people visit the office of every newly elected Representative and Senator just to be sure that they have no questions about the Middle East; if they have AIPAC is available with answers 24/7. Naturally there is a contribution to the politician’s campaign but the amount of that sort of nicety is severely limited by law. Other incentives to tractable politicians are not so limited; perhaps a child is applying to college; a full scholarship to a good school might be arranged. A wife has lost her job so a new job at a somewhat better salary might be found. These are very effective methods for controlling our legislators and other politicians.

 The CEO of “J Street,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, on the other hand is devoted to a more sane policy of Israeli support. James A. Baker 3^rd recently spoke at a J Street function and used it to rip into to Netanyahu and the current Israeli policy. Baker has never been an uncritical fan of Israeli expansion into the “conquered territories” and the Israelis don’t take kindly to any criticism, particularly criticism from a distinguished American like Secretary Baker. Bibi hasn’t learned that the more his AIPAC pushes the more some whose primary allegiance is to this country will push back!

The issue is whether or not this agreement should be pursued. Congress can vote against it but the President can veto that vote. Then we will find out if Congress can override the President’s veto. Some conservative politicians were reflexively against the agreement; they were opposed to it so quickly that it was improbable that they had bothered to read it. No matter, President Obama and Secretary Kerry were for it so of course they were against it.

It is vanishing unlikely that the six countries (Five members of the Security Council plus Germany) involved on our side in these negotiations will agree on these issues again. This means that it’s this agreement or no agreement at all; that’s the choice. If there is no agreement then Iran has a clear track to the bomb unless we take military action. Critics claim that Iran might have the bomb in ten years under this agreement; they might have the bomb in eighteen months without it. Which is better?

July 16^th

Today Thomas Sowell asks “Is the Civil War is really over?” Sowell, like a good Republican, doesn’t answer the question directly. He does point out the quick forgiveness in Charleston for the racist killer by the relatives of the slain parishioners and the “whites who responded with solidarity did their part” he says. He also delightedly points out that this inter-racial good will “was accomplished without the ‘help’ of racial activists like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.” (Sowell’s quotes.)

Then we have this peculiar and quite dismissive note, “Professional race hustlers have no incentive to see our current civil war end. They see in this shooting only an opportunity to escalate their demands.” Then he tells us that soon there will be demands to “destroy the statues of Robert E. Lee and other southern leaders, perhaps tear down the Jefferson Memorial and rename Washington D.C.” These demands are, as is usual for conservatives, designed to be hyperbolic. They also exist only in Thomas Sowell’s imagination.

The more realistic demands these “race hustlers” might make are quite different. Perhaps they are demands that cops should stop shooting unarmed black citizens in the back; or perhaps cops should not draw a weapon against black teenagers at a pool party, or maybe a burly cop should not put a bathing suited black teenager in an arm lock so that her face can be ground into the dirt, or a cop with four other cops should not strangle to death a black man in New York City. This last has cost the city of over seven million dollar in an attempted settlement with the man’s family. The particular cop involved got a paid vacation courtesy of his union contract; the family got a dead husband and father courtesy of the NYC police department. Thomas Sowell doesn’t realize it but many Americans believe that the “race hustlers” who object to this treatment have a point.

Then this naïf claims that we have no need of hate crime laws. Oh, but we do! This is because local laws against murder, or arson or other crimes are not always enforced if the victim is black because local customs prohibit conviction of a white person for committing such a crime.  In such a case, and there were once many such cases, Federal Hate Crime Law can redress the balance. Many states have their own hate crime laws that enhance the sentence if a hate crime is committed; South Carolina does not. Former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, now president of the Heritage Foundation, spoke against it in spite of sixteen hate groups in his state. Before you feel self–righteous Michigan doesn’t have such a law either.

 

July 15^th

Mona Charen’s piece today is titled “Democrats are holding the Trump Card.” No they aren’t; the Republicans are holding it and it’s burning their fingers.

Mona then buries her lead by going on to be horrified by the new agreement with Iran. She tells us that the result will surely be nuclear bombs over Tel Aviv and New York “in the near term.”  Mona is at least as concerned about Tel Aviv as she is about New York, with Chicago coming in a very poor third, perhaps because she has been vacuuming up Netanyahu’s angst about this agreement.  Certainly the Republican faithful are uniformly furious with the Obama administration and with John Kerry. As far as they are concerned the end of the world is at hand because Iran will now cheat and develop the bomb. Of course without the agreement Iran will surely develop the bomb anyway but nobody mentions that. We have survived North Korea having the bomb, Pakistan having the bomb, Israel,India and China having the Bomb. Maybe we can live with Iran having the bomb because we may not have a choice. Are we going back to having fourth graders hiding under their desks?

Then Mona is off on another rant, now, about illegal immigration. She claims that “the left, always panting to push grievance buttons transforms illegal immigrants into another clientele…they establish “sanctuary cities” as if enforcing immigration laws amounts to persecution.” Oh my goodness, poor Mona; now she believes that illegal immigrants will somehow get the vote and wind up in the Democratic camp because the Democrats aren’t hounding them. The administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported over 300 thousand immigrants just last year. That’s being friendly to immigrants?

Then Mona takes a crack at “sanctuary cities” these include most major cities, even some in Texas! This term does not mean that illegal aliens are safe from deportation if they can get to these cities, although it appears that Mona thinks they are. These cities prohibit their officers from stopping people on the street and inquiring about their citizenship status. Federal officers can arrest and deport any illegal alien in any so called sanctuary city. These cities will not use their citizen’s tax funds to enforce this federal law. If this weren’t agreeable with the citizens in these cities then it would be changed.

Mona finally gets around to the Trump fallacy: She points out that the net immigration from Mexico into the United States since 2005 has been zero. Mexico’s birthrate has fallen from 6.72 children per woman to 2.1 and it continues to decline. Mona claims that in 1960 half the U.S. work force consisted of high school dropouts. Now it’s just six percent. So who do we get to fill low skill jobs? We’ll soon have to encourage more immigrants. Isn’t that a stitch; Trump must hurry with his xenophobia before this word gets out.

July 14^th

Civil disobedience is on the menu today thanks to Pat Buchanan’s column. Pat mentions the long history of civil disobedience in this country. He talks about the civil disobedience that came out of the civil rights movement. He even mentions Rosa Parks favorably. That Pat Buchanan who was opposed to much of civil rights legislation, and particularly the idea that he might have to share his favorite D.C watering holes with non-whites, now promotes Rosa Parks favorably is shocking, I tell you shocking!  

Pat believes that civil disobedience is the weapon that will negate SCOTUS legalization of gay marriage; civil disobedience will protect those who prefer not to help gays planning a wedding ceremony. Then he presents us with this: “And if cities, states or Congress enact laws that make it a crime not to rent to homosexuals, or to refuse service at celebrations of their union, would not dissenting Christians stand on the same ground as Dr. King if they disobeyed those laws?” In a word, no.

Refusing service on the basis of race was entirely legal in the Jim Crow south and that is exactly what Dr. King was rebelling against. Now Buchanan apparently believes that to refuse service because of sexual orientation is very different. There were professed Christians in the south who believed quite passionately that there were Biblical precedents for “the separation of the races” and that their religious beliefs would be violated if they were required to serve blacks and whites in the same establishment or accommodate them in the same hotel. Why Buchanan believes sexual orientation is different he does not say, probably because he can’t!

I understand the dilemma that a county clerk faces who is required to issue a marriage license to a gay couple and believes that she would be committing a sin if she did. She believes that she is within her rights to refuse to accommodate the couple and she is right; if she believes it is a sin she shouldn’t do it. Her responsibility under these circumstances is to resign from her position. If she doesn’t then her supervisor should fire her. To make this more obvious, suppose someone is working in a factory which produces condoms; they have an epiphany and become a Roman Catholic and decide the work they have been doing is sinful.   They report to the work site but refuse to do the work assigned as a matter of conscience. They would be fired of course. How is this different from the county clerk’s situation? It isn’t; except that the clerk might have her position as a political favor.

Buchanan says, “Christian colleges and universities will deny married-couple facilities to homosexuals.” Of course they will; some already deny entrance to any student not properly screened for his or her “relationship to Christ” which must be described on the student’s application. In their view no practicing homosexual could possibly have a “satisfactory relationship” with Christ. No matter; there are lots of other colleges with much better academic reputations that really don’t care about their student’s sexual orientation.

 

 

 

July 13^th

Cal Thomas is bellyaching about the biased press. He reports that only 24 percent think the news media try to report the news without bias. Democrats are more likely to think the media try to be unbiased than do Republicans. Thomas claims that Brian Williams inflating the danger in his assignments and George Stephanopoulos’s gift to the Clinton Foundation have helped to reduce the trust in the media. Isn’t it interesting that Cal Thomas says not a word about his friend Bill O’Reilly’s tall stories describing his days as a “war correspondent” covering the Falkland’s war? I guess Cal Thomas doesn’t see anything emanating from Fox News as biased…and that’s the point!

The first question to be resolved is whether or not the news is biased and if it is which source is guilty. Thomas believes that CNBC, NPR and CNN are perceived to be biased and that Fox News and talk radio such as Limbaugh and others exist as an antidote to this perceived bias. Liberals, of course, see these news sources as biased in the opposite direction. Except for “Factcheck,” and similar groups that attempt to expose lies and exaggerations, there is not really any source of reliable information. Even “Factcheck” is seen as biased by the right wing when it exposes right wing exaggerations and lies.

 I watched some of “Outnumbered,” an early afternoon talk program on the Fox network. The program involves having one man on a low couch with two women seated on either side of him, thus “Outnumbered.” Today we had Lou Dobbs, a staunch conservative, seated in the middle of the expanded couch with two very short-skirted women seated on either side. (This program routinely presents seated young women exposing at least a foot of leg above the knee. The leg exposure may be a necessary and possibly a sufficient condition for appearing on “Outnumbered.”) The topic today was the body image of overweight adolescent girls. Research shows that they do not see themselves as overweight and this false body image makes it very difficult to change their unhealthy eating habits. One of the discussants finally said that Michelle Obama deserved “some credit” for publicizing this topic, but she quickly added that she didn’t like the way Mrs. Obama had done it. No specifics were provided about Mrs. Obama’s shortcomings publicizing the issue of course but her job with Fox was now secure.

As the electorate has become more and more polarized they have become more and more distrustful of any information source not completely synchronized with their bias. Information sources not equally biased  are ipso facto biased against their position.

 

July 12^th

There was no detritus yesterday; sometimes those pesky little electrons refuse to cooperate. Today we have the spectacle of Donald Trump’s Phoenix, Arizona, appearance. Mr. Trump gave what seemed to be an impromptu seventy minute speech. I say impromptu because his talk wondered around like a mentally challenged child looking for a ball lost in a hayfield.

Mr. Trump’s flacks describe this as a “massive rally.” What else would a Trump rally be but “massive?” Consider that Trump’s rally drew about 5 thousand people from Phoenix, a city of 1.5 million people. Bernie Sanders drew 7.5 thousand people from Portland, Maine, a city of about 65 thousand people and Trump is crowing about his drawing power?

Trump has been an equal opportunity supporter of political causes. Up until 2010 he had given slightly more money to Democratic political candidates than to Republicans. He even supported Rahm Emmanuel’s bid for Mayor of Chicago and Harry Reid’s 2010 Senate run against Sharon Angle. Trump claimed that he was too smart to contribute to candidates who had no chance of winning, so of course he contributed to some Democrats in solidly blue states. That’s nonsense because in Reid’s case the race was very close and could have gone either way. I’m sure that Trump’s financial interests in Las Vegas had not a thing to do with his contribution to Harry Reid.

Trump, as most everyone knows, was the birther-in-chief. He is not, even now, satisfied that Obama was born in the United States. He just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. Who can blame him; if you aspire to the Presidency your previous absurd beliefs are best disregarded. Besides, he has new absurdities.

He is a climate change denier and will probably wait until the sea water starts sloshing into his International Beach Resort hotel lobby in Florida before he recognizes the problem. He will surely support Governor Rick Scott’s ban on the term “climate change.” Next Trump will favor a ban on George Orwell’s “1984” because reading that book will open the public’s eyes to the insanity of the Florida Governor’s position.

When asked about SCOTUS decision on gay marriage Trump, in an interview, asserted that he favored traditional marriage. Jake Tapper, the interviewer, then asked him how having had three wives comported with “traditional marriage.” Trump admitted that Tapper had a good point (What else could he say?). Then blamed himself because his demanding businesses kept him involved “22 hours a day.”

Trump is the ultimate snake oil salesman. “What! You’ve used this fine product and had no relief? Dear lady you must be patient. Here, I’ll give you a ten percent discount if you buy a case of Dr. Trump’s salts. It will last you for a month;” giving him adequate time to get out of town. But Trump isn’t leaving and for that all liberals can be thankful.

 

 

July 10^th

Big news today! No I don’t mean the lowering of the Army of Northern Virginia battle flag that had been South Carolina’s adopted apartheid symbol, although that’s a good thing. The flag in question was never flown over any South Carolina troops and it was only rediscovered by the Dixiecrats as a symbol of their anger at Harry Truman for integrating the armed services. General Robert E. Lee told his troops at his surrender to furl their battle flags and put them in their closets. It’s taken 150 years for South Carolinians to get the word and if it weren’t for nine murdered black church-goers that flag would still be up.

OK, so I buried the news! The big news is that the Democrat’s darling Donald Trump is now leading all other Republican candidates in new polls. You know the bit about “yellow dog” Democrats; these are people who would vote for a yellow dog if it ran on the Democratic ticket. Well if “The Donald” continues to improve his position a yellow dog could win the Presidency on the Democratic ticket; it would be no contest.

It isn’t necessary for Trump to win the nomination; it is only necessary for the Republican field to continue to humor him, or in some cases, like Ted Cruz, agree with him. When you have a firebrand Latina Republican like Ana Navarro heading a “Dump Trump” movement he will not capture many Latino votes for the Republicans and without them they have no chance at all. Oh Pshaw!

“The Donald” comes with a ton of baggage; you think Hilary has baggage, and she does, but Trump will need a mule train to transport his. First, consider his comments about the Iranians: He insists that he will force them to accede to our demands and he will do it within a few days. He might not know that we are joined by other members of the Security Council plus Germany in sanctioning Iran and that this coalition is not very firm. His bombast could easily blow it apart. He does sound sure of himself though but that’s not likely to scare the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Then there are his comments about the national debt: he’ll get rid of it before we become another Greece. His track record here isn’t very good. His companies have gone bankrupt four times. This doesn’t mean that he has gone personally bankrupt; he’s too clever, or his lawyers are, for that to happen. The difference is that Trump has a company but the company is so structured that his personal wealth cannot be attached by creditors. If the company cannot pay its bills Trump is home free and clear. The company’s creditors get stiffed but why should Trump care about them? Hey, it’s just the way business works, use other people’s money. Doesn’t Trump make a great Republican Presidential candidate?

 

 

July 9^th

Cal Thomas discusses the result of the “culture wars” today. Those quotes are his, not mine; although I think I know what he means by the expression. He begins by asking “what do we do now… in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down state laws reserving marriage for heterosexual couples.” He answers that Christians must recognize that, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” The issue concerns what is properly part of that “kingdom” and what isn’t and that has been a recurrent problem.

This country has dealt with the problem of keeping the religious camel’s nose out of the public’s tent since the republic was founded. When I said the Pledge of Allegiance as a kid the words “under God” weren’t there. They were put there in 1954 by Eisenhower who had very recently joined the Presbyterian Church; he also added “In God we trust” to our coinage.

Southern Baptists were well known supporters of slavery and the “lost cause.” Plenty of Bible verses can be cited to support slavery (although they are usually called servants or handmaidens) and none seem in opposition to it. Southern Baptists have only recently (2009) apologized for their support of slavery. I guess they felt no need for precipitate action.

In 1967 SCOTUS finally got around to declaring miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Who supported that nonsense? A Virginia fundamentalist judge claimed, “The Almighty God put the yellow, black, white and brown races on different continents to keep them apart…” obviously, according to him, they shouldn’t be allowed to get married. When the appellants got their case to the Supreme Court the ruling was that any two people had the constitutional right to marry. Could this ruling have affected the gay marriage decision? In any event there is no accepted Biblical prohibition against inter-racial marriage. The restrictions that existed were the result of bigots looking for religious support of their preconceived beliefs.

About the time of the Civil War there was an upsurge in pornography and a corresponding increase in the reaction to it. One man, Anthony Comstock, went on an anti-pornography crusade. He showed members of Congress some of the material then being sent through the mail and Congress deputized him to intercept and confiscate such material and arrest the principles. He took this responsibility very seriously, and indeed expanded the scope of his mandate to include any sex instruction and any mailing of information about contraception. In fact married couples in Connecticut where the “Comstock Laws” lingered could not possess contraceptives. Finally, in Griswold vs Connecticut, SCOTUS decided that this law was an intrusion on personal privacy.

Religious beliefs about the appropriateness of contraception are various: Catholic doctrine prohibits it; Presbyterians have no problem with the practice. About as close as Scripture comes on this topic is the admonition to “Be fruitful and multiply;” one could claim, however, that multiplying incessantly isn’t required.

Where does this brief explication leave us? From gay marriage to contraception many Christians have strong opinions about how their religion instructs them on these issues. This in spite of the fact that there is little, or no comment from Jesus himself about any of them.

July 8^th

Mona Charen’s message today is that legitimizing gay marriage will affect your marriage and Mona will tell you how this happens….but she doesn’t! It is clear that she is very unhappy about the SCOTUS ruling; we get the usual “these five unelected judges yada, yada, yada.” Then she tries to convince her readers that their marriage is at risk because of this ruling: she asks, “How can extending marriage to gays possibly affect your marriage? The answer lies in the hidden message.” (If the topic weren’t so serious I’d be tempted to write, “OK folks get your magic decoder rings out so you can read the hidden message.”)

The problem, Charen tell us, has its origins in the feminist movement. “Feminists argued that there were no important differences between the sexes.” Mona throws in the weasel word “Important” which gets her off the hook for this nonsensical comment. Then she goes on to claim that if this were so “mothering and fathering would be interchangeable.” I assume she was speaking metaphorically and not biologically, but who knows? The upshot is it follows that two daddies or two mommies are just as good as one mommy and one daddy. Not really of course but Charen says so, presumably because both are called “parents.”

This is the crux of her argument:  She says that, “Every homosexual couple who chooses to raise a child together is denying that child a parent of the other sex.” She further claims that, “When homosexuals marry, any child raised must lose one natural parent. …the message to heterosexuals is to continue to devalue the biological importance of mothers and fathers and to discount the needs of the children.” Note this quote, “Any child raised must lose one natural parent.” No Mona, any child so raised has already lost one natural parent!

What an amazing oversimplification! Which children are adopted by gay couples? I suppose Charen believes these are happy kids from intact heterosexual marriages. They aren’t; they are single parent kids, often children of divorce because one of the parents is gay. In many cases the children have been abandoned by the other parent or lost in a custody fight. The result is that the child is raised by one parent unless the custodial parent remarries. If the gay parent remarries someone gay it will result in a gay marriage. The choice is that these children will be in a one parent household or a gay household. Charen talks as if the parental choice is between a pair of heterosexual parents or a pair of homosexual parents; it very simply isn’t that choice at all.

And finally Charen says nothing at all about gay marriages between older people who have been together for years and have no thought of adopting children. Not far from where I live two women, one eighty and one seventy-three, will be married soon. Give Mona time and she will think of some unfortunate effect this ceremony will have on the fabric of the country.

July 7^th

Today it’s Pat Buchanan’s turn to hold the stage. He has expanded Greece’s failure to pay its bills into “an existential crisis.” The real crisis, he maintains, is the influx of those pesky unwashed African heathen into “the mother continent.” The what Pat? Is Europe now the mother continent? From my reading of Paleoanthropology, I always assumed that Africa was the mother continent. Of course given Pat’s aversion to people of color perhaps he prefers to believe his ancestors evolved in Europe, perhaps with the Neanderthals?

Pat is in a swivet over the low birth rate of European countries compared with the birth rate of their immigrants. I believe Pat has to accept the fact that Europe and the United States will, over the years, just gradually turn more tan. I know he hates that, but like the ageing process, he’ll just have to get used to it.

There is one issue where he has a point: immigrants flooding into Europe. It takes time to absorb immigrants who come from a different culture and have different values. If too many, from a very different culture, arrive all at once the host culture will have some dislocation trying to absorb them; it happened here and it happened with my ancestors, the Pennsylvania Dutch. No less a founding father than Ben Franklin referred to them as, “Palatine boors who refuse to learn English and want to change the culture of Pennsylvania.” Actually they wanted to be left alone and they saw no need to learn English because they got along just fine speaking Low German. Still, their culture wasn’t very different from the Pennsylvanians already here.  If  anyone from outside Europe can simply put a foot on the continent they will then be admitted  as refugees and that has to be changed; how, and to what, is up to the Europeans but this system isn’t working and they must know that.

Not to be xenophobic, but the problem with the Greek economy is the Greeks. Some years ago I flew to Athens on Hellas, the national airline of Greece. Prior to take off my wife and I were buckled into our seats. There were still about twenty people standing in the aisle visiting with old friends also on their way to Athens. The attendants tried to get these folks to sit down so the plane could take off…forget about it. After about fifteen minutes of pleading with the aisle folks to sit down and being ignored the pilot took off anyway. Once in Athens an interesting traffic ploy emerged: if a red light up ahead had stopped a line of traffic, no matter; the driver of a small car would swerve on to the side walk, horn blaring at any pedestrians, barrel his way to the intersection and there make his turn into traffic.

It should not surprise anyone that 89.5 percent of Greek income taxes are not collected compared with 3 percent of taxes in Scandinavian countries. If people refuse to pay their taxes the country can’t pay its bills. (Grover Norquist take note.) Their politicians promise benefits but refuse to collect the taxes to pay for them. (We, on the other hand, fight wars and refuse to collect the taxes to pay for them.) It will be interesting to see what happens now!

 

July 6^th

Cal Thomas asks if he is allowed to repeat himself on his comments about the Iran nuclear deal. He answers “yes” because he says that’s what Iran is doing. (Frankly, I believe it’s more about taking some time off for the Fourth of July holiday.)

Thomas claims that Iran is not to be trusted to keep its word on the negotiations now in progress. Of course they aren’t, and no one claims they are to be trusted. That’s why this deal is replete with inspections. If our negotiators don’t get what they want regarding these inspections then the sanctions remain in effect. Thomas repeats the warning that the “Koran allows them to lie to ‘infidels’ in pursuit of their goals, could someone please explain how any agreement with liars forces them to stop lying?” Let me try: Perhaps Cal remembers way back to the Reagan administration which, when dealing with the Soviets, who were also considered untrustworthy, borrowed the phrase “trust, but verify” from the Soviets themselves. There will be many safeguards although not as many as Cal Thomas (and Israel) want.

Thomas says that the United States is in retreat around the world. This is demonstrated by China and their construction of tiny islands as well as Russian aggression in the Ukraine. These issues are supposed to show the weakness of the United States’ position. Thomas, as usual, has no suggestions about how these issues should be addressed.

It is clear from their comments that neither Russia nor China wants a nuclear armed Iran. I would guess that neither of them is happy about a nuclear armed North Korea either. Most realistic observers predict that Iran will eventually have nuclear weapons no matter what we do. Our best course is to consider just how we will deal with that eventuality. Condemning Iran’s religious views gets us nowhere.

July 5^th

Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” today interviewed Ted Cruz at some length. The subject was primarily immigration and, more particularly, what Cruz thought of Donald Trump’s comments. So what did Cruz think of them? Well, Cruz thought that was a “divisive question.” He claimed that these were questions the press loved to ask because they were meant to divide the Republican Party and he, Cruz, wouldn’t play that game. Still he said, “I salute Donald Trump for focusing on this (immigration) issue.”

Todd asked him what should be done about illegal aliens already here, and again Cruz played “duck ‘n’ dodge.” Cruz first wanted to secure the borders first before any other issues could be addressed. A secure border that would completely satisfy Cruz is certainly years away; consequently Cruz will get a pass on answering any other questions about immigration. Thus has Senator Cruz given himself a pass on this issue.

Cruz insists that all immigrants must follow the rules required to get into the country or be deported. Well, maybe not all of them; his father fought for Castro and then bribed a Cuban official there to get a visa and a green card to get into the United States. He stayed a short while and then got into Canada as a political refugee and while there married an American woman. They came back into this country because after his marriage to an American citizen he was now at the head of the line. Eventually, in 2005 to be exact, Cruz’ father became a naturalized American citizen. We don’t know what Ted thinks of his father’s interesting and apparently reluctant route to citizenship; he doesn’t talk about it.

The panelists on “Meet the Press” have discussed the variety of reactions to Donald Trump’s comments among the Republican presidential candidates. They believe that the responses have not been helpful to the party’s chances to win the Latino vote in 2016. Even the few who disagreed with Trump delayed far too long in saying so. Jeb Bush whose wife was born in Mexico and who speaks fluent Spanish was, today, quoted as saying that Trump was outside the mainstream of the party and that he was personally offended by the remarks.  But others, Governor Christie, like Cruz, were reluctant to be critical of Trump.

Jeb Bush, if he gets the nomination, might be able to salvage some of the Latino vote. Ted Cruz, even with his Cuban ancestry, has little chance, particularly when he declines to be critical of Trump’s comments…but then maybe he will be after a satisfactory fence is built.

July 4^th

No right wing columnists are trying to confuse the readers of our newspaper today. The result is that I have some freedom to change topics. I’m going to go out on a limb and fantasize about the future election. (As Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”)

First, consider the Republicans: Donald Trump has thrown an explosive device into the ever expanding field of candidates. Trump’s derogatory comments about Mexican immigrants have earned him considerable criticism; Macy’s has stopped carrying his signature merchandise, various networks have dropped his shows and he probably has to give up the notion of an Acapulco vacation unless he buys the town. The curious thing about Trump is that none of the other candidates have criticized him. About the most severe was Governor Pataki who went out on a limb and called Trump’s comments “disrespectful;” really, that’s the best the Republican field can do to rebut Trump’s outrageous racist characterizations of immigrants? So what does this flabby response mean?

I’ll answer that: It means these candidates know that many of their supporters agree with Trump. Some, or perhaps all, of the candidates themselves agree with him too, but they are not willing to risk the loss of Latino votes by saying so. The evidence for this view is in Trump’s poll numbers. The commentariate claim his high standing in the polls is because of his name recognition. That’s partly true but much of his support is also because many conservatives are closet bigots. They can’t express their bigotry publicly (wouldn’t be prudent) but are happy to let Trump do it for them.

If the party does not reject Trump and his message they will surely lose much of the Latino vote and with it they will lose the election. But Trump has a message which is very popular with many conservatives; that doesn’t matter because party kingmakers (read donors such as the Koch brothers) will insist that he go. If he is rejected he will indeed go; his need to be admired and appreciated is as much a part of his nature as his iconic haircut. The result will be a third party; quite likely called the “Trump Party.”  Bumper stickers will read, “Party with Trump, vote for The Donald.”

If you think that Trump’s message doesn’t appeal to millions of Americans just read Ann Coulters latest effort, “Adios America” in which she spouts much the same racist rant as Trump does. She appeared on Bill Maher’s show and claimed that she agreed with Trump’s message. Coulter has to be taken seriously, just look at her sales; ten, probably now eleven, books on the “Times” best seller list. All of her books viciously denigrate liberals. People who don’t buy her message don’t buy her books. She is very smart and now she is very rich; what a great V.P. candidate to accompany The Donald.

July 3^rd

Thomas Sowell tell us that the “Supreme Court decisions could lead to disasters.” That certainly got my attention. I have lived through several disasters and I try to avoid them; there was the attack on Pearl Harbor, my attempt to pass engineering calculus and physics without studying for either of them, doing a paper on the evolution of the Christian religion for a Bible College professor, and several other disasters equally irrelevant to the issue at hand.

I looked very carefully at Sowell’s piece to find exactly what disasters he was talking about. He has managed to hide most of them very carefully. There was one instance that might qualify: He writes, “When any branch of government  can exercise powers not authorized by either statues or the Constitution, ‘we the people’ are no longer free citizens but subjects, and our ‘public servants’ are really our public masters.” But this begs the question; the issue is whether or not the Constitution does authorize SCOTUS to act as it has done in the various cases described. Obviously the judgment of the court is that it is so authorized, and for Sowell to simply claim that it is not begs the question.

He has more problems with SCOTUS decisions. He disputes claims that “statistical disparities imply discrimination. That notion has created a whole statistical shakedown racket, practiced by government and private race hustlers alike.” Of course some statistical disparities most certainly imply discrimination; the pay gap between equally well educated men and women employees is a good example. Sowell gives not a single example of this “statistical shakedown.” Indeed he gives no examples of any of the “abuses” he complains about…with one exception.

He claims that Justice Warren’s decision about separate educational facilities being inherently unequal was quite wrong. It was wrong because he has found an all black public high school in the city of Washington which has sent a higher percentage of its graduates on to college than any white high school there; moreover they scored higher on tests than two of the cities three white academic public high schools. It is interesting that Sowell keeps the name of this exemplary school from his readers.

If I weren’t charitable I might suggest that Sowell was cherry picking here. Could there be other black schools not so able to educate their students? Let’s look at Prince George County: Prince George County opened its first black high school in 1939. Unlike its counterpart for white students, Robert Russa Moton High School had no gymnasium, cafeteria, lockers, or auditorium with fixed seating. Built with a capacity for 180, it contained 450 students by 1950. To house the additional students, the school board built plywood structures covered with tarpaper and heated them with pot-bellied stoves. These “tarpaper shacks” became a symbol of all that was wrong with segregated education. The all-white school board promised to build a new school, but never followed through. Finally, an eleventh grade black girl, Barbara Johns, persuaded the students to simply walk out. These kids did not have even one microscope for their biology classes.

I guess Tom Sowell’s usual Republican blinders keep him from seeing anything that doesn’t support his agenda; but to ignore the deplorable condition of segregated education in the south before Brown v Board of Education is simply unconscionable. Sowell should be ashamed of himself!

 

July 2^nd

Pat Buchanan is holding forth in a very predictable way about the SCOTUS decision on same sex marriage; for him it represents even more evidence that Christians are losing the culture wars. He is amazed that the Fourteenth Amendment could be used to support the SCOTUS decision and he wonders what equal protection has to do with gay marriage.

Well, of course he does. He points out that this amendment has been around since the 1880s and this application “has just been discovered.” Buchanan seems unaware that Loving vs Virginia, which SCOTUS unanimously decided in 1967, also used the Fourteenth Amendment as part of its decision to invalidate laws against interracial marriage. Earlier arguments that favored that absurd law focused on the fact that since both parties were discriminated against the law wasn’t discriminatory at all!

Buchanan assures us that we are going to hell in a handbasket. He doesn’t say so, but I believe he would begin the descent with the abolition of slavery, and following in no particular order was a right to abortion, marrying someone of another race, no fault divorce, decriminalization of homosexuality, distribution of condoms to the poor and various other horrors. He cites an Italian, one Antonio Gramsci, dead these seventy five years, as forecasting that this awful realignment of social values must precede a communist takeover. According to this long dead communist theoretician, these changes were required before communism could succeed. Now that many of them are here, communism must be on the horizon…so assumes Pat Buchanan.

Pat howls about the “illegitimacy rate” in the black community and wonders if “any connection exists between these fatherless boys [He doesn’t mention girls] and the soaring drug use and dropout rates and the near quadrupling of those in jails and prisons over the last third of a century.” First of all let’s get some terms straight: an illegitimate child is not a fatherless child; it is a child whose parents are not married. In many cases these unmarried fathers are very much around.

Consider this “soaring” drug use. It’s soaring because poor blacks are booked for using marijuana while wealthy middle class whites aren’t touched. Another factor in the increased incarceration is the monetization of crime. Prison Corporation of America has contracts with government units that specify at least a 90% occupancy rate for the prisons they control. That’s how they make a juicy profit. If that’s the case is it any wonder that poor blacks find themselves convicted of “drug” offenses and then sentenced to increase the profits of a major American corporation.

Then Buchanan gets to another favorite right wing complaint: the decline of the white population here and in Europe. Because of abortion and contraception whites will no longer be in the majority. The appropriate response to this bit of racist intelligence is…So what?

Finally Pat bemoans the incontrovertible fact that “we can no longer even agree on good and evil, right and wrong.” That’s right Pat, we can’t, and we have never been able to do that…and again.…So what?