February 28, 2018--Jared Agonistes

The story-behind-the-story regarding last night's breaking news that White House senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner had lost his top-secret security clearance is not primarily about the fact that he will no longer be privy to, for example, intelligence agencies' reports about the inner workings of the Israeli government--something it would presumably be important for Kushner to know as he strives day and night to "solve the Middle East," as his father-in-law puts it--but rather than the story primarily being about this most recent piece of juicy Oval Office gossip that chief-of-staff John Kelly gleefully cut Jared off from the nation's top secrets thus reducing his status to just-another-staffer in the snake pit that is the Trump administration; no, the story is not about what Kushner can and cannot know but rather the heart of the matter is that the feds that have been looking into Jared's background (the embattled FBI, the same FBI that is working hard on the Mueller investigation while daily being undercut by Fox News and the president) not only based their recommendation on the evidence that Kushner failed to report a meeting or two with the Russians or forgot to list a few of his hundreds of financial assets, but rather Jared is being cut off at the knees (including by Trump who threw him to the insider wolf John Kelly) because they, big time, have the goods on Jared Kushner.

The goods being the evidence the FBI uncovered of the fast-and-loose way Kushner has operated in his desperate efforts to lift his and his family's real estate empire for the mire of debt in which he has brought them as the result of his greed and arrogant overreach. 

This overreach luring him to turn to all sorts of bad guys as he scrambles to borrow money from the black economy where big money available to bottom-feeders such as Jared Kushner (and his felonious father before him in an almost biblical way) comes mainly from money laundries that as a consequence not only own your property but also own you.

And thus if you happen to work half a step behind the president in the White House owning you as you is worth a lot more than a billion or two. Putin already is the richest man ever with hidden assets conservatively estimated to total, give-or-take, $100 billion, making him twice as wealthy as Bill Gates. But to own Jared Kushner, now that's a story to behold. And fear.

Two more things. OK, three more--

First, within the federal bureaucracy it is no big deal to have a lowest-level security clearance. I know middle-level government workers who have little actual power but are excited that they have secret clearance. This places them in the top 40 percent of federal government workers because the 2.86 million of them who have such access to secret documents represent about 40 percent of the total 7.0 million workforce with that 7.0 million including postal workers. So think about Jared Kushner now having the status of the person who brings you your mail.

Second, note how casually Donald Trump abandoned his most trusted advisor. All right, his second most trusted family member. No one will ever displace Ivanka, though who knows what Trump will do next week to save his sagging skin.

And then last, isn't Jared's comeuppance evidence that the system is working? That not only is he being brought down by the little people as I am now feeling more certain his father-in-law will? Little people like those on various Mueller grand juries currently operating in Washington, DC and nearby Virginia? People Kushner has likely never noticed as he walks around with his nose aristocratically in the air.

Sorry, finally--do you think if Donald Trump was an American Mussolini Jared Kushner would have had his wings clipped?

February 27, 2018--Trump Unfettered

As much as I am enjoying following along as special counsel Robert Mueller makes Donald Trump and those close to him who not only colluded with the Russians but obstructed justice, as much as I like to see them squirm while their world continues to implode and they are forced to face justice--I like schadenfreude as much as the next fellow--I am beginning to worry about some of the unintended consequences of, one-by-one, Trump's people being indicted or copping pleas.

I do look forward to seeing the Trump boys' comeuppance, Hope Hicks being exposed for the enabler she is, as eager as I am to see Ivanka brought down for taking commercial advantage of her First Daughter status, as much as Jared Kushner likely deserves to be exposed and prosecuted for financial shenanigans, and of course above all how I crave the outing and perhaps impeachment or prosecution of the Godfather of the Trump Crime Family, while impatient for all of this, I am beginning to worry what Trump will be like when he finds himself essentially alone in the White House with Hope and Jared and especially Ivanka gone, as one way or the other they all likely will be.

No matter what Mueller finds, even if the Democrats in November take over the House of Representatives and impeach Trump (40/60), he will not be convicted by the Senate, and since he delusionally is not a quitter (his whole being depends upon viewing himself as winning at everything), he will not take a Nixon and resign and we will be faced with two-and-a-half more years of Trump as president with the nuclear codes not far from his night table. 

As fundamentally corrupt and perhaps as felonious as they are, Hope, Jared, and Ivanka may be the only ones who have the access and capacity to have a chance to moderate him, such as moderating Trump can ever be.

With them gone, do we want to see a White House with weaselly Stephen Miller even more empowered, former UN Ambassador John Bolton brought in as head of the National Security Council, and Steve Bannon re-ensconced, this time as Secretary of State?

Whatever small measure of sanity and constraint John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster, and James Mattis provide, with the three children exiled, and the hawks more in charge, what would the next two years of Trump's presidency look like? 

War with North Korea? We have a preview of that right now as Trump didn't even give our ally South Korea the courtesy of an additional day or two to close the Olympics before imposing a form of naval blockade on North Korea, virtually an act of war as blockades are.

One more round of indictments of those closest to Trump and . . . 

The one proven thing for presidents to do when cornered, as Trump surely will be, is to start or intensify a war. John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon did that in Vietnam, Reagan invaded Grenada, and George HW and George W did the same in Iraq. As a result HW's approval ratings shot up to 90 percent as did his son's.

To make matters even more psychosomatically complicated, it appears that First Lady Melania is weighing in on the Ivanka-Kushner-versus-John Kelly blood feud. She is taking Kelly's side in a deeply Freudian struggle that ultimately is about the jealousy she doubtlessly feels as Trump so clearly prefers the daughter to the spouse.

While Trump leers at and talks smuttily about Ivanka and gets exposed for cavorting with pornstars and Playmates, Melania seethes and then draws upon her Eastern European DNA to come up with an appropriate form of revenge, that among other things includes getting rid of the competition.

Some of this may be over-speculation, but is it wise to deny that this scenario is plausible and if true imperils us?

I would prefer to wake up one morning to find that the Trumps, grifters that they are, overnight moved out of the White House. But since that is inconceivable, I am thinking it's prudent to hope the three kids figure out a way to hang in. At least through November. Maybe even until 2020.

February 26, 2018--Jared Kushner In the Soup

If you're thinking that the reason it is taking so long for First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner to receive the security clearance that would allow him to see the top-secret documents Dad is already improvisationally allowing him to see, think again.

It is not just that he and First Daughter Ivanka failed to list meetings with Russians that they "took" or because they forgot to list several hundred of their assets on the forms they were required to fill out, rather it is because it is as the Washington Post reported on Friday--there are high-level concerns about Jared getting his hands on top secret information.

As reported Friday by WaPo there are substantial reasons it has taken more then a year for the FBI to get to this point. With no resolution in sight.

How is Jared supposed to "fix" the Middle East, defeat ISIS, and figure out what to do to get control of Mexico and Venezuela while serving as de facto Secretary of State, not to mention making the federal government more efficient and solving the opioid crisis while keeping his father-in-law from going off the deep end?

This is a rather ambitious job description for Kushner so one would imagine that the FBI would have given it top priority.

I am sure they did and in the process found things so egregious, so troubling that they punted the decision to the White House itself where chief-of-staff Kelly, to whom Jared is supposed to report, is undoubtedly taking illicit pleasure in arranging for his chief rival to twist slowly in the wind.

I got a sense of what concerned the FBI from David Frum's chilling new book, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. Especially the chapter, "Plunder," substantially about the Trump and Kushner money.

One thing son- and father-in-law have in common is frequently hovering close to bankruptcy. Including right now. In Kushner's case the collapse of the 666 Fifth Avenue deal, about which I have already written (January 8th).

This deal alone has plunged Jared into a cascade of personal financial troubles. Perhaps enough for at least three things to result--

First, Jared and the rest of the Kushners go broke. 

No more fancy New York City lifestyle, no more regular tables at the 21 Club, no more holidays in Aspen, and likely no more Ivanka who is unlikely to hang around while her husband is forced to grovel for bailout funding to keep him out of debtors' prison. She's no Huma Abedin.

Second--the groveling part. This includes, as bankripsies often do, involvement with shady types in shiny suits, characters who are only too happy to loan you money if you promise to turn over to them as collateral your first born son, but don't wait around for long before wanting to get paid.

In Kushner's predicament, back to David Frum and the FBI (which more than any person or institution must be relishing the Trump-related agony and desperation), I am feeling certain that their background check discovered his financial situation and shenanigans. In Jared's case I am certain that they unearthed the same sorts of note holders that Frum did--largely international banks that specialize in money laundering. Chinese banks, off-shore banks, Cypriot banks, Deutsche Bank, and of course--closer to home--Russian banks where oligarchs and Putin himself go to launder they filthy lucre. 

The kind of guys, who, if they can't get their hands on your evaporating cash, after working on your knees, want a piece of your behind. In the case of someone like Kushner (and Paul Manafrot) that piece could easily be access to confidential information or levers through which to undermine what's left of our democracy. You can pay back either with cash or state secrets.

Third and finally, Trump World comes crashing down. As I also wrote recently, using my favorite, Ockham's Razor (January 29th--"Reiterating."), ultimately it has been and is all about money. With Kushner's crash proceeding his father-in-law's.
And it won't solve Trump's problem to pardon Kushner and Manafort, among others, because some of their alleged crimes occurred in New York and federal, presidential pardons do not override criminal prosecutions in individual states. 

Be patient, once even many Trump supporters see all the documentary evidence of the colluding with the Russians, in spite of Fox News and the White House crying "fake news," once they see how the coverup and obstruction of justice has been playing out, once Trump "little guy" supporters see, again, hard evidence of the money trail, it will be difficult for Trump to talk his way out.
The system may be working.  

February 23, 2018--Occupy Tallahassee

Some are prognosticating that the gun control "movement" led by survivors of last week's shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, will be short-lived.

The odds are that they are right. 

To sustain this effort would require children now ranging in age from 14 to 18 to devote themselves to it essentially full time while still enrolled in high school or when their time soon comes to attend college or for some, as members of the ROTC, are obligated to enter the army. If their cause were taken over by a formal organizational structure run by adults it would lose most of its visceral effectiveness. 

Half of Never Again's current appeal is not just the popularity of the issues these kids are insisting be addressed in Tallahassee and Washington but the fact that this is a children's crusade. Children who in their newly-imposed maturity and youthful wisdom are so amazingly good on TV and the Internet and thus are especially viable in our social-media age.

So, as CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times move on, as they soon will, it is likely to run out of visible gas. In other words, it will no longer be as compelling and deeply moving a story as it currently is. This is inevitable.

But then again, I am reminded of another movement organized and carried out by young people which popped up unexpectedly, attracted a great following among the public and in the media, and then seemingly passed from view. 

Occupy Wall Street. 

Its outward manifestation, occupying Zuccottti Park not far from the Stock Market on Wall Street, lasted just 28 days from September 17 through November 15, 2011, but its basic message lives on. Occupy itself passed from the scene but its central message is still with us and continues to deeply affect our political discourse--the relentless economic inequality that plagues our society. The disparity in the ownership of America's wealth between the top 1% and the rest of us.

Zuccotti Park is back to normal, occupied again mainly by stock traders taking a smoking break and New York City's resilient pigeon population, but we still have lively debates about economic fairness. Bernie Sanders, for example, would not have been as viable as he turned out to be if it weren't for the issues Occupy Wall Street placed before us.

And it could be, hopefully will be, also true for Never Again. I am feeling that our discourse, such as it is, about firearms will be permanently altered. These kids and millions of others vote or will vote when they are old enough and those they have already inspired (count me among those) will keep their "common sense" issues before us and will compel candidates at the state and national levels to take their views into active consideration if they want to protect their public sinecures.

If as I sense that those as rigid and craven as Marco Rubio and Donald Trump are sounding different it may be that something new and welcome is happening thanks to those inspiring young people we have this week been getting to know.

February 22, 2018--Code-Red Kids: 3:00 am Raw Draft

In less than a week, it's become all about our children. Everyone's children, including those of us who do not have any of our own.

These are the children of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the latest place in America where 14 children and three adults were gunned down on Valentine's Day.

These children have been ubiquitous every day since--on social media, on TV, in the press. Including last night at a town hall meeting in South Florida where calmly they skewered and dismantled their senator, Marco Rubio, as he tried to con and patronize them, attempting to wiggle out of taking responsibility for the fact that the National Rifle Association (NRA) have him on their payroll and thus own him lock, stock, and barrel (to use a weaponized idiom). 

He could only sputter when students asked him to explain and justify this. He couldn't except to say, with unintentional honesty, that they do so because they "buy his agenda." Do they ever. By bankrolling him they are assured he will do their bloody bidding. He had nothing to say when they pointed out that he received $3.3 million in campaign lucre last year, three times what any of the other hundreds in Congress who are on the NRA payroll pocketed. 

They are all of our children because they are as perfect as we imagine ours to be or would want them to be if we had any of our own. In them we see a reflection of ourselves at our imagined best, as we would like to be, hope that we are.

Self-confident, well-mannered, articulate, forceful, passionate, persistent, polite, knowledgeable, just, fair-minded, and eloquent, they invite us to grieve with them and now are calling us, if necessary shaming us, to action. 

Inviting us to support them in saving their lives since as code-red, children who every day of their school lives have lived with the real threat that today, this week, this year the code-red drills they routinely practice, where they learn to hide in the coat closet when there is an actual shooter present in their classroom, will be more than a drill but an imminent threat. 

With respect and without averting there eyes either to us, their parents, their neighbors, their teachers, their so-called leaders, including even the president in the White House, they point their fingers, while not literally doing so, asking, telling us, now that we have demonstrated we are incapable of protecting them, saving their lives and childhoods since we adults have failed at that, they are telling us that they are taking action to save their own lives, that they are taking the lead and invite us to join them. 

"Never again," they chant.

How to put this? To finesse this? 

Though it may be unflattering to acknowledge, their movement seems different because those this time calling us to action are not from working-class backgrounds or, as with Black Lives Matter, not from urban hot spots, but look and feel like they are our imagined best, especially so to the media covering their testimony and mobilization. 

As with most of the reporters and journalists covering them, they come from solidly middle-class backgrounds and, though as diverse as America is, are disproportionately white.

Sorry, in spite of our progress we are still tribal. That is still how it works, hardwired in our DNA. 

They are like the kids we have at home and send in trust to the schools. This is thus personal and as a result may be powerful enough not just to move us but perhaps even succeed in bringing about some long-needed change. 

They are a generation who have been waiting to find reasons to inspire them, to make their lives meaningful, authentic. They are bringing the lie to how they have been stereotyped--as self-indulgent Millennials.  They now have reasons to be inspired--what they have been looking for last week was brought right to their classroom door. 

And they are thus far proving up to the task.

Which in turn, in exactly a week, still bearing raw wounds, is why they wound up in the White House, invited there by President Trump, who actually, following notes written for him by others, actually found the capacity uncharacteristically to "listen." For 70 minutes at least. 

He mostly seemed to listen, and that was both appropriate and welcome, but when he spoke, after their riveting testimony, when he did turn to speak to them and us, all he could offer was to parrot NRA talking points from previous classroom massacres from Columbine, to Sandy Hook, and now to Parkland, Florida. 

What we need to do, he mouthed, is arm classroom teachers so when someone shows up bearing military weapons of mass destruction they will be able to shoot back with their handguns and thereby take control of the situation. They will be armed and prepared how to pause while teaching their current students to shoot back and kill one or more of their former classmates. All this on a teacher's salary.

The students at the White House meeting did not let him get away with this absurdity, respectfully asking if he expected a semi-trained teacher would be able to defend them from fully automatic military-style weapons with, by comparison, a pathetic handgun?

Trump had no answer but to repeat what the NRA has paid him to say. Thirty million dollars in campaign contributions for the 2016 election. 

It of course remains to be seen if these children, which some reminded us they still are, can sustain their effort. They know, as one in effect put it during last night's town hall on CNN, they are just at the beginning of a "5K" race. Though, it made me feel a wave of both emotion and optimism to see another correct him, saying, "No, some of this is a 'sprint,' so let's make it work because our lives are literally at stake."

February 21, 2018--Trump Running Scared

As evidence that some of the most arrogant of politicians in America are already feeling the heat being generated by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 teens were murdered a week ago, the Florida state legislature, aware that busloads of survivors of that mass shooting were on the road, heading for the capital in Tallahassee, 400 miles north, before even showing them the courtesy of a meeting, like the cowards they are, they voted overwhelmingly not even to consider, not even debate about ways to control the kinds of weapons of mass destruction the shooter used to mow down their classmates.

They exposed themselves--only cowards are afraid to talk. 

All those tough-guys (mostly men) who attend Florida legislative sessions with their openly-carried hand guns stuffed in the pants (how appropriate), sensing the potential political power these children are generating, hid in their offices during the morning and then later vacated them hours before these children arrived, after attending, earlier in the day, another funeral of one of their classmates, before these survivors arrived to share their stories and to seek the help of adults sworn on their bibles to protect them in their classrooms as gun violence in the schools turns more and more deadly, before being confronted by representatives of the youth of Florida, who they claim to represent these useless legislators voted as they did, not even having the courage to wait to talk with these constituents about gun control. 

Instead, they up and ran for cover.

Cringing behind their desks and feeling manly clutching their weapons, may bring them a sense of protection, but these students, in a campaign that is rapidly taking hold in high schools across the country are in fact a real threat to them and their undeserved prerogatives. 

These children are bringing at last a reckoning. A powerful one, one that hopefully will begin to mean "never again," one of their tag lines, knowingly or not, similar to the "never again" avowed by Jews who survived the Holocaust.

Another coward, cringing in his gilded bunker in Washington, a coward who sought and secured five phony deferments so he would not have to serve in the army during the Vietnam era, that tough-talking coward, who some call "our president," is at least willing to talk or, as he promises, listen during a meeting later today at the White House that will include some of the Stoneman-Douglas survivors.

This pretender is not prone to listen to anyone about anything must be running scared because otherwise he would be lying in bed as usual this afternoon taking an "executive break," watching Fox News while gorging himself on Big Macs. We'll see if he can sit still longer than the usual 15 minutes he is capable of concentrating.

If he thinks he can cool these kids out by inviting them to their (not his) White House, he shouldn't hold his breath because these children, many already old enough to vote, with hundreds of thousands more eligible to do so in just a few months, in November during the midterm elections, they, and not you, Mr. president will ultimately determine who sits in state legislators, houses of Congress, and, yes, even in the office you illegitimately hold.

Your directing the Attorney General to do the paper work to ban the use of "bump stocks" that turn semi-automatic, military-style weapons into automatic weapons of bloodshed is evidence of how scared you are of the power of these kids. This is begrudging acknowledgment that as rigid as you have proven to be they are bringing fear to your heart, which must be a feeling familiar as Robert Mueller's noose tightens. 

Nothing that you do will deter or distract them. They are unleashed and activated and will not be bought off by phony listening sessions or White House tours. 

They are coming for you for a reckoning and you should be scared for your political life and already shaky place in history because that is what a reckoning is--holding people like you responsible for things you are constitutionally required to do. 

It is obvious that this means nothing to you. You do not even understand your sacred constitutional role. But they do. They have been paying attention in their American history classes. 

These kids are on the move not only to take their protection into their own hands but to teach any of us who may have forgotten or, like you, never even paid attention or understood, what America means.

But you do have strong survival skills--that I'll grant you--and though you truly do not understand you are feeling sacred. 

As you should be.

February 20, 2018--Children Must Lead Us

The biblical citation, Isaiah 11:6, says, 

"The wolf . . . shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."

The classmates of the very little children murdered five years ago, twenty 1st and 2nd graders in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, could not lead us. They were too young to find the words.

But the much older high school children who are the survivors of yet another school massacre, this time at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL can--they have found their voice and are attempting to lead us. 

We will do well to follow. 

They have already begun to plan a school boycott and a massive march on Washington for March 24th, "March for Our Lives." And they have been speaking out eloquently on all our media outlets with the savvy of people much older than they. 

Their suffering is prematurely making them wise.

Here in the words of one organizer, 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez, is the heart of the matter-

All these [students and their families] should be home grieving. But instead we are up here, standing together, because if all our government and president can do is send "thoughts and prayers," then it is time for victims to be the change that we need to see.

She demanded to know where the "common sense" is in our gun laws and identified members of Congress who have accepted money and donations from the NRA.

She also directly criticized Donald Trump who tweeted a call for action on mental health, not gun controls, while criticism him for overturning an Obama-era law that made it harder for people with mental illness to buy guns.

She ended by saying that "If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was 'a terrible tragedy,' I'm going to ask him how much money he received from the NRA."

The answer is--in 2016 more than $30 million. And, while I'm at it, $3.3 million to pay-to-play Florida senator Marco Rubio, who said it's "too soon" after the shooting to talk about gun control.

And so as not to be duped by our commander-in-chief who doesn't care at all but who may be trying to find a way to horn in on the students' passion as yet another way to distract us from his failings and felonies, Parkland students are tweeting--

Morgan Williams wrote--

Oh my god. 17 Of MY CLASSMATES AND FRIENDS ARE GONE AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO MAKE THIS ABOUT RUSSIA???!! HAVE A DAMN HEART. You can keep all your fake and meaningless "thoughts and prayers."

Aly Sheehy tweeted--

17 of my classmates are gone. That's 17 futures, 17 children, and 17 friends stolen. But it always has to be about you. How silly of me to forget.

March 24th--mark it on your calendar--Washington, DC.

January 19, 2018--Lock Them Up

Announced Friday was the first in at least three chapters about how Russians influenced the 2016 presidential election. 

This report from the Mueller investigation and the Department of Justice did not contain a "smoking gun."

That means no one from the Trump campaign, including President Trump, was accused (yet) of knowingly playing a direct part in the dozens of efforts to derail Hillary Clinton's campaign while boosting his.

But a smoking gun, in a second or third chapter, will soon be forthcoming.

The second chapter will show the many ways in which Trump's people wittingly were involved, likely including Trump himself. A third chapter, knitting everything together, will reveal how money was the root of all evil that led to this widespread malfeasance--how Russians indirectly and directly laundered oligarchs' ill-gotten gains (including from Putin) through western banks such as Deutsche Bank, which in turn loaned it to the likes of Trump (and the Kushners) to bail out their failing real estate deals.

Expect in these two chapters to hear directly from the perpetrators themselves as perhaps up to a dozen have been cooperating, for months working undercover for the Mueller investigation, wearing a wire, in exchange for not being tried, convicted, and sent to jail.

Thus far, some of this is unintentionally ironic.

For example, we learn how pervasive and effective Russian interference was in the 2016 campaigns and likely continues to be, including as we grind toward the 2018 midterm elections.

Their use of social media and their direct involvement in dirty tricks undoubtedly helped tip the election to Trump. By working strategically how could the Russians not have turned the few thousand votes Trump needed in purple states (which they targeted) such as Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida, and Pennsylvania to build his winning margin in the Electoral College?

This means (the irony) that the Russian campaign in 2016 was more effective than Hillary's--Trump won with Russian support; she lost for the same reason.

Rattled by the implication that he is an illegitimate president Trump spent the weekend off the golf course (too windy) attacking via tweets those he perceives to be his enemies from Congressman Adam Schiff (who he called a "monster") to his own National Security Advisor, General H.R. McMaster to . . . Oprah, who Trump says is "insecure".

Making what the Russians were up to vivid, Mueller, in this first series of indictments revealed how Russian operatives showed up at campaign events, including in West Palm Beach, FL with a flatbed truck on which there was a simulated jail cell within which there was "incarcerated" an actress dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit pretending to be Hillary Clinton.

Mueller is now moving quickly, wanting to complete as much of his work as possible before Trump attempts to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in an attempt to shut down the investigation.

None of this will work. Friday witnessed the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency.

February 16, 2018--The Other 3%

Not the economic elite who own a vastly disproportionate percentage of America's wealth but the 3% of Americans who own 80% of the assault weapons in private hands.

The New York Times reports it is much easier in Florida to purchase an AR-15 military style weapon than a handgun. It takes three days of background checking before one can take a pistol home but you can walk into a gun shop and an hour later leave with a semiautomatic rifle. 

In Florida you have to be 21 to buy a handgun but only 18 to purchase an AR-15.

Rona asked why it is places such as Florida, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, and Nevada where it is easy to purchase weapons of mass destruction while it is difficult if not impossible to do so legally in places such as New York that the worst shootings always seem to occur in those states where guns are easy to obtain whereas in New York this virtually never happens.

The answer to that is easy and self-explanatory.

February 15, 2018--Gilded Age

A friend who seems to know about almost everything that's on TV--knowing her is better than subscribing to TV Guide--recommend that we watch "The Gilded Age," part of the American Experience series broadcast on PBS.

I confess that I rarely (that means never) watch PBS. I like my TV at its raw, unrefined worst (when I can't stand any more Morning Joe, for example, I switch over to reruns of Married With Children)--television for me is for escape or to keep up to the minute about the latest high school shooting massacre (yesterday, therefore, involved switching back and forth between Olympic figure skating and the horrendous story of mass murder in a high school in South Florida not too far from where we used to winter.

But before that, we watched about half of "Gilded Age" (I kept nodding off since I'm not that good at taking in information other than by reading or talking).

What I saw of it was OK, full of well chosen photographs of the then vulgarians who made up the conspicuous worst of that era. The point, in part, was to remind us that we're living in a similar age and that we need to protect ourselves if we want to preserve what's left of our democracy. 

Dealing with gross inequality must become our highest priority. It was good, though, to be reminded that no matter how bad we think things are today they could be worse. Like during the Gilded Age of 1880 to 1920.

You know how these documentaries work--they depend mainly on vintage photos, film from back then, and talking-head historians who set the context. The ones who get me snoozing.

Last night, one of the historian experts who wrote definitive books about John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and William Randolph Hearst (all Gilded Agers), was David Nasaw, an old friend. I hired him for his first academic job in 1978 at Staten Island Community College. Some years before he had produced a neat book, Starting Your Own High School, derived from his experiences teaching at the Elizabeth Cleaners Street School. It was written by the kids and edited by David. He was just the kind of "radical" educator we were eager to bring on board at SICC for our "experimental college," which I directed.

He turned out to be the great teacher we were hoping for and after Staten Island went on to bigger but not necessarily better things. He's now a distinguished professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, where, after serving in President Kennedy's administration, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was affiliated. So David is doing very well as a cultural and social historian and was perfect for setting context for "The Gilded Age."

He and it were good enough so the next time my friend recommends something serious to watch on TV, I'll think about giving it a try.

February 14, 2018--Hence, Donald Trump

In case anyone is still wondering why Donald Trump was elected, in a few words, in her Sunday New York Times column, Maureen Dowd, who has recently turned more attention to interviewing celebrities (Uma Thurman last week) than writing about our depressing politics, returned to biting form and supplied as good an answer as I have seen. 

Here are the first few paragraphs--

Donald Trump slipped into the Oval Office through a wormhole of confusion about American identity.  

We weren’t winning wars anymore. They just went on and on and on, with inexplicable and deceptive aims and so many lives and limbs and trillions lost.  

We couldn’t believe in our institutions, with breaches of trust and displays of ineptitude.  

We were moving from a white-majority, male-dominated country and manufacturing base to a multicultural, multilateral, globalized, P.C., new energy, new technology world, without taking account of the confusion and anger of older Americans who felt like strangers in a strange land.  

Among many, the allure of Barack Obama’s brainy nuance had given way to a longing for a more muscular certainty.  

With the Russians sowing confusion, Trump surfed those free-floating anxieties, that fear of not knowing who we are, straight to Pennsylvania Avenue.

February 13, 2018--#metoo

Friday afternoon, exasperated, Katy Tur on MSNBC, said, "All I'm hearing is 'he, he he.' Not a word about 'her.'"

She was referring to what she and the rest of us were hearing from Donald Trump about Rob Porter, his recently fired White House Staff Secretary. Though an ordinary-sounding job title, the Staff Secretary has frequent direct access to the president and is responsible for determining what printed material is given to the president to read or, in Trump's case, ignore.

To serve in that position, like his predecessors, Porter needed a top secret security clearance. Which he didn't have since the FBI, about a year ago, when reviewing his application, discovered that he had physically assaulted both of his ex-wives and thus did not approve assigning him that status.

Late Friday afternoon, in a virtually unprecedented move, unannounced, Trump invited the White House press corps into the Oval Office to take a few questions. It was no surprise that all of them were about Rob Porter. Trump had clearly thought carefully about what he would say.

At length, with a heavy-sounding heart, he spoke about what an exemplary employee Porter had been and how he would be missed. He called his departure "very sad" and that "we hope he will have a wonderful career." That "it's been a hard time for him."

He also reminded us that poor Porter had not been proven guilty, that he was merely the victim of allegations. There had not been due process. 

It was widely noted by Katy Tur and others that Trump spoke not a word about the women who had been physically assaulted. He didn't point out that what they had endured was also "sad" or offer the hope that they too would have "wonderful careers" or lives.

Over the weekend a little research revealed that with Trump there is a distinct pattern about these matters--when someone is accused of spousal abuse or sexual harassment, in all cases except Harvey Weinstein's, Trump totally ignored the women and consistently made excuses for the men.  

About Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama, who was credibly accused of molesting and raping minors, Trump,  not acknowledging the then girls, emphasized that Moore hadn't been convicted of anything. It was classic he-said-she-said though it was clear who Trump believed. 

And in the cases of campaign managers Cory Lewandowski and Steve Bannon, both accused by ex-wives of domestic violence, Trump did not seem concerned and stood by them when the accusations came to light.

Then, still fitting the pattern, when Fox News's Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly were exposed as serial sexual predators, Trump fell in line in support of them.

About Weinstein Trump couldn't resist joining the condemnation since he was a major donor to Hillary Clinton's and other Democrats' campaigns. And so he overcame his reluctance to criticizing the men and took a swipe at Weinstein, saying, with unintentional irony on the very anniversary of the notorious Billy Bush Access Hollywood tape, that he was "not at all surprised" by revelations that the movie mogul repeatedly paid to settle charges of sexual harassment. It was obvious that Trump was speaking from personal experience.

"Still missing from this discussion," Rona said, "is more analysis about Trump's reticence."

I said, "I think in general it's been claimed that he's a classic chauvinist right out of the era in which he, a spoiled rich kid, came of age. A world where powerful men felt free to sexually exploit women, especially in the workplace. Mad Men like."

"I think that's only a part of the story," Rona said, "More significant to me is that he himself has been charged with sexual misconduct by at least 15 women and that he allegedly raped Ivana, his first wife. So he is directly implicated in his own world of similar accusations. Thus to talk in a more balanced way about the current burst of sexual allegations would potentially force him to confront his own behavior. So, by making excuses for the men accused, men like Rob Porter, via the psychological mechanism of projection, he is making excuses for himself. Diminishing the claims of the women suing him by assigning or projecting his behavior onto them. 

"You remember the hashtag Maureen Dowd created for him in her Sunday column? Instead of #metoo, she came up with something more appropriate for him--#me." 

"Perfect," Rona said with a sad smile.

February 12, 2018--Our Best Hope

What else is new. Over breakfast Saturday Rona and I were again talking about Donald Trump. This was in the midst of the Rob Porter fiasco. 

The fiasco was not about his two battered ex-wives (that was tragic) but about the way chief of staff Kelly handled, no, ignored the situation and tried to cover up the fact that Porter was denied a security clearance because the FBI found he was a spousal abuser. 

Additionally distressing, no one on the Trump team, including its supreme leader, did anything about it until it became publicly known and the White House was reluctantly forced to fire him. 

Reluctantly, not because Porter did such a good job, which was to manage the paper flow to Trump. Considering the fact that Trump does't read, that suggests Porter's was less than a full time job, which--gossip--meant he had the time to fool around with Trump uber-insider Hope Hicks. 

Trump and his Praetorian Guard handled his firing very gently--praising Porter highly as he was marched out the White House door because Trump and his inner circle feared he might show up on Robert Mueller's witness list and they didn't want to do anything further to incite him. 

Oh the stories Porter could tell Mueller from his vantage point right outside the Oval Office.

"You remember" Rona said, "the first person we knew who said he was not only putting out a Trump lawn sign but predicted that Trump would secure the nomination and also win the election?"

"I do remember that. It was up in Maine, it was Joe, and most amazing, he got it right even though Trump had just announced he was running and everyone, everyone, apparently including even Trump and his family, thought he had no chance. People were sure he was running half-seriously to build his brand. In other words, to make more money.

"We thought Joe was crazy."

"But he turned out to be right. Do you also remember what he said when we asked him why he was supporting Trump?"

"I do," Rona said, "It was because he felt Trump knew how to get things done. As a successful builder and businessman he had skills that would translate well in the White House. He'd be CEO-in-chief. And that's what we needed after eight years of Obama, where, Joe claimed, very little that was needed got done.

"I asked him to give us an example of Trump getting things done that qualified him to become president much less a successful one."

"He talked about the iceskating rink in Central Park. How the city couldn't make it work--the ice for years wouldn't freeze solid and though over six years they spent $3.0 million dollars of taxpayer money they couldn't fix it. After two years of agitating Trump finally got the mayor to agree to let him try, charging the city only for the cost of materials. In four months, 25 percent under budget, it was working fine and is now called the Trump Iceskating Rink."

"We were surprised that Joe knew so much about it. But he told us that not only did he but so also did a lot of others and that they would become his voters and defenders."

"Obviously Joe was right about the nomination and election but he was dead wrong about Trump being able to 'hire' only the best people or 'get things done.'"

"It turns out Trump's better at making messes than accomplishing things. Take Rob Porter as the most recent example."

"Can you imagine," Rona said, "How much worse it would be if Trump was actually competent and able to get things done? I hate to think what that would look like. At the moment, ineptitude is our best hope."

"One thing Trump accomplished."

"What's that?"

"After all the messes Joe's no longer willing to talk about politics or Trump."

February 9, 2018--Jack's Cri de Coeur

"Don't say a word." It was Jack. "I need to talk."

In the years I've known him he never sounded so vulnerable. He would not reveal that side of himself. 

"Of course," I said, "Anything. I have the time."

"I don't think I ever told you much about how I grew up. I know you know it wasn't a bed of roses. I think you know I didn't get much schooling. That things were such that I had to work from the time I was ten. Not the kind of fun jobs kids do these days at that age say during the summer riding around with their fathers delivering newspapers or something. I mean working to help put food on the table or during the rest of the year working at anything you can find so you can help pay for heating oil. It gets very cold here in the winters. Sometimes if I didn't make enough there was no heat. I put on every sweater I had and tried to sleep while my whole body, even under the blankets, couldn't stop shivering.

"I'm sure you're wondering about my mother and father. What was up with them. If you had a month I can tell you some stories. Not the kind of stories you like to write about. With mine there's nothing amusing or charming. Though here goes--

"The first thing I remember is when my father went to Massachusetts for work. You know there's more cranberry bogs there than any other state. It can seem like the whole state is nothing but cranberries there are so many of them. I know from first hand because some years, when I was older, with a couple of buddies I did the same thing. Rake those berries standing up to you ass in waders. Doesn't make for a happy childhood. But the money wasn't all that bad and they put you up in dormitories. Not the kind I'm sure you know from college or whatever. You did what you had to do.

"But I was telling you about the first thing I remember. About when one year when my father went to the bogs in Harwich or wherever and didn't come home. I don't mean over the weekends but didn't come home for three years. He had become a stranger to me those years when he was away. I must have been five or something like that. I didn't remember that exactly. I guess I could have been six or even seven. Though it doesn't really matter. I don't know why I'm making such a big deal about how old I was. Enough to say I was very young and he went to Massachusetts to work and didn't come home for what felt like my whole childhood.

"Somehow we managed to get by. Just barely. My mother had a friend who took me in. During the days that is. I hardly went to school. The truant officers knew me by my first name. My mother though was able to work stocking shelves at Hannifords. They let people who worked there take home food at the end of the day that was about to spoil so that helped. One year it felt like a lived on chicken salad that was about to go bad and stale rolls. But it cost so much to buy oil in the winter that my memory of that time was being so cold halfway through each month when my mother couldn't afford to have the oil tank filled up. The oil people were pretty good about extending credit so at least we didn't freeze to death. Though I remember one time when it felt as if we would. Maybe that's my first memory. Of freezing to death. Or nearly.

"During those years I forgot I had a father. But then one day he shows up with a big shit-eatin' grin on his face. When he knocked on the door I didn't recognize him and thought he was there, at our trailer, for the mortgage payment. My mom often couldn't make the payments.

"I'm sure this is sounding to you like a story I'm making up from my imagination. Right out of a bad tear-jerker of a movie or something." I was about to assure that it didn't but held back, "I have a vivid one. Imagination I mean. I wasn't much of a reader but from my imagination I made up a lot of stories. Kept me company. But these I'm telling you are all true. As best as I can remember them.

"So like I said he just appeared, wanting to be taken in. At first my mother blocked the door. She had figured out a way of life for us. But I suspect for my sake she stepped back away from the door and let him enter. That she felt a boy needs a father. Even like mine who had disappeared for three years and never been in touch. Forget a phone call. Ours had been turned off. But not even a note or letter or Christmas card. Nothing. Like he had up and died. But she let him in.

Looking back she shouldn't have. Things quickly took a turn for the worse. From it felt like the first day. I didn't know anything about him before he took off but when he came back he brought a pretty bad temper with him. Let me correct that. What he was like was much more than what I'm sure you're thinking of when I say a bad temper. It was closer to violent rages. 

"Of course, like that bad movie, he got drunk every night. Could be he was drunk all the time. He could barely keep a job, any kind of job. The best he was able to do was work for this neighbor who sold firewood. He hired my father to split logs but he wasn't much good at that. In fact, one day he had to be taken to the hospital since he sliced off two of his fingers in that log splitting machine. I'm not making this up. 

"So much for chopping wood. Or anything else for that matter. My mom kept working at Hannifords. She was doing a little better, getting promoted to manage the deli counter. It also became her refuge because after he got home from the hospital all my father did was lie around watching soap operas on TV. A grown man. That's what he did with his days. . . . His life.

"Of course his best friend was the bottle. He somehow managed to get a little disability from the government. He had been in the coast guard for about a year before they kicked him out, but he was good at working the system and got about $500 a month. All went for cigarettes and drink.

"So, like I told you my mother was doing pretty good on her job, but the better she did the worse he became.

"It begin from the minute she got home. By then he had drunk himself to sleep but woke right up when he heard her car on the gravel outside out place. He was hollering at her before she could even take off her coat. Raging at her at the top of his lungs--

"'You slut,' he got right into it, 'So what you been up to all day? Flirtin' around with the other salad scoopers?' His voice full of contempt, 'You still have your shape, that I'll grant you, so I guess all the pretty cheese slicers must be sniffin' after you.' He'd make disgusting sucking sounds, 'Which I'm imaginin' you're havin' a good time with. Knowin' you like I do. Slut that you are.'"

"On and on he'd go. It didn't take long for her to get hysterical. Crying and screaming at the same time. And like that bad movie again, throwing stuff around. All the dishes finally got broke and we ate off paper plates after that. She'd slam the door on the bedroom and lock it but he'd kick it in following her back there. I turned up the voices in my head to try to block out what he was raging about and, to tell the truth, so I couldn't hear her either.

"It went on like that. Day after day, month after month. It must have been only a few months before he became physically abusive. At first just--how can I just say 'just'--well after just that he began to punch and kick her. One night knocked out two teeth. Bloody noses happened all the time and all sorts of cuts and bruises. I was still a skinny kid but I tried to get between them, I mean in front of him to try to get him to stop. But he would just brush me aside. 

"One night thing got so bad, he was screaming 'whore, whore, whore' and drunkily slugging away at her that I ran over to the neighbors--the firewood people--and asked them to call the police. There was no need to tell them the whole story. They could hear the screaming and yelling through the walls of their trailer. They did call the sheriff and they came right over and took my father into custody. But after a few days he was back. And back to his familiar ways.

"My mom had had enough and one afternoon when he was dead drunk and deep asleep on the couch she loaded me in the car and drove us up state to Caribou where her mother lived, thinking she'd take us in. Which she did, but after only a few days he hitched north and found us out. I guess he knew there weren't many places where we could go and hide. 

"Rather then be killed on the spot my mother again gave into him and the three of us drove back home. Home, such as it was.

"Like I said I could go on for hours. But since I've already taken up too much of your time let me cut to the chase. And get to my point. Because I do have a point."

"It's," I began to say and again held back.

"Like I said, my life was like a cheap movie and that's how it ended. Not my life, but his. How his life ended. Simple, one of his drinking buddies who he owed about $1,000 to--who would give him money is beyond me--well, he up and shot him. Right through the chest. Killed him outright.

"Can't say my mother or me were unhappy about that. It was going to be him or us. For once things turned out. So, that's it."

He paused to take a few deep breaths. "Why am I telling you this?" Jack resumed, "That's sort of simple too. Let me read you something that'll help explain." 

On the other end of the line I could hear him shuffling papers. Then, in a monotone, he read--

The first time he called me a "fucking bitch" was on our honeymoon. (I found out years later he had kicked his first wife on theirs.) A month later he physically prevented me from leaving the house. Less than two months after that, I filed a protective order with the police because he punched in the glass on our front door while I was locked inside. We bought a house to make up for it. Just after our one year anniversary, he pulled me, naked and dripping, from the shower to yell at me. 

Everyone loved him. People commented all the time how lucky I was. Strangers complimented him to me every time we went out. But in my home, the abuse was insidious. The threats were personal. The terror was real. And yet I stayed. 

When I tried to get help, I was counseled to consider carefully how what I said might affect his career. And so I kept my mouth shut and stayed. I was told, yes, he was deeply flawed, but then again so was I. And so I worked on myself and stayed. If he was a monster all the time, perhaps it would have been easier to leave. But he could be kind and sensitive. And so I stayed. He cried and apologized. And so I stayed. He offered to get help and even went to a few counseling sessions and therapy groups. And so I stayed. He belittled my intelligence and destroyed my confidence. And so I stayed. I felt ashamed and trapped. And so I stayed. Friends and clergy didn't believe me. And so I stayed. I was pregnant. And so I stayed. I lost the pregnancy and became depressed. And so I stayed.

I knew where this was from. From disgraced White House secretary Rob Porter's second wife Jennifer Willoughby's journal entry.

Jack was silent for what seemed like five minutes, then finally said, "You know my politics" (that I do) "Well, this changes everything. I mean. To have him, this person, this animal in the White House in an office right outside the Oval Office. I mean . . . that's . . . I can't finish the words."

I held onto the phone for what seemed like another five minutes. But Jack had hung up.

February 8, 2018--Return Friday

I will be back here tomorrow before the sun rises.

February 7, 2018--Rupert Murdoch's Boys

Rupert Murdoch, worth at least $13.1 billion, owner of various news outlets and TV stations, including in New York, the salacious Post and, nationally, the Wall Street Journal (known for its Neanderthal editorials and high-quality reporting), entertainment companies such as F/X and the National Geographic channels, and of course the nefarious Fox News Channel, home to the likes of Bill O'Reilly (gone but insufficiently forgotten) and Sean Hannity (still awaiting his ultimate fate), Rupert, now married for the 10th or 11th time (kidding) to Mick's Ex, Jerry Hall, approaching 90, with at least half his marbles (enough to talk to Donald Trump almost nightly offering advice and encouragement) has for the past couple of years been dividing and turning his empire over to his two adult sons, James and Lachlan--the entertainment division to the former and the news operation to the latter. 

This represents an opportunity, perhaps even hope, especially for his media holdings in America as son Lachlan is reputed to be of a more liberal persuasion than his father (he pushed vigorously to fire Roger Ailes when his sexual harassment behavior was exposed) and might, just might be inclined to calm things down at Fox by dumping the evening opinion shows (right-wing rants) and while he's at it the insipid morning show, Fox&Friends, which Trump watches religiously and from which he gets many of his most corrosive and paranoid daily talking points.

But then again, Lachlan's half of the pie is the most profitable part, netting the Murdochs nearly $1.0 billion a year in net profit.

Though the money keeps pouring in, Fox News's viewership is aging out and dying off. Their 3.3 million daily viewers are on average 68, almost old enough to be required to begin drawing down their IRAs.

With these trend-lines there's no real future for Fox News as it's currently configured while for Lachlan, only 46, it is too soon to be presiding over such a geriatric operation.

Then, though he holds dual citizenship (he was born in England but lives in America) he is more American than Brit and thus to have a life in New York and Aspen, where he owns a sprawling mansion, to live a cosmopolitan life, presiding over Fox News as it spills hate out over American airwaves, to be responsible for Sean Hannity, is a cultural and social problem. And not to forget, these mesmerized viewers led the spawning of the Trump constancy. No Fox, no Trump.

I can see the possibility of son Lachlan guiding Fox in a still conservative but moderate direction. There is a younger viewership for that and so the bottom line, over a carefully staged transition, would not be undermined. The Fox News channel would remain a cash cow.

On the liberal side, the Washington Post and New York Times (both at the time, as Fox, family owned) over a decade morphed from outlets for traditional Republican editorial policy into liberal institutions. (The New York Post, another example of generational transition, was for many decades very liberal, at times, socialistic, and then along came Rupert Murdoch.)

So there is precedent. Above all, one cannot overemphasize the propensity of children, when inheriting businesses, to want to put there own stamp on things. (That's the Trump story, isn't it?) Of course, children (sons) thinking they're smarter than the "old man" frequently wind up bankrupting the family business. (That's the Trump story, isn't it?)

In regard to Fox News, if that were to happen, I could live with it.

The Murdoch Boys