October 4, 2022

The Supreme Court continues its race to the right. It currently is considering a case filed against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, claiming that using race as a criterium for college admissions is discriminatory. The schools claim that race is only one of many factors that they consider (grades, class rank, recommendations, alumni interviews, extracurricular activities, contributions to communities, etc.) in making their decisions. They also claim that having a diverse student body enhances the education that students receive by exposing them to others from radically different walks of life.

Conservatives are not buying the arguments, and the Court will most likely decide in favor of the plaintiffs. Race will no longer be allowed to be considered by admissions committees. However, I don’t think all is lost. Race was likely a shorthand anyway for students who were economically disadvantaged. For example, how do you compare an applicant coming from a broken home, living in a ghetto, attending a substandard school and having barely enough to eat with a student from a private prep school with all of the advantages? I think that it is clearly not discriminatory to say that, in some cases, the poor student may have done more with what he had at his disposal than the prep school student, and that he would be more likely to make a positive contribution to society. The poor student could be from any race or ethnicity..black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc.

I think that if colleges clearly use economics rather than race as a rationale for their admissions decisions, even Conservatives would be on board.

June 28, 2023

I have a more cynical take on the turmoil that has engulfed the Supreme Court and two of its Justices, who have accepted financial favors from conservative billionaires with business before the court. The Supreme Court clearly has lax oversight and ethics rules. Alito’s and Thomas’ defense is that no reasonable person could assume that they were influenced by these gifts, all appearances to the contrary. They may have a point.

Alito and Thomas are unabashedly conservative Justices. They have been doing the dirty work of the Conservative establishment for decades. I don’t think there is any evidence that their views changed or could have been changed after accepting vacation trips. You might have to question the judgement of the billionaires, who wasted money on two Supreme Court Justices already in their back pocket. If they had been flying around Kagan, Sotomajor or Jackson, that would have been suspicious. We’ll leave that to George Soros.

The moral of the story is that, as long as you can’t be bought, it’s okay to be bought.

June 23, 2023

Recent events have demonstrated that many of the governmental principles that we take for granted and affect our daily lives are seriously out of date. Here are some things that need to be changed and/or updated.

Lifetime appointments for Supreme Court Justices have outlived their usefulness. They insulate the judges from any real oversight, which is what they were designed to do, but judges are flouting any accountability. Thomas and Alito are just the most recent examples. I suspect that when no term limits were put into the Constitution, no one expected judges to live forever.

The Electoral College is a Rubik’s Cube of unfairness and complexity. States with minimal populations and get to choose Presidents, and, as a result, get to appoint Supreme Court Justices. The January 6th fiasco should be evidence enough that it’s time has come.

The debt limit is a quaint concept that no one understands. Neither party should be able to hold the entire country hostage because of an accounting anomaly. It’s a flawed concept with possibly fatal consequences.

Gerrymandering is done by both sides, but that doesn’t justify the insult it is to the average voter. It isn’t hard to draw fair and reasonable voting maps as the courts have demonstrated.

Nominating conventions may have been fun at one time when men secretly met in closed, smoke-filled rooms to pick a Presidential candidate. Today it is just a lot of funny people in weird outfits doing crazy stuff for the TV cameras while up-and-comers bloviate from the podium.

Are paper ballots really necessary? They do provide an extra layer of protection against people like Donald Trump, but the world has gone digital. I am sure someone could figure out how to run a safe and secure online election.

The President shouldn’t have pardon power. Donald Trump isn’t the only President to have abused it, but he turned it into a running joke. Jeffrey Epstein should have waited for his pardon. It should be done away with before another President does even more harm.

The party in the majority shouldn’t be able to control all of the committees. A slim majority in either the House or the Senate should not translate into total control.

June 22, 2023

I would like to say that the Republicans are out of legislative ideas, but I can’t because they never had any productive ideas to begin with. Because they are not hindered by the dirty work of creating and passing legislation, they have more time to engage in the politics of revenge. They believe that their personal savior, Donald Trump, has been the victim of a Pontius Pilate-like persecution at the hands of the Democrats, and they intend to prostrate themselves and wash his feet.

They censured California Rep. Adam Schiff aka “Shifty Schiff.” He was not guilty of totally fabricating his resume. He didn’t threaten to kill anybody. He didn’t pose with AR-15’s, or wear an AR-15 lapel pin. He didn’t aid and abet insurrectionists. He didn’t vote to not recognize that last election. He was censured for holding Donald Trump accountable, and that is a high crime and misdemeanor in the right wing universe.

Any number of the Know Nothing Party want to impeach the Biden crime family. Biden may be guilty of shuffling his feet, but he is not guilty of shuffling anything else. It is an impeachment looking for a crime. Impeachy keen.

June 20, 2023

Is Donald Trump an Idiot for going on FOX, and essentially confessing to the federal crimes he is alleged to have committed? His ramblings with Bret Baier were Incoherent and Incriminating. His arguments made no sense because they were in direct conflict with the facts. He probably knows that, and his attorneys certainly know that. So, what’s up?

Clearly, Trump believes that his base and political toadies are Imbeciles because only Imbeciles would believe his fulminations. Hilary Clinton unfortunately labeled these people deplorables. Trump believes they are even worse than that. They have been conditioned to buy anything he is selling. Maybe it’s Ignorance? Maybe it’s Idolatry. Regardless, for these followers, Trump’s guilt is an Inconvenient truth.

June 17, 2023

President George H.W. Bush wanted a “kinder and gentler nation.” President George W. Bush advocated “compassionate conservativism.” The MAGA crowd today says our moral values are going to hell in a hand basket. The are waging a culture, and, some might say, a holy war. Despite the fact that this has been a constant complaint from the hard right for decades, the question is are we really going down the tubes?

Despite some overzealous proponents of political correctiveness, we have a greater respect today for the differences that bind us. Communities that have been ostracized are gradually being brought under the tent. We have a greater understanding about what is mean, pejorative, and discriminatory. We know that words can hurt. We are trying to be kinder, and we are gradually getting there.

More people than ever have healthcare. While it is not 100%, it is a sign that, as a country, we have more compassion for our fellow citizens. Charitable giving is up. People are literally dying to come to our country. We are not at war. Despite an occasional protest and insurrection, we are calm. Negative media does not reflect reality, but it does affect perceptions. In the words of one researcher, “There are many real problems facing society today. Fortunately, moral breakdown is a fake problem, and we don’t need to spend any resources on it.”

June 15, 2023

I was recently asked who I would like to see the Democrats run for President if Joe Biden chose to withdraw or could not continue. While I fully expect him to run and win in 2024, I was stumped by the question. I was also stumped by the same question on the Republican side. Neither party has a deep bench, and is relying on septua/octogenarians. After giving it some thought and seeing them in action, here are a few credible candidates.

Gavin Newsom. He has been Mayor of San Francisco, Lt. Governor of California, and is now the Governor of California, the 4th or 5th largest economy in the world at $3T. He is 55 years old, Progressive, and a fighter. He chastised Ron DeSantis, and warned him to not mess with California. He recently went toe-to-toe with Sean Hannity on FOX. He was well-prepared, and didn’t back down.

Daniel Goldman. Goldman represents the 10th Congressional District from New York. He previously served as lead majority counsel in the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump and lead counsel to House Managers in Trump’s subsequent impeachment trial. He is 47 years old, and a graduate of Yale and Stanford Law. He is a scion of the investment firm, Goldman Sachs, and an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune. He is smart and well-spoken. He has been a constant thorn in the side of the Republican “weaponization” committee.

Other possible candidates that need to be taken seriously: Governor Wes Moore (44) of Maryland, Governor Gretchen Whitmer (51) of Michigan, Governor Josh Shapiro (49) of Pennsylvania, and Vice President Kamala Harris (58.)

June 13, 2023

“Murder on the Orient Express” by Agatha Christie is the story of a wealthy tycoon, who gets stabbed twelve times by the passengers on the train, and how Detective Hercule Poirot solves the mystery. Every passenger on the train had an alibi. They all presumably had clean hands, but were happy to see the tycoon dead. In a similar way, I think most Republicans, in and out of office, would like to see Donald Trump depart the party, but no one wants to be seen with “blood” on their hands.

Republicans are lining up to defend Trump in the classified documents scandal. Trump’s actions are indefensible, at least in the opinion of four lawyers, who quit the team. Yet Republicans are more than willing to publicly support thievery, sedition, conspiracy, and obstruction. Behind the scenes, they wish he would just go away, but no one wants to be seen as Brutus. Chris Christie is trying to tell the truth out loud, but no one is listening. Until they figure out how to collectively put an end to him without getting caught, we are stuck with a mystery with no blockbuster ending.

June 12, 2023

Republicans are obsessed with the word “woke,” but famously are having a very difficult time actually defining what it means. They approach woke the same way Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart approached obscenity. He wasn’t sure how to define obscenity, but he knew it when he saw it. I suspect Republicans don’t know what woke is either, but they believe that they know what it is when they see or hear it.

Republicans apologized for the mob that attacked Congress on January 6th. Trump wants to pardon the hundreds that were convicted. Tucker Carlson denied it ever happened. Others blamed it on the FBI and AntiFa. However, the faux tough guys on the right, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, believe they are threatened by the woke mob, which is coming soon for a school or bathroom in their neighborhood.

The anti-woke mob gets riled up by an alphabet soup of social concepts like DEI, ECG, BLM and LGBTQ. If it has initials, they hate it. It’s called acronymophobia. I suspect they are clueless about what is behind the initials. It is a lot easier to hate concepts than to make an effort to understand what they really mean.

June 7, 2023

Silly me. I thought the rift between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf/PIF was all about motherhood and apple pie. I was wrong. As it turns out, it was about, in the immortal words of the O’Jays, “Money, money, money, money, money…money.” Everything has, as Jessie J would say, a “Pricetag,” and the PGA Tour is no exception. Winchester’s own Jay Monahan said “Show me the money,” and the Saudis were more than happy to oblige. I guess all is forgiven. It’s too bad that Monahan wasn’t able to extract some political concessions from the Saudis in the same way that the Saudis extract oil.

Many more details need to emerge, but, as a consumer of TV golf, I suspect I will be asked to watch either more golf and/or different golf. Watching more golf is not physically possible in my case, and I am not looking to watch different golf with 54 hole, no-cut exhibitions, pros wearing shorts, and music blaring in the background. There is some junk golf on the PGA Tour, which has been called the “silly season, and I won’t watch that either. I will watch LIV golfers play in the four majors because I have to, but that is enough.