March 22, 2018--BREAKING NEWS!!!

Rona is making predictions again. This time about Stormy Daniels.

Not about what she will reveal Sunday evening on 60 Minutes. Not about the headlines she will inspire, even if she brings along a picture or two of a certain gentleman caller in flagrante delicto. 

But rather her prediction is about the headlines that gentleman caller will inspire.

Headlines Monday morning of the most shocking kind that, in a banner, will span all six columns at the top of the front page of the New York Times and every other paper in the United States and western world and will lead to 24/7-days of Breaking News on the three cable news channels.

TRUMP FIRES SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT MUELLER!!!

In the case of the New York Post, over a photo of Trump, pointing at the camera, in his Apprentice pose--

YOU'RE FIRED!!!

"Expect that to occur," Rona says, "Sunday afternoon to allow editors to get their stories written and typeset. To scoop Stormy. She'll be relegated to page 14, below the fold, and will be mired there for as long as it takes for this Sunday massacre to play out. Probably for the whole week after Republican members of Congress emerge from their bunkers and join Democrats in expressing upset about the 'constitutional crisis,' which, by the way, you can explain to me when you have a moment,"

When I overcome my shock, I ask, "Explain what?"

"'Constitutional crisis.' I have no idea what that means."

"It means," I stammer, "It means . . .  you know I really don't know. Maybe until they get the impeachment process going?"

"Dream on," Rona says, "You really think Republicans in Paul Ryan's House are going to impeach Trump? Enrage his base? They'd all get tossed out of office in November."

"Dream on," I cynically say.

"Maybe the crisis will result from what gets unearthed by various congressional committees."

"Dream on," I say. 

"You're right. There will be no committee investigations with the GOP in the majority."

"Correct. The Dems can jump up and down and scream about the need to get to the bottom of things but unless Ryan and Mitch McConnell allow it to happen there will be no meaningful investigations. The way Congress works the leaders and committee chairman totally control the agenda, including not allowing members of the minority, Democrats, to even call witnesses. It's almost as totalitarian as the Russian or Chinese legislatures. We've seen those in action. Members behave like zombies."

"This is very scary stuff. Is it the beginning of the end of our democracy? What if nothing can be done about this?"

"I have a crazy idea," I say, "Organize a Guerilla Congress."

"You're making light of this? We're in a crisis and you're cracking jokes?"

"I'm totally scared by what you said about Trump firing Mueller this weekend. I'm trying to keep myself from going crazy because what you are predicting sounds more than plausible to me. Look at the new lawyers he's hiring. That Joe diGenova is a killer."

"So what's your idea about Congress?"

"Since the Democrats have no power whatsoever, while waiting for the midterm elections in November, they should rent a big conference room in a Washington DC hotel and hold a Rump or Guerrilla Congress there. Do their  own investigations, try to get witnesses to show up, take testimony, issue findings. All of it unofficial, of course, but if they invite people carefully they could get quite a few to come before them. For example, by mid April, former CIA director Jim Comey will be on the talkshow circuit to publicize his new book and I suspect would appear before the Guerrilla Congress. As would another former head of the CIA, John Brennan, who went off yesterday on Morning Joe when he implied that the Russians may have personal dirt on Trump."

"Not a bad idea," Rona said, "I'll bet MSNBC and CNN would give it some coverage. It would break the mold and in its own way be entertaining. Which is sadly required by the news these days."

"There was a Rump Parliament in England in the middle of the 17th century. I think it has something to do with Charles I."

"Yours may be a crazy idea," Rona says, ignoring my historical example, "but we'll have to come up with things of this kind to keep Trump's and his sycophants' feet to the fire."

"Back to your prediction."

"You know I don't make them often, but about this one . . ."

"Please, for the sake of my sanity, don't finish the thought."

Rump Parliament

December 17, 2014--This Is Nuts

The daughter of the chairman of Korean Air Lines recently forced a plane she was on to go back to the gate so she could have the head steward kicked off because she had been served macadamia nuts in their bag instead of on a plate. This according to the reliable New York Times.

I say "reliable" since if this story had appeared in, say, the New York Post I would have thought it preposterous, made up. Who in their right mind would do such a thing? But there you have it--Cho Hyun-ah is unlikely to have much of a mind.

This, though, is not the whole story.

While waiting for the plane to get back to the gate, Ms. Cho forced the steward to kneel before her and apologize for the way one of the cabin  crew in first class had served the nuts. There was no word about how the peanuts were served in coach.

After the incident, the steward went public which is unusual in class-bound South Korea. Not only did he tell about the kneeling but also alleged that while he was on his knees, Ms. Cho hit him repeatedly with a folder of papers before tossing them at the junior steward.

As the story spread it added to the roiling resentment in Korea toward the families who own the county's sprawling conglomerates. It appears they have their own Occupy-Wall-Street going on.

The patriarch of the Cho family, Hyun-ah's father, so concerned about the implications for his widespread business interests not only kicked his daughter off the Korean Airlines board but also stripped her of her other nepotistic no-show jobs and forced her to apologize. Not on her knees of course.

In the meantime, as fallout from the nuts incident, sales of macadamia nuts in Korean are surging to the point that merchants can't keep them on the shelves. Everyone, it seems, wants a taste of first class. Even if in bags.

December 12, 2013--Meow Lion, Meow

What's happening up at Columbia University, my old college? The Lions, instead of roaring, as our fight song says, are meowing. At the Law School.

It is rare that I agree with anything in Rupert Murdoch's tabloid rag, the New York Post. Actually, I never agree with him or the editorial positions of his newspapers or Fox news outlets. But this one time I do wholeheartedly concur with Tuesday's front page that bellowed--"Poor Babies! Cop Rulings 'Traumatize' Columbia Kids."

The story that followed claimed that the acting dean of the Law School announced that any students so upset by the grand jury rulings in Ferguson, MO and on Staten Island could arrange to delay taking their end-of-semester exams.

Of course skeptical that this could possibly be true (the Post relishes having or creating opportunities to bash liberal elites), I turned to the New York Times where, to my dismay, I found, buried on page A-26, virtually the same report with the more temperate headline--"Columbia Law Lets Students Delay Exams After Garner and Brown Decisions."

Between you and me, I prefer the Post's "Poor Babies!" That does a better job of getting to the essence of the matter.

The acting dean, Robert E. Scott, in an email to students actually did use the T-word: he wrote that following existing policies for "trauma during exam period" students who felt their performance on final exams would suffer because of the grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers who killed alleged African-American perpetrators, could defer taking the exams.

Refusing to say how many sought delays, a Law School spokesperson said a "small number" had.

To me, even one student seeking such a deferment is one too many.

Yes, the decisions not to indicate are upsetting, deeply upsetting, but unless the "small number" of students who are delaying their finals are members of Eric Garner's or Michael Brown's immediate families (I doubt it), it is hard to imagine being so traumatized that they can't study or concentrate.

This is particularly pathetic behavior for law students who presumably are being prepared to deal with just these kinds of circumstances. Actually, even worse circumstances. Say, like what happened exactly two years ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 five- and six-year-olds were slaughtered.

I could sputter on about this--how we are over-pampering our young people, even those in top-ten law schools; how no one these days wants to take responsibility for anything; how we have lost moral fiber and what my father used to call "intestinal fortitude"; how for too many it's all about getting and spending; how the world has become Oprah-ized; how . . .

But I will resist and allow the Post front page to have the final word.