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Republicans on the March, Democrats, and a Socialist, too. Get ready America

February 17, 2023

"A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in."

- H.L. Mencken


So now the race for the White House has begun. A Kentucky Derby field, eventually diminishing to a Preakness and a Belmont horse race of Republican politicians all of whom have a new prescription of their vision for the future, of course tempered by political expediency, PAC money and a host of other issues, not the least of which should be how they will govern. But the real issues reaching the American public will really be the distillation of focus groups, advertising slogans, negative ads, and last but not least the torrent of money from the Koch Brothers, and Sheldon Adelson, who are, shall we speculate, interested in advancing their bottom line through bought politicians (through unlimited campaign contributions.)


All this a result of the disastrous Citizen’s United case, conservative Republicans justifying it all by claiming that it has unleashed millions to the Unions thereby balancing the equation.  In fact, it has not. The flood of PAC and super PAC money has corrupted the system, lengthened and polarized gullible voters with a flood of advertising from both sides of the aisle, 95% of which has no substance.


On top of all that, we have the warmonger class, the chicken hawks, here at home asserting that Iran should be bombed now and that if we do not bomb them now, we will be faced with a nuclear armed Iran, itching to explode the streets of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem—to wipe out the Jewish State, interposing an Armageddon, an existential threat to the entire world.  John McCain and Lindsey Graham, among others are beating the drums as loudly as they can.  And, of course, denouncing any deal as another Munich, if you want to buy the argument of the false equivalence of Iran being another Nazi Germany.


CNN is already chomping at the bit, filling its 24 hour news cycle with repetitive irrelevancies such as Hillary’s hair color and the utterances of crazy people like Ted Cruz, who, I am assured by people who knew him at Princeton, was a brilliant debater.  He had, supposedly, the ability to take a side in an argument, it did not matter which, and argue the other side into submission. Except he often outsmarted himself and came in second. I hope, of course, that he has not the ability to fool most voters who should see through his creepy façade. He even looks like Joseph McCarthy.


As I have written previously, the American Electoral system is a creaking remnant of the 19th century, except it was better then, because party bosses picked the candidates, and we were spared two years of primaries, talking heads and assorted other imbeciles who have no idea where it is all going, but sit on pundit panels prognosticating and picking out who will prevail.


Rand Paul, for example, has now moved from being a libertarian isolationist to a semi-hawkish statesman wannabe. This past week he sat with a bunch of Orthodox lunatics from Brooklyn, possibly telling them he is actually a member of the IDF and the Mossad, and also arguing at the same time that it was a mistake to take out Saddam Hussein and Mummar Quadafi. I am not making this up. This is not an acceptable position to the conservative base, but presumably he is already thinking about the general election.


Mike Huckabee is campaigning on his God and Jesus platform, clearly believing that the rapture is on its merry way, and that Jesus will return to the holy land and save Jews, who, incidentally will not qualify for heaven without converting to the true faith. 


Jeb Bush, trying to overcome the baggage of his brother’s destruction of Middle Eastern power balances, and the invasion of Iraq on WMDs that did not exist, proclaiming "mission accomplished," is not quite sure which path to choose. He says his brother was a good President, but he also is stuck with the mess W. made, having to overcome the production of a lot of maimed and disabled Americans who have families that do not want another war at a cost of another three trillion dollars that might be better spent repairing our 19th century infrastructure. In addition, the science challenged, religiosity litmus test position of his brother’s administration in the appointments at the NIH the CDC and other government scientific agencies of religious sycophants does not help big brother (no pun intended) to convince Americans that another Bush is suitable for office.  Tragically, though, he is the best the Republicans have. 


Chris Christie, an arrogant, pompous, scandal encased leviathan of political ambition, does not seem to be made of Presidential timber, an office that requires a temperate, even well-ordered ability to relate to the voter. Not one that is inherently abrasive, who tells people to "shut up" if they happen to inquire about a position or even a personal family issue. Or, not to mention, a bridge scandal and political revenge baked into his obnoxious persona. And now, the kicker, his three staff members who have been indicted yesterday over the George Washington Bridge scandal, and may yet implicate him as a vengeful, retribution seeking dude who very well knew what was happening or at least created an atmosphere that allowed it to happen. Good riddance.


Scott Walker, who enraged working people for shutting down protests for a living wage, a man who disparaged the teachers union and other elements of Wisconsin society to advance his right wing political agenda. He mentions nothing about income inequality or that the top 1% now control 90% of the wealth. 


Rick Santorum, a religious zealot, who does not understand the secular trend of American 21st century life, is considering another run, but he is yesterday’s news, thank goodness. He thinks women should stay home and bear children, not much else. He is a latter day Christian ayatollah and pretty stupid at that. His understanding of the new demographic of America is staggeringly ignorant.


Rick Perry thinks that there is a conspiracy to take away everyone's AK-47 assault rifles and is "studying up on Foreign Policy." Perhaps this time he will remember which country is which and which government department he will abolish. It certainly will not be the Defense Department.


And let us not forget the Donald, who this week blamed the Baltimore riots on the President, referring to him as African-American, but in a demeaning context.  Can one imagine Trump as president “if he decides to run?”  He has a fix for the Baltimore situation, but does not say what. Presumably he will unleash his concierges, headwaiters and croupiers to calm down the looters and rioters, when he emerges from his solid gold apartment on 5th avenue, leading his legions. I hope they are at least his Miss Universe contestants.


Last but not least, there is Marco Rubio, a panderer who will say anything to get elected. The thought of him becoming President is frightening. He talks about 21st century ideas, but is firmly stuck in the 1960s. Gay marriage? No.  A woman’s right to choose? No. Religion in the schools? Yes.  Immigration reform? Maybe. Trickle down economics that have not worked? Yes, for sure. Repeal Obama care? Yes.  Any admission on the administration's progress on unemployment? No. Any admission that the Auto industry was saved? No. Any acceptance of climate change as a threat to future generations, or that his home state Florida may soon be under water? "I am not a scientist.." Well what about the 99% of climate scientists say so? "I am not a scientist, so I do not know." How about is your steak cooked enough?  "I am not a chef." 


On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, a socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, but is an independent, seeking the Democratic nomination. Bernie, you are seeking the Democratic nomination, are you a Democrat? "No, I am an independent."  Bernie, you need to be a party member if you want to win the nomination.  If you want to win the lottery, buy a ticket.


Hillary and Bill are going to make a fine President and First Gentleman if they can overcome their integrity issues. Whitewater, Benghazi, and now we have the email “scandal.”  I do not think they will make Mount Rushmore, but they may be the best choice we have. At least they have some ideas that might make the country functional, or semi-functional, depending upon one's point of view.

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GOP Hypocrisy at its Highest

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
So the Supremes, appointed by Republicans, Bush I, Bush II, and three justices appointed by the Donald, who lost the popular vote by 3 million voters and who probably will soon be indicted in Georgia for election fraud, and maybe Federally for a failed coup d’état, have decided that 50 years of precedent be damned, that there is no constitutional right for a woman to make her own reproductive choices. Never mind an entire generation of women who have grown up under Roe. So let’s socially engineer by judicial fiat, what has been law for generations.N Let’s face the facts. The “justices” make up their own minds, and then build a constitutional rationalization to support their position from an infinite variety of decisions throughout the centuries of common law. And by the way, Bush II, like Trump, was also a minority president, except in the anti- democratic electoral college, designed originally to allow slave states to remain so. Our Constitution also ensured that woman and black people could not vote. So all you originalists and textualists can go back to where we were before Roe v. Wade, to that wonderful mid 20th century where segregation ruled, or the early 19th century where slavery ruled. Why not overrule Brown v. Board of Education to keep America white and segregated Justice Alito, that righteous avatar of Catholic abortion dogma rests at one of the pinnacles of governmental power, believes that American women should be the victim of state gerrymandered legislatures, representing a minority of the American polity. When Thomas Jefferson said famously, “keep the preachers away from government,” he surely should have included Alito. Let’s not forget the notion that the court is or should be not politicized. That train left the station in the early 20th century. When FDR’s National Recovery Act was shut down by the conservative Court, a court packing threat from the Democrats in congress caused the conservative majority to back off from shooting down the progressive programs that were to help the nation out of the great depression. The problem is now that there are not enough votes in the Senate to do any such thing because of successful Republican moves to suppress the vote; instead packing the court with ideologues, the most notable of whom is the handmaiden herself—Amy Coney Barrett, whom the Donald picked to fill the seat of a progressive giant, RBG. Never mind the hypocrisy of dissing Obama’s selection of Merrick Garland, not even given a hearing thanks to Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants, including Chuck Grassley, who should be in a nursing home feeding on double doses of Prevagen. Mitch at the helm has seen to our current “Justices”, helped by disinformation emanating from Rupert Murdoch’s FOX news, a money-grubbing Australian oligarch, no better than the Russian ones. Mitch’s net worth has increased ten-fold since he was elected and not on his Senate salary for sure, his wife benefiting from Chinese largesse to and from her uber wealthy family. Oh, and don’t forget Clarence Thomas, a black man who hates his own people, abetted by his wife, Ginny, encouraging the rioters to storm the capitol, sending emails to insurrectionists and GOP party leaders to stop the certification of the vote by the Senate. Thomas is all bent out of shape because of the dastardly leak, impugning the “integrity” of the court. But he will probably not recuse himself on Trump’s appeal if he is convicted of felonious conspiracy to precipitate an insurrection. Other dramatis personae include the repulsive Ted Cruz and the vituperative Josh Hawley, who voted against the purely ceremonial certification of a lawful election, necessary to enshrine the vote. Also, lets not omit a Bronx cheer for Bret Cavanaugh, the beer swilling frat boy, credibly accused of waving his penis in Christine Blasey Ford’s face at his fraternity house, assaulting her. While admittedly a college escapade, it does not speak well to his character. But no matter, he has absolved himself by joining in this sadistic exercise of Republican misogyny. “I like beer, Senator Klobuchar, don’t you?” Cavanaugh hubristically asked the Senator whose father died of alcoholism. No matter, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, says the red spider veined nosed icon of the religious right. Now, poor women who live in Texas, Mississippi, or other places of enlightened Republican legislators will have to book an airplane flight or drive to a place where it is legal. But wait! They do not have the money to do so, instead they can carry them to term and drop their newly born at the nearest police station or underfunded Mississippi or Texas childcare facility. Thanks a lot, Amy. Perhaps you want to adopt some more children. This whole sordid episode of “Making America Great Again,” curdles the blood even of the most casual observer.

A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
"A house divided against itself, cannot stand..." - Abraham Lincoln From California to New York, from Oregon to Florida, a frightening division has descended upon our country. From rural to urban America, people wonder whether the nation and its institutions can survive this polarity. There have been times in American history that the nation was divided, never more so than in 1860. Throughout that history, there had been bitter partisanship and division. From the heat of the constitutional convention in steamy 1787 Philadelphia, the founders fought bitterly to a compromise that actually welded two nations into one in a constitution which just ninety years later devolved into a insanely bloody civil war, brother against brother, father against son, family against family. A partisan press with countless newspapers and pamphleteers spewed hatred and vituperative allegations against their countrymen both at the founding and throughout the years leading to the Civil War. Twitter has nothing on them. A rural south, an industrializing north, both parts of which employed slavery, regarded Negroes as inferior, abetted involuntary servitude and a racist ethos, challenging even the most enlightened of our citizenry. During the time between the founding and the Civil War forged compromises kept the Union together. The Missouri compromise (1820) and the Kansas-Nebraska act (1854) failed as attempts to reconcile admission to the Union of new states as either slave or free. The Constitution itself had slavery baked in to its original ratification (Article 4 sec. 2.3) imposing that, " No person held to Service or Labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any Law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due," Later, the Fugitive Slave act of 1850 imposed the duty on citizens and officials of the individual states themselves to return slaves to their owners or face civil fines, and that persons harboring slaves to criminal penalties. Slave catchers roamed the North, collecting bonuses for bringing slaves in; captured slaves were not permitted a jury trial. Sound like a rickety Constitution? Of course, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments cured some of that, but still, it took the bloodiest war in the history of the Republic, 700,000 dead and wounded to get the amendments passed and only in the last few years was the Confederate battle flag removed from South Carolina government buildings. The Civil Rights act of 1964, race riots in Los Angeles, freedom riders, political assassinations of civil rights leaders, and a frothing George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door shouting "segregation forever!" interceded in the 1960s, almost 100 years after the end of the war and ten years after the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education outlawed segregation in the public schools. Well, that same Constitution has given us the Electoral College, a Federalist exercise in balancing the interests of the various states, and which now presents us with a highly undemocratic underrepresentation of large populations, California for instance, with its 40,000,000 people and North Dakota with its 500,000 each carrying two senators. Do the math on fair representation. Yes, I know the House is supposed to do that, but with present gerrymandering, the Democrats are obliged to win by much bigger majorities than Republicans. With Republicans dedicated to disenfranchising voters in Florida, for example, contrary to the will of the voters, Democrats must win votes in far greater numbers than Republicans to achieve a working majority. We now have entrenched minority government. With an unleashed president, sociopathically bound to his vindictive agenda, extreme anxiety pervades the Democratic Party, fearing that this president will be re-elected, boasting that "he alone" is claiming responsibility for the booming economy, acquitted from his misdeeds by a kangaroo court, comprised of quaking GOP senators afraid of tribal banishment to an ignominious gulag of GOP opprobrium, losing their congressional health plans, positions, prestige and power andthe ultimate loss of the dignity which they inartfully tried to preserve. Instead, they have lost it anyway by their surrender to political expediency. We need either a constitutional convention or a huge movement among voters to recognize that the divisions among us are not the result of a political agenda, but instead, tribal cultism. Many of the policy agendas result from identity politics, rural against urban, wealthy against poor, a displaced working class losing out in the battle against inevitable technological displacement, climate change and nuclear proliferation, the greatest threats to the world. A leader who can heal these divisions and create forbearance and a spirit of compromise is what we need more than ever. A president of either party who can understand reality, not phantasmagorical narcissism. It is said that great crises manufacture an FDR, a Winston Churchill, an Abraham Lincoln. Where may he or she be?

Running from Ennui

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
Passion seems to be bestowed as a blessing on few people but seeking it is a not inconsiderable chore conferred on the many. I am not officially retired, but it seems that way. The clients call less and the work I did as a trial lawyer has become less and less appetizing. Business has diminished, not only because I am seventy-nine years of age, but because I have zero desire to market myself like a snake oil salesman. I leave that particularly odious practice to well-funded and battle stationed Morgan and Morgan and others, whose legions of paralegals, investigators, paid experts and well-staffed soldiers battle with insurance companies, and “fight for you,” its overworked lawyers all the while complaining to their colleagues and family that they hate what they do. Fifty years at the bar, and I do not mean Flanagan’s, is enough, so I leave the task of transferring wealth from one party to another and taking a piece of the action the alleged passion of the many. I do still consult with clients, if I can be of help them. I wonder if I can achieve a modicum of mastery the piano, considering that when I took violin lessons as a youth, the bandleader working at my dad’s upstate New York hotel, a Catskill fiddler by the name of Billy Rogers (nee Rosenberg) who, admittedly, was not a music teacher, told my father, that I was the “dumbest, most tone-deaf child he had ever met.” But then again, he was no Isaac Stern nor even a music teacher. Music teachers do not scream at their beginning ten-year-old students. The sole reason Dad asked him to teach me was because a guest had left a violin in one of his hotel rooms. Before my dad’s discovered violin aspirations for me, I had expressed neither the interest nor the inclination to play the most difficult, annoying instrument, or torturing everyone within hearing distance. “Press the strings until your fingers bleed and you develop callouses,” said Billy. I do not recall what happened to the violin or Billy, although he was aged in 1952. Dad either sold the violin or most likely, gave it away. Another serial disappointment from his son, I guess. After becoming a lawyer, I decided I would learn to play tennis. And I loved it. I was addicted. I became reasonably competent, starting at the age of 35, and playing regularly until I hit 70 and had spine surgery laying me up a few years. I was never the best, but I was pretty good, had a good serve and tried to play again a few years ago, losing to a younger fellow who had been playing just a few years. I had beaten him soundly before. Never fast on my feet, my molasses-like movements said, time to hang up the sneakers. Life is a series of things being taken from you. At 55 I had taken up golf. I think I have a pretty good swing, but athletically, I needed time to learn, ( a nice way to say I am a slow learner) and time is running out. Although that would not stop me, if I had some agreeable companions with whom to play. Many of the friends whose company I enjoyed have died or fallen away. There is nothing worse than spending 18 holes with someone monumentally annoying. “Nice putt,” they said, as my ball sped past the hole. Plus, most golfers do not share my politics and, inevitably, an afternoon of enjoyment turns into a dumpster fire. Most players who are Republicans, cheat. The shoe wedge or miscounting the score is a frequently insufferable habitude of the right-wing selfish, individualist, “let them eat cake” crowd. Now, when my days are not consumed by interminably long doctor’s visits or some new ailment appears, I am seeking something to do with my spare time. Going to the hospital or delivering goodies to the ill and infirm is too depressing, since I already am depressed about most people walking past me as though I did not exist. I have become irrelevant and invisible, both not particularly enviable results of my wrinkles and weathered skin and increasingly whitening hair. A grey ghost. I suppose I should take comfort that a geezer like Joe Biden could be president, gaining inspiration from him. But he seems so delicate, so frail now, that a stiff breeze would blow him over or he might stumble coming down the stairs of Air Force One. It is frightening to behold. Still, Joe beats the alternative--the orange-colored crook who is still peddling the big lie. The country is in the worst crisis since the great depression, and Joe is not FDR.  Which brings me back to the piano. I asked a neighbor who is a music teacher at an exclusive private school, “Is learning the piano at 79 doable?” He replied, “definitely, it will be good for your mind. Always keep two hands on the keyboard and learn musical notation.” I replied that I had purchased a book that said I will be able to play a Bach prelude within six weeks if I practiced 45 minutes per day. Encouraging. I guess I will find out if it can be my new passion.
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