Category: Uncategorized

Truth or Consequences

Liar, Liar

It’s a town still located on the “high plains” of Eastern New Mexico. Or,  it was a game show your grandparents (my parents) watched on television.   But the term “truth or consequences” has a simple meaning:  tell the truth, or suffer the consequences of your lies.

Truth or Consequences used to be a bedrock of American politics.  Much like the Lincolnesque phrase about fooling some of the people, some of the time; while a politician might get short-term gains from lying, ultimately the truth would win out, and the liar wouldn’t.  But in our “post-truth” political era, the consequences of not telling the truth seems to have little impact on American politics today.  You can take that in two different ways.   One is that old joke: “You know a politician is lying when their mouth is moving”.  It’s a cynical outlook; they all lie, all the time, so don’t believe any politician; even the ones that agree with you.

Or you might believe there no longer is a single political “truth”, and that “fact” is whatever fits your current political proclivity.  That way, you can only listen, read, and immerse yourself in those that agree with your view; and shut off any information to the contrary as being “political horse puckey!!”

But sometimes, like the Eastern sun cutting through the dust rising off the New Mexico plains, a truth blazes across the silos of information.  And like any good story, the truth of this one should bring consequences to those politicians who depend on the lie.

Ukrainian Corruption

 It starts in 2015, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was given the “portfolio” to deal with Ukraine by President Obama.  The United States wanted to support the nation and particularly support their breakaway from Russian sponsorship.  In the “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 Ukraine declared independence from Russian influence. Russia responded by taking the strategic Crimean Peninsula and Eastern Ukraine with military force, the beginning of the current Ukrainian conflict.

But, even severed from Russia, much of the Ukrainian government was corrupt. It didn’t matter whether they supported Ukrainian independence, or wanted to remain in the Russian sphere of influence.  You might remember that the last Russian supported President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, fled a decadent palace with; “…a bowling center, swimming pool, super-modern boxing ring, tennis courts, massage rooms, therapeutic baths, cryo sauna, salt-cave, and other facilities” (Mezhyhirya).  He’s the one that employed the future Trump Campaign Chairman, Paul Manafort.

Biden encouraged Ukrainians to clean-up their government by prosecuting corrupt officials.  When a US aid package to Ukraine came up, Biden used that cash to leverage Ukrainian leaders to get rid of a corrupt prosecutor and appoint a new one.  Biden actually made the comment that either they got rid of the old prosecutor, or the US would not provide the one billion dollars in promised aid.

Russian Fable

Russian Intelligence  specializes in mis-information.   They take the facts of a story, then misdirect conclusions to further their own policy goals.  By 2019, it was clear that Russia’s goals were advanced by the then-President of the United States.  Donald Trump was shaking the foundations of NATO, the major alliance protecting Eastern Europe.  Trump envisioned foreign policy as a series of bilateral transactions, summed up best by the phrase:  “…what have you done for me lately”.  

The long-term, carefully crafted American foreign policy of world alliances protecting against Russian (and Chinese) aggressions was at risk.  And the chaos that ensued played perfectly into Putin’s hands.  So when it became clear that the main opponent to Trump in 2020 was Joe Biden, Russian intelligence went to work.

And Biden did have a vulnerability, a son who clearly used the Biden name to advance his own financial well-being.  And, of course, there was the cocaine habit.  Hunter Biden was contracted by a Ukrainian firm, Burisma, to represent their interests in the United States.  The Biden family name certainly helped.

Creating “Facts”

All of those are facts.  And it didn’t take much to twist those facts into Russian misinformation.  Vice President Biden didn’t have the prosecutor removed because of corruption.  He did it to protect his son from criminal charges.  And Burisma didn’t just hire Hunter, they paid the Vice President himself to influence US policy, perhaps while he was still in office.

Trump was searching for “proof” of this misinformation, when he made the “perfect” phone call to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment.  Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine before the 2020 election, to find the source, the “star witness” to the phantom Biden criminality.  And he found him, a dual Israeli-American citizen with the perfect “James Bond” spy name, one that would make Albert Broccoli himself proud:  Alexander Smirnov.

Giuliani’s own “henchmen”, Lev and Igor, warned him that Smirnov was a Russian plant.  But Smirnov’s “facts” were too good to pass up:  supposedly each Biden was given $5 million to protect Burisma.  And then, out of “nowhere”, Giuliani obtained a laptop with Hunter’s whole sordid private life on video.  Some of the emails, with a little “stretching”, seemed to confirm Smirnov’s story.  

Rudy couldn’t get the Trump Justice Department to touch it.  They recognized that it had the imprimatur of Russian intelligence.  And after the 2020 election passed, and the Insurrection occurred, Smirnov’s story faded away.

Impeach Biden

That is, until the MAGA-Republicans narrowly gained a majority in the House of Representatives in 2022.  They came in with a goal:  do to Biden what the 2018 House did to Trump, impeachment.  So all they had to do was find “facts” to fit their goal.  And Smirnov’s Russian fairy tale exactly fit their bill.

The Director of the FBI warned them; Smirnov was an undependable source, probably tainted with Russian money.  But the committee Chairman, Comer and Jordan; like Trump himself and Giuliani, found the story to good to pass up (it should have been too good to be true).

They staked their Congress, the 118th, on impeaching Joe Biden.  And they staked their impeachment on Alexander Smirnov.

This week, the Republican Special Prosecutor, David Weiss, appointed to investigate and prosecute Hunter Biden; arrested Mr. Smirnov.  He is charged with making false statements while an FBI informant.  Smirnov himself admitted during questioning to having contact with “high level” Russian intelligence officials.

The story that Trump, Giuliani, Comer and Jordan couldn’t resist was a Russian plant. The warnings of Republicans Bill Barr and Chris Wray, and the current Department of Justice, were ignored.  The truth is, that this current House leadership wanted to impeach Biden so badly, the bought into a Russian fable.

We will soon see if there really are consequences to that truth.

By a Thread

CNN

Since October 2023, the beginning of the fiscal year, the Army has spent over $430 million on various operations, including training Ukrainian troops, transporting equipment, and US troop deployments to Europe. “We’re basically taking it out of hide in the Army,” a senior Army official told CNN.

So far, that bill has been paid from the Army’s Europe and Africa Command. Without a 2024 budget approved by Congress, and without additional funding specifically for Ukraine, the command has roughly $3 billion to pay for $5 billion of operations costs, a second senior Army official explained. That includes not only the operations related to Ukraine support — training and ferrying weapons and equipment to Poland and Ukraine — but other operations for the US command throughout Europe and Africa. (CNN).

Burning

There’s an apocryphal tale about Roman Emperor Nero – that as the city of Rome caught fire, he played a violin.  Thus was created the phrase, “He fiddled while Rome burned”.  Whether Nero did that or not, the saying has come to describe anyone or group that allows a crisis to go by without trying find a solution, usually to a “bad end”. 

Here in the United States, we are fiddling away.  Well, maybe not all of us, in fact, not even the majority of us.  Most of the  US government, the Congress and even the House of Representatives would prefer action to “fiddling”.  But those that have the power to set the agenda for the House, the Speaker and his leadership team, seemed determine to allow Ukraine to “burn”, to fall to the Russian invaders, rather than step in and support their just battle.

No Man’s Land

Ukraine isn’t asking for direct military intervention.  They actually have the strategic situation well in-hand.  They’ve held off the Russian invaders for two full years, driving back into the territories Russia “annexed” nine years ago.  In fact, Ukraine was poised to drive Russia out of all occupied territories.  But the Ukrainian offensive stalled, stopped by the greatest concentration of land mines the world has ever seen.  And so, instead of a World War II battle of movement and strategy, this struggle has become a World War I battle of attrition and stalemate.

In World War I, the battle over “No Man’s Land” lasted for almost four years.  Both sides poured massive amounts of blood and treasure into maintaining that stalemate.  It nearly bankrupted Germany; France and Great Britain weren’t very far behind.  And an entire generation of leaders was left mangled in the mud-filled craters of France.

Ukraine and Russia are in a similar situation.  Russia, in spite of its relatively weak economic standing in the world, has resources to overwhelm Ukraine,  given time.  Ukraine, on the other hand, has the determination to drive Russia from much of their national soil, as long as they have the weaponry and supplies.

No Brainer

And that’s where the United States comes in.  Sure, part of it is the moral obligation of the world’s most visible democracy helping defend against an autocratic invader.  But there is a much more self-serving goal for Americans.  Russia represents one of the two preeminent threats to democracy and world stability.  The Russian military can be worn down: leaders, supplies, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers lost on the open plains of Ukraine.  The US can weaken a major world opponent.  And it doesn’t cost American lives.

It does require American treasure.  Just as Ronald Reagan doubled the US Government deficit to drive the Soviet Union into bankruptcy; the United States, for a much smaller cost, can dissipate Russian wealth and might.  

To what end?  Putin has made it clear that his goal is to rebuild the Soviet Empire.  It’s likely a “binary choice”:  support Ukraine now, or fight, with real American troops, in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland later.   It’s a “no brainer”, a decision that takes little intellect or nuanced understanding to make.  

But here we are, fiddling away. 

Northern Christian White Alliance 

What’s even scarier; it’s not just about keeping Biden from getting a “win”; or the 2024 Presidential election, or satisfying the ravenous political appetite of Donald Trump.  Underneath the raw politics is an ideology, expressed most clearly by former Trump advisor (and future Federal inmate?) Steve Bannon.   He believes in a world of the “great Northern, Christian, White Alliance”; a confederation of two autocratic nations, the United States and Russia; against the great “brown masses” of the rest of the world; and of course, China.  Bannon wants an alliance with Russia, and allies let other allies do whatever the hell they want.  If Putin wants Eastern Europe, so be it, and NATO obligations be damned.

Political Courage

We are fiddling away, but we are, willfully, allowing an extreme ideology take hold.  Put it to a vote, and a bipartisan majority of the House would join the Senate and supporting Ukraine (and Israel, and Taiwan, and even make changes at the Southern Border),  But the incredibly narrow majority of Speaker Mike Johnson, and his absolute desire to keep his job, is preventing our government from acting.  

It’s not just about the Ukrainian dead.  And it’s not just about 2024.  It’s about the future world “order”.  

There’s a way to stop the fiddling.  An arcane parliamentary maneuver, a “discharge petition”, will get the job done.  But it will take something in short supply in 2024 America, a few Republican Congressmen with courage to stand up to the MAGA majority. 

The fate of our future world is hanging by a thread.  Some three Republican Congressmen will decide what happens next. 

Ukraine Crisis

Down At the Crossroads

With a nod to Mr. Clapton

A Russian Moon

Wednesday was crazy.  Mike Turner, Dayton’s Congressman and the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, leaked  Russian plans for putting nuclear weapons in space.  It brings back the famous Lyndon Johnson quote from the early days of the 1960’s “Space Race” (and the movie The Right Stuff): 

“I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon”.

If not a “Communist” moon, how about a Russian nuclear weapon, orbiting earth.

That’s the vision that Mike Turner wanted Americans to see, even though both President Biden and National Security Advisor Sullivan painted Russian plans as more aspirational than real.  In fact, Turner wasn’t even briefed on those plans, yet.  And the Kansas City shootings at the Super Bowl celebration took over the headlines.

So why is Turner, known as a stalwart member of the senior House leadership, “flipping cars ”?  Perhaps he’s trying to make the point:  Russia is a threat now.  Keeping the Russian military in a long, men-and-materiel sucking war in Ukraine is a good thing for the United States.  For just a “little” treasure, and no American blood, we can sap Russian strength.

Get Trump Elected

The Senate passed an Israel/Taiwan/Ukraine military aid bill.  Speaker Johnson in the House claims that he will not allow that bill on the floor for a vote, where it would certainly pass with support from all of the Democrats, and many Republicans.  Johnson is under pressure from the MAGA-Trump camp to deny-deny-deny any action that might be seen as a “Biden Win”.  Long term policy isn’t a factor anymore; it’s about keeping Biden down so Trump might do better in November’s election.

The Speaker controls the agenda (the greatest power of his office). Sure, there is an arcane parliamentary move to circumvent his authority, the “discharge petition”.   A majority of House members can demand a bill come to the floor without the Speaker’s approval (after thirty days).  But it will require at least a couple of Republicans to stand against the Speaker, and more importantly, Trump and his MAGA-caucus.  And that hasn’t happened in a while.

But with all the worry about Ukraine, and deeper concern about what China will try to do to Taiwan, there is an even more important issue.  The United States is at a crossroads, and not just Biden versus Trump, or Democrats versus MAGA-Republicans, or even the existential crisis of American government.  We are also at a crossroads of world authority.

Woodrow Wilson

At the end of World War I, American President Woodrow Wilson led the US delegation to the Versailles peace conference.  Wilson had a world vision, where there would be less warfare.  He wanted to allow ethnic groups to have their own nations.  Wilson’s world had an international governing body, the League of Nations, to act as the referee when international conflict arose. And Wilson had the Fourteen Points of human rights, an aspiration for a better world.

And even though the victorious nations of Europe were more interested in getting treasure in the form of reparations from the defeated powers, they were willing to humor Wilson.  The American thumb on the scale helped tip the balance of war in their favor: they owed him that.

But they weren’t committed to Wilson’s vision, and as it turned out, only he truly was.  When the US Senate refused to ratify the peace treaty, and kept the United States out of the League of Nations; the dream of world peace soon went by the wayside.  America isolated itself behind “Fortress America” of the Atlantic and Pacific.  World War II wasn’t the “fault” of the United States, but it could have been prevented by the United States.  It’s the lesson that Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and the American leadership learned.

Pax Americana

So America took the lead after World War II, now clearly the military and economic power in the world (and Oppenheimer’s addition:  the US had the only nuclear weapons).  Not only did we sponsor the United Nations, but we led a series of alliance systems throughout the world.  The most important of those was (and is) NATO, the alliance system designed to offset the power of the then-Soviet Union. 

Like him or not, Ronald Reagan “won” the Cold War.  He did it by forcing the Soviet Union to try to match US defense spending.  The US spent six percent of Gross Domestic Product on the military, but to match it, the Soviets were forced to spend over twenty percent of theirs.  The Soviet Union fell during the George HW Bush administration, and Russia has been a mess ever since; a kleptocracy, as state owned industries were “privatized”, often for kopecks on the ruble (pennies on the dollar).  And the kleptocrats found a “defender” who “legitimized” their money – Vladimir Putin.

Russian Empire

But Putin made it very public that while he is no longer a Communist, his goal is a return of the Soviet Empire.  Ever since he consolidated power, he has pressed former Soviet states like Georgia, Belarus; and taken advantage of world instability to gain footholds in Syria and Africa (NATO: Canada).  And, of course, there was the open invasions of Chechnya and Ukraine.  

Until the second invasion of Ukraine, there was little the United States could do besides economic sanctions.  And Putin was happy to pass the pain of sanctions onto the Russian people:  even more reason for them to support him, and blame the West.  But when the Ukrainian people stood up to Russia, the United States found a lever to stall Putin’s long-term plan.  By the US supplying Ukrainian forces, Russia was forced into the largest ground war since World War II.  

A Choice

So here we are at the “crossroads”.  The MAGA-Republicans echo the 1920’s Senate, trying to step away from world authority and hide in “Fortress America”.  It’s the same policy with the same name:  America First.  But, as Congressman Turner pointed out, we are in a world where Russian satellites armed with nuclear weapons can bridge the oceans in minutes.  To turn our back on the threat is simply to invite them to our door.

NATO literally waits with bated breath.  Will the United States live up to their promise, to Article Five of the NATO Treaty and defend NATO Eastern Europe?  Or will we end up in Steve Bannon’s tacit alliance with Russia (and maybe China), splitting the “spoils” of treachery?  It starts in a trench in Eastern Ukraine, on the floor of the United States House of Representatives,  and in the ballot box and towns across America this November.  Is it 1921, or 1945?   That is the decision we face, which road to take.  We are at the “crossroads”. 

Note: As I publish this essay – word comes that Alexei Navalny, the courageous Russian opposition leader, died in a prison. He so believed in the cause of Russian freedom, he risked certain death to go back. He made the ultimate sacrifice, willingly. What will we do?

Long Island Speaks

Fools

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!!  

New York’s Third Congressional District, as George Bush would say, won’t get fooled again.  In 2022 they elected a fraud, Republican George Santos.  He lied about his upbringing, his education, his employment, his religion.  He even lied about his mother.  And voters in the Third could have, should have, known.  But in out “post-truth” world, he still got elected.  It wasn’t that folks didn’t care; they just didn’t believe what the North Shore Leader was saying.  We live in the age of Trump, where it’s “OK” to call facts, fiction, or fiction, fact.

So the Third definitely won the contest for the “Most Embarrassing Representative” (a hard fight in a Congress with Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene).  And finally, reluctantly, even the MAGA House Republicans realized that George had to go.  He was expelled from the House, triggering a special election.  

Moderate Democrat Tom Suozzi won by eight percentage points.  He won in a District that went for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Republican Lee Zeldin for Governor in 2022 (and elected Santos).  Sure, Suozzi had a leg up.  He held the same seat before Santos, resigning to run for Governor.  But the composition of this “bell-weather” District hasn’t changed, a middle-class suburb of New York City.  Tom Suozzi hasn’t changed either.  And that’s the point.

Moderation

He’s a moderate, much like Joe Biden.  In a political (and Democratic) world that is so often polarized; the Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez progressives versus MAGA world Republicans “conservatives”, Suozzi isn’t pinned on one side or the other.  And that’s a lesson Democrats need to learn.

We know the story of Joe Biden winning the Presidency in 2020, but what we often lose in the fog of the Covid pandemic, is how Joe Biden won the primaries.  The first caucus in Iowa chose Pete Buttigieg.  The first primary in New Hampshire chose Bernie Sanders, who also won Nevada.  Going into the South Carolina primary, Joe Biden was charitably in fifth place, behind those two, Klobuchar, and the rest.

The Democratic Party of South Carolina is heavily African-American, but it’s also moderate.  They aren’t wedded to an ideology; they just want a government that can make things better for people, and get things done.  South Carolina Democrats are pragmatic; led by Congressman James Clyburn.  And Clyburn made it clear – they needed to vote for Joe Biden in the primary.

They did, giving Biden’s campaign the oxygen it needed to make it through to Super Tuesday.  And even in that Covid marred election (it was the week the world shut down) Biden was able to win decisively.  The 2020 race for the Democratic nomination was over.  To “steal” a thought from an article by former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, some Progressives think Biden won because Covid stopped the world.  But that’s not what really happened.  Biden won because Democrats wanted a moderate who could defeat Donald Trump.  And he did.

Get Over It

I am a Progressive, a Liberal Democrat.  But I recognize, maybe because I’m a Blue drop in a Red sea here in Licking County, that there are many on both sides looking for moderation, not polarization.  That’s how Biden won, and that’s how he can win again.

And another point to make here; that’s not what pollsters believe.  We keep seeing polls showing Biden versus Trump, with Trump winning (all within the margin of error).  Just like we saw the polls last week, showing Suozzi close to his Republican opponent.  But today’s modern polling is designed to take the smallest sample possible, and fit it into a “model” of what the pollster thinks America is.  And if they see the “model” as so polarized that there is no room for moderation, then a moderate candidate gets pushed aside in the results.  It’s not about counting opinions, it’s taking opinions to fit into their mold.

No Rest

That doesn’t mean that Democrats don’t need to work their butts off to get Biden elected.  And it doesn’t mean that Trump can’t “thread the needle” and still somehow end up in the Presidency again.  We are at a moment of existential crisis, and there’s no rest for the weary.  We can sleep after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

But what Long Island told us yesterday is exactly the point.  The extremists in the Democratic Party need to “get on board”, and recognize that Biden represents much more than just “half a loaf”.  Biden, in the past four years, found ways to get things done to make our country better.  We  (progressives) didn’t get everything we wanted, and we lost in the Supreme Court, a problem that will take years to overcome.   But the next four years with Biden means more “progress” for “progressives”.  

But it sure is better than four more years of Donald Trump.  We might not recognize Amerika at the end of his Presidency.

Soundtracks

Nothing But Calamity

I’m definitely an MSNBC guy.  It’s the “soundtrack” of my life, on in the background most of the time at home. Even in the car (with modern technology) I’m following what’s going on through the Sirius Radio app.  Some would say that kind of immersion would “warp” my mind, building a silo to block outside information.  But I do check other media sources, including even (deep breath) Fox News.  I don’t stay for too long.

But NBC seems to stand for  “Nothing But Calamity”, at least  for the past several months.  First, to be honest, MSNBC was instrumental in “mainstreaming” Donald Trump back in 2015.  Their shows, particularly the now four-hour long “Morning Joe” show, gave Trump millions of dollars of free air time in the pivotal period when he was transitioning from NBC television “star” known for a single line (“You’re Fired”) to political candidate.  Now, every morning when the dogs demand I get out of bed, I make a little “bet” with myself.  It’s thirty seconds:  that’s how long it takes to turn on “Morning Joe” and hear the name Donald Trump.  I seldom lose.

Old is Old

And recently, NBC broke “big news”; the results of their polling.  They made the “amazing” discovery through their shrewd questioning:  over 80% of Democratic voters think that eighty years-old is too old to be President! (Oh, this just breaking – NBC found that almost 60% of all voters think both Trump and Biden are too old – it took them an extra three days to let that little secret out). 

No kidding.  I’m a Democrat and I think that eighty years-old is too old to be President too.  But what NBC failed to ask (or at least publicize) is the next question:  will you vote for Joseph R. Biden in 2024, anyway.  And the answer for this Democrat, and I’m sure the vast majority of my Democratic compatriots, is yes.

Look, the Democratic “bench” is incredibly rich.  Not only is there the obvious “next-in-line”, Vice President Kamala Harris.  There’s the Senators:  Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Murphy, and more.  Then there’s the Governors: Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, and Wes Moore.  And don’t forget Pete Buttigieg serving in the cabinet.   And I’m sure there’s more I haven’t thought of.  If 2024 is an existential threat to democracy, 2028 should be a lot of fun.  

Cancelling Out

But there is no question:  Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee.  If it were anyone else, Joe Biden is the absolute wrong candidate.  But with Trump as the MAGA-Republican, Biden is the right answer.

It’s all about that mathematics: the concept of “cancelling out”.  Biden is eighty-one, but Trump is seventy-seven.  That issue cancels.  Biden can’t remember names, Trump can’t remember the current President, or the former Speaker of the House; cancels.  Biden presides over the greatest economic miracle in modern history, Trump the greatest collapse; more than cancels. And most importantly, Biden ran in 2018 on the basis that Trump was a danger to our democracy.  Trump continues to prove that Biden was right then, and right now.

No other Democrat brings those credentials to the table. 

Fair and Balanced, Ain’t

So what’s the deal with my “friends” at MSNBC?  Why is the “progressive” news channel seeming to lead the way in finding critical anti-Biden information?  I think there are a couple “for sure” reasons, and some speculations.  For sure, MSNBC (and the New York Times) are falling into the same trap that snared them in 2016.  With so much negative news about Trump (trial, trial, trial; botched speech, trial, trial) there is the tendency to try to “balance” the news to make it “fair”.  

But there’s nothing “fair” about Trump.  Has actions, and his problems are unprecedented.  “Fair and Balanced”, the old (and abandoned) Fox News slogan, can’t apply.   If forces those media sources to literally create negative news about Biden, to “balance” Trump.  And that’s not fair.

And, for sure, progressive MSNBC is troubled by what really is a moderate Biden.  The consensus builder (in a world that doesn’t “do” consensus anymore) still is trying to put together coalitions in Congress, and the Nation.  That seems to require compromises that my fellow “progressives” can’t tolerate.  

Progressive Choices

And, speculating only, it seems that there’s a major ideological crisis at MSNBC over the Israeli/Hamas War.  Some commentators are more Israel oriented, some more Palestinian oriented (none are Hamas supporters).  That internal conflict spills out into their support or opposition to the Biden Administration.  Or at least, that’s how it looks to me.

We tried to watch more CNN, just to “flavor” our mornings.  But the problem with CNN, political switch or not, is that it’s still, just, boring.  And distracting – I struggle paying attention to what folks are saying, and what’s “crawling” across the bottom of the screen.  So it’s still MSNBC.

Except for long drives in the afternoon.  I re-discovered a different “media” choice; music.  Yesterday’s playlist on the road to Cincinnati:  Grateful Dead, Sublime, Crosby-Stills and Nash (of course) and Billy Joel.  Now that’s a “progressive” spread!

A Sad, Sad, Boy

This is a Sunday Story – no politics here, just another “dog” story.

Dahlman Dogs

There’s a whole “series” of these “Sunday Stories” about dogs:  finding dogs, taking care of dogs, and even losing dogs.  But what you need to know for this particular story, is that Jenn and I have five dogs.  They are all rescues, two from even before we knew about Lost Pet Recovery, the charitable organization we help that finds lost dogs for owners and, returns them home.

The other three are what they call in the dog “business”, “foster fails”.  They were dogs we brought into the house on a temporary basis, until LPR found a suitable “forever home”.  But, as John Wayne said, “…My fault, your fault, nobody’s fault…”; we fell in love with them, and now we have five dogs in our “forever home”.

Five dogs are a life altering experience.  They need to go out, they need to eat, they need medical care, and most of all they need love and attention.  It’s not just fifteen minutes morning and night, let them out and back in from the fenced back yard.  It’s time, it’s love and in return, all of them, from the eleven year-old Buddy to the four year-old Cece, are loving dogs back to us.  We had to buy a bigger bed.

Baddicus

Our second dog, a “before LPR” dog, is Atticus.  He’s a Yellow Lab, big and goofy, taken from the Franklin County Shelter before he was “put-down” for major ear infections.  It turns out they weren’t infected; Atticus is allergic to most animal proteins.  He can’t eat beef, nor buffalo, nor chicken, turkey, deer or even duck.  If he does, he gets crazy reactions in his ears, so much so that when we brought him home from the shelter, we thought he might be deaf.  

Shelters don’t have the time or money to work out those slow problems on stray dogs found wandering the park, but we did.  So, after trial and error, and with the help of our outstanding Vet Dr. Hicken, we found what Atticus could eat.  He’s a sweet potato and salmon guy, and for treats he can also have carrots (and celery, though too much isn’t good for him).   And he hears just fine, even if you stand up at the other end of the house.  He’s right there, an escort, ready for whatever you’re going to do.

Atticus is a “needy” guy.  He wants snuggles, he wants attention, he does not like to be left alone.  Anxiety often is Atticus’s middle name (not the “Baddicus” we nicknamed him.  All of our dogs have dual names, Buddy Budreau, Atticus Baddicus, Lou-Easyiana, Keelie Lee, and Cece Baby Yoda).   

Game Time

And they all like to run around and roughhouse in the backyard.  Even Buddy, at eleven, on good days will go out and bark at everyone else, trying to get them “in-line” as any good herding dog should.  

So we don’t know what happened.  But  a few weeks ago, Atticus was limping on three legs.  He just didn’t want to put his right-rear leg down, except for the times he required it to take his stance.  Both Jenn and I examined it, but couldn’t find a place where we elicited pain.  So we figured he bruised a pad in his foot, or stressed a muscle.  He didn’t seem particularly upset, and found a new, high-speed limp that worked for him. We gave it a couple weeks.  But the limp didn’t get better.  So it was a visit to the Pataskala Animal Hospital. Dr. Hicken wasn’t available, so we saw another great veterinarian, Dr. Borders.  And she gave us the bad news.

ACL

I was a track coach, and over forty years I became very familiar with knee injuries. The ultimate bad news in knees is the dreaded initials “ACL”, the anterior cruciate ligament that keeps the thigh bones from grinding against the lower leg bones in the knee joint.  When the ACL is torn, the knee is unstable, and surgery is the only answer.

Now ACL surgery for athletes is a big deal.  There’s a minimal six months recovery rate.  When an ACL is torn this season is over, and there’s a ton of rehabilitation to get ready for the next year.  And there are few shortcuts in successful ACL surgery, pretty much getting the diagnosis means the entire plan – from the Bengals Joe Burrow to a high school girls cross country runner.  

And for dogs it’s even worse.  The knee joint in dogs isn’t the flat-on-flat of the human knee.  A dog’s knee joint is at an angle, with serious shearing forces against the ligaments.  So when a dog’s ACL tears, the knee just doesn’t work right.  And meanwhile, all of those shearing forces are doubled on the other knee.  Fifty percent of Labs that tear one ACL will tear the other within a year.

So you know where I’m going – Atticus tore his ACL, just like Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow and that high school girl runner.  And there’s only one solution.  It’s a different surgery in dogs than it is in humans, one that requires a total change in the geometry of the knee.  Bone is altered, plates are screwed in:  it’s a big deal.  For most dogs, it’s a two to three month recovery rate to get back to about 85% of “full”.  Atticus won’t be catching passes in the “Puppy Bowl” (and he won’t be playing the piano either!!).  

Exile

He had surgery yesterday.  It’s tough – he was so excited to “go for” a ride, and meet new people at COVE – the veterinary hospital where Dr. Howard did the surgery in Delaware, Ohio. Rochelle, his surgical assistant, quickly made Atticus her “best friend”, and is managing us in managing his care.  When we picked him up, he was still stoned on the anesthesia, headed into exile in a crate in Jenn’s office.  He can’t jump up on the bed to sleep beside us, can’t hang with the rest of the pack, and has to figure out a new way to poop (without spinning at least three times).  

Atticus is drugged, big time.  It’s the only way to keep him down for at least the first two weeks until the staples come out.  We did get rid of the “cone of shame”.  We’ve switched him to a more palatable air cushion ring, like the thing frequent flyers use to sleep on a plane.

 But he’s still miserable, clearly trying to figure out what he did wrong to get crated in exile.  Jenn spent the night with him last night, I’ve got the day shift right now.  CeCe, Keelie and Lou are just outside the office door, desperate to see their friend.  We are on Day-One, at least ten days to go before our new “stoner-boy” will be allowed to get sober.  At least he’s sleeping – now.  But there’s a nose under the crack of the door.  Inquiring minds want to know — what’s up with Atticus!

The Sunday Story Series

A Counting Problem

Vengeance

The Republican caucus in the House of Representatives can’t count.  We saw it when the entire country waited for a week, fifteen full House votes, for them to choose Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.  We saw it again, as they dumped poor Kevin (the next Chairman of the MAGA-Republican Party??), and went through candidate after candidate (Scalise, Jordan, et al) until they finally reached Mike Johnson,  an unknown with only five terms in the House, as Speaker.  He wasn’t around long enough for folks to know – ignorance has advantages.

Now Mike is leading the House on a “vengeance tour”.  First it was the “Biden Crime Family”, with all sorts of noise about impeaching the President himself.  When their “investigation” revealed nothing, they switched to Hunter Biden, surviving son of the President, and a man with a dark past of drug addiction, tax evasion, and idiotic choices in computer repair shops.

Hunter

Hunter was a mess (seems better now), but out of all of that, the House committees were only able to come up with what the Department of Justice already knew.  He evaded income taxes (now all paid with penalties).  He, for a week, possessed a gun as a drug addict.  And Hunter got jobs that seemed above his “paygrade” (even with a Georgetown University bachelor’s and a Yale Law degree).  There is no question:  his employment likely had more to do with his last name and his father,  than his experience or expertise.  It’s unsavory, almost as ugly as the pictures from the “lost” laptop, or the Trump profits from the Old Post Office Hotel. 

But it wasn’t illegal, and neither were the naked pictures Marjorie Taylor Greene got so much pleasure displaying to the Nation in an open committee hearing.  (Is there an underlying theme here:  are MAGA-Republicans really hung up on sex?).

But when the House thought they had Hunter boxed in –  he refused a subpoena requiring him to come in for a “private” interview – Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, brought him to an open Committee meeting and demanded an interview in front of the cameras, the Nation, and God.  So while the House could still refer charges to the Justice Department, Hunter’s very public willingness to testify in an open hearing makes criminal charges less likely.

SOMEBODY

So Mike and “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight” couldn’t get Joe, and they couldn’t get Hunter.  But they HAD to impeach SOMEBODY, after all the noise, they needed a success.  So they turned their sights on Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security.  Mayorkas, (Cal. Berkley, Loyola Law School) a veteran of the Department of Justice, was pursuing the Biden agenda for the Southern border. That’s “ground zero” for the Trump and MAGA-Republican campaigns:  they are working hard to convince the Nation that all of our troubles are coming over from Mexico with backpacks full of fentanyl and a willingness to work for nothing and vote Democratic.

(Let’s be clear – the migrants would LOVE to work, and will work for less; at jobs the vast majority of American citizens won’t do.  And the vast majority of fentanyl is coming over the border in semi-truck trailers or in shipping containers on the docks, not the tattered backpacks of migrants fording the Rio Grande or wandering the Great American desert.  And even when those migrants do get here, THEY CAN’T VOTE.  ONLY US CITIZENS CAN VOTE; and citizenship is an arduous process of tests, recommendations and time).

Inconvenient Impeachment

But there was one minor inconvenient fact about Mayorkas:  he hasn’t committed a “high crime or misdemeanor”, the language of impeachment described in the US Constitution.   So “the gang” is shooting for a lower standard (but another “I” word), incompetence in office, claiming that makes him “impeachable”.   

Now it’s true that impeachment technically is anything that the majority of the House says it is.  So all it came down: could Mike and the “gang” count to the 216 votes needed to pass a Bill of Impeachment to send to the US Senate. (Where the Senate would deal with it appropriately and with dispatch.  There’s nowhere near the two-thirds majority to convict Mayorkas in the Senate. Senators can count).

It was always going to be a near thing.  There are only 219 Republicans in the House (they started with 222), and Speaker Mike counted on one Democrat, Al Green, to stay in the hospital after emergency abdominal surgery.   But Green decided it was important for his voice to be heard, and was wheeled onto the House floor in his hospital scrubs to cast a last minute vote.  The vote total stood at 215 to 215, Green’s vote crucial creating a tie (and therefore a fail).  Ultimately one Republican switched his vote for parliamentary reasons, and the final total was 216 against, and 214 for impeachment.

Missed Again

The “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” missed again.  They couldn’t count, in front of the entire Nation, again.  But they blamed Democratic “trickery”, bringing Green back “from the brink” to sink their plan.  Johnson and the gang need to blame somebody.  I guess if it wasn’t Green, it would be their high school math teachers.  They just can’t count, and they don’t learn other repeated lessons either.  

Don’t worry, they haven’t given up on Mayorkas yet.  Next week their own hospitalized member, Steve Scalise, will be back from his chemo treatments.  Maybe they’ll be able to find a majority then.  But I wouldn’t count on it – because clearly, they can’t.

Put A Bow On It (Please)

Election Issue

Let’s make one thing clear.  The most important issue in the United States isn’t foreign policy.  It isn’t the economy (stupid), and it isn’t what’s happening on the Southern Border.  The most important issue is the clear fork in the road America will take on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  On that day, election day, we will be choosing the next President of the United States.  Our choice is the current President, Joe Biden, an eighty year-old Democrat, or Donald Trump, the former President, a seventy-eight year old “Republican”.  

I put “Republican” in quotes, because Trump leads the Republican Party away from its traditional roots.  Republicans stood for a strong America with a powerful role in the world. Today, Trump would have us leave Ukraine alone against Russia.  Republicans were the Party of a strong economy.  But today, Trump would have Biden left as a “Hoover” so that Trump can win the election.  

Grand Old Party

And Republicans have been the Party of strong borders.  That’s the stand that the Republican (and conservative) Senator James Langford took in Senate negotiations on legislation to “fix” the border problem.  There’s a lot in that legislation that Democrats readily agree to:  better fentanyl detection, more legal aides and judges to determine asylum claims.  And there are parts that Democrats stand against:  more deportations, closing the border when the number of asylum seekers get too high, more “militarization” of the physical border.  

President  Biden and the Democratic leaders of the Senate determined to accept Langford’s compromise, in return for aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and increased help for the Gazan Palestinians left destitute by Israeli action in retaliation for October 7th.  Those are all issues “regular” Republicans support too.  It was a balanced package, one that, frankly, looked a lot more like something George Bush or even Dick Cheney would advance, rather than Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer.

As the legislation reached its final form, it had bipartisan support.  Sure, some Democrats would struggle to accept it, but for many Republican Senators, this was everything they wanted.  And in our narrowly divided Congress, it was a bill from the center of the political fray.  Even in the fractious House, if that bill ever reached the floor for a vote, it likely would pass.

Donald Trump couldn’t allow it.

“Republicans”

The “Republican” Party of Donald Trump stands for only one thing:  what’s good for Trump, is good for the Nation.  And the twice impeached, four-time indicted, facing ninety-one felony charges former President needs chaos at the border as a hammer to pound away at the Biden Presidency.  So instead of taking a huge step forward to solve the border problem, the first since 1986, Trump ordered his Party to block the bill.

Senators and Congressmen don’t work for Donald Trump.  They are elected to represent their constituents and the American people, paid for through tax dollars raised by the US Treasury, and under oath to protect the United States Constitution.  There is no direct “line of authority” from the former President to any of them.  But, almost as a block, the bipartisan legislation became, as Republican Speaker Mike Johnson stated, “…dead on arrival”.  

“Republicans” are now willing to allow Ukraine to fall to Russia.  They are willing to let the People’s Republic of China take Taiwan.  They want the nonsense at the border, from Texas defying the United States Supreme Court, to “surprise” buses of unaware migrants dumped in the streets of Washington, New York and Chicago, to continue.  And they even  are willing to hold back support for Israel.  All to give Trump his issue.

Whose Fault?

President Biden spoke to the Nation on Tuesday afternoon.  He asked, in fact, he demanded, that the Congress move forward with the legislation.  Some will say that Biden sounded “weak”, imploring Congress to do its job.

But Biden made the salient point.  This isn’t about what’s good for the country, and this isn’t about what’s right.  It’s not even about what the Republican Party believes.  It’s about Trump, and Biden made sure that the blame is placed where blame is due.

The border was going to be a problem for the Biden campaign.  Now, they have their answer.  We had the fix, one that we had to “sell” to our own Democrats.  But, through old fashioned political compromise, working from the center out, the Biden Administration went a long way towards solving the problem.  Trump stopped it – and it’s his problem now.

Ask Biden, ask Harris, ask Schumer, ask Jeffries:   what are Democrats doing about the border?  Now the answer is simple:  it’s Trump’s fault.  He couldn’t have given Biden a better “election” present.  Trump gave Democrats the answer to the border problem.  It’s his fault.

He even put a bow on it.

Our Pataskala Kroger’s

This is a “Sunday Story” even if it isn’t Sunday.  I was at a track meet yesterday, and since it was 100 miles away, I didn’t get the chance to finish this one up until Monday morning.  

Checking Out

So I was checking out at the local Pataskala Kroger’s.  Back before I retired, I hit that Kroger’s every couple of weeks for a “full re-supply”, and maybe did a “drive-by” for a roast chicken or a steak once a week.  But now, I’m one of the old-retired regulars, stopping every few days and hovering in the wine aisle trying to find our latest favorite (Meimoi’s Pinot Noir) or searching for that one spice needed to make the smoked baby-back ribs “more special” (not more Cayenne Pepper). 

It’s a “full service” Kroger, with a bakery and a deli shop, a sushi bar and even a liquor store.  The liquor store is big here in Pataskala.  When I first moved here, back in second half of the last century, Pataskala was dry – no bars, no booze stores, no carry-outs for beer.  Now, of course, we’ve modernized:  there’s beer in every gas station, “pubs” right in “downtown” Pataskala, and a liquor store – in Kroger’s.

Pick a Time

There are times to avoid Kroger’s:  Friday afternoons, and Saturday before games.  Friday you’ll run into everyone you’ve ever known in Pataskala, older folks coming up to me and saying “Hey, Mr. Dahlman, you haven’t aged a bit”.  Since they started with “Mr. Dahlman”, I know I had them in class once, but since it was back in 1984, they’ve changed (just a little).  In fact, they’re in their mid-fifties; and it sometimes takes a bit of “contextual” conversation to figure out who they are.  But that’s important.  They want to know you remember them:  “that time in class when you jumped on the desk” or “on the playground when you body-slammed that kid in a fight”, or “when they (not me) wore ‘MC Hammer Pants’”.  

And I usually can figure it out.  But if I’m in a hurry (after all, it’s Friday for me too.  Even retired, Friday night usually means something more than just watching “Blue Bloods” on CBS at 10:00); it takes time.  So I try to avoid Friday afternoons.

Old Man

The “old man” time (as opposed to “old woman” time, I guess, though I shouldn’t say THAT in public) is Tuesday or Wednesday about 10:30 am.  Then you get to see a bunch of white haired geezers, searching aisles that were re-organized about six months ago, and frustrated that what was always there in aisle six is now in aisle ten.  They’re doing a lot of standing and looking.   You might see an old friend, or an old not-so-friend (head down, cut to aisle 8!!).  And you hope that no one comes up with the “Mr. Dahlman!!” line; you can’t be so old as to have taught these guys in school!!  It still happens.

Kroger’s consigns me to the “elderly”, and it’s working.  They’ve cut the regular check-out aisles, the ones with a cashier and a bagger, in half.  On either end, there’s eight self-checkout stations, guaranteed to frustrate because you didn’t put something in a bag quick enough.  The machine  stalls and calls on some busy seventeen year-old to come help, no matter what.  

Touch Screen

And then there’s the “new” self-checkout, with a kid at the end to bag, but you do all the scanning and placing.  That one really bugs me: so here I am taking my stuff out of my cart, finding the bar code to scan, and placing on a conveyor.  If it doesn’t like what I did, the conveyor stops, and the screen demands I do “something”.  So while you’re taking a crash course in grocery cashiering, the kid at the end, bagging, is looking at you like you’ve never seen a touchscreen unit and you get up to change the channel on the TV by hand.  

Hell, I’d rather bag, I’ve always bagged; it’s what I’m good at in the checkout world.  Let the Kroger kid talking with the other Kroger kid about working too many hours, or looking for a date, or betting on a football game come up here and do this part – I’d rather that than the orange juice he bagged blowing through the bottom and crashing to the World War One no-man’s-land shell-shot parking lot.  

2/1/2003

But that’s not what the “new” checkout is about.  If you really want to see the old people in Kroger’s, line up in the only “full service checkout” line left open.  It’s still the seventeen year-olds, trying to determine if those are tomatoes “on the vine” or “organic”.    But at least someone else is doing the “hard” part.  All you’ve got to do is get the stuff out of the cart, and remind them there’s  a case of water in the bottom, and wait for “code 21 on checkout 14”,  because no seventeen year-old is allowed to check out the Pinot Noir.  Once in a while they ask for my Driver’s License, mostly, I think, to marvel that someone, anyone, was alive in the 1950’s. 

It does sting, just a little.  When cashiers are in a hurry, they tap in the “minimum” date to purchase alcohol, 2/1/2003.    2003 – I’m wearing a jacket that was old in 2003, in fact, the Jeep I’m driving was built in 2003.  They don’t seem that old, but they’ve been around long enough to buy booze.  A lot longer than the kids, and even the managers, working here at our Pataskala Kroger’s.

The Sunday Story Series

Carrier Groups

October 7th

The President of the United States sent two US Navy Carrier Groups into the Middle East after the October 7th Hamas attack; the Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Gerald R. Ford. Those groups aren’t just the aircraft carriers themselves, the most advanced military “hardware” in the world.  There’s the carrier, then two guided missile cruisers, two anti-aircraft ships, and two anti-submarine ships.  Often there’s an attack submarine trailing the group as well.  That’s sixteen US Naval vessels in the Middle East total, split between the Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf.  

A carrier group represents the greatest extension of US power short of landing troops on the ground in the region.  And they were put in the area for a single purpose:  to put Iran on notice that the United States would not tolerate their direct involvement against Israeli operations in Gaza fighting Hamas.  Practically, the message was:  Israel will deal with Hamas, and if Iran tries to intervene, they’ll face the full might of the US Navy. 

Militias

Iran not only supports Hamas, the terrorist group in Gaza that began this round of Middle East violence with their October 7th attack on Israeli civilians.  Iran also supports “irregular” forces in many Middle East nations, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and multiple groups in Iraq.  All of these “militias” are directly supported by the Iranian Republican Guard Qods Force, the “tip of the spear” of Iranian military intervention in other Middle Eastern countries. The Qods Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, died in a US drone strike in Iraq during the Trump Administration.

Those groups give the Iranian government itself “plausible deniability” for their actions.  While they may only exist with the support of the Qods Force, Iran claims not to have direct control over them.  This way, Iran can deny responsibility for the October 7th attacks, even though it’s unrealistic to think Hamas could plan such a dramatic move without Iranian support and consent.   

But more importantly, Iran has, at best, turned a “blind eye” towards many of those militia groups attacking US personnel in the region.  For the past several weeks, US forces have engaged in a “tit-for-tat” response, particularly with Houthi attacks on merchant shipping and US forces in the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal.  

US Bases

And there are a number of US bases, with US troops physically there, throughout the Middle East.  Some US troops are protecting the oil fields in eastern Syria, some are watching the remains of ISIS in Iraq, and some are “advising” Jordanian and Iraqi government forces.   There are US bases in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.   30,000 troops are stationed in the region. And that doesn’t include the fifteen thousand in the Carrier Groups (Reuters).

President Biden made it clear that a direct attack on US Forces would trigger a direct response. Last weekend, three American soldiers in their barracks in Jordan died in a drone attack.  Friday the United States launched a massive assault on seven locations in Syria and Iraq, hitting eighty-five separate targets.  US Naval forces participated, and B-1 Bombers stationed in the continental United States as well.  

Notably, there were no direct attacks on Iranian soil.  American leaders stated that this was a “campaign”, not a “one-off” strike.  They also noted that they were avoiding direct attacks on Iran, to prevent a further expansion of the ongoing conflict in Gaza.  

Simple Message

It’s a simple message:  we put the carriers in the region as a warning, and the Iranian “proxies” ignored it.  Yesterday’s attacks were a direct result of their targeting US personnel, the first of many.  The goal is no longer just deterrence; it’s to degrade the ability of  those militia groups to continue their attacks.

It’s a fine line.  If Iran, using its “proxies”; responds in kind, it’s a further step towards confrontation.  On the other hand, the United States cannot allow direct attacks on US Forces. Nor can we withdraw and allow Iranian domination of the Middle East.  

And as that goes on, Israel and the United States are dividing. Israel seems to be razing Gaza. And President Biden is still committed to a “two-state” solution to the Palestinian issue. Prime Minister Netanyahu opposes that idea.  So, as we are drawn farther into Middle East conflict, our own alliance with Israel is under stress.

And don’t be surprised when this issue “bleeds” into the American political campaign.  Republicans in the Congress want direct attacks on Iran.  The campaign issue may be:  Republicans want full war in the Middle East, Democrats are trying to “hold the line”. 

It will be interesting to see where the American people stand.

Deep State Fairy Tale

Hey – I’m back!!! After a few days concentrating on Pole Vaulting (a whole different side of my life) – it’s back to politics and the great American sport – Football!!

Swifty

Taylor Swift is the most successful pop-star in  the world.  Her current tour grossed over a Billion dollars in sixty shows in 2023.  And she’s still going strong  To put that in perspective, it’s already the highest grossing show ever, beating out Elton Jon’s prolonged “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour which capped at “just” $939 million (Forbes).

The thirty-four year old was born in Pennsylvania, but at fourteen her Dad moved the family to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a singing career (thanks Wikipedia!!).   She’s such a big “star” today, that internet hits crowd the screen search, and the “standard” Wikipedia page is more than halfway down.  I’m not a “Swifty”, but from the looks of it, I’m one of the few in the world who’s not.  Her business position in the “Pop World” is so strong, that when she couldn’t buy the rights back for her first album, she re-recorded and released it again.  And that was so popular, she’s doing the next five albums as well (Parade).   She’s released eighteen albums total so far.

NFL

It’s a fairy tale come true; a young, beautiful woman from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania comes to Nashville and makes it to the top.  And the tale goes on:  now Taylor is in love with future NFL Hall of Fame Tight End Travis Kelce.  Travis and his quarterback Patrick Mehomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, are arguably the best combination in NFL history.  They led the Chiefs to the Super Bowl four times in the last five years (winning two).  Only Joe Burrow and my Bengals stood in the way in 2022 (I had to put that in – look out for 2024 – Who Dey!!). 

The NFL ain’t stupid (usually).  And neither are the television networks covering the Chief’s games.  What’s not to like:  a Hall of Fame duo on the field, and the most popular singer in the world in the box, cheering on her man.  It’s the high school homecoming queen story writ large.  Everyone in the stadium is watching the game, and watching Taylor’s reactions as well.  (Even better when Travis’s future Hall of Fame brother Jason of the Philadelphia Eagles, comes to the game, hangs out with the crowd, and chugs beers shirtless in ten degree weather!!).  

Conspiracy Theory

So why would the MAGA-Republican Party align itself against the Swift/Kelce combination?  It’s football and pop music, Nashville and the Great American Game (sorry baseball), the stars aligned, a fairy tale of American life.  But that’s what they’re doing.

Taylor spoke out about Tennessee’s  MAGA-Republican Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn in 2018.  The thirty-four year old business success was against Blackburn, who stands against women’s rights to fair and equal pay and employment, and women’s health rights. Then in 2020, Swift came out for Joe Biden, and urged her fans to get out and vote.  Millions did.

And what about Travis?  He is a prominent figure in drug company Pfizer’s campaign encouraging folks to get the Covid vaccine.  And that makes for a toxic combination as far as the MAGA-Republicans are concerned:  a Biden supporter and a “vaxxer”.  

Now all of that sound fantastical to seasoned political observers.  Attacking the Swift-Kelce relationship, the Homecoming King and Queen of the Nation, is like attacking America itself.  But it’s happening, and not just in the dark corners of the Internet on Redditt or Telegram.  There’s even the “rumor” that somehow the “Biden Crime Family” and the “Deep State” conspired to raise Swift’s to the top of the charts, then place her with Kelce in the biggest sports venue in election year 2024 America, the Super Bowl.  A lot of fans (Bengal fans) think the referees are generous in calling penalties for the Chiefs,  but who knew that Joe Biden was behind it all? 

Deep State

Let’s see, rig Nashville (a MAGA stronghold), and rig the NFL.  If Democrats were that good, how did we ever lose the House of Representatives or all of those state Governorships?  It’s fantastical, and it must be to all but the most dedicated MAGA-hat owners.  But it’s still a part of a much bigger MAGA strategy.

It all goes back to Steve Bannon, and the “Deep State”.  Bannon believes that the “establishment”, the foundational institutions of the American government are corrupted by the “progressives”.  Every time MAGA-world can weaken those institutions in the eyes of Americans, it makes an autocratic leader figure look better.  And their strong-man, of course, is Donald Trump.

That’s why the MAGA-Republican House of Representatives is threatening impeachment for President Biden and members of his Cabinet.  Those impeachment charges are doomed in the Senate, but that’s not the point.  The point is to shake American confidence in the institution of the Presidency (while Biden holds the office) and his administration.  It’s also the way MAGA makes “lemonade out of lemons” in the multiple Court cases Trump faces.  Trump isn’t really an insurrectionist, or careless with classified documents, or a sexual assaulter, or a serial harasser or a crooked businessman.  No, he’s a victim of the Deep State, of progressive-infected institutions.  So if you can’t trust them, you must turn to an autocrat; because, as we “know”, “Only HE can fix it”.

The Congress, the Executive Branch, the Courts:  now the MAGA-Republican world is attacking two other American institutions.  They’ve already taken some runs against the NFL, we all remember Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the National Anthem.  Now they can double-down against that American institution, and get back at Taylor Swift in the process.  It’s just another “brick in the wall” (definitely not a Swift song) in deconstructing the Deep State.

If I were a betting man, I’d bet on Taylor and Travis against the MAGA nonsense.  But if I were a betting man, I would already have lost my shirt betting for the Bengals.

All Things Are Possible

Profile in Cowardice

They did it.  The MAGA super-majority of the Ohio Legislature over-rode Governor DeWine’s veto of their cowardly bill to ban transgendered care for minors in Ohio and ban transgendered women from Ohio K-12 and collegiate sports.  So the Legislature has managed to pass a law that impacts our society – or at least the miniscule few that are transgendered minors (about 3300 in a decade) and the transgendered girls who play high school sports (7 to 10).  

I’m sure that it takes a law, and a veto, and an over-ride; in our state with 2.5 million children (under 17):  “By God, we’ll protect those millions from the few”.

It’s embarrassing.  And it’s disgusting – like watching a bully on the playground.  Even worse, like watching a bully on the playground and not being able to do anything about it.  All of these “Bully” politicians, making their MAGA political points, at the expense of the defenseless, the most vulnerable among us.  The blood of the innocents will be on their MAGA hands, and match their red MAGA hats.  We already know that the attempted suicide rate among transgendered youth is high.  But MAGA politicians don’t listen, and they don’t care.  They KNOW – beyond a reasonable certainty, what THEIR God created.  And so the rest of the state must now kowtow to their religious certainty, because in Ohio where “…With God, all things are possible,” is plastered in almost every school in the state, humanity is more than uncertain.  It is missing in action.

A Civil Right

This fight isn’t over.  Now it will move to the Federal Courts, a venue that will look at the civil rights violations inherent in this legislation.  If everyone has equal protection under the law, then the right of a transgendered child to seek medical care should not be denied.  If parents have that “RIGHT TO CHOOSE” so often trumpeted by the same MAGA Republicans in front of school boards, then surely parents have the right to choose the medical care for their child.  And what could be a more fundamental right then to have the right to choose sexuality.  The MAGA God of “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” surely cannot be rammed down the rest of Ohio’s throats.  The First Amendment establishment of religion clause must still reign supreme, even in the Buckeye state.

I hope the Courts agree.  And I thank the Governor, Mike DeWine, for trying to stand up for the few.  I won’t even say he’s not trying to get re-elected:  he did the right thing, I think for the right reasons, and that’s enough.  I wish other politicians in Ohio would learn from him.  Sometimes it’s more important to have the courage of conviction, rather than the cowardice of expediency.  

Out-Flanked

But that is the essence of the “new” MAGA-Republican Party.  To stay in power, politicians must not get out-flanked to the Right.  And nothing, ever, is more important than maintaining power.  We see the same thing nationally.  This week, a solution to the Southern Border crisis is fading.  Not because it’s unattainable, but because it’s not politically convenient for their one candidate for President.  So that solution goes “under the bus”, possibly along with support for Ukraine against Russian aggression.  Not because it’s right, and not even because it’s controversial.  In the end, the vast majority of legislators and Americans would agree.  But because it might be a “feather” in Joe Biden’s cap: then it’s Damn them all. 

And, frankly, the Democrats in the US Senate, and the Democrat in the White House, seem helpless.  At least here in Ohio, the few Democrats left un-gerrymandered in the legislature can cry out against the super-majority.  But what good is a Democratic majority, when a rump-MAGA caucus of crazies, the whole eight or so of them in the House of Representatives, can call the shots.   The MAGA minority are willing to burn every bridge, throw every victim to the wolves, to get what they want, nationally, and here in Ohio.

Charity for All

John C Calhoun, the pro-slavery Senator from South Carolina in the first half of the 19th century, wrote eloquently about the “Tyranny of the Majority”.  He represented the “minority” slave-holding view,  one that kept the United States entangled until the Civil War.  He managed to create, through his eloquence and manipulation, a “tyranny of the minority”.  For over a decade, slavery was a “forbidden subject” on the floor of the House of Representatives.

And so we are living in a “tyranny of minority” now, both in the national government, and in Ohio as well. There’s little to do about it, except to rise up in November, and take action at the voting box.  The majority will can prevail, but only if the majority actual exercises its freedom – to vote.  

Then we can “throw the bums out”, and get on with, as Lincoln said:

“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

It’s scary – the words of Lincoln, at the end of America’s Civil War, seem so appropriate today.

Winning

Victory

I listened to Nikki Haley’s  New Hampshire “victory” speech last night.  She’s got some smart speech writers.  Haley got around 130,000 votes (91% of the total in as I write this), about 30,000 less than Donald Trump.  In politics, that’s usually called “losing”, 43% to 54%.  But in Nikki Haley’s world – this is what a “winner” looks like!!!

Talk about making lemons into lemonade.  And when those numbers are broken down, Haley lost the Republican primary dramatically among Republican voters.  That statement sounds pretty confusing, and it is.  In New Hampshire voters can “declare” for the Republican Party, even if they really identify as independents or even as Democrats.  And among those groups, Haley did extremely well.  But among the actual “Party Members”, Trump won by huge percentages.

So if Haley lost with Republicans and lost the overall election – what did she declare victory about?  Is this just another example of post-truth world, where whites are victims and minorities are advantaged, and the world spins from west to east?   

Nikki Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations, did win one thing – the right to continue.  And that was enough for her to “jump in” soon after the polls closed, congratulate the twice-impeached, four-time indicted former President on his win, then declare her own victory.  She gave perhaps the best national speech of her career, sounding for all the world like New Hampshire was the first domino in a well thought out plan to win the nomination.

About the Dough

So what really happened?  The reason most campaigns “suspend” (give up) is simple:  they run out of money.  The DeSantis campaign is the latest example of this:  after burning through more than $100 million, after his Iowa showing, the money simply dried up.  There was “no path forward”, because the DeSantis campaign couldn’t pay anymore bills. 

But clearly, the “monied class”* has decided that the one remaining opponent to Trump needs to “soldier on”.  So Nikki Haley can stand at the podium and say “…Let’s go back home to South Carolina” to contest the next primary with some confidence.  The Republican money against Trump is coalesced behind the Haley campaign.  She is the “last, best” hope to stop the Republican Party from what many see as the unmitigated disaster of another Presidency lost by Donald Trump.

Does that mean that Haley has a chance of beating Trump, particularly in those states with “closed” primaries where independents and rogue Democrats will have little impact?  The answer by the MAGA Party is clear – a resounding NO!!!  They didn’t want the substitutes for Trump (DeSantis or Ramaswamy),  and they don’t want Haley:  they want the real thing.

Rapture  

So why go on?  On MSNBC’s coverage last night, they coined the political use of the religious term, “the rapture”.  In Christian theology, “the rapture” is the time when God’s Chosen literally disappear, called to Heaven.  The good are there, and then they are gone.  The MSNBC commentators applied that analogy to Trump.  There are lots of ways where Trump might “disappear”.  He’s an older man (ask Haley -she’ll be glad to list his cognitive gaffs), and maybe his health will fail.  And, of course, he is facing ninety-one felony counts in four different courts; it could take just one guilty verdict for him to “politically” disappear.

And if that happens in June, after the primaries but before the nominating convention, someone needs to step in – and “the money” is anointing Nikki Haley.  

No one expects a “miracle”, some blinding flash when MAGA-Republicans realize that Donald Trump won’t win against Joe Biden.  But, he’s a 77 year-old man, who can’t remember if he ran against Obama or Biden, and confuses Haley with Nancy Pelosi.  And then there’s those felony charges.  So someone has to be “in the wings”, and Haley staying in the race makes her “the one”.  

And as a Democrat, Haley does make me a little nervous.  She is painting both Trump and President Biden as tired-old men, ready for the green pastures of retirement.  Against Trump, that really isn’t an issue for Biden – Trump’s almost as old.  But against Haley, the age issue is real, and quietly powerful.

Postscripts

*This whole “class” thing:  the monied class, the political class, the elite-liberal-university class; what’s that all about?  Sure, there are people with money, there are those who are professional politicians, and folks have complained about Harvard-Yale-Dartmouth arrogance for years.  Why are they now all “a class”?  Is that just a way to “cancel” them?  If you are a “class”, then your different from me, and therefore I can “hate” you, is that the goal?

Hanging:  A couple of Sunday’s ago I left you hanging on a “Sunday Story”.  It’s now indoor track season and I’m officiating Sunday track meets for several more weeks in a row, so not much time to tell stories (just creating some more!!).   But our group, Lost Pet Recovery, was helping to trap two young Pyrenees who were out for months in Western Ohio (Rube Goldberg).  The short version is that, it took three days to finally get both dogs into the big panel trap.  Jenn and Don spent two long evenings sitting in the truck in sub-zero wind chill  waiting for the dogs to go in.  But it was on the third night, with the local trapper in charge, that the pups finally went into the panel, and the “Rube Goldberg” mechanism remotely closed the door (IT WORKED – WOO-HOO!!!!).

That was only the first problem:  next was how to get the dogs into smaller “traps” so they could be transported to a rescue.  It was cold, and the dogs weren’t mean, but not cooperative either. Eventually the trapper and friends were able to get them in the traps, and soon out of the cold.  Both dogs are now doing well in their new, and warm, home at the rescue. 

Tale of Two Speeches

Who Are They?

I have to admit, nothing, absolutely nothing, surprises me about this new political party,  the MAGA Party.  I know, it used to be the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, my father, and many of my good friends.  But it’s not any more.  It kind of reminds me of the opening scene in Men in Black, when the alien “bug” lands, then crawls inside the skin of Edgar, the poor farmer played by Vincent  D’Onofrio, and struggles to inhabit his body.

Trump crawled inside the Party, literally taking over all of the working mechanisms.  There is little difference between the Republican National Committee and the Trump Campaign.  And there’s no difference between the Trump Campaign and Trump himself.  Multiple millions of dollars of supposed campaign money is paying for Trump’s personal legal fees.  Money that might have gone to support some Governor or Senate candidate, instead is paying for the series of terrible, awful, lousy lawyers representing Trump in courtrooms in New York, Washington, Atlanta and (that hotbed of legal action) Fort Pierce, Florida.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that those candidates running against Donald Trump in the 2024 primaries are failing.  It’s Trump’s Party – why would anyone else “suit” the voters in MAGA world?   Sure, Donald Trump received 51% of the Iowa caucus vote, about 56,000 (out of the more than 800,000 registered Republicans in the state( SOS)).  The MAGA Party is definitely smaller than the “old” Republican Party used to be.  But ones who are still there and active, the vast majority; they are red-hatted Trumpers.  It’s really a surprise that 49% voted for anyone else.

Primary Season

Sure, Nikki Haley is “still standing”, but she looks a whole lot like John Kasich back in 2016.  The “fever dream” of non-MAGA Republicans was that if they could only get “one-on-one”, then the “majority” of Republicans could rise up against Donald Trump.  But there isn’t a Never-Trump majority out there.  If Haley does well in New Hampshire, it’s because the folks who are more likely to vote for Joe Biden (or Joe Manchin) in November, cross over to hurt Trump.  Even that’s a media fever-dream, but it doesn’t matter.

Should Haley win in New Hampshire, it will simply extend the agony.  The South Carolina primary is a month away, but there is no magic trick that will turn her own home state from Trumpism to Haley-ism.  All that Haley can hope for is the influx of all of the anti-MAGA money. But there’s just some things that money can’t buy.  South Carolina’s fealty to the twice-impeached, four times indicted former President is almost as strong as their addiction to the low country boil called “Frogmore Stew”.  

Paragraph Six

This is the beginning of paragraph six – a fitting place for the end of Ron DeSantis.  He was the “anointed one”, the boy-Governor picked to stand in for Donald Trump.  He had all of the “issues chops”; things like his stand against Covid protections, his attack on “Woke America”, and his abuse of LGBTQ children in Florida.  And he had none of the liabilities:  no one was charging him with ninety-one felony counts.  He wasn’t (isn’t) likely to see the inside of a Federal prison soon.

So he ran as Trump’s “mini-me”, with millions of dollars in funding to back him up.  And as he got out in public, we found that, like Democrat Howard Dean back in 2004, the more people saw him, the less they like him. DeSantis was just awkward and weird, when it came to “retail politics”,  shaking hands and kissing babies.    And he was running to be the “replacement” when the “real thing” was still there, Trump.   

It was the momentum of all that money that propped DeSantis up for over a year.  But, like Howard Dean, it was in the first taste of actual voting that “the Party” got their chance to weigh in.  And they did so, in small numbers in a snow storm – they wanted Trump. 

DeSantis didn’t face the public in the end – he left us a message on “X”.  Sure he said the right things, “…when there is no course forward, no path to the nomination, it’s time to suspend…”, but DeSantis also had the opportunity to lay a future path for his Party.  But he didn’t:  instead he “kissed the ring” of Donald Trump, one more time.  He still wants to be in the MAGA Party, even if he lost to the MAGA King.  

It was as awkward as the big white boots the DeSantis got caught wearing, or the “controversy” over whether he was “Dee-Santis” or “Duh-Santis”.  Even he wasn’t sure.  But the MAGA Party was sure about him.

Fore-Shadow

This as opposed to the end of the Chris Christie campaign, just a couple of weeks ago.  Christie didn’t hide behind “X”, he stood out in a town-meeting and talked to people, something DeSantis couldn’t do.  And while Christie has a kind-of New Jersey gangster “aura”, he made the purpose of his failed campaign clear.  He, like Haley, wanted to be the nexus of the “traditional Republicans”.  He still seems to believe that there are some out there.  And Christie made the important point, even in his toughest moment.  Democrat, Republican, or even MAGA:  Trump is dangerous for America, and stopping him should be the national priority.  

If you didn’t hear the speech (eleven minutes), you should check it out (Christie).

Christie, DeSantis, Haley:  the side-shows are almost over.  By the end of February we will be onto the general election; Trump versus Biden – the Re-Match.   It’s the crucible America needs to go through one more time.  And, if Biden wins, perhaps we can get back to the Republican Party of past generations.  Because if Trump wins, we will all be in MAGA world, perhaps for longer than just four more years.

Can Democracy Answer?

Harper’s Ferry

The  looming shadow of the Civil War was clear in 1859.  It was then, in the soft October fall of the Potomac Valley, that radical abolitionist John Brown led his band of devotees and freedmen to the attack across the bridge from Maryland into Virginia.  Their goal:  to take the United States Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry (then Virginia, now West Virginia).  With the Arsenal’s weapons, Brown hoped to lead a rebellion of enslaved people against their owners.

It was the ultimate Southern nightmare:  well-armed enslaved people, led by a committed white man, taking vengeance for their servitude.  A whole series of Southern institutions were already in place to protect the slaveowner and their “peculiar institution” from attack. There were local militias that held monthly drills throughout the South. And organized “Patrollers” rode the countryside, often at night, searching for runaways.  They were early forms of “Law Enforcement” in America, the dirty  little secret of the beginnings of American policing. 

But, after all of that “preparation”, no one was ready for John Brown’s attack.  So the small standing US military was called forth, Marines led by Army officers Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant JEB Stuart.  They made short work of the “rebellion”,  and captured a wounded Brown as a result.

But with Blood

John Brown stood trial in a Virginia County Court in nearby Charles Town (not Charleston). The charges were treason, murder, and fomenting slave revolt.  America today, used to the “play-by-play” of “hot” criminal trials, would be familiar with the press coverage.  It was the first trial telegraphed nationally.  Every local newspaper had yesterday’s “highlights”, including the kind of Court illustrations we still see today. 

For many abolitionists, Brown represented laudable positive action to end slavery.  For many Southerners, Brown represented the kind of Northern meddling that “got people killed”.  Brown’s trial, and his ultimate execution, forced many Americans to take a side.  It was the very definition of polarization. There was no middle ground left on the critical issue of the day, slavery. 

Justice was swift in the 1850’s.  The attack started October 19th and ended two days later.  Brown was dead at the end of a rope on December 2nd.   The whole incident was as much a symptom as a cause.  It demonstrated the futility of American efforts to “solve” the issue of slavery.  Within a year and a half, Confederate cannons fired in Charleston, South Carolina, at Union-held Fort Sumter.  The Civil War began.

Insoluble Problems

Democracy could not solve the problem of slavery.  As Brown said, “I… am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”  The problem was a “snake under the table” in American history. It went back before the Declaration of Independence, and through every major governmental act thereafter.  No amount of oratory or compromise would solve the issue.  It had to be “purged in blood.”

Today, there are several issues that it seems American democracy cannot solve.  One example: the issue of mass shootings, what has an almost daily “Butcher’s Bill” of victims. It is entrapped in our Constitutional interpretation of the “right to bear arms”.    So, while we send our National “thoughts and prayers”, every time; any real action to end the problem is paralyzed.

On the Border

The problems of the Southern Border are similarly entangled, this time not in the Constitution, but by politics.  Both sides politically would “like” to solve the problem; but neither side is willing to let the other have “credit” for getting the job done.  Put simply, Republicans don’t want a Democratic President to “fix” the border, it’s too much of a “feather in his cap”.  Sure the issues are complex:  12 million illegal migrants already living in the United States, many with children who are born American citizens.  Hundreds of thousands more who were raised in the United States, the only country they have ever known – but are technically illegals (the Dreamers).   

The US worries about a lack of labor, particularly in the most arduous manual labor jobs, ones that migrants are willing and able to do.  We need workers, but some are concerned that somehow, they will “replace” the current workforce.  But few  already in the United States are “fighting” to pick vegetables in the fields of Central California, or fruit in Michigan and Ohio.  

There are solutions to the border – if only we really wanted to solve the problem.  But it’s too “big a political stick” to put down, to allow compromise to reach an agreement.

A Changing Nation

And there is the inexorable movement of America; becoming a nation where no one racial group has a majority.  That change has part of the Nation cheering, and the other part using every “trick” in or outside the law to maintain their power.

One of those “tricks” is that to move away from the principles of democracy.  Some are looking to autocratic solutions, where the right to vote is limited, and what we are allowed to learn and “think” is determined by the legislature.  That sounds like a rhetorical over-reach: but in Florida, state college courses are being cancelled because they are “too woke”, or “too ideological”.    The Florida legislature is now telling colleges what they can teach, and students what they can learn.

Our Nation is polarized, perhaps as much as we were in 1859.  And, like it or not, it’s nearly an even split.   The Insurrection of January 6, 2021 was a warning, without the “speed” of the John Brown raid and trial.  But does it foreshadow  a problem that cannot be “purged” except with violence, or can Americans overcome the siren song of autocracy to move to a new, multi-cultural and diverse nation?

This year, 2024, will tell the tale.

Let’s Go Joe!!!

Brandon

If, somehow, you missed this “code word”  lesson from MAGA-world, let me fill you in.  At a NASCAR race back in 2021, the winner was a twenty-eight year old driver named Brandon.  He was doing his post-win interview, live on television, when the crowd behind him began to chant.  The interviewer did his best to “cover” what was going out on national television, and told Brandon that the crowd was chanting for him, “Let’s Go Brandon!!”  But it soon became clear that they weren’t.  Their cry, for the National audience was: “F##k Joe Biden!!”

So when you see a “Let’s Go Brandon” bumper sticker, you’re seeing a MAGA follower profanely declaring their public dislike for the current President of the United States.

And, for a while in 2022 and into 2023, everything that went wrong in the world was followed by “Let’s Go Brandon”.  Gas prices went up:  “Let’s Go Brandon”.  Troops withdrawn from Afghanistan; “Let’s Go Brandon”.   Russia invaded Ukraine – “Let’s Go Brandon”.  In fact, every negative thing that happened was appended with the epithet.  And since it was in a “code” that only MAGA-world understood, it became their cute little secret.

Tack to the Middle

But the code-secret wore thin in 2023.  Gas prices were down.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average set new record highs, protecting American retirement investments.  Inflation rates are now under control.  Russia is bogged down in World War I style trench warfare in Ukraine – estimated Russian deaths 120,000 (more than all the US deaths in all of the wars since World War II).  Over $136 Billion of student loan debt forgiven.  Health insurance reforms include capping the cost of insulin at $35/month.  

Sure, President Biden is walking a steep path in the Middle East.  He’s supporting Israel, while trying to temper Netanyahu’s politically motivated blood lust against the Palestinians.  Meanwhile, he’s using US military force to prevent the rest of the region from breaking out in war (the success of that effort is still unclear: finger’s crossed).   We are spending dollars instead of blood to support democracy in Ukraine against Russia.  And the United States, right or wrong, has learned to “live” with Covid, though 1500 are still dying from the disease  each week (ABC).   (One of the big “causes” of Covid death:  only 21.4% of American adults took the new vaccine (CDC)).

MAGA-world, and even the few remaining old-school Republicans; like to characterize President Biden as a moderate being driven by the “far-left”. But the reality is that Biden, a well-seasoned, master politician; tacked left as the Congress and the Courts veered right.  Ultimately he’s charted a “middle” course.   There’s a lot that the “left” wanted:  voting rights protections, abortion and LGBTQ  rights, environmental protections; left on the table.  If you’re “left” (like me), that’s unfortunate.  But it not Joe Biden’s fault.

Thanks Joe!!

There was another little “secret code” of MAGA-world.  When gas prices were soaring in the post-Covid recovery, little stickers of President Biden appeared on gas pumps with the words “Thanks Joe” on them.  It was MAGA sarcasm:  gas prices were going up – thank Joe Biden for that (just after you get done with the Brandon thing).  But those stickers went away soon after gas prices recovered from the post-Covid shock.  

I think we should bring them back.  I paid $2.53 at the pump last week, down a full dollar from last year;  thanks, President Biden.   My stocks have never been higher; thanks President Biden.  And while the world remains a precarious place, I feel confident in the decision-making process of Biden, Harris, Blinken, and the rest of the Biden National Security team; thanks President Biden.

And the apparent ideological alternative, as we enter (so soon?) the 2024 Presidential election year, remains unable to govern.  MAGA Republicans can’t get anything done in the House of Representatives, threatening to shut down the government rather than reach a political compromise.  If the new Speaker (“meet the new boss, same as the old boss”) does reach a deal, it may well take Democrats to keep him in the Speaker’s chair.   And the apparent Republican Presidential nominee is doing all he can to close the government.  He needs inflation, economic ruin, and international disaster, so he can claim that “only HE can fix this” – again.

Binary Choice

As President Biden often says – “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative”. Republicans are Hell bent to re-nominate Donald Trump.  This despite his facing 91 felony charges in four different jurisdictions, including attempting to disrupt the peaceful transition of the Presidency and failing to secure classified documents.  And for those voters who are put-off by Biden’s age, and see Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis as an alternative:  it’s time for a childhood “fable”.  It’s the one about a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  While Haley or DeSantis “package” the Trump program in “nicer” way, they haven’t moved an inch from MAGA-world.  

They can’t.  The Republican Party IS MAGA.  There is no way to get around that:  ask Chris Christie.  And why should MAGA take “sheep’s clothing candidates”, when they can have the real, battered, stinky, growling and groveling old orange wolf himself?  

So you don’t want these alternatives?   Are you thinking about sitting out the most important election (or the re-boot of the most important election) since 1864?  I hope not.  America is faced with a choice in November, beyond just two old white men on the ballot. 

 So make it. 

The Dream

Who is Equal

I’ve studied politics since I was four years old in 1960.  Well, maybe studying might be too strong a word for that first decade, observing might make more sense.  But, really, since 1968, still one of the most horrific years in American political history, I’ve studied politics.  America is a push-pull of political ideology, and it has been since President Kennedy was assassinated on the streets of Dallas.  And it’s not so much conservative versus liberal:  it’s been a battle of America’s “destiny”.  

In the early 1960’s, the Civil Rights movement challenged America to live up to it’s mythology.  “All Men are created equal” was Jefferson’s founding phrase.  He absolutely knew the personal and governmental contradiction evoked by that.  Jefferson owned over a hundred slaves, and regardless of his personal “ideology” was economically unable to change that status.  And the Nation recognized slavery and racism as a structural doctrine.  “All Men are created equal” was an aspiration, a “dream” that for the Founding Father’s was some future generation’s problem.

Almost two hundred years later, Martin Luther King and many others demanded of that Nation their right to the Dream.  While the Kennedy Administration played around the edges, it took a racist President from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts that put statutory language to the Declaration’s key phrase and the results of the Civil War a century before.

Betrayal

Many white people saw Johnson as betraying their vision of the American dream.  They saw America’s destiny as a white majority Nation, the continuation of the Manifest Destiny brought over from the 19th century.  It was that idea that drove the Native Americans to “land jails” called reservations, and propped up the Jim Crow Laws.  

George Wallace, the racist Democratic Governor of Alabama, embodied that tradition.  He led a “rump” party in the Presidential election of 1968, taking most of the old Confederacy with 46 electoral votes.  At that time, the South wasn’t ready to vote for a Republican, the Party of Lincoln.  But they were willing to vote for a Democrat who spoke their segregationist, state’s rights language.  And that opened the door for the Republican Party.  Nixon became President.

By 1972 Nixon consolidated his position in the South, beginning the Republican tradition of Southern electoral hegemony.  It wasn’t that Wallace’s philosophy changed:  it was simply subsumed by the Republicans; the Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Rockefeller now the party of state’s rights and the language of white superiority.  Need an example?  Google Willie Horton.  

Since then little has changed.  Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor, didn’t embrace Nixon’s change, and lost to a Southern Democrat and moderate Jimmy Carter.  But Reagan did, and so did Bush of Maine (the father) and Bush of Texas (the son).  In between was another southern candidate, Bill Clinton, assisted in his first election by a Texas billionaire who split the Republican vote.

2008

All of that changed in 2008. 

One last political “fact” to keep in mind.  Democrats have been a majority in this country since the 1930’s.  The power of Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition, and his thirteen years in the Presidency, echoes down the generations.  It wasn’t about which party has more “members”.  For sixty years there were always more Democrats than Republicans (Pew).   The critical factor wasn’t “identification”, it was always about turnout.

In 2008, the young Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, motivated Democrats to come to the polls in record numbers.  He symbolically changed the landscape of American politics.  A Black man as President, leader of the Nation, seemed to signify the arrival of Martin Luther King’s Dream.

But just as Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights legislation triggered the backlash of George Wallace, Obama’s election began the “Last, Great Fight” for America’s destiny.  “Last, Great” because a decade from now, America will no longer be a white majority nation.  The Manifest Destiny dream of the 19th century will meet its end at the ballot box, that is, unless supremacists can alter the structure of our laws to protect their power.  And that’s happening:  voter suppression laws, extreme gerrymandered legislative districts, and the built in anti-democratic compromise of the electoral college might maintain their white power a little longer.

Imperfect Vessels

And in the last two decades, a new wrinkle was added to American life:  a “bifurcated” media.  There no longer is a single “truth”.  Just last night, 51% of Iowa Republicans believed that Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential election (Register).   Our “post-truth” era allows the Trump “miracle”.

A miracle; because a single scandal, much less ninety-one felony charges, would have ended any political career just twenty years ago.  Look at Jonathan Edwards, leading early candidate for the Democratic candidacy in 2008.  Even the possibility of charges against Hillary Clinton were enough to tilt the 2016 results. But today, Donald Trump has made court appearances the core of his Presidential campaign.  He’s made “victimhood” an honor.  In Christian terms, Trump is the “imperfect vessel” who is “suffering” for his fellow man (at least, fellow white men).   And “his” media backs his story.  Even Fox News, after losing over $700 million is legal damages for lying about the 2020 election, is “back” to supporting Trump. 

Trump is placed as the hero, supporting the “common man” (read, white man) against the rising tide of change.  And he’s done a remarkable job of staying in that position, even if it’s mostly his attempt to stay out of jail.  Certainly the Republicans of Iowa believe him.

Which leads us to the election of 2024.  Some Democrats are struggling to “get behind” Joe Biden, another “imperfect vessel”.  But this election is about something so much more important than the “vessels”; it’s about what the American Dream should be. 

It’s going to be an election between two old white men.  But it’s really a choice echoing back to the founding of the United States in 1776.  Are “all men (and women)” really created equal?  November will decide our destiny.

Rube Goldberg

Sure, it’s not Sunday. But this is definitely a “Sunday Story”, even on a Friday!!!

New Hampshire

So here’s the story.  There’s these two Great Pyrenees, big overgrown white Labrador looking dogs, roaming the flattened countryside of Western Ohio.  They’ve been “out” for months, two “puppies” (they don’t look like puppies anymore) that dug their way under their kennel.  And over the past couple of months they wandered across the now empty cornfields, from near Lima all the way to a tiny “burg” called New Hampshire, almost twenty miles away. 

In Allen County (and now Auglaize County next door) there’s a dog trapper.  She’s dedicated the past several years to rescuing the wandering dogs of the “plains” of Ohio.  And she’s incredibly successful; spending time, money and effort to find a way to bring those dogs in.  But the Great Pyrenees have eluded her, even as she tracked them twenty miles from Lima to New Hampshire.  Her regular trapping techniques didn’t work.  So, she needed equipment, and she needed help.  She called Don, the leader of Lost Pet Recovery, the group my wife Jenn and I belong to.  (All of this is volunteer by the way, the Allen County trapper, Don, us.  No one is making money in finding lost dogs).

Traps and Panels

Normally we catch wandering dogs in self-contained traps.  They look like cages, with a trap door at one end and a pressure-plate trigger at the other.  Often, a couple of McDonald’s double cheeseburgers (plain) at the back of the trap past the trip-plate is enough to make a lost dog “safe”.  Those traps come in sizes, from four-foot Chihuahua size to six-foot extra-large Great Dane size.  But some dogs: some that have been trapped before and “won’t get fooled again”, and some that just won’t go in “the cage”, need a different technique.

Panel traps are big kennels, six foot panels bolted together with an actual door in the front.  Instead of the “confines” of a trap, a panel can be as small as six by three, and as big as eight by eight.  A dog that won’t go in a trap, might well go into the “room” of the panel trap.  That is, if the bait is right, and the panels themselves don’t remind them of “bad kennels” of the past.

Slam the Door

The Allen County trapper was well aware of the “origin story” of the twin Pyrenees, and was reasonably concerned about the panels.  So she set them up, a couple at a time.  And she baited it with the Pyrenees “food of choice”, deer.  There are plenty of dead deer around this time of year, hit by cars or shot by hunters but able to hide away and die.  So it took a couple of weeks, and moving the whole operation to New Hampshire, to get the “pups” into an eight by eight panel trap.

Now it’s “just” a matter of closing the door.  In the past, we would string a rope from the door to a car, a couple of hundred feet away.  When the dog went into the trap, you’d pull the rope, and slam the door shut.  But there were always the locations where we couldn’t get a “straight shot”, and the rope just wouldn’t work. 

That’s only part of the problem with the Pyrenees.  The panel trap is out in a field, completely exposed.  There’s a barn fairly close, but it’s not a good place to “hide” from the hyper-sensitive instincts of the wandering dogs.  But the bigger issue is:  can we catch two dogs at one time?  If we get one, but miss the second, we’ll never get another chance to get her safe, at least in a panel trap.

Here’s where creative “engineering” meets dog trapping.  All we need is an “automatic” closer, that will slam the door shut when both dogs are in.  And we have one of those, with a “sensor” that detects the dog at the back of the trap.  The sensor is the kind to keep the garage door from closing on kids and dogs, a “beam” that shuts off the power when the light is broken.  When the power goes off, an electric magnet, holding the door open, goes off as well.  The door slams shut, and the dog is safe.

MacGyver’ed

But the “beam” thing won’t work with two dogs.  What you need is a “switch” with a remote control, and a way to watch the trap “real time”.  So what we “created” was a remote “switch”, operated from a remote control (from as far as a quarter-mile away).  The switch powers an electro-magnet, holding the door open against the pull of multiple bungees waiting to slam it shut.  And the old “latch” is now replaced by a big wrought-iron privacy fence gate lock.  Hit the button, the magnet goes off,  the door slams into the latch, and the dogs are safe.  And it’s all powered by a tractor battery, set up on an upside down milk crate on the side of the panel.

Oh, and there’s three cameras stationed around the trap, to give us the best view possible of the scene.  Both dogs have to be at the back of the trap, for sure, enjoying their deer, before the button gets pushed.  It’s kind of like that scene from the movie Oppenheimer, except that there’s really zero chance that the world will catch on fire.

Describing the whole setup depends on your age.  If you’re old enough, you know what a “Rube Goldberg” is.  That’s my Mom and Dad’s generation.  A little bit younger, and maybe you remember the contraptions of Wylie Coyote that came from the “Acme” company.  Younger still, and you’d say the whole setup is “MacGyver’ed”. Today, maybe it’s “jury-rigged”, or “jerry-built”, or “thrown-together”.  

Margin of Error

But there’s little margin for error.  The camera signals have to go to cell towers, then back to the button pusher’s phone.  There’s at least a three-second lag.  And there’s the real concern of changing weather in Western Ohio.  The forecast: high winds, falling temperatures, changes from rain to snow.  “Perfect weather” to sit in a silent truck, behind the barn, waiting to push the button and slam the gate.  And hope your finger’s don’t freeze to the remote control (the dogs won’t come if there’s a running truck nearby). 

And, of course, once the gate does slam shut and the dogs are “caught” – what to do?  It’s not like their “happy puppies”; they’re near feral, and enjoyed their months of freedom.  And they’ve never had a leash on.  So somehow, we’ve got to transfer the  dogs from the panel trap to a crate that can be transported.  That’ll be another trick.

The good news is that there’s a rescue ready to take them in, day or night.  The bad news is the temperatures will start falling tomorrow, and hit single digits by Sunday.  I’ll let you know how it comes out.

Post Script – I put this addition to a later essay – but here’s the conclusion to the “Rube Goldberg” story

Hanging:  A couple of Sunday’s ago I left you hanging on a “Sunday Story”.  It’s now indoor track season and I’m officiating Sunday track meets for several more weeks in a row, so not much time to tell stories (just creating some more!!).   But our group, Lost Pet Recovery, was helping to trap two young Pyrenees who were out for months in Western Ohio (Rube Goldberg).  The short version is that, it took three days to finally get both dogs into the big panel trap.  Jenn and Don spent two long evenings sitting in the truck in sub-zero wind chill  waiting for the dogs to go in.  But it was on the third night, with the local trapper in charge, that the pups finally went into the panel, and the “Rube Goldberg” mechanism remotely closed the door (IT WORKED – WOO-HOO!!!!).

That was only the first problem:  next was how to get the dogs into smaller “traps” so they could be transported to a rescue.  It was cold, and the dogs weren’t mean, but not cooperative either. Eventually the trapper and friends were able to get them in the traps, and soon out of the cold.  Both dogs are now doing well in their new, and warm, home at the rescue. 

The Sunday Story Series

Constitutional Scholars

Awake in Class

Did you sleep through your American History class?  What about American Government; awake in those first long months as “we” dragged through the Constitution?  Or was it just about “old, dead, white dudes”,  and talking about “stuff”?  You dreaded the long test at the end.  

First of all, you were right about a couple of things.  They are all dead, for sure.  And they were all white, and all “dudes” (no dudettes).  But they weren’t all that old.  Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, was in his mid-thirties.  Hamilton, the man with all of the ideas (some good, some bad) was still in his twenties.  But they all listened to the “elder statesman” of the group, Benjamin Franklin, just past eighty years old.  And George Washington, the chairman and “head referee” was in his mid-fifties, already “the man, the legend,” that no one in the room wanted to cross.

You probably had two shots at the Constitution, one in eighth grade history, and one in your senior year Government class.  Like that “damn” Algebra II class; the Constitution unit was one of those times when you thought:  why are they teaching us this – when will I ever need to know it?

I’ve got the answer to that question, at least concerning the Constitution (I can’t speak for Algebra II).  It’s today.  Today is the day you need to know the Constitution of the United States.  It would help if you remember the granular details; but even the big concepts of separation of powers and Federal versus State are in play. It’s every day right now, every time you catch the news.  We all need to be Constitutional lawyers, but if not that, at least Constitutional scholars.  Here’s why.

Seal Team Six

“Can a President who ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a rival, be held for trial on a criminal offense?”  That’s what a United States Appeals Court judge asked a lawyer in her court yesterday.  Sure, it was a hypothetical question, a dreaded “what if” scenario that those of us who spent a little time (one semester) in law school remember so well.  And the answer the lawyer gave:  only if the President had been impeached in the House, and convicted in the Senate.  Otherwise, the LAW could do nothing to that President, in office or out.

All of us old history/government teachers “took flight”.  Well then, the President could order the assassination of the Senators who might vote to convict them, and therefore avoid any criminal responsibility.  And that’s the definition of a dictatorship:  when the “leader” can kill their opposition with impunity.  Think of all of those Russians who took the big leap from the 14th floor window at the “behest” of Vladimir Putin. 

Reality check:  we fully expect that Seal Team Six would never carry out such an order.  They too, have an obligation to defend the Constitution, and such a mission would be completely illegal.  But that’s not the point.

Richard Nixon

The point is that a real, live, $1000 an hour lawyer; tried to make that argument in the DC Appeals Court yesterday, claiming that the Federal case against Donald Trump for trying to stop the lawful transfer of power should be thrown out.  He didn’t see the absolute foolishness of the position.  He got cornered; and the scary part is, there are other lawyers, and one particular twice-impeached, multiple felony charged former President, who believes that’s true.  It’s not much of a stretch from “shooting someone on Fifth Avenue” to sending Seal Team Six to do your bidding.  As Richard Nixon infamously said:  “If the President does it, it can’t be illegal.”  That’s the basis of the argument the Trump lawyers are making.

You think that’s what young Hamilton and Madison, middle-aged Washington and elderly Franklin wanted? They were fresh off of a nine-year war for freedom from a monarch, King George III of Great Britain, who claimed that kind of Royal Sovereignty.  Do you think those guys, those “old, dead, white dudes” would have created a new form of Sovereign immunity for their own Chief Executive?   

Civil War Revisited

And then there’s all the Civil War talk.  First it was the definition of an Insurrectionist.  Did Donald Trump commit or support Insurrection on January 6th?  And if he did, is he disqualified from the Presidency, just as if he was too young or not born a citizen?  There’s a famous Justice Potter Stewart quote about pornography: “I know it when I see it”.  (That quote always brings to mind the once-a-month “porn” showings in the basement of the Supreme Court, to see movies so they “knew” which to ban.  Those weren’t so popular with the Justices, but the Clerks, then an all-male club, enjoyed it). 

Does the 14th Amendment require some legal “finding”, or is it like Stewart’s view of porn;  we know it when we see it.  That seems to be what the authors of the 14th thought:  they didn’t put any kind of “due process” proviso.  Either you supported the Confederacy, or you didn’t.  Is that the legal definition to be applied to Trump?  Colorado and Maine think so, and the Supreme Court is going to weigh-in too.  Were you awake when they were going over the Amendments? (Admittedly, even when I was teaching the 14th, I emphasized the first section.  The second and third were left-over Civil War business, at least that’s what I thought then).  

And now Trump is bring back the old “Birther” argument.  He’s “rumoring” that his distant Republican rival, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, wasn’t born in the United States, and therefore isn’t eligible to be President.   It’s the same line he used on Barack Obama.  Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was born in the USA (Springsteen); Bamberg, South Carolina in fact.  But facts have never been part of the Trump campaigns.  

Spinning in Their Graves

When I first started learning about government, impeaching a President was an historic anomaly.  Andrew Johnson was impeached, and avoided conviction and removal from office by one vote, back in 1868.   In modern times, no one seriously tried to remove a “sitting” President.  That was, until my senior year of high school, 1974.  Then there was the very serious possibility that Richard Nixon would be removed, so serious that Nixon himself resigned to avoid the permanent stain. 

No one then thought Nixon had some kind of absolute immunity from prosecution.  In fact, many of us, looked forward to the “Trial of Richard Nixon”, for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and offering bribes.  The new President, Gerald Ford, ended all of that with a pardon.  But we all knew then that Ford was avoiding criminal action against Nixon.  

Since then there’s been three impeachments, and three trials in the Senate.  Bill Clinton once, and Donald Trump twice; have faced the possibility of being the first President convicted by the Senate.  Both avoided removal.  The last time (Trump’s second), one of the excuses used was – we can always prosecute him in Court (Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell).  Even Trump’s impeachment lawyers said the same thing. 

Now “Trump World” is looking for every opportunity to avoid responsibility for his actions.  They are telling us, and America, we were all wrong about Nixon’s fate. Once a President; if you’re not impeached and convicted, you are always immune.  

There’s a rumble under Wall Street in New York, and in Montpelier, Virginia.  Hamilton and Madison are spinning in their graves.  And it’s time for all of us to “bone up” on our Constitution.

Significant Percentage

Facts Don’t Matter

I suspect I’m pointing out the obvious, but I need to say it anyway.  There is nothing easier to do in politics then to “create” a problem, and then be “the only one” who can fix it.  I spent last Sunday morning listening to the news “shows”. I found that “He is the Only One” is the single most “important” Republican talking point. 

Republican Congressmen Elise Stefanik of New York (Meet the Press) and Tony Gonzalez, Texas (This Week) didn’t outright claim that the 2020 election was stolen, though Stefanik came close.  But there underlying theme was this:

A significant percentage of Americans belief that the 2020 election was stolen.  It is important to investigate, and make changes to assure those Americans that the next election will not be.  In order to do that, Americans must choose the Republican candidate for President. Because re-electing President Biden is rewarding stealing the election. At least, that’s the belief of the significant percentage.

Both of the interviewers, Kristen Welker and George Stephanopoulos, pushed back hard.  They both pointed out the self-serving, circular logic of the response.   Over sixty court cases, two internal Trump campaign investigations, Department of Justice inquiries, hearings in front of state legislatures, and even the “Cyber-Ninjas” were unable to find evidence of the “steal”.  In fact, the “words” of the former President and his cronies are the only “evidence” presented.   

Facts don’t seem to matter.  The whole justification for delegitimizing the Biden Presidency and electing Trump for a second term, is that this “significant percentage” belief it.  That becomes the “cause of action” – the reason to vote Republican.  

Held Hostage

And then there’s the January 6th “Hostages” (Stefanik, not Gonzalez).  The Republican Party would have the United States deny what happened before their own eyes.  We all watched on that fateful day three years ago.  There was nothing peaceful about the violence on the Capitol steps that day, nothing “legitimate” about defecating in the hallways and vandalizing the offices.  But, according to the Congressman from New York, those rioters were “patriots”, exercising their First Amendment freedom of speech to defend democracy. 

Well, the last part has a kernel of truth.  Many of those insurrectionists believed the lies they were told.  And since they believed it, then they were acting in “good faith” according to the politicians that fed them the lies, and they aren’t responsible.  Any court that holds them accountable is just another part of the “stolen” election, and the convicted are in fact “hostages”.  At least, that’s what a “significant percentage” of Americans believe.

Flies Aren’t Wrong

(Using the term “hostages” for the Insurrectionists so soon after October 7th, is inappropriate and disgusting. But it’s just one more way to legitimize Trump’s actions).

I’m tempted to return to my own childhood warnings : “…if Johnny jumps off of the Empire State Building would you jump off of the Empire State Building?”  Or the more graphic phrase, “Eat garbage, a million flies can’t be wrong”.   We built Our Nation on individual responsibility.  We have a national obligation to use our own minds to determine what is right or wrong, and to take personal responsibility for our actions.  

When I taught American Government, my most important goal was to get students to think on their own, to analyze and determine for themselves what they believe. I not indoctrinate my students in my own liberal ideology, but I worked to have them develop their own.  All I asked is that they could support those ideas with facts – the absolute counter to the “significant percentage” argument.

Fools and Foolishness

Stefanik is a graduate of Harvard.  Gonzalez has a master’s degree and is working on his doctorate in international studies.  From an academic standpoint, these are not “stupid” people, and can’t possibly be fooled by the “significant percentage” argument.  But it allows them to deny the facts, and stand for the false premise of victimhood.  That “feeds the fire” of the “significant percentage”, adding falsehoods without exactly lying.  And so they continue to make the argument, to justify the Republican Party’s complete sellout to Trump.

At this point it’s reasonable to use the words of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President:  “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

But quoting Lincoln to Republicans is now a dangerous thing.  As the twice-impeached, ninety-one time indicted former President Trump now says:  “Lincoln was wrong.  We should have compromised on slavery, and negotiated to avoid the Civil War.  I would have done it.”  And the former Governor of South Carolina, running for President against Trump, doesn’t even think slavery was an issue in the Civil War.

A “significant percentage” are fooled, and perhaps will remain fooled for all time.  But Trump needs to fool even more; enough to earn the slim margin of electoral votes for re-election.  And, if he can re-write the history of the Civil War, then getting us to ignore our “lying” eyes on January 6th shouldn’t be that big a deal.  

At least, for a “significant percentage” of Americans.