2016 March 31^st

Yesterday came a column from Pat Buchanan who used some 70 year old advice from General Eisenhower to bolster his isolationist argument. Eisenhower was speaking of NATO when he said, “If in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe have not been returned to the United States then this project will have failed.” NATO did not intervene in several instances of Soviet aggression against the rise of democratic movements in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. A nuclear war was possibly averted by their forbearance.

The Soviet Union is no more but Russia still lives under a dictator, an iron fisted ex KGB agent bent on expanding Russian influence. He has been effective because this expansion has come in communities that are largely ethnic Russian and Russian speaking. Most are enthusiastic about rejoining the Russian strongman. His continuing expansionist moves, however, will be limited by Russia’s disastrous economic problems. Those will continue as long as oil is cheap.

But then there is a 76 year old history lesson: In 1940 another dictator was annexing countries with populations ethnically congruent with his own. There was the Sudetenland, there was Austria and there were others and no one cried foul…and then there was Poland and that was the trigger for Buchanan’s “The Unnecessary War.” Buchanan knows history but his politics keep him from understanding it.

2016 March 30^th

Shall we play absurdities? OK, so these are not absurd matters to the people involved, but in the existential concerns of the nation they certainly are. First we have one Corey Lewandowski, a major adviser to Donald Trump, who is shown grabbing a reporter’s arm and pulling her away from attempting to question his employer. This is clearly seen from an overhead camera provided by Trump at his Jupiter, Florida, Golf Club where this happened. For a man to grab any portion of a woman’s anatomy is a no-no unless he is attempting to remove her from the path of a speeding car…and even then he better be grabbing his eight year old daughter.

And now for the absurdities: First off, Trump claims that Lewandowski never touched Michelle Fields; then when that was rendered nonsense by Trump’s own cameras, Trump claimed it was an insignificant “bump” such as he himself might have received in the scrum of a rally. But Michelle Fields wound up with bruises on her arm indicating a “grab” and “yank” disproportionately violent for the circumstances. Fields, a reporter for Breitbart News Service, an avowedly right wing on-line reporting outfit, decided to press charges. It was seen as rather naughty for a Breitbart News reporter to raise issues with a fine right wing leader like Donald Trump or his minions and Breitbart threw Ms. Fields under the bus. This led to outrage and resignations by Fields and several other Breitbart reporters. Now, with the arrest and the released camera footage, Breitbart is having second thoughts and claims that maybe Michelle Fields was right after all.

The tape evidence persuaded the local police department to file a charge of battery against Lewandowski. Mr. Lewandowski claimed complete innocence; in fact he said that not only had he never touched Ms. Fields, indeed he didn’t even know her. Lewandowski apparently believes that if you are unacquainted with someone you could not possibly be guilty of assaulting them.

Lewandowski is a top advisor to Donald Trump and insiders claim that he is so effective because “he lets Donald Trump be Donald Trump.” (Lewandowski knows how to keep his job.) Trump claims his adviser is blameless and Trump seems to be returning the favor by “letting Corey be Corey.” Ah, but the Jupiter, Florida, police may not agree.

The ultimate absurdity here is the fact that if Lewandowski had bothered to apologize to Michele Fields by saying something like “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to grab your arm that hard” this entire incident might never have arisen. But then who brings logic into politics?

Then, in another venue, there is the issue of Secretary Clinton’s emails—we are still dealing with absurdities here—it seems that depending on your source there are anywhere from 50 to 147 FBI agents classifying Clinton’s emails. Keep in mind that these agents all need a top secret clearance because some of Clinton’s emails have been so classified. This is not a job for any run of the mill clerk. At the same time we have a great concern about public safety and the monitoring of ISIS adherents in this country poised to commit mayhem and murder on our streets. But Clinton’s emails are safe and secure in the custody of the FBI; why then is this organization using such enormous manpower on this low priority endeavor when our citizens are at risk? Absurdities are everywhere.

                                                            

2016 March 29^th

This morning we are greeted by a gloomy forecast from George Will. Mr. Will, as most of you know, is the very intellectually gifted conservative commentator. His column today is titled, “Why the future will disappoint us.” Whoa! That’s not very encouraging.

Mr. Will’s column points out the enormous and very effective civilizing influences of industry—and medicine—over the hundred years from 1870 to 1970. He points out that in 1870 “Urban horses produced mountains and rivers of waste.” Home lighting, then, came from candles and whale oil; thousands died of yellow fever; the typical North Carolina housewife carried water into her home eight to ten times daily; there were eight thousand registered automobiles in 1900 but 26.8 million in 1930. For all of this, and for what follows, Will touts Robert Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” in which Professor Gordon, a Northwestern University academic economist, makes the case that the unprecedented growth of the last century and a half cannot continue at the same pace.  He’s right.

Then Will gets to what he sees as a large part of the problem: “…there are many reasons to believe that the rapid expansion of regulatory, redistributive government, which can be reformed, has contributed to--it certainly has coincided with—the onset of economic anemia.” Here Will lapses into nonsense. Government regulations are the evil genie that is destroying this wonderful picture? Where have we heard this before?

Let’s do away with regulations: no more sanitary inspections of restaurants; why worry about dishwashers that can’t get water over lukewarm…and what’s the problem with having an attorney who never passed the bar exam, or the electrician who can’t find the ground wire. Does your pharmacist confuse gabapentin with pregabelin? They do sound alike don’t they? So they probably work the same way. Never mind. … The absurdity of blaming regulatory requirements is obvious.

Most of the splendid advances Will talks about involved the private economy. He neglects to mention the enormous support for our well-being provided by government programs. (I’m sure that was just an oversight.) Consider the government construction of the interstate highway system; that happened in the 1950s and he makes no mention of it. Consider the construction of the various power dams in the west during the depression. These provided electricity and the necessary water for the development of California truck farming; no mention of that either. If you were a businessman or a small farmer in 1930 and you had money in the bank and that bank failed you lost all the money you had deposited there. Roosevelt’s FDIC made sure that any bank deposits you made were insured by the federal government. Will doesn’t mention that either. It’s not really surprising that Will can’t manage to mention any government programs that contributed to improving out welfare over the last 150 years. His political blinders are still firmly in place.

2016 March 28^th

Let’s see who Patrick J. Buchanan hates today; not surprisingly, it is Muslims, and in particular the Muslim religion as contained in the Koran. Buchanan apparently believes that what the Koran commands Muslims will do. The obvious fact that some Muslims do take Koranic commands seriously doesn’t mean that most Muslims do. Some do not even engage in the required five daily prayer rituals. I had a Muslim colleague when I was teaching and there was no prayer rug in his office and I never observed him at prayer, Nevertheless he was devout enough that he left this country so that his children would be removed from what he considered the immoral temptations offered American youth.

In the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, we find some instructions that few people would willingly follow today: From Deut. 13:6-11: If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Similar death by stoning awaits any bride who is not a virgin if her new husband is unhappy about it. Death by stoning is also provided for anyone who is an apostate and starts worshipping idols or who assists anyone in moving toward such apostasy

It is obvious to anyone that while a religion can provide moral guide posts, these guideposts may be totally absent or ignored is some areas. Jesus had some very pointed things to say about marriage; specifically that he would be opposed to the present increase in serial monogamy. (Mark 6:9 and Mathew 5:31) Many otherwise devout Christians ignore this and still have a series of marriages.

Christ did not condemn slavery, a practice well integrated into the society of his time. His failure to condemn the practice was used as a support for slavery by Christians in the antebellum south.

Catholic teaching against artificial birth control is uniformly ignored by the overwhelming majority of Catholic women.

Does Buchanan believe that because these admonitions are in his Bible, or in the instructions of his Church’s Chief Priest, that he or his fellow Christians will surely act on the instructions? Then why believe it for all Muslims who follow the Koran? The notion is ridiculous!

2016 March 27^th

One of Donald Trump’s paid flacks was interviewed this afternoon and I watched some of it. She was asked about the attacks by Cruz and Trump on each other’s wives and quite predictably gave the Trump line that Mr. Trump had to defend himself, and that Mr. Trump was attacked first. If someone is on Trump’s payroll Trump will inevitably be referred to as “Mr. Trump.” That’s helpful because when you hear “Mr. Trump” you know that what comes next is paid for by Donald Trump.

Trump was interviewed by The New York Times on his foreign policy views and the results were made public.  His new motto seems to be “America First.”  It's unlikely that Trump knows the interesting background this movement had in rendering our armed forces hopelessly unprepared during the lead-up to WW 2. He probably neither knows nor cares.

He believes that we should stop our support of the Saudis and stop buying their oil. We are not oil independent yet, so should we then get our oil from where? Trump doesn’t say. It is true that the Saudi’s support programs aimed directly toward destabilizing our allies but destabilizing the Saudis gives Iran an even freer hand in the region; not smart.

He would allow (encourage?) South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons. This would presumably relieve us from using our nuclear umbrella but also eliminate any control we might have over their weapon use. Trump also maintains that the South Koreans pay “practically nothing to support our troop presence there.” Only to Donald Trump would the 800+ million dollars a year South Korea pays us seem like “practically nothing.”

Earlier, on Morning Joe, when asked on whom he relied for foreign policy advice, he claimed that he relied on himself. He claimed that he had a very good brain for foreign policy so he consulted with himself first. He was also asked in his Times interview what books or foreign policy articles he read. There were no specifics although he did say to a Times questioner, “Your newspaper.” Perhaps we have Sarah Palin redux.

He made a point of claiming that he didn’t want to be predictable, for example in the use of nuclear weapons, so that America’s adversaries would be kept off-balance. Yes, of course, but if you are unpredictable it also means that your allies don’t know what to expect from one moment to the next and that makes it very difficult for them to support you. And if you have considerable doubt that the plan you are about to suggest makes any sense at all, wouldn’t a comment like “I don’t want to tell you because I prefer not to be predictable” be the perfect response?

A bit of Trumpian inconsistency: Trump has claimed that the 14 people killed in the San Bernardino California massacre could have been saved had people there just exercised their “second amendment rights” and been armed. Interesting idea, except that no one is allowed to bring a firearm into any of Trump’s rallies. I wonder why?

2016 March 26^th

Primaries of interest today are in Washington State, Hawaii and Alaska. Given the time difference, the results will be available too late for me to comment about them. The big prize is Washington where Clinton has some political endorsements and Sanders is the pick of the Seattle Times. Washington is a caucus state so both sides will get some delegates. Breaking News; Sanders has won both Alaska and Washington on the basis of huge early leads!

Meanwhile, we can do a “sleaze report” on the Republican primary race. Here is a quote from Senator Cruz, “Donald Trump may be a rat but I have no desire to copulate with him.” Yes that’s accurate; now, can you imagine the context in which this might have been said by a Harvard educated debate champion running for President of the United States? It isn’t easy. The “National Inquirer” ran stories alleging Ted Cruz’ multiple affairs; all of which Cruz vigorously denied. It is very important that Cruz jump on this right away because he gets much support from evangelicals who would be horrified if there were a shred of truth to these allegations.

Enter Roger Stone; this man is a notorious dirty trickster. Dirty tricks have been a staple of right wing political campaigns for decades. For example, Carl Rove circulated a rumor that John McCain had fathered a black child and that rumor cost McCain the South Carolina primary and gave the primary that year to George Bush. Nixon’s use of the IRS to irritate his many “enemies” is in the same vein. Stone is a master of these dirty tricks. His premier move was to open a bank account with a “Socialist etc. name plate” and then send a donation from this ‘Socialist” account to a struggling Republican‘s campaign, making sure the newspapers got the message. Guess what happened. That is Roger Stone’s typical contribution. Could he have had something to do with the National Inquirer’s story about Cruz? The real Prince of Darkness here was Lee Atwater who managed the dirty tricks for the Bushes and Nixon. This is where the term “rat f******” came from; it simply refers to these dirty tricks.

(The expression has its origins in the military. If you get a carton of MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, you can open all of them and just take out the good sections and trash the rest.  The “Rat” here is short for “ration.” This is where the “Rat obscenity” originated. How it was transferred into politically dirty tricks I have no idea.)

Why Cruz could not have said something like, “I have no wish to trade dirty tricks with the National Inquirer.” Instead of talking about “copulating with Donald Trump” I can’t fathom. Cruz is supposed to be very bright; he may be that, but it doesn’t mean that he is very imaginative.

2016 March 25^th

Fox has a program called “Outnumbered” in which four very short skirted women sit, two on each side of a male guest. Today a tape of President Obama’s departing remarks to some young Argentinians was played. The President pointed out that some will refer to dirty Capitalists and others to the awful Socialists and Communists, and that his advice to them was to take from each position what works for them. Outrage followed from the Fox folks and that outrage ended my interest in their program. We all know how well the image of the greedy Yankee Capitalist has worked in Latin America…about as well as fifty years of a heavy handed embargo worked in Cuba. And now, on wards and upwards, even though we have stopped offending most of Latin America, we still have 1.3 billion Muslims to work on.

Senator Mitch McConnell, on an earlier Fox interview program, said that Judge Merrick Garland could not be approved for SCOTUS by the Senate, even after the election, because the Judge did not have the approval of the National Rifle Association. No, I didn’t make that up; that is what he said. There you have it folks; the leader of the United States Senate bought and paid for by the NRA and showing no reluctance to admit it. What do you suppose he cost them?

In an interview with Senator Cruz we found him red faced and furious over Donald Trump’s very unflattering picture of the Senator’s wife. Looking directly into the distance Cruz called Trump a “sniveling coward and told him to “leave my wife the hell alone.” Cruz was terribly upset. The reporter, Hallie Jackson, who is assigned to monitor Cruz, and was right at his elbow when he erupted, asked him if he would still support Trump if Trump were the party’s nominee. Cruz was not about to answer that one; he wasn’t that mad at Trump, so he said that Trump would not be the party’s nominee. Hallie Jackson tried twice more getting the same evasion each time, before giving up. (I must say that although I am no fan of Donald Trump, I have never seen the man snivel. Perhaps I missed it.)

I saw Senator Tom Cotton on Morning Joe this morning. He appeared because of his combat experience and the terrorist disaster in Belgium. Mike Barnacle asked Cotton, who had blasted the administration for its handling of ISIS, to tell the viewers just what he would do differently. For a Harvard educated lawyer Cotton’s response was a pure boilerplate conservative pitch. When reminded of all the bombing sorties flown against ISIS targets Cotton said that the “rules of engagement” needed to be changed because many of these planes returned to their base without dropping their entire ordinance. The conclusion to be drawn from Cotton’s comment is that if you can’t find an appropriate ISIS target, at least drop your bombs on somebody. He subsequently went on with more equally inane suggestions; one of which was bemoaning the removal of Libya’s  Muammar Khadafy whose only fault was blowing up Pan Am 109 and killing 240 people.