April 2, 2019: A Rising Star, For Pete's Sake, Melodrama and Tribal Grandstanding

"While it is important that we apprehend the trees we must also comprehend the forest."
           ----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

There's a star rising in the Midwest. His name is Pete Buttigeig, pronounced “Buddajudge”. He is mayor of South Bend, Indiana and he is a declared candidate for President of the United States. He is also, for the record and because it will become an issue, homosexual.

He is the darling of the L.G.B.T.Q. Community but his candidacy isn't about gay rights. Buttigeig, instead, has become the apostle of the possible.

He has made the customary appearances on MSNBC, interviewed by the likes of Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow, but he has also taken his message to Fox News and the rest of the country. He has even captured the imagination of some stalwart conservatives. Today, it was conservative columnist David Brooks praising “Mayor Pete” in his opinion column in The New York Times. In it, Brooks had this to say:

“PETE BUTTIGIEG HAS some kind of magic right now. His campaign bio, 'Shortest Way Home,” was the 25^th-best-selling book on Amazon when I checked on Monday. That put him just a few dozen places behind Michelle Obama, and thousands or tens of thousands of places ahead of Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and other candidates who have campaign books out now.

“In a recent Iowa poll he surged to third place. His campaign just announced that it's raised an impressive $7 million since January. And I can't tell you how many Democrats in places as diverse as Nebraska, Indiana, New York and Washington have come up to me over the last few weeks raving about the guy....” (1)

What is driving this sudden fascination, after all—as Brooks points out—until recently no one had ever heard of the guy until his recent appearances on national television, including a CNN town hall meeting on March 10.

Brooks thinks that it is, in large measure, a response to the tRUMP era that is driving the interest in this candidacy.

“The Trump era has been all about disolving (sic) moral norms and waging vicious attacks,” observes Brooks. “This has been an era of culture war, class warfare and identity politics. It's been an era in which call-out culture, reality TV melodrama and tribal grandstanding have overshadowed policymaking and the challenges of actually governing.

“The Buttigeig surge suggest that there are a lot of Democrats who want to say goodbye to all that...

“They are sick of the moral melodrama altogether. They just want a person who is more about governing than virtue-signaling, more about friendliness and basic decency than media circus and rhetorical war.” (2)

Brooks feels that the Mayor of South Bend transcends the tension, and is somehow above the pettiness and cruelty of contemporary politics.

He is young, at 37 perhaps too young. But, Brooks observes, “he's an older person's idea of what a young person should be. ” (3) Perhaps, but is it enough?

He has crammed a lot into his 37 years. He's graduated from Harvard, is a Rhodes Scholar, has served in the Navy. But he is not—as Brooks duly notes—a social justice warrior. This begs the question: will his standing in the L.G.B.T.Q. Community once again—if he should gain the presidential nomination—present us with a candidacy that sacrifices the middle class in the name of making a social statement?

Brooks addresses the gay issue by telling his readers that although “he is gay and personifies the progress made by the L.G.B.T.Q. Movement, ...he doesn't do so in a way that feels threatening or transgressive to social conservatives. He has conservative family values; it's just that his spouse is a husband, not a wife. He speaks comfortably about his faith and says that when he goes to church he prefers a conservative liturgy to anything experimental.” (4)

While Brooks and many of our fellow progressives are comfortable with that, one is left to wonder just what will be the dictates of, for instance, Southern Baptism? It is difficult, at this writing, to imagine an openly gay candidate for President not fueling the culture wars.

Finally, Brooks points to the humility and lack of grandiosity in the man. Brooks describes meeting the mayor and finding him “modest and self-effacing, and I can't square that impression with the assumption that at 37 he's qualified to be president of the United States. “ (5) But then, we in Michigan have experience with youth. In 1820, President Andrew Jackson appointed Stevens Mason territorial secretary at age 19 and at age 22 Mason became Acting Territorial Governor of Michigan. It isn't the years it's what you do with them.  And tRUMP has so debased the standard  it seems that everyone, down to the maintenance man at an apartment complex in Athens, Georgia, now looks into the mirror and conjures a president of the United States.  

It is good that the mayor talks about local issues, fixing the potholes, repairing the sewer system. This appeals to the likes of David Brooks who waxes poetic about the virtues of the town hall. But what I find much more compelling is the Mayor's philosophy best expressed by the approach that “he'll do whatever works”. (6).

I like that lack of grandiosity, the emphasis on ways and means rather than, in Brooks' words, the “grand ideological conflict.” (7)

But perhaps this candidacy is a bit of an overreach. It isn't simply that the Mayor, if he were the first open homosexual to win the party's nomination, would add fuel to the culture wars. It would have been helpful, one supposes, had we been taught our history with some honesty. An openly gay President would be our first, but not our first gay or bisexual chief magistrate. One immediately thinks of James Buchanan or Abe Lincoln and Joshua Speed. But there can be no doubt that his elevation will add fuel to the fires of intolerance, drowning the debate over the much needed new direction; and the high crimes and misdemeanors, as well as the boorishness of our Caesar Disgustus.

Moreover, as much as we are drawn to the particular, the granular as opposed to the spectacular, these are not ordinary times. The yawning abyss confronting humanity's violations of mother nature must become all-consuming.

There can be no other approach: the ecological crisis must now become, as anti-communism was in my youth, the organizing principle around which we must all now gather. We must confront this head on for, as the United Nations and other reports are now telling us, we have about a decade to get our house in order. This calls for draconian measures. This calls for, in the words of the young Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a “Green New Deal”.

I appreciate that Mayor Buttigieg is governed by the politics of the practical. We must also be governed by the politics of the possible. While it is important that we apprehend the trees we must also comprehend the forest.

Roosevelt's New Deal was a struggle to find new solutions. The operative approach was, like Buttigieg's what works. But the ultimate goal was to fashion a more just society. At some point, we must join means to overarching ends. Yes, that means wealth redistribution, re-organizing the labor force, campaign finance reform, Civil Rights, infrastructure, education and a host of constituencies and issues. But, we must now confront the fact that all of these must somehow be woven into a tapestry that forms a banner around which we organize to save ourselves and this planet. This must be the organizing principle, there can be no other.

I haven't heard that yet, except from the Governor of the State of Washington Jay Inslee, and he polling well behind in the pack.

It we are to realize real change, getting rid of tRUMP is the necessary but not the sufficient condition.

Getting rid of tRUMP and ending the culture wars are only a beginning. I like the mayor. I find him intelligent, sincere, honest and capable. But his candidacy says more about not only the vision within the Democratic Party but the depth of its bench.

A dozen years ago we faced a similar crisis and produced a young upstart promising “hope” and “change”. We are living in the aftermath.

We don't have the luxury of making another social statement.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

___________________

1. Brooks, David. “Why You Love Mayor Pete”, The New York Times. Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Page A27
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. Ibid
7. Ibid

August 5, 2015: All-Dunn, Plumbing the Mendoza Line, New ‘Age of Shoddy’

For decades the threshold by which an athlete was judged competent to remain in Major League Baseball was determined by what became known as the ‘Mendoza Line’(1).  The standard was coined in 1979 by teammates Tom Paciorek and Bruce Bochte in honor of one Mario (Manny) Mendoza whose defensive skills were such that he played several years in the major leagues despite having a batting average hovering at or about .200.  This, the gods of baseball had determined, would be the absolute minimum offensive performance, the point at which one’s defensive skills however formidable could no longer justify one being in the lineup or on a major league roster.  As a struggling player’s batting average plummeted ever lower, the approach of the much feared ‘Mendoza Line’ would hang over the hapless ball player like the Grim Reaper waiting for that moment to call him ‘home’ and snatch him back to the corn fields of Iowa or snuff his career altogether.  No more.

With the advent of Free Agency and multi-year contracts, Major League Baseball has of late presented us with the proverbial ‘superstar’ free of the constraints of convention and not subject to the long established norms of the game.  I give to you as Exhibit One, one Adam Dunn.

Known as the ‘Big Donkey’, Dunn was acquired by the Chicago White Sox as a free agent in the off-season following the 2011 season.  Signing for a reported four-year 60 Million dollar contract (of which the Sox reportedly paid out 56 Million) Dunn struggled through the 2012 season hitting a paltry .159 in 496 plate appearances.  The following season he struck out a record 222 times in 649 plate appearances raising his average to .204. The “Sporting News”, making a mockery of sporting awards, promptly dubbed the ‘Big Donkey” 2013’s “Comeback Player of the Year”, perplexing future historians of the game as they ponder just how bad you have to be the previous year to win this honor with a batting average .004 points above the “Mendoza Line”.  Nevertheless the Texan clogged on.  In four years he hit a meager .201 for Chicago, striking out 720 times in 2187 plate appearances, or roughly 1/3 of the time.  As for the remainder he would, predictably by always going deep into the count, work a walk (321 of those over nearly 4 seasons); but more often than not hitting directly into a defensive shift as opposing teams would put the third baseman or shortstop over on the right side of the infield.  Dunn, always swinging for the fences would, if he got his bat on the ball at all, hit it into the defense or pop it up.  Saying that he was paid to hit home runs, he hit 106 of those in 4 years, many—all too many with the bases empty and when the additional run didn’t figure into a win or loss—the big oaf went about making a mockery of the game.

It cost Ozzie Guillen his job as Manager of the Sox.  Guillen had led the club to its first World Championship since “Pants” Rowland piloted the franchise in 1917, a feat which should have earned Ozzie a lifetime sinecure.  But as the club wound through the 2012 season with Dunn, in the middle of the lineup and striking out at a record pace, Guillen was unable to do anything about it.

You see at a cost of 12 million for the first year of his contract, Dunn was making a bit over $74,000 a game.  That’s about $8,250 per inning worked or, since he played mostly as a Designated Hitter, one would more accurately parcel it out by plate appearances or at-bats.  Assuming 4.2 plate appearances on average per game every time the ‘Big Donkey’ came up to bat it cost the club $17,619.00.  Paying a player this much money means that a manager no longer has the option to bench him, for no owner or General Manager is going to sit idly by and pay out that kind of money for an ‘asset’ that isn’t being used.  And so Sox fans had to endure nearly 4 long years of watching the big oaf.  By the time he left the team, mercifully traded to Oakland with a couple of months left on his contract, the White Sox had paid between 18 and 20 Million dollars’ worth of strike outs.

Moreover, when he did hit the ball it was predictably to the right side of the infield, weak grounders, pop-ups and fly balls hit right into the shifted defenses.  Rarely did he make plate adjustments to hit the ball to the now open left side or into the outfield down the left field line.  When he did to it, his average would rise but, after a few games, he would revert to old habits and the same old Dunn would return.  When ‘Hawk’ Harrelson, calling a televised game, would announce “Here’s Adam” it would send chills down the spine of any good Sox fan, much like fingernails scraping across a blackboard,

This is the conundrum in which the modern game finds itself. The Atlanta Braves had a similar experience signing Second Baseman Dan Uggla, the Yankees are presently paying Alex Rodriguez tens of millions as he presents the public with a meager .280 batting average.  Pitchers now routinely are paid as much as $5,000.00 per pitch!  Being a legal monopoly and confronted with ‘free agency’ and player unionization, the owners and players have made their deals with intent on passing the costs on to the consumer, resulting in skyrocketing ticket, parking and concession prices.  Meanwhile the quality of play continues to deteriorate as team play unravels, performance slumps, uniforms are worn improperly.  Today we witness in the sport the emergence of players from college programs and the minor leagues who simply have not mastered the fundamentals of the game.  They cannot make adjustments hitting at the plate, cannot bunt the ball, cannot field their positions properly, and make too many base-running mistakes.  Baseball has given us a ‘new age of shoddy’.

Ken Burns, in his television presentation of “Baseball” informs us that the sport has been central to the American Experience, playing major roles in establishing social norms from segregating to integrating American culture.  That it has.  What Baseball is presenting today is the example of what has gone terribly wrong with the economy and, by extension, the cultural norms.  Long established as a legal monopoly, baseball was able to function by oppressing its labor force.  With the coming of the Player’s Association and, more importantly, Free Agency the cork was removed from the bottle sending player compensation, profits, and costs through the roof.   Now it is quite impossible to imagine Major League baseball as being able to exist in anything other than a state-sponsored monopoly.  Oliver Wendell Holmes was quite right about that.  Another league in competition would surely likewise send the cost of labor skyrocketing, as it did when the old American Football League challenged the National Football League at its inception.  Professional sports, in order to function, nearly demand state protection.

It is one thing to have a monopoly or, for that matter, an oligopoly or cartel.  These do exist and, sometimes as with the municipal power plant, the water department, or local hospital are necessary.  But to have an unregulated monopoly leads to the kind of dysfunctions that produce the Adam Dunn’s of this world and a management left powerless to influence performance. The lack of regulation, as it did in the American Auto Industry leads to Shoddy. Lack of competition without regulation lead to complacency and decline.  We must have one or the other.

______________

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendoza_Line

(2) http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dunnad01.shtml

                                                                                                                                 

May 1, 2015: The Republic of Heaven, Laugh With the Sinners, Invisible Man

 

“I don’t believe in the Kingdom of heaven; I believe in the Republic of Heaven”

                                    -----from the ‘Quotations of Chairman Joe’

Several years ago I was working at a facility that builds railroad cars.  Working on a third shift security detail, one finds that one has a lot of time on one’s hands.  Accordingly, one of my co-workers, a man named Robert, and I would frequently engage in conversations ranging across the spectrum from current events, to politics, to philosophy and religion.  A devoutly religious man, Robert asked me in the course of one of the conversations: “I believe in the kingdom of heaven, so do you, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t”, I replied.

“What DO you believe in then?” he asked incredulously.

“I don’t believe in the Kingdom of Heaven, I believe in the Republic of Heaven”, said I, an answer that evoked a nervous laugh from my companion.  “In the modern age how could it be otherwise?” I continued, “The idea of a kingdom violates modern sensibilities, it rings hollow in the modern ear”.

“But the Bible”, protested Robert.

“Yes, the Bible,” said I, “and whose version are we talking about?”

“The King James version”, said he.

“A book sanctioned by a king…case closed.  That heaven should be described therein seems a bit self-serving don’t you think coming as it did at the dawn of the age of ‘Divine Right’. The monarch is claiming his legitimacy as divinely ordained and the confusion becomes complete.  No, to the modern era in which nearly every government on the face of the earth from constitutional monarchies and authoritarian regimes to parliamentary democracies to federations call themselves ‘republics’, or ‘democratic republics’.  In the modern age how could paradise be seen as otherwise?”

I was only being half facetious in my reply, for I had been given a glimpse of paradise among the ‘elect’ in parochial school; the prospect of spending ‘eternity’ with these people...

I’d rather laugh with the sinners

Than cry with the saints

The sinners are much more fun”    ----Billy Joel “Only the Good Die Young”

Jimmy Carter was quite right to sever his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention over the church’s positions on women’s rights and the place of women in human society.  There are other equally compelling reasons, I was to learn under the tutelage of my schoolmasters, including the war against natural history, reason and science and, at times, the contemporary historical record itself. There are a lot of counterproductive lessons taught in the American Madrasa, not the least is a sense of worthlessness (see Luther’s Small Catechism); but it was the overriding blind adherence to ‘doctrinal authority’ and the treacherous undercurrents of resulting intolerance that was most unsettling.  I entered this institution a bright, wide-eyed, confident and curious young lad, with a voracious appetite for learning. I emerged from the administrations of my parochial tutors timid, withdrawn, and badly prepared for what lay ahead. 

Accordingly I was assigned to the industrial arts classes upon entering the public school system, complete with courses in “General Math” instead of algebra.  During my first year in the Grand Haven public school system I was given the battery of aptitude and knowledge tests known then as the ‘Iowa Tests’.  Sometime late in my freshman year in high school I was called into the counselor’s office and told that they were changing my curriculum.  Over the course of the next three years I would take algebra and geometry, English literature and other advanced courses but the damage had been done.  The requisite background in mathematics simply wasn’t there, and there was no time to pass through the required classes in time to take calculus, physics, or chemistry.  I could do what I could to get as much out of the experience as time would allow, but I decided to study history and government given that I was more prepared in those fields and wouldn’t lag so far behind.    

As a sophomore in High School I found myself in Mrs. Madigan’s world history class.  Timid and withdrawn I found myself singled out as Mrs. Madigan would read my exam essays (yes 75% of my exams were essays) to the class, a practice my instructors would repeat in college and graduate school.  I could write, but I couldn’t speak having spent 9 long formative years doing my level best to be the ‘invisible man’. So began my journey that led me down the path of historical research and inquiry.

In order to recover the boy left behind, I found it necessary to likewise sever my ties with mother church; for I am a Camfield and a Kaye, and the sounds of the ‘farm’ beckon me. (1)  Accordingly, I have left the not-so-nurturing arms of mother church for it is no place for a wide-eyed, confident and curious young lad. Nor is it a refuge for an intellectual bohemian; for the wanderer and his shadow.
_______

1. See previous posts “November 15, 2010: Northwest of Custer, The Farm, Damn Democrats” and “November 5, 2011: Return to Custer, A Word About the Word, Pigs Breakfast”

 

 

 

 

 

April 23, 2015: Corporate Shills, The Untold Story, A Question of Trust.

"The Clintons have been nothing but corporate shills"
                                        —From "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

The New York Times published an article today written by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire entitled "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company" . The article, here reproduced in part, outlines some of the Clinton dealings with international corporations as they act in the interstices of international corporate interests and intrigue, international political relations, the Clinton foundation and the national interests of the United States. Here then is the article as it appeared in the ‘Times’:

"The headline in Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: ‘Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.’

The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.

But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian miningindustry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.


As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.

The New York Times’s examination of the Uranium One deal is based on dozens of interviews, as well as a review of public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia and the United States. Some of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were unearthed by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and author of the forthcoming book "Clinton Cash." Mr. Schweizer provided a preview of material in the book to The Times, which scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.

Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavilyon foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.

In a statement, Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, said no one "has ever produced a shred of evidence supportingthe theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation." He emphasized that multiple United States agencies, as well as the Canadian government, had signed off on the deal and that, in general, such matters were handled at a level below the secretary. "To suggest the State Department, under then-Secretary Clinton, exerted undue influence in the U.S. government’s review of the sale of Uranium One is utterly baseless," he added.

American political campaigns are barred from accepting foreign donations. But foreigners may give to foundations in the United States. In the days since Mrs. Clinton announced her candidacy for president, the Clinton Foundation has announced changes meant to quell longstanding concerns about potential conflicts of interest in such donations; it has limited donations from foreign governments, with many, like Russia’s, barred from giving to all but its health care initiatives. That policy stops short of Mrs. Clinton’s agreement with the Obama administration, which prohibited all foreign government donations while she served as the nation’s top diplomat. Either way, the Uranium One deal highlights the limits of such prohibitions. The foundation will continue to accept contributions from foreign individuals and businesses whose interests, like Uranium One’s, may overlap with those of foreign governments, some of which may be at odds with the United States.

When the Uranium One deal was approved, the geopolitical backdrop was far different from today’s. The Obama administration was seeking to "reset" strained relations with Russia. The deal was strategically important to Mr. Putin, who shortly after the Americans gave their blessing sat down for a staged interview with Rosatom’s chief executive, Sergei Kiriyenko. "Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20 percent of U.S. reserves," Mr. Kiriyenko told Mr. Putin.

Now, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine, the Moscow-Washington relationship is devolving toward Cold War levels, a point several experts made in evaluating a deal so beneficial to Mr. Putin, a man known to use energy resources to project power around the world.

"Should we be concerned? Absolutely," said Michael McFaul, who served under Mrs. Clinton as the American ambassador to Russia but said he had been unaware of the Uranium One deal until asked about it. "Do we want Putin to have a monopoly on this? Of course we don’t. We don’t want to be dependent on Putin for anything in this climate". (1)

Should Democrats be concerned? Absolutely. With a recent Quinnipiac University poll showing Hillary Clinton with the backing of 60% of Democrats and her nearest potential rival Vice President Joe Biden registering in at a paultry 10%,(2) it increasingly appears that she will face nearly no serious obstacle to her party’s nomination.

But all should not be well in the Clinton camp, as Chris Cillizza observed today in the Washington Post’s ‘The Fix’, "Hillary Clinton has a baggage problem". (3) Quoting very recent articles such as:

"There's this from the New York Times: "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company."

This from the Post: "For Clintons, speech income shows how their wealth is intertwined with charity."

And this from Politico: "Hillary Clinton struggles to contain media barrage on foreign cash."

Cillizza questions whether the country is ready for another scandal train that was the Clinton years, and make no mistake about it the melodrama that forced itself upon the consciousness of the nation from Monica to Whitewater; from Travelgate to Vince Foster, has taken its toll on the political house of Clinton. Check out, writes Cillizza, " the new Quinnipiac University national poll. More than six in ten (62 percent) of voters said Clinton has "strong leadership qualities." In that same sample, however, less than four in ten (38 percent) said that Clinton was honest and trustworthy. A majority (54 percent) said she's not honest and trustworthy, including 61 percent of independents.

That's a remarkable set of findings -- and speaks to the divided mind the public has about the Clintons broadly and Hillary Clinton specifically. There's a widespread belief in her capability to do the job she is running for. There's also widespread distrust in her personally. People admire her but don't know if she's honest." (3)

 And therein lies the rub, for this is at the heart of the current ongoing investigation not only into the tragedy at Benghazi but her use of a personal private server for her email while serving as secretary of state. Not illegal at the time but against her own policy directives while she was at the helm of the State Department. Given the pig’s breakfast that the Clintons have always made of their personal affairs, finances, and governmental connections questions are going to emerge demanding answers. With growing revelations and questions surrounding the administration of the Clinton Foundation and its relationships, the disappearance of thousands of emails while she was Secretary of State casts new aspersions on the veracity, indeed the integrity, of this candidate. What is certain is that the Clinton record of parsing and dissembling has always been evident; and the Clintons have never been entirely forthcoming.

　
______

(1).http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0

(2). http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-rubio-lead-2016-us-election-poll-110848806.html

(3).http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/04/23/hillary-clintons-baggage-problem/?wpisrc=nl_fix&wpmm=1 

April 8, 2015: Cat in a Thunderstorm, Well-Oiled Weathervane, Jackass in a Hailstorm

"There's no place where you can call home
Got me running like a cat in a thunder storm
Just a big bed and a telephone
Like the last remnants of a stately home

And it's a pretty hard thing
(It's not easy)
And it's hard
(It's not easy)
Well, it's a pretty hard thing
(It's not easy)
It's not easy living on your own"
----The Rolling Stones "It’s Not Easy" from the album Aftermath (1)
　
　
Nearly two weeks ago Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed into law the so-called "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" touching off a firestorm that had the dear governor "running like a cat in a thunderstorm". Previously Pence has been seen as a ‘moderate’ of sorts, in what passes for moderation nowadays in the bowels of Rescumlican politics; but forced to throw the idiot wrong a bone in the wake of last years’ defeat by the marriage equality movement, Pence thought that he could slip this one under the rug unnoticed. Accordingly, in a private signing ceremony attended only by the leadership of his own party and a few religious fundamentalists, Pence quietly signed the bill into law.

The reaction was devastatingly swift with everyone from "Star Trek"s George Taikai to the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association which has its headquarters in Indianapolis) to several high tech companies and those planning conventions a hue and cry went out condemning the action by the state as nothing less than legalized discrimination. Accordingly the governor was seen running like a cat in a thunderstorm, first appearing on a following Sunday’s television talk show saying the law needed to be ‘fixed" but reversing his position later that afternoon on the radio saying that the law was good as written. Hung out to dry and twisting in the political hurricane like a well-oiled weathervane the governor had, by mid-week lost all of his political bearings finding, in the words of Jagger and Richards, that it’s "pretty hard thing...living on your own".

By mid-week the State’s major newspaper the "Indianapolis Star" ran a front-page headline featuring a big black box taking up most of the front page with the words "Fix This Now" in bold white letters. This produced a ‘news conference’ in which the governor after having taken the podium stood in forlorn silence for 29 seconds looking for all the world like a jackass in a hailstorm. Finally speaking he tried desperately to wrap his arms around the incomprehensible, f admitting that although a ‘mistake’ had not been made, the law nevertheless needed amending. Meeting later with several of the legislative cabal responsible for the outrage an amendment, of sorts, was unveiled. The resulting ‘compromise’, of course, pleased no one with critics contending that the revisions didn’t go fare enough. Meanwhile, in states like Arkansas, governor Asa Hutchinson, another Rescumlican stands ready to sign a similar law into effect earning the preemptive condemnation of the likes of WalMart.

What we have here is, of course, bigotry demanding the right to discriminate using religion as a smoke screen. We have seen this nonsense before, as when the country saw an explosion in attendance at religious parochial schools in the wake of court-ordered desegregation back in the late 60's and 70's. Following the well-tread path of using the shield of religious conscience, as well as the ‘separation of church and state’ as rationale for re-segregating the society, the idiot wrong has here extended the argument beyond the church and schools into main street.

It is no coincidence that Indiana with a history, in the 1930's, of being ruled by the Klu Klux Klan, that the first experiment in this form of bigotry should come from the fertile fields of the Hoosier state. Given its history, perhaps Governor Pence thought this a relatively mild concession to the siren voice of intolerance. One, perhaps, will never know.

In any case it is curious that the idiot wrong will argue that there is no state jurisdiction, because of the separation of church and state, over religious conscience but will, in other arenas, argue against such separation. There is, of course, no logical consistency to these arguments moored as they are not in constitutional law nor in New Testament theology but rather in the dark murky bigotry of political expediency.

There is no need for the law. Everyone in America–Indiana included–is free to practice their religion with the number of churches standing in every community a visible witness to the robust practice thereof. Therefore the very name of the act is a misnomer, for there is no freedom in need of ‘restoration’. Others were simply demanding, and have been getting, the same freedoms as the alleged aggrieved. You can almost tell from the very names of these initiatives be it "Religious Freedom Restoration" or "Patriot Act" or the "Fair Tax" proposal often bandied about that whatever the title of the law or the initiative it is almost always a cover for a falsehood. Whatever the proponents call it is almost surely a means of controlling the language so as to control the debate and obfuscate real intent. So it is here. "Religious Freedom" is here conflated with discrimination. Freedom here comes to mean, in practice, discrimination; and, let there be no mistake about it, discrimination leads to persecution

Meanwhile the governor, after all this effort, stands like a jackass left out in a thunderstorm.

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1. http://www.metrolyrics.com/its-not-easy-lyrics-rolling-stones.html

March 19, 2015: Cultural Cesspool, Hip-Jerk Reaction, Musak to the Unwashed Ear

Shaun King, writing for Daily Kos on March 12, took Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe", to task for remarks she made defending an exchange with host Joe Scarborough and guest Bill Kristol about a college fraternity engaging in a racist chant about lynching black men.

"Popular culture becomes a cesspool, a lot corporations profit off of it, and then people are surprised that some drunk 19-year-old kids repeat what they’ve been hearing," said Bill Kristol. He added that Tipper Gore "tried to raise this issue, and was widely ridiculed," referring to the parental advisory labels the future V-FLOTUS enacted after her daughter purchased Purple Rain thirty years ago. "

"The kids that are buying hip hop or gangster rap, it’s a white audience, and they hear this over and over again," Joe Scarborough said. "So do they hear this at home? Well, chances are good, no, they heard a lot of this from guys like this who are now acting shocked."

King then proceeds with the standard hip-jerk reaction quipping "Instead of saying they just got it dead wrong, she denied that was ever how they felt, and then again pivoted back to hip-hop and how a discussion on why hip-hop artists use the "N word" was still very timely and appropriate.

The thing is, though, the conversation about hip-hop artists using the "N word" is completely irrelevant and is only being brought up as a distraction for the real matter at hand—shockingly ugly racism from elite college students". (1)

But did she "get it dead wrong" and was the conversation about hip-hop or rap artists using the "N-word" completely irrelevant?

Many years ago I found myself working as a cashier in a small retail establishment. One bright sunny morning I was working alone in the store when a young man, judging by his stature about 12 or 13 years of age came through the front door and asked "hey man, you got any rap music?"

"What kind of music?" I replied

"You know, rap music, man" He said.

"Son, there is rap and there is music, there is no such thing as rap music", said I.

"What are you talkin about? Of course there is", he protested.

"Well for starters, there is no melody in ‘rap’ music, come to think of it there is no harmony either"

"What’s that?" He asked quizzically

"That", said I, " is what I’m afraid of" I thought to myself; musak to the unwashed ear; songs to the barbarian.

"Rap", and its sister offspring "hip-hop" are cultural abortions. At its best the so-called ‘art-form’ is mere limerick set to a rather pronounced beat. At its best it can be somewhat engaging, and socially redeeming, if culturally limited and musically truncated. At its worst, it is a celebration of barbarism, a celebration of the culture of incarceration with constant use of the "N-word", calling women "Hoes"; a celebration of crime, misogyny and violence. This is especially so with so-called ‘gangsta-rap’.

When ‘Rap’ first emerged my reaction was much the same as when in the early ‘50's I sat before a small black and white television in my great-grandmother’s living room watching ‘Lawrence Welk". I remember to this day being 4 years old and thinking to myself that ‘this too will pass". Someday, I was sure, there would come a time when this would be no more. But like Welk, Rap has not been so keen to vacate the cultural stage, with the result that it has permeated the culture, to the point that middle class white adolescents are buying this stuff so as to participate in the ‘right of passage’ to manhood, if only vicariously. Is it any wonder that the obscenities that is this medium celebrates demystifies, by continual repetition, to the point that the ‘N-word" gets re-introduced into the subcultural lexicon as an appropriate adjective? And, how is the violence depicted in these rants (I cannot bring myself to call them ‘songs’), in any measure different or more justifiable than limericks about lynching.

I’m not here defending the frat rats. I find the whole concept of ‘Greek" life on campuses obnoxious and deleterious to serious scholarship. The Greeks, incidentally, knew no such institutions. Nor am I defending the obscenity that was their chant, nor the racist behaviour behind this naked display of hatred. It is hate speech pure and simple.

My point, and I think Mika’s point is that this behaviour, reprehensible and outrageous, is indicative of a much broader trend in this country; where hate speech has become not only acceptable but profitable. To point this out in no way deflects criticism nor does it justify the disgusting fraternity behavior. By drawing attention to other cultural influences one is performing the public duty of demonstrating that the problem is much more pervasive and deep-rooted and we have, consequently, much more work to do.   
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1. Shaun King, Daily Kos, " MSNBC host tries to clean up the mess her show made blaming hip-hop for the racist SAE chant." Thursday, March 12,2015