Blog Archives

4/23/23

4/23/2023

WILL JOE BIDEN'S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT
BE THE SPEECH OF MY DREAMS?

PRESIDENT JO BIDEN PHOTO CREDIT: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons license

JOE BIDEN'S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT about his future - and ours - is supposed to be Tuesday.
   Because I’m a big fan of the president, here’s what I’m looking for:
   Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will do something extraordinarily presidential: he’ll say that he’s not going to run for a second term.
   “I’m too old,” Biden will tell the country.
   “Right now, I’m doing great,” the president will say.
   “But, folks, let’s face facts. I’m 80. And just like my dad used to say: ‘Joey ….’ “Actually, I don’t think either my Dad or my Mom had much to say about what happens when you get really old.”
   I'm guessing that Biden didn’t get much guidance because getting old is the last thing anyone wants to think about, much less talk about or do anything about. Getting old is a wretched subject, and so is its nasty corollary, death.
   People put off writing their wills, saving for retirement or writing down what the want, or don't want done, to them if they get desperately sick.
   It makes sense. The purpose of life is life. The whole idea, Job One, is to stay alive.
   And for those of us lucky enough to have had terrific and long lives, living as we've known it is not about giving up.
   Since I’m Biden’s age , this is one subject on which I actually know what I’m talking about.
   Now, let's see ... where we?
   Oh, yes, Joe Biden's big video.

FOR STARTERS, when you're 80 and relatively healthy, you don’t think you really are 80.
   Your brain thinks you can still do all of the things that you used to do. You can move furniture. Stay up late. Go for a run. Dash up and down the stairs. Get out of bed early. Pay attention. Drive eight hours without a break. Twirl. Skip. Hop. Remember things - don’t ask what things - just things.
   And you realize how much you love all that you do. Why would you want to give up driving? Holding your great granddaughter? Why stop working, running, walking, kayaking across the bay, baking carbohydrate-rich desserts, sawing down a 50-year-old tree, sitting in the living room with your wife watching bottom-ranked Southampton hold top-ranked Arsenal to a 3-3 tie?
   Now, imagine that you are Joe Biden, and you are President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, the Boss.
   You live rent free in a relatively big mansion that comes with a huge workforce that’s really good at what they do: all the vacuuming, cooking, mowing the grass, driving the car, parking the car, getting people on the phone for you, playing music just because you walk into a room, flying you around in one of the world’s biggest, best airplanes. And all you have to do for that is practically nothing.

WELL, NOT NOTHING. Just on your say so, you decide whether people can have enough to eat, have a home, breathe fresh air, pay for college, walk into a doctor’s office. And you have at least some say on whether the oceans rise or fall, and whether the planet does its Biblical fire and brimstone thing.
   And there’s more; If you can remember the “codes,” you can blow another country to smithereens. You decide whether one country can fight off the invaders, and another can't. You decide who crosses the border, whether some sacred mountain should be a park and whether the Department of Justice lives up to its name.
   You’d have to be crazy to give all that up - or a patriot .

PLUS, IF YOU ARE JOE BIDEN, you have a burden that no other one-term president in history has had to consider: Donald John Trump.
   Even though he is a treasonous, seditious psychopath, a cheat, a bully, a pants-on-fire liar, a racist, an accused rapist and a misogynist – Donald Trump is, at this moment the likely Republican candidate in 2024, which makes it conceivable, even though it’s absolutely inconceivable , that he could be the next president of the United States. He did it once and could again.
   So, the logical thing that the 80-year-old brain wants to do – and it’s not crazy, far-fetched or selfish – is to say on Tuesday: "My Fellow Americans, the future of the United States of America rests on my shoulders. These shoulders, Mr. and Mrs. America, may be weak and feeble – and they are: the joints may need to go to the machine shop every so often; there's a little sag I wish wasn't there. But the sad fact is that my shoulders are the only shoulders available."

BUT IN MY DREAM, Biden says this:
   “Folks, let’s be honest: the idea that I, Joe Biden, and only I, Joe Biden, can save the country, that’s a bunch of malarkey.
    "If the future of the greatest democracy in the history depends on one 80-year-old man who needs to speak to you via a video, so he can get through his speech without his flunkies having to spend the next 24 hours cleaning up after him, clarifying, explaining, denying he said what he actually said, then we don’t have much of a a democracy.
   “I know I beat Donald Trump the last time,” Biden could say.
   “But that was the last time. Maybe I could do it again; maybe I couldn’t. I’m not doing great in the opinion polls. Beats me why not. I RESCUED the freaking Soul of America, and I’ve done a knockout job putting the country back on its feet, getting the government functioning on some sort of sane, normal level, and I've been doing amazing things, like reshaping the entire automobile industry so that sometime, a lot of us could be driving electric cars.
   “And let’s say that I do win. I’ll be second guessed every minute of every day for the next four years, at the end of which, God willing, I'll be 86 years old. Every word I say, every move I make, every breath I take will be viewed by just one standard: Is Joey too old? If I garble my lines, dribble my oatmeal, stumble getting on or off Air Force One, if I have one Bad Day – And isn’t it the God-given right of every American to have at least one Bad Day? – will you be asking, just like my Dad used to put it: ‘Joey, are you getting soft upstairs?’ “
   “No thanks. I’m not going to put you, the country, through that. Come noon, Jan. 20, 2025, I’m outta here. And if I can pass my diver’s license in the state of Delaware, there’s a '67 Corvette Stingray waiting for me in a garage, buried under some boxes marked Top Secret.”

"LISTEN, FOLKS, I love being president. I think – I know – that I’ve done a great job. But I don’t want the country to be at risk because I refuse, just like lots of my fellow Americans, to face facts. And one of those facts is, as my dad used to say: ‘Joey, none of us gets out of here alive.”
    In the video, and spelled out in my dreams in a lengthy, historic essay that takes up both pages of the New York Times editorial section, Biden explains why a second term would be too risky and just plain wrong for democracy.
   “Let me be straight with you – and don’t misinterpret my use of that word, because I believe in gay rights; one of my top cabinet secretaries happens to be what my Dad used call – well, skip that – and he would make a crackerjack candidate to say nothing of a president – do you want someone running the country who’s just been rushed to Walter Reed Hospital for who knows what?
"Do you want somebody as president whom you suspect should be tested for dementia; who’s just tripped on the Oval Office rug; or who one day when the sun is shining, the grass is green, Southwest's jets are on time and everything seems to be hunky-dory, simply drops dead?”
   “Then fine. Take your chances; spin the wheel; flip a coin. Lots of people do just perfectly well in their 80s. Not everyone falls at a hotel like Mitch McConnell,81, and disappears from the U.S. Senate for weeks; or are like Dianne Feinstein, 89, who gets shingles and disappears from the Senate Judiciary Committee for god knows how long.
   "But if you care about your country, why take extra and unnecessary chances? So, I’ll be the best president I can be for the next one-and-a-half years – I think that’s how long I’ve got (I should have had somebody look that up.)
   “The rest is up to you. Pick the best man or woman you can find – he or she MUST be a Democrat, because the Republicans are deranged - no exaggeration. And let’s say the GOP candidate is one Donald John Trump, because if I could beat him, and I did, any decent Democrat can do the same.
   “I hope.”

2 Comments

4/19/23

4/19/2023

1 Comment

WHAT TO DO ABOUT FLORIDA:
BOYCOTT? OR MOVE IN?

HERE'S some bad news for Ron DeSantis.
    Two of my friends are coming to Florida.
    Which is DeSantis’ worst nightmare: good people moving to what he is turning into a bad place.
Our friends are not getting a home in Florida because they are crusaders, determined to change Florida. It’s just that they like the place. They have a community of good friends there, and of course, they know that Florida is The Sunshine State.
   That said, you can expect our friends – Northeasterners by birth and longtime residence – to vote Blue and to lend a hand to this or that progressive cause.
   Of course their arrival will not make much of a difference. It would be silly to think that just two folks - nice and accomplished as these people are - can reverse the dystopia that the DeSantisans are hurrying to install.
   But my friends will alter Florida’s moral ecology.
   Not by much; just a smidgen.
   Which is enough to make a change in Florida. That’s what it takes: Good people from “away” moving in. And good, people already there, staying put.

THIS IS THE OPPOSITE of the remedy that usually comes to mind: BOYCOTT!
   In fact, I’m not aware there is much of a Florida boycott underway. I’ve heard the idea discussed enthusiastically on one radio talk show; but that was broadcast out of Boston, so it doesn’t count. To the contrary, according to census data, more folks are arriving in Florida than are staying away or moving out.
   Still, there's that dreadful word, “Florida,” which creates an instant flight-don’t-fight response.
   Stay out.
Hide your wallet. Move your spring training camp to Guam. Get your oranges somewhere else. Visit the Grand Canyon. Do whatever you must to shrink, strangle, starve and shrivel that evil economy.
   Boycott, if you value your life and those of your kids.
   Did you hear the governor declare that Florida is “Where Woke Goes to Die?” You did. So hit the trail. Go somewhere else, anywhere else. Head for Hawaii. Driving south on I 95? Make U-turn. Run for your life.
   Most of us do not want to ban books.
   We do not want to bully transgender kids. We do not want to black out Black history. We do not want to give mass murderers easier access to rifles. We do not want to scare college presidents into defunding campus diversity programs. We do not want to make capital punishment easier. We don’t want to ban abortion or to give Covid a fighting chance.
   Best to stay away.
   And boycotts sometimes do work – the grape boycott of the 1960s advanced Cesar Chavez’s farm workers’ movement – and it’s something that every one of us can do: vote with our dollars, keep our money away from an outlaw economy.

IN THE LONG RUN, however, I think a boycott isn’t the answer.
I believe that the most effective way to turn things around is just the opposite: it’s to invest in Florida in a personal way; to show up, or, in Florida-speak, to stand your ground.
I’ve seen that work in the place where I grew up.
Eighty-three years ago, my liberal parents moved from the borough of Queens in New York City to the Green Mountain State. The folks wanted to be rid of the city and to have their kids grow upwith the cows. The politics, just like the awful winters, weren't a factor.
Not that my Stevensonian mom and dad were happy to discover the place was overrun with crabby, miserly, set-in-their-ways indigenous Republicans.
   But the Vermont Republicans of yesteryear were not the crazed, cruel and frightening GOP terrorists of today. They weren’t up taking food from the hungry; or to make nice to Russian dictators; weren’t about to bankrupt the treasury; surely they wouldn’t dream of overthrowing the national government. The old-fashioned GOPers even held their noses from time to time and found common cause with those Democrats who still thought highly of that damned FDR.
   Things really got weird in the 1960s. More and more people from “away” were heading into the Vermont hills, drawn by the state’s beauty, its small-town charm, its fiery autumn extravaganzas and its sweet-as-maple-syrup town meetings. The migrants weren’t reformers; they went to Vermont because it seemed “nice.” But, slowly, steadily, year after year, decade after decade, they changed the state, its culture and its politics.
Heck, at one point, Burlington, the state’s “biggest” city (always a relative term in Vermont), elected a SOCIALIST as mayor. Brooklyn-born Bernie Sanders had emigrated from New York City, like my parents. Now, Vermont was really off its rocker, because it elected Bernie to Congress, then to the Senate and here’s the biggest knee-slapper, he ran for president and remade 21st Century progressive politics.
   Meanwhile, back on the farm, Vermonters elected more and more Democrats, even Democratic governors, even female Democratic governors. And what were the Hippies putting in the cows’ milk, now? Those loonies at the State House passed heavy-duty environmental laws and legalized gay marriage without any court telling them that they had to.
   So, yes, Green turned to Blue.
   And Florida can turn Red into Blue.

IT WILL TAKE a huge inflow of good people. It will require good people, who are already there, to stay in Florida.
It’s not easy, being in Florida. I’m saying that because it’s simple enough for me to pontificate, when, every night, I get safely tucked into bed in solidly Democratic Rhode Island (not that any of us are truly safe, these days).
   It’s quite a different thing to actually be on the field of play, having to fight for the future of America in a place where the contest is really underway.
   But, if you’re Ron DeSantis, my friends will terrify you.
They are fierce – and effective – foes of nuclear power and nuclear war. They're champions of abortion, at no little personal risk. They are healers, musicians, caretakers, writers, reformers, cooks, parents, sailors, grandparents and dog-lovers, who’ve recently warmed to cats.
Wherever these people have been; wherever they are now; wherever they are going to be - the effect is always the same: things get better.
   Now my friends are headed to Florida. And, governor, I doubt that they’re alone.
So if you're Ron DeSantis, it's time to woke up.

1 Comment

4/2/23

4/2/2023

0 Comments

TRUMP (FINALLY) IS CHARGED AS A CROOK. SO, WHY AREN'T WE DANCING IN THE STREETS?

TRUMP INDICTED
How long have we waited for this headline?
   Remember when Trump was elected, it seemed just a matter of minutes, maybe hours, until this very thing happened?
   There were pictures – albeit made up – imagining people wearing windbreakers with “FBI” in big yellow letters on the back, entering the White House to haul out the 45th President of the United States. The possibilities were endless, given that Donald Trump was a career criminal.
   These were followed by the glory days of the Mueller investigation, in which America’s Most Honest Lawman was going to get to the bottom of all the bad things that the gangster-in-chief was up to. The delicious part about the special counsel’s investigation was imagining all the things he knew that we didn’t – yet.
   But now that this seems to be finally happening, centuries later, why am I not all that excited.
   Maybe you feel the same way. In my case, I’ve figured it out, I think. (With anything about Trump, you always have to add a qualifier).
   Here’s what it’s not.
   It’s not that I believe that through legal trickery, Don is going to wriggle out of the legal net.
   I mean, he may get out of this one, but legitimately. There’s the Bad Case Theory. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, may not have all of his ducks in order; appeals courts may throw out the case; it’s always possible that Donald John Trump may not be guilty. At least of this one; more investigations are in the works.
   And it’s not that Trump has super powers. He is subject to the laws of gravity. It’s not true that he always goes scot-free. He had to settle the case involving his phony Trump University. He did pay to squash the story about his tryst with Stormy Daniels; not that it was very much money, even for a mostly fake “businessman.”
   Also, in case you haven’t heard, he did lose the 2020 election, and you have to assume, that was kind of hard to take, especially if you are an egomaniacal, narcissistic psychopath.
   Bad things do happen to bad guys, even if justice takes a while and isn’t all that you wish. Meaning that I haven’t been brainwashed into thinking Trump isn’t above the law as he daydreams about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue without losing votes..
   The real reason I’m not excited about TRUMP INDICTED is that I’m sick and tired of Donald Trump.
   I’m bored.
   I’ve had it.
   I’m tired of his lies. Tired of his voice. Tired of the long-lens photos of him playing golf. Tired of The Base. Tired of his racism, his cruelty, his contempt for democracy. Tired of waiting to find out what hold Vladimir Putin has over him. Tired of his hair.
   I’m tired of the same old story. It’s like Bill Murray’s “Groundhog Day,” minus the humor, where the plot is nearly always the same and happens over and over.
   Let’s review the latest version.

SATURDAY – MARCH 18
   Trump announces that he’ll be arrested this coming Tuesday. In his own words:

Illegal leaks from a corrupt & highly political Manhattan district attorney's office ... indicate that, with no crime being able to be proven ... the far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.

   It should noted that most news stories include a qualifier: his spokesperson says Trump has not been notified of an arrest.
   The news people go crazy, anyway, ignoring the fact that the information comes from the most-documented liar in political history, and that whatever he says, it’s (probably) not true.
   So, the familiar game plays out, bolstered by “insider” information that the Big Apple grand jury is winding up it’s work, and Trump has been invited to have his say to the panel, as the New York law allows. The nation waits to see what happens on Tuesday, sort of the way we might when a cult leader predicts that the world will end at a time certain.

TUESDAY, MARCH 21
   Trump is NOT indicted.

FRIDAY – MARCH 24
   Trump says something awful (quotable).
   This is from the Reuters news service:
“Former U.S. President Donald Trump warned of potential ‘death & destruction’ if he faces criminal charges....”
   Specifically, Trump writes on his not-the-Truth Social media service:

What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?

Here he goes again, ginning up a potential Jan.6 rampage. Outrageous thing for a former president to say, calling for chaos in the streets. How can he say this? It certainly can’t help his case in the on-going federal investigation into whether he was responsible for the Jan. 6 rampage at the Capitol.
   Could it be that Trump is again playing the news folks, whipping up attention to his rally in Waco, Texas, the next day, the kind of event where “death & destruction” is usually on the menu?

SATURDAY, MARCH 25
   The rally goes on, as usual. No surprises. People have been showing up for 24 hours. Despite this demonstration of loyalty, Trump keeps the faithful waiting in the Texas sunshine for an extra hour or so before speaking.
   He e seems tired and almost uninterested as he plods through the familiar liturgy of the stolen election, the rotten news media, the terrible state of the nation and how wonderful things will be after The Restoration.
   He mentions that the nation needs more babies. Strange, even for a philanderer. But reading about the rally later, I learn that it’s a racist trope. Trump means that America needs more white babies, more white baby boys, more white baby Christian boys to counter demographic changes which feature too many girls and boys of color and uncertain Christianity.

MONDAY, MARCH 27

A gun-person, whose legal arsenal includes a familiar item from the mass-murder toolkit – an AR-15 – kills three 9-year-olds and three adults at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee.
   This has some personal connections to my wife and I in Rhode Island, because the school is near the home of close friends, who can hear the helicopters hovering over head as they watch live coverage on cable TV.
   One of our friends is a retired private school teacher – a past Teacher of the Year in Tennessee – and it’s not hard to imagine her being in a school under attack. Her husband is a retired professor at Vanderbilt University, where one of his former students is related to one of the slain adults.
   The latest shooting leads to a new chapter in the gun debate.
   Gun control advocates are eloquent, as usual. In some states, game hunters are more closely regulated than human killers, who like the Nashville shooter, are mostly free to hunt children.
   Gun extremists say the usual stupid things. Among the stupidest are remarks from a Tennessee Congressman, Rep. Tim Burchett:

It doesn’t matter what state it’s happened in. We’re all Americans. It doesn’t matter the color of their skin. They all bleed red. They’re bleeding a lot. I don’t see any real role that we can do other than mess things up, honestly, because of the situation. Like I said, I don’t think a criminal is going to stop from guns. You know, you can print them out on the computer now, 3-D printing. I don’t think you’re going to stop the gun violence. I think you’ve got to change people’s hearts. You know, as a Christian, as we talk about in the church — and I’ve said this many times — I think we really need a revival in this country.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, is publishing a stunning series, long in the making, about the history of the AR-15. Memorable points:

Designed as a military weapon known as the M16 during the Vietnam War, the Armalite Rifle Model 15 was once shunned by gun advocates, but gains popularity as the gun industry finds its next big thing. The AR-15 and its variations is now the country’s most popular rifle, with 16 million Americans, about 1 out of 20, owning at least one.
You’d think that people would be ashamed to bought one, much less bring it home. Instead, sales spike after massacres like the 2012 killing of twenty 6- and-7-year-olds and six staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29
   Sending a chill through the anti-Trump camp, the Washington Post reports that the Manhattan grand jury, whose activities are secret, isn’t expected to take up the Donald-and-Stormy case again until late April.
   Alarmists like me fear that something is going wrong with the whole thing. What if the grand jury WON’T INDICT?
   My favorite line in the Post story: “….the soonest jurors are expected to hear evidence in the Trump case again is April 24, said the two people, who were briefed on the plans and spoke on the condition of anonymity ….”
   So much for the inside poop, we find out the next day.

THURSDAY, MARCH 30
   TRUMP INDICTED
   Here’s the Washington Post’s version:

NEW YORK — A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former president Donald Trump, making him the first person in U.S. history to serve as commander in chief and then be charged with a crime, and setting the stage for a 2024 presidential contest unlike any other.
… Trump is expected to turn himself in and appear in court on Tuesday at 2:15 p.m., said a person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that have not been publicly announced.

This time, the Person Familiar With The Matter appears to be passing out the right stuff. Bragg’s office confirms that TRUMP INDICTED, but leaves until Tuesday, the date of the expected arraignment, details about the actual charges.
Republicans, as usual, instead of disavowing Trump as a shameful, disgraced criminal, come to his defense. Including U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who Tweets:

How can President Trump avoid prosecution in New York? On the way to the DA’s office on Tuesday, Trump should smash some windows, rob a few shops and punch a cop. He would be released IMMEDIATELY!

What a hoot, that South Carolina sycophant: In one simple Tweet, Graham: a) defends Trump; b) ridicules DA Bragg as soft-on-crime; and c) jokes about violence.
   It’s left to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to bring together both horror stories – the latest development in the Trump insurgency and the Nashville slaughter. Carlson remarks that this is “probably not the best time to give up your AR-15’s.”

SEE WHAT I MEAN?
   We’ve been here, seen that, done that, are sitting through the same movie again and again, listening to the same album playing on repeat, watching the same sitcom reruns, driving, hiking, sailing, flying around the same circles over and over.
   We’re still talking about, still thinking about, still worrying about Trump, and nothing seems different and that's why I’m tired of and bored by the Trump story.
   Which doesn’t mean I and everyone else have a right to ignore it.
   In a democracy, being bored by the likes of a treasonous Donald Trump isn’t allowed. Nor is ignoring people who think that an AR-15 is a joke.
    In a democracy what happens next still matters, boring, familiar and unexciting as that may be.