January 30, 2020

Some individuals are distinguished by academic intelligence, which tends to be the one we prize the most. However, there are other forms of intelligence that are equally of value e.g. musical, spatial, and athletic intelligence. There is also something called emotional intelligence, which involves interpersonal and intra-personal interactions. If you are high on the emotional intelligence scale, you think about and are aware of feelings, both your own and those of others. Emotional intelligence begins with what is called self and social awareness, which is the ability to recognize emotions and their impact in both yourself and others.

Here are some of the indicators of emotional intelligence.

• You think before you speak and act.

• You strive to control your thoughts.

• You benefit from criticism.

• You demonstrate empathy.

• You praise others.

• You apologize.

• You forgive and forget.

• You keep your commitments.

Clearly, Donald Trump has exhibited a total lack of academic intelligence. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a moron. He has threatened to sue his alma maters if they release a transcript of his grades. Musically, he has effectively been banned from the Kennedy Center Honors. His idea of music culture is Kid Rock. Spatially, he doesn’t design garish buildings, he just builds them. And athletically, he cheats at golf. So that only leaves emotional intelligence. Maybe that is why he is so popular, and connects with his base? I think not.

He certainly does not think before he speaks or acts. His performances at rallies are pure stream of consciousness. He not only does not benefit from criticism, he aggressively attacks anyone who dares to say a word against him. Empathy is not in his vocabulary. Throwing paper towels at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico tells you all you need to know. He doesn’t praise others unless it benefits him, but he does load heaps of praise on himself. He definitely never apologizes, and he never forgives and forgets. He is extremely vengeful. Lastly, he does not keep his commitments. Just ask his ex-wives.

So what is his skill set? He is a bully pure and simple. Being a bully requires no intelligence. It just requires the ability to feel no remorse and feel no shame. He abuses his position, whether it be with aides or foreign leaders. What I don’t understand is why some people are not intelligent enough to understand this?

 

January 28, 2020

Democrats want witnesses and documents. Republicans want none of it. Now with the revelations from John Bolton’s book, the temperature in the Republican caucus room is going up. They are floating a Bolton for Hunter Biden swap. Democrats say this is a non-starter because impeachment trials are not fantasy football.

I think Democrats may be better off if there are no witnesses. If John Bolton testifies, Republicans will be able to say that the trial was fair, and Trump will be able to say that he was totally exonerated. He will say that regardless, but that is beside the point.

We know the story. We have known it for quite a while. If you don’t know the story, you are either in denial or have not been listening. If witnesses and documents are not admitted, Democrats will have a campaign issue between now and November, and the campaign issue will sound eerily familiar. Donald Trump tried to rig the 2020 presidential election, and Mitch McConnell rigged the impeachment trial.

January 25, 2020

1. I have the right to clean air and water, and a world free of global warming.

2. I have the right to equal educational opportunities.

3. I have the right to a progressive tax code.

4. I have the right to limited interference in my personal affairs.

5. I have the right to be safe from gun violence.

6. I have the right to be protected from discrimination of any kind.

7. I have the right to adequate food, housing, and medical benefits.

8. I have the right to not have my religion questioned.

9. I have the right to control my own body.

10. I have the right to vote, and to be fairly represented.

January 23, 2020

Republicans are screaming that the Democrats are trying to overturn the 2016 election, and trying to steal the 2020 election. That is rich. Impeachment is about correcting electoral mistakes. It is a constitutional process. You may not like or agree with it, but it is not stealing. And who again was trying to extort a foreign country to steal the 2020 election?

The reason this discussion is important is that there is only one party that has been trying to steal elections, and that is the Republican Party. Their two-pronged attack involves gerrymandering and voter suppression.

After the 2010 census, the GOP effectively gerrymandered election districts in Republican-controlled states. In 2016, voters preferred Hillary Clinton by 3,00,000 votes, but the GOP retained control of both houses of Congress. It took an 8,000,000 vote advantage for the Democrats in 2018 to take back control of the House. Many gerrymandering schemes have been ruled illegal by the courts, but it continues.

The GOP has also been guilty of attempting to suppress the vote ever since the Supreme Court overturned the Voting Rights Act of 1965. There are approximately 18, Republican-leaning states with ongoing voting rights litigation. These states attempted to reinstate voter ID laws, reduce the number of polling stations, reduce the number of days to vote, reduce early voting, restrict voting by mail, require proofs of citizenship, purge voter roles, and more. All of these actions were designed to make it more difficult for minorities to vote.

So who is really guilty of trying to steal elections?

January 24, 2020

Lying is a serious and difficult subject. First off, lying, and not lieing, is the present participle of the verb lie. Second, who can honestly say they don’t get confused with lie, lay and lain as well as lay, laid, and laid. If you don’t get confused, you are lying. The first time I became aware of the word “lie” being used in public discourse was in 2009 when Congressman Joe Wilson yelled “You lie” during Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech. Politicians have accused each other of all sorts of awful things over the years, but, typically, lying was not one of them. He crossed a red lyin’.

Before lying, we had spinning. Political spin is the art of interpreting the same set of facts in a way more favorable to oneself. Also, spin could be choosing a different set of facts that you believe are more relevant. Now, we have “alternative facts,” which are just lies. Lying is just being lazy. Politicians and others can’t even be bothered anymore to spin because that takes too much work.

Now, during the impeachment trial, political commentators have no compunction against using the “L” word. I am sure it has nothing to do with the fact that our current President has mainstreamed lying. He is at more than 15,000 lies and counting according to the Washington Post, but who’s counting? In the just released book, “A Very Stable Genius,” Trump is quoted as saying “It’s all an act. I can’t believe people haven’t caught on.” Trump once told CBS reporter Lesley Stahl that he deliberately used the term “fake news” to deflect from and discredit negative media coverage of his presidency. He is lying in plain sight.

I am not sure which is worse. Lying as a defensive mechanism or lying as a premeditated strategy to deceive. I need to lie down, and lay my head on a pillow.

January 19, 2020

What do Donald Trump, O. J. Simpson, Claus Con Bulow, Mike Tyson, and Jeffrey Epstein have in common. The answer…attorney Alan Dershowitz. Does Trump really want to attract more attention to his impeachment with his all-star attorneys? He has obviously never heard of the part of the legal code called Murphy’s Law.

Senator Martha McSally has been justly criticized for calling a CNN reporter a “liberal hack.” What I found even more objectionable was a fellow Republican Senator, who said eliciting more evidence in the impeachment trial was not his job. Mr. Senator, what the F is your job? As Bill Belichick says, “Do your job!”

What does the Trump Foundation, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump casinos, Trump Air, and Trump’s deal with China have in common? Draw back the curtain, and you will have your answer. They were all money losers.

Would anyone in the military take a bullet for President Bonespurs? After all, they are a bunch of “losers and babies,” and Trump knows more than all the generals. More importantly, would the Secret Service take a bullet? If Trump were a First Lieutenant in a war zone, he would be watching his back.

January 118, 2020

Ironically, Donald Trump and Barack Obama are looking for the same thing in Iran. It is called regime change. Both Presidents believe that Iran, the Middle East, and the world would be safer with a more moderate government in Tehran and and a more prosperous economy. However, that is where the agreement ends. They differ diametrically on how they propose to get there.

Obama believed in diplomacy. He believed in a long-term, negotiated plan, agreed to by allies, that would eliminate the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon and, at the same time, allow them to rebuild their economy. In a less hostile environment, the hope was that more moderate factions in Iran would come to the fore, and be able to exert more influence. There were certainly no guarantees, but the process was manageable and more predictable.

Trump has eschewed diplomacy. He has walked away from allies, and ripped up the international agreement with Iran. He has doubled down on sanctions. His short-term hope is that the Iranian people, tired of suffering, will rise up against the ayatollahs. He may right. His plan relies on violent overthrow of the government with no idea what comes next. There are no guarantees that this approach might extend violence beyond Iran’s borders. The killing of Suleimani brought us dangerously close to war. We probably have not seen the end of reprisals.

Which is the better course? As Colin Powell famously said, “If you break it, you own.” I for one am not prepared to own Iran.

January 18, 2020

“Two lefts do not make a right.”