February 23, 2021

There are many ways of assessing how a President did his job? One of the more important ways is to assess how a President affected America’s standing in the world community. On that score, Donald Trump was a miserable failure. He was laughed at during a United Nations speech. He damaged our relationship with NATO. He pulled out of the Paris Agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership. He withdrew from the World Health Organization. He said that Mexico would pay for his wall. He got impeached for his Ukrainian quid pro quo. He canceled the Iran deal. He withdrew troops from Syria, leaving our Kurdish allies exposed. He kowtowed to Vladimir Putin. He had nothing to show for his Chinese and Korean photo ops.

In addition, the things he did at home eroded America’s influence around the world even more. His response to the pandemic and the resultant loss of over 500,000 lives has made us a laughing stock around the world. Our adversaries use this ineptitude to take exception to American exceptionalism. China, Russia, Iran and others have been using the Trump-inspired insurrection as a major talking point, and as a way to maintain control over their own populations. The climate deniers and deregulators, who were supported by Trump, were responsible for a mass disaster in Texas that is tailor made propaganda for our enemies.

Polls show that our status and favorability ratings around the world have dropped dramatically. Our European allies are hedging their bets by doing more business with China. It will take years to correct the damage that has been caused. America’s standing in the world was knee-capped by Donald Trump.

February 22, 2021

George Washington

“History records few examples of a leader who so earnestly wanted to do the right thing, not just for himself but for his country. Avoiding moral shortcuts, he consistently upheld such high ethical standards that he seemed larger than any other figure on the political scene. Again and again the American people had entrusted him with power, secure in the knowledge that he would exercise it fairly and ably and surrender it when his term of office was up. He had shown that the president and commander in chief of a republic could possess a grandeur surpassing that of all the crowned heads of Europe. He brought maturity, sobriety, judgment, and integrity to a political experiment that could easily have grown giddy with its own vaunted success, and he avoided the backbiting, envy, and intrigue that detracted from the achievements of other founders. He had indeed been the indispensable man of the American Revolution”

Excerpt From

Washington

Ron Chernow

February 19, 2021

There is a healthy debate going on about the need to get children back in schools. Is it safe to go back for children, teachers, administrators and other support personnel? I am not sure what the answer is, but I am confident a rational, non-politicized solution will become possible. I believe schools will pass the test. The Republican Party, however, continues to fail the tests it has been presented even though they are take home, open book, pass/fail tests.

Their first test was the impeachment trial. It could not have been any easier. The “teachers” gave them the answer. All they had to do was write down the answer on the test sheet. They had only one true/false question to answer, and they got it wrong. They accused the teachers of giving them the wrong question. Rather than answering the question about Trump’s guilt or innocence , they essentially said, “Who’s to say?” For that, they have earned a failing grade, which will be on their transcripts for life.

Their second test was administered in the state of Texas. The Governor failed the leadership test, which was a multiple choice test where taking responsibility and solving the problem were the correct answers. Rather than getting out in front of the problem, he went on Fox to blame AOC and the Green New Deal. I am not sure if he was blaming AOC for not doing enough to solve climate change, or was trying to do too much. No sooner was he trying to walk that back when Ted Cruz was getting on a plane for Cancun. Rather than taking responsibility for his poor decision, he blamed his daughter for not giving him the test answers.

We need to get the schools open as fast as possible because Republicans are failing miserably, and should be made to repeat the past year.

February 18, 2021

One of the new conspiracy spreading techniques being employed by Republicans is the “just asking the question” ploy. For example, recently, radical right Republican Senator Ron Johnson asked, “I don’t know. I am just asking the question. What did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it about the Capitol insurrection.” Wow! That will get you thinking. Ironically, this was after Democrats proved what Donald Trump knew and when he knew it about the attack on our democracy.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas wants to know what AOC knew and when she knew it about windmills. Apparently windmills froze up in Texas, and rumor has it that it was the fault of the Green New Deal. Inexplicably, windmills in Canada are doing just fine. Apparently, Texas tried to provide wind power on the cheap by not buying freeze-proof blades. I guess climate change isn’t real until it happens to you. Even then, if you are a true red Texan, blame a girl. Isn’t Abbott in the pocket of the oil and gas industry in Texas? I don’t know. I am just asking the question. I would like to know.

According to the “previous guy,” Mitch McConnell is being paid by the Chinese. Isn’t McConnell’s wife Chinese? It seems like he is very accommodating to the Chinese, and willing to ship jobs overseas. Maybe that’s why he went after Trump, who was tough on Xi? I don’t know. I am just asking the question. I would like to know

I find it awfully convenient that Rush Limbaugh decided now to die. He has a lot to answer for. Do we really know he had lung cancer? A lot of people are saying that he died of COVID. Everybody knows he was hated by the Clintons. Maybe Rush had evidence that the Clintons killed Vince Foster. It seems very suspicious. I don’t know. I am just asking the question. I would like to know.

February 15, 2021

The evidence fit, but they still acquit. In the latest iteration of the McCarthy (Kevin) hearings, evidence was introduced and dismissed. Unlike the original McCarthy (Joe) hearings, people were actually guilty. Mitch McConnell did his best impersonation of Captain Renault in Casablanca, who famously said, “I have no conviction, if that’s what you mean. I blow with the wind, and the prevailing wind happens to be from Vichy.” We will have a 9/11-style commission where we will learn more than we want to, and Bill Barr won’t be there to whitewash it. The latest Republican talking point is that it really wasn’t much of a riot anyway, which is just baiting the white supremacists to do it bigger and better next time. Given the surge in gun sales, the next insurrection may already be in the works. Regardless, we have to move on, but how?

One of the keys to getting opposing sides together is to “force” them to work on a mutually agreeable and mutually beneficial project. Based on research into group psychology, there are conditions that increase the chance that groups will be successful. Being a real team results from having a shared task with clear boundaries with stability in group membership. The group must have a compelling direction, which results from a clear, challenging, and consequential goal. Defining the goal is up to President Biden. Hopefully, it will be infrastructure and the environment. The question remains will Republicans want to play nice, and chose cooperation. As of now, there is no evidence that they want to.

February 15, 2021

At a time when the country is at a national crossroads, suffering from the twin ills of a pandemic and an aborted, seditious takeover of our government, the PGA of America took the courageous stance of allowing professional golfers to use range finders on a limited basis. Wow! The next thing you know they will allow players to wear shorts when the temperature goes over 100 degrees. For the uninitiated, amateurs have been able to use range finders for many years now. And it’s not like range finders are the only publicly available information regarding distances. Most courses already have marked their sprinkler heads, and put out yardage markers at 100, 150 and 200 yards. Some courses even put yardages on cart paths. Many pro shops have yardage books ready available.

On the pro tour, caddies walk off yardages and check their yardage books endlessly while the rest of us are forced to watch the drama of picking the correct club. Four hour rounds become five and six hour rounds. The ratio of action to airtime is worse than football. Caddies are self-servingly objecting, saying that range finders will actually slow down play. Clearly, this is a job preservation strategy, which pains me to say as a former caddie. Other than because of history and tradition, I am not sure why caddies should be allowed to do anything other than carry the bag and keep the clubs clean, but that is another discussion. Players should be responsible for determining their own yardages, making a club selection, and reading putts. Regardless, the PGA is late to the party. However, they may run into the USGA coming in as they are leaving.

February 13, 2021

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump was a Rorschach test for the Republican Party. We have known for a long time who Donald Trump is, and what he was doing. We weren’t be surprised by anything that happened. The Democratic impeachment managers laid out the case against Trump in an unequivocally straight line from cause to effect. This is no longer about Trump. He his guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. The trial was about the Republican Party, and the whole world was watching. What it saw was a political party afraid of the facts.

We were all looking at the same set of ink blots. Some of us saw a President who sold his own country down the river in order to hold on to power. The Republican Party saw something different. The Republican Party had all the evidence it needed to convict Trump, yet the cowardly Republican Senators could not bring themselves to convict. They clung to the First Amendment as if it was the Second. They twisted themselves up in process arguments. Ten months was not enough time to put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, and two weeks in January not enough time to convict a traitor. The GOP should rename itself the RIP. Blue lives don’t matter. The oath of office doesn’t matter. The Republican Party has declared officially that nothing is impeachable. The ink blot that we are all looking at is the stain that the Republican Party has left on American democracy.

February 13, 2021

“The Lancet,” a worldwide, highly- respected, public health journal, recently took the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic to the woodshed. Previous administrations shoulder some blame as well. Here are some of the highlights.

• Trump exploited the anger of low and middle income white people through racist appeals and xenophobia to enlist their support for policies that benefitted high income people and corporations and threatened health.

• His trillion dollar tax cut and subsequent deficit was used as an excuse to justify cutting food subsidies and healthcare.

• His nationalism emboldened white supremacists and insurrection.

• He appointed judges dismissive of affirmative action, and reproductive, labor, civil, and voting rights.

• He promulgated policies reducing access to abortion and contraception globally.

• He weakened the Affordable Care Act after failing to repeal it, increasing the number of uninsured by 2-3 million.

• His hostility to environmental regulations has hastened global warming resulting in thousands of excess deaths.

• Cuts in public health have impeded the response to the COVID pandemic, causing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

• 40% of deaths could have been avoided if the U.S. mirrored the other G7 nations.

• President Trump refused to develop a national strategy, worsened shortages of PPE and testing, politicized mask wearing and school openings, and convened indoor events where masks were not worn and physical distancing was impossible.

This has been part of an anti-progressive trend started 40 years ago. Life expectancies in the U.S. now trail the rest of the industrialized world by 3-4 years, and our healthcare costs substantially more. This was before the pandemic struck, affecting low income people and people of color disproportionately. We will be cleaning up this mess for a long time.

Thank you to my friend, Vinnie Ferraro, Professor Emeritus, Mt. Holyoke College, for the reference.

February 10, 2021

A mulligan in golf is a do-over. Mulligans are never allowed under the rules, but, informally, many golfers allow them. Golfers will invoke a mulligan on the first tee, referring to it as a breakfast or lunch ball depending on the time of day. There is the traveling mulligan, which can be used at anytime during the round. Many charity events will allow you to buy mulligans. There are many theories about the derivation of the term, but none of them are definitive. It is like the history of the number “33” on the inside of a Rolling Rock beer bottle. No one knows where it came from. I assume that at one time there was a cheater named Mulligan, who’s egregious actions on the golf course earned him his eponym.

This is just background for Senator Mike Lee’s statement that Donald Trump deserves a mulligan for his incendiary and seditious speech on January 6th. A mulligan? This is the perfect reference for someone who has been called the “Commander in Cheat” by author Rick Reilly for his shenanigans on the golf course. I could see Trump saying, “You know, boys (Proud or otherwise), I shanked that one. I am going to take a mulligan.” Fortunately, in golf as in life, the rules do not permit a mulligan. You must play the ball as you found it, and suffer the consequences. Trump is asking for a do-over in his impeachment trial. As any golfer knows, a do-over will get you disqualified. We should only be so lucky.

February 8, 2021

Live by the Sword

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, more than any other indicator, was the metric Donald Trump used to tout his performance. Just before his defeat, he tweeted, “That’s a sacred number, 30,000, and nobody thought they’d ever see it.” This was just one of the numerous tweets about the stock market he sent out during his four years. However, The DJIA is not always directly linked to decisions the president makes. More often, the direction of the index is attributable to factors beyond the president’s control, from geopolitical incidents to decisions made by the Federal Reserve to the decisions of a former president, or even a pandemic. That is why one should never hang their hat on the performance of a fickle and volatile index. The DOW is actually up over 18% since his election, but Joe Biden has not mentioned it once.

So how did Trump actually do versus his predecessors regarding the DOW. Based on easily retrievable data, he should have kept his mouth shut. At 35.5%, he did better than Hoover (-82.1), Nixon (-28.3), George W. (-26.5), and Carter (-.7). He also bested JFK, Harding, and Johnson. However, he woefully lagged Northampton’s own Calvin Coolidge (+230.5), Clinton (+228.9), FDR (+198.6), and Obama (+148.3). He also lagged Reagan, Eisenhower, and Truman substantially as well as trailing George H.W. Bush and Ford. Based on his own evaluation criteria, Trump was less than mediocre. If you live by the sword, you should be prepared to die by the sword, metaphorically speaking.