2016 June 30^th

Dr. Thomas Sowell’s column today is titled “SCOTUS fraud goes on.” This means the Thomas Sowell doesn’t agree with some of the recent Supreme Court decisions. Sowell was trained many, many years ago at the University of Chicago as an economist. Nowhere in his c.v. is there the least hint of any training in constitutional law. Lack of knowing what you are talking about has not stopped his party’s standard bearer from talking about whatever he pleases, nor will it stop Sowell from pontificating on any issue. It seems that for these folks feeling strongly about a situation is enough to overcome total ignorance.

When I saw this headline I was sure Sowell was unhappy about the court’s 5 to 3 decision on the restrictive rules Texas had put on abortion clinics. The court decided that these rules were unconstitutional because they did nothing to protect the health of an abortion seeker. This ruling delighted Planned Parenthood president, Cecile Richards (the daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards). That wasn’t Sowell’s problem at all.

Sowell has been consumed with anger for years over any and all legal support for affirmative action. The ruling that has him livid about this SCOTUS decision was one in which the University of Texas was allowed to give admission preference to minority students even though that resulted in the exclusion of an academically qualified white girl.  The university argued that there were sound educational reasons to provide their students with a diverse student body. Here is part of the University’s statement on the issue:

 “Proposal to Consider Race and Ethnicity in Admissions,” the University identifies the educational values it seeks to realize through its admissions process: the destruction of stereotypes, the “‘promot[ion of] cross-racial understanding,’” the preparation of a student body “‘for an increasingly diverse workforce and society,’” and the “‘cultivat[ion of] a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry.”

What does Sowell have to say about these aims? He never mentions them. He tells us that the SCOTUS “…affirmative action cases have now had 42 years of evasion, sophistry and fraud with no end in sight.” He obviously isn’t happy with SCOTUS!

Later, his bluster yields to some data: He writes that, “When black students who scored at the 90^th percentile in math were admitted to MIT where other students scored at the 99^th percentile a significant number of black students failed to graduate there, even though they could have graduated with honors at most other academic institutions.”

That is simply nonsense. Sowell could have discovered that if he had bothered to look at the statistics for this freshman class at MIT. The data are online. About 45 percent of MIT’s freshman class scored below the top 1 percent on the quantitative SAT. So he begins with inaccurate data and then draws conclusions that make no sense. We have minority students introduced to an elite college. They have certainly not come in the same proportion as their classmates from elite high schools and private prep schools. They are suddenly in a very different environment and Sowell believes that if they now fail to achieve it is because of a small difference in the average of their entrance exam scores?

Sowell decided long ago that minority students are poorly served by affirmative action. Everything he sees must support that position.

2016 June 29^th

This is parochial day. I shall be discussing an issue of particular importance to Traverse City and our, about to arrive, Cherry Festival. Of course it is the controversial performance of the “Blue Angels,” the traveling team of Navy fighter pilots who perform for whichever small town festival with enough government clout to merit their appearance. If necessary our Congressman, Dan Benishek (He likes to be known as Dr. Dan), will give a nudge to the appropriate Navy officials. It usually works.

So on three consecutive days we will have a spectacular air show to the delight of the festival-goers. Those who keep records tell us that when the Blue Angels perform attendance at the festival improves by over 100 thousand people.

Hey, we’re talking real money here. Traverse City has a population of just over 15 thousand people and the Cherry Festival with the Blue Angels performing can be counted on to bring is about 700 thousand visitors. The jets are controversial; they produce about 140 decibels of sound pressure and that, if sustained, will damage your eardrums. We routinely have some veterans and other patriots who claim that the jet noise is “the sound of freedom.” Then there are the more cynical citizens who claim that over and above the jet noise is the ka-ching, ka-ching of active cash registers in the shops of downtown merchants and the owners of motels and restaurants.

The festival has to pay something for this spectacle. A couple of years ago the cost was about 12.5 thousand dollars. Now it might have doubled but the cost to the government is well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many right-wingers deplore wasteful government expenditures but this isn’t wasteful they say, this is patriotic, this is a recruiting tool to get more Naval aviators.

Tragically, it also eliminates some Naval aviators. Marine Captain Jeff Kuss was killed on June 3^rd  in a practice for a Blue Angel air show in Tennessee. The Captain’s jet lost power and he did not eject. Some say he stayed with the aircraft to make sure it did not hit a populated area. Captain Kuss was 32 years old and leaves a wife and two young daughters. Their mother will try to explain to her daughters that their father did not die in combat with his country’s enemies but died trying to relieve the boredom of some civilians at an air show. Semper Fi!

2016 June 28^th

Mona Charen has a column this morning and in it she is busy complaining about the “labor participation rate.” She also constructs a couple of straw men which she then nicely demolishes. Mona is well to the right of everyone on most issues although she is almost as opposed to Donald Trump as she is to President Obama. If it weren’t an impossibility I’m sure she would organize a “Bibi Netanyahu for President“ movement.

She begins her column by pointing out that, “…neither Trump nor anyone else can bring those jobs back because they weren’t lost primarily to foreign competition…Manufacturing jobs have been in steep decline mostly due to automation and efficiency.” That is mostly nonsense. She is right that Trump can’t bring the jobs back but to suggest that jobs haven’t been lost because plants haven’t moved overseas represents pure ignorance. For example; Flextronics loss 147 jobs; Hewlett Packard loss 500 jobs; Jabil loss 500 jobs: Philips Lighting Co. loss 345 jobs-- and the list could go on and on of companies who have very recently moved jobs overseas. If she doesn’t know this she is willfully ignorant.

She tells us that, “…particularly for men the labor force participation rate has been declining steadily.” Charen then tells us about that, “…non-work is associated with a host of troubles: Job loss is connected to increased body weight….” And she goes on to give us a litany of the physical, mental and family problems produced by job loss. But many in the 25-54 men’s age group have not been fired at all; they are unemployed, because they have retired, gone back to school or perhaps they are physically unable to work. You can retire from a civil service job at 50 if you have 20 years of service; you can join the military at 17 and retire after 20 years of service at 37. My brother-in-law joined the army at seventeen and retired after 22 years of service as a major when he was 39.

Moving on to family stability, Charen says, “Unsurprisingly the CEA (Council of Economic Advisors) offers Democratic Party boilerplate: infrastructure spending projects, expanding paid family leave increasing the minimum wage and reforming the criminal justice system.” She then says any proposal should begin by asking if it would discourage or encourage family stability.

Charen claims that a higher minimum wage, part of this “Democratic boilerplate,” is not family friendly? Where the minimum is much lower, the wage earner qualifies for supplementary assistance from the tax-payer. Charen apparently believes that business friendly and family friendly coincide.

Paid family leave, another part of the Democratic boilerplate, is not family friendly? One wonders how Charen defines family friendly if it excludes paid maternal leave.

Spending to fix the infrastructure would supply many good paying construction jobs. Funny how the right wing used good paying jobs in their pitch for the Exxon-Valdez pipeline but now the jobs’ infrastructure construction will produce is just part of some Democratic boilerplate.

2016 June 27^th

The Brexit vote continues to reverberate. The website of the politicians who favored the vote to leave has been wiped clean of the lies and misstatements that led many to vote for the Euro exit. The pound continues to fall; the dollar continues to rise. Pound denominated assets are worth less in dollars, a condition delighting Donald Trump who is selling 500 dollar a night Scottish hotel rooms. The strong dollar means that we will sell less abroad because our goods are now more expensive. Does Trump care about that? Paul Manafort, the ethically challenged scumbag who now heads his campaign, reminds us that Trump is a “businessman.” He certainly isn’t a statesman.

(Manafort had connections with the Reagan administration and those helped him with his pitch to Ferdinand Marcos. He was hired by Marcos on nearly million dollars a year contract to keep him in power. He worked for Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko to keep him in power; he had also worked for Trump because Trump wanted him to fight the licensing of Indian casinos in Atlantic City, casinos that would compete with Trump’s businesses there. There is more of Manafort’s sordid history online. Just google Paul Manafort if you’re interested.)

What does this Brexit vote really mean? It is an advisory to the British Government and while that is a lot, it does not bind the British Government to withdraw from the EU. Not until the government applies to exit the EU can any action be taken by the EU to either obstruct or expedite their leaving. Most people who understand the complex mechanism of withdrawal from the EU claim it will be two full years from the time Britain applies to leave until they actually leave.

Quite apart from the economic issues, and they are enormous, the Brexit vote could be the end of “Great” Britain. Most immediately, Scotland voted to remain in the EU by about a two to one margin. Now they plan to reconsider their vote to separate themselves from Great Britain. Northern Ireland would also prefer to remain in the EU (56 percent to 44 percent) and will probably join the Republic of Ireland, which is solidly in the EU. The result of all this is a Great Britain consisting of just England and Wales, hardly great any longer.

No one knows how this will finally adjust itself. Given the truly monumental problems, their exit would mean for Great Britain it is hard to imagine a responsible government actually following the Brexit vote if they don’t have to. The government could easily and justifiably claim that Boris Johnson and his Brexit shills lied their way to the Brexit victory and therefore that vote would be nullified.

2016 June 26^th

Yesterday, June 25^th, was the date for our town’s Gay Pride Parade. I sent an observer and she reported back that it went off without a hitch; there was no Pastor Kevin Swanson prancing about screaming “kill the homosexuals” although he and other like-minded “Christian” pastors have had their Pay Pal funding cut off and they are furious about that. I mean it is about the money isn’t it?

Last year this parade was held on June 27^th; here is my comment from that occasion:

(2015) June 27^th

In downtown Traverse City today there was a Gay Pride parade. There were hundreds of marchers. Not all of them were gay, there were many sympathizers too, and many not in the parade, standing along the way, applauded those who marched. Michigan has a law against gay marriage but Governor Snyder has agreed that SCOTUS’ decision is now the law of the land and ordered the authorities to “fully comply” with the ruling…and then there is Texas!

Texas Governor Abbott ordered officials there to “prioritize religious objections” in complying with the law. This means that if you work for the state office that issues marriage licenses and you object to gay couples getting married you can claim your religious beliefs compel you not to comply with that request. Keep in mind that the “religious” clerk who makes this claim may not have been in a church since he was six years old, even so, Governor Abbott allows him to hide his bigotry behind a phony religious mask. (I wonder if Viet-Nam war protestors were encouraged by the then Texas Governor to exercise the same religious privilege. Want to bet?)

Texas has no shortage of public officials outraged over the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage. No less than a sitting US Senator, Ted Cruz, has remarked about the effect of “five unelected Judges on the Supreme Court nullifying the wishes of 300 million Americans.” Most any high school kid could tell the Senator that the federal constitution which he claims to revere, and which he has sworn to uphold, specifically requires that the Justices of the Supreme Court be appointed by the President of the United States. You would suppose that a graduate of Harvard Law School would know at least as much about the Constitution of the United States as a high school kid. Can you skip the course in Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School? Probably not but maybe Cruz snoozed through the lectures on the selection of Supreme Court justices.

Then there are Cruz’s comments about this decision being in opposition to the “wishes of 300 million Americans.” That’s demonstrably “horse hockey”; most polls show that slightly better than 60 percent of the population support gay marriage and an equal number say that states have no right to prohibit it. One Republican panelist, S.E. Cupp, was in full support of the SCOTUS decision; she claims that the Republican Party will be a “relic” if they don’t update their rhetoric. I’m afraid it’s too late for that Ms. Cupp.

2016 June 25^th

Voter’s remorse has overcome some of the English Brexit voters. Over two million of them have signed a petition for a revote. Can they do that? I have no idea, but this is only 48 hours after the original vote so the petition will probably soon grow more signatures. One rational for this change of heart, if this is a change of heart, are the lies told by those who pushed for Brexit. A standout here is Boris Johnson, the ex-Mayor of London, who trumpeted that 350 million pounds would come into the strapped National Health System if Brexit passed; now Johnson says that was a “mistake.” He seems to have discovered this mistake only after Brexit passed.

It is obvious that many who voted for Brexit had no idea of the mess their country would be in if it passed. All is not lost because Russia and Iran have both decided that, as far as they are concerned, this was a very good move. Other EU countries now are pushing for their own Exit vote, France and The Netherlands among them.

In this country there is renewed enthusiasm in Texas for Texas to vote itself out of the Union. The last time they did that the Union fought to keep them in, this time they will not be that lucky. If a collection were taken to help them succeed in removing themselves I would bet that more money would be collected from states above the Mason Dixon line than from Texas. If they left would Trump decide to wall off Texas?

Then we have Trump, our Bluster Boy, doing a promo for his luxury Scottish golf courses in Scotland. He is shown landing in his private helicopter and leading an entourage of hangers on and reporters on a flying golf cart tour of the links, stopping periodically to make a fool of himself. He congratulated Britain for voting to “take their country back.” He made his congratulatory speech in Scotland however, and Scotland voted by two to one to stay in the European Union. Will the egg come off his face? It probably won’t, because he doesn’t have any idea that the egg is there and no one will tell him.

That a candidate for the Presidency of the United States from a major party would go abroad in a time of major political and financial upheaval and not meet with any foreign leaders but instead flog his personal commercial interests is bizarre. I wonder what Speaker Ryan thinks of Trump’s gaffe. Is it any wonder that the country’s approval rating of the Republican controlled Congress is about 11 percent?

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll has Clinton ahead of Trump 47 to 33. This probably reflect some of his recent stumbles and surely encourages the Democrats. His poll numbers could well get worse because he just isn’t acting as if he is really interested in the Presidency. The worse Trump’s poll numbers get and the more Democrats are encouraged, the more likely Trump will just quit, or that the Republicans will replace him with a more formidable candidate. Be careful what you wish for; you might not be happy with the result—think the Brexit vote.

2016 June 24^th

The news of this day is the Brits passing a resolution to leave the European Union. This has some consequences that many of those voting for it surely knew nothing about. A major consequence is that many of the trade treaties between Britain and her European partners will now have to be renegotiated: this will take years.

The economic response to this election result is predictable, and it has already happened; the stock markets around the world have dropped from three to seven percent; our own S&P, a broad index of 500 stocks, is now down about 3.5 percent and recovering from a more severe sell-off. The British pound is lower by several percentage points and that is great news for those wishing to buy a Rolls Royce, a flat in London’s Mayfair district or a bespoke suit from a Saville Row tailor. On the other hand, if your retirement depends on money invested in American stocks, plan to “eat in” a lot more often.

Why did the Brits do this to themselves and to the rest of us? It seems likely that the typical British voter had no idea of the ramifications of a successful vote to leave the Union. There was also a huge difference between the vote outcomes among various districts. London voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU; rural areas voted to leave. Scotland voted to stay in the EU and now they are considering another vote for Scottish independence so that they will not be bound by the British vote. This could also happen in Northern Ireland. In short, this vote could lead to the dissolution of Great Britain, which could now consist of just England and Wales.

Now that some of these voters have seen the results of their vote, they are having buyer’s remorse. One correspondent has said some voters are asking him to explain just what the EU does. This is a strange time to ask.

Churchill has said that the greatest argument against democracy is a five-minute chat with the average voter. Then George Carlin reminds us that half the voters are below average. While the Republicans are intent on guarding the polls against fraud by demanding ever escalating amounts of identification (which also keeps many poor people, often Democrats, from voting) there are no other tests required to exercise your franchise. States determine who can cast a ballot in their state and some will even allow convicted and incarcerated felons to vote. If you move to an assisted living unit for people with severe dementia, there will still be no loss in your right to vote unless a judge declares that you are unable to manage your affairs. Even this restriction doesn’t apply in all states.

We are not likely to return to the requirement of being male and owning property, which the founding fathers required of voters. Even those restrictions would be unlikely to keep citizens from voting on issues they knew nothing about.

2016 June 23^rd

Trump warns us about immigrants, particularly those from south of the border. He might be right in at least one case. Roger Jimenez, an immigrant from Venezuela has made some comments about the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that are typical of an ISIS follower. He says that he isn’t saddened at all by the slaughter, he only regrets that the shooter “didn’t finish the job” and kill everyone who was there that night.

Many on the right agree with Trump that our screening of immigrants is far from perfect and needs to be improved. So, who is Jimenez and how did he get into the country? Are you ready for this? Roger Jimenez is the Pastor of a thriving Baptist Church in Sacramento, California. Pastor Jimenez tells us, on his church website, that he was brought to Christ and saved as a very young man. Perhaps this was not an entirely successful conversion.

The company from which this Baptist Church has leased their building is outraged and they have told Jimenez that if his congregation wants to get out of their lease early they will be welcome to leave; the lease will not be an impediment. There have been individual protests of this man’s position but so far there has been no comment at all from the Baptist community. Perhaps they are a unique group of Christians.

Today Thomas Sowell, an economist of the right wing persuasion, holds forth in his column about the futility of gun control measures. What else is new? Dr. Sowell sites Joyce Lee Malcolm, a Professor of Law at George Mason University, who has written extensively about how restricting the availability of firearms does nothing to reduce crime. She and Sowell are natural allies. Sowell asks, in his opening paragraph, “Do tighter gun control laws reduce the murder rate. We have 50 states, each with its own gun control laws, and many of these laws have gotten either tighter or loser over the years. There must be tons of data that indicate whether murder rates went up or down when either of these things happened.” There are, of course “tons of data” and all of it is irrelevant to the question. The reason is obvious; there are no commercial boundaries between states that would stop someone in a state with restrictive gun laws from going to a state with less restrictive laws and buying a gun.  This should be obvious, but apparently not to Dr. Thomas Sowell.

Here is an example of Professor Malcolm’s logic: She writes, ‘…in the remainder of the 20^th century (from 1954) gun control laws became ever more severe—and armed robberies in London soared to 1400 by 1974. As the number of legal firearms have dwindled the number of armed crimes have risen.” Of course there is another way to say the same thing, “As the number of gun crimes have risen so have restrictions on gun ownership.” In a country where the police are not armed, perhaps it would make sense to restrict gun ownership as the number of gun crimes increases. The question is which came first; without any provocation Malcolm wants us to believe that the Brits just decided to restrict gun ownership. Now why would they do that? Neither Sowell nor Malcolm offer a reason.

2016 June 22^nd

Cal Thomas titles his column in today’s paper, “You are now entering the logic free zone.” He is certainly right about that; there is very little logic in his column about gun control laws. Thomas writes, “Name one law that deters someone intent on breaking the law. Murder has been prohibited since the beginning of civilization but people still murder. You might as well outlaw human nature.” Mr. Thomas apparently believes that murder is just a part of human nature and there is nothing we can do about it. This is a strange position for a former vice president of the Moral Majority. Does he believe the Biblical admonitions given in The Ten Commandments and elsewhere in the Bible are all simply useless? No, I don’t think he believes that at all. Thomas only believes that laws restricting firearms are without effect and he must believe that because the income from his politically biased column would be in jeopardy if he didn’t believe it.

Later in his column, he sites James Kallstrom, a former FBI assistant director, who, on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program, declared that “Orders had come down from the White House that the bureau cannot investigate anything to do with Muslims and that agents are “petrified” of losing their jobs.”

Two points are at issue here: If Megyn Kelly is supposed to be reporting news, as in Fox’s claim, “We report; you decide,” then why was there no corroboration of Kallstrom’s claim…and there has been none. Kallstrom has been retired from the FBI for a total of 19 years, since 1997. He is now 73 years old and when he was with the bureau investigating the TWA flight 800 that blew up shortly after takeoff killing all 230 passengers and crew, he was known to be a publicity hound. Was this comment just an attempt to get himself back in the limelight? We’ll never know.

Then we have Fox News. This has now become an arm of the Donald Trump campaign. There is no pretense of objectivity. As the election campaign moves forward you will find little or nothing positive about the President or about Hillary Clinton, but there will be lots of negative pieces. The Megyn Kelly report about the FBI agents not being “allowed” to investigate any Muslim activities is an example of this bias. Responsible journalism would find support and if none could be found that should be announced; that isn’t the Fox News way.

This really amounts to Donald Trump having his very own national TV network dedicated to pushing his candidacy and charging him nothing for the publicity. Why would he need to raise money?

2016 June 21^st

At the insistence of Trump’s family, Cory Lewandowski was given the boot, fired that is. He was escorted out of his office in Trump Tower by security guards just like a TV reporter might have been. (Oh, the shame of it all!) Cory’s failure had once been his principle strength; he insisted on letting Trump be Trump. That had worked just fine in the primaries where Trump had demolished a series of lightweight challengers.  Then things had changed, but Trump’s campaign hadn’t. The result was that Trump’s poll numbers began to sag. Where he had been ahead of Hillary Clinton, he was now either tied, or he was behind her. Moreover Lewandowski, while popular with his boss (and that was both necessary and sufficient), was wildly unpopular with the other inmates and particularly unpopular with Ivanka Trump, the boss’s daughter.

(The scuttlebutt was that Cory had never been a hit with Ivanka, but when he grabbed a woman reporter’s arm to yank her away from his boss, he really upset Ivanka and he was a goner.)

Lewandowski was interviewed on morning TV shows to get his side of the story. Not surprisingly, Cory wasn’t at all upset by getting the bum’s rush he got out of his office and out of the building. Apparently he was given no notice that he was about to be fired. Cory had nothing but nice things to say about his former employer. His abrupt removal from the building was just the way such things were done. It is very likely that Cory had signed a non-disclosure agreement that prohibited him from commenting on the inner workings of the Trump campaign.  As Cory had been a long time Trump favorite it is likely that he receives a very generous separation package, likely paid out over time. Would he jeopardize that?  Hardly.

Then there is always the possibility of re-employment by the Trump organization in some capacity or other. Trump has been known to change his mind about people. He was very unkind to Dr. Carson and to Governor Christie and now he seems to love them dearly. Maybe Cory can look forward to being a greater at Mar-a-Lago if he plays nice.

Now what? Now things are in the hands of Paul Manafort, the fixer of campaigns gone awry. Manafort has a long and very unsavory history of serving dictators who need to clean up their image. His premier client, who was rumored to have paid him nearly a million a year was Fernando Marcos of Philippine fame. Marcos was in deep trouble and was eventually thrown out of his country and Manafort was very helpful getting him safely relocated. Although when he hit Hawaii the customs boys there were not nice to him and Manafort was no help at all. Manafort was also on the payrolls of some legitimate politicians, Ronald Reagan for one.

Manafort is going to keep Trump on message and away from his love of spontaneous remarks that produce applause. Oh Come now! Trump has already come to some grief with his talk to a religious group in which he had to comment on Clinton’s religious beliefs and he blew that one.

 Poor Manafort; how long will he last?

2016 June 20^th

Mona Charen had a column published on June 15^th. The Record-Eagle has, so far, chosen not to inflict Charen’s venom on their readers; that is very sound judgment because Charen’s antipathy toward the President passes beyond anything rational.

Charen begins her diatribe by writing, “Whole doctoral dissertations could be devoted to the question of wat makes President Obama angry and what does not. His Tuesday broadside against Donald Trump stood in marked contrast to Sunday’s somewhat–cold response to the Orlando Massacre. This is a pattern.”

But the President met with the families of the Orlando dead and with the survivors. Here are the President’s comments after the meeting: "Their grief is beyond description. Through their pain and through their tears, they told us about the joy that their loved ones had brought to their lives." The President, Vice President Biden and the Orlando Congresswoman all arrived on air force one with flowers for the memorial service.  This is an example of what Charen believes is “a somewhat-cold response.”

Then Charen describes the Fort Hood attack by “Colonel” Nidal Hassan who claimed he was motivated by Islamist extremists. (Charen has given Nidal a nice promotion from Major, which he was, to Colonel.) Obama has indeed been slow to indict the Muslim community as the responsible party in these attacks because the American Muslim community must be kept separate from radical Islam. Charen is not interested in this distinction and that is not surprising.

Charen is a dedicated supporter of Israel; so much so that one wonders where her principle allegiance lies. Israel’s primary antagonists are Muslims and specifically Iran, a country whose theocratic leaders are dedicated to Israel’s destruction. The agreement between Iran and the Group of Nations that arranged with Iran to limit its nuclear capabilities has put Charen in a rage. She blames President Obama for this agreement, which she believes is flawed, and will vilify him at every opportunity. This, I believe, is part of the reason for her hostility toward President Obama and for Muslims of whatever stripe.

2016 June 19^th

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post’s premier columnist (in my opinion at least), has a column this morning titled “Donald Trump’s relentless assault on the truth.” Robinson then demonstrates the accuracy of his accusation with many examples.

For Trump the truth is whatever he says it is at the moment he says it. A New York Times reporter, Serge Kovaleski, has a neuromuscular condition that causes his arms to move spastically. Trump took issue with something Kovaleski wrote about him regarding his claim that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey were cheering as the 9/11 towers fell. Trump, refusing to be politically correct, read refusing to engage in civil discourse, felt it necessary to mimic the reporter’s disability. This antic brought down enough criticism that Trump subsequently denied having done any such thing. Unfortunately for Trump, the video evidence of his mocking actions have been played over and over again. No matter, he still denies it happened.

He told his Texas audience that had the patrons at Pulse, the Orlando nightclub where the carnage occurred, just been armed, the shooter would have been killed immediately. Isn’t it amazing that a couple of armed civilians could have eliminated this carnage when three armed and trained police officers couldn’t manage it.

Possibilities for keeping the patrons of Pulse safe had nothing whatever to do with Trump’s comments about guns. Trump was in Texas and as is usual for him, he was looking for applause lines. If you are in Texas and you tell your audience that everyone should have guns, you’ll get wild applause. Of course no one with a gun will be allowed into one of Mr. Trump’s events, even events in Texas, and no one attending Trump’s Texas talks pointed that out.

In spite of Trump’s almost certain domination of the Texas electorate, he still spends time campaigning in a state he is certain to win in the general election. Why would he do that? Why isn’t he campaigning in purple states where he might have a chance to move the electorate solidly in his favor? Trump is addicted to adulation; it is that simple. He cannot risk rejection, or the chance of a lukewarm reception, or a half-empty hall…and he will not risk it. This is the same reason he “relentlessly assaults the truth.” Telling lies about his antagonists produces wild applause from his supporters and that sustains him.

When his poll numbers were favorable, he referred to them incessantly; now that he is nine points behind Clinton in national polls he doesn’t bring them up. He doesn’t care about polls now because, if he chooses carefully, he can still fill an auditorium with thousands of cheering fans and those fans are all he cares about. When the fans dwindle sufficiently, Donald Trump will disappear.

2016 June 18^th

This is another look at the Orlando nightclub massacre. There is no doubt that Omar Mateen did it; the reason he did it has been subject to speculation. He said that he was killing people in the name of ISIS, an extremist Muslim religious group.

A picture of Mateen has emerged that will help us understand why what happened has happened. From the time this man was in the third grade, he had trouble controlling his temper. He struggled to understand school because his family at home did not speak English. His father was an Afghan immigrant and, as with many religious Muslims (and Christians), very homophobic.

Mateen’s first wife left him after a few months of marriage because of his temper and his insistence on controlling her. His associates at work also commented on his inability to control his temper.

He was obviously a devout Muslim. He made two trips to Mecca despite the fact that only one is required in the lifetime of observant Muslims. These trips, and some of his comments about ISIS brought him to the attention of the FBI. They interviewed him twice but found no evidence to suggest that he was a terrorist risk. At that time he wasn’t. A problem now arises because of Mateen’s sexuality; there is mounting evidence that Matten was bi-sexual. He subscribed to homosexual dating sites and he was a regular at the same gay bar in Orlando where he committed the murders.

Here we have a devout Muslim who cannot control his temper and who must deal with the fact that he is bi-sexual, a sexual orientation very specifically proscribed by his religion. Homosexual behavior incurs the death penalty in many Muslim countries and some Christian groups in our own country demand that believers kill homosexuals. Pastor Kevin Swanson, whom I’ve discussed before, happily sites various scriptural sources for his belief that gays should be murdered.

Mateen now has an intolerable conflict. He is attracted to men as well as women but his religious beliefs make this totally unacceptable. What action can he take that will compensate for this defect of character? I believe that his decision to murder as many of the patrons of this gay nightclub as he could was his attempt to compensate for his religiously unacceptable gay urges. He claimed that he was dedicating this killing to ISIS; this, perhaps, to assure that he gets some religious merit for the act. Isis was happy to accept the credit in spite of having little if anything to do with Mateen’s act beyond providing the motivating guilt and the hope of some ecclesiastical reward.

I doubt that this was “a terrorist act” in the usual meaning of the term. Its origins seem very different from the motivation for the Boston Bombers, the San Bernardino killers, or other high profile Muslim killers.

2016 June 17^th

On June 16^th one year ago Donald Trump, Mr. Trump as he now prefers to be known, descended the moving staircase at Trump Tower to announce his presidential candidacy. It was then a meager audience enhanced we now suspect by some paid actors. The next day my blog commented on this event; here is that blog:

(2015) June 17^th

Some days you get a gift from the gods; “The Donald” Trump has declared his candidacy for President. It isn’t really official yet because he doesn’t have to sign disclosure of assets papers for several more months…if ever unless the Congress can agree to fill out the committee overseeing such stuff. Hey, that’s OK; Donald’s initial performance was delightful and there is surely to be more to come.

He began by hammering away at Jeb. (Bush that is, although his last name seems to have gotten lost somewhere.) Then he also criticized Marco Rubio. Trump has insulted all immigrants from Mexico. According to him they are thieves, murderers, drug dealers and rapists. He was given a chance to back-pedal when a reporter asked him if all Mexican immigrants were in those categories. Not all he said, but most of them were. Jeb made his candidacy announcement in fluent Spanish. So has Jeb won more credit for his party from Latino voters with his display of fluency that Trump has lost by his insults?  Who knows; one thing is certain: Trump won’t get the Hispanic vote. I don’t think he cares.

He has also happily warred against several highly regarded Republican pundits. Charles Krauthammer and George Will have commented less then favorably on Trump’s candidacy and Trump has responded in his usual manner with some name calling—nothing very original of course.

His candidacy is a farce. Some have claimed that he appeals to “a certain segment of voters.” Of course he does, so does Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson but they are in the race hoping to win it; they aren’t in it just for the publicity. Well, on second thought…who really knows why anyone would get into a two-year race for a four-year term of office? It must be love of country.

Trump has long accused President Obama of not being a legitimate President because he claims Obama was born In Kenya. He has offered five million dollars to Obama if he will reveal his college and university grades and produce a copy of his passport.  Some time ago on Jay Leno’s program Leno asked the President why Trump seemed to have such animosity toward him. The President with a slight smile and perfect timing said, “It all goes back to when we were growing up together in Kenya…” The laughter was explosive. Poor Donald was out of his league then and he still is. Even so I surely hope he sticks around; now if Fox just invites him to the debates…

A year later now and Fox has done just that. Trump has demolished all of the other Republican candidates and stands alone as the presumed nominee of the Republican Party. He is now enormously unpopular with African Americans, Latinos, women and most other sub-groups. Trump has made it a delightful year for the Democratic Party even with Bernie Sanders looming in the wings. He once supported Hillary Clinton; maybe he still does. She couldn’t have a greater gift.

2016 June 16^th

Today’s columnist making a fool of himself is Cal Thomas; he tells us that “Congress should declare war on all terrorist groups.” Well Cal, any high school civics student will tell you that can’t happen. Congress can only declare that a state of war exists between The United States and some other sovereign state, or states; “all terrorist groups” just won’t handle it. Maybe you just meant that metaphorically. If you did just mean it metaphorically, what was the point?

Thomas manages to dismiss President Obama’s call for stronger gun laws by writing,”Does he believe that someone who claims to be on a mission from Allah would not be able to obtain guns and explosives illegally?” Does it follow, Mr. Thomas, that we should have no laws banning anything because lawbreakers can get whatever we ban? A car thief can steal your locked car, or break into your locked house, so why bother to lock anything?

Thomas follows up on his “declaration of war” metaphor by suggesting because we are at war certain civil liberties need to be abandoned. “In wartime certain liberties have been suspended in order to protect the country. This may be one of those times. Or should we wait until our enemies obtain a weapon of mass destruction?” Here is the typical right wing fear mongering and appeal to the paranoid among us. Who wins when, in fear, we give up our freedoms? Interning loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry was a notable blot on Roosevelt’s administration and here is a right wing columnist suggesting, once again, that we act out of fear to limit freedom.

Omar Mateen, the Orlando killer, was a Muslim and he had made several trips to Mecca as was required by his faith; but Mateen had issues far beyond his faith. Beginning with his early elementary years Mateen’s teachers found his inability to control his temper was obstructing his schoolwork. The family did not speak English at home so Omar, in addition to an inability to control his temper, had to deal with a poor command of English. His rages caused his first wife to leave him after a few months and they were also a problem in his second marriage.

He was no stranger to the gay bar where this massacre took place; indeed, there is some evidence that Mateen was not exclusively heterosexual. His father was clearly homophobic. The Muslim religion is well known to be very opposed to homosexuals.

This homophobia is shared by some Christians as well. Here is something written by Cal Thomas himself when he was a vice president of the Moral Majority:

God designed norms for behavior that are in our best interests. When we act outside those norms—such as for premarital sex, adultery, or homosexual sex—we cause physical, emotional, and spiritual damage to ourselves and to our wider culture. The unpleasant consequences of divorce and sexually transmitted diseases are not the result of intolerant bigots seeking to denigrate others. They are the result of violating God's standards, which were made for our benefit.

— Cal Thomas, Immutable Morals

Thomas has not sunk to the point of wanting to kill all gays as have his co-religionists, Pastors Kevin Swanson, Joel McDurmon and Phil Kayser. These pastors insist that the Bible demands that gays be killed. It appears that for some people and on some topics the Bible and the Koran are in complete agreement.

You’ll read nothing about that in any of Cal Thomas’ columns.

2016 June 15^th

As a change from the focus on killing in anger, as in the Orlando massacre, I will turn to a very different kind of “killing.” Kathleen Parker’s column yesterday was titled, “Freedom to kill…” a title that forecasts Parker’s opinion about California’s assisted suicide law. She writes, “Here I should confess my own ambivalence….I’m just not sure I like the idea of the state and doctors lending a hand.” Then she writes, “When the continuum of life from conception to natural death is interrupted as a convenience to one’s individual concept of time what else do we also terminate?”

How does she feel about interruptions due to intractable pain? The closest Parker comes to discussing intractable pain is her comment that “…medical advance that extend life well beyond what some find acceptable resulting in unnecessary suffering,” but that isn’t the primary problem. It isn’t necessarily a problem of aging; intractable pain can be a problem at any age and it might not have any hope of redress other than massive doses of opiates. Many cancers can be involved here. If you receive enough opiates to control the pain you are rendered comatose. Pancreatic cancer is a notable offender and once this cancer has metastasized, there is very little hope of a cure.

There are already some remedies: There is the “Do not resuscitate” directive; that is self-explanatory and it will be followed by most medical facilities. There is hospice care available if the person has a life expectancy of six months or less. In hospice care attempts to cure stop and only palliative care continues. Notice that in both of these situations the medical community withdraws any attempt at cure. They stop trying because they don’t know of any cure, but they also stop any but palliative care; no extraordinary care is provided to further extend life.

There are many associations whose purpose is to provide physician assisted suicide. People who wish to end their lives have no trouble finding ways to do it.  There are about 21 thousand suicides by gunshot every year. Many of these are impulsive and without the ready availability of guns many of them would not happen… but many still would. Then we have attempted suicide by overdosing on over the counter painkillers. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is a favorite but there are many others. In the case of acetaminophen, a less than immediately fatal dose can damage the liver so that a lingering death is inevitable.

Assisted suicide is a complex issue; tying it to abortion as a generalized lack of respect for life is an enormous oversimplification.

2016 June 14^th

The authorities are still sorting through the Orlando nightclub tragedy. Now we find that Mateen, the killer, had been a frequent customer at this gay nightclub. Indeed, evidence emerges that he occasionally went there to pick up men. Perhaps the carnage resulted from some unfathomable personality dynamic that we will never know about…and speculating helps no one.

Even so our favorite bluster boy is certain he has the answer. While Hillary Clinton advocates commiserating with victim’s families, Donald Trump continues to play his conspiracy game. He continues to push for immigration that is more restrictive. He tells us that Mateen was born in Afghan to Afghan parents. Mateen was born in Brooklyn. Trump apparently does not know that the country is Afghanistan and its citizens are Afghans. Serves Trump right for going off script. He makes a fool of himself much more quickly when he does that but he just can’t help himself. ( You may remember how well he was doing with a teleprompter speech until he came to the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP. He then slyly smirked and talked about Pee Pee. You see Trump hates being politically correct. Imagine how his handlers felt.)

His push now is to ban from the U.S., Muslim immigrants from any country that has any connection with terrorism. He insists that Syrian immigrants are being admitted to this country with no examination at all. That is simply a lie. These immigrants, most of them families and many of them Christians are very carefully screened to the point that entry can take several years.

Then we discover that Trump has “withdrawn the credentials” of The Washington Post to cover his campaign. Trump did this because he didn’t like a story the Post ran. Trump has been at war with the press for some time, even herding the press people into a corral where he can point at, and ridicule, individual members. He has even gone so far as to mock a handicapped press person on national television. He claims now that he didn’t do that but it’s on record. The Washington Post will not stop covering Trump’s shenanigans; they just won’t get press credentials. Not surprising, for the Post now joins Des Moines Register, Buzz Feed, Politico, Huffington Post, Mother Jones and other news organizations that have received this badge of honor from Trump.

Much has been written about the FBI and their surveillance of Mateen. The issue is why they didn’t recognize his lethal tendencies. If they had they still didn’t have the manpower to keep watching him once they had become convinced that his ties to radical Islam were not critical. If we want to be safer from such attacks then we need more FBI agents and to get enough of them will require money. The money can only come from an increase in taxes. Does anyone really believe that the current Congress will agree to raise taxes to keep the citizens of this country safe?

2016 June 13^th

Last night I watched a few minutes of Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News. O’Reilly has a limited acquaintance with logic. The discussion moved to what could be done about the easy availability of AR-15 the weapon of choice for most mass murderers. Mateen, the shooter in Orlando was no exception. Part of the problem is that Florida has essentially no restriction at all on gun ownership. When O’Reilly started pontificating about the difficulty of controlling access to AR-15s he said that if they were banned in this country they would just be smuggled in from Mexico as drugs are now. For O’Reilly then it would follow that our laws against drugs are useless because people can easily get them from Mexico. Sheesh!

Then this morning on CNN Chris Cuomo interviewed Secretary Clinton on what should be done about terrorism. She took the opportunity to commiserate with the families that were grieving and made some comments about not excluding Muslims or marginalizing those who live here. That wasn’t enough for Cuomo who seemed hell bent on getting Clinton to commit to something that might incite a political firestorm; she didn’t bite. The he brought on a Republican Congressman from Texas. Now, surely there would be some delicious controversy—nope! The Congressman when asked to comment on Clinton’s remarks by Cuomo said, “I’m not going to politicize this tragedy.” Bless his heart!

George Will tells us this morning that anti-Semitism endures in Britain; it also endures here. Then he turns eloquent and tells us that, “…anti-Semitism is also growing in the fetid petri dish of American Academia.” (Could this phrase, “fetid petri dish of American academia” be the result of a decline in the demand for George as a college speaker?) George Will is conflating disgust with Israeli policies, their construction of settlements on territory acquired by conquest, with the hatred of Jews; it isn’t. Iran, a nation intensely devoted to an irrational hatred of Zionism still has a healthy (if nervous) Jewish population. Will claims that a former chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs, calls the idea that “…hating Israel is not the same as hating Jews” a canard. He is simply wrong about that. Many American Jews are not at all happy with Israeli policies. They are hardly anti-Semitic.

I can’t neglect Mona Charen; she held forth about the Stanford University rapist. He was recently slapped on the wrist for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster on the Stanford Campus. I assumed that she would have something to say about the judge who sentenced this man to time served plus three months in Jail (It was his first offense you know and his father was very upset at his being branded as a sex offender.) There wasn’t much emphasis on the mild punishment. I thought that perhaps alcohol would be to blame as the woman had passed out from drinking too much and her assailant was nearly dead drunk as well. No, Charen didn’t see alcohol as the problem. In the last line of her column she blames the surge in campus rapes on “the hook up culture.” This phrase is used to indicate casual sex between couples barely acquainted. How this is responsible for rape where one member of the couple is clearly not consenting Charen doesn’t say. Perhaps the “hook up culture” offends her sense of morality enough that she simply must find it at fault for something. Who knows?

2016 June 12^th

Donald Trump has finally relinquished the national stage; it took the murder of fifty people and the wounding of another fifty-some to accomplish that. The murderer, Omar Mateen, was born in New York but was inspired by ISIS to do the killing. He called 911 just before the murders to announce his intentions. Mateen had come to the attention of the FBI because of remarks he had made and their agents interviewed him on two separate occasions. In each case the agents found no reason to hold him and, at the time of the shooting, Mateen was not under surveillance. As a result there was no legal basis to deny him access to automatic weapons so our gun laws provided him with the means to murder fifty people and injure more than fifty others. The price of our curious affection for lethal weaponry does keep going up.

The issue for Mateen was apparently his hostility toward gays. Acquaintances claimed that he could not stand to see men kissing each other. How he felt about women kissing each other is not recorded. In any case, he is dead so he will no longer be bothered by either situation.

This hostility toward homosexuals in not confined to Moslem radicals; many Christian radicals hold identical views and some have acted on them. In Laramie Wyoming in 1998 Mathew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, was beaten and left to die by two fellow students who were convicted of his murder and are each serving life sentences.

But then we have some religious leaders who happily incite their followers to kill homosexuals. One of the prime movers in this group is Pastor Kevin Swanson. Pastor Swanson heads the “National Religious Liberty Conference.” At the meeting of this conference attended by such Republican luminaries as “Bobby” Jindal, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, Pastor Swanson put on a splendid performance.

Bible held high this man pranced up and down across the stage, quite literally screaming that homosexuals should be killed. He referenced various chapters in Leviticus and in Pauls’ letters to the Romans as his authority. Of course there is also Biblical authority for taking your disobedient son to the elders so that they can stone him to death, but few people would think that appropriate. Pastor Swanson is quite serious about instituting a death penalty for gays.

He has company too!  There is Pastor Phil Kayser of the Dominion Covenant Church who is also in favor of executing unrepentant gays. Joel McDurmon of Atlanta’s Christian Reconstructionist Church who also shares his views about killing gays.

Certain Christian churches are no different than certain Moslem sects when it comes to hatred of gays and both can easily find a scriptural basis for their bigotry. Now this hatred is turned against gays; who knows who will be the target tomorrow.

2016 June 11^th

In yesterday’s blog I listed the surrogates Hillary Clinton could count on to help her candidacy; it was a distinguished list. While Hilary Clinton has this distinguished supporting cast trying to get her elected, Donald Trump’s party is trying desperately to get rid of him and, unfortunately, that isn’t working.  There was some hope that Trump would be more circumspect, more presidential, once the primaries were over. Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell said that he should be given a couple of weeks to come to terms with these restrictions. Why should the Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States be given any time at all to begin acting like a candidate for the Presidency of the United States instead of like a petulant nine-year-old?

                                                                                                                                         

At the same time that Trump is speaking to Ralph Reed’s “Faith and Freedom Coalition,” the Republican Party’s last “peerless leader,” Mitt Romney, is having a meeting of the party’s wealthy in Utah trying to figure out how to dump him.

Trump’s speech to Reed’s Christian group, although scripted, is not particularly truthful. Trump says of Clinton, “…she put emails on a private server all to hide her corrupt dealings.” Trump offered no evidence that the server was “used to hide corrupt dealings.”

Then Trump claimed that Obama’s endorsement of Secretary Clinton “was the first time ever, by the way, that a President of the United States had endorsed somebody under criminal investigation.” That claim is just more wishful thinking by Donald Trump. The FBI is investigating Clinton’s use of a private server but that is a far as the investigation has gone.

If Trump wants to keep the air nice and sterile he should look at his friend Ralph Reed’s lobbying for gambling interests. He was paid $20 thousand a month for lobbying against gambling interests that would compete with Jack Abramoff’s Indian casino clients. Before Grover Norquist got his anti-tax gig off and running Norquist was in cahoots with Jack Abramoff as well. (You can check out the tawdry history of Reed, Norquist and Abramoff by just googling “Reed, Norquist, Abramoff gambling lobby.”)

Trump will not allow himself to be controlled for any length of time. In an earlier teleprompter speech, he did stick to the script—except when he discussed the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This mentally compromised billionaire had to look away from his teleprompter and grinningly emphasize the initials “pee pee.” This mentally challenged adult is put forward to be President of the United States? Go figure!

2016 June 10^th

This blog must shift direction. Previously I’ve been happy to take issue with the half-truths and outright lies of various right wing commentators who write for the morning paper; this has been a fertile field and I have happily plowed it. I thank, in particular, Mona Charen, Cal Thomas, Thomas Sowell, George Will and occasionally our favorite isolationist bigot, Patrick J. Buchanan. I can no longer do that because these people are now writing scathing columns about Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s putative nominee. I agree with them about that. Of course they still occasionally attack Secretary Clinton over the “loss” of Libya or the risk to state secrets on her server, secrets that were not classified as secrets until she became a candidate. I’ll now comment primarily on the coming election. There is still lots of good stuff there.

It would appear that Hillary Clinton has all of her ducks in a row.; she has been endorsed by the President who claims that he is eager to get out there and campaign for her. This is really the President claiming he can’t wait to start bashing birther Donald Trump. Who can blame him? She also has former President Bill Clinton who is no slouch as a politician. Imagine, a former President and the current President eager to campaign for you.

Then Senator Sanders, who isn’t quitting yet of course, has said he will eventually help Hillary take on Donald Trump. Vice President Biden has joined in; he has excoriated Trump, particularly on Trumps comments about Judge Curiel. (Fox News has decided that because some in Curiel’s old law firm had donated to Hillary Clinton, that the Judge was fair game—curious logic.)

Then we have Senator Elizabeth Warren; she has savaged poor Donald Trump. Her impassioned anti Trump rants are spectacles to behold. So far Trump has made no response except to lie about her Senate record and call her Pocahontas. Trump claims that she has done nothing in the Senate when she has authored important consumer protection legislation.  Of course, for Donald Trump, protecting consumers (see Trump University) has no merit at all.

Warren has been so effective in her bashing of Donald Trump that some are calling for Clinton to name her has the Vice Presidential choice. There are good arguments against that: Warren is very effective in the Senate and that would be lost. The Republican Governor of Massachusetts would replace her and it would surely be with a Republican, at least until the elections when a Democratic Senator might be elected to replace the Governor’s appointee. Warren and Clinton are not well acquainted and might well not be sufficiently compatible for a pairing like that to work. On the other hand, Warren as Clinton’s VP choice would certainly make easing the Bernie Sanders fans over and into the Clinton camp. Who knows, maybe Clinton will pick Bernie himself. Questions without answers abound.

2016 June 9^th

Sometimes we lose sight of the usual right wing commentators when we have such plump targets as Donald J. Trump.  Today I go back one year to a piece by George Will who uses his ration of ink to excoriate socialism. Here he is:

June 7^th

George Will’s column today attempts to instruct us in socialism and in Senator Bernie Sander’s views about it. Will tells us that Senator Sanders is not an independent because he caucuses with the Democrats. Furthermore, Will claims that everybody is now a socialist so the label “socialist” has no meaning; he says, “If he (Sanders) is a socialist who isn’t?” He goes on to tell us that Republicans are socialists because they do not object to “regulation of commercial activities, government provision of a ‘social safety net,’ and redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation and entitlement programs” consequently the term is meaningless because everyone is a socialist. This will be interesting news to many Republican presidential candidates who have been campaigning to decrease social security payments and various other benefits, farm subsidies and oil subsidies excepted of course.

Will points out that socialist countries like Greece are in very bad shape; he doesn’t mention Denmark which was recently singled out as the happiest country surveyed, nor does he want to consider Sweden, Norway, Germany and many other countries whose social programs make ours look like they were designed by Ebenezer Scrooge. We have no mandatory maternity leave; it seems we are too busy condemning all abortions to bother caring for expectant mothers or providing healthcare for children once they are born. Will and his right wing buddies are big on protecting embryos; protecting children not so much!

He doesn’t bother to tell us that of these socialist welfare expenditures, about half are for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Will claims that Sanders, by proposing to increase Social Security payments and then increase payroll taxes to pay for that, is transferring wealth to the “most affluent age cohort.” The over-67-year-olds are the most affluent age cohort? That’s absurd, George. The average family income for this group is about 35 thousand dollars a year and that includes their Social Security payments. For 64 percent of people in this group, their SS payments are half or more of their income. The bright spot is that income for the elderly is the fastest growing of any age cohort. Perhaps that’s what George meant; if he weren’t so eager to condemn all government help programs he might get his facts straight. Still, anyone, even George Will, who maintains that the over-67-year-olds are the most affluent age group must be on some sort of silly sauce! Given that medical costs are skyrocketing and that medical costs are highest for the elderly, even with Medicare, this increased income is of limited help.

He says, “Hectoring Hilary Clinton about her…reticence on public policy issues is unfair, she will tell us what her convictions are when she decides, or is told, what her convictions are.” My goodness George, have you any evidence, any evidence at all, that Hillary Clinton’s opinions are bought and paid for? That would be wonderful political ammunition if you did, but typical right wing nastiness if you don’t. I would have thought a crack like that was beneath you, but I was wrong; pity!

2016 June 8^th

Some things are beginning to sort themselves out: Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee and Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee, at least pro tem.

Lots of the Republican cognoscenti are unhappy with Donald Trump’s tendency to, as some say, “run his mouth.” This has now reached the point where these leaders believe Trump should apologize to Judge Curiel for claiming that the judge could not be fair in adjudicating the suit brought against Trump’s “University.” This judge’s brilliant history of courage against Mexican drug cartels is well known but that makes no difference to Donald Trump. Trump is sure the judge’s ethnicity keeps him from being fair in this situation, And Trump has said this over and over again.

Trump’s tendency to flee from what he considers political correct speech has his handlers very worried. (Trump is, in fact, often politically correct: He is careful to refer to African Americans as African Americans, but then he ruins it by referring to one man as, “My African American over there.”) It is possible that Trump really doesn’t understand the effect his language has—or maybe he does understand but he doesn’t care. Not caring about the effect you have on others, the inability to empathize, is one of the symptoms of psychopathology. A classic instance was his mocking of a reporter he didn’t like who was afflicted with palsy. An eight year old would have had the maturity not to do that.

Last night, after winning New Jersey, Trump gave an unusual victory speech. Of course he usually gives victory speeches but this one was read from a teleprompter. Trump has taken great pride in his avoidance of this device and has ridiculed those who rely on it. What happened? It can only be conjecture, but the received wisdom is that his children and other handlers finally got him to realize that if he continued his thoughtless remarks, such as his tirades against Judge Curiel, he would lose the election—thus the teleprompter.

When someone’s behavior is out of control because of drugs, or because of some mental aberration, the remedy is a straitjacket. This device constrains the patient so that he/she cannot harm themselves. The teleprompter is a metaphorical straitjacket for Donald Trump. What happens when he decides he doesn’t want to wear it any longer? The mental problems that required it haven’t gone away so it’s only a matter of time before Trump hurts himself again.

2016 June 7^th

Donald Trump continues to get enormous criticism for his comments about Judge Curiel. He is advised that his criticisms of this truly distinguished jurist could cost him the election. (Judge Curiel defied death threats from Mexican drug cartels to preside over their prosecution. No matter; he can’t be fair to Donald J. Trump.) There are now calls for the high level Republicans who have endorsed Trump, albeit tentatively, to reconsider their endorsement. They won’t do that because Donald J. Trump is all that stands between them and disaster for them in the form of a President Hillary Clinton.

Typical were the remarks of the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Corker, on the Scarborough program this morning. Corker kept insisting that Trump could still turn things around. Of course, and a zebra can lose its stripes and become a horse if it really, really tries. Corker admitted that he did not agree with Trump’s position on Judge Curiel but he refused to say that this position disqualified him for the presidency because, he kept insisting, Trump might change.

Scarborough went on to ask Corker how the war against ISIS was going. His answer was remarkable for its attempts at evasion. Corker admitted that ISIS was being pushed back but only very slowly and this was surely because we had wasted so many chances when we pulled out most of our troops in 2011. Corker never mentioned that the troops were pulled out in compliance with an agreement negotiated by President Bush. Naturally, Scarborough did not remind him of that agreement.

Corker went on to vilify Secretary Clinton over the breakdown of order following the removal of the Libyan dictator, Moammar Gadhafi. I presume that Corker would prefer Gadhafi had been left in place to continue killing his citizens, blowing up airliners and planting bombs in nightclubs visited by American GIs. Once again, Scarborough never mentioned what had preceded Gadhafi’s removal in Libya.

This tendency to distort evidence is endemic to the right wing; yesterday on “Fox and Friends,” a commentator reminded her audience that there were over 94 million unemployed Americans. A two-minute search would have shown this commentator that fully half of those people were over 65 years old and probably retired. Many Americans retire well before 65; I retired at 57, my brother-in-law retired from the military at 39 after 22 years of service. There is no intent to provide information; Fox is simply an avenue for not very subtle right wing propaganda.

2016 June 6^th

We have a change in the likely Vice Presidential choice that Donald Trump will make. Up until yesterday the favorite, according to the British betting parlour, Paddy Power, was Newt Gingrich. That would have been (and it still might be) a truly remarkable choice. That choice would have meant that among the Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, there would have been six different wives, four divorces and two divorce actions for infidelity. This would not have been a “family values” ticket even if it got the endorsement of James Dobson’s “Family Research Council.” What happened?

Gingrich had been an unequivocal admirer of Donald Trump. Then came Trump’s rant against the Indiana judge, a second generation American of Mexican decent, Trump claimed the judge could not treat him fairly. Trump claimed that Judge Curiel could not treat him fairly because the judge’s parents came from Mexico and Trump has announced that he is building a wall to keep the Mexican “murderers and rapists” out of this country. Now this latest Trump rant against a federal judge is too vile and biased for even Newt Gingrich to tolerate, and he has said so. He has said that Trump’s comments were a mistake and that they were unacceptable. Well, there go Newt’s chances of being Trump’s running mate.

The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not share Gingrich’s intestinal fortitude. When he was asked if Trump’s comments were racist, the best he could do was to say that, “he didn’t agree with them.” Chuck Todd asked McConnell three times if he thought the comments were racist. McConnell didn’t have the spine to answer “yes” or “no,” he just kept repeating, “I don’t agree with him.” Chuck Todd gave up!

Trump has a major problem: He needs an establishment insider to run with him as Vice President but the prominent insiders have all removed themselves from his consideration; they have eliminated themselves by criticizing the Donald. If he can’t find an insider maybe he’ll have to make do with someone who will not treat him “unfairly;” who could that be? Perhaps he’ll pick a woman. He would surely be comfortable with his daughter; she is also a graduate of the Wharton School and a “business person.” He also knows that she was born right here in the United States. Joking aside, the Republican Party knows now, if it did not know before, that it has a tiger by the tail and that tiger is about to turn around and chew them up. Oh dear!

2016 June 5^th

McCullough’s book on the Wright Brothers has had a resurgence in popularity. A year ago this day my blog addressed Cal Thomas’ column that attempted to make a case that, what with the high current taxes and the absurd number of regulations now in existence, the Wright brothers would have never moved forward with their invention. Here is that blog:

Cal Thomas has read McCullough’s new book on the Wright Brothers. His column today is largely unconditional praise for the book. Of course he must also slam the current business climate in this country which he claims discourages such efforts.

His comments on the book are laudatory and not entirely in agreement with other reviewers. I’ll not get into a criticism of McCullough’s work here; this isn’t a book review blog. Let’s look at Thomas’ comments on the state of the nation then and now.

Thomas points to the problem the Wright’s had getting any government funding but the government then did provide subsidies for some enterprises. In 1911 the federal government was subsidizing mail carrying steamships and had been doing so for some time. Then as now there were critics for any money set aside to finance harebrained schemes; harebrained of course was in the mind of the protesting Senator. Senator Proxmire’s Golden Fleece awards, now famous, if a trifle antique, were given for what that Senator thought were unnecessary, or foolish, projects. These awards in some cases were ridiculous; one was to determine if Army Officers should carry umbrellas in the rain; others were more ambiguous. Proxmire was particularly distressed that federal money was awarded a researcher to determine if Chimpanzees could communicate using sign language. The Senator, always quick to ridicule, said, “Who cares what chimpanzees think?” The senator apparently could not imagine that the techniques used to teach chimpanzees could also be used to teach intellectual disadvantaged children. Senators are not required to have imagination; they are only required to raise money so that they can keep themselves in office.

Cal Thomas then waxes nostalgic for the bygone days that gave rise to the Wright Brother’s values. He cites their preacher father and their McGuffey Readers. Cal Thomas claims that,  “…if government taxation, regulation and envy of the successful had been the norm then the Wright Brothers dream of flying might never have gotten off the ground.” This statement is totally absurd. Imagine that the income tax had been all of 20 percent in 1900. Can’t you hear Wilbur saying to Orville, “I think we should just forget about this heavier than air flight; besides if we make it and get rich all of our friends will envy us. Let’s just stick to the bicycle shop.”

How about now; we have many more regulations and much higher taxes than the Wright Brothers had. None of this stopped Bill gates from dropping out of Harvard and becoming one of the richest men in the world. Can you hear him saying, “Why bother, look at my probable taxes.” Maybe another example: try Dell Computers; it started in a dorm room in 1985 and grossed 73 million dollars its first year. Income taxes and regulation really hampered Michael Dell. Really?  Yes Cal, these odious taxes and regulations are sure stifling creativity and initiative.

It is worthwhile on occasion to change the subject from Donald Trump and look at other absurd examples of conservative enlightenment.

2016 June 4^th

Muhammed Ali is dead and all of the various news media are focusing their attention on his career. This is a lucky thing for Donald J. Trump as it means that for at least a full day (maybe longer) he can’t embarrass himself.

His latest snit concerns Judge Gonzalo Curiel whose Mexican immigrant parentage means, ipso facto, that Judge Curiel is biased in favor of Trump’s opponents in the Trump University lawsuit. Trump’s unassailable logic is that because he plans to build a wall to keep illegal Mexican immigrants out of the country, that Judge Curiel will surely be biased against his case, and, indeed, should disqualify himself from hearing it.

No one has suggested that Trump is stupid and this charge against the judge, before things get well underway, is a smart move. Now, if Trump loses his case, and he probably will, he can say, “I told you that judge was biased.” The Trumpian ego can remain intact.

Trump has evaluations from former students who gave Trump U. courses very favorable reviews. These are all suspect because they were obtained while a Trump employee was looking over the student’s shoulder. That’s not how it’s done if the evaluations are expected to have any validity. In most college courses, the students evaluate the course and the instructor while the instructor is out of the classroom.  The evaluations are unsigned, and then a student collects the forms and takes them to the dean’s office. There was obviously no intent in this case to really evaluate the courses.

There is also the fact that several of the sales people simply quit Trump U. because of the up selling, that is the constant push to get students to sign up for ever more expensive courses than they could afford. When it was obvious that people with modest incomes were pushed to max out their credit cards to buy more expensive Trump courses, these sales people could not, in good conscious, support these efforts.

There is ample evidence in the Trump U.’s literature that the lecturers and curriculum were advertised as being under the direct supervision of Donald Trump. That was a lie, and Trump has admitted as much. His representatives claim that this was the same kind of sales push as the used car salesman’s claim that, “This is the best used Chevy you’ll find anywhere.” No one should have taken it seriously, and besides it was not a part of any sales contract.

Trump might not really want to be President. If he doesn’t want to win the Presidency he is doing exactly the right things.

2016 June 3^rd

Secretary Clinton gave a well-received foreign policy speech last night; although it was not well received everywhere. Her thesis was a point-by-point recitation of Donald Trump’s foreign policy comments from his suggestion that Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Japan be left to develop their own nuclear weapons to his praise for dictators Putin and Kim Jon-Il. For the most part Clinton simply recited Trump’s positions without comment. The result was to provide an unanswerable indictment of Donald J. Trump’s lack of foreign policy chops.

Never mind, Trump would answer Clinton anyway: He gave it his best shot but he would have been much better off if he had ignored Clinton and just thanked Speaker Ryan for his endorsement, weak though that was. Trump’s performance in criticizing Clinton was truly pathetic. He screamed that Clinton’s talk was an attack on him and not a foreign policy speech at all. This was one upset Donald Trump and a large part of his upset must have been his recognition that everything Clinton claimed he said were words that he did say. He denied no specific position that Clinton had referenced, he couldn’t and that made him all the more furious to the point of near incoherence.

If this is an example of what’s to come it will be a very unpleasant summer for Donald J. Trump and his newly acquired lukewarm buddies of the conservative persuasion.

Trump has some other problems: He has surrogates but these tend to be paid people who are immediately distinguishable by their continuing reference to him as “Mr. Trump.” Anyone calling Trump “Mr. Trump” is on his payroll and is paid for their support.

Clinton has a near 25-year history in national politics and that doesn’t count her involvement in Arkansas politics when her husband was governor. Trump doesn’t have that many months in national politics. The result is that Clinton can call on many surrogates for support while Trump has very few. Bill Richardson, former Democratic Governor of New Mexico and a prominent Latino is now a Clinton supporter, perhaps even a V.P. pick. Susana Martinez, the current Republican governor of New Mexico, was recently insulted by Donald J. Trump (He was just hitting back at her effrontery of for not attending one of his rallies.) So while Richardson was not initially a Clinton supporter he has been converted; and while the current Governor Susana Martinez might have been pulled into the Trump camp if he had “played nice” she is now a very unlikely Trump supporter.

Left alone Trump is on his way toward alienating everyone whose salary he doesn’t pay.

2016 June 2^nd

There is a limited consensus among the morning commentariate that Donald Trump does not really want to be President of the United States. This otherwise apparently intelligent candidate is now doing a great deal to alienate the general election voter he will need to win the Presidency. Trump has recently made disparaging remarks about the Governor of New Mexico, Susana Martinez, who also chairs the Republican Governor’s Conference, and is one of the country’s most prominent Latinas. His remarks were elicited because Governor Martinez didn’t come to one of his rallies. Now there is thin-skinned and there is shooting yourself in the foot; which one this is, is quite obvious.

The judge who unsealed some of the documents in the “Trump U.“ fraud case he has now called a “Mexican.” The fact that the man was born in Indiana doesn’t trouble Trump, but it will reinforce Latinos’ antagonism toward him. If you wanted to put impediments in the way of your candidacy this is exactly how you’d do it.

Then Trump calls an ABC reporter a “sleazebag” to his face at a rally. This just carries forward a general fury Trump has shown toward the press. If he wants better press coverage this not the way to get it.

He seems willing to tell obvious lies about his positions on various important international issues. He is on record as claiming that South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia should be encouraged to develop their own nuclear arsenals. This position is consistent with his view that we should let our allies take on more of their own defense; but it contradicts this country’s long established policy of restricting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. If his position on this issue weren’t bad enough Trump now denies that he has said any such thing. He claims the press has misrepresented his position. Unfortunately, his push for proliferation and his denial of it less than a week later can now be played back to back.

This morning a CNN reporter on hearing this contradiction claimed that Trump had every right to change his mind. He didn’t “change his mind,” he lied about what he had previously said; that isn’t the same thing. He insists that he never said what the cameras clearly record him as saying.

He has support among foreign leaders, but only from a couple: The heads of government in Russia and North Korea are all for him. What a shame that foreign leaders cannot legally contribute money to our election candidates. I’m sure that if they could, Trump would be there with his hand out.

The commentariate could be right, maybe Trump really just wants the “thrill of the crowds and the smell of the (hairspray).” Those with connections to Trump insiders insist the family is trying desperately to get Trump to turn the corner and start being Presidential. It’s a hard sell because his hostility to all who do not come to worship him has paid off handsomely, so why change now? He has a point. If he doesn’t change he’ll never win the Presidency and he must know that. My guess is that he doesn’t care. If he becomes President the worshipful crowds will disappear and if he misbehaves he will be impeached. What 70-year-old billionaire needs that?