April 23, 2023

When I used to work, I was encouraged to work on my platform skills. The Republican Party does not have a platform, and it isn’t going back to Bush, Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower or Roosevelt so here are my recommendations for a Conservative platform.

1. Maintain a strong defense. Defend friends. Work with allies. Resist authoritarianism.

2. Prevent government interference into personal and private matters.

3. Respect precedent in judicial matters.

4. Respect the rule of law.

5. Reduce budget deficits through program cuts and tax increases.

6. Protect individual liberties.

7. Protect the environment.

8. Support law enforcement.

9. Support science.

10. Respect religion, and the separation of church and state.

11. Tax everyone fairly, and collect their taxes.

12. Embrace the original intent of the Second Amendment.

13. Support one man (woman), one vote.

14. Celebrate the Statue of Liberty

15. Support business

In the climactic scene in the holiday classic, “Miracle on 34th Street,” the dogged lawyer proves that his client is Santa Clause because thousands of children said it was so, and the USPS stood behind them. That was fiction. In a similar vein, Fox News lied that the 2020 election was stolen and that the Dominion voting machines were rigged because millions of its viewers said it was so. Dominion settled for $787.5 million dollars, and it was supported by the judiciary. That was real. Fox’s defense was that people were entitled to believe what they wanted to believe, and that Fox was just reporting on it. I guess you might call it the Santa Clause.

Unfortunately, Fox is not going to go bankrupt as did Jimmy Stewart’s Bedford Falls bank in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Fox will have to settle many more lawsuits before it is done. It will be amusing to see who gets cast in the Disney, made for TV docudrama about the skullduggery that when on behind the scenes. It should be called, “It’s a Wonderful Lie.”

April 17, 2023

As a baby boomer, I am finding that my politics align more with the Gen Z population than any other group. They are rapidly becoming a political force. By 2024, 40% of the electorate will be Gen Z’ers and Millennials. 70% of Gen Z’ers voted Democratic in the last election. Their overarching concerns include the right of a woman to control her reproductive health; the right of all Americans to breathe clean air and clean water; the right of all voters to have unfettered access to the polls; and the right of younger people to feel safe from school shootings.

Boomers have seen much of the legislation that was enacted in 60’s undone by right wing extremists. The Dobbs decision undid the 1965 case, Griswold vs. Connecticut, which Boomers assumed would be Constitutionally-guaranteed abortion policy. The Clean Air Act was put into law in 1970 by Richard Nixon. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Boomers had to worry about atomic bombs from Russia, and not AR-15’s from next door. Republicans are out of step with this generation, and, if the trend continues, they will be out of office.

April 11, 2023

The Republican Party famously adjourned from its national convention in 2020 without for the first time endorsing a platform for its Presidential candidate. They decided that they would let Donald Trump wing it. They acquiesced to a candidate whose idea of an agenda was to do whatever it took to get to tomorrow. The Republican Party has been rudderless ever since, the best example of which is the lack of a coherent agenda and budget coming out of the Republican-controlled House.

Ironically, the GOP strategy for getting back into power in 2024 is to accuse Democrats, liberals, progressives, the deep state, and George Soros of having hidden agendas. I guess the only thing worse than having no agenda is having a hidden one. The hidden agenda of the DOJ and the FBI is to collude with the Manhattan DA, the DA of Fulton County, and the Biden Administration to get Trump. Pedophiles and groomers are working surreptitiously with school administrators to turn our children. Women have a hidden agenda to kill fetuses. Socialists have a hidden agenda to ruin the country’s economy. So many hidden agendas and so little time.

April 6, 2023

Finally some good news on the education front we can all applaud. No, it’s not Florida eliminating Critical Race Theory, curtailing African-American studies, and banning books. No, it’s not Tennessee making it easier to carry guns in the wake of a mass shooting, and then expelling elected leaders, who supported students opposed to the legislation. No, it’s not about all of the school administrators and teachers being terrorized by gun-toting MAGA goons. No, it’s not about any number of states attacking trans students. It is the fact that Massachusetts is number one in the country for the percentage of students, who had a score of three or higher on their AP exams. It was not the first time we led the field.

The home of Horace Mann (which was the name of my junior high school) remains focused on its mission while other states are distracted by culture war issues. “No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends.” Maybe MAGA Republicans should be required to take, and pass, an AP test on U.S. history.

April 5, 2023

The Annotated Alice is a 1960 book by Martin Gardner incorporating the text of Lewis Carroll‘s major tales, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. It has extensive annotations explaining contemporary references, mathematical concepts, and word play. Donald Trump has followed rabid Tea Party members down a rabbit hole, and entered his own wonderland where everything up is down and vice versa. He took the right-wing, conspiracy pill, and now he is incredibly small. The New York Times gives us its annotated version of Trump’s 34 felonies for those of us, who don’t want to read the book. Trump’s response to all of this is “Off with their heads.”

The annotated Trump is better described as the truncated Trump. Despite all his false bravado, the once most powerful person in the world has been shrunken back to below normal size. There was no hint of a Cheshire Cat smile in the court room. Ordinary people were having their way with him as they did their jobs. Trump weaponized the legal system in his private life, and the Department of Justice in his political life. He is being hoist by his own petard. Trump is mired in a legal maze that he will not be able to escape.

April 4, 2023

Here is the platform that Ron DeSantis will be running on as he tries to become the President of Florida.

1. The carrying of a concealed weapon without a permit will be legal.

2. Abortions after six weeks will be illegal.

3. Gender affirming care for minors will be banned.

4. Diversity programs in colleges will be eliminated.

5. Transporting immigrants without their knowledge will be legal.

6. His government will actively ban books it finds offensive.

7. The “Don’t Say Gay” bill will be the law of the land.

8. Corporations who disagree with his policies will become targets.

9. The CDC and NIH will be governed my emotions, and not science.

10. His government will set up a private enforcement agency.

11. The age for qualifying for Social Security and Medicare will be raised to 70.

12. Critical Race Theory will no longer be taught in kindergartens.

13. The state of Florida will not honor extradition treaties.

14. We will wash our hands of Ukraine

April 3, 2023

With the Easter season fast approaching, it is a good time to revisit the teachings of the Catholic Church. One of its foundational concepts is that of original sin. Adam took a bite of the apple, fell from grace, and we have been paying for his transgression ever since.

Similarly, Donald Trump took a bite of the apple, and it looks like he may be paying for it for a long time. While paying hush money to a porn star is not the worst thing he has done, it is his original sin. All his other sins were made possible by this one. It made his election possible, which led to two impeachments, an attempted steal, an insurrection, and the stealing of classified documents.

If he confesses his sins, the judicial system might grant him absolution. Otherwise, he won’t be rising from the dead.

March 27, 2023

The John Birch Society is arguably the grandfather of today’s MAGA movement. It was founded in 1958 by Robert Welch, and is headquartered in Ron Johnson’s Wisconsin. The John Birch Society is an American right-wing political advocacy group. It is anti-communist, supports social conservatism, and is associated with ultraconservative, radical right, far-right, or libertarian ideas. “Birchers” by Matthew Dallek discusses how the JBS set the Republican Party on its long march to extremism. My only contact with the JBS came in an uncomfortable freshman year when I was assigned to live with a student from Wisconsin, who was steeped in JBS philosophy.

The virus that has infected Donald Trump’s version of America has been with us for a long time, preceding even the JBS. The America First movement during WW II, eerily similar to Make America Great Again, is a perfect example. America First was populated by Nazi-sympathizers. MAGA has a fawning attraction to Vladimir Putin and other autocrats. Unlike JBS, however, MAGA has no overriding philosophy other than grievance and revenge. It has no agenda. It wants “redemption” in Trump’s own words. Trump’s indictment with more to come is a life saver for the Republican Party. It will distract its followers from its bankruptcy of ideas and programs.

March 29, 2023

For the record, I love my wife’s meatballs, but not enough to affectionately label someone else a meatball as Donald Trump has done in calling the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, Meatball Ron. I guess WOP, Dago, Spaghetti Bender and Guinea were already taken. No one ever accused Trump of being woke or politically correct, which seems to me to be a distinction without a difference.

Trump seems to have a fascination with all things Italian. He juts his jaw out just like Benito Mussolini. Maybe it’s a Fascist thing, or an old man with a triple chin thing. Ironically, Ron DeSantis, who’s grandparents came from Southern Italy, is claiming that the big difference between him and Trump is that he actually keeps the trains running on time. Trump could be the reincarnation of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but without the bunga bunga sex parties. Then again, I have never been to Mar-a-Lago so who’s to say.

Trump has had more than a passing relationship with mafia figures like John Gotti and Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. Now there is a nickname. Trump enjoys imitating tough guys like wrestlers and gangsters in the same way he impersonated a successful business man on The Apprentice. He even pretended recently to be a baseball player when he threatened the Manhattan D.A. with a baseball bat. Trump’s personal attorney before Giuliani was Roy Cohn, who also defended the original Teflon Don and Tony Salerno. I guess with Trump all roads do, indeed, lead to Rome.