Trey Gowdy: Twit Personified

MERRIAM WEBSTER DICTIONARY:

Twit: n. A stupid or foolish person. 

(See Accompanying Photo)


When the new edition of the dictionary is published, Congressman Gowdy's picture will be right there, next to "twit," I am reasonably certain. No better clarification of the word comes to mind, except perhaps for Mo Brooks or any of the Tea Party "Freedom Caucus," of Congressional Republicans.

One must admit, there was entertainment value to watching Eljah Cummings (D-MD) take Mr. Gowdy apart with help from his friends. When Mr. Gowdy got to raging on about the impropriety of Ms. Clinton receiving emails with advice from a Mr. Blumenthal, who is not a State Department employee--Heaven forbid Ms. Clinton should seek advice from thinkers who are not on the government payroll--Mr. Cummings suggested Mr. Gowdy release the entire transcript of Mr. Blumenthal's testimony, "for the world to see," which caused Mr. Gowdy to erupt in a fury. 

Apparently, Mr. Bluenthal's testimony is embarrassing to the Republican members of the committee and the very mention of  releasing his testimony provoked a frothing, sputtering response from Mr. Gowdy, who pointed out all he was interested in was Ms. Clinton's email correspondence with Mr. Blumenthal, not Mr. Blumenthal's testimony about what those emails meant. 

Gowdy, being the man with the gavel, abruptly and from left field, adjourned the committee, presumably for lunch. 

If ever there was an illustration of the aphorism: The worst thing for a bad product is good advertising, Mr. Gowdy and his committee provide  it.

The most alarming thing about Mr. Gowdy:  173,000 people in South Carolina voted for him in his last election. Can you imagine what those people must be like? 

          

Give 'Em Hell, Hillary

I'm from Alabama. 

Next to these guys, I'm looking better.

"In the end it is not the words of your enemies, you will remember but the silence of your friends."
"The vicious racists, the governor of Alabama, the words nullification and interposition dripping from his lips."

--Martin Luther King

Thus spake Martin Luther King, the man who turned the tactic of turning the other cheek into a political weapon, a tool for change.
Still, he did not shrink from the word "enemies" when it was an accurate description of his adversaries. 
When anyone departs from attacking your ideas and shifts to attacks on your character, your competence, your motivations then he has shifted from being your opponent to your enemy.

If you can go out for a beer after the hearing and laugh together, then you have a loyal opposition.

Can you imagine Mo Brooks inviting Hillary for a beer, in a spirit of collegiality?
Hard as it is to believe, Antonin Scalia goes to the opera with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. These two are not enemies but opponents opposed across a passionately felt philosophical divide. 

For any Republican, now a member of a radicalized, far Right Tea Party Republican Party to feign umbrage at Ms. Clinton for naming Republicans as "enemies" is the height of hypocrisy.   You slap her in the face and then are outraged when she spits in your eye.

What's more difficult to take is Joe Biden scolding her for having more balls than he has.

Are Republicans "Enemies?"

She Calls A Spade a Spade

The concept of a "loyal opposition" is a slippery thing. From the founding of the American republic, the level of vituperation in American political discourse has been staggering, but only during one era, that leading up to the Civil War did it become evident the opposition was "disloyal."  

Can an American political opponent be considered an "enemy" if he remains loyal to the republic?  That depends how you define "enemy" of course, but one definition must surely include stepping over the line where you questions your opponent's character, loyalty to the country, morality or character rather than policies and positions. Simply put, when you make it personal, you are an enemy by most common understandings of the word.

So if a Republican Congressman or operative or employee says:
1. Hillary Clinton is a lesbian, when in fact this is not true that might be the act of an enemy. As C.J. Craig in a "West Wing" episode says, when she is asked to deny that she is a lesbian:"So now I'm asked to deny something I do not think is a bad thing, to say that I'm not that not bad thing." Family Research Council President, and Republican, Troy Perkins said "rumors swirl" about Clinton's own sexual orientation. So he has crossed the line into the personal, attack or not, he got personal. He's a Republican and he's an enemy.

2. "Hillary Rodham Clinton will bring permanent darkness of deceit and despair, forced upon the American people to endure." That's the NRA's Wayne LaPierre.   He also accused her of causing the death of White House aide Vince Foster, found dead along the Potomac and said Hillary Clinton was the center of many "scandals." An enemy, qualified in full. And a Republican whose organization supports Republicans and intimidates Democrats.

3. Bill O'Reilly, Republican said a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean "if you're a Christian or a white male in America, it's open season on you."

4. Hillary is "the Wicked Witch on the Left," (Larry Klayman, Republican), embodies the "hideousness factor" (Don Feder, Republican with the World Congress of Families).

5. A TV commercial shows the grave of Ambassador Stevens, killed at Benghazi and does not say, but portrays her as something between a facilitator and an accomplice to the crime. 

6."I think the awful way Hillary Clinton treated the mother of a Benghazi victim went too far" said Dan Backer, a Republican from "Stop Hillary,"  referring to Republican allegations the mother of a dead American said, "they have treated me like dirt and have not told me anything."  

So, can we forgive Hillary Clinton if she thinks Republicans have treated her as the enemy? 

You be the judge.

Say It Ain't So, Joe: Not Ready for Prime Time

So, you had to expect it: You knew Hillary was going to take flack for naming "Republicans" as her enemies, rather than say, "Some Republicans" or "Tea Party Republicans," but you might not have expected the first volley to come from her own party--But there was Joe Biden getting all folksy saying "You don't call the other team enemies."

Yes you do, when they have behaved as enemies. 

These guys are not "the other team."

Just read on...next post.

The Donald: Lost in the Details

The Donald, Short on Specifics

One of the most embarrassing moments I had as a third year medical student was  on the Neurology rotation when they sent in to see a delightful 69 year old man whose wife had brought him in and deposited him on the Neurology ward saying he was demented, would lose his shoes and blame her for hiding them, could no longer drive to the store, etc.

He was a charming man, full of the blarney, funny, a great story teller and when the Chief Resident asked for my evaluation I told her he was as sharp as you or me; his wife must be just trying to get rid of him.

The Chief Res, a wispy young woman, took me to his bedside and asked him about his vacation, which he had returned from a week ago.

"Oh, it was just beautiful.  Really, just so nice. Even at my age, you can enjoy a holiday.

"Oh?" she asked. "Where did you go?" 

"The most beautiful place. Sun off the water. Sunsets like you see in postcards."

"Oh? A lake? The ocean?"

"The water was just so gorgeous, turned all pink in the glow."

As she persisted, it was clear he had no idea whether it was the lake or the beach, or what the names of his children were or how many days they had spent or who had come along. When she drilled down to the details, you could see his answers were devoid of specific content, and were all carefully designed to include no details others could deny or correct.

I had the same feeling this morning  as I listened to some CNN journalist/bimbo interview Donald Trump. This lady was clearly selected for her looks, not her journalistic talent and I found myself  screaming at the television: Ask him for specifics!!!

She asked about Trump's assertion, made at a rally in South Carolina, that President Obama is "Thinking about signing an executive order to come and take away your guns." 

How did Mr. Trump know what Mr. Obama was thinking? Had he talked to Mr. Obama? Had he heard this from a reliable source, like Mr. Obaman's press secretary?

"Well, people are saying it," Mr. Trump said. "It's in the newspapers. People have told me." Which newspaers? What articles in what newspapers? What specific person is saying Mr. Obama is contemplating taking away your guns?  Names, dates, places please. The bimbo asked for none of this. She was cute, though. Just not very smart.

This is such an eerie echo of Michele Bachmann's source of information, about the woman in the parking lot who told her a friend's daughter got autism from a tetanus vaccine.

Is it not curious Mr. Trump would know what Mr. Obama is thinking about when that thought is the very thing so many of Mr. Trumps supporters have always suspected: They are coming to get my guns!  Those black helicopters. They want to disarm me!

Of course, if you believe Ben Carson, they want to disarm you because they know if the Jews in Nazi Germany had shot guns, deer rifles, Glocks or even attack rifles, they could never have been rounded up and carted off to concentration camps.  As Dr. Carson must know, when Jews actually got their hands on some guns in the Warsaw Ghetto, they were able to resist--for a week or two--until the SS rolled up a few howitzers and blasted the Jews right into oblivion. These Jews with guns, it must be admitted, did not die in concentration camps. They were splattered over the rubble in the ghetto. So they died happy and proud.

But back to Mr. Trump.

"I'm for the Second Amendment," Mr. Trump informed us. "I don't know how the President thinks he can get away with this." Well, Maybe Mr. Trump does know, as he suggested--Mr. Obama thought he could get away with signing an executive order allowing for a flood of immigrant rapists to cross the Rio Grande, so it's just one in a long line of Mr. Obama's plans for ruin for this country. What specific executive order is Mr. Trump talking about?

In fact, the longer I listened to Mr. Trump the more he reminded me of that guy on the Neurology ward, all generalities, all determinedly non specific, no hard details, nothing that could be checked. Someone told me, don't ask who.  I've heard it.  It's in the newspapers. You could look it up. It's just so amazing. We will win so much, you'll get bored with winning. 

He resonates with the 49% of the Republican party which does not ask for details because, well, truly, they are pretty vague on details themselves.

Mr. Trump did talk  about one specific case,  a case of  a 69 year old woman (un-named), a veteran who was raped and murdered by an illegal alien, in San Francisco. Well, there's a set of details. You could look it up. But is this a specific case from which we are safe to extrapolate?  If you can find a case of say, a white policeman murdering an innocent black man, should we conclude we should fire all the white policemen?   When he does use a specific story, he leaps from the specific to the general conclusion in a way which defines prejudice. All those immigrants flooding across the border, raping and murdering. We ought to build a wall. Round 'em all up. "I was attacked for saying this; now everyone is agreeing with me."

Really? Who is agreeing?

As Chris Cumo pointed out, after the Donald had signed off,  the vast majority of illegal immigrants in this country have come in legally, and overstayed Visas.  I would have liked to hear at least some numbers, any numbers, even bogus numbers about that. but more, I would have liked to hear him ask Mr. Trump about that. But three CNN anchors sat there with flustered smiles, never pressing him for specifics. The "Morning Express" is too express to stop and ask the important question. No local stops. Might slow us down. 

Thus does our free but commercial press fail us.  Maybe the news organizations should try hiring people for their brains rather than their looks.

Mo Better Brooks: Republican Hero of the Day

Mo Brooks wins my nomination for the Most Inspiring Republican of the Day (MIRD or Merde, as the French would say). Somebody rated him only the 75th most conservative in Congress, which must be something of a slap in the face  for a representative from the 5th District of Alabama, to be told there are 74 members of Congress more conservative than he is.

Famous for identifying the "War on Whites," which is a scheme concocted  by Mr. Barack Obama in 2008. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and now Mr. Brooks, all discovering undeclared, sneaky wars which might have escaped our notice, were it not for the vigilance of the Right: the war on Christmas, the war on Terror, the war on Drugs. These Tea Party types just find wars under every haystack.

Apparently, Mr. Brooks uncovered the secret memo from Mr. Obama and dutifully exposed the nefarious plot:

: "Well, this is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party... And the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else. It's part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012, where he divides us all on race, on sex, creed, envy, class warfare, all those kinds of things."  (Wikipedia)

"All those kinds of things,"  that's Alabama for "and all like that," just to cover anything he couldn't think of at the time, which, you know, is bad. 

Mr. Brooks wants to send all the illegal immigrants home, or at least just get rid of them somehow.

But today he wins special distinction because he wants to impeach Hillary Clinton. It may be Mr. Brooks has not heard that Ms. Clinton has not yet been elected, not to mention nominated. But if she is, day one, Mr. Brooks will introduce a resolution of impeachment  because of her ill behavior related to emails or something related to putting Americans at risk at Benghazi or somewhere in Libya--the details are cloudy but the general principle is hard core.  This would be a historic move: impeaching a President for offenses committed before she ever reached office--retroactive high crimes and misdemeanors. If that doesn't work, he might try "conspiracy" to commit HC&M, because, you know, she must have thought about it. 

Mr. Brooks opposes stem cell research, abortion, Ombama care, Social Security (which he says people ought to be able to convert to investments of their own choosing, because you know the average citizen of North Alabama is way smarter about money than those liberal bureaucrats in Washington) and, although nobody seems to have asked him, you just know this has to be a man who fears fluoridated water.

He also would like to call out all the "socialists" in Congress who he knows are skulking about but he cannot yet identify specifically. 

As is true of many Southern Republicans who rail against socialism and government regulation and the heavy hand of government, (that federal government which first swept down into Alabama with Sherman, Grant, Hooker, Sheridan and all those nasty invaders,) the federal government, it turns out,  is the largest employer in Congressman Brooks's district. 

Before 1933, the Northern Alabama counties were characteristically poor, white and rural. The Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) arrival changed much of that, slowly transforming the demographic towards technical and engineering employees. The second major project was the space and rocketry programs includingRedstone Arsenal in Huntsville where the first large U.S. Ballistic missiles were developed. Additionally, NASA built the Marshall Space Flight Center in the Huntsville-Decatur area during the 1960s. In the late 1950s Northern Alabama came to be dominated by the high-tech and engineering industries, a trend which has continued up to the present. In recent years, the United Launch Alliance has located its research center in Decatur. As a result, Huntsville has become the second largest and fastest growing metropolitan area in Alabama.(Wikipedia)

So Rep. Brooks's  constituents have been suckling at the teat of the federal government avariciously for decades, while sending to Congress their man to complain about out of control federal spending. The Tennessee Valley Authority! Wasn't that a plot by that Socialist, Franklin Delano Roosevelt to electrify rural areas or something? Wasn't that part of the pinko, commie New Deal plot?

Apparently, all federal spending is bad, except what the government spends in Alabama. If socialism is a form of centralized government which provides the income and support for its citizens, there is likely no more socialistic society in the United States than the 5th Alabama district, where the centralized, socialist,  federal government is the largest employer. 

No wonder Mr. Brooks is sensitive about socialism. 

And he's the first to tell you:  All this spending and borrowing is sending us straight to bankruptcy, except when it happens in Alabama, mostly in the 5th District.

And this is a college educated man, who is making this argument:  He graduated with high honors from Duke University, something Duke will eventually have to answer for. 

To his credit, he thinks we should have pulled out of Afghanistan the day after we killed Osama Bin Laden, which, I am guessing, he credits to the heroic Navy Seals who acted despite  withering interference of that ultimate of federal government officials, President Obama. 

I'm now searching for who the 74th most conservative member of Congress might be. Ought to be a doozy. If he is half as interesting as Mr. Brooks, it will be well worth the time to listen to what he has to say.

Why Should New Hampshire Go First?

Hampton, NH 

Finally reached the point in "West Wing" where Jimmy Smits gets to New Hampshire, as he starts his campaign to be President. He is immediately confronted with an 8 year old quote, when he said what so many others have said: New Hampshire is about as unrepresentative of the rest of the country as any state can be; why should our elections, our choice of candidates emanate from here? The state is overwhelmingly white. It's biggest "city" is Manchester, little more than a recovering mill town. It is legal to walk on to  any property in the state, including private yards, as long as you have a gun and can claim to be hunting, unless the property has "no hunting" signs posted. You can shoot across any road in New Hampshire (save eight specifically named exception--including I-95) if you are shooting at a deer on the other side. There is no income tax and no sales tax and the biggest newspaper is the Manchester Union Leader, made famous by the reactionary William Loeb.

Of course, this creates good moments of dramatic tension, as the much offended New Hampshire voters react to this Hispanic from Texas telling them they are irrelevant and possibly anomalous. 

I have not yet seen how this plays out, how Aaron Sorkin resolves this, but that doesn't stop me from fantasizing about how I'd like to see it play out.

Smits complains he is wasting his time sitting in living rooms with these whitebread citizens, when all he wants to do is give speeches to big arenas about big ideas, like the idea the federal government should focus on and guide a restructuring of American education, beginning with lengthening the school year from 180 to 240 days (as Japan and Russia have done) and eliminating tenure and security for school teachers.

Ice Pond, NH

The first couple he meets resists both ideas: The man says he was educated well with the 180 day school year and his wife says her sister is a school teacher and she is underpaid but at least she doesn't have to meet a quarterly earnings report, so that keeps her in the profession.

Smits begins to answer the question but never says what I'd love to hear him say, which would address, in stages the two big questions here:
1/ What is the value of retail politics as opposed to wholesale politics?
2/ What about our educational system makes it a federal concern and a national priority?

Plaice Cove, Hampton, NH

The answer to the first is to show how the candidate, who thinks he knows the answers is changed when he has to defend his ideas one on one, as you might with your tutor at Oxford. In Washington, if "West Wing"  is correct, politicians engage in constant debates with their staff and with their colleagues about issues like education, but the direction and perspective is always "what will win?"  In New Hampshire, the voter does not care whether or not he is representative. He cares about how a new idea will work in his own life. 

If I were writing "WW," Smits would be told the expedient of counting the number of days in class may be an easy metric, but it is meaningless unless the time in class can be shown to be better, educationally, than the time in the hammock during the summer, when kids of a certain socioeconomic status actually learn a great deal, arguably more than they learn in class during the school year. 

Winnacunnet Street, Hampton

Personally, I read Huckleberry Finn, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Little Women, A Stillness at Appomattox and many others, swinging in the hammock by Lake Winnipesaukee.  I didn't realize I was learning anything. It was pure pleasure, but for reasons I did not understand at the time, my parents never bothered me to do chores when they saw me immersed in these books.  My friends learned how to change a carburetor or to wire a room during summer breaks. A lot of learning went on, I would submit, outside the classroom. 

Of course, I imagine, some kids spent their summers selling drugs on street corners and dodging bullets and would have been better off in school. But some lucky rich kids accompanied their parents to Rome, London, Lisbon, Berlin. Some toured Auschwitz or the Louvre, or saw Ann Frank's house in Amsterdam. They were not wasting their time, educationally.

As for the idea of eliminating dead wood among the ranks of teachers, Smits reassured the wife that her sister would do better once tenure was eliminated because good teachers would be rewarded. Why protect all those dullards who seek teaching positions because they are secure, and then just bide time until retirement, protected from ever having to improve or to really challenge their students?

I certainly saw teachers in the distressed schools of Washington, D.C. and even in the affluent and blessed schools of Bethesda, Maryland who fit the description of "those who cannot do, teach." These were the adults teaching and judging our children and it was a testimony to the power and effectiveness of highly motivated families that these kids managed to learn and achieve despite their public school teachers, rather than because of them. 

President Obama's idea, that we can judge the effectiveness of teachers by the performance of their students on standardized exams is very likely wrong, especially in current practice. What the performance of the students reflects has less to do with the effectiveness of their teachers than it has to do with the drive of their parents. 

The Walt Whitman High school in Bethesda, Maryland has for 50 years sent 95% of it's graduates to college, 40 out of 500 graduates to Ivy League Schools, another 60 to Duke, Stanford, Swartmore and that ilk, with mean SAT scores above that of  the freshman classes at most Ivy League schools. Ruthless competition, tiger moms and dads, the place made the Bronx High School of Science look like Romper Room.  Faculties changed over this period and, from all reports, the faculties which passed through the school over that time had its stars, but, for the most part, was decidedly mediocre. Few of Whitman's teachers had degrees from schools as prestigious as the schools where their students were headed. (Not that the brand name on your diploma means that much, but when you are talking about academics, it may be relevant.)  

North Hampton, Along Rout 1A

But, in President Obama's scheme, the teachers at Whitman would have been highly rewarded for the success of their students, where the teachers across the District Line at Wilson High School would have been fired. And the fact is, Wilson HS had many very fine, dedicated, imaginative teachers, who had to deal with kids from broken families where just getting the kid out of the door in the morning was a success, and nobody did much homework when they got home. The teachers at Whitman could have gone on a three year sabbatical  and their students would have done just fine, scored high on their SAT's and aced every other standardized measure. Their parents were paying for Kaplan SAT prep courses and tutors. 

If all that could be thrown at the Jimmy Smits character, then the value of having his ideas challenged and the change it wrought in him would be fun to see.

And he might say that even though the New Hampshire voters lack diversity, they make up for that in engagement and thoughtfulness.  Better to have a white bread electorate who really care about politics and public policy, who talk about it at the hardware store, the Dunkin Donuts, and the dump than a diverse group of voters in Texas who care more about Friday night football and NASCAR.

New Hampshire voters understand that 180 days of school in 1965 might have been fine before the economy went global, but now it's a different world and economies which depend on factories may be left behind by economies which thrive on programming and innovation. 

Exeter, NH

In 1957 the world changed for American kids. The Russians stunned the world by putting a Sputnik satellite into space. Some Americans scoffed at this as a "stunt" of no practical significance. What good were satellites? The Russians still could not build automobiles or pave roads. 

Can you imagine our world today without Satellites and all that flowed from them:  GPS and the internet? 

Government policies in the United States changed on a dime, after Sputnik. The Soviets were pumping out more engineers and scientists every year than we were and science curriculum and faculties at universities doing scientific research were the beneficiaries.  That Sputnik was the best thing that had happened to American education that century. 

Beach Bungalows, North Hampton, NH

There is no such headline today, but politicians, as they tread through the snows of New Hampshire can make their case town hall by town hall and get the conversation started. Hard to do that in a diverse and more populous state like Maryland or Pennsylvania or Texas.  A state like New Hampshire can be the laboratory for national ideas.

Politicians cannot justify taking time off for a year at Oxford thinking critically about policy, but they can justify the Rhodes scholarship surrogate which is the experience of defending their ideas to the skeptical, admittedly homogeneous, rooted, irascible, polite, subversive, engaged citizens of New Hampshire.