Where Do We Go From Here?

We're at the end of the month that saw perhaps the most consequential election of if not our nation, at least our lifetime. Quite frankly I'm at a loss for words.

In my last post I mentioned a friend who voted for Donald Trump. In challenging him I brought up the insurrection after Trump refused to accept defeat in the 2020 election. 

My friend's response? 

"What's that?" 

I said: "you know what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021."

He said to me and I quote: "Oh you're not going to hold THAT against him?"

In a post-election radio interview, one of the authors of the book "How Democracies Die" either Steven Levitsky or Daniel Ziblatt, can't remember which one, said that the public cannot be held responsible for preserving a democracy, rather it is the responsibility of democratic institutions, and the people placed in charge of them. 

If that's the case, then God help us.

For me, I tuning out of politics for now, as I'm trying to mend a broken heart, quite seriously. 

Fatalistic as it sounds, let's hope for the best and expect the worst.

See you next month.

Post Mortem: The Blame Game

On the afternoon of Election Day before a single vote was counted, I flushed all my hopes down the toilet that Kamala Harris might pull off a victory. No, I wasn't disillusioned by one of the plethora of polls that made me see the light, or dark if you prefer. Nor was it a commentary written by one of the great thinkers of our day. Rather, it was talking to a friend who was set to vote for Donald Trump when he got off work. I asked him why and he told me this: "Because the economy is so bad." 

I foolishly set about trying to convince him that the economy really wasn't that bad, and that Donald Trump was by far the lesser of the two candidates because of the many threats he poses to this nation.

My friend was unmoved.

I've had countless arguments with Trump supporters who more or less are just like me in that they spend a lot of time thinking about politics and are just as passionate and strident about their views as I am about mine.  

But I've never talked politics to folks like this friend, that is to say, people whose world doesn't revolve around current events, especially what's going down in Washington, not to mention the rest of the world. The fact that until Tuesday afternoon we'd never in the decade or so we've been friends discussed politics, illustrates that point.

Simply put, folks like my friend are doing their best to get by one day at a time, struggling in his case with health issues, with living in a not always safe neighborhood, and especially having enough money to live a reasonably comfortable life. After having worked hard and honorably through his mid-fifties, he certainly deserves it. 

So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that my friend and tens, of millions of Americans like him, don't make their electoral decisions based upon any ideology, but rather personal experience. And he feels his life was better under the Trump administration than under the Biden/Harris administration.

Quite frankly, who am I to tell him otherwise?

After our brief encounter Tuesday afternoon, it dawned on me that Kamela Harris didn't stand a chance to win the presidency, not because this country has taken a sharp turn to the right, but because more Americans are moved by the words "five dollars for a dozen eggs" than by these: "existential threat to democracy." 

In post after post, I tried to make the case that this attitude was selfish and myopic, that we were better to follow JFK's famous words "Ask not what your country can do for you, ,,," than Ronald Reagan's famous question to the American people during one of his debates with incumbent president Jimmy Carter in 1980: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

Compounding it was the realization that from what I consider any reasonable viewpoint, the policy proposals of Team Trump, namely mass deportations and imposing blanket tariffs on all goods coming from abroad, would only exacerbate inflation and have other disastrous impacts on the economy.

But what do I know?

Since the election I've read dozens of reasons why Harris lost. 

In a post-election podcast by New York Times writer and commentator Ezra Klein. Klein places the blame squarely on the shoulders of Joe Biden who Klein says, should have withdrawn from the presidential race long ago, so there would have been enough time to have a proper primary to pick his successor as the Democratic Party nominee. I agree that Biden should have stuck to his pledge in 2020 not to seek a second term because of his advanced age, but would that have made a difference? 

I don't think so.

We have history as a model. In March of 1968, Lyndon Baines Johnson announced he would not seek re-election, leaving open a field of Democrats, including Robert F. Kennedy, to seek their party's nomination. Kennedy was assassinated in June of that year and shortly thereafter came the contentious Chicago convention in August which left the party in disarray. Johnson's vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey was nominated standard bearer and as the representative of an unpopular administration, lost the November election to Richard M. Nixon. Another vice president who unsuccessfully ran to replace an (at the time) unpopular boss was Al Gore in 2000. Granted, both elections were extremely close, but as they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

At least, some say, the Democrats should have had an honest-to-goodness primary which included Biden with other candidates challenging him. Well, the last time an incumbent president was seriously challenged by his own party was in 1980 when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries that year. Carter ended up losing the November general election to Ronald Reagan. That one wasn't at all close. Why? Well yes, Americans were still being held hostage in Iran, but the overriding issue of that election and the reason that Jimmy Carter was a one term president, as was his predecessor Gerald Ford, was inflation. 

I remember it well.

The interesting thing about all the finger pointing is that it seems to come from folks who have a particular bone to pick about something or other. Some claim that Harris lost because she refused to rebuke the Biden administration's policy on the war in Gaza. Had she been more open to the suffering of the Palestinians and the need for their own homeland they say, she would not have lost the many progressive voters who refused to vote for her. 

Other progressives were offended when Harris joined forces with never-Trump Republicans, especially the Cheneys, whom they hold in particular disdain. Surely, they say, she might have won had she kept the whole lot of them at arm's length.

Bernie Sanders and others blame Harris, and the majority of Democrats for abandoning the working class.

Others claim she lost because of her gender and her race, claiming that Americans are too sexist and racist to elect a woman whose heritage happens to be black and Indian.

Folks both left and right of center blame Harris for not distancing herself from the president, whom they point out has desperately low approval ratings, especially on issues like the economy and immigration, 

Sam Harris (no relation to Kamala), whom I've quoted in this space extensively, in his latest podcast, before completely eviscerating Trump and his supporters, takes a good deal of time eviscerating the Democrats for losing the election because of their allegiance to identity politics and other sacred cows of the Left, singling out in particular the Party's defense of transgender rights.  

As I see it, these issues may have cost Kamala Harris votes but, they are all break even issues. Had Kamala Harris spent more time addressing the plight of the Palestinians, which admittedly I think she should have, she would likely have lost Jewish votes. Had she followed the avowed Socialist Sanders' advice, she would have lost the votes of some of the centrists whom she picked up with her alliance with Liz Cheney. 

I don't honestly see any credence that she lost many votes because of the Cheneys, but I have no doubt she did lose votes because of her race and her gender. On the other hand, I think it's likely that she won at least as many votes because of those two undeniable facts, so there's another break-even issue.

And had she thrown Joe Biden under the bus, as many suggest she should have, that would have left her vulnerable to accusations of disingenuousness and hypocrisy (being an integral part of that administration), and would have caused a tremendous rift in the Democratic Party who still by and large believes, as I do, that when all is said and done, Biden will go down in history as having been a very good president.

I had an equally illuminating conversation with another friend the week before the election. We shared our disbelief, given Trump's record, his policies and his lack of decency, that anyone still supported him. This friend had a one-word solution to the problem, education. It's no secret that Harris won the vote of people with college educations quite handily, while his shall we say, unorthodox style late in the campaign, led some to believe that Trump was speaking directly to male voters without college degrees. Given the vulgarity of his rants, that should be considered a tremendous insult to male voters without college degrees.

Now this particular friend and I by and large share political ideologies although I would have to say he is to the left of me. He also comes from a background of undeniable white privilege as do I, only more so in his case if you factor money into the equation. And he married into a family of even more privilege if you catch my drift. 

So it's easy for him to say that education is the answer as he and his wife had the means to send their four children to good colleges, paying their way in full.

By contrast, the friend I spoke with the day of the election is neither white nor privileged.

But privilege transcends both race and money. My definition of privilege includes a child having parents, family, friends and an environment that encourages curiosity, critical thinking, and above all, a love of learning. I had all that in spades when I was growing up, but unfortunately many people do not. Having money, and the ability to afford going to college alone, do not necessarily grant this important privilege. 

That's not to say people who grow up without the privilege of having been taught a love of education, cannot develop one, they just have to work harder. 

I agree with my friend about education being the key to a well-functioning society, especially as we've been seeing lately, populists with bad intentions can easily manipulate people without a sense or desire to think critically. Could it be a coincidence that the President-elect plans to do away with the Department of Education?

Unfortunately, curiosity, a love of learning, and critical thinking are not things we as a society can expect of everyone, as education is just not everyone's bag.

It's likely that more Americans are like my friend the Trump voter who thinks about politics most likely only during election season if then, rather than the habitual watchers of FOX, or like me, people who for better or worse, think about politics on an almost daily basis. 

In the aforementioned podcast, Sam Harris takes some admittedly well-deserved jabs the Democratic Party's losing touch with average Americans with their over-devotion to the alphabet soup of progressive dogma from PC, to CRT, to DEI, with a little woke thrown in. But he tips his hand when he claims that all of the Trump voters he knows are not concerned about the nuts-and-bolts issues that directly affect people's lives like crime and inflation, but rather culture war stuff like Christmas, taxpayer-funded art, and trans rights. If that's the case, I have a sneaking suspicion that he doesn't know too many people like my friend the Trump voter whom I can assure you doesn't lose sleep over any of those things. 

This is not just an American phenomenon. At the beginning of the podcast I mentioned earlier, Ezra Klein points out that in the past few years, Great Britain, Japan, Sweden, Portugal and Finland all have had dramatic swings in their governments. These shifts were not ideological, conservative governments lost to liberal ones, and vice versa. The only thing they all had in common was the voting public's demand for change, in whatever form it might take.  

Why? Well as they say, it's the economy, (or at least the public's perception of it) stupid.

And how.

So what do the Democrats have to do to get back into the White House? That's another question I've been hearing ad nauseam since last Tuesday. Tremendous soul searching is the response I hear the most. 

That's Democrats for you.

No, there's only one way for them go get back into the Executive and Legislative Branches. Take a page from the Republican playbook and do everything in their power to make sure Donald Trump and the Republicans seriously fuck up in the next four years, and the American electorate will be looking for yet another change. 

From what he suggests he's going to do once in office, they won't have to work too hard.

At least we've got that going for us.

On Respecting Opinions

On the eve of the upcoming election, I've noticed a surge in pleas to "respect each other's opinion." On the surface that sounds like an honest, sensible and heartfelt attempt to help alleviate some of the divisions in our country at the moment. After all, everyone is entitled to their opinion, aren't they?

Well sure, it's a free country, at least for now.  But on the same token, while we should grant others the right to their opinion, no one should feel in the least, the obligation to accept, or respect that opinion.

Here's an extreme example: Suppose a person is of the opinion that their own race, nationality or religion is superior to all others and therefore members of their group should be granted rights not granted to other groups? Not only do I vehemently disagree with that opinion, but I find it vile, repugnant, and entirely unworthy of respect. 

Here's another: What if someone believes in something that is verifiably false, such as the earth being flat? Are those of us who have come to the conclusion that the earth is not flat by personally witnessing empirical evidence to the contrary, supposed to agree to disagree?

I would hope not. The size and shape of planet Earth is an established fact, as it has been for thousands of years. It is not an opinion.

Opinions by definition can never be wrong. But opinions can be misinformed, illogical, unconscionable, and a score of other things that should reasonably disqualify them from respect.

Virtually every issue that is front and center in the current election cycle in the United States can be honestly and intelligently debated. I don't have the slightest problem with people who disagree with me on those issues and indeed I respect those opinions so long as they are well thought out and based upon credible evidence.

For example, I assume most people accept that we can't possibly grant residency in this country to every single person who wants it, as that would be an untenable situation, consequently there must a system that manages immigration. It is not unreasonable to argue that the current administration could have done better on that front. 

I also assume most reasonable people agree that it would be a mistake to ban all immigration as naturally all of us who are not among the indigenous American population, are descendants of immigrants if not immigrants ourselves, AND that immigrants continue to contribute a great deal of good to this nation.

Just exactly how to balance these two is a matter worthy of sincere and above all, honest debate.

The Republicans behind their standard bearer in the 2024 presidential election have made immigration the centerpiece of their platform. 

I agree with them that there is a reasonable argument that can be made for deporting some people who are here illegally. 

On the other hand, in my opinion, the blanket deportation proposed by the exPOTUS is short-sighted, not to mention morally objectionable, as it would create vastly more problems in this country than it would solve. 

For starters, in purely practical terms, much of our economy depends upon the labor of undocumented workers. Contrary to what the exPOTUS might have you believe, undocumented workers do not take away jobs from American citizens, they occupy jobs that the vast majority of American citizens would never do, especially for the amount of money those workers get paid. In a perfect world, everyone would get paid a fair wage for their labor but in the real world, the idea of paying ten dollars for a single tomato at the grocery store or twenty dollars for a head of lettuce picked by U.S. citizens making a living wage would make even the most fair-minded of us re-evaluate our well-intentioned values. 

In addition to the inflation many cite as their primary reason for voting for the exPOTUS this time around, we are also experiencing a housing shortage which has been exacerbated by a labor shortage. Many folks working in the construction industry, as Donald Trump could (but won't) testify as he's hired many thousands of them as a real estate developer, are guess what, undocumented workers. It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out what a wholescale Trump deportation program would do for the housing problem.

Deporting tens of millions of undocumented immigrants is one of the exPOTUS's handful of campaign promises. It doesn't help that Trump and his running mate are unapologetically promoting outrageous lies to attempt to cast illegal immigrants as the source of every problem this nation faces. 

I must say it's a little difficult to take the immigration problem seriously when the best these guys can come up with are fantasies of Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, that criminal elements from Venezuela are taking jobs away from hard working honest-to-goodness American criminals in Aurora, Colorado, and that immigrants as a whole are coming to this country to take away "Black jobs." 

Another sweeping solution to all our problems from Trumpworld is imposing stiff tariffs on all imported goods. Again, you don't need a doctorate in economics to understand who will ultimately pay for those tariffs, the consumer. You think inflation is bad now, just wait.

Yet despite the Republicans' dubious agenda, imbecilic exaggerations and outright lies, people in this country are legitimately struggling and feel that government at the moment is not doing enough to help them. I can't fault people for wanting to vote out of pure self-interest, even if they haven't quite thought the whole thing through.

Nor can I completely fault single-issue voters, the people who feel that one issue above all others is so important that it trumps, no pun intended, all others, and are willing to overlook a candidate's shortcomings because they feel he or she best represents their view on that particular issue. There are many such issues but the two I'm specifically thinking of at the moment are abortion and the War in Gaza.  

Unlike the issues mentioned above, finding compromise on these particular issues is exponentially harder as many Americans stand firmly on one side of the fence or other, without any intent of considering the other side. I won't go into detail because I've written extensively about both issues, here's a piece on abortion and here is one of many on the Middle East War.

All I'll say is that emotions run at a fever pitch for many Americans who will undoubtably cast their vote based solely on one issue, come hell or high water. 

Do I understand their opinion if they choose to vote for Donald Trump if he happens to appear to be on their side on one of those issues? Yes. Do I respect those opinions? I'll get to that in a moment.

If you know me or have been reading my political posts, and admittedly there have been way too many of them since 2016, you know that I have about 30,000 reasons, one for every lie he told while he was president, why I wouldn't vote for Donald Trump even if he were the proverbial last person on the earth. 

But those are my opinions, so who cares.

On the other hand, I have reasons that go beyond opinion. You see I happen to love my country despite its faults. I deeply believe in our Constitution, in participatory democracy and in the Democratic-Republic we have managed to nurture along for nearly a quarter of a millennium. 

In that time we've had our share of good presidents, bad presidents, and so so presidents. All of them except one, have had a few things in common, a profound love of this country, a deep respect for our system of government and the document that holds it all together, and an understanding of the meaning of the office of President of the United States, especially in regards to the limits imposed on the job both by tradition going all the way back to George Washington, and by law.

This is what General John Kelly, the man who served the longest as President Donald Trump's Chief of Staff had to say about his former boss:

A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior (General Mark Milley) who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said, God help us.

Ah, you say, that's just the opinion of one man who obviously has a chip or two on his shoulder against Trump.

Fair enough. 

Nevertheless, Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified to be president, period. This is not an opinion, this is a fact of the law as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, Article Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to be exact. I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: 

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

(Emphasis mine)

You can dance around those words all you want, but the fact remains that on January 6th, 2001, Donald Trump relinquished his right to return to the office of the presidency when after exhausting his legal rights to contest an election he lost, he sent a mob from the White House to the Capitol Building for the sole purpose of interfering with an official act of government, intended to declare his opponent Joseph R. Biden, President of the United States. 

People, including police officers as they were defending the Capitol Building, died as a result of that attack on the most sacred symbol of our democracy, while Trump gleefully watched it all unfold on TV, refusing to lift a finger, which is all it would have taken for him to stop it. 

In a bi-partisan vote, Congress determined that yes, what happened on January 6th was indeed an insurrection and that Donald Trump as its chief instigator, did in fact, engage in it, albeit from a distance. For that he was impeached for the second time. 

My opinion of Donald Trump notwithstanding, Trump's actions on that day and those leading up to it, disqualify him from being president according to the Constitution, just as they would have disqualified any president, good, bad or indifferent who would have done the same.

One week from today, we will be electing our next president but only one of the two major party candidates, Kamala Harris, has shown any intention of actually being president if elected. In his words and in his deeds, Donald Trump has proven again and again that he has no interest in being president. He might like to be king or dictator perhaps, but not president.

Not only does he continue to defend the indefensible by maintaining his lie that the last election was stolen from him, but he declares solidarity with the people who on his behalf, desecrated our Capitol and killed and injured scores of Capitol police, by referring to the murderous insurrectionist traitors as "we."

Perhaps even more disturbing if that is possible, Trump has recently taken it upon himself to describe people, both public servants and private citizens who oppose him as "enemies from within, more dangerous than any foreign adversary." Yes that includes the likes of Kin Jun Un and Vladimir Putin, who according to Trump, are more dangerous than people like me and anyone else who opposes him. Despite attempts at damage control from Trump loyalist FOX News talking heads trying to reign him in, Trump doubled down by suggesting using the "military if necessary" to go after these people, in other words, U.S. citizens, our fellow countrymen.  

It's impossible to consider this and not think of historical figures who have said the same thing and carried out their plans.

Now, calling a politician you disagree with a fascist and comparing him or her to Adolph Hitler is certainly a tired cliche which should be avoided if at all possible. 

I will say this unequivocally, Donald Trump is no Adolph Hitler. 

But he sure appears to want to be. 

In addition to declaring his detractors as "enemies of the people", he continuously channels Hitler by using phrases directly linked to the German dictator such as "poisoning the blood of the people" in reference to immigrants. He has used the term Hitler used, "vermin" to describe his political opponents. Cruder still, out-Hitlering even Hitler style rhetoric, again referring to immigrants, Trump just this week called the U.S. under the Biden/Harris administration, "a garbage can for the world."

Then there's this.

The article written by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic titled: TRUMP: I NEED THE GENERALS HITLER HAD, reveals tidbits into the mind of Trump through conversations he had with his aforementioned Chief of Staff and retired four-star general John Kelly, and other high-ranking members of the inner circle of the Trump administration. 

Some of the main takeaways from the article are Trump's profound lack of historical perspective, his ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, and his complete lack of respect for the military. Here Goldberg quotes retired General Barry McCaffrey:

The military is a foreign country to him. He doesn’t understand the customs or codes... It doesn’t penetrate. It starts with the fact that he thinks it’s foolish to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit himself.

But the main takeaways from the article are Trump's fascist tendencies and his admiration for Der Führer which we've been hearing about all week in the news, starting with the quote revealed in the title of the Atlantic piece. Simply put, Trump rejects the American ideal that members of the armed forces take an oath to the constitution, not the president. The generals he longed for were ones who would serve and obey him, not the country, just as he imagined Hitler's generals did. If that isn't a mockery enough, Kelly had to point out to Trump that on several occasions, Hitler's generals tried to assassinate him.

OK you get it, I don't like Trump for many reasons, some of them personal opinions, some of them not. It's the ones that are not, like his betrayal of our country and its democratic norms on January 6th, and the revelations from those close to him that he really wants to be dictator (not much of a surprise there), that make me realize no American who takes this country or our constitution seriously, regardless of their political ideology, has any business supporting him. 

That is what makes the current alliance between the Harris/Walz campaign and die-hard conservatives like the Chaneys so compelling. These are people who despite their profound ideological differences are coming together because they share one idea in common, that country comes before party, ideology, and everything else.

The thing is this: out of the plethora of issues facing us, we should all be able to agree to disagree on the multitudes of ways to address those issues. But for those of us who believe in our in our system of justice and government, flawed as they are, we should all agree on one thing, that no one in our country is above the law, not even the President of the United States. 

There in a nutshell is the most basic foundation of our democracy. 

No one should ever expect or be expected to agree with all or any of the policies of the president. The truly special thing is that we all get to directly address our objections every four years. 

But the one thing all of us must expect from a president, is that he or she lives up to the solemn pledge made before God and country at inauguration, to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." 

If he or she refuses to do that, then truly nothing else matters. 

And that is a fact, not an opinion.

Immigration Man

Kamala Harris did so well following my advice before her debate last month with Donald Trump that I thought I'd offer the same service to her running mate Tim Walz for his debate with J.D. Vance this evening.

You may recall that on the day of her debate, I suggested that Harris be mindful of her facial expressions which would be visible on the split/screen during Trump's time on the microphone. Be careful I said to her, not to do what Joe Biden did during his July debate:

Hers should be a look of dismissal rather than of abject horror which lost a lot of points for Joe Biden ten weeks ago.

She took my advice and ran with it, way beyond I could ever imagine. I went on:

We all know that Trump absolutely relishes being thought of as a badass, as a tough guy who takes no prisoners. But brushed off of as irrelevant, that drives him crazy, possibly to the point of spontaneous combustion.

I think her high point in the debate came early on when she emotionally and eloquently argued about how the Supreme Court's Dobbs Decision overruling Roe v. Wade has been an unmitigated disaster which has put the lives of scores of American women in jeopardy, while I might add, not reducing the number of abortions in this country, which I'm assuming is the whole point of the Pro-Life movement.

But the turning point of the debate came when she brought up massive snooze fests, otherwise known as Trump rallies. You can call Trump a thief, a grifter, an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, a wannabie dictator,  an existential threat to democracy, or a whole slew of other really terrible things, and he doesn't bat an eye. In fact I think Trump takes those accusations as compliments. 

But suggest that people are so bored by his stream-of-consciousness ramblings that they leave his rallies in droves while he's still speaking, and he goes apeshit. He may not have spontaneously combusted as I predicted, but he did the next best thing, going off on a diatribe about how immigrants, legal ones at that, are stealing people's pets in Ohio and eating them for supper. When challenged, he doubled down, insisting it's true because he saw it on TV.  

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I wouldn't have believed it either. 

As has been well established, the pets of Springfield, Ohio are perfectly safe.

That didn't stop Trump's running mate from running with the story of Haitian immigrants dining on the Fidos and Whiskers of Ohio. In his defense, Vance said it was justifiable to report a false story in order to bring home the gravity of the situation of illegal immigration. 

But here's my question: if illegal immigration is so bad, why does he have to make up stuff to point that out?

So here's my advice to Tim Walz:

Run with it. Be relentless in pointing out that Trump and Vance are lying to the American public and not even caring enough to hide it. 

If they're lying so openly about their strongest issue, what's stopping them from lying about every other issue?

They say that illegal immigrants are causing untold harm to the American people by taking American jobs, that's a lie, they're not. 

They say crime is up in the country, mainly because or undocumented immigrants. That's a lie, crime in general is actually down from the days of the Trump administration and all the evidence shows that immigrants commit far fewer crimes (understandably so) than do native born Americans.

They say that the Biden/Harris administration wrecked the U.S. economy. That's a lie, the economy they inherited from Trump caused in large part, but not entirely by the pandemic was in shambles, in danger of slipping into a recession. That did not happen, and the biggest concern about the economy, inflation which was a direct result of the pandemic and is a world-wide problem, has decreased in this country to the point where the Federal Reserve last week deemed it safe to lower interest rates that were implemented in order to help bring down inflation.

These are Trump and Vance's supposedly "strong" issues which when you look closely at them, are based upon garbage information and outright lies. That's not to mention their "weak" issues, lot sof doozies there too.

Tim Walz shouldn't be afraid of confronting these issues, nor should he or Harris be afraid of owning the accomplishments of the Biden/Harris administration, because the other side's portrayal of them as an abject failure, and their "plans" to improve the lives of everyday Americans, is nothing by smoke, mirrors, and a ton of lies. 

Naturally, Walz isn't going to win over the base, if Trump told them Joe Biden is currently waging a zombie apocalypse against the United States and has appointed Kamala Harris as its Tzar, they'd believe him. 

But if Walz can convince the handful of voters in a small number of states who will ultimately decide this election that there is nothing but bullshit to back up Trump's and Vance's campaign promises, maybe this national nightmare of ours will be over. 

After

I have to admit having been a little nervous before tuning in to the debate the other night. All those years as a disappointed Chicago sports fans must have served me well as my motto in anticipating the outcome of practically anything I care about is this: hope for the best, plan for the worst.

That way I'm never disappointed.

Well, it turns out I had little to worry about.

Granted there were things I wished the Vice President had done better: answer more questions directly for one, be a little more hesitant with spouting BS (like bringing up Trump's "good people on both sides" and  "bloodbath" comments which were both taken out of context), and missed opportunities by not nailing the exPOTUS down more on issues like the economy, which he is obviously clueless about.

On the other hand...

Complaining about all that is a little like having your football team win the game 60-0 and then complaining about your quarterback throwing an interception late in the fourth quarter isn't it?

But, on the other hand...

Taking that sports metaphor one step further, one game does not a season make. Or a more familiar metaphor, we may have won the battle, but the war is far from over. 

If you expected a reprise of the Lincoln-Douglas debates the other night, you were certainly disappointed. 

Which is perhaps why this first, and probably only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump, despite being by any reasonable measure a hand's down, slam dunk, gob smackingly devastating victory for Harris, didn't move the poll needle significantly in either direction. 

Judging by what I heard in post-debate interviews with still undecided voters in swing states, that's because neither candidate made a very good case for his or her plan for the number one issue on their mind, inflation.

I think the bottom line for lots of these voters is this: when Trump was president, their lives were better, while under Biden/Harris, their lives are worse. Yes, that's a myopic point of view but since these folks are really the only people who matter as far as the outcome of the election goes, their concerns must be addressed.

Regarding that, I believe Harris missed a golden opportunity at the very first question she received which was, "When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?" 

As is so often the case in debates like these, she didn't answer the question (admittedly a tough one) but sketched out her economic plan for bolstering the Middle Class, while slamming her opponent's one-size-fits-all solution to our economic problems, stiff tariffs on all imported goods.

All well and good but here's what she might also have said:

Four years ago, we were in the middle of a pandemic which took the lives of over one million of our fellow citizens. Second only to the unspeakable human tragedy, COVID also devastated our economy. Millions of Americans lost their jobs as the unemployment rate doubled, and the annual growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product was in negative territory for the first time in thirty years. 

And yes, during COVID, gas prices were low. Do you know why? Because no one was driving and the demand for gasoline was practically zero, while the supply went through the roof. That's basic supply and demand economics, it got so bad that for a time, if you had a barrel of oil to sell, you had to pay someone to take it off your hands. 

That was the state of the United States economy when Joe Biden and I were sworn into office in 2021. At the time, economists across the board predicted a recession at the very least if not a depression. Now I'm the first to admit that the recovery from the pandemic has been slow and bumpy at times, and things, especially the inflation rate, which by the way is a worldwide problem, is still too high. But we are continuing to work on it and inflation which has been declining over the past few years, is at a point now where it's low enough that the Fed is on the brink of lowering interest rates. 

Don't be fooled, there is still lots of work to be done but far from being the disaster that my opponent will have you believe, despite inflation, our economy is looking bright. The Stock Market keeps reaching record highs. If you don't think that affects you, take a look at your retirement account statement. My opponent will tell you that we are sorely falling behind in the production of oil, but the fact is that the United States currently leads the globe in not only the production of fossil fuels but renewable energy sources as well. My opponent will tell you that our nation is an economic disaster, but the truth is, the United States economy under the Biden/Harris administration, not only staved off a devastating recession, but is leading the world in the broadest measure of economic growth, the GDP. If Donald Trump were president right now with the economy exactly as it is, rest assured he'd be telling you that it's incredible, nobody has ever seen as great an economy as this one.

But no, I'm not going to deceive you like that, we are not there yet in terms of incomes catching up to inflation, but we are getting there.

And yes, I'd say we are indeed better off today than we were four years ago when our economic future was still very much uncertain.

Or something of that nature.

Not only would that have directly answered the question, but it would have given people who may not know better, an important lesson that there are a lot of factors that control inflation, many of which have little or nothing to do with the person who sits at the resolute desk in Washington D.C. 

It would also point out that economic trends develop slowly, usually spanning multiple administrations. As an example, Donald Trump loves to point out that before the pandemic, he "created" one of the greatest economies the world has ever seen. The fact is, he inherited that economy from his predecessor Barack Obama who himself inherited the worst U.S. economy since the great Depression.

Is it possible to tout the achievements of the Biden/Harris administration while still addressing and not belittling the concerns of people who feel they got let behind?

I think it is, but precious time is running out, especially since Trump yesterday announced he won't do another debate, (who can blame him?), and Harris won't have as good an opportunity to address uninterrupted, tens of millions of Americans who get their information from "news" sources that won't give her the time of day. 

But try she must, to reach these folks. 

Because the alternative is simply unthinkable.

POST SCRIPT

I could go on and on and on and on and on about how Kamala Harris completely undressed Donald Trump the other night in Philadelphia, or in her words, "ate him for lunch." I won't though because it's so obvious and so much has already been said and written about it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still downright giddy about her performance, but we have to put it behind us now and move on to the next challenge. 

All I can say is this: Well done.

Before

This post is being written about six hours before the most significant presidential debate in American history. The debate this evening happens to come on the heels of the last most significant presidential debate in history.

I guess that makes these past ten weeks between the debates the most significant two- and one-half months in American presidential debate history, or maybe not.

It is a little hard to believe there are still undecided voters out there who could be swayed by the outcome of tonight's debate. But given our arcane system of electing presidents, and the fact that the outcome of this election will be determined by a small number of people in a handful of states, this is the reality we're living in. 

I heard this morning that yet another poll has determined that up to one third of all undecided voters will likely make their decision based upon the tonight's outcome. Given that Donald Trump's performance is virtually a given, it means that everything will hang upon Kamala Harris's performance. Everyone and their mother, including mine, has advice for the Democratic nominee, and I hope she's listening, nodding her head, and keeps doing what she's been doing.

Yes, I'd like her to get a little more specific about her agenda, policy matters and all that. But let's face it, any president coming into office is inevitably faced with a barrage of issues that are unexpected and have little or nothing to do with the rhetoric that is spewed during the campaign. Contrary to the popular opinion of some of our countrymen and women, a president doesn't have a magic wand that he or she can wave to make an agenda reality, such as making inflation go away. The president not only has to work with Congress, and we've all seen how that's been working out lately, but also has to work with forces that are by and large beyond his or her control such as the economy. The scariest force of all that is beyond a president's control is the unforeseen, events like we've recently seen such as global pandemics and far-off wars. Setting a well-defined agenda at the outset is all well and good but in reality, what's more important to know is what are the tendencies, the values and perhaps above all, what is the intestinal fortitude of the candidate, which hopefully will give us an idea as to how he or she might handle the unforeseen.

In one of the candidates, we've seen all too well how he's handled adversity and the unknown. As I've mentioned before in this space, had the exPOTUS's response to the COVID pandemic, the one and only true challenge during his one term in office, been only barely competent, say a grade of C minus, had he made just a token effort to convince Americans that we were all on the same page in fighting that horrific tragedy together, Americans would have rallied behind him as they have in other times of crisis and he would have easily won reelection in 2020. 

However, he insisted on using the Pandemic to further divide the nation for his own purposes and as a result, he lost that election. It wasn't even close. Then, rather than conceding defeat as every losing presidential candidate up to him had done, well, we saw what happened on that day of infamy, January 6, 2001. 

In that regard, Kamala Harris is a blank slate, as has every person ever elected president for the first time.

Speaking in generalities as Harris has been doing, isn't necessarily a bad thing. In reality, that's all we ultimately have to go on, other than she can't be nearly as bad as her opponent.  

Anyway, I'll get into the act and offer my suggestion to the Vice President for the debate tonight if she's listening, which I'm sure she is...

When Trump brings up her communist tendencies, she should suggest he open up a book (perhaps "The Idiot's Guide to Communism") and read up a little on the subject before opening his mouth about something he knows absolutely nothing about.

And she should concentrate on her facial expressions during the split screen when her mic is turned off. Hers should be a look of dismissal rather than of abject horror which lost a lot of points for Joe Biden ten weeks ago.

We all know that Trump absolutely relishes being thought of as a badass, as a tough guy who takes no prisoners. But brushed off of as irrelevant, that drives him crazy, possibly to the point of spontaneous combustion. Not that I'd ever wish someone's demise as Clarence Darrow once suggested, "but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

Who said this is going to be a debate? These things are not about ideas or issues, they're all about the performance, especially the one liners.

Just ask former Vice President Dan "Senator you're no Jack Kennedy" Quayle. 

Go get him Madame Vice President.

The Chicago Convention

The head coach of this year's U.S. Men's Olympic Basketball team and of the Golden State Warriors, Steve Kerr let everyone know last week at the DNC in Chicago how time, like Old Man River, just keeps rolling along. Reminding the crowd of the history of the building they were in, he said:  "You young people, Google Michael Jordan and you can read all about it." 

The nineties were a great time to be alive and living in Chicago, not only because those were relatively calm days for both the city and the world, at least compared to today, but Chicago was also in the midst of a bona fide sports dynasty. Anywhere in the world you went, if you told someone you were from Chicago in those days, you would more than likely be greeted by the response: "Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan!"

Not anymore.

Today we're back to being known as the home of Al "rat-a-tat-tat" Capone, as we had for decades before the arrival of Number 23 from North Carolina, on the Southwest shore of Lake Michigan. 

Boy, those were the days.

Likewise, until last week, the mention these four words: "Chicago Democratic National Convention", inevitably evoked memories of riots in Grant Park, of cops armed with tear gas and billy clubs and more than willing to use them, of the image of young protestors climbing on Alexander Phimster Proctor and Augustus Saint Gaudens' equestrian statue of General John Logan across from the Conrad Hilton Hotel, of the chant "The Whole World is Watching", of Hippies, Yippies, Mayor Richard J. Daley and Judge Julius Hoffmann, and of the (in)famous Chicago Seven, sometimes Eight Trial. I have no doubt people today who weren't around back then, remember those things more than they remember the candidates who were picked to represent the Democratic Party in the November election of that year, Hubert H. Humprey, and his running mate Edmund Muskie.

That of course was the Chicago Democratic National Convention of 1968. *

Never mind that before the 2024 DNC, Chicago had already hosted 25 presidential nominating conventions. the last being in 1996. more than any other city. Hardly anyone including yours truly remembers much about that last one. It could be because there was little drama, as the convention served as a rubber stamp sending the incumbent president, Bill Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore en route to their second term in office. Or maybe it was just because Michael Jordan and the Bulls were still dominating all the headlines in town.  

That convention is most famous for having been the first held in this city since the disastrous '68 convention and for the collective sigh of relief the city fathers (and mothers) breathed after they pulled it off, practically without a hitch.

Hard as it would be to imagine for anyone living in the nineties, almost thirty years later we're living in times that more resemble 1968 than 1996. Which is why trepidation was high that this convention would be remembered more for what went on outside of the United Center than within it.

Fortunately, that didn't happen. Starting with the Democratic Party, normally a fractious group even in quieter times, who came together nearly unanimously in support of their chosen representatives in November, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz. Not only that, but they coalesced in a remarkably short period of time after President Biden announced he would not seek a second term late in July.

By doing so, they seemed to be taking my advice. Is it possible more folks look at this blog than I realize? 

The biggest fear was that the protests, which occur during every presidential nominating convention, would turn violent as opposition to the U.S. support of Israel in the war in Gaza, is understandably running at a fever pitch. I believe kudos must go out to both the protestors, their leaders, AND to the Chicago Police Department and all the other law enforcement officials involved., who took great heed in learning from their mistakes of the past. While there were some scuffles and arrests, this convention will forever be remembered for what took place on the floor rather than in the streets. 

And while we're at it, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also deserve heaps of credit for setting the tone by insisting that we can both grant people their First Amendment right to protest and avoid violence if everyone works together. 

But will the words "Chicago DNC" from this point forward evoke 2024 rather than 1968? 

Who knows, I guess that all depends on what happens this November. 

* It should go without saying that prior to the convention that just ended, there were many remembrances of the 1968 Convention published and broadcast in both the national and local media. I was struck in nearly all of the ones I read and listened to, how the narrative about what happened has been cast to a very selective point of view. The general consensus is that the blame for the violence that occurred in Grant Park and other parts of the city during the convention lies entirely on the shoulders of Mayor Daley and the Chicago Police Department.

What is hardly ever mentioned in the discussion of the '68 Convention is the context in which it took place. In the contentious era of the late to mid-sixties, between the War in Vietnam and the struggle for Civil Rights in this country, riots had taken place all over the country. Two of the most well-known prior to 1968 were the Watts Riots of 1965 in Los Angeles, and the Detroit Riots of 1967. While not nearly as destructive in terms of lives lost and property damaged, campus unrest took place in major universities all over the country at that time. 

But in 1968, all hell broke loose. The watershed moment of that year took place on April 4 of that year when Martin Luther King was assassinated. The response all over the country was swift and devastating. In the days that followed Dr. King's assassination, much of Chicago was in flames.

It was during these riots that decimated neighborhoods on Chicago's West Side, that Mayor Daley issued his notorious "shoot to kill arsonists, shoot to main looters" order to the Chicago Police and the Illinois National Guard. 

In the shadow of the devastation, the DNC would take place in Chicago barely four months later. and the Daley administration, still reeling from the events of April, was steadfast in the determination that with the eyes of the country focused on this city, law and order would prevail during the convention. 

Meanwhile anti-war groups from all over the country set their sights on being in Chicago and made public their plans to do so. Some expressed their desire to simply to march peacefully while others planned to participate in acts of civil disobedience including spiking the city's water system with LSD. 

The Daley administration rightly or wrongly took all the threats seriously and vowed none of it would happen under their watch. 

The rest as they say, is history. 

There is no question that Daley and the Police grossly over-reacted to the goings on during the convention. But it also should be noted that the hit this city took only months before, certainly colored the officials' response to the chaos during the convention. In none of the accounts of the events of the 1968 convention I encountered, were the riots that took place after Dr. King's assassination even mentioned. One report on the radio which was filled with a number of factual errors that I easily spotted, inexplicably played the recording of Daley's "shoot to kill" order in the context of the convention rather than its proper context of the West Side riots.

Stuff like this is what makes history such an interesting and vibrant subject, especially when you've lived through it. 

Oops, I Did It Again

For the last four years or so, I've done my best to avoid getting into social media spats over politics. That was made easy since the last presidential election, as I either de-friended or have been de-friended by most of the social media "friends" with whom I've had shall we say, heated political disagreements. 

Like banging my head against the wall, it felt so good when it stopped.

I didn't jettison all of my friends with alternative visions of the universe. 

Yet for my part, since the 2020 election, I've kept political commentary to the minimum on my own posts (saving it for this blog), and have bent over backwards to avoid commenting on others' posts when they rubbed me the wrong way. 

But one post the other day was particularly aggravating, and I simply could not help myself. The post was, as are so many of them are, not original, but the repost of a meme. The meme said: "Run on your record. Not your race. Not your gender." signed: "America."

As you can see it was not explicitly addressed to any particular candidate, but you can probably guess who the intended target was. Taking advantage of the ambiguity, this was my response:  

Oh I don't know, if you have a record that includes dozens of criminal indictments, thirty some felony convictions, two impeachments, trying to overthrow the United States government because of not liking the outcome of an election, having Orban, Kim and Putin as BFFs AND total incompetence in handling the one real challenge (COVID) of his administration, what else does he have to run on besides being an old white guy?

I had a flash of Deja vu when I read the comments from total strangers to my response which were posted within minutes of my comment. I learned that I'm drinking the Kool Aid, that I'm delusional, that I don't have an open mind and that I need to stop paying attention to the "mainstream media."  

What they don't know about me (as I said they're perfect strangers so how could they?), is that I stopped drinking Kool-Aid when I was about seven, never really liked the stuff. For much of my adult life and then some I've prided myself on having an open mind, seeking out sources of information from all sides of the political spectrum, especially those with whom I disagreed. After all what can you learn if you just read things that confirm your own biases? Yes, I do get information from the dreaded "mainstream media" as well as from other sources, including Fox "News".

Until eight years ago, I considered myself to be politically moderate, even right-of-center on certain issues.

What they also don't know about me is that no, my opinion of Donald Trump has not been shaped by the MSM or any other political commentary, but rather by observing and listening to the man himself.  I've been following Trump's career for the past oh, forty years or so and can honestly say that for all that time, I never found him to be anything more than an attention grabbing, self-serving crook, a conman and a grifter. And that was back when he called himself a "liberal, very pro-choice Democrat." Needless to say, my opinion of the exPOTUS has not improved in the last eight years. 

As for the delusional part, well in some circumstances, I have to plead guilty as charged. But judging by the words of my comment published in its entirety above, one would be hard pressed to deny anything I wrote; yes friends, Donald Trump is responsible for all that, and so much more.

Fittingly, none of the responses to my comment tried to deny any of what I said. Instead, they dwelled upon what a great president their man was, how the country was so much better off under Trump and what a disaster it has become under Biden. According to them, Trump may have done some bad things, but nothing that the Democrats haven't done.

Well, I beg to differ. 

If you've been reading this blog for the past eight or so years, you've heard it all before so I'm not going to rehash it here. In a remarkable bit of self-restraint, I let it go with my original comment, choosing not to get into arguments over politics with complete strangers. 

I did type out a response to my friend, an actual friend by the way, who made the original post. Basically, she pointed out the predictable: prices are too high, too many immigrants, two wars waging in Europe and the Middle East, and more. 

How much those things are attributable to the current administration is very debatable, which is what I wrote. But I never posted it, seeing no point in arguing with my friend either, since she's as set in her opinions on the subject as I am in mine. 

However debatable though, hers are valid concerns and if the Democrats are going to have any chance of winning in November, they're going to have to address them honestly. 

As far as I'm concerned, they can dump on Trump all they want but they're also going to have to give up demonizing Trump supporters as Hillary Clinton did with her infamous "basket of deplorables" comment eight years ago. That alone I believe, is what doomed her campaign more than anything else. 

Interestingly enough, I listened to an interview with Tim Walz a couple weeks ago. He spoke passionately about all the folks we still see wearing the red baseball caps at Trump rallies and how they're not all that different from folks like us who turn our noses up at them. The Democrats aren't going to reach all of them, probably not even most of them, but the truth is, deep down, most of these folks have by and large the same needs, the same hopes and dreams for themselves and their families as the vast majority of Americans. (Yes there are the dyed-in-the-wool racists too who I'd say comprise a small minority of the MAGA crowd.)  

I was so impressed by Walz and especially his comments about unifying the country, that I became convinced Kamela Harris should choose him as her running mate. Two days later, she did.

Trump was clearly aggravated when President Biden announced that he would not seek reelection and would throw all his support to his vice president. So too were Trump supporters who like their man, were beginning to see a slam dunk victory in November, especially after (for Biden) the disastrous debate performance, the assassination attempt against Trump, and the rousing, bullshit laden RNC in Milwaukee. 

In stark contrast, those of us who wouldn't vote for Trump if our lives depended upon it, were in a state of depression at the thought of the man who waged an insurrection against the United States government on January 6, 2021, returning to office. So, the timing for Biden's announcement, coming just days after the MAGA Convention, could not have been better for the Democrats and anybody who thinks a redo of the Trump presidency is the last thing this country needs.

I'm not often right but I made the right call two posts ago when I said that there were only two legitimate options for the Democrats. Either Joe Biden would have to voluntarily withdraw from the race and get behind Kamala Harris (and no one else), or stay in the race and deal with the ever-growing scrutiny of his mental and physical condition. In either case, the Democrats, if they wanted any chance of beating Trump, would have to be all-in in supporting their candidate, whomever that may be.  

Well, much to Donald Trump's dismay, they chose option A, and it seems to be working out pretty well for them, up until now at least. 

The double whammy was Harris's pick of Walz, who couldn't be farther from the MAGA concept of the wealthy, elitist, Ivy League educated coastal Democrat who has zero connection to or appreciation of Average Americans and their values. 

For the record, both Trump (Penn) and his running mate J.D.Vance (Yale) are in fact, Ivy Leaguers while Harris and Walz both are not. 

That little tidbit in a normal world would be quite irrelevant, as all four have advanced degrees from respected universities. But if the Trumplicans are going to paint a picture of themselves as being more in touch with the lives of average Americans, as you can see, that simply isn't so. 

Harris and Walz would do well to remind folks of that. But it's also important that both candidates don't spend all their time reminding us that they're not Trump and Vance, we already know that. As I said, they're going to need to get substantive and address those bread and butter issues mentioned by my friend in her response to my comment on her post.

Because at some point, as everyone keeps reminding us, the honeymoon will eventually be over with the Harris/Walz ticket and the voters who will determine the outcome of this election, will be a relatively small number of people in a handful of states who will show up to vote, based upon whether or not they feel Harris and Walz are worth the effort. The Democratic candidates need to do everything in their power to reach out to these folks, even some of the ones in the red caps. 

Trump of course will always be Trump, a man who cannot resist the impulse to be a jackass and a bully, no matter the cost to himself. While his base has shown they will support him no matter what he does, his Achilles heel is that he will never lift a finger to reach out to anybody who doesn't already adore him. His choice of running mate proves that in spades. That weakness provides the Democrats with a tremendous opening, if only they'll take the opportunity to run with it.

Well, so far so good.

So, what was it about my friend's post that irked me so? 

Well, you may recall four or five of my posts which address the issue of "colorblindness" that seems to be an obsession with the MAGA right. They just love to brag about how they don't notice race and how inspired they are by the line of the "I Have a Dream" speech where Martin Luther King dreams of a day when: "his children would be judged by their character rather than the color of their skin." When you're reading a rant about race by a MAGA writer, you can set your watch by when that line will come up.  

And how did these same folks react when it was announced that Kamala Harris, a woman of Black/Asian ancestry would be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States? 

They called her a "DEI" hire, implying that she was picked not because of her qualifications but because of her race and her gender. Never mind that she served as Vice President of the United States for four years, a senator from the largest state in the country before that, and the top law enforcement official of that state before that. Before that she was a prosecutor.

And remind me, what exactly were Donald Trump's qualifications before he was elected president in 2016? Oh yeah, he was a talk show host and a businessman who went bankrupt a half-dozen times.

So, if anyone is running on race and gender in this election, it is the Trumplicans. 

That point was made crystal clear during last week's Democratic National Convention here in Chicago, where the milestone of Harris possibly becoming the first woman president of the United States was not lost on many of the speakers, but practically ignored by the candidate herself. 

Meanwhile the exPOTUS is working overtime to portray Kamala Harris with references filled with piggish male chauvinist stereotypes of women, portraying her as weak, frivolous and stupid, someone who will not garner the respect, nor inspire fear in the minds of our adversaries. 

Well, anyone who has ever seen her in action, such as when she grilled the likes of former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh. understands that Harris, a former prosecutor, senator and vice president, is as serious, intelligent and tough as they come. 

On the other hand, her current opponent, the exPOTUS, extremely vulnerable to attention and flattery, has proven himself to be easily manipulated by our adversaries. His shameful performance in Helsinki with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, is the most but certainly not the unique example of this. 

Of course none of this should come as a surprise, Donald Trump is a master of projection, casting his own faults onto his opponents, only more so with those he truly fears. 

From his unhinged rants on Kamala Harris, we can gather a few things. He's really scared of her and he's the unserious, weak and stupid one.

And how.

Slow News Month

Not much happening in the news lately.

Oh yeah, the attempt on the life of Donald Trump, almost forgot about that one.

So what did I learn from that?

Well first of all it's been a good opportunity to think about a few things regarding one of the great passions of my life, photography. 

You may have had the chance to see the amazing photograph of the exPOTUS shortly before he was grazed by a bullet, with the track of another bullet whizzing by him to his left (our right). We know this isn't the bullet about to hit him because the shooter was to his right (our left), meaning the bullet in the photograph had already passed him. In the amount of time it took to make the exposure, what we call the shutter speed, the bullet travelled a bit of a distance, meaning that it was not frozen still in the photograph, but rather was recorded as a blur, from its location at the beginning of the exposure, to its location at the end, and all points in between.

From looking at the photograph, I'd estimate the bullet covered about two feet during the exposure. Given that, one could presumably estimate the rate of speed per second of the bullet by multiplying those two feet, by the denominator (the bottom number) of the exposure time which is measured in fractions of a second. 

According to the photographer, Doug Mills of the New York Times, the photograph was shot at 1/8000 of a second. So multiplying two feet by 8000 gives us a velocity of 16,000 feet per second, about three miles. 

I wasn't up on the subject of bullet speeds before seeing the photograph, but that seemed way too fast. I looked it up and indeed it is. A bullet from the type of weapon used in the assassination attempt typically travels in the vicinity of 3,200 feet per second. 

So what gives, altered photograph? fake news? conspiracy?

Actually, there is quite a logical explanation for the distance bullet covered to appear greater in the photograph than it actually was. It has to do with the type of shutter on the camera that Mills used. The shutter is the part of a camera that opens up to allow light coming from the lens to fall upon the light sensitive material, be it film or in Mills' case, a digital sensor., that records the image  The shutters found on most modern cameras are known as focal plane shutters. Unlike leaf shutters which open from the center, focal plane shutters open from the side. They consist of two curtains, a leading curtain that opens up a window between the lens and the light sensitive material to make the exposure, and a trailing curtain traveling in the same direction that closes to end the exposure. After the picture is taken, the shutter has to be "cocked" to return the two curtains back to their original location before the exposure was made, so the process can be repeated. 

With slower shutter speeds, usually below 1/200 of a second, there is a gap of time when the entire "window" is open and the whole digital sensor (or piece of film) is exposed to light. Above those speeds however, the trailing curtain begins to end the exposure before the leading curtain is completely open, meaning there is never a time when the entire image is exposed at once. The faster the exposure, the smaller the gap of time there is between the opening of the leading curtain and the closing of the trailing curtain. 

By the time you get to 1/8000 of a second, the fastest exposure you'll generally find. the gap between the two curtains is very small, meaning only a very small slit of the image is exposed at any given time during the exposure.

Now the amount of time it takes for the two curtains to make their complete journey is usually quick enough to stop most motion like race cars, but not bullets*. Assuming the speed of the bullet was around 3,200 fps, in 1/8000 sec, the bullet would travel approximately 3 inches. Which means that if the shutter were moving in the opposite direction as the bullet (imagine yourself in a moving car observing another car traveling in the opposite direction) , there would have been a very small window of time for the bullet to reveal itself in front of the camera during the exposure and the resulting image would have seemingly compressed the trail of the bullet to less than the actual 3" covered by the bullet in 1/8000 second. Conversely, if the bullet and the shutter are traveling in the same direction (now imagine observing a car moving the same direction as your car but at a different speed), as appears to be the case here, there is more time than 1/8000 sec to track the bullet's trajectory. Therefore, we have the appearance of more distance covered during the exposure. 

Moral of the story, photographs lie, or at the very least, mislead.

I already knew that part.

Something I also already knew about photography is this: a well-made still photograph is vastly superior at capturing an important moment than a comparably well-made a moving image. I understood this long before I was able to express it, back when I was a child looking at the great weekly magazines of my childhood such as Life and Time. 

Think of the iconic photograph of the late Wille Mays with his back to home plate catching a fly ball off the bat of Vik Wirtz in the 1954 World Series. In that photograph, we can contemplate everything from the ball about to be caught, to the position Mays is in relation to where the ball is coming from, to the reaction of the fans in the stands, many of whose vision of the play was blocked by the peculiar architecture of the old Polo Grounds. The moving image of that catch is remarkable as well in its own right but as it exists in little over the blink of an eye, it mainly serves to help put the still image, forever frozen in time in our memory, into context. 

The same is true for the most memorable photograph of the Trump assassination attempt, one of several of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist to the crowd after members of the Sevret Service helped him back onto his feet, after literally pushing him out of his shoes to get him out of the line of fire. 

The one that stands out of all of them was made by AP photographer Evan Vucci. 

Here's a link to the AP page that features the photograph along with the story.

Dare I say, this is about as close to perfection as a press photograph can come. it is a shoe-in for a Pulitzer Prize.

Its composition is somewhat reminiscent of one of the most famous press photographs ever made, the Joe Rosenthal photograph of the raising of the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. 

Here is an interesting video that gives a little background of that photograph. So you can compare the difference between still and moving images of the same event, the video includes a short film of the flag raising made by a Marine Corps photographer standing beside Rosenthal. The video also refutes the common misconception that the photograph was staged.  

Like Rosenthal's photograph, the American flag is prominently featured in Vucci's picture, flapping in the breeze at the top of the frame. But in Vucci's image, the flag is mere window dressing as Trump himself replaces Old Glory as the object to which all the action is centered upon. In his photograph, four Seret Service agents, three men and one woman are caught in the middle of propping the bloodied Trump up, each one well defined in a distinct pose as they attempt to shield the former president from exposure to any other would-be assassins. If that weren't enough, they were also struggling with Trump in the attempt to haul him off the stage, while he defiantly pumped his fist to the crown admonishing them to "fight."

The photograph became an instant icon, expect to see it again and again through November as team Trump will use it to promote their man's alleged courage in the face of death.

Regardless of your opinion of Donald Trump, I haven't been afraid to share mine, you can't deny the man has more than his share of chutzpah, having the presence of mind to pump his fist to the crowd after being shot, while an average Joe like me would have crawled away to safety like a snake in the grass.

Or maybe it was just too perfect?  

I have to admit having been a little skeptical as I followed the event in real time on the radio while driving home from grocery shopping that Saturday afternoon. My first thoughts after hearing that he pumped his fist at the crowd after being shot was that this was all a setup. I later discounted my own little conspiracy theory after I learned that other people at the event actually did get shot, one of whom died.  

But not everybody gave up their theories.

The funny thing about conspiracy theories is they always portray the narrative of the people who promote them. In this case, I didn't hear any Democrats claim that Joe Biden tried to have Trump assassinated and I didn't hear any Republicans claim it was all a setup by Trump and his minions.

Just for fun playing the devil's advocate, if we could for a moment put the moral implications aside, let's examine the likelihood of a conspiracy, shall we? First of all, assuming this was a conspiracy put in motion by one of the political parties, who would have had the greater motivation to carry out an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Democrats or the Republicans? 

Well, it seems to me the Democrats had everything to lose and absolutely nothing to gain by snuffing out Trump. As we have witnessed again and again, adversity that befalls the exPOTUS, including the myriad of impeachments, indictments and felony convictions against him, only works in his favor. After the failed assassination attempt, Trump was greeted at the RNC in Milwaukee, just days after the shooting, with religious fervor as many claimed him to have been personally saved by God himself. Using that logic, apparently God didn't care about the retired fireman who was killed by the would-be assassin's bullet, not to mention the children killed in the school attack in Uvalde, TX, or the thousands of people who die from senseless violence every day in this country. 

If the shooting were not bad enough for the Democrats, had Trump been seriously injured or killed, it would have been worse, as his status as a martyr figure among the faithful would have been unstoppable. Heck, even a dead Trump might have won the November election against an increasingly frail Joe Biden.

Fortunately, that didn't happen, and Trump had his moment of glory in Milwaukee as God's chosen one.

So, as the assassination attempt clearly worked in Trump's favor, it's obvious the Republicans had far greater motivation to carry it out than the Democrats. 

But did they? 

Of course not. 

Let's just use some common sense.

It was a real shooter using real bullets who really killed and maimed people. The shooter was a 20-year-old who didn't make his high school shooting club because of his bad aim. And he was using a weapon more suited for taking out a nest of enemy combatants or a classroom of third graders than for picking off a target one and a half football fields away.

I don't know about you but if I were going to sign off on a fake assassination attempt against myself and have someone shoot in my direction, this wouldn't be the guy I'd pick to carry it out.

I think what impressed me the most about this whole unfortunate event, is how vulnerable we all are to conspiracy theories. "How could this happen?" was the question I heard most in the media, social and otherwise, and in real life. 

My answer to that question is "how could this not have happened sooner?" In my 65 years on this planet, I've witnessed countless acts of violence carried out in this country, starting with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The names of the assassins of the sixties are forever etched into the memories of anyone who lived through those particularly violent years. Many of us however have forgotten the would-be political assassins who were less competent in carrying out the task at hand.

But I haven't. These are names I didn't have to look up: Arthur Bremer, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, Sara Jane Moore and John Hinkley Jr. all of whom attempted to kill either presidents or presidential candidates in the seventies and eighties.

I don't remember the names of other would-be assassins such as the ones who more recently tried to kill Congress members Gabby Giffords and Steve Scalise, but political violence is no stranger to this country, nor has it ever been.

I suppose we haven't witnessed close encounters with assassination attempts on presidents in the last several decades simply because Secret Service protection has been beefed up significantly, which made the attempt on the life of Trump lead to more questions about who was involved. 

But seriously folks, the Secret Service participating in a conspiracy to kill a presidential candidate? I simply don't buy it.

Let's face it, even at the highest level mistakes happen and given the political climate in this country at the moment, it should come as no surprise at all that someone would seize on the opportunity to take out a former, current or possibly future president.

If we're willing to accept that people are willing on their own to commit heinous and senseless crimes like massacring children as they attend school, why should it be so hard to understand someone on their own attempting to kill a politician? 

This unfortunately is nothing new, we live in a violent world and a violent country.

Anyway, despite the terrible tragedy that fell upon Corey Comperatore and his family, I'm happy Donald Trump lived to see another day.

Other than that, not much happened this month.

Oh wait...

*The well known photographs made by Dr. Harold Edgerton and others that capture bullets in mid flight were made possible not through the use of fast shutters, but strobe light, the duration of which can be much shorter than 1/8000 of a second. 

Job Number One

An analyst before the debate said the president had to win the first three minutes or else he'd lose the entire debate. Then the debate started and from my perspective, Joe Biden lost the first thirty seconds. 

Then it got worse. 

Yes, Biden lost the debate, but it would be a stretch of the imagination, a huge one, to say that Donald Trump won. With Trump, especially last Thursday night, fact checkers would have had a much easier time enumerating the things he said that were facts. I watched the entire debate and for the life of me, I still can't think of anything Trump said that was remotely true.

Never mind the verbal stumbles and the occasional losses of train of thought, Joe Biden lost the debate because last week Donald Trump handed him talking points on a silver platter that he failed to take advantage of. 

Warning, here comes another sports analogy:

In ice hockey, when a team has a two-man advantage, that is to say when two players on the opposing team are sent to the penalty box at the same time, it's usually a pivotal moment in the game. If the team with the advantage fails to score during that opportunity, they often lose the game.

Using that analogy, Joe Biden had a two-man advantage for at least half the debate.  

At times he appeared even to have a three-man advantage, something not possible in hockey, yet he failed to score. 

The subject of abortion was Biden's greatest missed opportunity. Unbelievably, Trump once again brought up one of his most egregious lies ever, perhaps even worse that his claim that he would have won the 2020 election were it not for voter fraud. Regarding late term abortions he said this:

(Doctors) will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month and even after birth.

I find it understandable that people would be particularly sensitive to abortions that take place late in a pregnancy when the unborn child has developed beyond a certain point and in our time, might even be viable outside of the womb. 

But using late term abortions to sum up the "pro-life" argument is a logical fallacy, a classic example of the "Strawman", that is, basing an argument upon exaggerated and faulty assumptions. Trump's assumptions here were doozies, not only faulty, but outrageous and shameless, something we've all come to expect from the man.

First of all, everyone agrees that willfully taking the life of a child after birth is nothing short of murder, which has never been legal anywhere in this country. Suggesting otherwise as Trump has done now for at least eight years, needs to be called out for the bullshit it is, unequivocally. 

Biden didn't do that. 

Beyond Trump's reprehensible claim of obstetricians willfully murdering babies outside of the womb, late term abortions need to be addressed for what they really are. These are not cases as Trump suggests of capricious women deciding late in their pregnancy that they can't be bothered with giving birth. 

The most eloquent words I've heard about the subject were spoken by current Secretary of Transportation and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg:

Let’s put ourselves in shoes of a woman in the situation, if it is that late in your pregnancy that means almost by definition, you have been expecting to carry it to term, we are talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name, women who have purchased a crib, families that get most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible choice.

It would have been nice if Biden could have responded to Trump's stupid, uninformed comment with one tenth of that eloquence. But instead, we got crickets. He even pivoted mid-response from one of the Democrats' most powerful issues this year to one of their least, immigration.

Yes, it was a terrible performance, one perhaps for the ages. Immediately after the debate, one of the TV commentators said that he loved Joe Biden, that Joe Biden was his mentor, but that Joe Biden needed to step down, he's simply not up to perhaps the most difficult job in the world. 

One word immediately came to mind:

Fuck.

But I've had a week to think about it. Quite honestly, I am a little pissed at Biden because I do remember him saying four years ago that he intended to be a transition president and as he would be 81 in 2024, wouldn't intend to seek a second term. Had he lived up to those words, we wouldn't be in this situation today. Of course, the situation could have been worse with another candidate, who knows.

By any reasonable standard, Joe Biden has been a good president. Yes, inflation is still a problem; we're all feeling the pain myself included, especially at the gas pump and the checkout counter of the supermarket. And yes, this is also a terrible time if you want to buy a home for the first time. But the fact of the matter is that's the way of economics, we've been here before and were it not for the selective memory and/or historical amnesia of many Republicans, they'd see it as it is. It's also true as I pointed out in a recent post that the extremely dire warnings made by economists four years ago of an imminent recession did not come true. 

I have to laugh hysterically because if Trump were president now with the current state of the economy, you wouldn't be able to shut him up about how the stock market continues to shatter records, how we're producing fossil fuels in record amounts, and how we have at the moment, the strongest economy of practically every nation in the world. Which reminds me of a line from Bill Clinton, "if you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat."

Biden has also had to face numerous challenges, especially two major wars that threaten to destabilize the world. The current president has remained steadfast in the American tradition of supporting our longtime allies, democracies that are facing existential threats from totalitarian regimes. In contrast, Trump has shown nothing but admiration for those totalitarian regimes, especially those in North Korea, China and Russia.  

And Biden has addressed the issue nearest and dearest to the hearts of the right, namely immigration, by working on a bipartisan bill to stem the tide of immigrants crossing the southern border. That bill was quashed by Trump who insisted the Republicans kill it in order to prevent the Democrats from having another issue they could campaign on against him.

 

By contrast, Trump had few challenges during his first three years in office. He inherited a strong and growing economy from his predecessor, much of which he erroneously took credit for himself. There were also few international incidents for which he also, without any credible evidence, continues to take credit.

In the final year of his term, he had one tremendous challenge that had he done even a slightly credible job of addressing, that is, no better than a C-, he would have won reelection in 2020 handily. Instead of bringing the country together as any good leader does during a time of crisis, Trump used COVID to further divide the country, this time over the proper response to a pandemic, resulting in the United States having one of the highest rates of mortality from the disease of any nation in the world. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Trump supporters died of COVID at a disproportionately high rate.

Yet even that doesn't seem to dissuade his supporters. 

Nor does the fact that he attempted to wage an insurrection in order to overturn a free and fair election. If you disagree with that last part, show me the evidence, not just theories. 

Is Trump the existential threat to our democracy that many people insist? Well I happen to believe that beyond having been a terrible president, he is a threat and has no business of ever setting foot in the White House again.

Naturally in my opinion, it's job number one to beat him in the election in November. Biden's performance last week certainly didn't help in that matter.  

So in that vein, where do we go from here? If Biden should decide to step down, I would support and respect that. But then what? To me the natural replacement for him on the Democratic ticket would be his vice president. Personally, I would vote for Kamala Harris in a heartbeat, in fact I was kind of rooting for her to win the Democratic nomination in 2020. But truth be told as I pointed out in another post, I'd vote for my cat in a heartbeat over Donald Trump. 

But I'm not sure if Harris could beat Trump in the electoral college in November, since many people seem to despise her as they did Hillary Clinton. As an aside, it dawned on me the other day that their hatred of these two women is perhaps not prejudice against strong women as I once thought. Could it rather be a prejudice against smart women? Margorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are both strong women who get a lot of support from the Right. But certainly no one ever accused them of being smart. 

One thing's for sure, I'd sure love to see Kamala Harris debate Donald Trump. Trump would never let that happen though, even he's not that foolish. 

The polls today show that a Democratic candidate other than Biden would do well against Trump. Unfortunately, "Democratic candidate other than Biden" is not going to be a choice on the ballot in November. And I'm afraid that if the Democrats were to go above Kamala Harris's head and select someone other than her for their candidate, that would lead to a lot of hard feelings, with good reason. 

I also think that the Democrats forcing Biden out would be a terrible idea as he is the candidate who was elected by the people, including me, who voted in the Democratic primaries. 

To me the only credible options for the Democrats going forward are for Biden to voluntarily step down, turning over the reins to his vice president, or Biden remaining the Democratic candidate. 

Both options are fraught with risk but frankly I don't see any other option.

Which means for the first time in a long time, the Democrats are going to have to get their act together and unify themselves in unequivocally getting behind their ticket in November. That means if Biden remains the guy, to assure the public that he can do the job and if by some chance he can't, he has a very capable vice president who can easily fill the shoes. 

If Harris is the woman, again, to a person the Democrats will have to get behind her full speed ahead.

In either case the Democrats, and by that I mean every single one of them, will need to be on the same page doing a full court press (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) to show the country the difference between their party and the other one.  

On the bright side, I believe this week, the largely Trump-picked Supreme Court handed the Democrats a tremendous gift in ruling that a president has complete immunity in his or her official acts while in office. Why do I believe it's a gift to the Democrats? 

Remember that the Supreme Court ruling goes both ways. As Joe Biden is the current president, he could now do all sorts of things including enacting an executive order banning convicted felons (have anyone particular in mind?) from running for president. Heck while we're at it, he could even, thanks to the Supreme Court, take out a contract on his chief political opponent with likely impunity. True he might get impeached by the Republican House but likely won't get convicted by the Democratic led Senate.

By not doing any of that, he's showing the nation that he means business by not wanting to be king or dictator, which six members of the Court seem to have said is his right. 

Assuming these things won't happen, the Democrats will be able to rightfully say that Republicans,  including an obviously biased Republican leaning Supreme Court, not the Democrats, want to increase the powers of the president in ways never imagined in the Constitution. Combined with the 2025 Project, the work of the Heritage Foundation which is effectively the planform of the Republican Party in the upcoming election, the Democrats can rightfully argue that they are the party committed to preserving and protecting the Democratic Republic that has served this nation well for the last 248 years, while the Republicans in what they are calling a "new American revolution" are looking to overthrow all that and return this country to the monarchy it rejected on this day, July 4, 1776, or worse, introduce a type of government that no one in their right mind ever imagined for this country. 

Between that and the Dobbs ruling which overthrew the federal government's protection of a woman's right to choose her own healthcare, the Democrats will have a lot to work with in terms of convincing the American people that they are the party that looks out for the rights of the people and the fights for the preservation of the democracy we have enjoyed for nearly 250 years. 

Of course, all bets are off if the Democrats drop the ball and lose sight of the big picture by letting their personal grievances take precedence and refusing to compromise their more extreme positions. 

I understand that it may not be the best of choices this year, but there couldn't be a more clear choice.

It's a 50/50 chance at best the Democrats and their voters will come together to do that but if they do, I'll bet my firstborn the Democrats will win in a landslide this November, no matter who leads their ticket.

Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans.

Let's not fuck it all up.