November 21, 2018--IvankaGate

According to a story in yesterday's Washington Post, presidential First Daughter and official senior advisor to the president (her daddy), using a personal account, Ivanka Trump, sent hundreds of emails last year to White House staff and Cabinet officials. 

According to sources, "hundreds" violated federal rules about the dissemination and retention of official papers and correspondence. 

Sound familiar? Do you hear "Lock her up. Lock her up" being chanted in the background? This from rabid Trump supporters who packed themselves into mass rallies during the primary and general election campaigns of 2016-17, the same time Ivanka was using personal email for official business  

If you were paying attention, so must have been Ivanka. And she as well as we knew the "her" bing chanted was Hillary Clinton and the reason Trump claimed that Hillary should be locked up was because, while secretary of state, she used a private email system rather than one provided by the government.

Also like Hillary, Ivanka is now asserting she did not know that by doing so she violated well established rules.

Clearly she wasn't paying attention. Or, more likely, felt that federal rules about official papers did not apply to her or, for that matter, her princely husband, Jared Kushner, also a senior presidential advisor, with whom she shared a personal network or domain.

As might be imagined, the mainstream media are having a field day with this example of blatant hypocrisy. How delicious it must seem to Democrats (very much including Hillary Clinton) who have had to endure Trump's mocking while blaming the former First Lady for all our troubles. He did so as recently as Sunday while trying to deflect probing questions from Chris Wallace on Fox News.

By Tuesday morning, on CNN and MSNBC, chat was all about Ivanka's let-them-eat-cake hauteur. But, on both networks, while gleefulness was universal, Jeffery Toobin, CNN's chief legal analyst, and John Harwood, Washington correspondent for CNBC, on Morning Joe expressed second thoughts. Both claimed that this was not that big a deal. Nor for that matter, retrospectively, was what Hillary did, though both confessed to having spent too much time on the Hillary flap. They cautioned that we should not to make the same mistake again. 

Mika, Joe, and Alisyn Camerota went ballistic. It would be irresponsible to give the story short shrift since is was such an open-and-shut opportunity to get back at the Trumps.

I agree with Joe, Mika, and Alisyn, but perhaps for somewhat different reasons.

Progressives need to take this on aggressively. Not only to get even with the Trump crime family but to demonstrate that like Republicans we are capable of fighting aggressively. 

There is a tendency within the educated, professional class to reason rather than fight. In many instances this is the appropriate option but in most political situations it needs to be more about winning than reasoning.

One reason Republicans have done as well as they have (including electing Trump) is because they have the capacity to battle relentless for things they want to achieve. Like getting nominees confirmed for federal judgeships. Change the rules if necessary. Keep an eye on the goal--winning.

Progressives often lose because they are too quick to be understanding and reasonable.

This is not an argument to emulate Mitch McConnell but to stop being such wusses when it comes to confrontations and political battles. A cold political war is underway and we demur at our peril.

April 30, 2015--Burn, Baby! BURN!

"Burn, Baby! BURN," during the 1965 Watts riots, was the trademark of on-air rhythm-and-blues DJ, Magnificent Montaque. He and others proclaimed, some said encouraged insurrection as a large section of Los Angeles was in fact burning. During the 60s and 70s, so-called race riots spread to many American cities and to some, Burn, Baby! BURN became a rallying cry for the violent minority. Others protested peacefully, most stayed safely out of sight and were only marginally engaged.

As a much smaller section of Baltimore was being looted and torched on Monday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake uttered a 2015 version of Burn, baby! BURN. She said--

While we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well. And we work very hard to keep that balance and to put ourselves in the best position to deescalate, and that's what you saw.

What we also saw was a three-hour period when the rioters and looters had free range--or should I say had "space" "to destroy"--what we saw was an almost complete absence of police and not even a glimpse of Mayor Rawlings-Blake.

I can only conclude one or two things--she was ether cowering somewhere not able to think clearly about what to do or, more likely, was closeted with her political advisers since her primary preoccupation these days is not being mayor but how to launch a campaign for the U.S Senate seat about to be vacated by long-serving Barbara Mikulski.

After this week, I think she can forget about her Senate dreams.

But is there something to think about in her psychobabble about giving young people "space" to do their thing?

Much of urban America has missed out on the recent improvements in our economy and the steady growth in new jobs. As someone said, if a rising tide is to lift all boats, first you have to have a boat. Too few in the ghettos do.

Unemployment among the under-educated, especially young men of color, looms imperviously at at least 25 percent. Local schools are dysfunctional, families are shattered, street thugs rule the neighborhoods, and there is little left to do other than attempt to act as "cool" as possible, not to show concern about one's reality and sad prospects.

As with most of us, in order to become reconciled to our position in life, our reality, we find ways to validate and flaunt our circumstances, no matter how impoverished. And it doesn't help in Baltimore, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, to see the glittering city meant for and protected for other people--those of us who through fortune and effort have done well.

In everyones' faces, if they choose to look up, is evidence of the widening inequalities that are manifestly worsening.

So what to do with that frustration, anger, hopelessness, and rage? With so few on-the-street examples of friends and neighbors making it (except in the underground economy) where and how is that pent-up pressure going to express itself, get some relief? In what private and public space?

This is not to find bleeding-heart excuses for criminal behavior but rather to ask, if social remediation is not likely, what do we expect of people whose lives are so full of insult and despair? In the absence of hope what is the appropriate response to oppression and containment by the criminal justice system--the police, prosecutors, courts, and prisons?

Listening to Wolf Blitzer and Jeffery Toobin on CNN in real time Monday when the looting and arson was occurring, not so much from their words but from their tone they conveyed nothing but disgust as mainly young men looted a CVS pharmacy. They didn't deserve sympathy, but they were not the "animals" Blitzer and Toobin implied them to be. How many viewers privately agreed with them?

More likely, they were desperate people who felt the world had no respectable place for them. That too needs to be part of the narrative.

What would we expect them to do? In their circumstances, what would you do? For myself I do not have a good answer. Or one that makes me feel good.