2016 Dec 31^st

Let’s talk economics. I can’t compete with the background of Dr. Thomas Sowell the columnist who has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, but Sowell hardly ever talks about economics. His primary agenda is the importance of denying the disadvantaged people any extra advantage. I suppose that’s some variety of economics.

My concern here is with Trumpian economics. I am not sure what Trumpian economics are and that uncertainty is part of its charm; whatever it is, it may well be different by New Year ’s Day.  

Trump’s has called for a number of things that will grow the economy: He wants to reduce taxes, particularly for the wealthy. He wants to eliminate the Inheritance Tax, which would benefit only people of very high net worth, such as himself. He wants to reduce the corporate tax rate, currently at 35 percent. Of the largest corporations, the average tax rate actually paid is just 17 percent; this is due to effective lobbying by these businesses and their hiring of skilled tax attorneys.

Trump plans to ask for a tax on imports if companies move production facilities abroad where labor and the cost of production are cheaper. If these companies comply, their products will be more expensive for American consumers to buy.

Trump is also going to “deregulate” various industries so as to achieve a growth rate of three to four percent thus creating at least 1.3 million new jobs every year. The happy talk about this from the investment community has already begun. The S&P index of 500 stocks rose 6.7 percent in the two months since the election.

 The upshot here is a massive increase in money in circulation and the result will be an increase in prices. There could also be a trade war. If we increase the tariffs on foreign goods coming into this country other countries will increase their tariffs on our products and we’ll have the Hoover depression all over again.

Back in the decade of the 1980s we had inflation as high as 1 percent per month. The result was a huge increase in interest rates to avoid a real runaway inflation; it worked. People who had fixed income securities found the value of their assets cut in half but inflation was controlled. I doubt that we see anything like that soon again, but fixed income securities, even long term government bonds are, like J.P Morgan said when asked what he thought the stock market would do said,  “It will fluctuate.”

So what’s the answer? If Trumpian economics does produce inflation probably the best bet will be the S&P 500 and very short term bonds whose interest rates change every couple of years to follow inflation…or we could just impeach Donald J. Trump!

2016 Dec 30^th

Today there are nearly identical columns by Mona Charen and Cal Thomas on the perfidy of President Obama in not vetoing that miserable anti-Semitic UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel. I addressed this issue yesterday so I’ll just deal with these two columnists today.

Both Charen and Thomas are in the “ready, fire, aim” camp on this issue. Their position is very simple to state, “Obama bad, Netanyahu good.” In this attitude, they echo the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This group has been heavily critical of any cautionary action aimed at Israel and particularly the recent speech by Secretary of State John Kerry who said, to the effect, that friends tell friends when they are wrong. In this instance, this friend, Israel, just didn’t want to hear the message and so, of course, had to attack the messenger.

Not all organized friends of Israel are as obtuse as Charen, Thomas and AIPAC. Netanyahu has deliberately positioned himself so far to the belligerent right that no more right wing person than he exists to challenge him. Public opinion polls show that most Israelis want conversations on peaceful solutions to take place between Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmood Abbas. This is also true here where “J Street,” another less congenitally angry Jewish organization, was quite happy with Kerry’s speech of advice to Israel. The lesson is that, as in this country, there are different viewpoints. Charen and Thomas do not understand how anyone can be pro-Israel and not agree with them. Bombast converts no one!

A surprising aspect of both Charen and Thomas’ comments is the failure of either of them to mention the 3.8 billion dollars in yearly aid to Israel that Obama has recently signed into law. The only excuse for this omission is the unwillingness to admit that the Obama administration is doing anything at all to aid Israel. The result is that both of these writers take positions more consistent with lopsided professional propagandists than either of them would admit.

The money given to Israel amounts to about $11.50 from every man woman and child in the United States and this pledge continues every year for ten years. Given a population of about eight million Israelis, that is about $400 a year for every man woman and child in Israel. No wonder neither Charen nor Thomas want to talk about that gift. Nothing could be harder for their “Obama hates Israel” agenda to explain.

2016 Dec 29^th

Today I will comment on a recent column by Michael Barone, a long time (1971) conservative voice recently available in the Record –Eagle, our local newspaper. Mr. Barone manages to be misleading without devoting himself to inflammatory ad hominem attacks so dear to some of his fellow right-wing columnists.

Barone in his column of December 14^th made much of the fact that Trump received 33 percent more of the African American vote than did George Romney four years earlier. That is absolutely true! Running against Barak Obama, Romney got just six percent of the African American vote; against Hillary Clinton Trump got eight percent of that vote, Eight percent is 33 percent more than six percent. What an improvement!

Then on December 21^st Barone explains that money is no longer important in political contests because Clinton outspent Trump and Trump won anyway. That is absolutely true as well. But Barone neglects to talk about the “freebies” Trump got. He had 60 over an hour long rallies in August and September, all televised and none of them costing him a cent. What do you suppose that would have cost him?

On December 26^th Barone struck again. This time his title was “Some Christmas advice for pundits and partisans.” The advice for Democrats was the usual Republican response, “You lost, get over it.” He talks about the unhappiness in 1948 when Republicans were sure they would win against Truman. They ran the brave crime fighter Tom Dewey. Dewey was a moderate Republican and, unlike the isolationist Robert Taft, would probably have made a good president…but he lost to Truman in spite of polls (poorly conducted) predicting otherwise. Barone says that, “Thomas Dewey’s Hollywood celebrity supporters didn’t run ads begging electors to vote against Harry Truman. Only now has understandable disappointment given way to utter derangement.”

The suggestion that electors vote against Donald Trump was not “derangement” but was due partly to Trump’s inability to tell the truth about much of anything, his addiction to the adoration of crowds and his assertion that he could grab women’s privates and they would not object because he was rich and famous. None of that seems to bother Barone but it does bother others. I voted for Harry Truman in the 1948 election and I don’t remember Harry being accused of anything like the immaturities that many thought should keep Trump from the presidency. In point of fact, 2.8 million more Americans voted for Hilary Clinton than voted for Trump. It is Trump who can’t seem to accept that fact and insists that these were all votes by aliens. Maybe Barone should tell Trump to get over it; he might have won the Electoral College but he lost the popular vote by a lot! Not everybody was flimflammed.

2016 Dec 27^th

We now have a hissy fit by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, occasioned by our country’s failure to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlements in conquered territories. Netanyahu now accuses the US of pushing this resolution but neglects to mention that every President from Eisenhower onwards has pushed against Israel’s settlement plans for territories taken by force. Nor does Netanyahu seem to realize that thirteen nations in the UN voted in favor of this resolution with the US abstaining. Apparently, Netanyahu whose nation is already isolated from the Arab World now wants to isolate itself from the rest of the world as well. The hostility of Israeli prime ministers to American presidents has a long history and in spite of Ambassador Bolton’s comments did not begin with President Obama.

We have been told over and over that Israel is our ally and the only democracy in the middle east. We support Israel financially to the tune of about 3.8 billion dollars a year. President Obama has just approved extending this benefit for the next ten years. This amounts to just less than 500 dollars a year for every man, woman and child in Israel. Have we heard a “Thank you” from Netanyahu? Don’t hold your breath.

After the 9/11 attacks we decided to attack Al Qaida in Afghanistan. Their leader, Osama Bin Laden, bragged about the murders.  This was Operation Enduring Freedom. The number of nations offering help, in some instances trivial but in others substantial, consisted of almost all of the UN membership…except for our ally Israel. There were no Israeli troops nor any of Israel’s vaunted air force with us in Afghanistan. Evil Iran was helpful; Israel was not.

Now Trump and some other right-wingers are upset at the cost to the United States of UN membership. We do pay dues of slightly over three billion a year and that is more than the next however many nations pay altogether in membership costs. How is that fair? Why should we pay so much? This is the constant question from the UN deniers who believe we shouldn’t be in the organization no matter what it costs.

So how are the monetary contributions of member countries determined? They are based on a formula that depends very heavily on each nation’s Gross Domestic Product; relatively rich nations pay more than relatively poor nations. There is a limit however; no matter how rich the nation is, the limit of its contribution tops out at a GNP of 22 percent of the world’s GNP. Our GNP is actually 27 percent of the world’s GNP but we are only committed to that 22 percent, so as a matter of fact our dues are a bargain.

Unfortunately, a number of UN member countries, including the US, are perennially behind in dues payments.

2016 Dec 26^th

Corey Lewandowski, erstwhile Trump honcho until he was fired in June of this year, and then a CNN contributor until he resigned on November 11^th, has informed one and all that it is now OK to say, “Merry Christmas.” I hope that is retroactive because my wife and I have been saying that all along; still it’s nice to know that Corey Lewandowski thinks it’s now OK.

Mr. Lewandowski, most noted for manhandling a woman reporter, has a home in Wyndham, Massachusetts, where a few years ago he ran for township Treasurer. His very high-handed attitude led the 80-year-old incumbent to hold off retiring and run again. He swamped Corey Lewandowski by getting 1941 votes to Lewandowski’s 714. This was a few years back but Lewandowski apparently believes that nastiness will pay of if he just keeps at it.

On the 24^th  of this month my blog focused on various appointments within the Trump transition team. Well, that was then; today we find that his newly appointed Communications Director, Jason Miller, has decided, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Now we find some palace intrigue may be at work here. Miller’s wife is due to deliver a baby in January so a decision by Miller to avoid a very taxing new job with unpredictable hours is understandable. However, there are those in the Trump arena who now insinuate that some naughty behavior on Miller’s part may be more to blame than a simple desire to play the devoted husband, Indeed The famous John Edwards scandal has been mentioned. Edwards you remember was a candidate for the presidency while at the same time being a candidate for fatherhood with Rielle Hunter, a woman not his wife.

Exactly why such shenanigans should upset Donald Trump, or his fans is not clear. It does not take a very efficient long term memory to recall that The Donald, himself, fathered a child by Marla Maples a  woman not then his wife, although, admittedly he was not at the time married to Ivanka, who had already dumped him on account of his blatant affair with Maples and several other women. There isn’t much Miller could do that would cause Trump to be embarrassed without Trump looking like a hypocrite…but then he might not mind looking like a hypocrite.

While sexual indiscretions should not give any of the new Trump appointees any concern, working to abort climate change is another matter entirely. A memo was sent recently to the Energy Department from the transition team; it asked for the names of people who had worked on climate change, or attended global climate talks organized by the United Nations within the past five years. That more detailed questionnaire, on the heels of Mr. Trump’s appointment of a climate change denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency, sowed fears that the Trump administration would purge anyone involved in trying to curb the effects of climate change. Sexual peccadilloes are one thing, supporting climate change is quite another.

                   
According to Reince Priebus everything is now, at long last, going to be just dandy. Here is this Trumpeter’s Christmas comment: The message from RNC chairman, Reince Priebus says, "Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King."

Priebus is Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, a powerful position in any administration. Some people reading that message thought “the good news of a new King” meant he was talking about his new boss Donald Trump. That brought a lot of righteous wrath from Priebus who claimed he was really talking about Jesus Christ. The fact is that makes no sense. What sense does it make to say, “…two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world,” and then saying we have “the good news of a new King.” The really good news for Priebus is that none of Trump’s supporters care, and the others don’t count.

2916 Dec 25^th

I’ll ignore politics today; instead I’ll reprint a piece from “More of the Same…” a book of memoir/essays I did some years ago. This one concerns my mother’s Christmas cookies; the year was about 1950:

 

Mother’s Christmas Cookies

When I was in college many years ago, my mother made very special Christmas cookies. There was a delightful variety to choose from. There were sugar cookies, toll house cookies, gingersnap cookies and molasses cookies, among others. These cookies were good cookies. When my friends came by to pick me up for our nightly study break (A break, I might add, that usually consumed the remainder of the evening.) they would leave with their mouths and pockets stuffed. Mother didn’t mind; this was a testimonial to her baking skills.

Far more important to my mother than the taste of these cookies was their appearance. These were Christmas cookies after all, and they should look like Christmas cookies. As a consequence, mother spent more time decorating the cookies than she did baking them. Indeed I believe that my grandmother did most of the baking freeing mother to spend her time decorating them. She would put little faces on the round gingersnaps to mimic Santa’s elves. There were little white candy spots for eyes with raisins just above them for eyebrows, a red cinnamon candy for the nose, little licorice strip for the mouth and white icing for the elf’s hat. There weren’t many of these on the plate. Most of the cookies had a few minimal decorations and these, more plebeian cookies were those my buddies consumed. All but one buddy that is: Harry inevitably started with one of the fancy cookies, maybe two, before he shifted to the plainer ones.

Mother also produced a super fancy cookie: this was her Santa Claus cookie. It had a molasses cookie base in the shape of Santa’s face. The red cap, eyes, nose and mouth, and the beard were all done with carefully applied colored icing. The beard had an added detail; it was made of grated coconut imbedded in the white icing. Each plate of cookies had just one Santa Claus. Of course no one ever picked the Santa cookie, no one but good old Harry, who always gobbled up a Santa cookie, and a few other cookies as well, every time he dropped by.

Mother had intended the Santa cookies as decorations. She probably would have hung one on our Christmas tree if she had thought of it. They really weren’t intended for consumption. Of course Harry didn’t know that. He was very polite and always complimented mother on how delicious her cookies were. He never mentioned their appearance, only their taste. Mother could not understand this, if the taste was all that mattered to him why did he have to pick cookies that took half an hour to decorate instead of a more plebian cookie with the same taste?

She decided on a plan to teach Harry a lesson. She made a very special Santa cookie. It looked exactly like all the other Santa cookies, but with an important difference; this Santa’s beard was not grated coconut, but grated Ivory soap. When Harry was due she switched a genuine Santa cookie for the specially doctored version. As she usually did, she asked Harry if he’d like a cookie or two. Now there was no need for him to pick the Santa cookie, there were at least a dozen other perfectly delicious cookies on that plate, but there was only one beautiful Santa Claus cookie smiling up at him.

He picked up several cookies and put them in his pocket for later, and then he picked up the Santa Claus cookie and immediately chomped down on Santa’s beard. Harry, in later life, made his living in dramatics. He taught theatre at the University level and he directed plays. He loved an audience even back then. He was deeply engrossed in some story or other about the college we both attended and he simply gulped down that cookie. At that moment he was not interested in the cookie’s taste because he had discovered that he had an unusually attentive audience, presumably, he thought, for what was coming out of his mouth, not for what was going into it. If that Ivory soap had any effect whatever on Harry, it happened much lower down in his digestive tract than it was our privilege to observe. Mother, and dad, who was also in on the Santa bit, simply stared.

If Harry knew there was something odd about that cookie, he never showed it. And he never neglected to eat the prettiest cookie on the plate every time he had the chance.

Now to complete the story: Harry and I roomed together in Pittsburgh after we graduated from the little liberal arts college we attended. Harry took an MFA in directing from what was then Carnegie Tech and I was in graduate school at Pitt. I introduced him to the Pitt graduate student who became his wife; I was best man at his wedding. No, I don’t believe he ever found out about the doctored Santa beard.

Harry subsequently became head of the theater program at the University of Mass. and then head of their fine arts division. Like many theater people Harry was a heavy smoker. He died in a one-car accident after learning that he had inoperable lung cancer.

2016 Dec 24^th

Trump says that he has “…received a very nice letter from Vladimir Putin. His thoughts are so correct.” And so the Trump/Putin bromance continues…through Christmas at least. Later it will depend on whether or not Trump’s posture toward Russia continues on a “qualitatively” different path, that is to say, one more pleasing to Putin than Obama’s has been. At least nuclear winter can wait until after the inauguration.

At this very moment Trump is playing golf with Tiger Woods. Given that he becomes President in about 25 days, why not spend your time playing golf. Never mind that there are cabinet positions to fill and that about 4000 federal jobs must be filled very soon. Hey, maybe if he tries, he can make a birdie and win a hole against Tiger Woods.

He has filled some positions that I doubt previously existed: Dan Scavino is to be Director of Social Media (Tweets?). This is the guy responsible for at least one anti-Semitic tweet and Megyn Kelly holds him responsible for death threats she has received. Never mind, he is loyal to Trump; that’s what counts.

Hope Hicks is now Director of Strategic Communications, presumably not including tweets; that’s Scavino’s job, and not including communicating with the press, which is the job of Sean Spicer, Press Secretary.

But then there is Jason Miller who is now Communications Director, except of course communications that fall to Scavino’s social media responsibilities and Hick’s Strategic Communications, and communicating with the press which is Spicer’s job.

Now that you have your playbill sit back and enjoy the circus. Just don’t sit under the trapeze artists.

 There have already been some attempts by family members to monetize Mr. Trump’s election. The boys, Donald Jr. and Eric had a truly brilliant idea, although surprisingly insensitive even for descendants of Donald Trump. Donald Jr. is 38 years old and Eric is 32, so these men are old enough to have developed a notion  that selling access to your father on his first official day as President of the United States is a very inappropriate thing to do.

They advertised a meeting with their daddy on his very first day in office for a donation of a million dollars to their favorite charity.  Mercifully, the offer wasn’t up very long before someone pointed out that this was tacky even for Trump and company, so the offer disappeared.

Stay tuned, something equally gross will be coming along.

2016 Dec 23^rd

Patrick J. Buchanan (PJB) presents his views of the recent election, particularly on Putin and Russia’s involvement in it, or in Buchanan’s estimation non-involvement, in it. He begins by asserting that, “The never Trumpers are never going to surrender the myth that Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking…to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump.”

Who says that Putin and Russia were involved in hacking into private emails and then handing them to WikiLeaks? The authors are the Central Intelligence Agency, and now the Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined them. Buchanan, however calls that a myth. He is joining Trump’s bromance with Putin because Putin is well known to have America’s best interests at heart, unlike the FBI and the CIA.

(The CIA was criticized by Trump and friends because they claimed the CIA authored the false story about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.” In fact the CIA sent Ambassador Joe Wilson to Niger to find out if “yellowcake” a slightly processed uranium ore, had been exported to Iraq. It had not been and Wilson reported that infuriating Cheney and company. Robert Novak a right wing columnist, was so angry that he blew the cover on Joe Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame who had been a CIA clandestine operative, ending her career.)

Now Buchanan has claimed that the suggestion of Russian interference in our election is just a ruse to diminish Trump’s improbable win; after all if he had Russia’s help to win, then maybe the hated “Putin’s Puppet” title does fit.

Buchanan begins to refer to the “war party.” He writes, “If the War Party can convert this “fake story” into the real story of 2016 then they can scuttle any Trump effort to attain rapprochement with Russia…” So which is this “War Party?” It appears to be any Republicans or Democrats who are not happy to kowtow to the Kremlin.  Suggesting an Investigation of Russia’s interference in our election immediately places you in this new “War Party.”

Just today, Buchanan’s ambassador for peace, Donald J. Trump. is ramping up the nuclear arms race. He commented to Mika Brzezinski on “Morning Joe,” he said: "Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all." He said that well after Buchanan had written his commentary on the “War Party.” Poor Buchanan, how do you suppose he will handle this eruption from his hero?

2016 Dec 22^nd

And, as promised yesterday, back to good old Cal Thomas whose misleading commentaries are a delight to puncture. Thomas comments extensively on Michele Obama’s appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s program where she said that she, “Now knows what not having hope feels like.” Cal says that, “She couldn’t prove that by the polls.” That is the first piece of nonsense he utters. What have polls to do with how a particular person feel about the election? (Donald Trump excepted of course.)

He goes on to present some misleading poll evidence about the public’s love affair with The Donald. A CNN poll taken November 30 through December 5 has Trump with a 41 percent approval rating. At this point in their campaigns Obama was at 72 percent and G.W. Bush was at 62 percent approval. Only forty percent approve of his cabinet; 51 percent disapprove. Just 45 percent have confidence in Trump in an international crisis; Bush was at 70 percent on that one. Forty-one percent see him as “honest and trustworthy,” 31 percent see him as moral and just 26 percent see him as a good role model. Maybe his comment about grabbing women’s crotches did have some effect on the general electorate even if it didn’t dent Moral Majority’s erstwhile VP’s worshipful acceptance of him.

Now for Cal’s distortion of Michelle Obama’s comment: She said, “We feel what not having hope feels like.” Cal Thomas says that translates to, “Michelle Obama’s hubris that only her husband could provide hope.” Of course she never said that.  I guess if you can’t criticize what someone says, just change what you say they’ve said so as to make that criticism easier.

Then Thomas says that the Obamas sent their daughters to “elite private schools rather than bad D.C. public schools. But denied that choice to the less affluent…” Tell us exactly how the Obama’s choice of appropriate schools for their children has anything whatever to do with where anyone else sends their children to school.

Two important points here, neither of which bothers Cal Thomas:  The president’s children have secret service protection, and that of necessity must be increased when they are away from the White House. Trying to provide adequate protection for these young women if they were to attend a huge public high school would be very complicated and probably disruptive. Does Cal Thomas consider this at all? Of course not because it’s not compatible with his agenda.

Perhaps Donald Trump’s new Secretary of Education pick can improve public schools. But Betsy DeVos has never done anything to improve public schools. She seems bent on eliminating them. She has never attended one; her children have only attended private schools and DeVos has spent a part of her fortune pushing against any evaluation of the Michigan charter schools she so favors. If Cal Thomas were concerned about public school improvement, why is he so silent about DeVos? Again, it’s all about his agenda.

2016 Dec 21^st

Today we have two right wing columnists to counter; there is the “newbie” (for the local paper at least) Michael Barone and an old favorite, our Moral Majority VP friend, Cal Thomas.

The Detritus, on Dec. 14^th commented on Barone’s column as follows: 
And now for Barone’s most laughable comments, “Exit polls show that Trump …ran slightly better among non-whites than Romney did in 2012, This apparent regression to the mean, to voting more like the national average, undercuts the theory that…non-whites will remain overwhelmingly Democratic forever.”--- Ah, how wonderful is the power of distortable statistics.

Trump did get 33 percent more of the African American vote than Romney got. Of course Romney was running against an African American and Trump was running against a Caucasian woman. That should make a difference, but 33 percent? That’s a lot. But let’s look more closely:  Romney got just 6 percent of the African American vote; Trump got 8 percent of that vote, that’s an increase of 33 percent all right. But looked at another way Romney lost 94 percent of African American voters while Trump lost just 92 percent of it. That’s a measly 2 percent smaller loss; whopee for Trump! The bottom line here is that if you are going to lose 90 to 95 percent of the vote of a growing population your party is in trouble.

So what’s new today in Barone’s right wing world? His latest epiphany is that money no longer matters so much in politics. He makes this nonsensical observation on the basis that Hillary Clinton spent far more than did Donald Trump and she still lost. He doesn’t mention that while Trump won the Electoral College vote he lost the popular election by well over 2.8 million votes. Still his people believe he has a mandate because they are sure the popular vote loss was due to the vote of millions of illegal aliens.

It is true that Hillary Clinton spent far more than did Donald Trump, but Barone conveniently overlooks all of Trump’s “freebies.” In just one week, from Oct 30 to Nov 5, Trump held 21 rallies, every one televised by all of network television, and Trump paid nothing for that coverage.  The coverage was by the same “mainstream media,” that Trump insisted were scum.

In August and September of this year Trump held 59 of these hour long rallies making the usual vague promises with no explanation of how he would achieve them, and insisting that Clinton should be in jail. He paid not one dime for any of that TV time. What do you suppose those 59 hour long commercials advertising himself would have cost him if he had to pay for them. If you get a free ride, of course money isn’t as important.

Then we have Barone complaining about the Clinton campaign “…spending the bulk of their ad budget on spots decrying Trump’s character and this bombardment was augmented by mainstream media talking heads expressing horror at his latest outrage”

Clinton’s commercials against Trump usually consisted of Donald Trump’s own words. That’s all she really needed. Barone, do you remember Trump saying, on camera, that he could grab a woman’s privates and because he was rich and famous, the women wouldn’t object? That was out of Trump’s own mouth. Clinton couldn’t manufacture anything more damaging to Trump than Trump’s own utterances. That none of his comments damaged him tells you a lot about his fans.

Tomorrow I’ll get around to our Moral Majority boy’s misleads.

2016 Dec 20^th

Today we have a column by one of our favorite commentators, Dr. Thomas Sowell. His current rant is against “The New York Times” whose editorial recently irritated him because it suggested that citizens shouldn’t be allowed to carry concealed weapons. Dr. Sowell has some limited military experience…as a photographer in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. He says, “The only time I ever pointed a gun at a human being was when someone was sneaking up behind me… in the middle of the night. …I told him to stop and he stopped.” Sowell does not realize that if this person also had a gun, and had been on drugs, the outcome might have been very different; Sowell might have been stopped quite permanently.

He then takes some liberties with history by insisting that WW 2 was caused by disarmament agreements that were ignored by the Germans. They did ignore them eventually but in 1938 the French army could have crushed the German army and Hitler knew it. France and England simply lacked the will to invade Germany despite their (temporarily) superior numbers. To say that France had disarmed is to display a rank ignorance of history.

As to our citizens being armed Sowell twists the data to agree with his agenda. In 1980 51 percent of households had a gun; in 2016 that had dropped to 36 percent. Gee, Dr. Sowell, wouldn’t that drop in the percentage of households having a gun lead to an enormous increase in crime? Well, no! In fact, the crime rate in 2014, the most recent data available, is now much lower than it was in 1980 and it continues to drop.

In 1980 we had 5353 property crimes per 100 thousand of population; in 2014 that had dropped to 2565 crimes per 100 thousand of population a drop of about 50 percent; and that is with fewer households having guns.

In 1980 we had 10.2 murders per 100 thousand of population; in 2014 that had dropped to 4.5, less than half as many murders, again with fewer households having guns. Are there pockets where violence and crime have increased? Of course there are and I’m sure you can cherry pick those to try to make your case.

The distribution of gun ownership is interesting. At this writing the average gun owner owns eight guns; in 2004 that was just 6.6 guns. This increase may have to do with the false narrative circulated by conservatives that Hillary Clinton would confiscate guns. But there are folks who really do have an extreme love of guns. The top three percent of gun owners have an average of 25 guns. If the NRA is going to increase gun sales, these gun huggers will have to be the targets. Unfortunately, Trump is a staunch defender of “second amendment rights” so getting people to buy more guns to secrete them in the outhouse, the barn and under the mattress so as to hide them from the feds probably won’t work anymore.

2016 Dec 19^th

Way back in early September Hillary Clinton said that half of Trump’s supporters were deplorable, that they were racist, misogynist, homophobic, etc., etc.. Later she took it back; well, she sort of took it back. She said that she had generalized and that it probably wasn’t really half. Whatever proportion it is, it is not trivial and “deplorable” is too complimentary a label for many of them.

Here is an example of their behavior, behavior encouraged by Trump himself. An eighteen-year-old St. Anselm college student, Lauren Batchelder, attended a Trump rally in New Hampshire and was given the microphone to Ask Trump a question or two. She said that she didn’t believe he was a friend of women and would he favor equal pay for them…and would they be able to control their own bodies.

Trump claimed that they would be paid equally if thy produced equally and that he was pro-life; that latter meaning that of course their bodies weren’t their own once they got pregnant. (Presumably, once they got pregnant their bodies belonged to the state.)

Trump then in several tweets accuse Batchelder of being a Bush plant sent to disrupt his rally. Batchelder was a Bush intern but Bush is just as pro-life as Trump so that accusation makes no sense. Then the deplorables set to work.

Batchelder told the Post that her voicemail, Facebook feed and email inboxes began filling up with anonymous threats of bodily harm that were often sexual. As Trump supporters circulated her address online, she left campus in fear.

Even a year later, Batchelder says the harassment hasn’t stopped. She told the Post that five days before the election, she received a Facebook message that said, “Wishing I could f***ing punch you in the face. I’d then proceed to stomp your head on the curb and urinate in your bloodied mouth and I know where you live, so watch your f***ing back punk.”

But Trump can’t imagine his supporters doing anything like that: The president-elect says: "If my many supporters acted and threatened people like those who lost the election are doing, they would be scorned & called terrible names!"

In fact, Trump and his supporters have threatened people before. He frequently whipped up audiences at his huge rallies by railing against reporters, immigrants, Muslims and his critics. He repeatedly threatened news outlets with lawsuits. And he and his supporters have bombarded his critics on Twitter.

Then, the ultimate Irony, Ivanka Trump his daughter who will function as his first lady, says her first priority will be an effort to reduce cyber-bullying.

2016 Dec 18^th

SNL’s skit last might suggested that Trump was a Russian agent a la the Manchurian Candidate. Of course the Manchurian Candidate was hypnotized to become an assassin and it is more than a little farfetched to imagine Trump literally assassinating anybody.

On the other hand, if the Russians wanted an American president manufactured to their specifications wouldn’t Trump do very nicely? Look at the facts: The RNC had, as part of their platform sending arms to Ukraine to help them defend themselves against Russia’s incursion. Then, when it became clear that Trump had secured the party’s nomination, that particular plank in the platform was removed. No arms will go to the Ukraine. Has the Putin Puppet begun his work?

Then we have the series of Putin compliments: Putin is described by many Republicans as a murderous thug. That doesn’t matter to Trump. On “Morning Joe” he said:
"He's running his country and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country."

Trump does not understand the difference between a dictator who can order done whatever he wants done, including the murder of opponents, an d a president of a democracy whose powers are constitutionally limited. Trump the businessman is a dictator within his own organization. He can control whatever and whomever he wishes. As a businessman he doesn’t have to answer to anyone; as a president he will find his total control may be limited to his dinner menu. He will learn; in the meantime we will suffer.

All it took to get Trump to compliment Putin was for Putin to compliment Trump. Putin called Trump “bright” which is subject to interpretations other the intelligent; In Russian the same word can also mean showy or glittery. No problem because Trump was complimented enough to say, “He said something nice about me so I’ll say something nice about him.” This is Donald Trump’s idea of international diplomacy.

In addition to Trump’s curious notion of international diplomacy we have his tentative appointments of people to various positions who have absolutely declared their desire to abolish those sections of government they have been appointed to head. The Russians couldn’t accomplish that but Putin’s puppet can do it for them.

Finally, there is Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exon-Mobil. Here is a dear friend of Putin himself and Trump’s Secretary of State designate. Tillerson has receive “The order of Friendship” Russia’s highest award to non-Russians and received it from Putin’s own hand in a ceremony at Putin’s summer home.

It does look like Putin has his stars all nicely in line.

2016 Dec 17^th

Our new President-elect (assuming the Electoral College does not surprise us) is busy appointing cabinet heads. Many of these have previously claimed they are eager to demolish, or at least diminish, the departments they will now supervise. Government will surely contract.

Governor Rick Perry of Texas has been nominated to be Secretary of Energy. Some time ago the governor gained fame in a debate by trying to name federal departments he would abolish if he became president. There were three departments altogether, but that number overburdened the governor who could name only two, forgetting the Department of Energy which he soon will head. Perhaps his delightful performance of the  “Cha, cha, cha” on “Dancing with the Stars” is also what brought him to Trump’s attention. Perhaps Trump has an affinity for those who also love to perform in front of an audience.

 Trump claims a desire to “bring the country together” but there is little evidence that he is doing it. He has appointed Congressman Tom Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Price, many years ago, practiced medicine as an orthopedic surgeon. His record in congress has been to vote for bills that decreases or defund health care. He is virulently opposed to Planned Parenthood and claims that there are no women so poor that they cannot afford birth control.

Consider this trio of potential public servants: Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, whose goal is to privatize public education, not improve it.  Secretary of Energy Rick Perry who wants to take restrictions off coal combustion and remove other regulations protecting breathable air and drinkable water.  Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price whose Hippocratic oath begins with “First do no harm…” who never-the-less can’t wait to gut health care particularly for poor people. He plans to reduce funds for Medicaid and provide “Medical Savings Accounts” which allow earnings to be set aside tax free to pay health care costs…but if you are unemployed, then what? Then you’ll get 3 thousand dollars from the government to buy your own insurance and if you’re 75 years old with congestive heart failure…then what?

These folks don’t have to worry about enough money. Betsy DeVos is worth about 5 billion dollars, some of which which she uses to convince legislators that her educational ideas are best.  Neither Congressman Price nor any of his immediate relatives will ever need Medicaid. He is worth between ten and fifteen million dollars. Rick Perry is the poor boy in this crowd. His stash amounts to only three to four million, but hey, that’s enough for air purifiers if his family needs them.

2016 Dec 16

There has been much ado about Rex Tillerson, the head honcho of Exon Mobil, the super gigantically huge oil and gas company. I mentioned in an earlier piece that Tillerson earns as much in a year as a first string NFL quarterback, about 30 million dollars. Tillerson has been chosen by President –elect Trump to be his Secretary of State largely because he has been touted as an outstanding business man/administrator, and of course Trump wants to select only the “best of Breed,”... people like himself.

There have been some unpleasant comments about Mr. Tillerson’s very close friendship with Vladimir Putin, the Russian strong man. Tillerson has received Russia’s “Order of Friendship” the highest award given to a non-Russian citizen. But Tillerson’s presumed superior business skills trumped (?) all. We are told that Tillerson will now, as Secretary of State, put these skills in the service of us American citizens.

But just how great are Tillerson’s business skills? He is certainly well paid and it is said that his first loyalty has been to his shareholders. How have these shareholders done? 

Ten years ago the company’s stock, XOM, was $71.68 a share, now it is $90.78 a share. That is a gain of a little over 26 percent. There were dividends as well, about 3 percent a year.

Suppose instead of putting your money in XOM you had settled for an index fund based on the Standard and Poor’s index of 500 stocks, the SPY. If you had put your money in the SPY in ten years it would have gone up over 59 percent, better than twice as much as XOM’s stock improved. The SPY also pays a dividend, a little less than XOM’s.

As we all know, the price of oil has sagged badly in the last few years so maybe Tillerson has done a heroic job to keep his company’s stock from going through the floor. It is also possible that Trump chose him for reasons quite apart from his business savvy. Recall Trump’s cozy relationship with Putin; maybe he wants a Secretary of State nicely primed to keep that relationship intact. Maybe that’s why Tillerson is his man.

John Bolton the white mustached, whiteeye browed warrior, is apparently a favorite for the job as deputy Secretary of State. This is the person who runs things while the premier person is off visiting foreigners.  Bolton was named ambassador to the UN as a recess appointment by G.W. Bush but he didn’t last long. His bellicosity was not in favor then and it isn’t now either. Senator Rand Paul has said that he will do whatever it take to.insure his appointment fails, The Senator will surely have some help.

The alternative to Bolton may be Rudy Giuliani. There’s a choice maybe Trump will let Tillerson make for himself.

2016 Dec 15^th

Cal Thomas’ column today deals with “fake news.” That is certainly a worthy topic because the amount of fake news has been increasing and it is dangerous. Thomas describes a fake news story “about Hillary Clinton being involved in a child sex ring run out of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant.” That is accurate and Thomas goes on to say that this fake news story prompted “a deranged man with a gun to fire shots inside the place in hopes of liberating the children.” Fortunately, no one was killed. Thomas has gone to some length to describe this scary event but, curiously, he can’t bring himself to tell us who made up this fake story to begin with. Wouldn’t you think that information was important? Perhaps it wasn’t really important because the originators were Lt. General Mike Flynn, Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor to be, and his son Michael Flynn Jr.  Since the tweets declaring this fabulist tale appeared, General Flynn has deleted his contribution and son Mike Junior has been summarily fired from Trump’s transition team.

Here is a bit more about Flynn and his impressive imagination:

In the since-deleted tweet from Nov. 2, Flynn linked to a story on TruePundit.com that falsely claimed the FBI investigation into Anthony Weiner had turned up evidence "to put Hillary (Clinton) and her crew away for life."

"U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!" Flynn's tweet read.

Retired Lt. Gen. Flynn has proven to be a controversial choice for Trump. He has tweeted that fear of Muslims is rational and, as CNN's KFile previously reported, he has shared fake news stories and interacted with conspiratorial figures on social media.

In one such instance, from July, Flynn shared a tweet that falsely claimed Clinton wore a hijab in solidarity with Islamic terrorists. (She wore a head scarf.) In another tweet from October, Flynn retweeted a baseless claim that the UN was attempting to create a one-world church that prohibited Christianity.

In speeches he has given throughout the year, he has claimed without evidence that Sharia law was being implemented in states and that Arabic signs on the border guided potential terrorists into the US.

Flynn’s subordinates at his previous post in Defense Intelligence began referring to these fables as “Flynn Facts.” This is the President’s new National Security Advisor. If Flynn belongs in an institution it is not any part of the government.

Thomas goes on to describe what he believes is fake news and not once does he include anything presented by the political right. He does not mention Trump’s years’ long insistence that President Obama was born abroad and thus his entire presidency was illegitimate. Now that Obama has released his birth certificate, Trump says that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

Most Trump voters still believe Obama wasn’t born in this country and more than half believe that he is a Muslim. I would be willing to bet that about a month after Trump moves into the White house General Flynn will have a press conference to show several beautiful prayer rugs he claims to have found hidden under the mattress in the Lincoln Bedroom.

2016 Dec 14^th

This morning’s paper carries a very rarely seen columnist’s advice to the Democratic Party. The columnist is Michael Barone who writes for the “Washington Examiner,” a low circulation (40,000) weekly Washington D.C. paper devoting itself to pushing a conservative agenda. Barone is also a resident fellow at “The American Enterprise Institute.” These credentials give you some idea of what to expect. However, look at the title: It is “Democratic Party,” not the usual snide right wing “Democrat Party,” so be encouraged!

He quickly returns to snide by telling his readers that, “The first thing the Democrats must do is to end the alibi game.” The Republicans were quick to analyze the reasons for their defeat in 2012; so was that just an “alibi game” or a legitimate analysis of reasons?  What’s the difference? It seems if you aren’t sympathetic to the loser these are alibis; if you are sympathetic, they are reasons.

Barone says, “Don’t blame “fake news” when your candidate had lots to spend delivering her message.” What nonsense! What did it cost Trump for the air time on most networks to cover his lengthy speeches from beginning to end nearly every night. Trump was getting freebies from the very media he so delighted in condemning. Fake news can’t be combatted by simple denial. What good did it do Obama to deny that he was born in Kenya; Trump had insisted for years, on no evidence at all, that President Obama was not born in this country and therefore his presidency was illegitimate.  About two thirds of Trump supporters still believe that and about an equal number believe he is Muslim. Does Barone really believe that enough campaign money can change those opinions?

Barone says, “Don’t blame the FBI director when your candidate violated criminal laws and the Attorney General had to disqualify herself after a secret meeting with the candidate’s husband.” More baloney: The FBI head said that there was not enough evidence of criminality to prosecute Mrs. Clinton, and as to this secret meeting…It was indiscreet but surely no secret that the two of them were chatting and walking up the steps of the Attorney General’s plane. The film of this were played in and endless loop. Perhaps Barone didn’t see that…some secret meeting!

And now for Barone’s most laughable comments, “Exit polls show that Trump …ran slightly better among non-whites than Romney did in 2012, This apparent regression to the mean, to voting more like the national average, undercuts the theory that…non-whites will remain overwhelmingly Democratic forever.” Ah, how wonderful is the power of distortable statistics.

Trump did get 33 percent more of the African American vote than Romney got. Of course Romney was running against an African American and  Trump was running against a Caucasian woman. That should make a difference, but 33 percent? That’s a lot. But let’s look more closely:  Romney got just 6 percent of the African American vote; Trump got 8 percent of that vote, that’s an increase of 33 percent all right. But looked at another way Romney lost 94 percent of African American voters while Trump lost just 92 percent of it. That’s a measly 2 percent smaller loss; whopee for Trump! The bottom line here is that if you are going to lose 90 to 95 percent of the vote of a growing population your party is in trouble.

The Latino vote is similar; Trump got 29 percent of that vote to Romney’s 27 percent. Again, if you are losing 70 to 75 percent of a rapidly expanding cohort you shouldn’t be congratulating yourself. It is true that Trump’s performance here is surprising given his grossly insulting comments about Mexican immigrants, but it isn’t something to crow over…and Barone is doing a lot of crowing.

2016 Dec 13^th

The way to get an appointment as head of a cabinet department in the Trump administration is to declare that you wish to abolish that department.  The case in point is the fact that Trump, today, will name his erstwhile antagonist former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as Head of the Energy Department. Perry is notorious because in a debate he volunteered that he wanted to eliminate three cabinet departments and then named two that had to go but he just couldn’t remember the third…the third, he said later, was the Department of Energy which he now will head. The Department of Energy is on the list of “bad guys” by fans of the gas and oil industry because the Department’s stock in trade is restricting these companies from contaminating the environment and killing their employees and other people in the vicinity. Well, pshaw; what killjoys they are!

Mr. Tillerson of ExxonMobil has officially been tapped as Secretary of State… if he can be confirmed. I hope he has saved his salary because he will take quite a cut. I believe his salary last year fell to a measly 28 million, about on a par with an NFL quarterback. Now as Secretary of State, he’ll take a 93 percent salary cut to 205 thousand a year. (The sacrifices some business people are called to make for their country!)

He might have a problem in his confirmation hearings because he lobbied forcefully against imposing sanctions on Russia after their incursions into Crimea and Ukraine. But, as one of his promoters said this morning, most business people oppose most economic sanctions. I mean asking business people to forego economic gain for the good of the country; what will be next?

We now have john Bolton as assistant Secretary of State. Bolton is another “chicken hawk.” He supported the Vietnam War from the relative safety of the Yale Law School campus. He is sure the Iraq War was a good idea, flawed intelligence or not. And he believes the CIA intelligence about Russia interfering in our election was in fact a Clinton plant. It was really the Clinton camp just pretending to be the Russians. (We’ve seen Yale Law School graduates in government before haven’t we.)

Why is this man being considered? Follow the money! He is backed by the Mercer father and daughter, major contributors to the Trump campaign. You remember Trump explained that his campaign was impervious to the influence of contributors because he  himself was so rich. Well, maybe not because The Mercers were major donors to Trump, and Bolton is one of their favorite people. The curios question is:  What, if anything, did  Tillerson the new Secretary of State designate have to say about having to deal with this curiosity as his assistant secretary of state.  He will be asked and you can bet he’ll whitewash Bolton until you won’t recognize him. It’ll be his first truly diplomatic performance.

2016 Dec 12^th

This morning General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, was interviewed on “Morning Joe.” This is one impressive guy; the only comparison I’ve heard interviewed by them is when they bring on Mika Brzezinski’s father, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. (Mika is vaultingly sincere but she provides an excellent example of intellectual regression to the mean. Of course she has a considerable distance to drop before she gets to average.)

Now, lest we bury the lead, General Hayden clarified the problem in the apparent contradiction between the FBI declaring that there was no evidence that Russian hacking had interfered in our election and the CIA concluding that Russia had done exactly that. The fact that Trump has belittled the CIA’s conclusion is no surprise and has nothing to do with his manufacturing of their past “failure” with the weapons of mass destruction gambit. Actually it is quite the opposite.

 You may recall that Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent on a mission to determine if yellow cake, a barely refined source of Uranium, had been shipped to Iraq from Niger in Africa. Yellow cake could be further refined and used to make nuclear weapons. This mission was financed by the CIA and was with the knowledge of Niger’s ambassador. George Bush had pushed the notion that some aluminum tubes ordered by Iraq were for use in centrifuges so it was important to find Iraq importing yellow cake…only Ambassador Wilson found they were not doing that at all.

This finding infuriated the war party led by Cheney and so in revenge they outed Valerie Plame, Joe Wlson’s wife, who worked as a clandestine CIA operative; the journalist Robert Novak leaked this information, destroying Plame’s career.

The upshot is that evidence of Russian activity in our election gleaned from foreign sources is not available to the FBI whose activities are, by law, only within the borders of this country. When DNC and RNC materials hacked by Russia appear in foreign sourced articles only the CIA will know about it. Instead of bring these agencies closer to cooperating with each other, an outcome surely in the national interest, Trump has further driven a wedge between them and this seems entirely because any hint that Russia might have influenced his win, in his mind, detracts from his importance. As we all know anything detracting from Donald Trump’s importance cannot be tolerated by Donald Trump.

He may also have some problems if he picks Tillerson as his Secretary of State. Two Putin puppets may be more that the Senate can handle. Senator Rubio has expressed doubts and others may come forward as well. Then there is the fact that Tillerson spoke strongly against sanctioning Russia over their invasion of Crimea and Ukraine. The question will arise: “Whose side is he on?”

2016 Dec 11^th

After listening to Reince Preibus trying to worm his way out of acknowledging Russia’s playing about in our election, I decided to reach into the memoir bag. Here is my disastrous experience learning German. From “And Yet Again…”:

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

My father’s ancestors were German. When they immigrated to Pennsylvania they were called Pennsylvania Dutch, the “Dutch” was a corruption of Deutsch—for German. When they got here, like most immigrant groups they stayed to themselves and kept their customs and their language. In fact, the historical record shows that old Ben Franklin was very upset about this “race” coming into Pennsylvania and corrupting the English language. I guess times don’t change at all—think Miami!

You would suppose that I might have had some genetic predisposition to find German grammar easy to learn. I did not. “You have your wife a ring bought,” is the German equivalent of “You have bought your wife a ring.”  There are far worse examples. I first took German when I transferred from one college to another and discovered that the college to which I transferred required two years of a modern foreign language. I thought I might want to go to graduate school, and if I did I would have to have a reading knowledge of German. Naturally, I signed up for German. I considered Spanish, but I had two years of Spanish in high school and I managed to learn very little Spanish. I have always been able to pass courses and earn a respectable “C” without learning much of anything. It is a skill I share with some high government officials and with my sons.

My German instructor was a sixty-something woman who was very enamored of German “Kultur,” culture that is. Many of the men in Miss Bachmann’s class were veterans of WW 2 and their experiences had not led them to become wild about German kultur. Even so, as you will see, it was an easy sell. Miss Bachmann taught her class recitation fashion. The first twenty minutes or so were devoted to instruction in German syntax, grammar and other exotica; the last thirty minutes were for translations. She would start around the class and we would translate the German text that we had been assigned for homework. You kept translating until Miss Bachmann had formed an opinion of how well you understood what you had read. Fortunately, she did this by going right down the rows. We were seated in alphabetical order. This made it easier for her to identify us and to give us a grade. It also let us figure, out a little in advance, what section of text we would be called on to translate. By whipping out the little pocket dictionary we could translate enough to survive even if we’d never looked at the assignment before. We had learned that if someone, usually a vet, brought up a question about German customs, or German history, or German anything which would give Bachmann an excuse to get into German sociology, recitation was cancelled for the day. (Bachmann also taught the introduction to sociology class. There she was known to pause occasionally and instruct the class on some of the peculiarities of German grammar. It was an interesting college; I have written about it elsewhere.)

I eventually graduated from that college and managed, as was my wont, to have a “C” average through two years of German while learning very little. I did develop a splendid German accent which helped me perform the role of a German professor in, “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

When I started graduate school the PhD language exam was of no concern; it was impossibly far into the future. Well, futures have a way of becoming imminent if you wait long enough. After I got my master’s degree and passed my PhD comprehensive exams my advisor told me to sign up for the language exam and get it out of the way. Sure, I’ll do that.

I discovered that the test was really very simple. You were given two pages of German and a very generous amount of time to translate it into English. Moreover, you could bring a dictionary into the exam with you. I flunked it anyway. I was accustomed to failing things in my previous academic incarnation but not anymore. Graduate students rarely get “C”s let alone “D”s and “F”s. A “C” is a failing grade in most graduate schools. If you get more than two “C”s in your coursework you will probably be terminated from your graduate program. If you fail your doctoral comprehensive exam you are gone. There are no do-overs. It isn’t written anywhere; it’s just common knowledge.

Fortunately for me the language exam was seen differently. My advisor was very casual about this. “Just take it again next time it’s offered,” he said. OK, I’ll do that—and maybe I’ll do some reviewing as well. The exam was given three times a year by the German department. I got some vocabulary flash cards and tried to learn what was on them. I became very familiar with those German words that I saw over and over again but I didn’t learn their English equivalents. I flunked the exam again. That’s not all. I flunked it a third time. Keep in mind they didn’t give us the same couple of pages to translate each time we took the test. I was getting desperate. I was finishing my dissertation. I had a job offer. I had to pass this damned test!

 I decided to get a tutor. I called the German department and told them I’d like to hire a tutor for a few hours a week. They gave me a name and a price I could handle because I had to. I was to meet the tutor, a part-time faculty member, in her office the next day. I arrived promptly at the appointed hour and met Miss Hannah Stern. I recounted my pathetic previous attempts to pass this exam,  and how important it was that I succeed on this try. We got down to business at once. She asked me how much German I‘d had. I told her I’d had two years of college German but that it was some time ago and that I hadn’t done very well in the class. She gave me a German novel and told me to begin translating. I stumbled through the first sentence and Miss Stern took that novel away and gave me a textbook instead. This was much easier. I got through the first three sentences when Miss Stern said, “…and you have had two years of German?”  She was incredulous. Then she said, “We have a lot of work to do.”

The next exam was six weeks away. The tutor was engaged three times a week. I went back to the flash cards with renewed intent. That didn’t last long. I hated the damn things. This seemed to require not so much understanding as rote memorizing. I gave it my best shot and waited for doomsday. Exam time came soon enough. Fraulein Stern (She insisted that we communicate in German) wished me “viel gluck,” which is, very approximately, “good luck.” I needed it.

The exam was just as it had been on its three previous incarnations. I took the full three hours and was one of the last to leave. We were allowed all the time we needed but the examiners could not imagine anyone needing more than three hours to translate two pages of simple German. We were not given a selection from Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.”  Now I had to wait. I was not optimistic Oh well; the results wouldn’t be out for a week so I’d be anxious for a week and after that I’d be depressed.

The day after the exam my phone rang and it was Miss Stern, “Mr. Klugh,” she said, “I have called to tell you that you have passed your German examination.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said, “but I thought the results wouldn’t be posted until next week.”

“That’s true,” she said, “but I corrected your paper and I thought you’d like to know the results now.”

I don’t remember the rest of that conversation but rest assured “danke” was very prominent in it.

It has been more than 60 years since I passed my German exam and got my PhD. I have never, in all that time, not even once, needed this “tool of research” and that is a very good thing.

2016 Dec 10^th

An interesting story was told by Rachel Maddow (Ravin’ Rachel) last night. It seems that our CIA had discovered incontrovertible evidence of Russian attempts to influence our election by leaking emails from the Clinton camp that would favor Donald Trump.  Such shenanigans had been suspected for some time but now our electronic spooks had the goods on their electronic spooks. The immediate problem for the administration was what to do about this information.

When in doubt call a meeting so the blame for any stupid decisions can be shared. A meeting of the principle deciders from the congress was called. This meeting was held in a room outfitted with the latest technology to prevent un-authorized evesdropping. To be decided was whether or not to release this admittedly explosive stuff just before the most vitriolic election in living history.

No one would be surprised to find that because this information about Russian interference in our election would be a negative for Trump, that his supporters would want it suppressed. They did just that: The Majority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, essentially said no way should this information be released to the public. His political buddies fell into line and this intelligence was not released…and Hillary Clinton lost.  Might she have won if the information had been released that Trump was Putin’s puppet? I doubt it because most all of Trump’s voters would have refused to believe it and would have assumed that it was a Hillary Clinton trick. Now that it has been released, Trump claims that it is simply not true, that the CIA is not to be trusted because they insisted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. (Not true, that interpretation of the data was the Bush Administration’s, particularly Dick Cheney’s.)

Donald Trump is not an ingrate. You remember that Senator Mitch McConnell was a staunch resistor of releasing this potentially damaging information about the Trump campaign. Guess whose wife is now Secretary of Transportation in the Trump cabinet: Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife.

The CEO of Exxon-Mobil, Rex Tillerson, is the new front runner for the premier Trump cabinet position, Secretary of State. We can safely move him from front runner to shoe-in because Tillerson is in a very cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin and any friend of Vladimir Putin is surely a dear friend of Donald Trump. Tillerson as an oil and gas man has helped Russia develop remote oil reserves and those developments have helped to increase Putin’s net worth. Putin is so fond of Tillerson that he awarded him Russia’s “Order of Friendship,” the highest award that can be given to a non-Russian citizen. Moreover, Putin made this presentation at his summer home. I’m sure Trump wants to cement further his cozy Kremlin relationship and there is no better way to do that than to make Tillerson his Secretary of State. If Tillerson is appointed maybe that will finally trigger some Republican backbone at confirmation time…but then maybe not!

2016 Dec 9^th

I’ll take a brief look at some of Trump’s recent cabinet picks. Trump has said that he prefers to appoint very successful people to these positions because they will then use their success to benefit the entire country. That might pass inspection if we don’t look at his picks too closely. Of course it is occasionally ridiculous, as in the case of Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary, who simply came into the possession of a five billion dollar fortune by being born into the right family. That is a skill set she probably can’t share.

Linda McMahon, once the CEO of World Wide Wrestling, is to be head of the Small Business Administration. It is certainly true that Linda and her husband have grown their company from a small pay per view outfit to a company grossing worth well over a billion dollars. Linda tried a run for the senate in Connecticut and lost after spending over a hundred million on the effort. Now, by donating just over six million to Trump’s campaign she gets to be in his administration. She wins political success at last, and it cost so little

The new EPA head is Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier just like his boss and who, as Attorney General of Oklahoma is suing the organization he now heads. No matter what happens there he can’t lose…or looked at another way, he can’t win. Breathe deeply while you  still can do it without coughing.

The Department of the Interior goes to Cathy McMorris-Rogers, currently employed as a representative from a district in eastern Washington State. The new head of this department plans to open lots of federal land to oil and gas drilling. Again, see Yellowstone while your view is unobstructed by oil derricks. Of course, maybe Trump will sell some of Interior’s National Parks to the Chinese to compensate for the federal revenue lost by his tax reduction plan for millionaires.

Mike Pompeo is the new and very hawkish CIA director. Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point and as soon as his military obligation was finished, he was off to Harvard Law. He is virulently anti-Muslim and a firm believer in internet surveillance. He seems not much bothered that his anti-Muslim attitude would alienate non-radicalized Muslims whom we need to discover the radical ones. Pompeo is sure they are all alike.

The new Secretary of Labor is Andrew Puzder. He is the CEO of a fast food chain and although he is Secretary of Labor, he is no friend of labor. He is not in favor of any minimum wage, just another plutocrat who wants the government to help him support his employees.

Puzder has an affinity for ads showing very scantily clad young women eating his sandwiches in near orgiastic ecstasy. One of these ads shows a well-endowed model pretending to eat a substantial hot dog, except she never bites it, she just keeps sliding it in and out of her mouth. Many TV stations have refused to show these commercials. When asked about them Puzder claims that he sees nothing wrong with pretty girls eating his restaurant’s product.

So much for our new Secretary of Labor and Soft Core Pornography.

2016 Dec 8^th

This morning’s paper caries a column by Thomas Sowell titled “The Left’s political gambles.” For a party that just elected to the presidency an admitted lecher without any political experience and who is enthralled by Vladimir Putin, I thought that any “gambles” by the left would, by comparison, be modest indeed.

So who is Thomas Sowell? Dr. Thomas Sowell is a very conservative columnist whose doctorate is in economics. His degree, from the University of Chicago, indicates that Sowell is very academically talented. (It is important not to conflate academic talent with judgment or with general intelligence. They are correlated but they are certainly not co-extensive.)

Sowell’s point here is that liberals have taken choices away from people. He gives examples: “Something as personal as what doctor we want to go to has been taken out of our hands by Obama Care. What job offer at what pay rate someone wants to accept has been taken out of their hands by minimum wage laws. …people who are dying are prevented from trying a new medication if it has not completed the long years of tests required by federal regulations.”

His very first claim is not true. You can contract with any physician who will take you as a patient and ACA cannot interfere with that relationship. When it comes to paying for that physician’s fee you might find that he/she is not part of the service providers signed up by your insurance company. That is different. If you want to pay the physicians fee nothing stands in the way. Keep in mind that some physicians don’t accept Medicare or Medicaid payment either.

It’s true that ACA needs some repair but even Trump claims that providing insurance for preexisting conditions must be kept and that policy is the driver of costs. Still, his statement that the ACA means you can’t choose your doctor is standard right wing exaggeration

As to minimum wage laws keeping you from getting “the job you want at the pay rate you are willing to accept” is also nonsense. Sowell says that at 17 he “ left home and went out into the world as a black high school dropout.” He claims that it was far easier for him to find a job then because the minimum wage had become meaningless due to inflation. Of course the fact that this black high school dropout was surely articulate and savvy enough to ultimately get a doctorate in economics from a premier university is not something to consider. Any 17-year-old black kid could have done that; it just took a very low minimum wage to get started.

What Sowell doesn’t mention is the fact that many minimum wage earners are not teen agers and that they will all be eligible for food stamps because their paltry earnings qualify them for this subsidy at the public’s expense. Sowell’s idea of public largesse is to but a door in the sides of dumpsters to make access easier for those dumpster divers who depend on this food source.

His last claim isn’t true either. Experimental drugs not yet approved by the FDA for general use can be approved for compassionate use. Below is a paragraph  from the FDA’s website. If Sowell weren’t so intent on pushing his agenda he might get some accurate information and avoid writing ridiculous columns.

Expanded access, sometimes called "compassionate use," is the use outside of a clinical trial of an investigational medical product (i.e., one that has not been approved by FDA). FDA is committed to increasing awareness of and knowledge about its expanded access programs and the procedures for obtaining access to human investigational drugs (including biologics) and medical devices.