2017 Jan 7^th

Today’s news is dominated by the murder of five people in a Florida airport. They got the guy who did it; after killing five people and wounding eight others he spread-eagled himself on the floor and waited to be arrested.

This gives Rick Scott, the Florida Governor, a splendid opportunity for publicity as he assures his citizens the he will keep them safe and that he sure hopes tourists won’t decide to go elsewhere. He also has several conversations with President-elect Trump but none with President Obama. You would suppose that Governor Scott, being in government, would know that a sitting President can be considerably more helpful, if help is needed, than a President elect who has no power to do much of anything except tweet.

Keep in mind that Rick Scott has a history of activities that would lead one to conclude that he isn’t the brightest light in the window. He has decreed that the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” cannot appear in any official document of the State of Florida. As you know much of Florida is not far above sea level. A sea rise of just six inches would cripple South Florida’s flood control system.

The Governor’s remedy for this problem is just don’t talk about it and maybe it will go away. That is rather like trying to eliminate death by outlawing obituary columns and funeral homes.

In the case of the airport killer, there isn’t much that Scott could have done to prevent that tragedy, nor is there anything he can do to prevent it from happening again. The killer, Esteban Santiago, boarded the plane in Anchorage, Alaska. He had a handgun in his luggage, where its transport was entirely legal. He had previously brought himself to the attention of the Anchorage FBI office by asserting that he was hearing voices controlled by the CIA pushing him toward joining ISIS. They called local police who had him examined by someone in the mental health community. He had been in service and discharged as unfit; he had been accused of violent behavior by his girlfriend but none of these made it illegal for him to buy a firearm.

Unless a judge has determined that you are mentally incompetent, or you have been incarcerated for mental issues, Alaska allows you to buy and carry a handgun. Part of the problem is a lack of standards for what constitutes a “mental health professional.” You can be licensed in most states if you get a master’s degree from an online “University,” have so many supervised hours of counseling, which might consist of a supervisor with an office down the hall and never in your entire experience have spoken to a person exhibiting psychotic symptoms. Until there is some recognition of the difference between a person with a doctorate from a legitimate university and a diplomate in clinical psychology and the MA level counselor from “Online U,” the problem will continue.

Now there seems to be an effort to declare that Santiago had been “radicalized.” The belief that this was another example of an ISIS attack would bolster our new president’s enthusiasm for his undefined “extreme vetting.” But Santiago was an American citizen; he wasn’t an immigrant although not being an immigrant he could still have been radicalized; so far that’s a stretch. It looks like it was just those voices in his head. Like many others he was a law abiding citizen until he started killing people.

2017 Jan 6^th

Consider for a few minute the thesis that Donald J. Trump, President–elect of the United States is a Russian agent. All right, we both know he isn’t, in part because the Russians are too smart to tolerate as agent a sexually precocious nine-year-old inhabiting a 70-year-old’s slightly paunchy body.  He just took time from his presumably crowded schedule to tweet a chortle about Arnold Schwarzenegger whose Celebrity Apprentice TV show didn’t draw the viewers it had when The Donald was host. Such things are much more important to Trump than preparing to be President.

But if Trump isn’t a Russian plant exactly how is his behavior any different than it would have been if he were a Russian plant? Short answer is it isn’t! He has marginalized James Locksley the former CIA director who was advising his transition team. The transition team stopped notifying Locksley of their meetings so Locksley had no input. He didn’t want his name associated with the mess about various intelligence agencies, so he quit. Who can blame him.

Trump is left with General Flynn, the hyper-active former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency until he was fired for a combination of miss-management and so many made up tales that they became known around the agency he headed as “Flynn facts.” He was fired by his boss James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. Shortly after the results of the election were known Clapper announced his own resignation. Trump, who favors payback might make the previously fired General Flynn the new Director of National Intelligence. That isn’t really likely because Flynn as an advisor to Trump needs no congressional approval; as Director of National intelligence he might have some hurdles to jump over.

Flynn has also had fun sitting with Putin after he gave well-paid speeches to RT, the Russian news agency controlled by Putin. Now we have the new Secretary of State Tillerson getting a personal medal from Putin; Trump’s personal advisor on security issues giving paid speeches and dinning with Putin; Trump claiming that he believes Julian Assange the originator of WikiLeaks, when he says he never got anything from Russian intelligence rather than our intelligence services who are sure that’s where Assange got his stories.

At this point Trump has done a great job of dissing the intelligence agencies. Admiral Rodgers, the Director of the National Security Agency, went further, expressing his concern that damage to the morale of the intelligence community’s professional workforce could potentially lead to the departures of key personnel.

“What we do is in no small part driven in part by the confidence of our leaders in what we do,” said Rogers. “And without that confidence, I just don’t want a situation where our workforce decides to walk.”

For someone whose signature campaign promise was to “Make America Great Again,” publicly trashing one of the fundamental pillars of the country’s national security apparatus seems an odd way to go about restoring the country’s greatness in the eyes of the world.

There it is: Trump has some VIP members of his new team who are dear friends of Putin; he has trashed the intelligence services that are supposed to provide him with information to protect the country because he doesn’t believe them. After he received the nomination, he insisted the RNC platform remove a plank aiming to provide Ukraine with weapons. I ask you; if you were Putin what more could you want of a plant who isn’t even in office yet.

OK so he isn’t a Russian agent, what’s the difference.

2017 Jan 5^th

We hear that the new administration will cancel what they call Obamacare (The Affordable Care Act) on “day one.” What ever happened to saying you were going to do something, immediately, or as soon as we can, or on the first day? Does no one in the new administration plan to do anything on “day two.” The substitute plan the Trumpites propose won’t be ready for some time. In other words they haven’t agreed on a substitute plan yet. When asked what people will do for insurance between the promised immediate cancellation of the ACA and this nebulous substitute plan, Republicans assure everyone that nothing will change.  Say what? You are cancelling the ACA; you don’t yet have a replacement, but nothing will change. Sounds like Abbott and Costello are at it again!

Kellyanne Conway always provides some interesting comments. Not long ago Kellyanne said she wanted no part of a job in the Trump White House. She gave us the usual reasons, she had children with whom she needed to spend time. There were four pre-teens and a husband to think of and a White House job would be just too time consuming, so no thank you. Well then The Donald placed his siren call and Kellyanne came running. Maybe she figured hubby could look after the kids; not likely, because George Conway, an attorney, is on the short list to be solicitor general. At least they’ll have plenty of cash for D.C. posh schools and for after school baby sitters.

Trump is known for his thin skin; if he can construe a remark as insulting then he will be insulting right back at the remark’s originator. This is not a smart characteristic for a politician to have, but 70-year-old Trump has it and he will probably keep it. This tendency to revenge might be shared by son-in-law, Jared Kushner.  One of Trump’s earliest supporters was New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Christie shared the early stage with Trump…and then he was gone. Christie had recommended many people for various jobs in the Trump administration; not one of his suggestions was accepted. This was in spite of a drumbeat about Trump’s loyalty to his friends. Jared Kushner’s father had a legal issue with Christie when Christie was a prosecutor. Kushner Senior, a real estate tycoon, boke a number of laws and Christies put him in jail for a year. Now it’s payback time. The final nail in the coffin lid is the hiring by Trump of Bill Stepien as political advisor. Christie fired Stepien because Christie found him untrustworthy. Christie is a belligerent type “A” and you can bet Christie will find some way soon to stick it back to The Donald.

Trump has also had a go-round with Senator Schumer. This was a classic example of the Trump mentality…or lack of it. Schumer said that perhaps he could work with Trump on some issues; Trump responded immediately by saying he liked Schumer better than either Senator McConnell of Speaker of the House Ryan. That is an amazingly stupid comment from a President-elect who will have to work with both McConnell and Ryan, important leaders of his party. Not to worry; Schumer said something complimentary about the ACA and Trump immediately began calling him a “clown.”

This will be an interesting year.

2017 Jan 4^th

A long time ago there was an irregular guest on the old Jack Paar show named Alexander King. Mr. King, as with many Paar guests, was an irascible humorist, author and all ‘round character. His parting shot as he left his seat as a guest was to say to Paar, “May your house be safe from tigers.” Eventually came this exchange: Paar “Why do you always say ‘may your house be safe from tigers’?” King replied, “Has your house ever been attacked by tigers?” Paar, “Well, no.” King, “Now you know why.” Preserving Paar’s house from tigers is a lot easier than preserving our country from Donald Trump.

I listened to Paul Ryan and Mike Pence give an abbreviated press conference within the past few minutes. The primary topic was the replacement of the Affordable Care Act. Ryan was asked about the replacement, but about all he could talk about was how awful the ACA was. When asked about the acts replacement he claimed the incoming administration had many ideas. That’s political speak for they really don’t know exactly what they’ll replace it with.

The leading candidate for replacing the ACA is a program to provide everyone with a tax-free portion of their own income to buy insurance. The sum mentioned is five thousand dollars. If you’re making 20 thousand a year, (That’s about ten dollars an hour, well above the minimum wage,) setting aside five thousand dollars for insurance will probably be just a tad difficult. Do these politicians really believe a family of four, and with some members with health problems, can buy decent health insurance by paying about 420 dollars a month? One day in Intensive Care will cost you, or your insurance, about 2,800 dollars.

If you are unemployed, these Republicans will provide you with three thousand dollars with which to buy insurance. That’s 250 dollars a month. So an unemployed man with a family of four will have 250 a month to buy insurance; on what planet? That’s almost as sick a joke as nominating Trump for the presidency!

I just watched a Republican congressman interviewed who said that some years ago when he had graduated from college jobs were plentiful and so was healthcare for employees. Then he said, “Now with this terrible economy….” The interviewer never interrupted to remind him that the current unemployment rate is below 5 percent. Why these Republicans are allowed to lie about the economy must be because if the interviewer got a reputation for correcting the lies, the interviewers would have no “guests.”

Then we have the Republican complaints about how awful it was for President Obama to use executive orders to get anything dome. His executive orders were just anathema to all those Republican obstructionist. Guess what technique Trump plans to use to counter Obama’s programs? You guessed it, he’ll use executive orders.

2017 Jan 3^rd

It was inevitable, although I didn’t believe the Republicans would have recognized the need to act so quickly. The House of Representatives have tried to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). This move will make that group report to the House Ethics Committee, a group best known for its expertise at whitewashing the ethical failures of   house members.

The OCE was created in March 2008 after the cases of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., who served more than seven years in prison on bribery and other charges; as well as cases of former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who was charged in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and pleaded guilty to corruption charges and former Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., convicted on corruption in a separate case.

The proposal would bar the OCE from reviewing any violation of criminal law by members of Congress, requiring that it turn over complaints instead to the House Ethics Committee . The House Ethics Committee would also have the power to stop an investigation at any point and bars the ethics office from making any public statements about any matters or hiring any communications staff. That’ll show them. We don’t need no ###### ethics committee so they can just shut the hell up; right boys?

The full House of Representatives will vote on this as part of a larger rules package up for consideration Tuesday, so by the time you read this it might be moot…or maybe when Trump comes in ethics concerns will leave the building.

Currently the ethics panel operates as an independent, non-partisan entity that has the power to investigate misconduct against lawmakers, officers and staff of the United States House of Representatives. Originally created by Congress under Nancy Pelosi's speakership in the wake of multiple lobbying scandals, it continued to act as an independent body under then-House Speaker John Boehner. Maybe  ethics are  less a concern in the Trump administration.

BULLETIN! Now we know; the proposed change in the OCE was defeated by a vote of the full house! Score one for ethics. There is nothing like publicity to sanitize public policy. I heard comments from an attorney who had worked for the OCE. His opinion was that this group will try again when no one is paying quite so much attention. He also commented on the so-called excesses of this committee such as complained about by congressman King of Iowa. The attorney claimed that these excesses were  usually associated with the activities of congressmen who preferred not to have their activities examined too closely.; and for good reason.

Donald Trump has also commented on the issue: H is complaints are given some credit for the defeat. The credit is undeserved. Trump was not complaining because he supported a stronger ethics policy, on the contrary he also talked about the OEC “excesses.” Trump complained about the house wasting time on ethics issues instead of dealing with his priorities such as eliminating “Obamacare.” It is hard to imagine anyone believing that Trump would favor a stronger congressional concern about ethics.

2017 Jan 2^nd

And now we have the rest of the interview with Dr Guru:

Writer: Dr Guru can you tell me what happens when water boils? You can see currents start to move around in the water, bubbles form and then steam. Can you explain please?

Dr Guru: I’d be happy to. This can get very complicated; it involves physical chemistry, but I can explain it without using any numbers at all. First of all you must understand that there are invisible homunculi in all water.

Writer: Invisible homunculi? What are they?

Dr Guru: Homunculi are little people, teensy, tiny people.

Writer: Oh, I see. Please go on.

Dr Guru: These Homunculi are coextensive with the water. Coextensive is a scientific term meaning they are everywhere the water is. Oh my, that sounds like a song title—never mind—well, to continue, as the water heats up these Homunculi, we’ll call them Homs, get more active. You see the effect of this as the water begins to circulate. It doesn’t circulate by itself, the Homs do it. As the heat is increased, the water eventually boils and steam rises. That’s because the little Homs are so agitated they fly off into the air. We call that steam. If you capture this steam and cool it, the little Homs calm down and you have ordinary water again.

Writer: And what about ice?

Dr Guru: When water reaches precisely thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, the little Homs become so chilled they cannot move; indeed, they become rigid. When that happens, you have ice. That’s nothing more than immobilized Homs.

Writer: Dr Guru, you’re accounting for all this by the action of tiny unseeable people? That’s preposterous.

Dr Guru: Have you ever seen a tornado? No, you haven’t. You’ve only seen the dust the tornado picked up; you have never seen the tornadic wind, only the wind’s effects. This is the same thing. Don’t argue with me; I have a master’s degree in science.

Writer: Dr Guru, would you comment on a series of commonly used words and phrases?

Dr Guru: I’d be happy to do that.

Writer: Let’s start with something called a think tank.

Dr Guru: That is in the same league as army intelligence. Think tanks are usually collections of people who think alike politically—except for one or two token members of the opposition. These token members provide cover against the charge of bias. These “Institutes” are usually funded by very wealthy people who continue their funding only if the politically correct papers are forthcoming. Thinking outside the box can be lethal for the institute, so their thinking is very predictable.

Writer: Global warming.

Dr Guru: Global warming is a liberal socialist plot. Those photographs you see in magazines showing the yearly shrinking of the arctic ice cap are fakes. There are bands of Canadian and American socialist liberals who go to the arctic every year just before the fly-over and use portable blow torches to melt great quantities of ice. They then blame carbon dioxide. It’s shameful.

Writer: I never knew that….What about women?

Dr Guru: My mother was a woman, and my wife is a woman. Some of my best friends are women. I have always been opposed to women’s suffrage; women suffer enough as it is without some politician adding to their burden.

Writer: But Dr Guru…

Dr Guru: Please…Next question.

Writer: What do you think of national compulsory service?

Dr Guru: It’s a great idea…unless you have children or grandchildren who might be compelled. Any politician who votes for it is voting himself out of office. No politician will vote for any measure that benefits the country if it will lose him an election. Politicians are venal; they aren’t stupid.

Writer: What about socialized medicine?— Are you in favor of that?

Dr Guru: Of course not! Now universal health care is another story altogether.

Writer: But what’s the difference?

Dr Guru: Words are the difference; that difference keeps political parties in power.

Writer: Dr Guru why are the blooming of forsythia bushes the first sign of spring?

Dr Guru: I know nothing about forsythia. We were very poor when I was a child; consequently we never had forsythia in our yard. Father said that we had to make do with threesythia. That was a very homely plant indeed, but it was all we could afford, sorry.

Writer: Thank you Dr Guru. Would you agree to another interview?

Dr Guru: Of Course!

2017 Jan 1st

Today’s blog will be different, and so will tomorrow’s blog. We meet Doctor Guru a short-tempered character with an opinion about everything. Dr. Guru first appeared in “More of the same,” a collection of memoir essays I did a few years ago. To celebrate the New Year I thought a little non-political humor would be an agreeable change.

Doctor Guru

Writer: Dr Guru can you tell me the meaning of the phrase, “He puts his pants on one leg at a time?” Isn’t that something everyone does?

Dr Guru: Oh my goodness gracious me! Indeed not. There are three methods of putting on your pants: The least skilled, and the means used by most people, is to put them on one leg at a time. Some particularly athletic people can hold their pants open at the waist and leap into the air landing with their feet in the appropriate pants leg. Sometimes the novice will get the feet in the wrong pants leg, or both feet in the same pants leg and then hospitalization may be required. A final method, not well understood by the layman, is to pull the pants on over one’s head. That final method has never been photographed and may be apocryphal. I’d suggest that you sick with the first method.

Writer: Dr Guru is it possible for time to stand still? Can time be stopped?

Dr Guru: Indeed it can! Time is measured by the sequence of events; if events stop so does time. If your watch stops so does time.

Writer: But when my watch stops time doesn’t stop.

Dr Guru: It certainly does…for your watch. You haven’t stopped, but your watch has, ergo (That’s Latin; it means therefore. All us intellectuals use Latin.) time hasn’t stopped for you but it has stopped for your watch. Once you get its innards moving again, time will start moving for it too. Of course the same kind of thing can happen to you. If you go to sleep and wake up in the middle of the night you’ll have no idea how much time has passed, unless you look at a watch. While you were asleep time, and the events associated with it, have stopped for you. You reorient yourself to time by looking at a watch for which events have proceeded apace. Time didn’t stop for your watch.

Writer: That is amazing, Dr Guru. So when you die time must stop for you because you are no longer aware of any movement?

Dr Guru: Exactly! In that case time stands still.

Writer: I’ve noticed that philosophers and poets often say the same things ordinary people say, but philosopher’s words are widely quoted while ordinary people saying the same things are ignored. Why is that?

Dr Guru: It’s true of course. Philosophers are paid a lot of money to write things; it follows that those things are important and memorable. Money determines the importance of things. Ordinary people can write something with the identical meaning and their efforts will be ignored. For example, Thomas Hobbes, a famous political philosopher writing hundreds of years ago said, “Life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Suppose an ordinary man said, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” That’s the same meaning, but no one will remember who said it. Proper phrasing is important; so is being a dead philosopher!

Writer: Dr. Guru, in the same vein, why are dead people more famous than live people? Everyone can name dead composers, or famous dead generals, or famous dead philosophers. It’s much harder to name famous living ones.

Dr Guru: That’s very true. One theory is that the ghosts of these dead composers, Beethoven, Brahms, and others, have exerted their influence on current composers to make them produce junk. As you know there is a fad for very loud sound. Increasing a composition’s volume disguises the junk so the audience doesn’t notice the absence of melody and counterpoint. Loudness is a wonderful support for mediocre musicians in other ways; it produces eventual loss of hearing in their audiences who then become even less critical. Dancing about on the concert stage also helps distract the listeners from the music. You will rarely see the Chicago symphony dancing around the podium, unless there is a fire backstage.

Continued tomorrow.