Bernie's Endgame

AS i see yesterday's New York primary,  Hillary thoroughly trounced Bernie.

Despite the massive rallies of 30,000, despite what appeared to me to be a devastating debate, where Bernie looked better on Israel, looked to be effective in impugning Hillary on her relationship with the banks and Wall Street, despite what looked like a whupping in the debates and on the campaign trail, Hillary prevailed.

Which means, either people are not paying attention to the things I pay attention to, or they are smarter and more critical than I am.

They look at those Wall Street speeches and shrug it off. The lady was just doing what famous people do:  They cash in on fame, and Wall Street throws money around; doesn't mean they own you.

As for the Israel exchange, Bernie said Israel over reacted by causing 10,000 casualties in Gaza and Hillary said, that happened because Hamas was hiding behind the skirts of a civilian population, not Israel's fault. I thought that comment got swallowed up by the applause for Bernie's initial statement, but maybe people actually heard that and agreed.

I don't know. Maybe they just really love Hillary in New York.

Whatever it is, this was, had to be, a meaningful win.  Of course, there are other states and no one primary this far from the convention is determinate, but it looks as if Hillary is getting through to voters.  

Personally, I cannot be unhappy about this.  I have been worried that Bernie will be the stronger candidate, the more likely to defeat Trump or Cruz or Paul Ryan, but if Hillary can do this well in New York, that's reassuring.

Does the New Hampshire Primary Really Matter?

Remember that crucial primary in a small, White, state called "New Hampshire?" That was so CRUCIAL. All the news organizations were up in the Granite State, Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg. They wanted to know what the guy in his plaid shirt and his suspenders and Elmer Fudd hat thought of Hillary and Bernie and the Donald and Chris Christie.

Everyone was using his most portentous tone of voice, telling us this was the pivotal moment, the game changer, the most important thing going on in the world. 

Until the next primary. 

Today, it's New York.  

If Bernie wins today, well, that could be a game changer, but it would still not be end game. It would just make Hillary less inevitable.

The thing about Hillary is, she just doesn't get it.  

She needs to answer the question about getting paid all that money from Goldman Sacks. 

The wonder is, she hasn't done it. What could she be thinking?

Just in case you're reading, Hill, here's the answer:

"Yup, I took the money.  I wasn't in office. I wasn't even running for office. But they wanted to pay me for a grip and grin and speech. They wanted to put photos of me shaking their hands on their brag walls.  

But it's not like I slept with anyone. 

There, I said it. Bernie and Donald and many others have suggested for me to take that much money I must have done something immoral.  

But no, all I had to do was show up and smile and tell them how important banks are to the American financial system, which, in case you haven't noticed, is true today, was true yesterday and will be true tomorrow.

In a capitalist system like ours, if someone offers you money and you don't have to do anything immoral, you take it. You would, too.  If you didn't, I'd say you ought to have your head examined. 

Sure, Bernie never took their money. They wouldn't have offered it to him, but even if they had, I believe him, he wouldn't take it. He doesn't need it to run his campaign. I envy him that.

But I needed the money. I was broke when we left the White House and I'm proud to say, I'm rich now. If people want to throw easy money at me, I'll take it.

Now, it's different. I need money for my campaign and I'm not doing speeches for dollars. I'm doing speeches for free because the people I care about don't have a lot of money. But they have something more important: Votes.

So, there it is. Stop playing all high and mightY and holier than thou.
I'm in this for the little guy and if the big guys think they've got me because I was an expensive date once, well, they'll learn soon enough."


Cut us some slack, Madame Secretary. Talk like a real person. Enough of that lawyer garbage. 

The Bernie Revolution Really Isn't

James M. McPherson

"And sometimes the old, against all the warnings of better judgment, wait with the young and hopeful, their tired, winter eyes turned heavenward to seek."
--Grace Metalious

Revolution is an emotive word.  At it's heart is the notion of the new and, ordinarily, but not always, change.

When the South seceded from the union, that was revolution aimed at resisting change, at standing solidly in a past of slavery and "states' rights."

When Abraham Lincoln resisted that revolution by the Southern states, he launched what James M. McPherson aptly described as "The Second American Revolution," a profound change in this nation, which is evident in the change in the very way people thought of this nation: They stopped saying "The United States are..." and forever more said, "The United States is."

I often wondered, as a child, why "union" was such an important "cause."  The idea of keeping the union together seemed like a nice idea, but hardly an idea which would cause so many men to be willing to lay down their lives. After all, all the South was asking for was a divorce, and if people in a union decide it's not working, how can that union be forced upon the unwilling?

Old Man

Lincoln, of course, was motivated by what he saw in Europe, the constant warring of nation states, and he was determined the United States would not dissolve into that condition, that this nation would be one united continental nation, not a bunch of warring nations. 

Later of course, Lincoln recognized that events controlled him rather than his controlling events, and the liberation of the slaves, the powerful cause of emancipation had become even more important than the cause of union, so he was unwilling to accept union without emancipation.  As he so precisely and elegantly said in his second Inaugural address, nobody wanted war, nobody anticipated the war would become as huge and terrible as it became, but, ultimately, it arose and was sustained by the issue of slavery. 

So the war became a revolution against that peculiar institution, that status quo, which could only be sustained by ongoing racism, hate, cruelty and injustice, that system which allowed the fruits of labor to be wrung out of the efforts on one race to the benefit, not of the worker doing the labor but of the master exploiting that labor. 

He couldn't wait for incremental change

Now comes Bernie Sanders who is urging what he claims is a third American revolution, which proposes the fruits of labor belong to those who do the work, not to those who manipulate the workers, who game the system and who sit in their 21st century gated communities, separated from the workers in the field, much as the plantation owners were separated, looking out over the fields of Tara where the slaves bent down to pick cotton, singing "Swing Lo, Sweet Chariot."

Sometimes, we need the perspective of history to see what is happening in front of us today, to gain an eagle eye's view (or maybe a drone eye's view) from the eye in the sky.  

Suffragette who refused to wait for the vote

McPherson in his last paragraph of his wonderful 2008 book, "Tried by War" about Lincoln as commander in chief, writes:
"The crisis of the 1860's represented a far greater threat to the survival of the United States than did World War I, World War II, Communism in the 1950's, or terrorism today. Yet compared with the draconian enforcement of espionage and sedition laws in World War I, the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940's McCarthyism in the 1950's, or the National Security State of our own time, the infringement of civil liberties from 1861 to 1865 seems mild indeed. And the problem of Reconstruction after the Civil War was not that the federal government exercised too much power bu that it did not exercise enough."

Older than Lincoln was when elected President

Today, Bernie Sanders urges a stronger role for the federal government, providing a government option for Medicare for All for those who want it, breaking up the too big to fail banks, providing free college as we once provided free high school education.  That is called socialism and revolution and denounced as fantasy by the New York Times and the Daily News. 

Because he has not issued detailed plans for academics like Paul Krugman to read, judge and contain, he is denounced as a demagogue who panders to class animosities. 

It is true, the President must have command of the details of the working of government and Lincoln made many compromises along the way, but on critical issues, Lincoln was every bit as intransigent as Sanders. Lincoln was offered the release of prisoners of war moldering in Andersonville and other Southern prison camps but he refused because the South refused to release negro Union soldiers who they considered slaves. Lincoln refused to accept peace offers in 1864 because it would have meant slavery would have not been abolished.  He had, finally, identified the big issue and refused to compromise on that.

Many had argued, and Lincoln himself once believed, slavery would eventually wilt and die on the vine of incremental change. By 1940, Lincoln believed, there would be no more slaves in the South because of economic forces and technological innovation.  But Lincoln eventually appreciated, as Martin Luther King did later, the fierce urgency of now. 

Secretary Clinton argues for working within the system, accomplishing step by step, little by little, what can be accomplished. 

Not a fan of incrementalism

That was the same approach wise men urged upon LBJ in approaching Civil Rights.  But, ultimately, LBJ was persuaded to push for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts and that cost the Democrats the South, as the entire South left the Democratic Party and become Republicans almost overnight. Was that not a revolution?

I have been counseled by wise men, all of them over 60 years of age, to be smarter than those 20 somethings who are been so aroused by Bernie Sanders. To look at what is possible and to consider the way Barny Frank and Paul Krugman and other progressives have dismissed Bernie as as demagogue and a fantasist. 

An old guy, semi revolutionary

But sometimes change has to be led by old men, who can remember how real change happens in the real world.  Sometimes it is the old, who turned their tired, weather beaten eyes to the sky and though they should know better, hope with the young for a new, impossible Spring.

When Hillary Met Bernie (in Brooklyn)

Brooklyn may not be like the rest of America, but watching the debate tonight Mad Dog had a strong premonition of things to come: Mad Dog's fearless forecast is that Bernie Sanders will be and should be the Democratic nominee and he will be elected President and he will become the Democrats' Ronald Reagan, garnering support from "Bernie Republicans" just as Reagan got "Reagan Democrats."

Listening to Bernie respond to the question about whether he owed an apology to the parents of Sandy Hook for his opposition to laws that would hold gun sellers and gun manufacturers liable for the use of guns in killings, he said, no, he owed no apology.  If a gun shop owner sells a gun to a crazy person, having got all the clearances and followed the law, he should not be responsible for seeing what nobody could predict, the buyer was a lunatic.  Simple, direct and fundamentally correct.

When Sanders is asked about his statement that the Israeli response to rocket attacks from Gaza was disproportionate, does he not think that Israel has the right to defend itself, he says, of course Israel has that right, but that is not the question. The question is when Israel launches an attack which causes 10,000 casualties and 1,500 deaths among Palestinians in the Gaza strip, that is disproportionate. And if we really want to be a friend to Israel, sometimes we have to tell them what they don't want to hear, namely that Palestinians are suffering too. You got to love Bernie.  You have the feeling he is capable of saying more than the proper thing.
When Bernie speaks, and says something which will be received poorly in some quarters he is unapologetic: He is saying. I believe we cannot be afraid to criticize Israel. If that offends you, tough, that's the truth. And you have to respect that candor.

Hillary sounds with each answer as if she is trying to find the one sentence which contains the applause line, the one safe thing to say. She uses lawyers' words, "revisit"  and "take into account."  She sounds as if she is trying to speak in a way which nobody can find fault with. That's not the role of a leader. Offend some, but let everyone know where you stand and what you think right is.

And, after all this time, she has not come up with an answer to those $250,000 Goldman Sacks speeches and she still refuses to release the transcripts "until everyone else does." And Bernie has the perfect response: "I'll release every transcript of every speech I made on Wall Street behind closed doors--because there are none."

Hillary stands there, mouth open, with nothing to say, other than she does not like the insinuation, which Wolf Blitzer spells out in the question, "That you are in the pocket of Wall Street." She insists nobody can show that all the money meant to buy her vote ever actually succeeded in buying her vote. Oh, they can give me the money, but they can't count on me voting their way. But that's not the point. The point is, you have participated in this way of doing politics: You took the money. 

And now you expect us to believe they were paying you to spend the night with them, but you never actually went to bed with them. You did business from the brothel, but you never actually prostituted yourself.

Oh, poor Hillary. She has done everything right, her whole life. She has learned the rules, played the game by the rules, passed every course with flying colors and now she expects to be handed the prize.  

This, the ninth debate revealed all her weaknesses and vulnerabilities and very little of her strengths.  After 90 minutes, with the debate still raging on, I had to turn it off. I like Hillary enough, I just could not watch it any more.

Zombie Issues In American History

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes..When the laws undertake...to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society...who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain...we can at least take a stand against...any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many."
--Andrew Jackson, 1832


"Representatives...shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within the  Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons...three fifths of all other Persons."
United States Constitution, Article One.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia called himself an "originalist," claiming he reached his decisions about issues in the 21st century by examining the holy sacred text of those bewigged 18th century gentlemen who wrote the Constitution. Of course, he never addressed the problem of in which Constitution he found his Word--the original "original" Constitution, which contained Article One and its allusion to that 3/5 of a person, the Negro slave, or the Constitution as it was amended in 1868 to undo that 3/5 of a person notion with the 14th amendment which made the Congress represent all males over the age of 21, regardless of race, unless of course they were "Indians," who did not count.

Slavery was one of those issues in American history that would not die. It was there at the origins and it kept coming back to threaten the existence of the nation, a sort of zombie threat, over and over--in the 1830's and finally in the 1860's.  The racism which underlay the peculiar institution kept coming back into the 1960's and even in the 21st century.  

More subtle and more complicated was the issue of the subjugation of women, who could not vote and were not counted in the apportionment of representation in Congress, until the 19th amendment in 1920.

But the issue of disparity in wealth and the connection between wealth and political power, those who can buy favor, the best Congress money can buy, has persisted and recurred right up to the Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders campaign. 

It is both comforting and disturbing this issue is not new. In the gilded age of the Vanderbilts and Rockerfellers and Mellons and Carnegies, wealth was accumulated in dizzying magnitude by a few dozen families and it has been argued before and since whether their accumulation of wealth resulted in the denial of wealth to others.

The resentment voiced by Bernie Sanders is not new and no matter what happens to Bernie Sanders, it will not end with his candidacy or even with a Sanders Presidency. 

There are simply some issues which will not die.  

But changing law, even if it cannot changes hearts and minds, can change some things:  Slavery, at least overt, beat and whip the slave slavery is not legal and does not exist in the United States and women can and do vote and in fact, are courted by those running for every office, and in fact occupy offices.  Both of these anathemas were brought to heel by persistent movements among the people. The causes suffered set backs, delays, defeats, but thousands of people convinced hundreds of thousands of their fellow countrymen (and country women) of the justice of their cause and, ultimately, laws were passed which made a difference, amendments to the Constitution, voting rights laws, lots of laws.

While the issue of disparity in wealth may never die, changing laws which affect how wealth is distributed may change the reality on the ground.  

The likelihood is no President can or will ever achieve more equitable distribution of wealth.  The great polemicist and flawed historian, Howard Zinn reminded us that seeking the great champion to deliver us from injustice is an unlikely scenario for real change in economic reform. That reform will have to come from the people themselves and their representatives, in the House and Senate. 

Which means the Presidential election, as eye catching as it may be, is not nearly as important as the Congressional races.

We should all be thinking about what returning Kelly Ayotte to the United States Senate would mean for this country.

A Republic, Ma'am, If you can keep it.

Legend has it when Ben Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked him what sort of government the men inside had given the people, and Franklin said, "A Republic, Ma'am, if you can keep it."

And that has been the rub, ever since.  The founding fathers rigged the political system, which, in turn, rigged the economic system, and we have had the best Congress money can buy ever since.

These men, plantation owners from the South, wealthy businessmen, like John Hancock, from the North looked around at the rabble who were their countrymen and grew faint hearted about the prospect of the common man trying to govern himself and his neighbors. 

There was no such thing as public education then.

Over the ensuing centuries the verdict on the intelligence of the American public has not changed much--as H.L. Mencken said, "No one every went broke under estimating the intelligence of the American public."

The fact is, people are often smart in their own worlds, as engineers, lawyers, doctors, construction workers, cab drivers, but they are at sea without a sextant outside of their own worlds.  

So, in 2010, having elected President Obama, they turned on him and blamed him for the financial crisis. They blamed Obama and his party, not Wall Street, not George W. Bush.  

And the T Party was right there to capitalize on that and for the next 6 years the American voters in Kentucky gave us Mitch McConnell. These are the same voters who say they love Kynect, Kentucky's Obamacare, but they hate Obamacare. In Alabama they hate the federal government and they want the feds to keep their government hands off Medicare.  In Mississippi, they hate the federal government but they sho do love those government defense contracts without which they would have no economy.  And Kansas!  Yikes, don't even talk to me about Kansas.  Too much wind through the brain out there in the wasteland. They see beheadings on TV and they blame Obama, because he's the President after all, he should be able to stop that.

Watch a Donald Trump rally and you lose faith in the American public.  If they cannot see through this guy, do these voters deserve a Republic? 

I actually do not think Donald Trump is as evil as my Democratic friends here in Hampton do.  Ted Cruz, yes, that guy is loathsome.  But the Donald is too ridiculous to be scary.  He is Bart Simpson running for President.  

If Homer and Marge could see me now!

Trump has written no Mein Kampf  screed because he's really not interested in much beyond himself and his own reflection and his beautiful wife and children. He doesn't hate Muslims because he has no idea who Muslims are--they're just some people he's seen on TV before he lost interest in them.  As far as I know, while there may be some Muslim neighborhoods around Detroit and a few other places, for the most part American Muslims are so thoroughly integrated and woven into the American fabric, you are hardly aware they are even Muslim, until you to go to a wedding. They are doctors and teachers and cab drivers, doing no harm; actually, doing this country a world of good, for the most part.

As for those Mexican rapists streaming across the border, all Trump knows is he doesn't like those Mexicans but he likes the Hispanics who build his buildings for him, just the way most developers love those Hispanic workers who are very good workers. 

Of course, like Spiro Agnew and many others before him, Trump has given the worst haters among us permission to voice their nasty thoughts.  Hitler was not a magician; he needed Hess and Goebbels  and Speer and that whole vile crowd around him to do his damage. 

Hitler was a serious man, in the sense he had theory and he laid plans to execute it.

Trump has no theory.  He's barely even thought about the answer to the next question.  Abortion?  Haven't given it much thought. Yeah, sure, punish the woman but not the man.  Using nukes against ISIS? Sure, why not? Unless, of course, they'd be willing to come negotiate with me. Then we'll make them build a wall and stay behind it and whatever they want to do in that little hell hole of a country they make in the desert, that's their problem. 

In fact the only thing which he seems to stay focused on is Megyn Kelly, and even there, you figure it's just an adolescent crush. She gives me a hard time because, deep down--she doesn't want to admit it--she has the hots for me.

The Donald's real abiding interest

I have bigger things to worry about than the Donald. What if Bernie wins the nomination then has a heart attack?  What if Hillary wins and has a heart attack?

Things happen.

Dirty Old Men of Paksitan

"A coalition of more than 30 religious and political parties has declared the law un-Islamic, an attempt to secularize Pakistan and a clear and present threat to our most sacred institution: the family. They have threatened countrywide street protests if the government doesn’t back down.

Their logic goes like this: If you beat up a person on the street, it’s a criminal assault. If you bash someone in your bedroom, you’re protected by the sanctity of your home. If you kill a stranger, it’s murder. If you shoot your own sister, you’re defending your honor. I’m sure the nice folks campaigning against the bill don’t want to beat up their wives or murder their sisters, but they are fighting for their fellow men’s right to do just that."
--Mohammed Hanif, The New York Times

Mohammed Hanif tells us about something which should give us all--Democrats even more than Republicans--pause. In the Punjab province of Pakistan a proposed law to make the murder or maiming of a female relative a crime has stirred outrage.   Apparently, there is no such thing as "spousal abuse" in Pakistan.

Violence against women, far from illegal, is often embraced, if it is done in an attempt to defend the "honor" of the male head of household in particular, or the family in general. So a daughter who runs away to marry a boy not selected for her by her parents is murdered by her brother or her father throws acid in her face to deform her,  to defend the honor of the family--and that's defending family values in Pakistan.

An alliance of religious and political groups defends these values and opposes making murder or assault or disfigurement practices waged against wives or daughters or sisters a crime. Okay, I know I'm repeating myself more than Rachel Maddow, but:  Really?

Acid to the Face: The Family Honor Restored

We need not ask what Donald Trump would say about this, but we do need to hear from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton about this.  Democrats have, as a rule, said we need to keep engaged with foreign countries and cultures with whom we disagree rather than simply alienating them.  But when the culture embraces an anathema, if we  declare ourselves open to hearing their side on this one, if we say, well, we have to be careful about denigrating the values of another culture, then we are every bit as effete and spineless as the Republicans always say we are.


From Mad Dog's perspective, Democrats ought to lead the way in excoriating these values, acknowledging they may be deeply held, but we have to say:  "Look, if you want to engage with us, you have to respect our values as well as your own." 
There are some lines you cannot cross if you want to sit at the same table with us. 

As Americans, we do not accept cannibalism.  Would we establish an embassy in a country which endorses cannibalism?  If you commit genocide, we don't talk to you; we hunt you down. (Well, we should, even if we don't.)

Of course, there is a difference between what we demand of our own and what we feel we can demand of others:  We would not admit Utah to the Union until it agreed to ban polygamy.  But we do not refuse to trade with Saudi Arabia because the royal family practices polygamy. 

Or course, some of our willingness to tolerate what we consider uncivilized or beastly behavior is shaped by our own needs and weaknesses. When we need Saudi oil we can get very open minded and tolerant of foreign cultural values.

And what, if anything, can we do to make that Pakistani villager decide to not throw acid in his daughter's face? We may deplore these practices and attitudes but is there anything, practically speaking, we can do to abolish them?

 We can talk the Prime Minister, but it's not clear he can do much, even if he wanted to.  He might well say, "Oh, I agree with you, but I am educated and sophisticated. We are talking about ignorant villagers here.  How well did you deal with those men in Mississippi who threw on Ku Klux Klan sheets and burnt down a Negro church with children in it?"  

We can say, "At least here, horrendous behavior is illegal."

So this is the question of whether or not you can point to a particular behavior and say this is representative of the group, the nation. 

 Lynchings occurred all over the South in the first half of the 20th century, Blacks who looked too long at white women, or who whistled at white women were strung up and the white men who did this said they were protecting the safety and defending the honor of white Southern womanhood. "Strange fruit" hung from trees all across Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.  When the Pakistani governmental leadership points to this phase of American past, they can say, "Well, you had your problems; we have ours."

The difference, of course, is lynchings were illegal even then, and, theoretically at least,  punishable by imprisonment.  In Pakistan we have just the opposite:  acid attacks, outright murder are defended by a coalition of religious and political groups who say these acts are justifiable and, indeed desirable, and consistent with Sharia law.

Donald Trump will said, "A pox on your house. No Pakistani gets into our country. Stop these abominable people at the border!"

I would have to say to the Pakistanis: "Well, then, you have to change your interpretation of Sharia law. The Third Reich had the racial Nuremberg laws which justified the annihilation of 6 million Jews and Gypsies. And those we now call "war crimes." Should we not call the mutilation of women in Pakistan, crimes against humanity?

But then the Pakistanis may say, "What about female circumcision in Africa? Do you want to point to this sort of mutilation and launch a cultural war against those African tribes?"


Mad Dog freely admits when it comes to international relations, he is an ignoramus.
But then again, so is Donald Trump and that doesn't stop him from  expressing an opinion.

In this sense Trump is the hedgehog. He knows only one thing--he doesn't like this sort of behavior.  Of course, his solution is to ban all Muslims.  Mad Dog knows plenty of American Muslims who are as horrified by acid throwing and wife beating as many American Jews are by mohels with Herpes Simplex who lick the bleeding tissue of male infants during circumcision, and cause Herpes Simplex encephalitis in the innocent male infants they have circumcised because God told them to lick the stump.

But, the difference here is you have a coalition of religious and political groups in Pakisitan speaking publicly, as a matter of policy, supporting insufferable behavior. When a  governor in Arkansas or South Carolina or North Carolina signs into law a policy which appears intolerant, and the cancellations for planned conventions start rolling in, when the mayor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire announces there will be no city business done with that state, when commerce starts to suffer,  then the businessmen back home in the offending state start howling.

Perhaps America has some leverage like that with Pakistan.

What do we have a United Nations for?  How about a resolution that maiming women is repugnant to the rest of the world? 

Democrats can play the fox, but at some point you do have to be a hedgehog and known only one thing:  Maiming and murdering is just wrong, no matter how you try to invoke Allah's name to justify it.

Defending the Indefensible