Category: Uncategorized

America’s in Trouble

America is in trouble.  The cost of everything is going up, and wages aren’t keeping pace.  And if you think that’s bad, think about trying to live on 90% of what you made in 2013.  That’s what retired folks on fixed income are looking at, down 30% in purchasing power in the last twelve years.  (For a retired public school teacher; the promised thirteen years of 3% annual Cost of Living Allowance has turned into a total of only 5.5%.  That’s 30% less than what was promised – not that I’m complaining!!).

But one side of our political debate chooses to ignore consumer costs and spending, and focus on the tiny fraction (03.3%) of American teenagers that are transgendered (UCLA).  Those kids are used as a cudgel, a perceived “threat” to other children, and, according to some, the “The American Way of Life”!

Let me give you a current case, a distraction; demonizing this most vulnerable group of all, transgendered teens.  

Wrestling Coach

To start out, I need to explain that I wrestled in Junior High and High School.  I was also a wrestling coach at both levels for decades.  Like most wrestling coaches,  I got on the mat with the kids, it’s the most effective way to coach.  Wrestling is the ultimate full-contact sport.  One wrestler attempts to gain physical control of the other wrestler, forcing his or her shoulders to the mat for a long enough period of time that the official declares a fall, or what’s called a pin.  

Short of pinning someone, wrestling involves a series of actions to assert control over the opponent.  Certain actions are assigned points.  Taking the other wrestler down to the mat in control is worth two points.  Getting away from the controlling wrestler is worth one point.  Reversing from controlee to controller is worth two. Getting the opponent into a “near-fall” (nearly pinned) position can be worth two or three points, depending on how long they’re held there.

So you can win by pinning the opponent, or you can win by scoring more points.   Even if you have fewer points, a pin always wins. And there are technical rules:  you can’t choke, you can’t lock your hands around your opponent’s body down on the mat, you can’t twist against a joint to injury.  Violation of rules gives the other opponent points, or can result in disqualification from the match.

Parts is Parts

When I was wrestling and coaching, wrestling was a males-only sport.  Today that’s changed, and there is a growing movement of girls wrestling. Regardless, the rules are the same.  And whether a girl is wrestling a girl, a boy a boy, (or even, girls versus boys) there is an unspoken rule.  There are obvious places or parts that you don’t grab on your opponent.  Not only is it against the rules, but both wrestlers are equally vulnerable.  So, just because a hand comes across your mouth, you don’t get to bite it.  And just because an arm goes into the opponent’s crotch (there’s actually a move called a “high crotch”), it doesn’t mean you grab their private parts.

But it sometimes happens.  If you go on the wrestling mat, whatever form of “protection” you might wear, you could get hit in the privates.  It’s almost always an accident.  If it isn’t, and the official observes, it results in disqualification for unsportsmanlike conduct.  But the reality of the sport is:  when you’re struggling to gain or get out of control on a mat, things do accidently get touched, pushed, prodded or banged.  

 But when I was on the bottom, trying to escape, and the boy on  top thrust his fingers in my anus, it didn’t feel like an accident.   He later joked that he was “checking the oil”.  Today, we might call it sexual assault.  Back in “that day”, it was definite grounds for a fist fight.   And I haven’t forgotten.  It happened almost fifty years ago and I can still tell you that boy’s name (now an old man, like me).

Kallie’s Story

Kallie Keller was a sixteen year-old girl wrestling in the state of Washington.  She was in a match, down on the mat, when her opponent pressed fingers into her vagina.  Neither video of the action, nor the official, can see what happened.  But video of Kallie’s expression showed that something was going on that shocked her at that moment during the match.

It’s a different era, and fist-fighting during a wrestling match is even less likely.  After the match, Kallie complained both to her parents and the coach.

Like the incident in my match, it’s difficult to tell: was this an intentional sexual assault, or was it “inadvertent contact” in a wrestling situation.  The video is online: I can’t tell whether it was accidental or intentional.  Ultimately, the County Prosecutor didn’t think he could make a case, and charges were never brought.  But the county did bring charges of “failure to report” on both the school’s athletic director and the principal.  The prosecutor couldn’t bring charges, but he made it clear that it wasn’t up to the school administrators to make that same determination.

What Matters

Does it matter who was on top of Kallie when this happened?   Kallie’s opponent (it was later discovered) is a transgendered girl, but if she was cisgendered, would that make it OK?  I didn’t seem “OK” with that boy fifty years ago. I’m sure Kallie felt the same on the mat that day.  

As you might expect, all of a sudden this is about “boys in girls’ sports”, not the alleged inappropriate conduct of a wrestler of any gender.  The birth gender of the offender doesn’t make a difference. The intent absolutely does.

But for the political tinder fueling our social media fires, gender is really all that’s important.  And it distracts us from the very real and  serious issues that face our Nation.  

October 7th

It’s campaign time for the 2026 election, and you’re going to be hearing about this one.  Republicans are going to claim that some Democratic candidates are “anti-Semitic”, because they are horrified at Israel’s actions against Palestinians in the Middle East.  To Republicans (and by projection, for you), Israel’s actions in the Middle East since the October 7^th attack by Hamas should be totally justified.   And for the record:  I think that the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians that day was horrific, unjustifiable, and awful.  1200 Israelis were killed, including 364 massacred at the Nova Music Festival. 

But in response, Israel leveled Gaza.  73,000 Palestinians are dead, and more than 170,000 more wounded.   Two million Palestinians are homeless, roughly 90% of the population.  Republicans (and some Democrats) want us to consider this a “proportional response” from Israel, a nation-state, against Hamas, a terrorist organization.  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear in both word and action that he considers that all Palestinians are Hamas.  He explains away his nation’s actions by comparing it to the United States use of atomic bombs against Japan, or US actions against Native Americans in the 19^th century.  Netanyahu is so committed to this destructive path, that clearly no settlement, even one negotiated by Trump’s own “Board of Peace”, is good enough for BeBe.  He refused another deal just this week.

False Equivalents

First, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not measurable against what’s happened in Gaza (accept, perhaps, in terms of casualties).  World War II was nation-state versus nation-state, and the atomic bombs were used as an alternative to a two or three year plan of invasion which would cost millions of lives.  The two situations are not the same.

Second, there are more realistic parallels to the American actions against the Native American population.  And while the United States still benefits today from the aggressions of the 19^th century, few of those actions are something Americans ought to be “proud of”.  Similarly the actions taken by American immigration control forces today echo the World War II internment camps, another black spot on our history.

Republicans want this to be a “black and white” issue.  They say if you’re not in favor of Israel, then you are abetting terrorists.  And if you’re not backing Netanyahu, then you are an anti-Semite, a hater of Jews. (In the same way, they’ll tell you that if you support Democrats who support some socialist ideas, then you support Communism).  Neither are “black and white” issues.  

In the Gray

There are a whole lot of grays.  First of all, absolute obeisance to Netanyahu isn’t even true in Israel itself.  Like Trump here in the United States, BeBe has a core support of around 37% of Israelis, and his re-election chances in the coming October 27^th election are currently less than 50% (Jerusalem Post).  So if Americans can’t question his actions without being anti-Semitic, what about over half of Israelis? Are they anti themselves?

In the same sense, much of the world is opposed to Donald Trump.  So, is much of the American electorate, with only a 34% approval rating (Pew).  So is the world anti-American, or simply against Donald Trump, along with a majority of the American people?  

Americans can be against the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu without being anti-Israel or against Jews.  Almost half of American Jews oppose his actions (Washington Post).  And Republican leadership, most of whom are not Jewish, don’t get to decide who is anti-Semitic and who isn’t.  But they’re trying to anyway. 

It’s About Arithmetic

This issue has a lot more to do with electoral politics than right and wrong.   “Gray issues” don’t make for good thirty second television ads, or billboard slogans.  But our clear political reality today is that Donald Trump has committed the United States to Benjamin Netanyahu. What happens to one impacts the other.  BeBe is already running an AI generated ad showing his opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, running past a Jewish youth with a T-shirt saying “Israeli Unity”, to embrace a Palestinian lawmaker (Twitter). And it’s not playing so well with the voters in Israel.

Michigan Democrats nominated Abdul El-Sayed for the US Senate. Expect Republicans will do all they can to link support for him to  support for “terrorists”.  But, even in politics, two plus two doesn’t always equal five.  Hopefully both the American and Israeli electorates can see the mathematical error, and get to the correct answer for the equation.

This is a “Sunday Story”.  No politics today, just a story of “modern life”.  Enjoy!!!

Old Can Openers

Our home is now a heavy consumer of can openers.  But for decades, I didn’t even own an electric can opener.   I had one of those (really) old metal ones, that required a grip of steel and a right handed person to manipulate.  Did you know that most manual can openers are “right handed”?  They require you to operate the twist/handle with your right hand.  There’s no way to use in a “left-handed” manner.  It’s just one of many commonplace objects where “handed-discrimination” is rampant:  try scissors.  Update – of course you can now buy a left-handed can opener – where were they all those years!

But I really didn’t open cans that much, so it wasn’t that big a deal.  And thanks to a buddy who served in the Marines, I always had the military alternative.  It was a “GI can opener” that hung on my keychain for decades.  If the “right-handed” one wouldn’t cut it (hah!), the GI can opener would do the job. 

But with the dogs, especially our dogs with a mix of dry food, canned food, and green beans; we open cans a lot.  So we bought electric can openers to ease the process.  At first, I considered buying an industrial, counter-mounted can opener, the kind I used at cross country camp.  That would open any can of any size or condition.   But Jenn really wasn’t interested in having that big lunk in our kitchen – and besides – we have granite counter tops.  I was afraid the clamp would somehow damage it.  ( I wanted a restaurant dishwasher with the big casino style handle – but it would take up too much room!!)

Automation Strikes

We get our canned dog food in bulk from Chewy.  Sometimes the cans arrive in pristine condition, but just as often a row of cans is dented or semi-crushed.  Getting a regular electric can opener (even a Cuisinart) to circumnavigate a can that wasn’t close to even was a challenge.  Sometimes, I’d just get a portion of the top open, then take pliers and tin-snips to open it the rest of the way.  But even that partial process was still too much for the Cuisinart, breaking the tiny gears that turned the can under the blade.  We went through three of them over a couple of years.  When the last one broke a few weeks ago, it was definitely time for a change.

Amazon is, of course, the savior for all things in the kitchen.  Don’t have what you need?  It can be at the front door by sundown, with just a few keystrokes.  So I perused all of the varying can openers, and decided to go with a “heavy duty” Hamilton Beach model.  As advertised it arrived that evening, in time for the dog dinner hour.  I was anxious to try it.

Where’s the Edge

Now my whole life, opening a can meant putting an “edge” into the top of the can, then traversing the rim of the can, leaving a “top” that is just slightly smaller than the circumference of the can.  Each of the first four openers pictured above worked that way.  The major “danger” was that top, which might have sharp edges.  So removing it was sometimes tricky (though the Cuisinart included a magnet to pull it out of the can).   

And the Hamilton-Beach seemed the same.  You press the can against the front, push down the top handle to lock it down, and the can turns.  But once the can had turned a full 360 degrees, I looked at the top.  It wasn’t open!!!!  There was no edge, no top to peel out of the can.  I ran the can through again, but still no opening.  I felt – foolish.  How old am I?  Old enough to fail at working a can opener!!!

A Better Mouse Trap

I swallowed my pride, and asked Jenn to join in on the task.  We both tried again, but nothing changed.  Then we switched from dog food to a can of baked beans.  Again, no top opening, but I did notice that “bean juice” was running all over the place.  Something was open!!!!

There’s an old phrase, “Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door”.  Hamilton-Beach has a better “mouse trap”.  Their can opener doesn’t open the top of the can.  Instead, it de-capitates the can, cutting through the side just below the top.  What we were doing was decapitating the cans over and over again.  It just took lifting the top off to now get it open.  No dangerous edge to remove finger tips, and no worrying about how bad the top of the can is beat up.  If it’s too beat up, go to the bottom of the can.  Hamilton-Beach doesn’t need a can edge to “grip” as it carves through the side!!!

Who knew?  I still marvel at the “outside the box” (outside the can?) thinking at Hamilton-Beach.  And, I’ve discovered once again:  there’s always something new to learn in the world, even if it’s as mundane as how to open a tin can.  

And, I know. There haven’t been real tin cans since pennies were copper.

The Sunday Story Series

2021

• 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

2022

• 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

2023

• 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
• Toy Truck – 8/20/23
• Medical Terms – 8/27/23
• Missing Margaritaville – 9/3/23
• The McGowan – 9/10/23
• Who’s Watching – 10/22/23
• The Saturday Before – 10/29/23
• A Tale of Turkey, and Dogs – 11/26/23
• Bruno’s Story – 12/3/23
• Out in the Country – 12/10/23
• Christmas Eve – 12/24/23

2024

• Rube Goldberg – 1/12/24
• Our Pataskala Kroger’s – 2/5/24
• A Sad, Sad, Dog – 2/11/24
• Singing in the Tornado – 3/3/24
• Your Safe Spot – 3/17/24
• Easter Dawn – 3/31/24
• Swarms – 4/14/24
• Lowest Common Denominator – 4/28/24
• Seniors – 5/12/24
• Season’s Over – 6/22/24
• Camp Morning – 6/30/24
• Jeeping – 7/7/24
• How Mondo Won the Gold and Started a Dog Fight (almost) – 8/6/24
• Fifty Years of the McGowan – 9/8/24
• A Walk in the Woods – 10/22/24
• Smokin – 12/6/24
• Coal for Christmas 12/16/24
• Provenance – 12/22/24

2025

• Lost and Found – 2/22/25
• Catching Cars – 3/2/25
• PV Mentor – 3/31/25
• Dogs, Jeeps, Fireworks and Beer Coolers 7/6/25
• It’s About Time – 7/27-25
• Gas War – 11/30/25

2026

• The End of My Nose – 1/18/26
• The End of the Jeep – 1/25/26
• Fat Chipmunk – 2/15/26
• A Flash of Unity – 2/23/26
• Lessons Learned – 4/12/26
• Blue Sky Rain – 5/10/26
• A Union Dog House – 8/2/26
• Thinking Outside the Can – 8/9/26

Alligators

The state of Louisiana is known for a lot of things.  There’s gumbo, bayous, New Orleans, and the LSU Tigers football team.  And, down in the bayou, there are lots of alligators.  There are supposedly three million in the wild, and another million on alligator farms.  And while there are almost as many alligators as people in Louisiana, the one thing there “ain’t”, is crocodiles.

But there were plenty of crocodile tears in the US Senate chamber this morning, cried by the lame-duck Senator from Louisiana, Dr. Bill Cassidy.  He was so sad, choked up, driven to tears, by his decision to vote for Todd Blanche as the next Attorney General.  Cassidy is the deciding vote.  With Mitch McConnell out on extended (and perhaps terminal) sick leave, President Trump could only lose two Republican votes, if all the Democrats held firm. 

Hamlet 

Lisa Murkowski made it clear early that she found Blanche unacceptable.  And Susan Collins, facing a tough Maine re-election contest, had to go farther than her normal “concern” and actually pledge to vote against as well.  Meanwhile John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Tillis of North Carolina accepted a “blank check” from Mr. Blanche, to mollify their spoken concerns.  All of that left Cassidy as the “last man standing” between Trump getting his chosen personal attorney as his Attorney General, or not.

Cassidy played out his “Hamlet” routine for all it was worth.  He talked about everyone who advised him, from Cornyn and Tillis to former Attorney General Bill Barr and the two US Attorneys in his native state.  He even mentioned Democratic stalwart and Blanche opponent Sheldon Whitehouse.  

Then he noted that Trump could keep Blanche as an interim appointment for months anyway.  And that Trump could have chosen a nominee “so much worse” than Blanche.  All of that sounds like a solid reason for something.  Blanche is better than worser, and he’s already there.  Trump “trumps” America once again.

Providing Cover

Then the tears came out:  “People aren’t going to like what I decide.”  But crocodile tears or not, Hamlet or not, unfettered by re-election concerns or not, Cassidy did exactly what we expected him to do.  He saved Blanche’s appointment, and showed once again that, while he might have been a gastro-intestinal specialist, he definitely can’t identify a spine;  at least from personal experience.

I think it’s really a deal to provide cover.  There are five Republican Senate members who “talk the game” of standing up to Trump:  Cornyn, Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski and Tillis.  When McConnell was around, it took four of them together to stop a pro-Trump vote is in the Senate.  (Note:  there are 47 Democrats and 53 Republicans in the Senate, with a tie decided by Republican Vice President JD Vance).  

And in vote after vote, three, usually Murkowski and two others, would gain political cover by opposing Trump, while a rotating list of the other five “showed concern” but stuck with the President.  The net result:  Trump got what he wanted, and two Senators could “show their independence” to their constituents.    

But with McConnell missing, the number was down to three.  Collins and Murkowski already had their opposition positions staked out.  That left Cassidy, facing the wrath of Trump.

Wrath is Real

That wrath is real. There are states unable to get Federal disaster aid, because they voted for Harris instead of Trump in 2024.  So it really is a possibility that repairing the damage from the next hurricane to come up the Mississippi Delta might depend on Cassidy’s vote (though his Senate brethren from Louisiana, John Kennedy, is a Trump stalwart).  

It’s not the fact that Dr. Cassidy is spineless, it’s the tears that makes me boil.  How dare he, a United States Senator, one of one-hundred in all of America, not have the courage of his decision.  If he has to cry, then he’s admitting he’s doing the wrong thing, for the wrong reason.  And that doesn’t make him a sympathetic victim of Presidential bullying, it makes him coward.

If you’re going to be spineless, a coward, at least make a good show of it.  The Trump Administration has a lot of people in this country crying for good reason.   A US  Senator who can’t stand up isn’t one of them.

Can’t Shoot

I’m not a basketball guy.  In fact, I was cut from the fifth grade basketball team at Southdale Elementary School in Kettering, Ohio.  And they were right.  No matter how many shots I took at the basket hung over the driveway at home, I didn’t improve.  Hours of time, dribbling from the garage door to the pole, usually ended up with me in the next door neighbor’s yard, finding the ball.  And while I was often the fastest kid on the court, there was no need to guard me.  Leave me open, I’ll miss the shot all by myself.

So I found another sport in the winter, wrestling.  

But I stayed around basketball long enough to understand the rules.  You can’t walk without dribbling. And while it’s a physical game (did you see the NBA Finals, or any WNBA game?), there are some things you can’t do.  In high school and college basketball, you get five personal fouls, and then you’re disqualified from the game.

Stupid Fouls

I did watch a lot of high school basketball. As part of my “duties” as Dean of Students, I was at most home games, usually keeping an eye on the student section of the stands.  We wanted our kids to be excited and involved, but not to do anything stupid.  The “stupid” part was where I came in as “the Dean”.  

In a close basketball game, coaches protect their best players from fouling out of the game. They save the final foul so that their critical skills are on the game floor until the last seconds.  But in a blowout, when no special talent was likely to change the outcome, a coach might leave their best “out there”, playing with four fouls.  It’s a good experience for them to play under the handicap, and if/when they get tossed, it doesn’t really matter.

Max

Congressman Max Miller, is a thirty-seven year old Republican from Shaker Heights, a wealthy suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.  He represents the Seventh Congressional District, a carefully gerrymandered area including the Cleveland east and south suburbs, parts of suburban Akron, and huge swaths of Northeastern Ohio farmlands.

Miller was a staffer in the 2016 Trump Campaign. He transitioned to a Treasury Department job after the election, then moved to the White House staff.  There, he became a Trump “favorite”.  After Trump left office in 2021, Miller went back home to run for Congress.

He opposed Republican Tony Gonzalez, who was one of the ten Republican Congressmen to vote for Trump’s impeachment.  In fact, Trump’s first campaign appearance after leaving office was at a rally for Miller. Gonzalez withdrew from the race in the fall of 2021, and Miller defeated his Democratic opponent Matt Diemer in 2022. He then won re-election against  Diemer and Independent Dennis Kucinich in 2024.

Miller’s a flawed candidate.  He has a history of physically abusing women, including during his short marriage to Emily Moreno, the daughter of current US Senator Bernie Moreno.  They had one child together, and continue to wage an ugly custody fight over her.  The battle has spilled over into the public arena. Just last week, the Senator weighed in stating that Miller was so violent that he wasn’t qualified to be a Representative in Congress. Miller responded by accusing Moreno of trying to distract from his own political problems. That includes a profane rant against Dr. Anthony Fauci in a formal Senate committee hearing.

Technical Issues

Ohio Republicans face a problem.  Miller is the candidate for re-election in 2026.  He is faced with a Progressive Democratic opponent in Brian Poindexter, and without a known independent like Dennis Kucinich to siphon off thousands of votes.   And the more information that comes out about Miller, the less likely it seems that he can hold the Seventh.

There are technical issues.  If Miller were to resign from office today, Ohio law requires a special election be held, and then the regular election in November.  If Miller stays in office, but withdraws as a candidate by Monday, August 10^th, Republicans can replace him on the ticket for November.  But if Miller holds on until after Monday, his name will appear on the ballot in November, no matter what else occurs.

It’s not often that a Republican Senator from the same region comes out against a Republican Congressman.  And while it’s more common (these days) to find Congressmen embroiled in bad behavior than it used to be, the evidence about Miller looks strong enough to cost him the seat in November.

Still in the Game?

So it comes down to this.  Republicans do not want a special election.  But they do not want Miller on the ballot in November.  He won’t resign from the Congress, but will the powers of the Republican Party have enough to push him out of the campaign by Monday?  

Will they pull him with “four fouls”, or allow him to “foul out” in November?

The answer may have more to do with what National Republicans really think about their chances of holding the House of Representatives for 2027.   If they’ve already decided that Democrats will take the Speaker’s gavel, maybe it’s not worth a fight with Miller, and perhaps Trump, over Ohio’s Seventh District.  After all, if Republicans are going to lose control, one more seat doesn’t matter much.  But if Mike Johnson is really “in the fight” to keep the House, then Miller needs to go.

The clock is ticking down.  Time runs out for the Seventh and Republicans on Monday. 

Old Phrases

It’s an old phrase, one that my coaching mentor, John McGowan taught me:  “If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got”.   It explains the irrational expectation that doing the same action without change will result in a different outcome.  Run the same first mile of the race, get the same finish.  Use the same bad technique in the pole vault, clear the same height.  

Of course there’s the alternative to this.  If what you “always got” is good, then why change what you’re doing?  If the sprint workouts produce great 400 meter runners, then don’t throw them out and try something completely different.  Maybe “tweak” the workouts, trying to find an even better outcome.  But don’t “…throw the baby out with the bath water”. 

And to push the coaching analogy one more step; I also learned that every workout doesn’t work for every kid.  You have to build your team, your process, around the individuals you have, not the individuals you used to have.  Change is inevitable.  Back in the early 1970’s, I ran my workouts in low-cut Converse All-Stars.  My only alternative was to use my racing spikes, with no arch support at all.  Kids today have specialized shoes for longer runs, racing flats for sprinting workouts, and racing spikes for competition.  The pounding that gave me an aspirin addicting case of shin-splints, now can be prevented with the right equipment.  They train harder and smarter.

On the Brink

As a Democrat in the United States today, I see a Nation on the brink.  America is making so many choices:  billionaires or working class,  uncontrolled Artificial Intelligence or “guardrails”, health care based on need or on wealth, great education for all or for the few, free elections or voters chosen by those governing. It’s not just about Trump or even MAGA.  Here in Ohio a billionaire is running for governor, bringing his values to the table.  He’s made it clear:  Ohio should be only for those who excel, not for those who don’t or can’t.  It sounds good for those few, I guess. But is that the state or the Nation we want:  one that only benefits the few, not the many?   

The Supreme Court is in the pocket of the billionaire class.  So is the Congress.  The President, a billionaire himself, is enriching himself daily, often at the expense of the American people.  Congress chooses not to enforce its own powers, ceding authority, even the power to make war, to a President who recklessly risks lives and world peace.  

Old Days

Democrats thought this existential crisis was over in 2020.  We won, then governed like it was “regular” times (to quote Prince, like it was “1999”).  Instead of holding those responsible for Trump’s excesses accountable, they mostly were given a pass.  Though some Insurrectionists of January 6^th were punished, the leaders who brought them to the doors of the Capitol were not.  There were no institutional changes to alter how temporary appointments were used to dodge Congressional oversight or other executive expansions of power.  Trump was considered an aberration, not a trend.  The Democratic establishment went blissfully along like it was the “good old days”. 

How wrong we were then. And now, even more importantly, we don’t know how many more chances will we get to make it right.  What happens this November may be the last, best opportunity to alter the trajectory of the Nation.

Always Got

Democrats have run “regular” candidates for office.  We spend millions of dollars trying to match the billionaires, even run billionaires ourselves (Governor Pritzker of Illinois).   The “establishment” of the Democratic Party has a pretty straight line, Clinton to Obama to Clinton to Biden to Harris.  Today, Democrats in many places are faced with a choice.  We can  “do what we always did”, and risk getting what we always got.  We can support “establishment candidates”, like those currently in Michigan and Wisconsin, and hope (irrationally?) that we’ll get something different.  Or we can risk “throwing the baby out with the bath water”, and support candidates aligned with the Progressives, the (OMG!!) Democratic Socialist Party (the DSP).

Here in Ohio I think our Democratic candidates are following a “middle path”.  Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton are more “progressive” than “establishment”, but neither is a DSP member.  They are not leading a working class “revolution”.  They are trying to reach both. (There’s another catch-phrase about what happens to those who sit on the fence – I hope it doesn’t apply to them). 

But tomorrow in Michigan Democratic voters may be deciding the fate of the United States.   The Michigan race for the US Senate is crucial:  the current Senator, Democrat Gary Peters, is retiring.  The “establishment” candidate, supported  by Peters, current Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, is Congressman Haley Stevens.  But she’s running behind in the polls.  The “insurgent”, Abdul El-Sayed, a DSP member and supported by Bernie Sanders and AOC, is leading by a pretty wide margin.

Tomorrow

So, if tomorrow Michigan Democrats choose El-Sayed as their candidate, to use a different catch-phrase, they are taking the Nation, “all-in”.  Will a bluish-purple state like Michigan elect a DSP and Muslim candidate?  Or will the balance of the Senate shift, as a Democratic seat falls to a Republican candidate?

I can say with reasonable certainty that a DSP candidate could not win in Ohio.  The balance of elections here is in the hands of the suburban Republicans turned independent, the “Red, Wine and Blue” voters (they used to be called “soccer Moms”).  Democratic candidates are making in-roads in this group, but the DSP would be a bridge too far.

But I can’t say about Michigan.  Perhaps the Detroit vote is so overwhelming, and for El-Sayed, the huge Islamic vote, that he can overcome what might be unifying MAGA moment.   What I can say is that we are at the cusp of two different catch-phrases:  getting what we always got, or throwing the baby out. 

Tomorrow will set the stage – and tell us where we might be going in America.

It’s been a while since I wrote a “Sunday Story”.  So what better way to get back to it than one about dogs – our dogs – and the “Dog Union”!!!

A Dog House

We are a “union” dog house.  Our dogs are charter members of  “Dog Meals United”, local number 200.  And, as a former union President myself, I understand their organizing.  After all, there are four of them, and only two of us.  They need to express their feelings about the “working conditions” here at 200 Linda Ave in Pataskala (thus, Local 200).  

Equity is a major issue for the Local, led by the “shop steward”, Keelie, loyally followed by Lou. Keelie isn’t the oldest dog in our pack, but she’s definitely both the wisest and the most independent.  And Keelie is a stickler of equity at mealtime.

So here’s the problem.  We have Atticus, the “six million dollar” Lab (more like $30,000), who’s allergic to almost everything.  He can’t eat meat, he can’t eat fish, he can’t eat buffalo or reindeer or whatever exotic food is available.  He has to eat “hydrologized protein” food.  That means that the proteins in regular food have been put through a homogenization process, which fracture the proteins into their component parts.  He still gets needed protein, but it has the consistency and taste of chalk (Jenn tried, not me).

But he can eat carrots, lots and lots of carrots.  Oh, and green beans too, preferably fresh and just “cracked”, but he’ll take canned green beans over none.  So we mix the “chalk” with carrots pieces and green beans, so he actually has something that tastes like, something.

Equity and Diversity

Well, that creates an equity issue with the rest of the union membership.  After all, he gets “special food” (which the youngest, CeCe, actually seems to like).  So what’s “special” for them?  They used to eat Pedigree chicken and vegetables.  It came in a thirty-two pound bag for about a dollar a pound.  And we mixed in canned beef and gravy, to “sweeten the deal”.   But “Steward Keelie” determined that management wasn’t providing an equitable distribution of diverse food.  So there was a work stoppage.  Keelie and Lou refused to eat their regular dinner.  

Now don’t think this was a starvation strike.  They ate carrots, and they ate treats (dog bone biscuits).  But they wouldn’t eat their breakfast or dinner.  After intense negotiations, lasting for several hours, management (Jenn) determined that we’d switch them to salmon based food, that cost about $60 for a twenty-four pound bag.  And for a while, that upgrade worked.

But then there’s CeCe, the youngest.  She’s as stubborn as a pit bull. (Well, she is a pit bull.) And she decided that she wanted Atticus food, plus canned food, plus something else.  We went a couple of days with minimal eating, and finally her “wildcat strike” (wild-dog strike?) ended with the addition of a little bit of lunch meat, first turkey, then ham.

Union Noses

But the other union members recognized the change. After all, they are Union dogs, with Union noses.  They filed a “unfair feeding practice” complaint. It stated;  “We’re getting salmon dry food (with a few green beans), he’s getting carrots and beans, and she’s getting canned food, hydrogolized food ($137 for thirty pounds) and lunch meat?” They soon came up with the “Hell NO” strategy.  First they held out for canned food too.  And while that got them back to the duties for a minute, soon the smell of lunch meat was too much to overcome.

This morning, Keelie and Lou got their salmon dried food, mixed with canned beef and gravy, with a smattering of green beans on top.   They walked over to breakfast, sniffed it, then walked back to the gate at the entry to the kitchen.  Keelie looked me in the eye:  “No meat, No eat.” If they only had fingers to make signs, they’d be picketing the kitchen.

Capitulation

As management, I felt frustrated.  After all, eating is our business, and to fail means total disruption to 200 Linda Ave. But, my hard-headed unionized pack knows what they want, and they’ll stare at the gate, waiting, for as long as it takes.  And my former Union President sense kicks in.  After all, I am proud they stick together, proud that they are an American Made Dog Union.  And, I am a pushover anyway.

So they got a bit of sandwich turkey.  And all of a sudden, it was the best meal they ever had!!!

I’ll try again, tomorrow.  After all, we go through a lot of dog food, and adding lunch meat to every meal seems a bit much.  

Maybe if I can get them through breakfast, we can try some ham at dinner.

The Sunday Story Series

2021

• 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

2022

• 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

2023

• 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
• Toy Truck – 8/20/23
• Medical Terms – 8/27/23
• Missing Margaritaville – 9/3/23
• The McGowan – 9/10/23
• Who’s Watching – 10/22/23
• The Saturday Before – 10/29/23
• A Tale of Turkey, and Dogs – 11/26/23
• Bruno’s Story – 12/3/23
• Out in the Country – 12/10/23
• Christmas Eve – 12/24/23

2024

• Rube Goldberg – 1/12/24
• Our Pataskala Kroger’s – 2/5/24
• A Sad, Sad, Dog – 2/11/24
• Singing in the Tornado – 3/3/24
• Your Safe Spot – 3/17/24
• Easter Dawn – 3/31/24
• Swarms – 4/14/24
• Lowest Common Denominator – 4/28/24
• Seniors – 5/12/24
• Season’s Over – 6/22/24
• Camp Morning – 6/30/24
• Jeeping – 7/7/24
• How Mondo Won the Gold and Started a Dog Fight (almost) – 8/6/24
• Fifty Years of the McGowan – 9/8/24
• A Walk in the Woods – 10/22/24
• Smokin – 12/6/24
• Coal for Christmas 12/16/24
• Provenance – 12/22/24

2025

• Lost and Found – 2/22/25
• Catching Cars – 3/2/25
• PV Mentor – 3/31/25
• Dogs, Jeeps, Fireworks and Beer Coolers 7/6/25
• It’s About Time – 7/27-25
• Gas War – 11/30/25

2026

• The End of My Nose – 1/18/26
• The End of the Jeep – 1/25/26
• Fat Chipmunk – 2/15/26
• A Flash of Unity – 2/23/26
• Lessons Learned – 4/12/26
• Blue Sky Rain – 5/10/26
• A Union Dog House – 8/2/26

Wuhan Once Again

Wednesday morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci was dragged in front of Senator Rand Paul’s Committee on Government Affairs.  For the past several years, Paul and Fauci fought a running battle over the Covid virus: where it came from, how it was controlled (or not), and what drugs were effective in treating it.  

With Republicans in control of the Senate, the junior Senator from Kentucky (does McConnell still live?) is a powerful committee chairman.  And he’s using his committee as a cudgel to pummel the eighty-five year old Fauci, former head of the Covid Task Force, President Biden’s national health advisor and the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for thirty-eight years.

We’re back to all the old issues:  the Wuhan lab, Ivermectin, the dangers of the Covid vaccine.  I’m still waiting to hear a Republican member complain about wearing a mask, but I’m sure it’s coming (it did).

For most Americans, the Covid era is a “black hole” of memory.  It’s kind of like there was 2019, the winter of 2020, and next the spring of 2021.  What happened in that year in the middle, including the election of Joe Biden as President, all seems vague; unclear in a haze of social distancing and online schooling.  So why are we dredging all this “old news” up again? (Just an aside – maybe that’s why Trump’s ongoing cry that “I won in 2020” has some resonance – we really don’t remember it all that well).

Change the Subject

It’s pretty simple.  No Republican wants to talk about the price of gasoline. No Republican wants to analyze the American strategy in the Middle East.  And certainly, no Republican can talk about “regular” Americans who are struggling to make ends meet today.  So they are trying to change the subject, back to the “black hole” of the Covid era.  And, since our national memory is so vague, they can re-write it anyway they want.

There also is an interesting legal issue playing out in the hearings.  Knowing the coming vindictiveness of the Trump Administration, President Biden issued a blanket pardon to Dr. Fauci before they both left government service.  Fauci cannot be tried for any official act prior to the pardon being issued.  So Chairman Paul is attempting to goad Fauci into a current statement that might be perjurious.  If only Fauci would say something that contradicted the hundreds of hours of testimony he gave to Congress in the past, or some other written documents newly released, then the Committee could refer him for criminal prosecution by the ever-ready Trump Justice Department.

Dueling Senator

Fauci has dueled with Paul for years.  And, most of the time the doctor got the better of the Senator.  But engaging in that kind of repartee today could put Dr. Fauci in legal jeopardy.  So he is availing himself of the 5^th Amendment, his right against self-incrimination.  

In most Committee hearings, the witness can assert that right once, and the Committee “saves their breath”.  But this is not a fact-finding hearing.  It’s a political one, with a potential legal “perjury trap”.  So Fauci is forced to say his “Fifth Amendment” spiel, over and over again. And when Fauci’s attorney spoke to the issue of continued questioning, Senator Paul had him escorted from the room by Capitol Police.  That’s called “political hardball”. 

What’s the point?  Republicans are worried.  Trump’s not on the ballot in 2026 (just like he wasn’t in the “slow motion Blue Tsunami” year of 2018, when Democrats flipped forty House seats).  And Republican poll numbers are dropping lower than anyone thought possible.  Trump is at a mere 32% approval rate (The Hill).  The war in the Middle East, the affordability issue, endemic corruption; all are signaling another Blue wave election in November.  

Ohio Politics

The least Republicans can do is get their MAGA base out to the polls.  But those folks are unhappy too:  Trump promised them no new foreign wars, and lower prices.  Neither is happening.  So what might motivate MAGA to the polls?   How about old memories:  masks, school closings, toilet paper wars and probing extended Q-tips into the lower brain region.  Is that enough to keep the MAGA hopes alive in November?

Here in Ohio, this has particular relevance.  The Democratic candidate for Governor, Amy Acton, was the Director of Public Health (under Republican Governor Mike DeWine) at the beginning of Covid.  The Political Action Committee ads are already pounding Ohio voters about school closings and wearing masks, linking Acton to DeWine’s decisions.  Funny, Acton wasn’t even a Democratic candidate back then.  So if Paul can pillory Fauci, maybe he can drive the MAGA vote out to the polls in Ohio. That would hurt Acton, and even more, Sherrod Brown and the quest of Democrats to win back the majority of the Senate.

Ohio’s Senator Bernie Moreno had a despicable, bullying performance at the hearing .It was all for Ohio MAGA voters’ benefit. To paraphrase him: “Who the Fuck (his word – used in public in the Senate hearing) do you think you are, to talk to any witness that way!!” That he represents me, an Ohioan, is embarrassing.

Only Winning Move

Fauci gave his entire adult life to helping Americans live longer.  He was pivotal in finding the cause and treatment for AIDS back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and also spearheaded the American response to Ebola cases.  Of course he was a leader in the Covid pandemic response.   The reality:  millions of Americans are alive because of what Fauci did during Covid.  Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands might still be alive if we had listened to him more closely.  But, like many other aspects of our lives, Fauci has become a political football.

Rand Paul tried to kick a field goal for MAGA in this hearing.  But Anthony Fauci outwitted him once again.  

He decided to make the only winning move – not to play.

Morning Joe

Joe Scarborough of  MSNOW’s “Morning Joe” made big news this morning.  In his daily “rant”, he made a major statement:  “I am not a Socialist”.  Duh…

Joe was a conservative Republican back in the day when he represented Pensacola in the US Congress.  He came in as one of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” boys in 1994.  When he left the Congress in 2001, he embarked on a new career, this time in New York with what was then called MSNBC.  He became the conservative voice in the morning, along with Tucker Carlson’s in the afternoon, as the news network attempted to “balance” their progressive outlook.

Joe renounced his “Republicanism” in the age of Trump, even though “Morning Joe” served as an unlimited forum for Trump in 2015 as he entered the Presidential contest.  Now he is a Never Trumper, and prone to advise Democrats on how to defeat Trumpism.

Define the Party

So it should be no surprise that Joe Scarborough isn’t a Socialist.  But his rant had just a touch of hypocrisy as well.  As he went on, he chided Democrats for departing from the Party of Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.  He talked about the civil rights acts and even Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.  But it should be clear:  were Scarborough still in Congress, he would have voted against the civil rights acts, the Affordable Care Act, and most of the moderate Democratic agenda.  

He then brought in a panel of “experts”, to further tell Democrats how dangerous it was to “flirt” with socialism.  There was a Mark McKinnon, former GW Bush and John McCain advisor, and Jim VandeHie, co-founder of Axios among others.   And they warned of the “dangers” of the Democratic Socialist Party’s agenda, dragging regular Democrats from the message of “defeating Trump”.  Joe intoned:  “If Democrats don’t define their Party now, Donald Trump will do it for them in November”.  

America’s Division

OK, Joe has a point.  The Democratic Socialists are, “GASP!!”, Socialists.  They want to abolish “class” in American life.  That  includes the Constitutional compromises that encourage class separations; a Senate with each state equal regardless of population, a Supreme Court with Justices appointed by the President.  Their goal is to gain a Parliamentary form of government with the Chief Executive chosen by and subordinate to the legislature.

It’s not likely.  Certainly the Democratic Party isn’t going to become the Party of re-writing the Constitution.  But the Democratic candidates who also are members of the Democratic Socialist Party have tapped into a huge reservoir of anger in America.  The DSP put their finger right on the “sore” in American life; the growing separation between the “haves” and the “have nots”.  While Democrats over the years have paid lip-service to the “working class”, the proof is in today’s reality.  It’s clear; billionaires and millionaires, money and more money; control American politics, not what’s good for the American people at large.  

By the way, that division fits right in with Joe Scarborough’s prior conservative view.  The old 1950’s Republican saying, “What’s good for General Motors is good for America” didn’t hold a lot of truth back then, and certainly isn’t true today.  At least in the 50’s, General Motors employed hundreds of thousands to build their cars.  Today, the richest businesses are venture capitalists and artificial intelligence developers, who create fewer and fewer jobs.  What “good” are they for the regular citizen in the United States?  Today’s choice seems to be pretty black and white:  support the billionaire class, represented by Trump himself, or look to radical change.

That’s a big problem for Democrats as well.  

Talk is Cheap

Yesterday I wrote a long essay about the political diversity of the Democratic Party.  That broad expanse of political thought should allow them to not only tap into the current anger, but to actually do something about it.  American politics are still on a “knife edge” of change.  The MAGA domination of the last two years is really predicated on a very small majority.  And that majority could tip (again) in November.  

One of the major reasons for the success of the “socialist” wing, is that they are willing to act.  They not only represent change, they promise action.  And that’s where Democrats have fallen short.  I love what Joe Biden tried to accomplish; but leaving both the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Bipartisan Border Bill “on the table” made many feel that Democrats were all talk with little action.  Chuck Schumer highlighted Democratic impotence last year; shutting down the government for six weeks over the health funding cuts.  In the end, they got nothing but a vote, a vote that Democrats lost, and the health cuts were made.

It won’t require a full socialist revolution.  It won’t require abolishing the Senate, or the Supreme Court, or the Constitution as we know it.  But it will require Democrats to ACT, not just posture.  Talk is cheap.  Americans require concrete achievements, not just hitting a wall, a filibuster, or a Joe Manchin-like member sabotaging action  from “inside the house” (John Fetterman?).  

We don’t have to re-write the Constitution.  But we better get stuff done.

In Harness

I’ve been writing about politics for almost a decade.  And I’ve been living American politics, and particularly Democratic Party politics, since Mom stuck a JFK for President button on my blue sweater in the summer of 1960. I was three.  So let me tell you a little bit about my Party.

I’ve used this analogy before, but it still applies.  There are two kinds of  harnesses.  The first is a horse harness; the Clydesdales pulling the Budweiser wagon.  It’s a single line, with horses staggered on either side, all pulling in the same direction.  It’s efficient, and it’s very controllable.  Even the horses get it.  If one in front isn’t pulling enough load, the one behind bites them on the ass.

That kind of harness is the most efficient in going in a single direction, like along the road to the brewery.  

But what if you’re pulling a dog sled along an icy river, one where there might be thin spots where the ice is weak?  Do you want all the dogs harnessed into one single line?  If the lead dog goes in, the rest of the line would go right with him, and the sled and driver too.

So there is a different kind of harness, with dogs attached to single leads back to the central point ahead of the sled.  That way, if one dog goes in an ice hole, the others can avoid it.  At worst, lose a dog; not the pack, sled and driver.  It’s not as “efficient” as the horse harness, but it allows for more “freedom” for the dogs to pick their own path in the same general direction.  And, if one dog slacks off, the other dogs can combine to “encourage” them to put forth more effort.  

MAGA Whip

So if you want to describe the MAGA Republican Party, the Clydesdale harness is a pretty good example.  Donald Trump exercises whip-like power over the members.  If they get out of line, other Party members bite them, and Trump either whips them into compliance, or they’re sent to the glue factory.  Disagree:  ask Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Tom Massie.   Even former Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a non-power in today’s MAGA Republican world.

There definitely is the “party line”, and we see near-absolute compliance with it.  In fact, it’s a major news story when a Republican Senator, someone like Lisa Murkowski, stands up against it.  And there’s the “YOLO” (you only live once) list:  Cornyn, Cassidy and Tillis; already headed to the glue factory but with votes left to go in their term.  Yet, by and large, they still stay in line.

Feuding Pack

That’s them:  what about us?  Well we Democrats are happy in our sled harness.  There’s the “establishment” Democrats, folks like Adam Schiff and Chuck Schumer.  They follow the leadership of the “regular” Party.  Their ideology is termed “moderate”.  They’re definitely Capitalists, definitely free-marketeers.  But they still are interested in making life more “affordable” for everyday Americans.  And they are the core group that got the moderate compromise, the Affordable Care Act, passed back sixteen years ago.  

And then there is a spectrum of  “progressive” Democrats.  Sherrod Brown of Ohio is a good example.  He’s kind of moderate, but emphasizes protection of the average person, the “working man and woman”.  So he’s not tied to the billionaire class, but to improving “regular” American life, even at the expense of the billionaires.  He artfully describes the economic line:  “…Whether you take a shower before work or after work”, and tries to help regular folk.  And the best thing for Sherrod; he’s got a decades long career of doing exactly that.

Get beyond that, and there’s even more progressive Democrats, like Elizabeth Warren.  She’s determined to re-balance the American economy, where one percent of the population has thirty percent of the wealth.  She continues to propose a “wealth tax” to fund programs to help the other ninety percent.

Democratic Socialists

And then there’s the Democratic Socialists, the outliers now waging an insurgency to become mainstream in the Party.  Bernie Sanders has been their standard bearer for generations.  He’s an “independent” who runs in the Democratic Party, even for President.  And now his ideological descendants are demanding a piece of the Democratic pie.  They’ve had great success, especially in the heavily urban areas like New York City.  The media has dubbed them the “DSP”, which has overtones of some Soviet intelligence service of the Cold War.  

One important note:  the DSP has won some major elections, most notably Zohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of New York.  But many of their primary elections have been “big fish in little ponds” actions.  Alexandria Ocasio Cortez won her first primary over a leadership Democrat, by 4000 votes out of 30000 cast.  That’s in a Congressional District where over 250,000  people vote in a Presidential election. Twelve percent of the voters decided her victory.

The most progressive wing of the Party wants the United States to emulate the European Socialist model, with areas like education, healthcare, and housing financed by the government.  They place the importance on the worth of the individual, rather than the wealth of the individual.  It’s a compelling argument in the “richest country in the world”.  We’re ranked 33^rd in health care, 13^th in education, and 7^th in housing. 

Miss the Hole

Look, there’s a lot of diverse Democratic ideas, even within the boundaries of New York City.  The Mayor is a Democratic Socialist, one Congressman, Hakeem Jeffries, is the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, and the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, is from Brooklyn.  They each have a different approach to leading Democrats back to leadership.  They are all pulling on their “lead”, generally in the same direction, but each at a different angle.

It’s not as efficient as being in “whip line”.  It looks, and often is, messy.  But there is an important point.  We are all pulling the same sled.  And if one goes in the “ice hole”, the rest will still be moving forward.  The whole Graham Platner situation in Maine is a great example.

What Democrats can say, is that we don’t have an all-powerful leader, level-set on taking us all down.  The MAGA-Republicans can’t say the same.

Dominoes

I never learned how to play dominoes.   I guess there’s a “game”; kind of a tabletop thing where you match the dots.  But that’s not what I thought dominoes were for.  As a kid, dominoes were for toppling.  If you lined them up just right, you could knock down one, and the line of dominoes snaking around the floor would continue the chain until all were flat on the ground.  

There was a certain power in that.   One action on one domino, determined the fate of a whole line of dominoes feet away.  Serpentine curves and even mild changes in altitude didn’t matter.   It was a child’s way of learning the importance of action/reaction, cause and effect, and how electricity goes through a wire.  And then we got to play “Mouse Trap”!!!!

And dominoes also taught the meaning of missing just one thing.  Should one domino on a curve fail to hit the next, the whole chain was interrupted.   How important was each individual domino?  All must succeed in order for the chain to fall.  In more modern terms, each domino, “… had one job to do”.  (By the way, the phrase “You had one job” isn’t ancient.  It comes from the 2011 movie Ocean’s Eleven.  Don Cheadle’s character sets off a complex explosion to break into the main safe of a casino.  When it goes off successfully, Cheadle dances into the safe, only to have an alarm go off. He yells out to his fellow thieves, “You had one job to do!!!!”).

Marco

The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is the son of parents from Cuba.  They left the island to come to Miami in 1956, during the government of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, two years before Castro’s Cuban Revolution began.  His mother went back to Cuba in 1961, then determined to stay in the United States.  Both his parents became naturalized citizens in 1975, four years after Marco was born in Miami. (Marco is thus a “birthright citizen”, and eligible to run for President).  His grandfather did escape Cuba in 1962 to enter the United States without a visa, but ultimately was allowed to stay under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act which legalized entry for those fleeing the Castro regime.  

One of the “legends” of  Rubio is that he is the child of escapees from the Castro regime.  They were already in the United States before the revolution.  But, from a political standpoint, being a “escapee” of Castro is worth a lot in the Miami-exile community.   It creates financial as well as political support. So the Secretary didn’t correct the story.  

One thing is for sure:  Marco Rubio has made it his life’s mission to end the Communist regime in Cuba.  In his mind, he has “one job to do”.  And now, with his hands firmly on the levers of United States power in the Trump Administration, he set the “dominoes” up to end the heirs to Castro’s Revolution. 

Venezuela First

The first step wasn’t in Cuba. It was in Venezuela, where Rubio supported a lightning military strike to seize the President there, Nicolas Maduro, a staunch ally of the Cuban regime. With Maduro imprisoned and under indictment in New York, the Venezuelan Vice President fell in line with US demands for change and economic control.

 Why attack Venezuela?  Oil from that country was the energy lifeline to Cuba, and one of the first actions of the US was to blockade Venezuelan oil from the island.  This energy loss severely damaged the Cuban economy.  Blackouts became common, gas prices high and the civilian population continues to suffer from the loss.  It places the leadership of Cuba in an untenable position.  The US refuses to negotiate, demanding regime change.  The Cuban government, heirs to the Castro brothers, refuse to acquiesce.  It looked like Cuba was to be next.  US Carrier groups were already in place from the Venezuelan operation.  

Bebe

But then the “domino chain” was broken.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swept into Washington DC, and in a late night briefing for President Trump in the White House Situation Room, convinced him to join Israel in a “decapitation strike” on Iran.  The Israeli was sure it would lead to an internal revolt to overthrow the Shi’ite religious regime.  The President bought into “Bebe’s” idea, and committed the United States to war.

It was supposed to be quick, a couple of weeks of bombings, then a new regime in Tehran suing for peace.  But the Israeli intelligence was wrong.  The power of the Iranian regime, nestled in the structure of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was prepared in-depth for just such an attack.  The visible leadership was killed, including theocratic dictator  Ayatollah Khamenei, and multiple generals and political leaders.  But the core structure of the Guard continued to control the government, the military, and the internal opposition. 

Forever War

The Israelis are in this battle “for the long run”.  Rubio even admits that they have undercut every attempt to maintain a ceasefire.  Netanyahu sees the Iranian theocracy as the ultimate enemy, to be destroyed at all costs.  They will do whatever is required to make sure that happens, even if it requires a “forever war” in the Middle East – for the United States.

And so what was supposed to be a short “detour” from Rubio’s master plan to topple the Cuban domino, has stalled.  The “one job” of the US Navy, already assembled in the Caribbean, is now “one job” in the waters surrounding the Middle East.  Just today, the Houthis of Yemen are threatening the “other” choke point in world oil transport, the body of water that runs from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait.  

It’s located  between the tip of  the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen) and the horn of Africa (Djibouti).  That strait is only fourteen miles wide, even narrower than the Strait of Hormuz (twenty-one miles).  It’s the entrance and exit to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean.  Over five percent of the world’s oil transits the region.

Coals to Newcastle

There’s no end in sight for American involvement in the Middle East.  Today, Trump tried to get “a do-over” by offering Saudi Arabia enriched uranium to start up nuclear plants.  My English mother used to have a phrase for being foolish:  “It’s like bringing coals to Newcastle”.  Newcastle was the center of British coal production; taking coals to the place that already had all the coal made no sense.  Saudi has enough energy in the form of petroleum to forever exceed its needs.  Why do they need a nuclear reactor – unless the enriched uranium could go to something else, like maybe a nuclear bomb.

Best thought – Trump is trying to scare Iran into submission by offering Saudi a bomb. Or maybe, subterfuge layered on subterfuge, he’s trying to warn off Israel.  Let the US off the hook, or deal with a nuclear Saudi.  Worst thought – Trump wants Saudi to use nuclear power and put more oil on the world market, to get Trump out of his economic mess.  

What the Crown Prince does with the enriched uranium is a huge problem.   Giving nuclear weapons to Saudi, in a region where Iran is close to one and Israel has plenty, isn’t “coals to Newcastle”.  It’s “gas on a fire”.  

Meanwhile, poor Marco’s dominoes are out of line.  Even if the Middle East miraculously settles down and the US can withdraw, it’s hard to imagine starting a new conflict just ninety miles off the buoy at Key West.   After all, Marco has another set of dominoes, set to be the next Republican candidate for President of the United States.  A war would knock a giant, buoy sized gap in that lineup.

The Balance

It has always been a balance in our society, the scale measured between two different values.  One is the value of a free press, so important that it’s directly stated in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  The Founding Fathers, like all politicians, were bothered by the “press”.  But they also used it, even from the beginnings of the American Experiment.  Thomas Paine’s pamphlets, so important to spread the Revolutionary movement, are a classic example of the “press” speaking out against the government.

The other is government security, the reasonable need of all governments to hold some information secret from the public.  There are obvious examples, among them, the entirety of Presidential security measures.  There are the public ones:  agents with “bugs” in their ears, sniper overwatch positions, and such.  Then there are the speculative ones:  electronic counter measures against drone attacks, the scale of the background checks and precautions taken.

Undercover

A quick story:  when I was twenty, I worked for the 1976 Carter/Mondale Presidential campaign.  One of the big highlights was when Jimmy Carter (he insisted we call him Jimmy) came into Cincinnati.  He landed on a small private plane at Luken Airport, just east of downtown.  As he exited the plane, there was a crowd (a couple thousand) gathered to welcome him into town.  I was a junior staffer, assigned to clear a corridor for the candidate to shake hands and walk to the terminal.

As I backed into the crowd, I bumped into the man behind me.  He was scruffy looking, with an old fatigue jacket and blue jeans, and a couple of days growth of beard.  He was taller than me (most are), and my left elbow hit him at mid-chest.  But it struck something hard; it felt, to me, like a gun in a shoulder holster.  I glanced over my shoulder, wondering what my next “move” should be.  He looked me in the eye – then flipped up the collar of his jacket.  There was the Secret Service code pin-of-the-day.  He was one of them – a great relief to me!!

Of course they have undercover agents in the crowd – but who knew?  

The Court, the Favor and the Puzzle

There are a series of Court cases that determine the balance between security and freedom of the press.  Certainly the press cannot engage in espionage, stealing government secrets directly.  But what if someone else steals those secrets, and instead of selling them to an enemy, hands them to the press?  In the Pentagon Papers Supreme Court case, (The New York Times Co. v United States, 403 U.S. 713 , 1971), the Court ruled 6-3 that the government could not prevent the publication of classified information in the possession of the newspapers (the Washington Post had them too).  

On the other hand, President Kennedy held the secret of Soviet missile sites in Cuba for almost two weeks.  Just a couple of days before Kennedy revealed the crisis to the American people, the New York Times got the story.   Kennedy called The Times Washington editor, and asked him to hold the story until Kennedy acted.  The Times agreed.

OK, here’s one more story.   In the months before the D-Day invasion, British and American security forces were horrified to find the code word for the invasion, “Overlord”, and for the assault beaches, “Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword” appearing in crossword puzzles in the Daily Mail newspaper.  Was this German intelligence, transmitting “in the clear” to the homeland?  The author of the crosswords was taken into custody.

It turned out that the puzzle-master used local school children to help compile the “answers” to his crosswords.  Those children also heard a lot of the conversation by the hundreds of thousands Allied troops stationed in the south of England, and so often over-heard words ended up in the crosswords.  The puzzle-master was released.

The Plane (the Plane)

President Trump took a $400 million gift from the government of Qatar, a modified Boeing 747.  It’s similar to the planes that the US Air Force supplies as “Air Force One” to carry the President, but with a lot more luxury fittings added.  Meanwhile the current “Air Force Ones” have been in service since the 1990’s.  Two new planes are in the “pipeline”, and due in service by next year.

Instead, Trump accepted the Qatari gift, and had it modified (a taxpayer expense – between $400 million to a much as a $1 Billion) for the use of the President.  But there are some modifications that couldn’t be done.  Current Air Force Ones have both missile-defense measures and the capability of in-flight refueling.  Those aren’t easy (or cheap) add-ons to an existing aircraft, and haven’t been made to the Qatari plane.  

How do we know the defensive measures of Air Force One?  Well, it’s in the encyclopedia (Britannica).  And for those Harrison Ford fans, many of the security measures are detailed in the 1997 movie Air Force One  (along with the famous Presidential line:  “Get Off My Plane!!”).

And the deficiencies of the Qatari plane are visibly obvious.

Trump took the Qatari plane to Türkeye, a country which borders Iran.  US security services raised alarms of a possible Iranian attack.  The “old” Air Force One, with counter-measures and refueling capability, was brought in to bring Trump home.  And that whole series of events was reported by the Times.

The Leak

The question is:  how did the Times find out about the security controversy?  That answer is simple, it was leaked by someone in the Administration with knowledge of it.  And like all Presidential Administrations, the Trump Presidency is trying to “plug” the leaks.  They decided that the easiest way to do that, was to force the reporters to give up their sources.

So FBI Director Kash Patel was called to the White House where he led an investigation into the “leak”.  It’s not the first time the White House was used to find leakers.  In fact, Richard Nixon had a whole secret staff called the Plumbers, with the job to stop leaks.  They used a variety of illegal methods, including break-ins and extortion, to stop information flowing out of the building.  Some of those same Plumbers broke into the Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate office building.

But Patel went a different direction.  As FBI Director, he had the ability to get Grand Jury subpoenas ordering the Times reporters to testify to their sources.  In fact the FBI delivered those orders to the reporters homes. They included seizure of phones and computers, and even the electronic communications of family members.  

The Case

The New York Times went to Court to squash the subpoenas, and the Pentagon Papers case was cited.  The Times claims that the methods used, delivering the subpoenas to the home instead of the work place, including of all of the family equipment, and failing to allow the Times some prior ability to gain Court action; all were an attempt to squash investigative reporting rather than find leakers.

It’s like using a sledge hammer to kill a fly.  The deficiencies of the Qatari plane were well known.  While the Administration may say they were secrets, they weren’t very secret.  And, as shown in the Pentagon Papers case, the source of the information, the leak, can be investigated from the source, the White House, not the outlet, the reporter.  

In many areas of American society, the Trump Presidency tries to use intimidation and threats to get their way.  The most obvious example is the actions of ICE, threatening and even committing violence to scare migrants into leaving.  But the Administration has also gone after universities.  Just this week, they announced another attack on Harvard.  And they’ve gone after the press, suing ABC and CBS and, of course, The New York Times.   But these seemingly minor subpoenas are really a whole new level of intimidation.  

The Threat

It’s not just the knock on the door on Friday night, with Federal Agents on the step.  It’s not just the personal invasion of privacy, phones and computers. The threat is to other family members.  It’s the old Mafia threat:  “I know where you live and who’s in your family”.  And finally, if the government will do this to keep a “non-secret, secret”, what will they do with something that really matters?

That’s the real threat to the First Amendment.

McCain

John McCain ran for President in 2008 against Barack Obama.  Whatever you thought of his politics, McCain had a tremendous resume.  He was a US Senator from Arizona, and a Naval Aviator during the Vietnam War who flew twenty-three combat missions over Vietnam.  The seminal event of his life was during that last mission, when he was shot down, injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese.  He spent five and a half years imprisoned, routinely tortured.  Both of his shoulders were broken in the process.  The son and grandson of Navy Admirals, McCain was offered an early release by the North Vietnamese, but he refused.  He wasn’t going home before the rest of his comrades.

When McCain returned he was no longer able to fly.  Instead, he became a Pentagon liaison to the Congress, sent to brief the members on ongoing situations.  He often travelled with them on overseas missions, “fact-finding” on US military operations.  He was directly attached to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and spent a great deal of time with then-Senator Joe Biden. They became fast-friends, despite their political differences.

Politics

When McCain left the Navy after his Congressional work,  political office was a natural progression. He was a “maverick” Republican, often willing to go his own way regardless of the party-line.  He was well known for two other characteristics.   McCain had a ferocious temper, perhaps abetted by the constant pain from his injuries.  And, he was famous for his sense of humor, one that he often displayed publicly.  

So when on the campaign trail, he was asked over and over again what he would do about the ongoing irritation of Iran, he finally broke into a Beach Boys song, “Barbara Ann”, slightly altered.  Instead of “Ba-Ba-Ba, Ba-Barbara Ann”, McCain improvised  “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb; bomb, bomb Iran”.  While some were outraged that he “trivialized” such a serious consequence, most Americans recognized that few knew better than McCain the consequences of launching an aerial war.

Total War

World War II was the zenith of mass bombing.  Both the Axis Powers and the Allies engaged in bombing civilian and military targets.  It was a central tenet of the “total war” concept.  Sure, both sides try to defeat the enemy in ground battle.  But when that wasn’t possible, particularly in such a geographically wide range as a world war, the theory was to destroy the enemy’s ability to continue fighting.  It’s the same principle Grant and Sherman determined on in Sherman’s famous “March to the Sea”.  Restrict the enemy’s ability to provide arms, uniforms, weapons and food to continue fighting, by destroying their supplies and manufacturing capabilities.

Nazi Reichmarshal Herman Göring promised to, “Bomb England to her knees”.  But, while the mass attacks which became the Battle of Britain wreaked a tragic toll on British civilian lives, it failed to defeat the British.  In fact, the direct attack on civilians brought the war “home” to the population, steeling them to the sacrifices required to persevere.  And the sacrifices made by the Royal Air Force ultimately made the battle too costly for the Luftwaffe. 

Strategic Bombing

The British and the US 8^th Army Air Corps returned the “favor”, with massive bombings of German industry and infrastructure.  And while those bombings restricted Nazi supplies, forced industry underground, and prevented some technological advancement, it took invasions from the Russians in the East and the US, British, and their allies in the West to finally defeat Hitler.   Bombing had a definite impact, but it alone was not the deciding factor.  

And the United States took that same massive bombing theory to the Pacific theater of the war.  The “island hopping” strategy, and particularly the ground battles at Iwo Jima and Saipan, were specifically to get forward bases to launch massive air attacks.  B-29 bombers dropped over half a million bombs on the Japanese islands, mostly on industrial and civilian targets.  But in the spring of 1945 as Nazi Germany fell, US planners were still working on Operation Downfall, a two-pronged, multi-year plan for the ground invasion of Japan.  Casualty estimates were a quarter of a million Americans, and tens of millions of Japanese.

Lessons of War

The atom bomb changed the paradigm of warfare.  The US use of two of them demonstrated an ability and a willingness to destroy whole populations with a single device.  The Japanese surrendered rather than face obliteration of their culture.

The lesson of World War II:  massive bombing helped, but didn’t win, wars.

The United States forgot that lesson in the Vietnam War.  Three times more bombs were dropped on Vietnam, a country the size of New Mexico, than were dropped by both sides in World War II.  Yet the Vietnam War continued beyond America’s willingness to fight, and ultimately the Communist Vietnamese won.  Bombing couldn’t win the war, and neither could US ground troops.  Over 58,000 Americans died in the struggle, and between one and three million Vietnamese.

Consequences

Today, the United States has the strongest military force ever assembled in world history, (even without Secretary Hegseth’s added testosterone!).  But it seems that the historic strength has lent itself to hubris; to a willingness to ignore the lessons of the past.  Bombing is a tool in warfare, but, excepting nuclear warfare, it is not a solution.  The US learned it in Vietnam, and again in Afghanistan. Winning wars requires a national commitment to sacrifice more than just the “treasure” of sophisticated weaponry.  

American leaders forget that in our current conflict in Iran.  Now, like Afghanistan and Vietnam, Trump must find a way out without “a win”.   We all have the images of that last helicopter in Saigon, or the civilians falling off the C-17 landing gear in Kabul.  Bombing Iran won’t win this conflict.  Sending in American troops without the “will” of the American people won’t either.  And, let us all hope that there is no consideration of a nuclear option.

John McCain would have warned us of these consequences.

Retirement

I’m a retired teacher and coach, of that I’m sure.  But retired is kind of a “fuzzy” word.  I officiated over seventy track and cross country meets last year.  I gave presentations about pole vaulting to multiple groups. And I coached a “pit” at a track and field camp over the summer.  I’m even consulting as an “expert” on a track related lawsuit.  So, I’m retired, but I haven’t stopped working.  

Of course, there’s the near-daily essays on politics, the world and life that  stream out of my head onto the screen like this morning.  If you’re reading this, it’s likely you’ve been here before.  And then there’s the dogs.  We’ve got four, and we’re also a part of Lost Pet Recovery, getting lost dogs back to their “people”.  Just last night, at 11:19, a lost dog in the village of  Fayetteville in Brown County (Southwestern), Ohio, walked into our panel trap.  Another one safe, this one from frequent crossings of busy State Route 50 by the Skyline Chili.

So I’m retired, but I’m busy.  

Calculations

And, on the side, I still occasionally help out in political campaigns.  One of my areas of “expertise”, is in targeting information to a particular voting group in an area.  I started doing this when I was fourteen, the first time I actually was part of planning a political campaign.  In 1976 I was twenty. I did the “statistics” for eight counties in Southwestern Ohio for the Carter/Mondale Presidential campaign.  It included Fayetteville, as well as Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Middletown.

So how do you “target” information?  You use the voting rolls, the list of people who are registered to vote in the area.  Here in Ohio, we have partisan primaries, where voters are required to declare either a political party, or declare as an independent.  So for the more than fifty years I’ve been involved, you could go down to the County Court House and get “the list”.  It took weeks to gather all the data back in 1976.  I travelled to the Court Houses in West Union (Adams),  Georgetown (Brown), Hamilton (Butler), Batavia (Clermont), Wilmington (Clinton), Cincinnati (Hamilton), Hillsboro (Highland) and Lebanon (Warren); armed only with a calculator and a yellow legal pad. (Thank goodness for calculators, five years earlier and I would have used a slide-rule; if you know, you know) .

Public Record

Today I could do all that work from my kitchen table.  All of the voting rolls, with lists of names, addresses, party identification, and voting frequency all are available with a few computer key strokes.  Here in Licking County (Newark), you can produce reports using any variable involved; by family, or by street address, or by voting frequency, or, of course, by party.  It’s all public information, and it’s always been public information, at least for the last sixty years.

So I was a little surprised when President Trump presented as “evidence” that China had all of the US voting information, “…over 220 million voters”, as if it was a national secret like the atom bomb or Area 51.  It was like the Chinese hacked into our voting systems.  There are fifty-one of them, all decentralized by state and then county; that makes it much more difficult to break.  I wasn’t surprised that China had the information:  anyone; you, me, the Democratic Party or the Peoples Republic can access it.  I was just surprised that President Trump didn’t seem to know that wasn’t a secret.  

See Dead People

I had to do some channel surfing to watch Trump’s “seminal” address on voting security.  MS-NOW cut away from the speech early.  ABC and NBC did not even run it.  CBS, with a parent company deeply involved in government regulated purchases, started to run the speech, but even they cut away.  I finally ended up on C-SPAN; they cover everything.  The voter roll “evidence” was only one part of Trump’s “case” for “securing” the vote. But his whole, twenty some minute argument was a house of cards.  Each piece of evidence, from Venezuelan voting machines to “dead people” on the voting rolls, were like the Chinese lists – easily explained, and essentially harmless.

Trump “Sees dead people”.  Sure there are dead people on the voting rolls.  While many states try to cross-check death certificates and state benefits against the voting rolls, ultimately the dead simply fall off the list.  Here in Ohio, if you don’t vote for multiple cycles, your name is removed.  And in many communities, voting occurs where the workers know the voters.  The dead there have little chance of casting a post funeral-ballot.  

Federal Takeover

What was Trump’s point?  He wants the SAVE America Act to pass the Senate.  He wants Americans to go over high hurdles to prove their citizenship, their identity, and their residency in order to vote.  It’s a solution without a problem; voter fraud is so rare that it isn’t an issue.  It’s only become one because Trump has made it a point to claim it is – so he can discount any election that he fails to win.  

Last night speech is the latest in that effort.  But it’s also a warning bell.  Most people in the United States ignored him last night, and most states will continue to run and secure their own election processes.  But don’t expect that Trump will just let it go.  He will find lots more reason for Federal control of the voting process, because Federal control means HE controls it.  

That’s the only way he and his MAGA “friends” can win in 2026.

Future Classroom

Fifty years from now, there will still be classrooms.  Students will still be studying, listening to teachers, and exploring ideas with their classmates.  The idea that Artificial Intelligence will replace all of that is foolish.  AI will have its place, capable of Star Trek like conversations and searches. It already is. But human interaction, reasoning, and argument will remain an important part of education.  The goal then will be the same as it is now: to educate students to take their place as intelligent citizens in a democracy.  Schools will still develop skills in discerning facts, opinions, and pure fiction.  That will require the social interaction a classroom provides, and the neutral mediation of a teacher.

And, fifty years from now, students will be studying this day in history; Thursday, July 16^th 2026.  Today is the beginning of something. And what that something is depends on our current set of intelligent citizens now in place in our democracy.

Stolen Election

The President of the United States is addressing the Nation at 9:00 pm tonight.  It seems that all of the mainstream media are, willing or not, going to give their platform to him.  The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, who has made his bias for the President clear, already is “growling” at the major networks.  He’s warning them of sanctions if they fail to act “in the public interest”.   It doesn’t matter.  I will be watching the President tonight, probably on my choice of media, MSNOW. Sure, they have a bias against the MAGA movement, but that won’t impact what Donald J Trump says tonight.

The White House is coy about what’s in this speech.  The media office still says that the speech is “open” to change.  But they also leaked what we can expect to hear from the 47^th leader of the Nation.  He’s going to say that China impacted the 2020 election, such that Donald Trump lost, and Joe Biden won.  And he’s going to challenge the legitimacy of the election of Georgia Senator John Ossoff, just as Ossoff prepares to defend his Senate seat against Republican Congressman Mike Collins.  Trump will claim that 2020 was “stolen”. 

Ham Sandwich

The President may claim that this was discovered through the intense search of Fulton County (Atlanta) ballots seized a few months ago by the FBI at the direction of then Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.  He’s going to use this as “proof” that the 2020 election was tainted.  Like a Federal Prosecutor presenting to a Grand Jury, Trump is going to present only “his side” of the case.  And, as has recently been the case, maybe the “National Grand Jury”, the intelligent citizens of our democracy will accept his “side”.   After all; as the saying goes, any good prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich.  An American Olympian was indicted for felony vandalism in the District of Columbia, for sticking his hand in the Reflecting Pool to see what was floating there. So anything is possible.

But, if that’s all he says, then it will be waste of prime time.  The 30% of Americans who follow the Trump command of “only believe what I say”, will, of course, believe what he says.  The rest of America will apply their own discernment, and recognize a ham sandwich when they see one.  But there is a much greater danger tonight.

Facts

It bears repeating that the 2020 election has been analyzed perhaps more than any other in history.  Nationwide, sixty different courts ruled that there was no election “fraud”.  And on an even larger scale, the Heritage Foundation, birthplace of the MAGA 2025 Project, finds that voter fraud is so rare as to be completely inconsequential.  All of the rumors, all of the bizarre theories of Venezuelan voter machines or Chinese infiltration of programming, have been completely invalidated.  In fact, Trump’s own CISA (Cyber-structure and Infrastructure Security Agency), tasked with protecting elections, stated that the 2020 election was the most secure election in US history.

There has only been one intense government investigation revealing foreign interference in an America Presidential election.  Volume I of the Mueller Report outlined Russia’s attempts to influence the outcome in favor of Donald Trump in 2016.  But, I’m absolutely confident that we won’t hear about that from the President tonight.

Doubt

That won’t stop Trump from making his “case” to the American people, likely a re-hash of all of the rumors and conspiracy theories of the past.  His goal isn’t to overturn the 2020 results.  

It’s to make Americans question the validity of their own votes.  The entire thrust of the MAGA movement since 2020 has been to make Americans think that the election was stolen, to shake their confidence in our election outcomes.  They do it all the time, including even this last California primary.  California counts votes slowly, not because they cheat, but because they don’t want to spend the incredible amount of money it would take to count so much faster (and less accurately).  As the vote count increases, the “leaders” in the results change.  It’s those changes that Trump and his cohort use to sow doubt in the eventual outcomes.

Trump plants the doubts, then uses those doubts to proclaim the need for Federalized elections, a process that he can directly control. (Much as he now directly controls the Department of Justice – just Google “8647”).  He might, tonight, claim some form of national election emergency, requiring him to take emergency control, or even to send in Federal agents or troops to “protect” the ballots.  

Foxes and Chickens

I live in a “farm friendly” community.  My neighbors even have a full chicken coop in the backyard.  There’s an old saying:  “That’s like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop”.  If this fox is placed in charge of this election, it may be that we’ve already had the last “free election” in American history.

And that’s why today’s date will be studied fifty years in the future.  It may be the beginning of a new era of American government, one where true democracy no longer exists.  Or it may be the beginning of a resurgence in a truly democratic Nation.  

Either way, the lesson plan begins tonight.

Bad Movie

Here’s a trivia question for you.  You turn on a movie, twenty minutes after it starts.  As you “drop in”, you see multiple random vehicles chasing a car or van.  A close up inside the chased car shows a group of men, or a man and his child, struggling to avoid getting overtaken.  But the random vehicles are relentless, and finally the chased car is boxed in and slows.  

Armed men jump from the vehicles and approach from all sides, guns drawn.  They are screaming different things:  hands on the wheel, get out of the car, show me your hands, take out your keys.  The confused driver doesn’t get what’s going on.  Fight or flight runs strong in humans – the driver panics.  He hits the brake, or maybe the gas.  Gun shots ring out, through the driver’s window.  The car rolls to a stop.  The passengers are placed face down in the street.  The murdered driver is laid out on the sidewalk. His blood pools at the curb.

It could be a movie about World War II, the Gestapo making an apprehension.  It could be a drug movie, or a spy movie from the Cold War, or even some kind of cult/horror film. But it’s not.  It happens in the United States.

It Happens Everywhere

It’s every day in America.  As Bob Seger might sing; “It happens in Chicago, happens in Houston, on the windswept streets of Biddeford or in the cold of Minneapolis… All through the daylight, they come and they go, Oh they go.  Only one thing’s for certain, it’s ICE, not fire, down below…” (Misappropriated lyrics from Bob Seger’s song – Fire Down Below).

It’s not just about thuggery. It’s not just the “inexperience” of newly recruited, undertrained ICE agents.  And it’s surely a lie to say they are just trying to cleanse America of the “worst of the worst”.  The dead are not the worst. In some cases, they represent the best of America.

This is not so simple.  These actions, these four murders and six attempted murders, are not the result of failed training, or the random few agents who are bullies with guns.  This is an orchestrated, planned, and intentional policy to terrorize Americans.  And it’s working.

Intentional Terror

There is a cabal appointed by the President of the United States, and led by the Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.  That cabal includes the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Acting Attorney General, and the heads of the immigration regulatory agencies:  ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, and the mysterious Homeland Security Investigations.  

They’ve set a “target” – now 2000 arrests a day (it was 3000). Many of those “arrests” are without court warrant, some are literally random roundups. They believe that ALL undocumented migrants, whatever their particular standing in the process, and as long as they are people of color, are fair game to be removed.  Their simple existence provides the “probable cause” for their removal. 

That basis then justifies all of their actions.  Due process of law, guaranteed to ALL by the 14^th Amendment, is not an issue.  They are the “administrative short circuit”, cutting through the legal processes.  And they are doing it through terror.

If they can terrorize migrants to “voluntarily deport themselves”, it’s a win.  If they can whisk up hard working migrants, put them in inhumane concentration camps (yep – I used the right word) like Delaney Hall in New Jersey, then offer them “the choice” of signing papers and leaving, it’s a win.  And if a few get killed along the way, terrorized by dangerous street chases in unmarked cars and shot through the car window, that just heightens the terror.  To the cabal, that’s a “win” as well. 

Means and Ends

There are two television shows of the 2000’s that are the “Ying and Yang” of choices.  One was The West Wing, about a White House staff that were definitely political, but tried their best to improve America.  And then there was 24, about American agents who were willing to break any law in order to protect the Nation.  One was about lawful use of power (usually), the other was about using any means, all justified by the result. 

The current White House cabal combines The West Wing power of the Presidency with the morality of 24.  Their hoped for result, an America “cleansed” of undocumented migrants, is more important to them than the disastrous economic consequences, or the morality of using terror as a tactic of law enforcement.  It’s even more important than the 14^thAmendment.

For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? (Matthew 16:26, KJV).  At what cost to a country that they ignore their own laws, their Constitutional soul, to achieve a political end?  

We are now a terrorist nation.  America attacks other nations without warning.  We use our superior military force to gain economic advantage.  And we chase down folks living in our country, based on the color of their skin.  It’s all done under the imprimatur of law – but it’s really the definition of lawless. 

This is Our America today.

So Much E-Mail

My email is voluminous.  I get well over one hundred emails a day. If I don’t check every few hours, it’s overwhelming.  Most, not surprisingly, are for various Democratic candidates around the country, pleading their  case, and asking for donations.  Some are more persistent. I get multiple messages from Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton.  No, they aren’t asking for advice – but since I’m local to Ohio, they just send a lot more donation requests.  Sherrod often sends three of the same emails, probably from three different Democratic mailing lists.

Then there’s all the odd stuff I’ve gotten into over the years.  There’s the “Trivia Quiz” now more than a decade old (proud to be running about 70% correct approaching 4000 questions).  And there’s the “Quora” group, an online chat mostly about politics with some history and other stuff leavened in.  I can learn about the difficulties of flying World War II aircraft, and weigh-in on political/historical questions from time to time.

Hillsdale

And I ended up on the Hillsdale College mailing list years ago when I wanted to see their “alternative lessons” to the 1619 Project.  (The 1619 Project was the New York Times intensive study of the real impact of enslavement on American economic development).   The  Hillsdale 1776 Project was  a “Christianized and sanitized” version of American History.  When I first downloaded the “lessons”, it was just an oddity.  Today, their slanted version of reality is gaining legal power in Ohio’s biased state legislature.  

With a “connection” to Hillsdale, I ended up on a variety of conservative mailing lists.  Like my Democratic friends, their email campaigns are relentless, not so much about donating, but about believing.  And so I ended up on the “Faith and Freedom” list, with news dedicated to Christian Nationalism in this “progressive-agnostic world”.  But I find it worth reading.  It helps give me an understanding of how faith can be manipulated to achieve real-political goals.

Socialist Threat

This week’s article caught my eye, enough to not only get me to read, but to write about it here. It was entitled:  The Socialist Wave Threatening America’s Christian Foundation.   First of all, a full disclosure: I am not a Biblical scholar, nor will I pretend to be.  My more religious friends may (and should) feel free to revise and correct.  But, in my “agnostic” view of the Bible, the Old Testament with its “reap what you sow” and “eye for an eye” attitude is more Capitalistic.  And then, the New Testament, with the “loaves and fishes” and “Blessed be the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God”, seems more Socialistic.  

But even with that, the foundation of Israel, a Jewish state (an Old Testament based religion) was built on the kibbutz, a truly socialist farming community where everyone worked together, ate together, and owned everything and nothing together.  

So what threat is American socialism to Christianity?

The socialist movement recognizes an opportunity to remake America in their image. They seek to replace individual liberty with government control, personal responsibility with dependence, and faith-based values with secular ideology (Faith and Freedom).

There are a couple of points to unwind here.  First, there is a trend in many American Christian churches to follow the “Prosperity Gospel”, defined as accumulating wealth as God’s reward for strong faith and support for the church.  Obviously, a socialist system is antithetical to this personal “prosperity” – meaning more dollars.  So it’s likely that those who have great financial prosperity from their Christian ministry, will see socialism as “bad”.  God can’t show His/Her/Their favor to those chosen faithful if there’s a socialist economic system.

Godless Communism

But there’s a more important issue here, more important than rich TV evangelists.  President Trump is leading the charge to confuse the Democratic Socialists in the United States, with old-school, cold war COMMUNISM!!!  That kind of fits:  Trump does a whole lot of things that were “OK” back in the 1950’s, from kidnapping foreign leaders to sexually abusing women.  So it makes sense that he would fall back on that era when America tried to define the struggle against the Soviet Union in religious terms.  

Many Americans today don’t realize that some of our most fundamental “rituals” in American life were altered to fit the “Godless Communist” model.  It wasn’t until 1954 that the words  “Under God” were inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance (History.com).  And “In God We Trust” didn’t become the official motto of the Nation until 1956 (History.com). Before that, the motto was “E Pluribus Unum” (out of many, one – kind of socialist?), chosen for the seal of the United States by the real Founding Fathers in 1782 (diplomacy.state).

It wasn’t just that Communism was totalitarian, against all of the First Amendment freedoms that current Americans shouldn’t take for granted: religion, speech, press, peaceable assembly, petition for redress of grievances. In the 1950’s America made the struggle about Communist atheism versus religious Americans, even though there were plenty of atheist Americans, and even atheist Capitalists (and some God-fearing Russians). 

American Souls

Communism isn’t socialism.  There are plenty of socialist countries in the world that maintain freedom of religion (and the other freedoms too).  But conflating the two makes the argument more cogent for the fundamental Christian set. 

Our nation’s founders understood that freedom requires virtue, and virtue requires faith. They knew that human rights come from God, not government. Socialist ideology rejects these foundational truths and seeks to replace them with an all-powerful state.

The battle for America’s soul is real, and it’s happening now. Patriots who love God and country must engage this fight with prayer, wisdom, and unwavering commitment to the principles that have sustained us for over two centuries. (Faith and Freedom).

Like the 1776 Project, Faith and Freedom re-writes American history in order to pursue their own religious and economic goals.  Our Nation’s founders came to the New World for religious freedom:  from the Pilgrims and Puritans in Massachusetts, to the Quakers in Pennsylvania, to the Roman Catholics in Maryland.  And then there was Roger Williams and the Providence Plantations (Rhode Island). In 1636 they promised acceptance of all faiths, and separation of church and state (Rhode Island). The last thing the Founders wanted was a government that requires an exact “faith”, as that was exactly why they, and their ancestors, left the “old world” to come to America.  

But I will agree with one thing:  this is a battle for the “real soul” of America.  But it’s not “Godless Communists”, or even Democratic Socialists, that are trying to control our soul.  The concept of controlling “souls” is against everything the Founders of the United States stood for.  

But it sure sounds like the “Faith and Freedom” folks would like to try.

Full Sprint

Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina, died Saturday, at 71 years of age. He dropped, as they say, in full sprint.  He was in Ankara, Turkey on Thursday, his birthday. And he was in Ukraine on Friday, trying to bridge the gap between his friend, Donald Trump, and the one of the few issues where Graham stood firm; support for Ukraine.  He died at his home, reportedly of cardiac arrest.

Graham stood for several things.  He was a fierce advocate for Ukraine, and for Netanyahu’s Israel.  He was just as fierce an opponent of Russia and of Iran.  His foreign policy was the “Old School” Republican policy of Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon – use our military and economic might to denigrate our enemies, and to support our friends.

Modern Republican

Graham came to the fore as a House Impeachment Manager in 1998.  He spoke for the removal of Bill Clinton, demanding that America “cleanse the office of the Presidency”.  And he followed up that notoriety with a move into the Senate, succeeding South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, who served for forty-seven years.  Thurmond was the original “Dixiecrat”, a Democrat who broke with the Party in 1948 to support segregation.  

Graham was a more “modern Republican”, but still a fierce advocate for his Party.  But after all of the partisanship at the end of the century, he found common ground with Democrats in foreign policy.  When he reached the Senate, he became one of the “three amigos” that shared a single view on how the United States should interact with the world.  He “hitched his wagon” to Republican Senator John McCain and Democrats Joe Biden and Joe Liberman, as they travelled the world trying to further US aims.

Protege

McCain became a mentor to Graham, and the younger Senator responded with strong support for the Arizona Senator’s two Presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2008.   Graham himself ran for President in 2016, staking out a conservative economic policy and an aggressive foreign policy.  He was known for “plain talking”, calling then-candidate Donald Trump “…a nut and a kook”.  But his campaign never gained traction, and he ultimately supported Trump in the general election.

McCain forged an independent path away from Trump in the first administration.  Graham didn’t “break” from his mentor, but remained quiet.  While McCain voted to stop Trump’s plan to end the Affordable Care Act (the famous thumb down), Graham supported the President.  And when McCain died of a brain tumor, Graham mourned his friend.  But he also made it clear to the Senate, and the world what the future looked like.  He specifically said, “I’m no John McCain”.  

Count Him In 

He was right.  He became Donald Trump’s best friend and fiercest defender.  The loyalty he showed to McCain became sycophancy to Trump.  He was Trump’s golf buddy, a frequent flyer on Air Force One and at the Mara Lago Supper Club.  And Trump treated him like he does most of his entourage, praising them when they support him, and ripping him when he didn’t.

Graham tried to break away from Trump after January 6^th, saying on the floor of the Senate “…You can count me out”.  But he also was one of the first Republicans to travel to Mara Lago to see Trump, only a month or so after the Insurrection.  Graham helped start the “rehabilitation” of  Trump’s political fortunes.

Graham’s friends on both sides of the aisle call him a “coalition builder”.  And, they say that he was old school, like his “amigos”; willing to fight like Hell for a side on the Senate, then smile and laugh over drinks when it was over.  And if you are a friend of Ukraine, then you lost a huge advocate Saturday, one who still had the ear of the most important American decision maker.  

But it’s also true that Graham clearly shrugged off the mantle of John McCain, of a “maverick” who forged his own path.  Whatever he did behind the scenes; in public, Graham made a “nut and a kook” his best friend.  It looked like exactly what it was:  a politician looking to the most powerful to survive.  

Twitter Politics

To be honest, I expected to hear of the death of a powerful Republican Senator today – Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell.  He was transported from his Washington home in cardiac arrest a few weeks ago, and his current condition remains a mystery.  Rumors abound.  But, I didn’t expect Lindsey Graham to go down.

For me, he was a disappointment, and man who came out of John McCain’s shadow, then ran from the light.  But his loss will be felt, especially as an advocate for Ukraine against Russian aggression.  And perhaps most of all, Graham’s death represents another in the transition from the “old school” politics of the past, to the Twitter politics of our current era.  

And that’s not good for America.

Powerball

$749 million dollars is a lot of money.   When the Powerball jackpot reached that amount, there were various articles about how to spend the winnings.  With the Powerball, about half would go to taxes.  That leaves $324 million left to spend – still not bad.  Financial advisors suggest the winner should spend 10%, $32 million, on whatever they might want.  That’s to get the “I WON!!” pressure off.  Maybe buy a new house, or car; an island in the Caribbean (not Epstein’s), or a mountain in Western Colorado.  Or build the local high school an indoor track facility.  

Then stash the remainder in investments to take care of finances for the rest of your life.   That’s $290 million invested safely, earning 5% a year.  The amount would generate $14.5 million a year, before taxes (again).  After paying about another $4 million in taxes, you’re left to live on $10 million a year.  I bet I could do that.

Media Spending

But this isn’t about winning the Powerball, or even what I would do with the $32 million “spending money” (though that’s a fun topic!).  It’s about the election of 2026 here in Ohio.  Political campaigns buy “time” on broadcast and media channels in advance of the campaign season to guarantee they have the spots.  They “fill in the blanks” with ads later on.  And here in Ohio, there’s a pivotal Senate race (Sherrod Brown -D v John Husted- R), and a hotly contested Gubernatorial race (Vivek Ramaswamy – R v Amy Acton – D). The time is already committed.  And you guessed it:  $749 million dollars is how much it costs (Dispatch).

That’s up from the original projection of $440 million.  What happened?  Well the National climate changed:  Trump’s approval rating dropped, with 35% approving and 61% disapproving (Newsweek).  And the increased costs of gas, food and consumer goods, all made life tougher, not only for regular citizens, but for Republicans trying to run on the how they governed.  And finally, the constant drip of failed Federal government over-reach, from ICE to the Reflecting Pool, soured Americans’ view.

So what were nearly guaranteed wins in “Red” Ohio for Husted and Ramaswamy, turned into real races.  Both Democrats are within the margin of error, with some polls showing them in the lead.  So both sides, Republican and Democrats, started pouring more money into the campaigns.

Pox or Diarrhea

In the “good old days”, political campaigns started the day after Labor Day.  That’s September 8^th this year.  But the “good old days” are long gone, and the media wars have already begun.  Brown has ads out tying Husted to “big energy”.  Ramaswamy is flooding the media with spots that blame Acton for everything that happened during the pandemic.  After all, she was the Public Health Director for Republican Governor Mike DeWine during that time.  She followed the Trump era guidelines, including the original “close downs” to try to prevent the spread of Covid.  And, of course, there were the dreaded “MASKS”, the cloth mouth coverings that became the cause celeb of the right:  “How dare they tell me to cover my mouth!!!!”

And Husted, well he’s trying the old strategy of tying Brown to Joe Biden.  

It’s July, and there’s plenty of real news to dominate the airwaves (and streaming cables).  Local headlines are focused on sixteen children rescued from a horrific home in Vinton County, and the new virus that gives the victims “explosive diarrhea” (WCMH).  But the real explosion is coming:  the explosion of ads claiming every candidate is horrible.  It’s “negative advertising”, and designed to keep people from coming out to vote.  The design is to suppress the vote, to make voters say “a pox (or diarrhea virus) on both your houses”.  

Street Money

Driving down the turnout here in Ohio is considered an advantage to Republicans.  In the more recent Presidential elections, Biden got 45% of the vote and Harris 43%.  So any Democrat has an uphill battle from the start.  

Democratic campaigns are aware of this.  And they are aware of the overwhelming boredom created by one campaign ad after another, until everyone is jaded with all the candidates.  The one area that Democrats are supposed to be better than Republicans is “street money”.  While that sounds like something that’s illegal, “street money” is really just spending money on efforts to get voters to go to the polls.  “Street money” is spent on organizing folks to knock on doors, encourage Democratic voters to show up, and let them know that as difficult as Ohio has made it to vote (we have the strictest voting laws in the country), they can still do it.

I hope they saved some money for that.  Otherwise, it’s not likely they’ll get the chance to say,  “WE WON”.  

Collins

Senator Susan Collins of Maine is an adept politician.  In her thirty years in office, she’s cultivated her political image as a “moderate”.  That’s not easy.  She’s a Republican that the good people of  majority-Democrat Maine (Maine voted for Harris by seven percent) can accept, because she’s appears to be in the middle.  Collins famously joined John McCain (thumbs down) in saving the Affordable Care Act in 2017.  But time and time again, from Kavanaugh to Kennedy, she voted in support of the Trump Administration.  

Collins uses her political influence in the Senate to bring money to Maine.  During her tenure, over $4 Billion in Federal funds went into Maine transportation infrastructure, $135 Million in local community projects, and $4 Billion in Defense projects. And she makes sure that the people of Maine know where the money comes from.  She’s an outstanding “retail” politician, making the less than one million Mainers feel like she “cares” for them.

The Senate

Democrats have been stymied by Collins, unable to find a candidate to overcome her political juggernaut.  But in our current political climate of division, it’s a difficult time to be perceived as “in the middle”.  Even in Democratic primaries, more moderate incumbents have been defeated for not being tough enough on the current Administration.   

And this year is pivotal.  Trump’s approval rating is in the mid-30’s, and the President himself is not on the ballot.  If Democrats can hold the seats they have (Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire), and flip four more (out of North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Maine, Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa), they can gain control of the Senate.

Maine is key.  

But there is a second variable in the Maine Senate race.  Two factions of the Democratic Party, the “establishment” wing led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the Democratic Socialist wing, led by neighboring Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, both put candidates up to run against Collins.  As befits the establishment, they chose Maine Governor Janet Mills, the 78 year-old who told Trump that, “We’ll see you in Court”.  The Sanders wing found a more compelling candidate, Graham Platner.

Platner

Platner appealed to Maine Democrats on a number of levels.  He’s an “oysterman”, who comes across as a working class guy.  And he’s a veteran, a Marine who served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Platner acknowledges having PTSD, with severe difficulty transitioning from combat to normal life.  As a Politico article put it, Platner is:  “…(A) manifestation of the ineffable national frustration”.

Maine Democrats were given a choice:  a geriatric Governor finishing her career, or a damaged veteran who spoke bluntly about the failures of American government.  They overwhelmingly went for Platner, despite evidence that he had a number of issues with former girlfriends. (See this earlier essay, Holier than What).

But now, Platner is accused of rape.  Unlike earlier accusations, this one doesn’t come from a woman associated with Republican politics.  After further investigation, there is contemporaneous confirmation of her claims.  Now Platner stands on the verge of dropping out of the Senate race and faces potential criminal charges.

Maine Democrats

In the end, it’s not about Graham Platner.  His political future is already decided, set in stone by his drunken transgressions of the past. (Not the “distant past”, not “when he was a kid”.  This rape accusation is from six years ago, well within the Maine criminal statute of limitations).  The decision is what will Democrats in Maine do next?

When Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 race, Democrats moved quickly to consolidate the candidacy of Kamala Harris.  There was a great deal of criticism of the Party for failing to give the “members a say” in their candidate.  Maine has a narrow window for whatever action they  choose to take.  First, Platner has to withdraw.  The deadline for that is July 13^th, next Monday.

Then the Party has until July 27^th, to choose a replacement.  

In three weeks, Maine Democrats must accomplish the following.  First, get Platner out.  Second, give their constituents some way to “input” into the process.  While Platner should be gone, his Progressive stands absolutely resonated with the Democratic base.  If the “establishment” picks an “establishment candidate”, it’s likely that the Maine race is over – Collins wins.  While Janet Mills did not withdraw from the primary (probably foreseeing these issues), she’s not the answer.  For many Democratic Mainers, she’s part of the problem.

Collins is one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents.  Flipping four seats in the Senate is tough, and Democrats can’t just “give away” the opportunity.  Graham Platner, and the Sander’s folks who raised him up without proper vetting, already damaged the chance of winning the seat.  But, as Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s not over ‘til it’s over”.   

For all of us, Maine Democrats:  get it right this time.

Addendum: Platner “suspended his campaign” last night. He blamed the “Democratic Establishment” for bringing these false charges. But he also pledged to withdraw his name from the nomination. And finally, he demanded that Maine have an “open” nomination process. He continues to deny the accusations.