January, 1977

It was one of the coldest Presidential Inaugurations on record.  January, 1977; the National Mall had wind chills in the zeroes. My place was below the Capitol and I shivered, despite my goose down mountain jacket.  I watched the former Governor of Georgia sworn into office.  I was one of “the staff”, one of the twenty-somethings who were  “feet on the ground” for the Carter-Mondale Presidential Campaign. 

 I’d spent two months crisscrossing Southwestern Ohio, organizing high school kids and Moms for literature drops in Cincinnati, getting statistics and materials for Warren, Brown, Clermont and Butler Counties, and organizing students to knock on dorm room doors at Miami University in Oxford.  There were signs everywhere, and long computer lists on wide paper. We made thousands of phone calls to get folks out to vote.  We won Ohio by only a few thousand; at twenty years-old, I thought I talked to every one of them!!

A New Era

Jimmy Carter was President.  The Watergate Era was officially over, as Nixon’s replacement Gerald Ford failed to win election.  I went from the parade (Jimmy and Rosalyn walked) to get ready for the “Staff Ball” at the DC Armory.  I wore my three-piece suit and cowboy boots;  stylish for 1977.  Jimmy was truly a Georgia man, he was good friends with the Charlie Daniels Band (and even more the Allman Brothers). Daniels played for the inaugural ball.  We all danced to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”.

Georgia changed America that day.  Jimmy Carter represented a sea-change in American politics.  He was a Southern Man, the Governor of a Southern State.  His predecessor in Georgia, Lester Maddox, was an “old-style” Southern Democrat.  He chased Black people out of his restaurant with an ax handle.  But Jimmy was a friend of the civil rights movement.  When Carter was sworn into the Governorship, he called for the end of racial discrimination.  He was a new kind of Southern politician, a man who spoke of human rights.

1976 in Georgia marked a pivotal change in American politics.  And last night, Georgia was leading again.  

Perfect Call

We all listened to the entire conversation, recorded by Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.  The President of the United States was demanding more votes, threatening  Georgia authorities.  His meaning was crystal clear:  alter the Georgia vote count so that Donald Trump wins, no matter what the actual votes were.  While by then we were well aware that Trump didn’t follow the established “norms” of the Presidency;  as Americans listened to the call,  most of us were thinking the same thing:  this has to be illegal.

Last night, Atlanta’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis answered the question with a resounding “YES, it was illegal”.  In a ninety-one page, forty-one count indictment of nineteen named defendants, DA Willis called Donald Trump the leader of a criminal conspiracy, in violation of Georgia’s “RICO” (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization) statute.  It’s the same law used to bring down organized crime; the Mafia and drug cartels.

Time to Dance

Federal Special Prosecutor Jack Smith indicted Trump two weeks ago in a tight, targeted case for attempting to obstruct and delay the Presidential transition of power.  While there were seven conspirators, Smith only indicted Trump himself in that action.  The prosecution is designed to quickly bring the former President to trial, before the 2024 election and maybe even before the nominating convention. 

While Smith was tight and targeted, Willis’s indictment was broad.  She indicted all of those involved, from Trump to Giuliani to Meadows to the Georgia Republicans who signed on as “fake electors”.  She is bringing the entire conspiracy to obstruct the election to Georgia, in a case where nineteen defendants will try to avoid the mandatory minimum five-year sentence attached to the RICO charges.  

Willis is not encumbered with the time constraints facing Jack Smith.  Smith needs to conclude his trial before September, 2024, before the Justice Department mandated window of sixty days prior to the election.  And, Smith knows well, that if Trump or an ally is elected President in 2024, his case might well disappear.  Willis, on the other hand, has time.  While the election is important, there is no mandate to skirt around the campaigns.  She’s not likely to try all nineteen at once, in fact, I’m sure she expects that several of them will “flip” and plead-out well before trial.  But when it all “comes down”, Willis has the luxury of time that Smith cannot depend upon.

Soul to Save

Smith and Willis have different goals.  Smith is trying to hold Trump personally accountable for his actions, to let the Nation see that justice applies to all.  Willis, on the other hand, is trying to tell the entire story.  She wants America to know that it wasn’t just bumbling “hacks” trying to somehow deflect the will of the people with hair dye running down their face.  It was organized, it was real, it was a determined attempt to change an American election, and short-circuit the United States Constitution.  

Smith wants Trump, his “Devil”.  Willis has invited the “Devil” and the entire structure of Hell with him down to Georgia.  What’s at stake?  “Only” the soul of the United States.

He Can Run

Hey folks, let’s be clear about one thing.  Trump is under two federal indictments and one, soon to be two more state indictments; all during an election year.  But it isn’t going to matter.  Even if he is convicted on all of those counts, he still could be elected President.  He wouldn’t be the first to run for President from behind bars. Socialist Eugene Debs ran from the Atlanta Penitentiary in 1920, and got almost a million votes.  And for those of you who think, surely the United States wouldn’t elect an orange man in an orange jump suit as President. How sure are you?  We didn’t think the US could elect a reality show “star” who “grabbed them wherever”, either.

No Fourteenth

Some take solace in the Federalist Society lawyers who say we can apply a Fourteenth Amendment prohibition to the twice-impeached, thrice (so far) indicted former President:  I wish it were so.

“No person shall…hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”(Section 3, 14^th Amendment, US Constitution).

We might all agree that Trump meets the “common” definition of giving aid to insurrectionists. But none of the charges, Federal or State, specifically use the terms “insurrection or rebellion”.  The Federal charges in Washington, DC, are “normal” charges of conspiracy to defraud and obstruction of government.  Even Jack Smith’s final charge of taking away citizens’ rights to vote (a violation of the same 14^th Amendment) wouldn’t necessarily be covered by the disqualification section.

And which Court is going to apply the disqualification to him?  When the case inevitably reaches the Supreme Court, does anyone reasonably believe that the six majority Republican and conservative Justices are going to deny his opportunity to run, or more, reverse his election to office?  Unless Jack Smith has a full insurrection and sedition charge still to “drop”, the 14^th Amendment disqualification argument just doesn’t stand: too bad.

Solid Base

What can we expect?  There are two elections coming up in 2024, one a primary election where the voters are the “hardcore” Party members, and the other a general election where we all take part (I hope).   Since the majority of the “hardcore” Republicans don’t believe that the 2020 election was “legal”, and think that the “insurrection” was little more than a “First Amendment Event” that got out a control, Trump is good with them.

Every time Trump gets another indictment, it solidifies his support among that base.  Every time anyone, especially other Republican candidates for President, say something negative about the candidate who faces criminal charges, the base rallies round the MAGA flag.  And as Donald Trump always says:  better to have bad publicity than no publicity.  Trump is taking up all of the oxygen in the campaign, all of the discussion.  Candidates Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy can’t get a word in edgewise.  And Mike Pence, well, he’s a “great traitor” in their midst.

So, as crazy as it might sound, indictments probably don’t hurt Donald Trump’s candidacy for the Republican nomination.  If he gets that nomination, the general election is different. In a general election, Trump depends on a swath of “hold your nose” voters.  They don’t like Trump, but don’t like Biden even more.  Add in a far-left candidacy with the Green Party, and a “who-knows” Joe Manchin “No Labels” candidacy, and the binary choice we made in 2020 isn’t quite as clear.

Run for Protection

Many Democrats are willing to “roll the dice” on a Biden versus Trump rematch.  Biden’s greatest weaknesses, age and Hunter, are completely cancelled out by a Trump candidacy.  Biden delivered in 2020, why take the chance of a divisive primary with Newsom or Harris or Whitmer; perhaps irretrievably  splitting the Party? (Look at  history:  Reagan challenged Ford in 1976, Kennedy challenged  Carter in 1980.  While both sitting Presidents got the nomination, the other Party won the general election). 

Be careful what you wish for.  Trump MUST run for President.  It’s his best (and perhaps only) way out of jail.  When he’s elected, he can order the Justice Department to drop the charges.  If he’s convicted, he could even go so far as pardoning himself (though that’s a whole other “kettle of fish” legally).  And then there’s that  nagging Department of Justice “policy” (not a law) that prevents DoJ from acting within sixty days of an election (that should be called the “Comey Rule”).   Trump’s trial dates, both in Florida and in DC, are likely to be in the middle of the primary elections.  Does that count?

You can be sure that Trump wants the “Comey Rule” applied, and his lawyers will make the same argument.  They say all of the trials should be delayed. The American people should render the verdict, not in the jury box, but at the ballot box.

Democrats will have to win in 2024 to get the final say.

Way to Go, Ohio

Congratulations, citizens of Ohio.  By a strong margin, 57% to 43%, with over three million people voting, Ohioans turned down Issue One this week.  It was a 38% turnout, in spite of the oddity of an August statewide election.  That’s not as high as the 2022 November election at 52%, but it’s higher than the spring 2022 and 2020 primaries, and close to the highly contested 44% turnout in the 2016 primaries.  The first rule to make a difference is “show up”, and Ohioans showed up this week.

Veto Power

Issue One would have changed three parts of the Initiative process of amending the Ohio Constitution.  It would have required a new amendment to pass by 60% instead of 50% plus one.  It would have made the petition acceptance for the ballot a “one shot deal”. Currently, petitioners have ten days to add or “fix” petitions after they are submitted, the Issue would have required them to be either good on entry or rejected.

But perhaps the most Insidious part of the Issue was way “in the weeds” of electioneering.  To get a citizen’s petition issue on the ballot now, law requires a convoluted process of getting the wording of the petition approved.  The ballot language requires 1000 legal voter signatures, and then approval of the State Attorney General and then the Elections Board.   That’s just for the language on the petitions.  Only then can petitions be circulated publicly.  Final petitions require 10% of the total vote in the last Gubernatorial elections, and at least 5% from 44 of the 88 counties in the state. 

Issue One required 10% statewide, but also required 5% of ALL 88 counties.  In Noble County in Eastern Ohio, there are less than 8000 registered voters spread across the foothills of Appalachia.  In 2022, 4734 voted for Governor (82% Republican, 17% Democrat).  Under the failed Issue One, it would require 274 legal signatures from Noble County to qualify for the ballot.  In contrast, Franklin County, the Columbus metro area, has 860,000 registered voters.  409205 voted for Governor in 2022.  It requires 20,461 legal signatures from there.

The 274 in Noble County would hold a “veto power” over the entire state.

One Person, One Vote

Now that Issue One has failed (it gained 67% of the vote in Noble County, but only 25% in Franklin County), some Republicans are trying to create another “wedge issue” to divide Ohioans.  Social Media echoes with the claim:  those “Blue cities” have forced their will onto the rest of “good” Ohioans, again.  66 “good” Ohio counties voted in favor of Issue One, “only” 22 voted against it – but it still failed (by 57%).  

In the 1960’s, the US Supreme Court in a series of cases (Baker v Carr, Wesberry v Sanders, Reynolds v Sims) said that States must have voting districts of equal population.  Ohio and California are widely different in size, but under the US Constitution, they each still have two Senators.  But Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) and Noble County (Caldwell) MUST have representation based on population.  Out of these cases came the legal axiom that each voter should have the same weight as any other voter: “one person, one vote”.

Wedge

Urban and rural are widely divided here in Ohio.  It’s not just along racial lines, it’s also religious, economic, and cultural.   But it’s not as stark as you might think.  Listen to the music in the parking lot of the local high schools.  It’s hip hop and pop, from urban Columbus to suburban Pataskala to rural Archbold.  

But to “gin up” the vote, politicians use the divide as a wedge.  They tell their rural base that cities (with all the racial overtones) forced their will on the state.  The reality is if you take the three biggest urban counties out of the August count Issue One count (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati), it still fails.  

It’s a national issue, highlighted by the electoral college.  When you look at the political voting “maps”, the Red/Blue look at the nation, we are a Red country with blue edges and a few splotches in the middle.  But when we look at the population maps, we are really bluer than red. 

US – Political Majority by County

US – Political Majority by Population

It’s the law, at least until this crazy Supreme Court tries to rewrite it:   One person, one vote.  The “amber waves of grain” and “purple mountain majesties” are Beautiful, but land doesn’t vote; and neither do cows. People do.

Glad Ohio rejected Issue One last night. There is an old coaching axiom: “No gloating in victory, no pouting in defeat”. It will be interesting to see the breakdown of Ohio votes — it’s not just the big cities versus the farmers.

By the Numbers

Let’s look at the numbers.  When Joe Biden was inaugurated as President of the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Index, a measure of the “health” of Wall Street, was 31,000.  Today it’s over 35,300.  On that same day, the unemployment rate was 6.7%.  Today it’s about half that, at 3.5%.  The inflation rate was 4.7%.  Now, it’s just under 3%.  And finally, the median household income was $70,074.  Today it’s $70,784.

Thanks, Joe Biden.

There’s no question we had some economic “rocking and rolling” in the last two and a half years.  Biden inherited the pandemic and the myriad of medical and economic issues we had to  recover from.  We went from lockdowns to wide-open in only a few months.  The government did everything it could to cushion the economic impact on individuals and corporations (both Trump and Biden Administrations).  So there were booms and busts, soaring wages and inflation, and shortages of all sorts of products from lumber to computer chips.  

The Future

Everyone predicted that the recovery boom cycle would be followed by a crushing recession.  But, from today’s perspective, we’ve dodged that bullet as well.  The private economic advisors are saying that we will achieve the “soft landing” of our economic “plane”. It’s taken a couple of years to smooth out, but the numbers don’t lie.  For most Americans, things are better today than they were on January 20^th, 2021.  

Thanks, Joe Biden.

We are improving the Nation, preparing for the next fifty years.  We are building:  roads and bridges, electric grids and fiber optic networks, computer chip production here in the United States, environmental improvements and more nationally protected lands.  And when there’s a crisis, the Biden Administration can act quickly.  The Pennsylvania I-95 bridge collapse is a great example; what should have taken months to rebuild, happened in three weeks.  (And what about the East Palestine train derailment? Why did Ohio’s Republican Governor effectively keep the Federal government out by not asking for a disaster declaration:  thanks, Mike DeWine?)

Thanks, Joe Biden.

Wedged Apart

Yet, we are mired in the detritus of the January 6^th Insurrection.  Our Nation is fascinated by a former President who waves top secret documents in the air and stacks them in his bathroom.  And we are victims of political “wedge issues”.  We spend so much energy arguing the “alphabet”:  LGBTQ, DEI, CRT.   Historians and Futurists warned for years that as we approach a population where White people are no longer the majority, now just a decade or so away, there would be a backlash.  A segment of our Nation longs for the “good old days”, forgetting that those were the days when minorities were legally suppressed, criminally intimidated and even imprisoned. 

Victimhood has become a potent political position.  There are even some notable “mainstream” Republicans (see yesterday’s New York Times) who say that indicting the former President is so dangerous to our Republic, he should get a “pass”.  Equal justice for all just shouldn’t apply to him.   All of those are problems that Joe Biden hasn’t solved — yet.  

2024 Election

Democratic operative James Carville defined Presidential politics simply back in 1995.  When asked what his strategy for re-electing Bill Clinton was going to be, he said; “It’s the economy stupid”.   If he’s still right, now twenty-eight years later, then the Biden 2024 campaign should be easy.

It won’t be.  The wedges dividing us are so great, that it’s easy to focus folks on their grievances rather than their successes.  And  30% of Americans are so enamored by the cult-like leadership of the former President, that they’ll never change, no matter how many times Trump is convicted.  In fact, some threaten to revolt if he is.

Presidential decisions are supposed to be hard, and Joe Biden is faced with a Nation as divided as any since the pre-Civil War era.  But, by the numbers, he’s doing all he can to make life better for every American, of all races and genders and political persuasions.  As he keeps it up, the 2024 election should be an easy choice.

Thanks, Joe Biden.

The Autumn Leaves

No the leaves aren’t falling.  There’s no hint of snow in the air.  Today the high’s going to be over eighty degrees, the grass needs cutting, and “back to school” sales are everywhere.  It’s August; but here in Ohio, it’s election day.  

Jenn and I voted over the weekend.  We drove to the county seat, Newark, and cast our single issue ballot, one that’s costing the taxpayers of Ohio $20 million.  The state legislature, who only a few months ago said August elections were foolish and undemocratic, felt this Issue was so important that it was worth the hypocrisy, effort and money.  Their political calculation is cynical.  They hope only their few stalwarts will appear at the polls.  So here we are:  it’s election day.

What’s so important that it can’t wait until November, already an off-off year election – 2023?  The Legislature wants to make it harder for the citizens of Ohio to change the state Constitution.  They want to alter the more than a century old initiative addition to the Constitution, one that allowed citizens to “bypass” that same legislature.

Issues and Arguments

I hope Ohioans vote NO on Issue One, but I’m not going back into all of the arguments.  Here are links to the several essays I’ve written – if you still are undecided – please check them out.

• In the Weeds
• Small World Politics
• Little ‘d’
• Just a Lie.

Here’s what Issue One isn’t about:  abortion, gun control, transgender kids in school, minimum wages, or LGBTQ rights.  We will surely have those discussions and arguments in the future.  That’ll start in November with an amendment to guarantee women’s health rights, or to say it another way, a woman’s right to choose an abortion or not.

But this Issue One is about one thing:  Power.   The power of a demonstrably corrupt state legislature to act unfettered by citizens control.  Sure, today it’s a Republican legislature.  But as “Red” as everyone seems to think Ohio is, we are really a 54-46 state.  That balance can tip, and then, as my mother might say, “The shoe is on the other foot”.  

Go

Anyway, it’s election day.  However you plan to vote on Issue One, I encourage you to go out and cast your ballot.  Put your best Hawaiian shirt, shorts, flip-flops and sunglasses on, and go prove the legislature wrong about at least one thing.  

You can’t slip an election this important through, by hiding it in the shimmering sunshine.

Go and Vote.

Ivy League

In my junior year of high school, I decided that I wanted to go to an Ivy League* school.  I was intent on becoming a lawyer and run for political office.  My political heroes, the Kennedys above all, went to Harvard, and almost everyone in power in both parties had Ivy connections. (Bobby Kennedy, the Dad not the current son, went to University of Virginia Law School, a fine institution.  But he was a Harvard undergrad).

It was a long shot.  My grades in high school were “OK”, but not “Ivy”.  But I did have a “gift” for test taking, and back in the early 1970’s the tests (SAT, ACT, the “subject tests” called the ACH’s now SAT II’s) weighed heavily in admission decisions.  Those scores were good.  And I had a lot of the other stuff Ivy’s weighed; academic teams, sports, Scouts, political involvement and such.

I applied and interviewed at Dartmouth and Harvard.  I also applied to a “Little Ivy”, Williams.  And, to be realistic, I applied to Washington University in St Louis, and Denison and Miami here in Ohio.  

Oh Denison!!

In December of my senior year, the guidance counselor called me out of class.  She told me that Harvard just called, and I was in.  For about twenty-four hours I was walking in the clouds.  Then the next afternoon, the cruel-thin envelope with the crimson emboss arrived in the mailbox.  Harvard thanked me for my interest, but politely declined.

It took a minute, or maybe a week.  Dartmouth was out, and Williams put me on the waiting list.  By January we (Mom and Dad did have a say) decided that Denison, here in Ohio, was my best fit.  So in the fall off I went to Granville.  It was a great school, a great place for me.  They taught me politics from the left and the right, and let me study in Washington DC and even credited me for a semester of working on a Presidential campaign.  And, as an aside, I earned an Ohio Teaching License, opening the option for a whole different career.   I have no regrets.

the Formula

But I did learn that, at least academically, only the most successful, the highest grades, the most brilliant students went to the Ivy League universities.  

So it amazes me when I look at those politicians and political influencers with Ivy League credentials who have bought into the Trump “Big Lie”.  It’s not that “real” conservatives aren’t “smart”.   The most brilliant professor I had at Denison was a true conservative, who went on to work in the Reagan Administration.  But to espouse the “Big Lie” of election fraud?  It’s hard to understand.

It is a simple formula.  The Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, has spent nine years saying that the election process in the United States is corrupt.  Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, many Republicans, Independents and even a few-odd Democrats think that’s true.  Their conclusion is based on the “smoke and fire” principle.  The GOP and Trump have created so much smoke, there must be some fire somewhere.

Truth be Damned

It’s not true.  There really isn’t a fire at all.  Sixty court cases after the 2020 election failed.   Republican officials running elections in contested states know – for a fact – that there was no widespread voter fraud (ask Ohio’s Secretary of State Frank LaRose, before he was running for Senate, or the “Cyber-Ninjas” in Arizona).  But Trump and other Republicans go the next step.  Republicans justify all sorts of repressive voting laws, and Trump’s own clearly criminal attempt to overturn the 2020 election, on “corrupt elections”.  The twice-impeached, now thrice-indicted former President’s defense is that “…he believed the elections were corrupt”.  But instead of actually proving those elections were falsified, they simply say, “…Republicans believe that the elections are corrupt, so we need to fix them”.  

It’s an old trick – the BIG LIE.  If a lie is told over and over and over again, eventually it will sound like the truth.  Please be sure, it’s not true, and constant repetition doesn’t become truth.  A lie is a lie is a lie.  But if a significant part of the citizenry believes the lie, then that becomes a justification to “fix what ain’t broke”.  It also justifies all sorts of other illegal acts and lies.

And the big difference in our current era is that our “main source of information”, social media, makes their biggest profit by creating controversy and division.  So we have one political party’s leadership repeating a lie, and the echo chamber of social media amplifying it a million-fold.  It’s not just “smoke and fire”, it’s impenetrable smoke, choking smoke; smoke that all common-sense says must have a “fire source” somewhere.  But it doesn’t.

Geometry

A ”corollary” to the BIG LIE is that the “Biden Administration” is “persecuting” Donald Trump.  It’s simple political geometry:  if you believe the elections are “rigged”, then opposing those elections and denying the results are “good”.  Anyone prosecuting “good” people for that belief must be bad.  Therefore, the Biden Administration (who really lost anyway) is persecuting Trump.

If you don’t accept the starting premise, the “Big Lie”, then the rest of the action falls apart.  And from a FACTUAL standpoint, there is no factual basis to the “Big Lie” of election fraud.  So you’d think all of the Ivy Leaguers, leading the charge for Trump, would know better.  But Hawley (Yale), Cruz (Harvard), Bannon (Harvard), DeSantis (Harvard), and even Trump himself (Penn) are “all-in” for election fraud.  

And they are bringing all of that intellectual prowess to bear. They  are using their Lie to change America.

*The Ivy League consists of:  Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale. 

Track’s Loss

Last week a friend of mine passed away.  We weren’t that close, but we knew each other for over four decades.  Bob Hollen was the track and cross country coach at neighboring Granville High School, for nearly as long as I was the track and cross country coach at Watkins Memorial, forty years.  We were often competitors, and just as often, collaborators working on the “issues” of track and field.  

Bob Hollen, Jeff Sheets, my “sister from another mother” Jan Heffelfinger and I were the “core” track coaches in Licking County for a long time.  There were others that had big impacts, but the four of us were always there.  Bob was the head coach at Granville, and when he retired, came back as an assistant coach at another Licking County school, Heath.  Jeff was the head coach at Licking Valley, and when he became a Heath guidance counselor, he became part of that program as well.  And Jan was the head girls coach at Watkins, and then an assistant coach for me in those final few years.  Between the four of us, we impacted Licking County Track for more than forty years.

Bob and Jeff were also Presidents of the Ohio Track Coaches Association, helping to lead Ohio High School track through the dramatic changes of the last three of decades.  Licking County was always well represented at the “table” when it came to the critical decisions about track and field.

Rivals and Friends

The four of us saw the Licking County League break apart in the early 1990’s, mostly over football issues. Heath and Granville went into the Mid-States League, and Watkins went to the Ohio Capital Conference.  But we kept our old alliances and rivalries alive, creating a Licking County Honor-Roll meet and bringing our best onto the track against each other each spring.  That meet sustained the relationships between the schools and the kids, and it kept us together as coaches.

Then in 2013, the Licking County League was re-established.  Instead of the OCC teams as our arch-rivals, it was back to Granville, Heath and the rest of the LCL.  And for a couple of years, it really was like old times.  The difference:  while we all wanted to win, we also all knew each other so well.  It was good to see Bob on the field, or crack “wise” to Jeff on backstretch.

Bob Hollen would definitely be on the list for an “All Star” throws coach: he consistently had solid shot and discus athletes for all of those decades.  Bob’s in the Ohio Track Coaches Hall of Fame, and was the State Coach of the Year as well.

Empty Chair

When I retired from coaching, I continue to educate coaches about pole vaulting.  Each year at the state track clinic, I arrive early Saturday morning to educate sleepy and perhaps hungover coaches.  Before my “bit” starts, I hang out in the staff room of the clinic.  No matter what else was going on, Bob was there, working to make the clinic better.  We always caught up a bit.  They’ll be an empty chair this year.

Our generation of track coaches is past.  Jeff and I are officiating, no longer coaching on the field.  Jan, perhaps the smartest of us all, comes in for Watkins home meets, runs the high jump, then heads out.  It’s hard to be involved “a little bit”.  The momentum of all those decades pulls –the old line from the Godfather Part III: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” 

But one of us is gone.  Bob Hollen will be missed.

Democracy

Ohio is in the throes of another controversy.  This one is called “Issue One”, on the ballot this Tuesday.  There’s a whole lot of arguments on social media about how to vote on the Issue.  But, on this single Issue, the only one on our August ballot, it comes down to this:  do you believe in democracy, or not?

What is democracy?  It is a government based on the “consent of the governed”.  And when the “governed” is split as to how they feel, we voice our opinion through voting.  The majority, the side that has more votes than the other, wins.

Back in the early 1900’s there was a movement to make the United States more democratic. After the Civil War, giant companies influenced much of the government.  You might remember from eighth grade history the story of the “monopolies” like Standard Oil, that controlled 90% of the petroleum industry out of Cleveland, Ohio.  The money created by monopolies spilled over into the state and even national legislatures.  Senators and Representatives were “tagged” with  titles, the Senator from the Sugar Trust, the Representative from US Steel.  Out of the Midwest, states like Wisconsin and Nebraska, came politicians who wanted to move power to the citizens, and make America a truer democracy.

Reform

Today we take for granted the national advances those reformers made at the time:  women gained the right to vote and Senators were directly elected by voters, (not chosen by state legislatures).   And in many states, Ohio included, they approved a method for the citizens to intervene when the state legislature could or would not.  It was called “initiative”. 

The initiative process allows citizens to propose both laws and Constitutional changes.  It gives them a “bypass” around a state legislature that in the 1900’s was corrupted by corporate money.  Looking at Ohio’s recent past, where the former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives was just sentenced to twenty years in jail for taking a $60 million bribe from the First Energy Corporation, things haven’t changed much.   

There is a fundamental difference between the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitutions of the several states. The US Constitution was written to be broad, brief, sometimes vague, and hard to change.   In a few short pages, it outlines the structure of the national government, with powers and limitations.  State Constitutions are intentionally the opposite.  They are highly detailed, defining all of the vast powers of the state in particular.  The average state constitution is five times longer than the US Constitution.  They are not comparable documents.

Initiative

Here in Ohio, the current initiative process, to put a proposal to the state’s voters, is difficult.  First, the language of the issue has to be approved by the state Ballot Board, a part of the Ohio government.  Then to get on the ballot, the proposers have to get 5% of the voters from the last gubernatorial election, and in 44 (out of 88) counties to sign a petition (this year that would be around 200,000 legally verifiable signatures).

Only after the signatures are verified, and the percentages  per county are approved, then the language is put on a ballot.  If there aren’t enough verified signatures, the petitioners have ten days to “cure”, or find more, to reach the standard. And then, like all other elections, a majority, more than half of the voters, is required to pass.

For example, there is an initiative to add a law (not change the Constitution) in Ohio to legalize marijuana use.  It would go on the November ballot.  The proposers handed in 220,000 signatures.  But they still fell 679 verified signatures short of the required number.  They have ten days to “cure” their petition, and get on the November ballot.

The Proposal

So what’s “up” with Issue One?  Issue One is a referendum, proposed by the State Legislature itself.  Issue One would make three changes in the initiative process.

First – It would require the proposers to get signatures of  5% of the voters in every single county in the state – all 88.  The smallest counties in Ohio have only 13,000 voters, the largest two counties have 860,000.  But petitioners would have to get 5% from every county.  It “grants” a veto to the smallest counties, the “will” of 13,000 over the will of 860,000.  That doesn’t sound like a democracy.

Second –  There would be no more “cure” period.  

Third – To pass a Constitutional amendment, it would require 60% of the state to agree, instead of 50% plus one.

Obviously, passing an initiative Constitutional Amendment would become almost impossible.  But that’s the point, isn’t it?  The State Legislature wants control ONLY in their hands.  They don’t want a “bypass” around their power, the bypass that’s been part of Ohio’s election law since 1913.  The current legislature is trying to undo the gains of the democratic movements of one hundred and ten years ago.

August

Last year Ohio banned August elections.  It was just a bad time to get a decent turnout, with less than 10% of the voters usually participating.  Only the most motivated would show up, and the decisions were often “undemocratic” and unrepresentative.  But for this Issue One, the state legislature decided to “allow” an August vote.  Their intention was obvious, to get only “their” motivated voters to the polls, and slip their “undemocratic” change into the Ohio Constitution.  

So here’s where Ohio stands.  The voters can chose to give up their power to intervene, and make the gerrymandered, special interest dominated state legislature even less accountable than it is already.  Voters can make Ohio less democratic, giving the “few” the power over the “many”; all by passing Issue One.

Or Ohioans can show up on Tuesday, and vote NO on Issue One.  They can stand for what the United States is supposed to be about:  a nation where every vote is equal, and where the word Democracy is more than just a fairy tale we tell eighth graders.

• So I worked all yesterday on an essay entitled “Hanging Fire”.  It was about the media vacuum created while waiting for Jack Smith to indict Donald Trump, and what filled it.  Maybe I can use it somewhere else.  At 5 pm on August 1, 2023; the Federal Grand Jury in Washington, DC,  indicted the former President of the United States for attempting to overturn the Presidential election of 2020.

Peaceful Transition

August 1, 2023: Donald J Trump, the 45^th President of the United States, indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for attempting to disrupt the peaceful transition of power from one President to the next.  It is a bookmark in American History, beside August 8, 1974 (Nixon’s resignation) and November 22, 1963 (Kennedy’s Assassination).  

In American History this “foundation” of democracy was established in 1801.  President John Adams, a Federalist; peacefully turned over the Presidency to his arch-rival, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson.  There were no riots, no troops in the streets.  Adams simply got in his carriage and headed back to his home in Braintree, Massachusetts. Jefferson took the oath of office and moved into the new White House.

The precedent continued For the next two-hundred and sixteen years.  Buchanan left a looming Civil War to Lincoln.  Democrat Cleveland left the White House to Republican Harrison, to win it back four years later.  The unelected President, Gerald Ford, greeted Jimmy Carter on the White House steps. The elder Bush left a sweet note in the Resolute Desk to Clinton, and  proud Obama did all he could to assist Trump.  But in 2020, that precedent was broken.

USC 18 § 238

Some of us wanted the former President held to the highest standard.  We believe that Trump committed Insurrection and Sedition, leading the Nation to the crisis that still threaten our founding principles.  But Special Prosecutor Jack Smith and the Grand Jury did not charge him with that, outlined in USC 18 § 2383. It states: 

“Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” 

Prosecutor Smith must not believe he has the ironclad evidence to prove rebellion and insurrection.  So he proffered four “lesser” charges, all still with large punishments.  But those charges do not include the final phrase: “…and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States”.  Even if convicted of the four charges Smith laid out yesterday, Trump could still be elected President.

Process

Jack Smith did not focus on the Insurrection itself, the storming of the Capitol that most watched in horror, and some in MAGA-inspired glee.  Instead, he focused on the process of Trump’s attempts to disrupt the count of popular votes for President, and alter the selection of electors in the arcane Constitutional process called the “Electoral College”.  There are four counts in this indictment:

• Conspiracy to defraud the United States (by knowingly lying about the results of the 2020 Presidential election)
• Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding (by creating “fake” electors and attempting to have them counted)
• Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding (the direct disruption of the Congressional counting of electoral votes on January 6^th, including encouraging the rioters and pressuring Vice President Pence)
• Conspiracy Against Rights (attempting to take away the legal votes of citizens in violation of their Constitutional right to vote).

The sum possible penalty for conviction of all four offenses is a maximum of sixty-five years in prison.  While the Federal Courts never give that kind of maximum, certainly a ten or more year sentence could be levied.  

Indictment

The forty-five page indictment is written in clear language (not “legalese”).  It outlines all of the demonstrable facts that Smith will bring to court to prove each count of the indictment.   Read it with the knowledge that each “fact” is supported by evidence.  There no longer is supposition, “…well Trump must have known”.  Instead, there is direct evidence that in fact Trump did know; he knew that he lost the 2020 election, he knew that Biden was the next President, but continued to lie about it.  Beyond that lie, he led and directly participated in a conspiracy to overthrow the vote of the people, and have himself falsely installed as the next President of the United States.  

That conspiracy was based on obscure and outlandish interpretations of the law. Even those who created them knew they were wrong (Eastman stated that the Supreme Court would rule against him unanimously).  But the President and his co-conspirators proceeded ahead anyway.  Power was more important than the Constitution.

Conspiracy

The indictment does not name the co-conspirators.  Some of them are obvious:  Co-Conspirator 1 is lawyer Rudy Giuliani who led the effort to alter the vote count. Number 2 is John Eastman who developed the “Constitutional theory” to overturn the Electoral vote. Co-Conspirator 3  is Sidney Powell. She joined Giuliani trying to convince America that the election was corrupted. 

Co-Conspirator 4 is Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark, who attempted to use the Justice Department to sow doubt in the election results.  5 is Kevin Chesbro, a lawyer in Wisconsin who developed a “legal basis” to throw out legally chosen electors and replace them with Trump electors.

Co-Conspirator 6 is still less certain, though it may well be past and current Trump advisor Jason Miller, who helped implement the “fake electors” strategy to overturn the January 6^th Congressional certification process.

But these six were not charged.  Donald Trump is the lone person indicted.

(Oddly missing as a co-conspirator to Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, at the center of almost all of these actions.  Speculation – has Meadows turned “state’s evidence”?)

Time

Time is of the essence.  While we are farther from the 2024 election that it “feels”, it seems crucial that the trial result of Donald Trump should be available for the American voters when they walk into the ballot booth in November of 2024.  Smith didn’t want the complexity of a seven person trial; seven different defense attorneys, seven different culpabilities to prove.  Instead, he is laser focused on the center of the conspiracy:  Donald Trump.  That doesn’t mean that the other six, and others not indicted, won’t face justice. 

It’s just that justice for Trump cannot be delayed. 

The Indictment

 

 

 

 

This is a Sunday Story.  No politics here, just memories from a yard sale.

Storage Addiction

Like a lot of Americans, we fell “prey” to the “sweet seduction” of storage.  Back in 2012, we first rented the space as a place to put all of Mom and Dad’s remaining furniture when we closed out their lives:  first their assisted living apartment, and then their house in Cincinnati.  There was no reason to have all that furniture and boxes of memorabilia there, so we U-Hauled it all up to Pataskala.  

Then, when the furniture was apportioned out to the family, there was all that open space. It wasn’t in our garage, or even in the shed behind the house.  It was out-of-sight, but only a couple of minutes away.  By 2015 it was no longer “Dad’s” storage, it was ours.  And we filled it, 200 square feet of old furniture, boxes of papers, the books and  pictures from my last office, boxes never unpacked from Jenn’s last move, left over T-shirts  from meets, and whatever.  

And for the next eight years it grew.  All of the stuff that went in the camper, went into storage when five dogs ended our “camper days”.  We added more old furniture,  and our son Joe’s collected stuff from college apartments and almost annual moves here in Columbus.  And then, Joe moved to California, leaving a lot of “good stuff” that couldn’t make the trip. After that, we could barely close the door.

Find Joy

We pay storage rental for a whole lot of things that were important to us; once.  

Marie Kondo had an “improvement show” called “Tidying Up”. Her tag line phrase was , “Feel the item in your hands, and if it sparks joy, keep it”.  There was a lot of stuff that was no longer “sparked joy” in storage, all for $140 a month.  It was time for a yard sale!!

We know how to “throw” a yard sale.  That was the big fundraiser for the Watkins Cross Country team for decades, literally tons of stuff from the team families, all piled into my garage during the spring and summer, then dragged out in August.  The aprons, stickers, and money rolls were all still in the steel “strong box” that was stashed in a container in the garage.  So we got together with the neighbors next door, and we had a garage/yard sale!

U-Haul was still involved.  It took two truckloads from storage to bring all of the sale items back to the house.  And there was lots of “clearing out”, first our garage (there was stuff in the rafters for the early “00’s”), then our backyard shed (the nine foot Christmas tree that five dogs made obsolete), and then – the storage itself.  And, naturally, it was the hottest day of the summer on “moving day”.   Finally, for three days, it was time to say goodbye to things that once gave us joy.

Bomber Jacket  

When I was a kid, I loved watching TV shows about World War II.  One of my favorites was called “Twelve O’Clock High”, a show starring Robert Lansing about American bombers flying out of England to attack Germany (it was also a great 1949 movie starring Gregory Peck).   Ever since then, I wanted a leather “bomber” jacket.  I got my first one just after high school, when wearing my Wyoming Letter Jacket (I still have it) went “out of style”.  That made it into my thirties, when I finally needed a “skosh” more room.  My second bomber jacket made it forty years.  It was my go-to “cool” jacket from November to March, a sure sign that winter was here.

But the zipper was worn, and I needed more “skosh” in my older age.  It spent the last couple winters in the closet.  I got a new one last Christmas, leather and fur and roomy. So my old bomber jacket went in the sale. I watched it go out of the garage on the shoulders of a teenager, smiling from ear to ear, even if the zipper was sticky, and he didn’t know how to “pop” the collar.  He didn’t have the “style” yet (I almost got up to fix it), but it’s got a new life.  

Camper

And there was all of the camper gear.  Jenn and I bought a camper in 2017 and spent a winter in Florida.  But health problems interfered with the next couple years, and then there was Covid.  And finally we went from one dog to five, and there was no room with five dogs.  So we sold the camper in the summer of 2020, but kept a lot of the gear.  We were going to get a bigger RV, one that all the dogs could travel in.

But that never happened, and the camper gear didn’t “hold joy” anymore.  It all went in the sale.  The night before, I had a fluke conversation at the Hardware store. The cashier showing me pictures of her “former” camper, exploded from a faulty refrigerator.  Luckily no one was in it, though it burned out their detached garage.  She was picking up her new camper on Saturday, and needed almost everything from kitchen utensils to sewer hookups.  And we had them.  She and her husband came over and our camper “stuff” got new life.

Backpack

But the biggest “regret” of the sale:  I sold my backpacking equipment.  I hiked the Rockies and the Appalachians, on my own, with friends, and of course, with Scouts.  I had some of the best equipment I could get, a Kelty Pack, a North Face tent and down sleeping bag; the stuff needed to get me over the next mountain to that night’s campsite.  All of the stories, from bears to rattlesnakes to the attack of the raccoons near the Kangamangus Highway in New Hampshire, were wrapped up in that gear.

But track and field took up all of my free time.  Instead of trekking mountain ridges, I was taking kids to National meets all over the country. And then there was my health, just the “price” of getting older, that made single treks less appealing.  And finally my “gear” was stashed in the rafters of the garage, more than two decades since my last excursion.  Backpacking through the wilderness was a part of my past, but not my future. 

My good down bag became a home to mice.  But the tent and the backpack were still good, and I put it  and the compass, stove, and canteen all in the sale.  A  man bought it for his grandchildren, just entering Scouting.  It’s more equipment than they can handle, but I hope it encourages them to find the joy of the wilderness as I did.  It was a reality shock when he picked up my hard-earned gear, and walked away.  No more frozen mountain camps in June in Colorado, or “billion” star nights on a ridge in New Mexico.  

Life Changes

And there were bins of artificial flowers, the remnants of our wedding back in 2012.  Jenn and I threw a great party, and had a great time planning our wedding together.  The flowers were wonderful; we decorated Salt Fork Lake Lodge so well that what didn’t come home stayed up on their walls for years.  But our fall wedding was definitely a one-of-a-kind thing.  I hope the lady who bought them puts them to great use.

There’s lots of empty plastic bins in the garage.  The rafters are empty.  The backyard shed is clearer than the day after it was built.  There’s still lots of memories to get out of storage, but the monthly bill is strong encouragement to get it done.  We’ll get rid of some, then absorb the rest into storage here.  There’s more to just saving money here.  It’s about a changing life, and finding new joy.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22
• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Graying in Pataskala – 7/17/23
• Being a Goat – 7/23/23
• Yard Sale – 7/30/23

Hunter Week

Wow, it’s Hunter Biden week!!!  The President’s wayward adult son is all the headlines, starting with an entire House of Representative’s committee hearing on him.  We now know: he didn’t pay taxes for a few years; he was addicted to drugs (cocaine) after his brother tragically died, and he doesn’t look half as good naked as he probably hoped.  

Naked – thanks to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene we got to see Hunter in full action.  That is, unless the famous Hunter Laptop (not to be confused with the Anthony Weiner Laptop – why don’t those guys use desktops, it would sound less suggestive, or maybe “towers”) was somehow hacked.  Let’s see; the legal “chain of custody” goes from Hunter, to the blind computer repairman, to Rudy Giuliani, to the New York Post, and then, I guess, to the FBI.  What could possibly go wrong?  We can blame Hunter’s embarrassing photo “in-delicto” on Photoshop, or even Artificial Intelligence, as much on his bad taste in recording swordsmanship.

NI (No Intelligence)

Speaking of intelligence, how do two groups of highly trained and compensated lawyers, reach an agreement, walk into a courtroom, and then discover that they really don’t agree on anything?  Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of tax evasion, and one felony of filing false information on a gun permit application.  His lawyers thought that was the end of the “Hunter Investigations”.  The US Attorney of Delaware didn’t agree.  He wanted to reserve the “right” to keep investigating all the other possible charges from that same time.

U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika stopped the hearing, and asked why Biden should agree to such a deal.  Apparently, she was speaking for the defendant.  It was a bad deal with no ultimate guarantees – and she “nixed” it.  Not bad for a Trump Appointee!!

Trump Strategy

I’m sure that Donald Trump isn’t pleased.  After all, he leaked the “Target Letter” from Jack Smith’s Special Prosecutor’s office.  It notified the twice impeached, once defeated, multiply indicted former President that he was likely to face more indictments over the 2020 elections.  Trump has a theory:  any publicity is better than silence.  His leaking the letter was a way of refocusing media attention back to HIM, and away from the other “little” Republican candidates for President, and the Biden economic renaissance.  

And Trump did get a few days of 24 hour coverage on national media.  And he will get that same coverage again when Jack Smith actually does indict him (it seems inevitable).  But in the meantime, Hunter is cutting into Trump’s “bad” time on cable news.  The Florida man can’t be happy with that.

Back in 2016, the news media was faced with a new and complicated issue.  Trump had so much going on, was saying so many “alternate facts”, that they couldn’t  correct him quickly enough.  And, since Trump was getting so much press, they had to “balance” their coverage with Hillary Clinton’s emails, over and over and over and over again.  While it seemed like it was emails ad-nauseum, at least it was one Presidential candidate versus another.

False Equivalency

But today, the media is falling into the same trap.  This time though, it’s a false equivalency.  Hunter Biden, as much of a mess as he is; is not the equivalent of Donald Trump.  If Hunter Biden was Hunter Smith, we would never have heard about his sad story at all.  Instead, he’s getting almost “equal” treatment; with reporters hanging out the doors of the Wilmington Federal Court House, all of the expert lawyers discussing every nuance, and messengers breathlessly running out of the room with the latest scoop.

Sure if Hunter was his Dad, this would be major “breaking news”.  But he’s not.  And while we all have some interest in what happens to the President’s family, it shouldn’t be the media equivalent of a candidate for President.  Think about what this current media frenzy would have been like with Billy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s younger brother.  His proclivity for beer (he even had “Billy Beer” brewed) and urinating on airport runways would have been headline news.  But the media at that time let Billy “be”, a sideshow, not a focus.

Too bad Hunter doesn’t get the same treatment.  In the meantime, the Dow Jones is up, unemployment AND inflation are down, and the world gets better:

  Thanks Joe Biden!!!!

There is a movement in the United States to “revise” American History.  It’s really kind of sad; there’s a portion of our political “class” that think they are the “victims”.   They declare that “woke” teachers (whatever that means) are trying to make their little white children feel guilty over the misdeeds of the American past.  So they want American History sanitized, whitewashed (a doubly-loaded term) to protect their children from feeling responsibility for the sins of their fathers.  

Emmett Till

Yesterday was the eighty-second anniversary of Emmett Till’s birth.  Till was a fourteen year-old Black teen, who in 1955 went from his home in Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi.  He committed an “unforgiveable sin” in the then-Jim Crow South. He spoke to a white girl, twenty-one years old, in a store. Maybe he even flirted with her a bit, as fourteen year-old boys sometimes do.  For that, he was kidnapped, tortured beyond belief, and then murdered.  They found his body in the Tallahatchie River.

The mangled corpse was eventually returned to his mother in Chicago.  She made a momentous decision:  she determined to have an open casket at his funeral.  Mamie Till-Mobley wanted the entire world to see what was done to her son.  She got little reaction from the national government.  A telegram sent to President Dwight Eisenhower asked him to see that:  “(J)ustice is meted out to all persons involved in the beastly lynching of my son.”  She never heard back (NYT).  Till’s murderers, Roy Bryant and RW Milam, were found “not guilty” by an all-white male Mississippi jury who deliberated for an hour.  No one was ever legally held to account.

Photographic Memory

But the media, particularly the Black Press, made sure that her decision impacted the world.  More than 100,000 people personally viewed the open casket.  And the pictures of Emmett’s body, and Mamie’s reactions, became a national memory.

Why was the excruciating death and funeral of this fourteen year-old so important?  It put a true picture of the terrorism that supported Jim Crow segregation in the mind of the Nation.  The Till story was a huge step on the road to Civil Rights.  It inspired leaders like John Lewis and Rosa Parks to sacrifice.  And it became the “face” of segregation, to be joined in the next ten years by the black and white video of Bull Connor’s police dogs attacking demonstrators, the bombed church in Birmingham that killed four little girls, and John Lewis himself beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.   Within a decade, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were law.

National Monument

Yesterday President Biden officially created a National Monument in honor of Emmett and Mamie Till.  The monument spans three sites:  the riverside where Emmett’s body was discovered; the Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi where Bryant and Milam were tried; and the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago where the funeral was held.  The riverside plaque had to be made bulletproof.  The memories of Jim Crow are still strong in the South, sixty-eight years later.

History is history.  It isn’t “woke” (whatever that means) or propaganda to be sanitized.  It is America’s “story”, the good and the bad.  It’s the amazing achievements, including Black people gaining civil rights. And it’s the incredible indecencies, including the lynching of Emmett Till.  To ignore, to “whitewash” those facts of our past, to scrub them from the classrooms of Florida, or here in Ohio, is to tell children a different story.  It says to those children that they have something to be ashamed of, some unspeakable crime that they can’t know about because THEY somehow bear responsibility.  

When the Education Department of Florida tells its teachers to talk about the “benefits” of enslavement to the enslaved, (“…they learned trades like blacksmithing they could use in life”), the kids in the classrooms aren’t stupid.  They’ll know that there’s a deep dark secret their teachers, or parents, or state governments, are ashamed of.  You see, kids are smart.  They can jump on the computer at home and see exactly what happened. It’s easily available: from Emmett Till to the horrors of enslavement in the 1800’s.  

More Perfect

In fact, the victimhood that the “white political class” or so afraid of, is exactly what they are creating.  Good teachers teach American History in the context and spirit of the Constitution (itself a flawed, racist document).  The Constitution begins with the goal;  “…in order to become a more perfect union…”.  To become more perfect, there were “imperfections”, from the three-fifths compromise to the Fugitive Slave Act, that needed to be “perfected”.  And that’s what our Nation did and does.  To deny those facts, those imperfections; is telling kids they have something to be ashamed of, that is somehow “their” fault.  

It’s not.  And a good teacher will let them know it’s not.  And just like the bullet holes that still scar the plaque by the river where Emmett’s body was discovered, we are still in the process of becoming “more perfect”.  That’s the lesson kids need to learn, and that every good teacher will share;  even in Florida, and even here in Ohio.  It isn’t about being “woke”.  It’s about kids knowing the truth, in context; and teachers knowing kids.

This is a history lesson – about the most “successful” third party Presidential run in modern American history.

American Success

Mark Hanna was the Republican “Boss” of Ohio in the 1890’s.  He was an American success story, a boy born in Northeastern Ohio in Lisbon, the son of a grocery store owner. They moved to Cleveland and opened a store there, and by fifteen Mark was the manager.  Like most men his age, he went to the Civil War, then came home to marry the daughter of a coal magnate. Ultimately, he ran that company and added iron as well.  By forty, he was a millionaire.

He then turned his sights to American politics.  He was a “behind the scenes” actor, one of the players in the “smoke filled backrooms” of national Republican politics.  Ohio was the pivotal state.  In the lates 1800’s, the Buckeye State was the political stepping-stone to the Presidency.  James Garfield (Cleveland) and Rutherford B. Hayes (Delaware) gained the Presidency, and Senator John Sherman (Lancaster, younger brother of Civil War General Sherman) was a political power and frequent candidate for the Republican nomination for decades.  Hanna was a “Sherman Man”, but when Sherman’s Presidential ambitions ended, he shifted to Canton’s William McKinley, a Civil War Veteran and a former Congressman.  Hanna helped McKinley become Governor of Ohio.  

King-Maker

In 1896 Hanna ran McKinley’s successful campaign for President against Nebraska’s Democratic Populist William Jennings Bryan.   McKinley’s running mate was Garrett Hobart, a lawyer and political insider from New Jersey, who died in office in 1899.   After his death, Republicans needed an “Eastern” replacement for McKinley, and also wanted to reduce the power of the “Progressive” wing of the Republican Party, dedicated to ending America’s industrial monopolies. 

McKinley chose Teddy Roosevelt as candidate for Vice President. Roosevelt was a Progressive, forty-two year old newly elected Governor of New York.  He made national news in 1898 as the newspaper hero of the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba.  McKinley’s choice hoped to keep Roosevelt and his Progressivism under wraps as Vice President, but Hanna was no fan.  He privately said “[T]here’s only one life, between that madman and the Presidency.”  The Republican ticker was elected in 1900, and took office in March of 1901.

That Damn Cowboy

McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz while shaking hands at the  Buffalo, New York, International Exhibition in September of 1901.  While McKinley lingered for a week, he ultimately succumbed to the wound.   Roosevelt was sworn in as the new President.

Mark Hanna said it best:  “Now that damn cowboy is President”.

Teddy Roosevelt was forty-two years old, the youngest man ever to serve as President.  He was athletic, often hiking the countryside that still surrounded Washington DC (including swimming across the Potomac River), or boxing on the front lawn of the White House.  His athletic lifestyle exemplified his political views.   He wanted an active government.  Roosevelt led the way to intervene against the monopolies that were throttling the American economy, beginning the process that would ultimately break up US Steel, Standard Oil, American Sugar and other monopolies.  

Roosevelt took a much larger view of American influence in the world, building the “Great White Fleet” that toured the globe to show America’s Naval might. He also began the Panama Canal project, to allow American shipping, and particularly the US Navy, to have a quicker route from East Coast to West.   And, Roosevelt personally intervened in the Russo-Japanese War, gaining the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.  

Taft

His personal energy seemed to energize the United States as a whole, leading us into the “Gilded Age”of American life before the First World War.  He served the remaining three years of McKinley’s term, then ran for re-election in 1904. Mark Hanna unexpectedly died before the convention, but Ohio still had “power”. 

 Roosevelt appointed Cincinnati’s Williams Howard Taft (forty-eight) as his Secretary of War.   While  Roosevelt was the first “media” President, Taft was the ultimate insider, the Solicitor General of the United States at thirty-two, a Federal Judge at thirty-four, and the Governor of the newly US occupied Philippines at forty-three.  He served Roosevelt as the ultimate problem-solver. 

By 1908, Roosevelt grew frustrated with the pace of change in America.  His own Republicans in Congress were slowing many of the economic changes that Roosevelt wanted to implement.  And the President also felt some pressure to honor the precedent set by Washington of not serving more than eight years.  So he decided not to run, and threw his support to Taft as his successor.  Taft faced McKinley’s 1896 Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan again, and won decisively.  

The image contrast of Roosevelt and Taft was stark.  The athletic Roosevelt, now fifty, went on safari to Africa, and then toured Europe.  Taft, a large man at three hundred-fifty pounds, was true to his “insider” image. While he continued to dismantle America’s monopolies and trusts, he was a more mainstream Republican, and soon ran into Roosevelt’s Progressivism.  

Bull Moose

As the 1912 election approached, Roosevelt decided to run for the Republican nomination for President against his former friend and the incumbent Taft.  While Roosevelt won the open primary delegates, most of the nominating delegates were selected by the leadership of the Party, in the “smoke-filled” room. So while Roosevelt had a large lead of popular votes going into the convention, Taft had a majority of the delegates, and won the Republican nomination.

The Democratic Party selected New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson as their candidate (the last Democrat to win the Presidency was two decades before).  Roosevelt determined to continue his candidacy as a third-party candidate, creating and accepting the nomination from the “Bull Moose Party”.  

And Roosevelt continued to live up to his media image, even giving a ninety-minute speech immediately after an assassination attempt. He was shot in the chest, and he began the speech by saying; “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Luckily the lengthy text of the speech, fifty-pages, absorbed much of the bullet’s energy as it passed through the document folded in his jacket pocket.

Final Result

Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party was the most successful third party candidacy in modern history.  He gained 88 electoral votes and received 27% of the popular vote.  Taft’s Republican Party gained only 8 electoral votes, and 23% of the popular vote.  Add those popular votes together, and a unified Republican candidate would have won.  Instead, Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats got 42% of the popular vote but an overwhelming 435 electoral votes.  

In the final analysis, even the presence of Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t enough to overcome the momentum of the two-party system.  But “Bull Moose” Roosevelt did determine who the next President of the United States would be – Democrat Woodrow Wilson. As Roosevelt wrote three years later – “What a dreadful creature Wilson is!  I cannot believe our people have grown so yellow as to stand for him.”

Joe Manchin, Joe Liberman, Jon Huntsman, Larry Hogan and the other “No Labels” politicians should take note.  If Teddy Roosevelt couldn’t win from a third party, how will they? And what’s the likely outcome if they try?

This is a “Sunday Story”. There’s no politics today, just a story about the World Series of Poker – and being a “goat”.

Goat Hood

I was a coach for over forty years. I coached wrestling, cross country; and for forty years I coached track.  Over the time, I learned a lot about how my athletes dealt with pressure, from their first competition at a dual meet, to the State and even National levels.  One of the lessons from all of those competitors was that everyone needs a “goat”.  

There’s a lot of recent definitions of “goat”.  Maurice Greene, world record holder and top US sprinter of the 1990’s (two Olympic Gold Medals, five World Championship Golds) had the letters tattooed on his shoulder.  Who wants to be a “goat”?  According to Greene he was the Greatest of All Time – the GOAT!!  Michael Johnson, Carl Lewis, and the soon to be introduced Usain Bolt would all take exception to his Goat-Hood, but those Gold Medals clinking around his neck, for that moment, were pretty convincing.  So was his then-world record time of 9.79 for the 100 meters.  That’s pretty GOAT-ly.

NFL 49’ers Jerry Rice and soccer legend (and now Miami player) Lionel Messi also have GOAT tattoos of one kind or another.  Greene was the best in his event, and inarguably so were Rice and Messi.  

Companion Goat

But I’m talking about a different kind of goat, one more closely related to the four-legged, hard-headed, sure-footed animal (not those weird fainting goats).  In horse racing, the thoroughbreds are the very definition of “high strung”.  They are always “on the edge” of training and temperament.  Every change makes a difference, from the jockey to the trainer to the track.  And every successful thoroughbred learns to adapt to new stables, new noises and new smells.   Good trainers find some way to “normalize” the situation.  

If there’s plenty of money, maybe the trainer brings along a stable horse, one that the racer is used to.  But another “trick” is to use a different animal as a stable mate.  Back at home, the thoroughbred lives with an actual goat in the stall.  Then when it’s time for the “big race”, the goat goes along for the ride.  The goat’s “job” is to keep the horse calm, to make things feel like “at home”.

So as a track coach when I qualified a single athlete to the Regional, State, or even the National meet; I always took a “goat”.  Their job was to enjoy the ride, hang out and warm up with the “Horse”, and  keep things calm in a highly charged championship environment.  It also let me be the coach, rather than a split coach/goat.  That made my job easier, the trip more enjoyable for everyone, and it let the “goat” see what the “big leagues” of competition were all about.  Someday maybe he (or she) would need their own goat.

Tournament Poker

I’m not a card player, but we once had a poker tournament as a fund-raiser for our track team. It was the smokiest room ever. That’s where I learned the basics about what’s called “Texas Hold-em”.  

It’s seven-card poker. Each player is dealt two cards face down.  Then there is a round of betting.  Next, three cards are placed face up on the table.  All the players can combine their two down cards with the three on the table to make their hand.  Another round of betting occurs.  Then “the turn”, a fourth card is placed up on the table, followed by more betting and a fifth card, “the river” is placed up.  That completes the seven cards for seven-card poker, two down, five up.  A Final round of betting, and the best hand wins.

Tournament poker isn’t the wild-wild west kind of card betting with money and whiskey on the table (and a pistol underneath).  In tournament poker you “buy in”, and get a number of chips to play.  The tournament then goes on until one player has chips left.  He (or she) is the winner of the tournament.  It’s kind of like Monopoly – the winner has all the Monopoly money – the chips.

World Series (WSOP)

I got a call from my nephew Chris the other day.  He was in Las Vegas (he sent me a photo of fireworks there on the Fourth of July), and he loves tournament poker. But I didn’t know that he entered in the World Series of Poker – Main Event.  There are over 10,000 participants in the tournament, each with a buy-in of $10,000 ($100 million total).  It’s not winner-take-all, the winner gets $12 million. The rest of the prize money is divided so that if you make the top 1500 players or so, you get at least $15000.  That pays for your “buy-in” and expenses. The longer you last in the tournament after that, the more you get.

So Chris was in Vegas, by himself, in the World Series of Poker. It’s the biggest poker tournament of the season, a tournament so big it goes on for a total of ten days.   He didn’t need advice about poker (at least not from me), what he needed was just someone to share his experience, talk through his decisions, and just be that other person “in the stall” to smooth things out. Chris needed a goat.

He first contacted me on July 10^th.  He’d already been playing for a couple of days, and there were  “only” 1520 left in the tournament.  That number turned out to be critical:  the first level of the “winning” $15000 was 1507.  Get to that, and the entry costs were paid and he was making money.

In the Stall

We talked about the same things I would say to my athletes.  Sure there were the technical aspects of the game, but there were also all of the issues created by days of focus and concentration.  Tournament poker is about the cards, but it’s also about reading the other players, and determining when to “…hold’em or fold-em” (thanks Kenny Rogers).  Sometimes you might even have the best hand, but it’s not worth risking all of your chips (going “all-in”).  And sometimes you have no choice.  After all, it’s called “gambling”. 

So my key words were “focus and the goal”.  Keep focus for games that lasted for hours, often until the early morning hours, and a tournament that lasts for days.   And keep “your eye on the prize”.  Sure it’d be nice to win $12 million.  But the longer you could stay at the table with chips, the higher up the “prize money” chart you’d go.  Advancement and survival;  that’s the goal.

Paying Out

It went on for three more days. Chris played the “small ball” game, folding a lot, taking chances when he had to, and building his chips carefully.  And we texted and talked at breaks.  He let me in on the experience of his poker competition, a whole different world to me.

Like all of those other National contests, it was a competition. Chris didn’t make the “final table”, a guaranteed cool million.  But he did end up 102nd, the top one percent of the tournament, and earned a $67,700 prize check.  He’s happy with the money.  But, he’s a competitor, a “Horse”. He wanted to go further; for the money, but even more, for the game.

He’ll go back, I’m sure. He’ll use his experience to improve his game.  And it’s still a card game; in the end, how the cards fall determines a lot in poker. Like any competition, you can’t control “all the variables”. Sometimes, you just go “card dead”. Luck plays a role. But when he does return to Vegas, I hope he needs another “text-goat”.  It was a fun ride.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22
• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Graying in Pataskala – 7/17/23
• Being a Goat – 7/23/23

Who’s Fooled

There is a political science axiom:  if you repeat the same thing, over and over again, ultimately, no matter how absurd, a percentage of the population will believe it’s true.  Abraham Lincoln (may have) said it best:  “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”   And there is a further “corollary” to that axiom:  “If you’re going to tell a lie, make it a whopper”.  No one would believe you would tell THAT big a falsehood.  

I don’t need to infringe on “Godwin’s Law” for an example of this.  Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin in the 1950’s proved the point in a speech to the Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. He held up a sheaf of papers and said he had the names of “…two hundred known Communists in the State Department”.  He didn’t; there weren’t even names on the papers, but it didn’t matter.   McCarthy started an era of distrust in American institutions, from the Government to the movies, that still echoes to this day.  And even though McCarthy was ultimately repudiated (“…have you no sense of decency sir”), an entire era of American History carries his name, and his “Big Lie”; McCarthyism.

Post-Truth Era

Our present “Post-Truth” era is saturated with “Big Lies”.  Just this week, Robert Kennedy Jr, the son of revered Senator Bobby Kennedy; said he wasn’t against vaccines, or anti-Semitic, or racist.  He said all of that under oath in front of a Congressional Committee, in spite of his own anti-vaccination, anti-Semitic and racist comments being read to him.  It  doesn’t matter – we are in an era when it’s OK to say something one day, lie about it the next, and deny the whole matter on the third.  

The State of Florida, by law, now requires schools to teach that enslaved Americans learned “personal skills” that benefitted them.  The fact that those skills were taught not to “benefit” the enslaved, but to profit the owners isn’t included in the lesson plan.  But in our current “Post-Truth” era, manipulating historic facts to make it “palatable” to some students (and more importantly, some parents) is just fine.  Like McCarthy’s names or Kennedy’s anti-vaccination, it’s OK to ignore the truth.  Glad I’m not teaching eighth grade history in Florida.  Even forty years ago, I wasn’t sugar-coating America’s history of enslavement to my classroom.

Watch “conservative” media.  Joe Biden is addled, infirm, senile, AND the master of a grand “Biden Crime Family”.  Oh, and he’s a Socialist or a Communist or some kind of “ist” that WE DON’T LIKE. (Just an aside:  I’m a Liberal, a newspeak Progressive, and Biden isn’t even that.  He’s a traditional Democratic moderate, in an era where there is little “moderation”).  

And climate change – well it’s “inevitable”, nature not industry, and there’s nothing we can do but apply more sunblock and run the air conditioners (electricity, 79% provided by fossil fuels).  Sorry about that, future generations.

Both Sides

To be fair, it’s not just one side of the political spectrum that is post-truth.  “My” side says that all MAGA supporters are “dumb” and “racist” and self-centered.  While I would agree that the MAGA ideology is racist and self-centered, I know many Trump supporters who are good neighbors, and want “good” for their friends, families and the Nation.  We don’t agree on how to get there. And we even don’t agree on where we’ve been.

And maybe that’s the point.  Forty years ago, when I was teaching American History to eighth graders, there was a “place” in the middle where we could “agree to disagree”.  We would vigorously argue our issues, but came from a single point of “fact”.  That point no longer exists, it’s been rubbed out by the totally separate sets of “postulates” that each side holds as “the truth”.  

My truth is no longer your truth – and perhaps that’s the ONLY thing we can agree on.  And that’s not enough foundation to continue our Nation.

Rough Guy

You know; Hunter Biden is a “rough” guy.  He’s been addicted to drugs. He ignored a “one night stand” child. Hunter’s played “fast and loose” with his income taxes, his law degree (Yale), and his connections to one of the most powerful men in the country.  But Hunter Biden’s father loves him and stands by him, regardless of the addiction or the behaviors.  Hunter, in fact, is the definition of the “black sheep” of the Biden family, and not in a “good” way.

The younger Biden pled guilty to misdemeanor counts of tax evasion and falsification on a gun permit.  This “deal” was offered by the US Attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, a Republican appointed to office by Donald Trump.  The Biden Administration specifically left Weiss in his position so that there would be no questions of bias.  Weiss himself said that he had all the power he needed to complete the investigation and bring the appropriate charges.

Lots of Smoke

There is a tremendous amount of “smoke” around the Hunter Biden fire.  Much of it was created by Rudy Giuliani. He spent part of 2018 fishing in the murky politics of Ukraine/Russian relations trying to find “dirt” to use against Joe Biden in 2020.  One of Giuliani’s aides was Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born businessman who served as a conduit for Ukrainian politicians to the former Mayor.  Parnas was later convicted in the US of campaign finance fraud, and is serving a twenty month federal prison sentence.  

In 2016, then-Vice President Biden went to Ukraine to talk to officials about $1 Billion in US aid.  According to Biden himself, he told then-Ukrainian President Poroshenko to replace the state prosecutor, Lutsenko, who wouldn’t prosecute public corruption.  When Poroshenko said that the Vice President didn’t have that authority, Biden threatened to call President Obama.  The prosecutor was replaced.

At the same time, Hunter Biden took a lucrative position as a board member of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.  Several US diplomats involved in Ukraine warned that Hunter’s actions “looked bad”,  an apparent use of his father’s position for profit.  It was in the United States’ interest and policy that the $1 Billion not be stolen by corruption in the Ukrainian government, and Hunter Biden didn’t help.  It soon didn’t matter though, as Joe Biden left office in January of 2017.

Alternate Theory

Mayor Giuliani created an “alternate theory” of the Bidens’ actions.  This theory was political storytelling, encouraged by sources connected to Russian intelligence.  Giuliani claimed that the Vice President demanded the removal of Lutsenko because the prosecutor planned on charging Hunter Biden. (Much later, Lutsenko backed Giuliani’s charges, and a successor prosecutor said he was fired for NOT investigating him).

And then, miraculously, Giuliani found Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop.  The nearly blind shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, copied the hard disc and found all sorts of “evidence” of Hunter’s involvement in Ukrainian corruption, as well as nude pictures of Hunter and women.  According to Mac Isaac, he tried to turn the laptop over to the FBI, but they showed little interest.  So he gave it to Giuliani who ultimately gave it first to the New York Post, and then to the Justice Department.

There is a legal principle about evidence (like the laptop) called “chain of custody”.  Evidence of a crime needs to be traceable back to its origins, without gaps.  Otherwise, the evidence might be altered.  The Hunter laptop has several “breaks in the chain”, and it’s likely none of that information could be used by Justice in Court.

Parnas this week wrote a letter from prison to the Republican Chairman of the House Committee investigating Hunter, telling them that he never found any real evidence of Hunter’s involvement.  

Fact and Fiction

So what we have is Joe Biden’s story, backed by US diplomats (even those who warned about Hunter’s involvement).  Or we have Giuliani’s story, backed by rumors and information (disinformation) from Russian intelligence and a disgraced former Ukrainian Prosecutor.  And discredited by Giuliani’s aide, Mr. Parnas.

The Trump-supporting Republicans in the House of Representatives are hooked on Giuliani’s story as a line of attack on President Biden.  They hope to weaken him in the 2024 election in the same way they weakened Hillary Clinton with the Benghazi hearings.  But there is a critical difference.  The House Republicans attacked Clinton’s lack of action during Benghazi.  But they are only indirectly attacking Joe Biden in the “Hunter hearings” today.  They are instead attacking his son.

It’s more as if there were hearings about Chelsea Clinton, or even Donald Trump Jr.  The full power of the House of Representatives is being brought against a private citizen of the United States.

Where’s the Fire

The “Hunter Hearings” are a “payback” for the Democratic House Trump investigations of the past six years. But the difference is, the Democrats were investigating the duly elected President of the United States: first for connections to Russia during the 2016 election, then for withholding aid from Ukraine for political purposes, then for fomenting election fraud and insurrection.  It’s politics:  “…all’s fair in love, war, and politics”.  But it’s not “fair” to attack the children of the President, even the failed ones:  it’s not “equivalent”.  

So we’ll watch the “Hunter Hearings” today.  We will listen to the “whistleblowers” (hopefully they will show up this time).  But in the end, we aren’t talking about government corruption.  The Republicans can’t get to the President, so they are hitting his “weak spot”, his troubled youngest son.  And they are hitting him with what they know is weak and even falsified evidence.  But it doesn’t matter; they’re getting the “smoke” they want.  

Even though there’s no fire.

Politics

OK, I know that the campaign for the one issue August election here in Ohio is ugly.  But I just saw a “Vote Yes for Issue One” advertisement that was a complete “Big Lie”.  Vote for Issue One so that schools don’t try to make you kids transgendered?  Vote for Issue One to keep control (the “promise”) of your children, to keep them from “forced” gender or identity changes?  I mean come on, do you really think schools are trying to change your kid’s gender?  We can’t even get them to stop chewing gum, look at their cell phones, or turn in their homework.

Issue One was slipped onto the ballot for August 8^th, soon after that same legislature said we shouldn’t do August ballots.  It’s technical:  about how to amend the Ohio Constitution.  It’s got nothing to do with schools or sex or gender.  Here’s the simple truth:  since the year 1912 Ohio citizens had the right to amend the Constitution by a mass public vote:  Majority wins.  But if Issue One passes, it will require 60% of the voters to amend.  

There’s More

And Issue One goes even farther.  To even get an initiative on the ballot, the new Issue would require signatures of 5% of voters in EVERY county in Ohio, regardless of how big or small. (Today signatures are required from half the counties in the state).  It allows ANY small county to literally VETO any initiative, regardless of the percentage of statewide vote they actually have.  How much power de we want to give to Vinton County (12,608), or Monroe (13,007), Morgan (13,427) or Noble (13,956), all smaller than my City of Pataskala (15,008 “strong”)?  Should any one of them be able to veto the entire rest of the state (11.78 million)?

But wait, there’s more.  Issue One also changes how the State Board “counts” the more than 400,000 signatures it takes to put an initiative on the ballot.  Currently, once the State counts the signatures, petitioners have ten days to fix illegible ones (see my writing) or add more signatures as necessary.  Under Issue One – they would have to start completely over.  

Constitutions 

Issue One would basically make changing the Ohio Constitution ONLY possible through the State Legislature. And that’s exactly what Ohio’s State Legislature wants.  They want one less check on their own powers. If you went to Watkins Memorial High School and I was your social studies teacher, you might think that’s OK.  After all, I taught you that to amend the United States Constitution, it takes two-thirds of the Congress, and three-fourths of the States to agree.  It’s really, really, hard to change.

But there’s a difference between the US Constitution and the fifty individual state Constitutions.  The US Constitution was written as a “general” document, with lots of room for interpretation.  The State Constitutions are specific documents, hundreds of pages long.  The average State Constitution is five times longer than the US Constitution. The US Constitution has seven original sections, and twenty-seven amendments.  The Ohio Constitution has nineteen sections and 170 Amendments. It’s like a combination of the US Constitution AND the US Code of “regular” laws.  

The US Constitution and the State Constitutions are NOT the same, and do not serve the same purpose.  They never have.  In fact, the United States Supreme Court requires State Constitutions to be much more specific.

Big Truth

So here’s the “Big Truth”.  The Republicans in the State Legislature are afraid of losing to a “pro-choice” women’s health amendment in November.  That’s a valid argument for the entire state to have, and it’s on for the November ballot.  But, instead of fighting that “fair” fight, Issue One changes the rules for November so that it would be near impossible to pass.  These Republicans simply don’t believe in majority rule. And don’t just ask me, a Registered Democrat.  Ask John Kasich and Bob Taft, former Republican Governors or Maureen O’Connor, former Republican Chief Justice.

Gerrymandered districts already tilt the legislature.  IF Ohio was fair, then there would be something close to a 55% Republicans, 45% Democrats in legislature.  Instead the Ohio Senate is 79% Republican and the House is 68% Republican.  Even the most rabid Republican can’t really believe that represents the Buckeye State. Ohio’s State Legislature even ignored a state Constitutional amendment (passed by this same process) and rulings by the State Supreme Court that required fairer districts.  They refused to change – so Ohio is still highly gerrymandered.  Now they want to change the rules to make sure they have even more power.

The November vote on the women’s health amendment will be a tough one.  But at least in that fight, folks can be clear what the issues are.  This Issue One isn’t about that.  It isn’t about schools, gender, sex, or even abortion.  It’s about power.

Let’s put this in football terms most Ohioans understand.  If Issue One passes:Ohio State 58, Michigan 42;  Michigan wins. Or worse, Ohio State 87, Michigan 1; Michigan wins.  The people of Ohio understand what’s fair, and what’s a power grab.  They just have to show up on August 8^th and keep it fair so   Ohio wins.

This is a “Sunday Story”. There’s no politics here, just some observations about a little neighborhood in a little town called Pataskala.

Summer Fix Up

It’s summertime in Pataskala. And this summer, besides having to cut the grass three times a week, there’s a new trend. 

Everyone’s home value is rocketing up. Sure, part of that’s inflation, but part is the economic boom that’s boosting the Columbus, Ohio area. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Intel, Facebook (oops, I mean Meta), are all building on the east side of town – just beyond the outer belt. And that’s us; right where Pataskala is.  We part of the new Midwest “Silicon Valley”!!

How big a deal is it?  Our house value is up more than 80% in the last ten years.  Luckily the property taxes aren’t quite keeping up, though they’ve increased too.   So maybe those increased values make the owners feel like putting more effort into their homes.  We just power washed our twelve year-old vinyl siding and it came up great.  There’s no need for the expense of ripping all the old off and putting new on, not to talk about the disruption to five dogs from people pounding on the outside walls all day.  Two dogs were already freaked out from the groan of the power washer.  But others in the neighborhood are tearing even newer siding off and replacing it completely. 

That’s fine:  it makes the neighborhood look sharper. But there is one concern. 

Colours

Our house is “cream” (or “alabaster, chateau, or clay”). On one side is our neighbor’s newly painted brick and stucco.  It’s “off-white”(or “weathered white or melting icicles”). On the other side, their new siding is the color of an old red barn (maybe “mountain berry, or harvest red”). 

But several others decided to choose the same color.  Of course they say their houses are all different:  “seaport, granite, smoke or dove”. But to this old history teacher, they all look battleship gray. Remember those World War II movies; the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay or the USS Arizona before December 7th?   US Navy Battleship Gray; fresh off the pier and ready for action. 

One of my sisters is an artist.  She has a “professional” eye.  When she looks at blue, she sees dozens of shades and hues, all carefully categorized and used in her work.  I’m sure if she looked down the street, she’d see all the differences in the “gray”.  But to my, untrained eye, blue is blue, and these are all just Battleship Gray – some darker, some lighter, but all gray.

And I have to admit, it looked sharp — On the first house. And it looked OK on the second.  But now  it’s going up on the third, I’m beginning to feel like we’re living in officers’ housing, here 566 miles from the nearest Naval base. 

My street should be renamed Battleship Row, even though the houses are more Frigate than Capital sized.   While gray is striking in contrast – it’s just gray when you put them all together. 

Words

And, by the way, there is the whole difficulty with the word “gray” too.  Is it “gray” or “grey”?  I had to do some research on that, and discovered that, as Bill Murray said in his famous soliloquy in the movie Meatballs; “…It just doesn’t matter”.   Either “g-r-a-y” or “g-r-e-y” is OK.  So what’s the problem?  Well, like a lot things involving my writing, it’s all Mom’s fault!!

Yep, here in the USA it’s Battleship G-R-A-Y.  In the Crayola box it’s listed as G-R-A-Y.  You can even order Battleship G-R-A-Y paint for your own equipment.   But – if you want fine English breakfast tea (or you’re a fan of Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Starship, Enterprise) you order Earl G-R-E-Y tea.  And F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about G-R-E-Y days in This Side of Paradise:

“It was a grey day, that least fleshy of all weathers; a day of dreams and far hopes and clear visions”.

But, he was an American author.  Maybe he had an English/English teacher, or an English mother helping him fail spelling tests like me!!

Anyway, I’m glad my neighbors care about their homes.  It makes everyone try to “keep up with the Joneses”, and make their property look nicer.  And all these gray homes are making our house stand out; more than even the “Biden for President” sign in the front yard did a couple of years ago.  But it would be nice if they could find another shade.  How about a nice light blue; “robin’s egg, or turquoise”, or, — oh no: “greyed-out blue”.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22
• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Gray – 7/17/23

Driving

I’m not a “podcast” guy, but I get a lot of recommendations.  “Have you heard Rachel Maddow’s latest podcast about this?”, or “Your favorite lawyers, Weismann and McQuade have a podcast about…(something)”.  My current lifestyle doesn’t have the “situation” where I can sit and listen to someone on headphones.  If I do, I usually have a more pressing task – I fall asleep (thanks Dad for the “Dahlman sleep gene”).  

I do a lot of driving.  During track season, there are trips all over the state, long hours in the Jeep.  And the radio is always on, though it’s really not a radio much anymore. It’s a Bluetooth device hooked up to my phone.  A couple of years ago I decided to take “courses”; US Constitutional Law, the American Revolution, African American History; as I cruised to the next meet.  But there were two problems.  

First, I found I drifted away from the course as I bumped along, then had to “rewind” to get back to what I missed.  And even more importantly, the “Dahlman Sleep Gene” would kick in. After a long day of officiating pole vault – definitely not a good situation on the road.  Better to “boogie” to Motown or 60’s and 70’s Classic Rock (or Surf music at full volume for that drive at the end of May when the Jeep top first comes off).

 And every few weeks, Jenn and I travel Ohio gathering Lost Pet Recovery equipment used to get lost dogs.   I usually drive as Jenn organizes where our next stop will be (last week:  Pataskala to West Liberty to Kenton to Findlay to Greenville to Pataskala, 358 miles).   Jenn and I do actually talk, and we also usually have cable news going in the background.  Just like it’s going on right now as I write.  

Gavel to Gavel

But there is one event I can always listen to, in the car, cutting the grass, even the doing the perpetual picking up of poop (five dogs – you do the math):  Congressional Hearings.  I listen often enough, that I have the CSPAN Radio App on my phone.  That way I don’t have to depend on cable news for “gavel-to-gavel” coverage.

I can tell you exactly where I was when Cassidy Hutchinson testified to the January 6^th Committee about what Donald Trump did on the morning of the Insurrection. (I was ten miles south of Archbold, Ohio on Route 66).  Yesterday was a “throw-back” to the “old days”. We listened to the Congressional questioning of Chris Wray, the Director of the FBI.  It was like the Benghazi hearings (I sat and watched all eleven hours of Hillary Clinton), or the early James Comey hearing. (That was the first time we found out that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign, and got to see Adam Schiff and Jim Jordan in action).  

How Republican?

Jenn and I went to Greenville, Ohio (thirty miles northwest of Dayton) to get equipment, and the hearings were on for the whole trip. The big overall headline:  Republicans think the FBI is co-opted by Democrats to attack Republicans.   So let’s get the obvious out of the way first.  The FBI is perhaps the MOST conservative agency in the United States government.  It always has been.  Remember George Carlin’s famous “Seven Words you Can’t Say on TV” monologue?  Carlin represented the “liberal” view of the FBI back then.  He told us to answer the phone saying, “F—k Hoover, can I help you?” 

And then there’s Chris Wray himself. He was appointed by Donald Trump, and unanimously approved by Republican Senators. He is a life-long Republican who worked in Bush Justice Department.  So was the now “infamous” James Comey, the Director before him (and the even more “infamous” Robert Mueller, the Director before Comey).  Ask anyone involved with Black Lives Matter, the FBI is no “friend” of Progressives.

 But if you listened to Chairman Jordan’s Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, you wouldn’t get that.  The Republican members attacked Wray for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, claimed that there were FBI “provocateurs” on the steps of the Capitol during the Insurrection, and that Wray was buying “meta-data” from the big social media companies and censoring what they published.  The Republicans attacked Wray for backing Covid precautions, threatening the Roman Catholic Church, and protecting the “Biden Crime Family”.  We heard about Hunter’s Laptop and texts, and questions like “Mr. Wray, when did you stop violating the First Amendment?” 

Flip the Script

And in a full “flip-the-script” moment, it was the Democrats; Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Zoe Lofgren, and the profound voice of Sheila Jackson-Lee; who were defending the Trump-appointed Director.   They even spent most of their five minute time slot making speeches.  It gave Wray a chance to recover from the relentless conspiracy-driven Republican onslaught.

But in the end, Wray gave as good as he got.  I think I would have stood up and told the Republicans where to stick Hunter’s laptop, but Wray remained cool.  We were on State Route 49 just north of Phillipsburg, when Wray told Republican Congressman Harriet Hageman (took Liz Cheney’s seat): “The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me given my own personal background.”

Chris Wray is a bureaucratic survivor.  He somehow managed to avoid getting fired by Donald Trump before he left office.  And he manages to remain in the Directorship because of Biden’s goal of restoring “traditional norms” to America’s government.  He didn’t take the Republican bait, but he managed to defend the 38,000 employees of the FBI, time and time again.  In his own, low key way, he got his point across.  When challenged on the Mar-a-Lago search, he quietly said:  “In my experience, ballrooms, bathrooms and bedrooms are not SCIF’s (sensitive compartmented, information facilities)”. 

Ginning Up

The majority committee members represent what the Republican House of Representatives is all about:  defending Donald Trump and perpetuating MAGA conspiracy myths.  The accusations against Wray will surely “gin-up” the Republican base, but will do little to change anyone’s mind about MAGA’ism.   So it’s hard to see how attacking the FBI is a good long-term strategy. 

But one thing for sure – it keeps me awake behind the wheel.  And that’s an all-around good thing, for me, and the rest of the drivers out there.  I’m holding my breath for the “whistle-blower” hearings!! We’ll plan a nice long trip for that one.

Alliance

This week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) got stronger.  NATO has a strict policy, every member must agree for the alliance to accept new members – every, single one of the thirty members.  It’s difficult to imagine that any thirty nations could all agree on any single issue.  But here we are, Finland was already accepted, and this week, Turkey dropped their opposition to Sweden joining ($20 Billion worth of F-16’s from the US to Turkey didn’t hurt).

When I was studying world strategies in the 1970’s, one of the ideas was to “contain” Communism.  The United States had a series of Treaty Organizations; NATO, CENTO, SEATO, stretching around the world and surrounded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People’s Republic of China.  The idea was to create a physical barrier to further Communist expansion.  (Containment was the justification for the Vietnam War, “…better to fight Communism in Southeast Asia than in the fields of Iowa”.  We misjudged what the Vietnam War was all about.  Now Communist Vietnam stands as a bulwark against Communist China – go figure).

Russian Democracy

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the “mission” of NATO seemed in jeopardy.  There was no reason to protect against Communism, when Communism itself demonstrably failed.  Many talked about abandoning NATO, including some of the core countries of the European Union.  Others thought we should ask the newly “democratic” Russia to join in, as a way to support the reformed Yeltsin government there.  And, when President Trump talked about disbanding NATO, he wasn’t really crazy, he was just really late.  

Because Russia didn’t remain a democracy.  The rise of Vladimir Putin created a whole new kind of Russian autocracy, one based on a criminal oligarchy.  It wasn’t about the good of the Russian people, it was about the profits of the oligarchs surrounding their former KGB operative turned President.  And as Putin solidified his leadership, he began to look beyond Russia’s borders, lusting to re-form the USSR. Putin reasserted Russian military dominance in the south:  Azerbaijan and Georgia.  Then he looked at the Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia; and the major nations to Russia’s west, Belarus and Ukraine.  

The other states of Eastern Europe, all formerly in the “Soviet Bloc”, were already in NATO.  When the Baltic states looked for protection, NATO agreed.  And that put NATO directly in the path of Putin’s plan for Russian expansion.  

Russian Hegemony

Putin and his minions intervened in elections and made sure that the leadership of Belarus and Ukraine remained sympathetic to Russian hegemony.  And while Lukashenko in Belarus maintains control and close ties with Putin, the Ukrainian’s “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 removed the Russian backed President Yanukovych, replacing him with more democratic leaders.  In response, Putin sent troops into the Eastern Ukrainian provinces of the Donbas and the southern province of Crimea, where Russia maintains its major warm-water naval base at Sevastopol. 

Putin’s incursion into Ukraine raised the alarm in the rest of Europe.   The US responded with economic sanctions against Russia, but the oligarchs remained firm in their commitment to Putin.  And with President Trump’s actions, the perception was that NATO was weaker.  The Eastern European members were looking in fear to their East.  But without assured United States’ support, those members were left “in the wind”.  

Putin’s Mistakes

America remains embroiled in internal political conflict since 2016.  The “pandemic” election of 2020, the Insurrection of January 6, 2021, and the ugly withdrawal from Afghanistan all gave the perception that the United States was so self-involved, it couldn’t (or wouldn’t) react to a Russian move on Ukraine.  In fact, Putin thought that a major crisis might further fracture NATO, with the US stepping away from its responsibilities.  That was his first mistake.

Putin’s second mistake was in misjudging the determination of the Ukrainian people.  He thought that a “lightning strike” of Russian troops on the capital, Kyiv, and against President Zelenskyy, would quickly topple the government.  Putin could then replace Zelenskyy with someone more sympathetic to Russia, perhaps even Yanukovych again.  But the “lightning” fizzled, strung out in a seventeen mile traffic jam north of the capital.  And Zelenskyy proved to be an inspirational leader, able to maintain Ukrainian unity against Russian pressure.

Putin’s third mistake was in depending on his own armed forces.  In a government where profit to the oligarchs is the most important factor, a well-supplied and trained military just isn’t that crucial to the cause.  While Russian tanks had a feared reputation based on World War II, the reality is that the commanders couldn’t even communicate without cell service, allowing Ukrainian forces to zero-in and kill the leaders of the Russian attack.  

And finally, Putin failed to recognize that his actions gave NATO a “reason to be”.  NATO existed to offset the Soviet Union, now it was clear that Russia was still an expansionist danger.  Not only did NATO, led by the Biden Administration, unite in support of  Ukraine; but two “neutral” nations, Sweden and Finland, determined to join the alliance.  They not only have extensive borders with Russia, but have strong military forces themselves to add to NATO’s strength.

NATO

Putin’s four major mistakes have left him weakened, so much so, that some of his oligarch allies are “testing” his control.  He involved Russia in the biggest land war in Europe since World War II in Ukraine; one that Russia seems ill-equipped to win.  And Putin has done something that didn’t seem possible just a few years ago:  uniting NATO nations together, and making the alliance even stronger.

There is nothing more dangerous than a cornered Putin.  He’s under threat, from Ukraine, and from NATO.  And he’s vulnerable within.  We saw the Wagner Group, a private army under control of a Putin ally, threaten to march on Moscow itself.  Perhaps the greatest proof of Putin’s weakness is that his “ally”, Yevgeny Prigozhin, wasn’t executed for treason.  In fact, Putin had a “meeting” with him, after the Wagner troops turned around and went back to their bases.  That doesn’t look like strength.

But Putin still commands the Russian Strategic Forces; nuclear weapons in missiles, bombers and submarines.  And he still controls the Russian “special services”.  Just last week a twenty-eight year old bank Vice-President “fell to her death” from a sixth floor apartment balcony (Daily Mail) in classic Russian secret police style.   Putin may be weakened, but he’s not finished.  

That’s even more reason to continue to strengthen and grow NATO.  Ukraine has not been invited to membership, yet.  But once the current conflict is over, don’t be surprised to see it as the next “newest” member, blocking one more area of Russian expansion.  It’s the only thing to do, whether Putin remains in power, or one of his “buddies’ finally pitches him out (the Kremlin window?).  Because Russia is likely to remain a “rogue” nation for a long while.  And NATO is the “balanced” response to Russian expansion. 

Ukraine Crisis

• Putin’s Disaster – 7/11/23
• How Good Are They – 4/10/23
• Marking Territory – 3/15/23
• Ukraine and America – 2/28/23
• Kherson – 11/14/22
• When Winter Calls – 9/12/22
• A Full Plate – 7/26/22
• Ukrainian Independence – 6/30/22
• No Victory Day – 5/10/22
• Desperate Moves – 4/27/22
• This is the Time – 4/20/22
• The Winning Message – 4/18/22
• Victory Day – 4/12/22
• Chapter Two – 4/11/22
• Zelenskyy’s Choice – 3/31/22
• The Gaffe – 3/28/22
• Putin’s Choice – 3/27/22
• Far Away From the Front – 3/20/22
• The Next Step – 3/17/22
• Thinking the Unthinkable – 3/14/22
• Russian Oil – 3/11/22
• Kyiv’s Choice – 3/8/22
• The Logic of Madness – 3/7/22
• Lights Out – 3/6/22
• Ante Up – 3/3/22
• State of the Union  3/2/22
• The Guns of March 3/1/22
• Sanctions 2/26/22
• What Happens Next 2/24/22
• The Games Begin  2/22/22
• Talking with a Friend 2/18/22
• Trip Wire 2/2/22
• On the Brink 1/23/22
• The Ukrainian Dilemma 12/5/19