...I will support and defend the Constitution...

I am watching the Trump Impeachment hearings with interest. I watched the events unveil on January 6, and concluded that day, because I had been paying attention for the last four years, that President Trump was obviously responsible for inciting the insurrection. He has spent his entire personal life courting conflict, and devoted his one-year campaign and four-year presidency to provoking, condoning and relishing in violence. Trump is not a difficult man to understand.

At the same time, the big question surrounding his impeachment seems to revolve around what Republicans will do. Actually, this isn’t the big question. The big question is why won’t Republicans do the right thing—and again, the answer appears obvious.

No attempt has been made to hide this fact that Republicans are expected to vote for acquittal because they fear political retaliation from Trump supporters, should they do the right thing and stand up to Trump by condemning the January 6 insurrection. This apparently outweighs the fear the rest of us have of the damage their dereliction to duty will do to our democracy should they give Trump a pass.

I think House managers are doing an excellent job—an effort, we are told, which is being missed by many Republican senators who are behaving childishly, as Trump has often been accused himself, by refusing to pay attention.

Overall, I think most senators are paying attention. As with Trump’s election in 2016, setting a low bar is oftentimes what we do best in this country.

One thing does bother me about the hearings, and I don’t know if changes will be made down the road. I hope so, but fearful they won’t.

Despite the fact that most Republicans appear to have made up their minds to acquit, House managers are proceeding as if they are dealing with impartial jurors, who will ultimately do the right thing.

The nation can count on fifty Democratic senators voting to convict, not because they are biased, un-American traitors as the ex-president suggests, but because they were at the Capitol on January 6, witnessed the violence, and don’t need to be told what an insurrection looks like, or who provoked it.

This impeachment is all about convincing 50 Republicans that what they saw really happened, and that they must do the right thing so that it never happens again. Republicans would have us believe that now is the time to come together and respect President Biden’s call for unity, and question whether Congress can work as a unified branch if Democrats insist on going forward with, not one, but now the second impeachment of Donald Trump.

Democrats, despite their desire to work with Republicans, know they are taking this unprecedented action because Donald Trump has not once, but twice, committed impeachable offences. Democrats are not the villains. Donald Trump is the villain.

Neither are Democrats the jurors everyone is questioning whether they will do their duty.  

House managers should stop addressing the Senate as a whole and start aiming their case directly at the Republicans. This cannot be another, “there were good people on both sides,” or “no harm, no foul.” When the argument is between right and wrong, justice can only be on one side.

There was real harm done on January 6, physical harm and psychological harm, and our democracy was threatened, and continues to be threatened.

Whether this crime is punished rests not with the Senate, but with Republican senators, and House managers need to stop ignoring the elephant—pun intended— in the room, and forcefully and unequivocally address their case to the only people in the room that matter.

It is not a question of, can we allow the president’s actions to go unpunished, but can you, Republican senators, allow the president’s actions to go unpunished.

It is not a question of, can we honor the oath we took and stand up for democracy, but rather, can you, Republican senators, stand up and protect democracy.

It is not a question of, can we muster the courage to stand up to Donald Trump and say no, no more, enough, but rather can you, Republican senators, stand up, finally, and say no, no more, enough.

No effort has been spared to point out that impeachment is not a trial. That is not to say a trial isn’t taking place. Make no mistake; the Republican Party is being put on trial—the trial of public opinion, which I would remind them is where election are won and lost.

There can be no doubt how history will look upon this impeachment effort, and at the behavior of Senate Republicans. History is full of accounts of heroic individuals standing up for what they believed to be right, as well as cowards who for political expediency did what they knew to be wrong.

The senators should be aware of this, but for those that aren’t, House managers should make the case, so that there can be no doubt, that this impeachment will not be decided by the Senate. The decision to convict will be determined by Republican senators, and history will hold them accountable, and the accountability in question might very well be, who was responsible for the fall of democracy in America.

  

ThemVersUs

Historically, the roles of the Republican and Democratic parties seem to hinge on blaming the other party for everything that goes wrong and taking credit for everything that goes right—and staying as far away as possible from working together to find real solutions to real problems.

This is harsh, but justified criticism for two groups that somehow manage to bilk American citizens out of millions, billions, and soon to be trillions of dollars every election cycle. For what? Balloons, yard signs and annoying and harmful 30-second divisive, fear-mongering ads.

The one thing both parties can ever seem to agree on is American Exceptionalism, not because they have done exceptional things, but rather because they believe the American people have done exceptional things, and the parties aren’t above taking credit for what the people have done.

In reality, the only exceptional thing we have done was when 56 men assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to create a government, which had probably been imagined but never before seen. Everything after that—the Civil War, the land grabs, racism, labor struggles, self-interest infighting and deceit has been more or less standard fare.

As human beings, Americans haven’t behaved much differently than the ancient Persians or Egyptians, the feudal societies of the Middle Ages, the Conquistadors of imperial Spain, or the European opportunists who divided Africa up in the late 19^th century. A basic flaw in humanity has defined our behavior from the earliest days of the Stone Age right through to the Space Age we now live in. Again, instances of exceptionalism such as what occurred in Philadelphia in 1887 have been rare.

This flaw in the human condition, which keeps both individuals and, by extension nations, not only in constant conflict, but prevents them from being truly exceptional, is the Us/Them factor, which after watching a lot of TV and being subjected to too many pharmaceutical ads,  I’ve reduced to one word, ThemVersUs because it is so basic to understanding humanity.

We (us) have always been suspicious, fearful, or threatened by them—anyone who isn’t us. This isn’t an American problem. Just as we are not exceptional, neither are we the only culprits in the world. Neither is ThemVersUs a political problem, which government can fix—no matter how many balloons and yard signs political parties buy, to convince us they are the solution.

The ThemVersUs problem, as basic as it is, manifests itself in many different ways, both between nations and within nations. Obvious in this country is racism, but it also surfaces in class struggle, labor relations, economics, health care, housing, education, and anything else where there are two positions creating us versus them situations—even mask wearing during a pandemic. Rural communities and large cities distrust each other, as do sparsely populated states and heavily populated states, and people owning guns thinking people without guns are going to take their guns away—by, I dunno, twisting their arms.

Taken to the extreme, Middle America fears the inhabitants of the two coasts are conspiring against them and vice-versa. Our forefathers couldn’t have foreseen this because Middle America back then were the coastal states of Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas.

There’s an old Woody Guthrie where he takes on one job after another in order to convince his girlfriend what a hard worker he is, to the point where he just about wears himself out. If we truly want to lay claim to being exceptional, we don’t have to do a whole lot of things, but each individual acting in concert with other individuals will actually have to do something exceptional—something that historically has rarely been done. Namely, deal with the ThemVersUs by learning to get along with them, which ironically, will actually entail less effort than attacking them, and be easier on everyone in the long run.

As I’ve said, this is not a political issue so much as a humanity issue, but the divisions created do prevent the exceptional government designed by our forefathers from working, and even threatens to bring about its collapse as in 1861, and again more recently on January 6 when us/them went after them/us.

If Americans truly want to lay claim to the title of exceptionalism, we will have to do something truly extraordinary, learn to live with and not fear them who surround us, or we will suffer the same fate that has plagued every other society and cursed humanity from its earliest days—a never ending struggle that has no winners.

It won’t be easy. Being exceptional has never been easy, certainly not as easy as being predictable, which requires no special talent or effort. It wasn’t easy for those 56 men in Philadelphia, but despite their differences, they understood that ordinary people can do exceptional things, once they stop doing the senseless things they think they’re expected to do.

The conflict between us and them cannot be won in the courtrooms, or in Congress, or on the battlefield where the war has been waging continuously ever since Cain first determined Abel represented a threat and needed to be killed. It can only be won when we stop fearing them, and learn to live with them—or even better, when we learn that there is no us and them, but only us. 

Party of Lincoln Derailed

Republicans are fond of claiming to be the party of Lincoln. It gives them a sense of respectability that Nixon and Joseph McCarthy never could provide. The last time they were the party of Lincoln was seven score, ten years ago if it was a day. So, the obvious question is what has the party of Lincoln done for us lately.

For a good part of the 20^th century, Democrats struggled to remove racism from within their own party. When they finally exorcised their demons, those who couldn’t stomach reform, who thought giving blacks actual citizenship rights, just one century after giving them full citizenship was moving too fast, sought refuge in the GOP.

Republicans were only too happy to welcome them, just as they would grudgingly welcome other hate groups when there were political gains to be had. Clearly “big tent” means something different for Republicans. Today’s Republican Party is not the party of Lincoln. It is the party of Strom Thurmond.

For the last fifty years, the nation has tried to move toward tolerance and acceptance and away from racism and bigotry, not just for blacks, but for all minorities.

During this same period, the Republican Party has relocated to a place where its main constituency is now old white men with money and/or attitude and young, less educated white men with mostly attitude. Oh, and Evangelicals, who used to be all about GOD have also found a home in the GOP.

When Civil Rights legislation was still in its incubator stage, Nixon was putting together, his “law and order southern strategy.” The once solid Democratic south has morphed into the new solid Republican south. Racism and bigotry are the glue holding it together.

The 1976 election wasn’t so much about enforcing law and order or advancing civil rights. Gerald Ford was burdened by blow-back to the Nixon-pardon-baggage. It allowed a southern Democrat who was neither racist nor law-and-order to win the election that even Republican Lincoln would have had difficulty winning.

By 1980, bigotry was back on track. Reagan gave his first post-convention speech near Philadelphia, Mississippi, sight of the 1964 murder of civil rights workers. Republicans claim the location was insignificant and only coincidental, as was his references to states’ rights. No one, in either party, was fooled.

The Republican Party has spent the last 30 years since Reagan was its figurehead working behinds the scenes, sometimes shrouded by smokescreens, to dismantle anti-discrimination legislation and actual civil rights achievements. Knowing they have a problem with minorities, they’ve continually vowed to improve their relationships with them—just as soon as they’ve stopped Blacks from voting, slowed down immigration, and stop catering to people with disabilities.

Republicans would have us believe they are the party of small government, low taxes and individual freedom, but their biggest concerns always seem to be enacting discriminating policies against minorities, protecting gun rights and shifting tax burdens away from the wealthy.

Republicans repeatedly oppose anti-discrimination laws benefiting gays, transgender, blacks, Hispanics, woman and just about any other group looking for not much more than acceptance and equal treatment under the law.

At the same time, their discriminatory practices in the 30 or so states where they control government have led to countless voter ID laws under the pretense of preventing voter fraud. I’m not sure what fewer voting locations and shorter voting periods have to do with stopping voter fraud, but it sure makes it more difficult to vote.

How bad is this fraud? Very bad say predominantly Republican state legislatures.

What do the actual numbers tell us? Out of 197 million votes cast in federal elections between 2002 and 2005, only 40 voters were indicted of voter fraud and 26 convicted. That’s a conviction rate of 0.00000013. Probably more cases went undetected. I will admit that. Certainly not enough to justify all the money and time that has been spent making voting harder for legitimate voters.

The only national election decided by a single vote in the history of our nation was the five-four vote by a Conservative Supreme Court to elect a Republican president in 2000.

The only fraud being committed, is by Republicans who under the pretense of making it fairer, make it more difficult.

Today, few Republican leaders are willing to speak out against the obvious bigotry of their presidential nominee. I’m not saying they are bigots. Perhaps, gutless hypocrites is a better word. Trump is able to succeed, not despite his racist comments, but because his racist comments seem to find such a welcoming audience among his supporters. They’ll be the first to say he speaks to them, that he says what they are thinking, what they want to hear.

Obviously not all Republicans feel this way, but enough of them do to cause Lincoln to turn over in his grave and demand they stop using his name in vain.

Grass-roots Republicans—upset that their leaders have failed to fulfill promises, either ignore or don’t understand how hard the Republican establishment has worked for the last 50 years to turn back anti-discrimination movements. The fact that it hasn’t totally succeeded in spite of their efforts isn’t their fault. They tried. They are still trying. It is a tribute to those Americans, who not only say they aren’t racist, but actually aren’t racist, that the struggle for equal rights continues.

Electing a black president did not signal the end of racism in America. It only gave racists more stuff to complain about. Racism is alive and well, and has found a home in the Republican Party. The party of Lincoln continues to deny this, even as white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups, and most militias continue to pledge their support to the Republican Party.

The party of Lincoln is now the party of Donald Trump because Republicans have handed it over to him on a silver platter.

Postscript: Trump challenged Blacks with the words, “What have you got to lose?” He has spent the last two years answering his own question. He’s belittled black athletes, business leaders, staff people, and Congresswomen. He’s called them dogs, questioned their intelligence, their patriotism. He’s lied about how well they have done under his presidency.

He’s treated Hispanics with outright scorn, to the point where some families separated at the southern border may never be reunited.

He jumps on every opportunity to divide the nation, pitting one class against another, one state against another, one party against the other.

He’s denigrated the Justice Department and Intelligence community—once the darlings of the “law and order” party to the point where the whole country—well, most of it—are shaking their heads in disbelief.

The party that thrived on the Cold War in the fifties and ended it in the eighties, now finds its leader standing on the same stage with Putin and Jung-un and talking about what great guys they are—even as Putin attacks our elections and Jung-un threatens to attack our west coast.

Republicans haven’t opened the door for Trump so much as they paved the way for him.

Simply put, the GOP has fallen victim to the MAGA scam. As Yogi Berra might have said, it’s SNAFU all over again.

Sack of Potatoes startin' to look good—again



Potatoes doing what they do—nothing. Ya gotta love them.

I wrote a novel a while back entitled, Postal Service, which detailed the daily working of the USPS. Much of the novel centered on the relationship between management and the work force.

At one point, I suggested to a fellow carrier that we would be better off with a sack of potatoes as a supervisor. Naturally, when this got back to my supervisor—as these things always do—she jumped to the conclusion that I had accused her of being as dumb as a sack of potatoes.

I explained to her that anyone smarter than a sack of potatoes would know that wasn’t my intention. I told her she was an instigator, a trouble maker, someone constantly looking for a fight. I added that a sack of potatoes sitting at her desk, while unable to accomplish anything good, would nevertheless be incapable of creating so much havoc as she did on a daily basis.

Because of climate change, we are not even beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but it’s beginning to look like a sack of potatoes in the Oval Office wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

What if on November 8, 2016, Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton, instead wrote in the name, Sacko Potato? What if American voters put a sack of potatoes in the Oval Office instead of Donald Trump?

To be sure, nothing would have been accomplished in the last year, meaning we would still have a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Also, we wouldn’t have had...well, actually that’s the only thing we wouldn’t have. Nothing else has been done.

So what else might a sack of potatoes not done?

For starters, it wouldn’t have named a foreign agent as head of the National Security Agency.

It wouldn’t have named Cabinet Secretaries to departments they want to destroy.

It wouldn’t have pulled out of the Paris Accords, which now essentially include everyone except us.

It wouldn’t have insulted virtually every leader in the world who isn’t a dictator.

It wouldn’t have waged a year-long war-of-words with a thin-skinned, arrogant, ego-driven boy-man—in short, his mirror-image.

It wouldn’t have gotten into spats with every significant member of Congress—Democrat or Republican.

It wouldn’t have gotten into public feuds with the NFL or the NBA or athletes in general.

It’s safe to say it probably wouldn’t have received the support of white supremacists, who are very particular who they hang around with.

It wouldn’t have turned on the free press while, at the same time, embrace conspiracy theorists.

It wouldn’t have insulted American Indians, Americans living in Puerto Rico, Americans who didn’t vote for him, Americans it happens to disagree with, or any American with a basic understanding of history or a working knowledge of the English language.

It wouldn’t have put its self-interest ahead of the country’s best interest.

It wouldn’t have turned the White House into a pre-school playground.

On almost any day, you can hear the news coming out of this administration or read a tweet coming off the president’s phone and say, “No sir. A sack of potatoes wouldn’t have done that.”

In the end, there is a lot that a sack of potatoes cannot do and will never be able to do, but thank God, for all the things that a sack of potatoes cannot do and will never do. That’s the sack half full/sack half empty look at potatoes.

It’s why sometimes I wish there were a sack of potatoes sitting in the Oval Office right now, stinking up the place instead of the stinker we have.  

Who's in Wall Street's pockets—and does it really matter?

There is a lot of debate going on as to which political party will do more for Wall Street and big business. Trump says Hillary is in bed with the big Wall Street firms. On the other hand, whenever Trump goes to bed, it’s always big money turning off the lights.

I think it is fair to say that both parties do Wall Street’s bidding. They always have and they always will. Politicians bow to the will of Wall Street and big business for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks—because that is where the money is.

And it isn’t just campaign financing—although that is always appreciated. I think it simply comes down to the rich—wealth-with-power-thrown-in and powerful—political-power-with-wealth-thrown-in, taking care of the rich and powerful.

Both parties should stop running away from the obvious. The truth is, while not in every way but certainly in many ways, America is great not solely because of democracy and not solely because of capitalism but rather because in America, democracy and capitalism have become uneasy bedfellows.

Our government has consistently, and unabashedly, allowed itself to be corrupted by money while our economic system has unenthusiastically allowed itself to be governed by regulations—with a clear understanding that they don’t go too far.

So do elections not make a difference? Is neither party different from the other?

Of course, elections make a difference. And yes, the parties are different. Just not to the rich.

Look at elections the way you would look at a boxing match or a concert. You’ve got the main event and the undercard.

Both parties take care of the headliner—the rich, but it’s the undercard where the most interesting fights occur—and Democrats tend to favor the undercards.

Republican trickle-down theory, at its best, was a policy of taking care of the wealthy, first and foremost, on the outside chance that with so much money floating around, some of it was bound to wind up in the pockets of the middle class—if they lived long enough and the poorer class—when hell froze over.

At its worse, it was a cruel joke.

Republicans believe in their souls that taking care of the wealthy is the only way to take care of the masses. Make a man rich, they believe, and he will take care of the rest. That’s what the wealthy do—except that history tells us they don’t. Never have and never will.

But Democrats have and will continue to.

Their history of protecting workers and defending unions, have resulted in shorter work weeks, higher hourly wages, pensions, healthcare, and safer working conditions. They have defended minorities—racial, religious, and otherwise—the majority of whom have always resided on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

On the other hand, Republicans gave us the Gilded Age plagued by the recessions of 1873, 1893, 1907; the roaring twenties followed by the Great Depression; and the Bush tax cuts and deregulations that led to the Great Recession of 2008.

Workers will receive minor tax cuts from Republicans but the nation will go broke from the massive tax cuts given billionaires and millionaires.

Republicans are convinced that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs by destroying companies. They believe allowing CEOs to become billionaires is the way to grow companies. The problem is that even companies that do badly have well-paid CEOs and even companies that do great have low paid workers. Why don’t Republicans and CEOs just admit that they don’t really care for workers and would be happier employing robots? Sure, they would have maintenance expenses but gone would be health insurance, pensions, and break rooms.

Health insurance won’t expand under Republicans who’ve taken 60 votes to kill Obamacare and not released one plan to replace it. It’s not because they’ve been busy doing other things.

Republicans at the state level have shown us what they think of voting rights.

All those Republican recessions and depressions mentioned earlier cost millions of jobs—over 15-million in the Great Depression and another nine million in the 2008 recession. Democrats receive no credit for recouping those jobs. Halting the skid and turning the corner should count for something.

People might not like hearing these facts but people have to get over liking only what they want to hear.

The rich will always win. There is virtually no way for them to lose. It reminds me of an old joke, so old it was politically correct to tell it back then.

Put a fat lady, a bulldog, and a can of dog food in one room.  In another room, put a fat lady and a bulldog.  In the room with the fat lady, bulldog, and dog food, the lady ate the dog food.  In the room with just the fat lady and the bulldog, the fat lady ate the bulldog.

CONCLUSION: Fat ladies will always make the best of a situation. 

Rich people are the fat lady.

Today’s poor and middle class don’t have the luxury of winning no matter who is in office. They have to look for small wins anywhere they can find them. They can’t be sucked into thinking things are going to be great. They should be happy with things being good because when you already live in the greatest nation, good ain’t that bad.