#1,033: There But For the Grace of G-d . . .

                                          There but for the grace of G-d . . .

I swear by everything holy that the next time I hear a לאַנדסמאַן (lahtzmahn - Yiddish for, roughly “a fellow Jew”) proclaim that IT is “the best friend the Jewish people ever had,” I’m going to ברעכן (brechen - e.g. “vomit”) all ever the White House lawn.  “Why?” you may well ask.  Simply stated, he is the bipolar opposite of a friend or supporter.  Whenever I ask what proof the person has for making such a statement, I regularly hear one or more of the following: “He moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem”; “He has provided more defense materiel to Israel than any other POTUS,” “How can he be anti-Semitic when his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren are practicing Jews?”, and most recently, “No POTUS has ever focused more on punishing elite universities for being tolerant of anti-Semitic activities.”  

Oy!  We aren’t going to take the time or space to explain ITs  motives behind most of these actions save, of course his daughter and her family, who, in accordance with the old dictum חזקת לאדם כשר (chezkat l’adam kashayr - Hebrew for “the presumption of being Jewish”) we will give a nod of acknowledgement.  Otherwise what I’m hearing from this pro-MAGA folks is, what in Yiddish is called די זעלבע מיד אַלטע געשיכטע (di zelbe mid alte geshikhte - '“the same old tired story”).

The one area of ITs presidency I will touch upon is anti-Semitism. Although he certainly did not create the hatred which transcends most of human history, he has not outside of rhetorically - done a hell of a lot to confront of quell it. Much to the contrary, he has actually weaponized it. At this time of the year, when the Jewish calendar is book-ended by Purim and Passover when real antisemitism — and redemption from it — are top of mind for Jews, we would be wise to see Trump’s rhetoric and policies on antisemitism for what they really are: gaslighting that will further endanger American Jews.

By publicly linking federal funding for research to combating antisemitism — and cynically appropriating the Hebrew word “shalom” to announce ICE’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil — Trump has actually fed nasty tropes about Jews wielding financial leverage and pulling the strings of government to protect perceived “Jewish” interests. Meanwhile, the Departments of Justice and Education (or what’s left of it) have launched antisemitism investigations into dozens of universities nationwide, singling out Jews as worthy of federal protection while simultaneously dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that support countless vulnerable and underprivileged Americans. In other words, for IT, the concern about the horrific rise in anti-Semitic acts isn’t a project; it’s a pretext.

Sometime in the early hours of Sunday, April  13 - the first day of Passover - the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was set on fire by an arsonist while Governor Josh Shapiro and his family slept inside.  Ironically, the greatest damage occurred in the very room (see photo above) in which the governor, his wife Lori, their 4 children and other family members had partaken in the traditional Passover seder.  There but for the grace of G-d they escaped harm. When arrested on charges of terrorism, attempted murder aggravated arson and aggravated assault, the alleged arsonist, 38-year old Cody Allen Balmer told police that he used two Molotov cocktails to set the residence on fire.  According to authorities, Balmer told them that he had also brought a small sledgehammer with him for the purpose of killing Governor Shapiro had he encountered him.  Balmer, who actually had turned himself in to state authorities, said he attacked the mansion because of Governor Shapiro’s  stance on the war in Gaza and that “needs to know that he will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

Exactly how the murder of a Jewish Governor and his family (the alleged perpetrator’s stated intent) could save Palestinian lives half a world away is anyone’s guess.  Fortunately, many Republicans, including V.P. Vance, A.G. Pam Bondi and Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry issued statements deploring the arson attack, calling it, variously, “inexcusable,” “deeply disturbing” and “horrifying.”  Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said, “Political violence of any kind is never acceptable, and it is especially unconscionable to attack a Jewish family during the first night of Passover.” 

                                                                     Rep. Dan Meuser, R-PA

Not all responses were so mixed with angst over, concern about and condemnation of the attack.  Republican Rep. Dan Meuser (Penn.), a potential challenger to Josh Shapiro in the 2026 gubernatorial race,  suggested that .Shapiro was “asking for it” when an attacker burned down part of his house after his Passover celebration and that he needs to “tone it down” with actions against President Donald Trump. “This guy is a psycho of course,” Meuser said of the attacker during an appearance on a local radio show on Tuesday, April 15. “And our hearts go out to the Shapiro family on this. But you know, they’ve got to tone it down, too. I mean, every action Josh Shapiro has taken so far against the president has either been a lawsuit or a falsehood.”  

When asked for his response to the crime, IT, who, during his last campaign referred to Shapiro as a “highly overrated Jewish Governor [who] has done nothing for Israel and never will”  said that he “wasn’t aware of a motive for the man accused of setting the fire,” and sloughed it off as nothing more than being the act of someone who was “probably just a whack job.” As of today, IT has yet to issue a public statement or contact Governor Shapiro about the arson attack. When Jonathan Martin, senior political columnist at Politico criticized IT  for staying silent (except for his “whack job” comment) after the Passover blaze, he was faced with quite a bit of backlash from conservatives online, many stating that when IT was the target of an assassination attempt at a Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally on July 13, 2024, Shapiro did not contact their standard bearer.  (n.b. in truth, before thatday was out, Shapiro’s office issued a heartfelt statement wishing the then-former President a speedy recovery while condemning the attack and mourning the death of former firefighter Corey Comperatore,  a native Pennsylvanian).

Eerily, Its “whack job” response came during a quicky presser held in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador, one of this hemisphere’s most brutal dictators.  (n.b.: It never ceases to amaze me that IT, who  is forever yakking about taking over the Panama Canal, making Canada the 51st State and turning Greenland into the newest American territory [à la  American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam] claims he doesn’t have the power to get Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to send back the more than 200 men illegally kidnapped and currently residing in this hemisphere’s most notorious  mega-prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo [CECOT]). 

We conclude with two thoughts: one for the POTUS, the other for/about the Shapiro family.

First for POTUS: From time to time, I am angrily attacked by readers wanting to know why I never say anything nice about the man they consider to be the best president in the history of the United States. I’ve given this a bit of thought, and have concluded that there is one very nice thing I can write about him:

Donald Trump is mortal!

And second, a thought for the Shapiro family: In the Jewish world, when someone - or a group, like a family - survive a traumatic, potentially life-threatening episode, it is customary. to recite a blessing known as Birkat Hagomel, which goes:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה הׇ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַגּוֹמֵל לְחַיָּבִים טוֹבוֹת שֶׁגְּמָלַנִי כָּל טוֹב

namely,

“Blessed are You, O G-d. ruling spirit of the universe, Who rewards the undeserving with goodness, and rewarded me (us) with goodness.”

To which we, who have heard them say this prayer. respond 

אָמֵן מִי שֶׁגְמָלְךָ כָּל טוֹב הוּא יִגְמָלְךָ כָּל טוֹב סֶלָה

namely:

”Amen. May the One who rewarded you with all goodness, continue to reward you with only goodness, Selah!”

Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone

(#1,025) The MUMP Regime: Defying Democracy & the Constitution?

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall (R) Giving the Oath of Office to President Andrew Jackson on March 4, 1829.

It goes without saying that many of humanity’s most profound truths are either of unknown origin or attributed to more than one - if not two or three - different philosophers, writers or sages. Take but one example . . . the old saw which teaches “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Ask a literate person who is responsible for this eternal verity and you are just as likely to hear the names Edmund Burke, George Santayana and Winston Churchill, one of the most oft-quoted polymaths of the late 19th and 20th century. I myself have come across at least 5 slightly different versions of this lesson:

1. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

2. Those who do not learn from the experience of history, are doomed to repeat it.

3. Those who cannot learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them.

4. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and

5. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Yes, they are all saying pretty much the same thing, but with slightly different words.  As to precisely who the original author was no one knows of a certainty.  My money is on the Spanish-born American philosopher, essayist and novelist (The Last Puritan) George Santayana (1863-1952), just because he was so astonishingly sagacious.

Permit me to pair this aphorism with an historic phrase all but universally ascribed to America’s 7th president, Andrew Jackson (1767-1845).  Before typing out the phrase, and getting to the up-to-the-minute meat of this post,  I will give you its political background and let you know that “Old Hickory” never said it.

First its background:  First its background:  In September 1831, Samuel A. Worcester and others, all non-Native Americans, were indicted in the supreme court for the county of Gwinnett in the state of Georgia for "residing within the limits of the Cherokee nation without a license" and "without having taken the oath to support and defend the constitution and laws of the state of Georgia." They were indicted under an 1830 act of the Georgia legislature entitled "an act to prevent the exercise of assumed and arbitrary power by all persons, under pretext of authority from the Cherokee Indians." Among other things, Worcester argued that the state could not maintain the prosecution because the statute violated the Constitution, treaties between the United States and the Cherokee nation, and an act of Congress entitled "an act to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes." Worcester was convicted and sentenced to "hard labor in the penitentiary for four years." The U.S. Supreme Court received the case on a writ of error.  The case became known as Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832). The question before the court was whether or not the state of Georgia had the authority to regulate the intercourse between citizens of its state and members of the Cherokee Nation.

The case was argued on February 21-23, 1832; the decision was handed down 8 days later. Writing for the court in a 4-1 decision, Chief Justice Marshall held that the Georgia act. under which Worcester was prosecuted, violated the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the United States. Marshall argued, "The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community occupying its own territory in which the laws of Georgia can have no force. The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation, is, by our constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States." The Georgia act thus interfered with the federal government's authority and was unconstitutional. Justice Henry Baldwin dissented for procedural reasons and on the merits.

According to American political mythology, upon learning of the court’s decision, President Jackson (that’s him taking the oath of office alongside Chief Justice Marshall in the painting above, defiantly bellowed “Chief Justice Marshall made his ruling; now, let’s see him enforce it!” According to Court historian Jeffrey Rosen, Jackson’s real remark was made in a letter to John Coffee, a well-known planter and state militia brigadier general in Tennessee: “. . . the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.”  Truth to tell, Jackson had no desire to threaten Georgia with federal forces or openly challenge the Supreme Court.  “Old Hickory” solved the problem by convincing the governor of Georgia to set the defendants (who were Christian missionaries) free.  Years later, journalist Horace E. Greeley, who himself would lose in a landslide (286 electoral votes to 66) to Ulysses Grant, who referred to Greeley as “a genius without an ounce of common sense.”  Before running in the 1872 election, Greely  published a history of the recently concluded Civil War called "The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion, in which he apparently gave the fictive quote about Justice Marshall enforcing his decision.

This bit of the past is meant to serve as prologue for the horror show that has been transpiring over the past 40 days; i.e. ever since January 20, 2025. In just his first week in office, IT signed dozens of executive orders affecting everything from immigration, climate change and oil exploration to health and medical research, as well as eliminating federal diversity programs, directives defining gender and much, much more. And this isn’t even mentioning the roughly 1,500 pardons and commutations he issued to the people he refers to as “hostages” or “true patriots” . . . the people who stormed Congress on January 6, 2021. Executive orders, despite being limited, are not all that easy to overturn. Courts can strike them down not only on the grounds that the president issuing them lacked authority to do so, but also in cases where the order is found to be unconstitutional in substance.

At this early point in the nascent MUMP Regime, when so many Americans are walking about in a collective haze, fearful that Democracy is being eroded from within, about the only positive feeling is that somehow, the Courts — our third branch of government - will step up and become our Knight (or Dame) in shining armor.  And despite the Supremes having a public opinion rating just ahead of cockroaches and snails, one must be aware of how the lower courts (both federal and state) have already been responding to the most asinine promises and proposals coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. In a trenchant essay by A.P. writers Chris Megerian and Lindsay Whitehurst the two journalists note, A familiar pattern has emerged since President Donald Trump returned to the White House less than three weeks ago: He makes a brash proposal, his opponents file a lawsuit and a federal judge puts the plan on hold. It’s happened with Trump’s attempts to freeze certain federal funding, undermine birthright citizenship and push out government workers. 

A word to the wise: although just about every Democrat on the planet, most independents, and a majority of non-MAGA Republicans may be encouraged by the initial round of judicial resistance, the legal battles are only beginning. Lawsuits that originated in more liberal jurisdictions like Boston, Seattle and the District of Columbia could eventually find their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where its conservative majority has time and again demonstrated its willingness to overturn precedent. To date, roughly three dozen lawsuits have already been filed, including those by FBI agents who fear they’re being purged for political reasons, families who are concerned about new limitations on healthcare for transgender youth, and the MUMP Regime’s attempt to freeze as much as $3 trillion in federal funding.

Just this past Thursday, U.,S. District Judge John Coughenour blocked ITs executive order on birthright citizenship, which was intended to prevent the children of parents who are in the country illegally from being automatically considered Americans. The judge described birthright citizenship, which was established by the 14th Amendment as “a fundamental constitutional right” and he assailed POTUS in scathing terms. On the very same day in Boston, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. put a kink in ITs plan to encourage federal workers to resign by offering them paid leave until September 2025. There is a huge judicial problem here: nowhere in the current federal budget are there the billions of dollars required to fulfill this paid leave promise . . . a promise coming from a man who has made a career of not paying bills to those who do work for him (let alone the American people). Congress - which has the sole right to craft and create a budget will not be voting on the next federal budget until October 2025. (BTW: It should be noted that Judge O’Toole, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1995, did not express an opinion on the deferred resignation program; he merely voted with the majority.)

Currently, there are also three lawsuits challenging POTUS’ effort to overhaul the civil service, stripping away job protections from tens of thousands of employees, and giving the White House unilateral firing authority if they fail to “faithfully implement administration policies,” and other lawsuits challenging the administration’s attempts to unilaterally fire a member of the National Labor Relations Board, one of several agencies that are supposed to be independent of the executive branch. A lawsuit to stop Elon Musk’s team from accessing ultra-sensitive data at the Treasury Department yielded an agreement to do so for now.

It makes one wonder if IT (or anyone in his and his BFF’s circle of twenty-something acolytes who hold in their hands the super, super secret algorithmic keys to virtually everyone’s Social Security numbers) is familiar with Worcester v Georgia. Oh perhaps a couple of them have a vague recollection of some president long ago challenging a long-forgotten Chief Justice to enforce a decision that the White House did not like. But I’ll bet you a bushel and a peck that they neither know that the president in question never uttered the words about the Chief Justice enforcing the decision, nor understand that in his own way, that president Andrew Jackson was far more interested in preserving the Constitution than in getting his way.

 Nor do they likely know that during his time as POTUS, Thomas Jefferson actually disregarded a ruling (dealing with the Embargo Act of 1807, a drastic - and absurdly self-destructive - attempt to punish Great Britain for seizing American merchant ships. This legal ruling was issued by a single Supreme Court associate justice, William Johnson.  (Back in the early 19th century Supreme Court Justices “rode circuit” and traveled to courts around the country to hear appeals.) Jefferson disregarded John’sons decision which rebuked the nation’s 3rd President for insinuating the doctrine of “constructive treason” - a judicial fiction that refers to actions carried out without a treasonable intent, but found to have the effect of treason. Jefferson gave up his fight, thus allowing the Constitution to retain its supremacy.  Moreover, Presidents Lincoln and Grant both tried to suspend Habeas Corpus during their 16 years in office, and both suffered defeat at the hands of SCOTUS. 

          Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941)

And let’s not forget FDR who, after suffering a number of New Deal reversals in the nation’s highest court, (most notably, AL.A. Schechter Poultry Corp v. United States . . . nicknamed the “Sick Chicken Case”) set off on his disastrous “Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937,” (known to history as his “Court Packing Plan”), which would have granted the president power to appoint an additional justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years.  One of FDR’s closest advisors, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (whom FDR called "Isaiah,” for his prophetic mien) openly opposed his friend’s court packing plan; in turn, FDR considered Brandeis’ public and private pronouncements to be an act of defiance.  Nonetheless, Roosevelt relented; his plan was consigned to the dustbin of history.

When it comes to democracy and the Constitution, we are indeed living in perilous times.  The MUMP Regime, guided largely by ultraconservatives from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, are doing their damndest  to, in the words of Washington anti-tax salonista Grover Norquist ". . . cut government in half in twenty-five years to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."  What all the MUMP loyalists seem to forget is that they - for better or for worst - are the government.  Whether or not they will actually reach their goal, and turn over what is left of the federal government to the approximately 756 billionaires who are members of their club, is anyone’s guess.  It strikes me that in order for them to fail, it will require Congressional Republicans growing spines, Democrats finding a positive path and purpose they can run on, and a federal judiciary that finally, finally, puts precedent over politics.  And as for we, the people, we must pull on our gloves, strap up our protest boots and act in consonance with the lesson taught us by our great  British cousin, Winston Churchill:

“ . . . never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to conviction of honour and good sense.  Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy . . . never, never, never, never!”     

And while we’re fighting the good fight, let’s never forget the lessons of history . . . lest we are forced to relive them.        

Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone                        

#1,018: Pardon Me!

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                              Emilie Todd and Benjamin Hardin Helm, 1857. 

   President Joseph R. Biden, Jr’s. recent pardon of his son Hunter has a lot of people talking. According to recent polling done by the now-80 year old Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago, only about 2 in 10 Americans approve of the President’s decision to pardon his son after earlier promising he would do no such thing.  The survey found that a relatively small share of Americans “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the pardon, which came after the younger Biden was convicted on gun and tax charges. About half said they “strongly” or “somewhat” disapprove, and about 2 in 10 neither approve nor disapprove.  Unsurprisingly, a higher percentage of Republicans - both office-holders and everyday voters - found fault with Biden’s act than Democrats. As soon as the pardon was announced, the President-Elect took to Truth Social, slamming Biden for what he called "an abuse and miscarriage of Justice! Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?" he wrote. Steven Cheung, the President-Elect’s communications director, told Newsweek, "The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system."

   Political commentator Ben Shapiro slammed the president for his decision to issue the pardon, saying that Biden "has always been a venal liar who utilized his political power to pursue familial gain. So of course he's pardoning Hunter. He was always going to pardon Hunter. Hunter was the bagman." Shapiro and many other voices on the right have seized on the timeframe of Hunter's pardon to note that it starts before he joined Ukrainian gas company Burisma's board of directors. Shapiro later posted a video trying to connect the dots on this narrative.

Ezra Klein, a popular New York Times opinion columnist, acknowledged that "it's terrible politics and precedent," but argued that "the Trump team has been brutally clear they want revenge on their enemies, they are obsessed with Hunter in particular, and that would weigh like hell on me if I were his father and could protect him." Klein also joked about the "Dark Brandon" memes and endorsed the suggestion that Hunter Biden should appear on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Political pollster Nate Silver had harsh words for the president, writing on X that he "voted for Harris despite feeling like Democrats indulged in a lot of bad behavior that voters were rational to publish. After the White House lying about the Hunter pardon I'm not sure how much more I can tolerate."  Silver also called for voters to reject "any Democrat in 2028 who doesn't repudiate the pardon within 48 hours." He also accused the White House of "consistently" lying about Biden's plan to abide by the court's decision on Hunter Biden's cases and called Biden "a selfish and senile old man."

Many Republicans, including members of both the House and Senate appear to believe that Biden’s pardon of son Hunter was, historically speaking, absolutely nonpareil; that no other POTUS had ever pardoned a member of his own family.  If they really, truly believe this  (which I doubt) when the lights go down and they put their heads on the pillow, then they had best go back and relearn high school-level American history.  For not only did their once-and-future leader pardon his מַחֲטוּנִים* billionaire real estate mogul Charles Kushner in December 2020; he recently announced that he was nominating him to become America’s next Ambassador to France.  (*Pronounced mechute’n), this is a basically untranslatable Yiddish term, meaning something like “your child’s father-in-law” which, in the eyes of Jewish custom, makes Jared’s father a flesh-and-blood member of the Trump family).  And to make sure we’re all on the same page, remember that In 2005, Charles Kushner was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. After learning that his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal investigators, Charles Kushner hired a sex worker to lure him into a hotel room with a hidden camera and then sent the recording of the encounter to his sister.  The senior Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 counts, including tax evasion and witness tampering. He was sentenced to two years in prison and was ordered to pay $508,900 to the Federal Election Commission. After his release - and before he received his pardon -  he returned to the real estate business.

So we can add IT to Biden as presidents who have pardoned family members.  But we’re not even halfway there.  In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln  issued a posthumous pardon to Confederate General Benjamin Hardin  Helm, who was the late husband of Emilie Todd Helm, (that’s them in the picture above). Emilie Todd was the half-sister of Lincoln’s wife, thereby making the general Lincoln’s brother-in-law. General Helm was the last commander of the “Orphan Brigade”* and was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga. Lincoln had originally offered Emilie Todd's husband a position in the Union Army, but he chose to raise a regiment for the Confederacy.  (*The “Orphan Brigade was made up of Kentucky regiments that were "orphans" because Kentucky's secession movement failed, leaving them without a "home state" in the Confederacy.)  Nonetheless, Lincoln pardoned him, thus permitting his widow (who after his death moved to the White House), to sell her homestead and Kentucky-grown tobacco on the open market.  

Ironically, Abraham Lincoln also pardoned Joseph Robinette Biden’s Great Great Grandfather, Moses Robinette on September 1, 1864.  In 1861, Robinette, who was working as a veterinary surgeon for the Army of the Potomac’s reserve artillery had been convicted of a number of offenses including attempted murder. Found guilty in 1864, he was sent to the Dry Tortugas islands of Florida to serve out his 2-year sentence. When the attempted murder charge was overturned, Robinette’s case was brought to Lincoln’s attention.  Within a matter of weeks, the nation’s 16th POTUS pardoned “Doc” Robinette.

Rounding out the list of presidents who have pardoned family members is Bill Clinton, our 42nd Commander-in-Chief. On one of his last days in office, he issued a pardon for his half-brother Roger Clinton, Jr., who, in 1985, had been tried, convicted and served federal time for possession and drug-trafficking. The conviction came on the heels of a sting operation operation looking into conspiracy to distribute cocaine. During the time his brother served as POTUS, Roger’s Secret Service code name was “Headache,” due to his unpredictable behavior.

   I for one am a bit torn about Joe Biden pardoning Hunter.  On the one hand, this man has lived through more family tragedy than perhaps anyone in public life: those of a certain age well remember the president’s shared anguish over his two sons, after the boys survived a car crash that killed Biden's first wife and a daughter more than a half-century ago. Or to those who heard the president regularly lament the death of his older son, Beau, from cancer, or voice concerns — largely in private — about Hunter’s sobriety and health after years of deep addiction. But on the other, for months prior to the November election President Biden said he would not, under any circumstance, pardon his remaining son: “No one is above the law.”  His stunning reversal is hard for a majority of Americans to swallow, myself included.  But this pardon is not the sum total of everything one need to know about Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.  For Republicans, this reversal gives them license to self-righteously proclaim to anyone and everyone who will listen and agree, that this pardon will, when all is said and done, be the only thing history will remember about Joe Biden.  This is stuff and nonsense.  American history is replete with presidents who have granted pardons that are far more questionable and downright dishonest:

• In 1869, President Andrew Johnson pardoned Dr. Samuel Mudd, who had been sentenced for assisting Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth.  It is likely that Mudd earned his pardon from Ft. Jefferson n part because of his efforts to halt the spread of an outbreak of deadly yellow fever at the prison.  (In 1936, 20th Century Fox produced a film loosely based on Mudd’s life. The Prisoner of Shark Island, directed by John Ford, and starring Warner Baxter. 

• In 1922, President Calvin Coolidge granted an unconditional pardon to Lothar Witzke, a citizen of the Weimar Republic who had been imprisoned in the United States for his involvement in a 1916 bombing attack on New York Harbor that left seven dead. After being Coolidge’s pardon, Witzke was deported to Germany where he received a hero’s welcome. 

• In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant effectively pardoned most members of the Confederacy when he signed the Amnesty Act. This allowed former Confederacy members to once again vote and hold office. Tensions were still high across the United States and Grant viewed the act as a way to promote unity.  Believe it or not, the incoming administration has used this act in defense of their stated goal of pardoning all the jailed or arrested January 6 perpetrators.

• On September 8, 1974, President Gerald R. Ford signed what is hands down, the most controversial pardon in American history: that of Richard Nixon. The former president received a full, unconditional pardon for his role in the Watergate Scandal, which resulted in his resignation. Nixon is the only former president to receive a pardon.

• IT’s mass pardons of such convicted loyalists as Roger Stone, Paul Manifort, Michael Flynn and former Maricopa County (AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio The last of these was perhaps IT’s most controversial pardon. Arpaio was convicted of contempt of court for illegally detaining people without reasonable evidence after being ordered to cease these practices. Civil rights groups protested the pardon as they viewed Arpaio's actions as unconstitutional attacks on immigrants. to name but a few.

Those who believe that Joe Biden’s pardoning of his son (despite his earlier statements to the contrary) will be all that history remembers him for are delusional. Historians (presidential and otherwise) tend to have a far broader and more all-encompassing view of our nation’s chief executives than political operatives, staunch loyalists and the so-called “partisan base.”  I’ve got to believe that Joe Biden doesn’t sleep as well at night as the man who will replace him come January 20, 2025.  Biden, when all is said and done, is a man of heart, faith, inherent kindness and conscience.  He is, in the words of Mark Twain, “. . . the sort of man who speaks a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”t A perfect man?  No, of course not.  But within his soul he is at least a man who cares about doing for others, rather than mostly - if not strictly - for himself.  His successor, on the other hand, sleeps well and does not worry a farthing about what history’s  . . . let alone G-d’s . . . judgement of him will be.  In his mind it really doesn’t matter, for he will be dead and all those mansions, towers and golf courses bearing his name will be the only legacy that matters.  However much he will ultimately eviscerate democracy while enriching both himself and his billionaire backers is of no concern to him, for he lives only in the moment, only for himself. 

   Will IT ever get his comeuppance?  Will it ever dawn on a majority of the American voting public that the man they elected with precisely 49.78% of the popular vote is a grifter, a conman, what British humorist Sir P.G. Wodehouse would have called a “gumboil of a human being”?  I hope so.  2026 is going to be as crucial - if not more so - than 2024.  Already, Democrats are raising money and seeking candidates in order to take back both the House and the Senate in the next mid-term elections . . . assuming there will be elections. 

If I sound a bit harried and pessimistic, please, PARDON ME!

 Copyright024 Kurt Franklin Stone        

There's Got to Be a Morning After (#1,014)

Good morning dear readers: Like you, I awoke this morning with a queasy feeling in my gut and an ache in my head. After checking various online sources of political information, and attempting to deconstruct yesterday’s “Trumpster fire,” I felt the immediate need to be in contact with you all . . . even if briefly.  While contemplating what words of comfort I could compose, two word-streams kept swirling through my brain: the first, Macbeth’s 75-word soliloquy in Act 5 Scene 5 (“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps into this petty pace . . . "  and Al Kasha and Joel Hirschorn’s Academy-Awarding winning (1972) song The Morning After.”  Both word-streams have their own haunting quality this morning: in the former, Macbeth states, in part,  “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot . . .” while the latter bravely asks, Oh, can't you see the morning after? It's waiting right outside the storm. Why don't we cross the bridge together, And find a place that's safe and warm?

While it is true that America is about to enter uncharted ground, the spirit and strength which has seen us overcome so many past challenges still hovers amidst and above us.  Trying to figure out “how we came to this point” is, this morning, a fool’s errand best left for another day.  We owe ourselves a bit of a breather . . . a period of adjustment in which we might reacquaint ourselves with the higher angels of our being.  

Democrats and people who love America are grieving. That is understandable. Everyone will need time to express feelings of shock, anger, and fear. Respect those who need to talk about what happened and those who don’t want to talk about it. Everyone will need to process the results in their own way.

It will take time to digest what happened and why it happened. Both are necessary inquiries. But there is no rational explanation for America’s election of a felon, adjudicated sexual abuser, incessant liar, narcissist, and aspiring dictator. None. So, think about it as much as you need to, but don’t waste emotional energy seeking answers where there are none.

Trump is an avatar of anger for millions who see their world slipping away. There is additional nuance about racism, misogyny, and white nationalism, but it’s not more complicated than that.

We must invest all our energy in the process of recovery and the continued defense of democracy.

For those of you who have the ability to do so, providing leadership, comfort, and hope today will be a blessing to those who feel shattered. No false optimism, just genuine determination.

For myself, I think I will be taking a break from writing about politics.  Instead, I shall spend a bit of my researching, writing and editing time dealing with my other blog, Tales From Hollywood & Vine. Perhaps I will find a bit of comfort getting back to my roots and "visiting” the heroes and heroines of my youth.  I invite you to join me . . . 

Be good to yourselves . . . 

KFS

Copyright2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#999: In Sanskrit, "Kamala" (कमल) Means "Lotus"; In America, It Means "POTUS"

It’s simply amazing how much the world can change in a mere 168 hours (1 week). A week ago, Trump was riding high on the iconic moment when he rose bloodied and with a defiantly raised fist from an assassination attempt, pulling away in the polls. President Biden, meanwhile, was struggling to recover from his dire late June debate against the Republican nominee and an unconvincing performance in the days since. Then, on Sunday, July 21, President Biden’s press office sent out a brief message telling the world that he would be leaving the 2024 presidential race. In the note, which many of us received via email, he wrote, in part:

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.

Within a few more hours, he would publicly endorse Vice President Kamala Devi Harris for the Democratic nomination to face off against former POTUS Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. The Vice President hit the ground running: by the next day, the Harris campaign had raised in excess of $50 million in smallish donations, and sent a massive steroidal infusion into the body politic. As of today the campaign is still in the deliriously happy “Honeymoon” stage, and has raised in excess of $200 million. (As an unexpected side benefit, viewership of the 2012-2019 cable TV show “Veep” has gone up more than 300 percent within a week.) For people all across the country, Vice President Harris’ entry into the race put smiles on faces, tears in eyes, and hope - until recently, a pretty rare commodity - into souls.  Her polling numbers began creeping upward.  At the same time, her entry into the race - along with an avalanche of endorsements -  sent MAGA-world scurrying in anger, fear, and resentment, the resurrection of racist and birther memes, and above all, dire uncertainty. Suddenly, the campaign they were oh so comfortably running - the one against “Sleepy Joe” - had to be revamped;  they would have to create a new game plan containing a new strategy, along with new lies and brand-new epithets.   

Within the past 168 hours, Trump has called Vice President Harris “a bum”, “lazy,” and a “crazy liberal,” accused her of wanting to “defund the police,” claimed she was a “terrible prosecutor who never won a case,” and most recently, in a rally held in St. Cloud, MN, roared “she has no clue, she’s evil.” He told a rally in South Florida he “couldn’t care less” if he mispronounced her name, (he repeatedly proclaimed that there were “at least seven different ways” to say Kamala). Obviously, he was becoming even more unhinged than the norm; at a rally in Florida this past Friday night organized by the far-right Christian advocacy group Turning Point Action, Trump not only went personal against the Veep, but once again appeared to threaten American democracy:

“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it anymore. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” he said at the event in West Palm Beach, not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence. Trump also promised to create an anti-Christian bias federal task force, as well as to defund schools "pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the lives of our children."  Madame would have called this “crapola.”

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post got into the anti-Harris attack by claiming that the V.P.’s step-daughter, Ella Emhoff, had personally raised more than $8 million for Hamas, and “does not  consider herself to be Jewish.”  A bit of research shows that Ella Emhoff did not raise $8 million to support Gaza. She did share a link to a fundraiser created by the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. That fundraiser has generated more than $8 million from hundreds of thousands of donors, including one donation from Ms. Emhoff herself.  The Trump campaign  has used this untruth - along with Harris’ public position vis-à-vis Israel’s response to the October 7th attack, to “prove” that the V.P. is an  “anti-Zionist, anti-Semite.”

The same Republican sources have reported that Harris “refused to attend” Israeli P.M. Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress. What they of course left out is that both President Biden and Vice President Harris had a private meeting with the Israeli P.M.  As such, Trumpsters are doing everything in their power to wrest Jewish votes away from the Democrats.  I for one (who, despite being both an ordained rabbi and a Hebrew-speaking practicing Jew) have been accused of being both an “anti-Semite” and “anti-Israel”) because I refuse to condemn  those who cannot or will not approve of  each and every pronouncement of the Netanyahu government.  Likewise, Kamala Harris - like Joe Biden - is, and will long remain, a strong supporter of Israel . . . despite - like yours truly - not agreeing with Bibi Netanyahu or his war cabinet on everything they do.   

Ed Luce, the observant and perspicacious US editor and columnist of the Financial Times notes the rapidity with which Kamala Harris’ “capture of the Democratic crown has changed the political weather. A funereal Democratic party has rediscovered its zest.”  I for one applaud her for also bringing a sense of “fun” to an election campaign that felt, until 168 hours ago, like a “death march.”  Can Kamala Harris and whoever she taps to be her running mate win in November? Without jettisoning our current and much-needed gush of giddiness, we must leave room for political reality. The Harris campaign has quickly outlined the content of their campaign strategy: the seasoned prosecutor versus the convicted felon; the youngish forward-looking progressive versus the oldest presidential candidate in American history who wants to eliminate virtually every bit of progress since the New Deal; a candidate with a full slate of issues and proposals versus one whose strategy is nothing more than the denigration of his opponent; a woman who wants to expand human rights versus a man who wants to make America a land of and for white Christian males.

Kamala Harris, Democrats, Independents and lovers of freedom and democracy everywhere face 100 days of the most serious political knife fight in all American history. MAGA-world knows and follows the famous line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: “There are no rules in a knife fight.” Want proof?

Already, we have seen Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter, which I abandoned the day he announced his purchase) break his own rules by retweeting a parody Kamala Harris campaign ad without labeling it as misleading. Segments of video in the altered content — such as Harris speaking to crowds, and general videos of her supporters — were used in a recent Harris campaign video on YouTube. Most notably, the altered content used a voiceover that sounds like the vice president, making it seem she is calling President Joe Biden senile and herself an incompetent presidential candidate.  There has also been a carload of false claims about Vice President Harris ranging from her not being eligible to run for POTUS due to citizenship issues, to having an affair in the 1990s with the then-married Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown (he had been separated from his wife for nearly a decade before they saw one another) to her not really being Black. Each of these claims (and more) has been fact-checked; all have been found to be total fabrications.

And lest we forget, in the eyes of MAGA-world her biggest negative is SHE LAUGHS TOO MUCH!  When, I ask you, was the last time we ever heard the Sir Donald of Queens laugh?

                 Nelumbo nucifera

In Sanskrit, Kamala, a very popular Indian name, is the lotus flower. Despite their delicate nature, these resolute plants can survive being submerged under ice and can even bloom in extreme heat. Some lotus plants can live for nearly a century! They symbolize both rebirth, (due to its blooming pattern of opening with the rising of the sun and closing as night falls), and persistence (because they're most commonly found in swampy, difficult terrain and emerge from the dark, muddy water looking pristine and beautiful).  

For the sake of our future as a freedom-loving democratic republic, let’s do everything in our power to ensure that 100 days from today, LOTUS will become POTUS.

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#998: The Patriot

From time to time I have had to put a nearly completed blog post into cold storage because history beckons. Such is the case this week. This week’s essay-that-was, The Theology of Ecology, may or may not be revived in the coming weeks or months. Obviously, President Joe Biden’s announcement that he is no longer running in 2024 and instead, wholeheartedly endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, is an event of epic proportions that must, of necessity, put anything else on the back burner. In thumbing through my mental files, I find that Biden’s selfless act - putting country and party above himself - finds but a single parallel in all American political history: G. Washington’s decision not to run for a third term . . . which was his for the asking. (Indeed, one of the truly inspired documents in all American history is Washington’s Farewell Address, a letter to the people co-written by Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.)

Like President Biden, the “Father of his country” decided that running for reelection (in Washington’s case, a third term) would simply not be the right and proper thing to do; it would set an undemocratic precedent. Unlike George Washington, of course, President Biden’s reelection was anything but a sure thing.  Similar to Washington, Biden decided that what is best for democracy and the country’s future is Donald Trump’s not winning the 2024 election. After more than half a century serving the American people as a Senator, Vice President, and President, Biden is both an idealist and a realist - a man who can read the tea leaves.  Once again, he has shown himself to be a class act.  It could not have been an easy thing to do.  He has long been both a leader of consequence and a man whose faith is apparent not so much through his words, as by his deeds.  

The differences between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in both temperament and personal makeup are about as stark and bipolar as any two people who have ever occupied the American political stage. Biden is as he has always been: a gentleman who was likely the first to call the former president upon hearing that he had been shot. Trump, on the other hand, shortly after learning that Biden was ending his re-election campaign, posted on social media a forceful attack denouncing his rival, calling him ignorant, mentally unfit, and the “very worst president in the history of the United States.” Over the next hours, he posted several more.  And just this morning the FPOTUS wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, “It’s a new day and Joe Biden doesn’t remember quitting the race yesterday!”  Who could ask for anything less? 

Although Joe Biden is going to continue his presidency until noon, January 20, 2025 (despite virtually every Republican urging that he resign today) I firmly believe that his place in history is assured; future historians will be very kind to him, his administration, and what he was able to accomplish in an era of bullies and bitter partisanship.

During his 3 ½ years as Chief Executive, Biden has revived the American economy to where it is the envy of the world. He has passed the most significant infrastructure legislation since the New Deal and a climate-change package that is unparalleled.  Our energy production is at an all-time high and we are, for the first time in G-d knows when, a net exporter of oil.  This is not to say that he has accomplished everything he set out to do; far from it. Part of the blame rests on the shoulders of the MAGA maniacs in Congress who, following their cult leader’s command, refuse to give Joe Biden any victories lest he and the Democrats be given credit in the next election.

As I near the end of this brief post, Vice President Kamala Harris has just arrived in Delaware for  her first visit to the national headquarters for what, until yesterday, was the Biden-Harris campaign.  In the first 24 hours since Joe Biden endorsed V.P. Harris for the Democratic nomination, dozens upon dozens of leading Democrats have also endorsed her (one notable exception: Barack Obama, who has a history of not issuing endorsements).  In those first 24 hours, the Harris campaign has raised more than $80 million.  Precisely what Donald Trump and his staff think about Harris becoming their opponent is anyone’s guess.  What we do know is that even before President Joe Biden’s long-speculated withdrawal from the presidential race, Trump floated the possibility of suing to block Democrats from having anyone other than Biden on the ballot in November.  But election administration and legal experts said the timing of Biden’s exit on Sunday makes it unlikely that any Republican ballot access challenges will succeed, with some calling the idea “ridiculous” and “frivolous.”  I have to wonder if the second debate will ever take place.  Imagine the scene: a former District Attorney and Attorney General debating a convicted felon . . . 

I doff my cap to Joe Biden for all he has accomplished; for significantly lowering the decibel level of public life and above all, for showing people from Maine to California what it means to be both a gentleman and a true patriot.    

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#987: How Many "Trials of the Century" Can one Century Have?

Back in the late 1990s, I taught an 8-week film class at Florida Atlantic University entitled “How Many ‘Trials of the Century’ Can One Century Have?” The course had a dual purpose: first, to introduce students to what, in my opinion, were 4 of the most prominent and salacious crimes/trials of the 20th century, and second, to screen a Hollywood film based on said crime/trial. The four cases and their subsequent films were:

Nathan Leopold (1904-1971) & Richard Loeb (1905-1936)

1.    The 1913 Leo Frank case, in which a young Northern Jew Leo Frank) was tried for the murder of a young Southern girl named Mary Phagen; 23 years later Warner Brothers produced a film based on the base called “They Won’t Forget,” starring Claude Rains, Edward Norris and newcomer Lana Turner. In real life, Frank, who was exonerated by Georgia Governor John M. Slaton, was taken out of his cell and lynched. His “trial of the century,” and subsequent murder led to the creation of the Anti-Defamation Committee.

2.    The 1924 Leopold and Loeb case in which 2 wealthy, brillant, Chicago-area teenagers who were already college graduates, killed 14-year old Bobby Frank, inspired by the concept of “the perfect crime” and philosopher Frederick Nietzsche's concept of the "superman" — the idea that it is possible to rise above good and evil. This horrendous crime and ensuing trial, were turned into the riveting 1959 film “Compulsion,” starring Orson Welles, Bradford Dillman  and and Dean Stockwell. (Yes, there was an earlier film based on this notorious trial, Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking 1948 '“Rope,” but this one was not screened for the course in question.

3.    The 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial,” in which a Tennessee high school science teacher was arrested for breaking the law by introducing his students to Charles Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution.”  This would be translated onto film by the phenomenally-talented Stanley Kramer as “Inherit the Wind,” starring those two magnificent cinematic warhorses Spencer Tracy and Fredric March.

4.    The Trial of Adolph Eichman for crimes against humanity.  The movie version “The Man in the Glass Booth“, was directed by Arthur Hiller from a novel by actor/writer Robert Shaw (“The Sting”), this highly fictionalized 1975 thriller portrays the trial of the Nazi’s chief originator of “The Final Solution.”  Starring Maximilian Schell (who was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor), Laurence Pressman and Lois Nettleton. 

There were also several so-called “Trials of the Century” that never made it into the movies, including:

• The 3 Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle trials in March/April 1922 in which the beloved (and soon to be both reviled and blacklisted) silent movie comedian stood accused of murdering young starlet Virginia Rappe at a booze-soaked party in San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel;

• The “Army-McCarthy” hearings, a 36-day television spectacular that held the attention of an estimated 80 million television viewers (many watching the trials at their local saloon or TV store) for an amazing 6 weeks from April 22 to June 17, 1954. This was the first time that television offered “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of a trial.  It served to be the Wisconsin senator’s undoing: within 3 years, the once-feared McCarthy took to the bottle, was censured by his colleagues and died at age 48.  Although no theatrical film has been made of this “trial of the century,” there is Emile de Antonia’s brilliant 1964 documentary, Point of Order!,  in which de Antonia culled from extant kinescopes what is, to this day, the definitive documentary record of America's first great televised political spectacle.

• The O.J. Simpson murder trial.  Need we say more?

So far, in the first 24 years of the twenty-first century, there have already been quite a few “Trials of the Century.”  Eerily, most of them have one thing in common: the name D-O-N-A-L-D T-R-U-M-P.  Among the most widely-covered and widely-viewed trials and Congressional hearings have been:

·       Trump’s dealings with the Russians during the 2016 presidential election (the Mueller hearings);

·       Trump’s first and second impeachment hearings, and

·       The hearings into the January 6, 2021 insurrection. 

All of these hearings were nationally televised and watched, at least in part, by millions of viewers.  But unlike say,  the Kefauver Hearings, which spent more than a year investigating organized crime in Interstate Commerce (1950-1951), and the Army-McCarthy hearings of the 1950s,  both of which were broadcast by precisely 2 national networks, the various  Trump hearings and now, trials, are and were accompanied by a plethora of on-air commentaries,  broadcast by numerous partisan cable outlets.  In essence, those who were and are, generally speaking, pro-Trump fans, can view coverage produced and carried by media that makes their hero the victim of a partisan witch-hunt, while those who are mostly anti-Trump (sitting on the fence . . . all 23 of them), can have their views and opinions both validated and buttressed by the cables they most commonly watch.   

Donald Trump’s current trial - in which he stands accused of paying off former adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money so that their alleged sexual relationship wouldn’t negatively affect his 2016 run for the White House - is rara avis: there are, by New York State law, no television cameras permitted inside the courtroom.  Out on the street . . . well, that’s a different story.  Hence, a judicial proceeding which has all the ingredients - conspiracy, money, the former POTUS and a porn star - could have and should have had the highest Nielsen ratings of all time. But no: the thousand-and-one talking heads and their teams of TV attorneys (many of whom are, in fact, former federal prosecutors) are reduced to talking about - rather than reporting on - the latest "trial of the century.   Reputable media figures spend the lion’s share of their on-camera mornings, afternoons, and evenings opining on whether or not the former president is sleeping through the trial due to his not being able to get his daily Diet Coke fix; on which Republican Vice Presidential wannabes (Senators Tuberville, Scott and Vance and who knows, perhaps Vivek Ramaswamy) and going to be with him in court; on why not a peep – let alone a supportive visit – from his wife; on whether the jury is going to like Michael Cohen; on whether or not Judge Juan Merchan, tiring of merely fining the FOTUS a grand every time he opens his big yap, will finally send him to jail . . . and on and on.

What precise effect this latest “trial of the century” will have on Donald Trump the candidate is anyone’s guess; the impact it is having on Donald Trump the man is already quite palpable. Never known for having the firmest grip on reality, the former president shows, in my humble opinion, increasing signs of moral and psychological disengagement. Is it any wonder? Here we have an out-of-shape, morbidly obese 77-year-old (he’ll turn 78 on June 14) who has long subsisted on little sleep, a diet of fast food burgers, fries, and at least a dozen Diet Cokes a day; a man who, despite wearing a mask of extreme bravado, sees himself as a perpetual target of victimization. Of late, he has been forced to sit in a courtroom without making a sound or showing outward emotion. In his mind’s eye, he is likely seeing himself in an orange jumpsuit, denied a staff to cater to his every whim and need, and - even worse - being told where to be and what to do all day long by people he considers to be his inferiors. (I have to believe he’s having nightmares about not being able to get his hair styled and colored every morning, noon, and night. God forbid someone takes a surreptitious snap of him without the bird’s nest atop his pate!) Is it any wonder that, when gets the chance to give a campaign speech, he rambles on for an hour and a half, now speaking about how the Chinese Government is putting together an army of Chinese immigrants here in the United States and then going off on a bizarre tangent, praising the fictional Hannibal Lecter (“The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner,”). Even his supporters started walking out on These are definitely not the thoughts or words of a man who has both feet on the ground . . . let alone one who is running for the most powerful job on earth.

So you tell me: how many more “trials of the century” is Donald Trump going to go through before this year . . .  let alone this decade . . . is over?

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#986: Déjà Vu All Over Again

We begin with a 1970 song by one of the rock world’s first “supergroups,” CSNY (Crosby, Stills, Nash Young). Entitled “Four Dead in Ohio,” it is a classic protest song Neil Young reportedly took less than an hour to compose.  For those of a certain age, it embodies a wide-ranging panoply of a  time long gone . . . and now, more than a half-century later, being born anew.  

In the spring of 1968, a whole lot of American college students - yours truly included - were spending less and less time in class and far far  more marching and protesting the war in Vietnam and the military draft.  Those of a certain age will well remember the chant “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” and “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, N.L.F. (the National Liberation Front) is gonna win!” Protests were alive on College campuses from Columbia to Berkeley, and from Michigan and Chicago to Harvard, Yale and Duke.  The spring was awash with sounds of Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Arlo Guthrie  and Country Joe and the Fish, the smell of pot, the antics of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, long hair, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Tom Hayden and eventually, the trial of The “Chicago 7” (or 8).

This generation of political activists may well have been the most productive in all American history.  Its fervency, activism, and memorable pranks (some will recall when Abbie Hoffman threw tons of money onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange or  when throngs of “Yippie” protestors nominated “Pigasus” [also known as “Pigasus the Immortal” and “Pigasus J. Pig”] for POTUS at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National

Convention). played a major in lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, forcing an American president (LBJ) to dramatically announce on nationwide TV that he would not run for reelection, and bred a generation of politically-minded parents and grandparents who to this day are still fighting the good  fight for climate change, and the rights of women, voters and those of color. In 1970, the year that CSNY came out with “Four Dead in Ohio,” things had become grim. President Richard Nixon (who was elected POTUS by turning the college students into the focus of his call for “law and order”), launched a “secret” bombardment of Cambodia, in which U.S. forces dropped up to 540,000 tons of bombs,  which in turn led to the deaths of an estimated 150,000 to 500,000 civilians. This time around, student protesters were livid times ten. It led to a massive march on Washington, the closing down of many universities, and death . . . the killings of students at Kent State in Ohio and Jacksonville State in Mississippi. The most poignant photo of the time was that of young Mary Vecchio kneeling in agony over the body of  student Jeffrey Miller, killed by the Ohio National Guard.

Eventually, the music grew dark (“The Eve of Destruction”), some of the protest leaders went into business (Jerry Rubin became a multimillion dollar stockbroker, and Drummond M. Pike founded the Tides Foundation, a “passthrough” for funding progressive political causes). Others went in to  mainstream politics (SDS founder Tom Hayden was elected to both the California Assembly and Senate, and Berkeley’s Ron Dellums served 13 terms in the United States Congress where he eventually rose to become Chair of the House Armed Services Committee). Many, like Columbia University SDS leader Mark Rudd,  became professors.  Crosby, Stills and Nash (minus Neil Young) continued turning out hit songs “Teach Your Children,” “Southern Cross,” “Love the One Your With”) record albums (“After the Storm,” :Live it Up,” "Looking Forward”)  and touring for the next half century.  In 2023, David Crosby passed away at age 81;  Stills and Nash are pretty much retired at, respectively, ages 79 and 82.  In 2010, Graham Nash was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to music and to charity;  in 2021, Neil Young sold 50% of his of the rights to his back catalog to a British investment company for an estimated $150 million.  The “baby” of the group, the now 78-year old Young still does an occasional concert. . . 

Many, many pages have been turned since the anti-war, anti-draft protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. Today, even though protests are once again being carried out mostly on the same college campuses as in an earlier time - Columbia to Yale, Michigan to Ohio, and Berkeley to UCLA -  the issues, the underlying narrative, the look, and the sound are radically different.  In the earlier era, mostly long-haired college-age students were protesting an optional, America-based war, they believed represented a miscarriage of justice and international law.  The earlier student leaders were, to a great extent, both literate and knowledgeable about the sides, and history of the conflict. Their protests were memorialized in tense lyrics accompanied by twanging guitars and tight harmonies.  Today, their grandchildren are hiding faces under keffiyehs, chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,”  “Globalize the Intifada” and calling for the utter destruction of Israel - America’s staunchest ally in the Middle East.  Unlike their grandparents, they show an appalling lack of knowledge about history and Middle-Eastern realpolitik  - of understanding the how, when and why of Israel’s creation, let alone the simultaneous "creation” of the "Palestinian people.”  And as for their musical memorialization?  Sorry, but rap and/or hip-hop just won’t cut it; for me its simply too atonal . . . full of sound and fury, signifying G-d only knows what.  Comparing hip-hop to CSNY is like holding Gravity’s Rainbow in one hand, The Great Gatsby in the other. 

  While I, an American Jew, cannot support and certainly do not condone the Netanyahu government’s overwhelmingly lethal response to the deadly October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas militants,  I - unlike many of the student protestors who liken Israel to the Third Reich - understand the enormity of the loss Israel suffered.  With a population of about 9.73 million, Israel is about one-34th the size of the United States, which has about 335.55 million people. This means that the reported death toll of more than 1,400 Israelis from the Hamas terrorist attacks is proportional to about 48,300 Americans. The official U.S. count of Americans who died on Sept. 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center was “a mere” 2,977.  These facts and statistics (which Twain referred to, respectively, as first, “stubborn things,” and then “pliable”) are either totally unknown or totally unimportant to the today’s protesters. 

      Terrorists Fighting Under the Banner of Hamas

Have tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of Muslims died at the hands of annihilators over the past decades?  Yes, of course.  But another truth unknown to the protesters who liken Israel to the Storm Troopers of World War II is this: that far, far more Arabs men, women and children (whether they be Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Syrian, Libyan, Sudanese,  or what today we term “Palestinian”) have been plundered, raped, tortured and murdered by fellow Muslims going to war under banners  bearing the names حماس (Hamas), حزب الله (Hezbollah), الشباب (Al-Shabab) or الفلسطينيحركة الجهاد الإسلامي (harakat aljihad al'iislamii alfilastinii - Palestinian Islamic Jihad) among others.  Have these students even thought about the fact that stockpiling weapons of death and destruction in, around and under schools, hospitals and mosques have virtually nothing to do with creating a Palestinian State and everything to do with the total annihilation and dismemberment of the Jewish State . . . not to mention growing rich in the process?  Oh, if only were like low-hanging fruit . . . ripe and ready for the picking.

In many regards, the protesters of the Viet Nam era and those of post-October 7 are similar: in their fervor, their anger and utter certainty that they are on the right side of history.  Both, according to those who find solace in conspiracy theories are - and were - accused of being brainwashed, useful idiots and dupes funded by immoral international cabals; Marxists (or Leninists, Stalinists, Maoist or Viet Minh) in the case of the 1960s and 70s) or billionaire backers of mayhem and disunion (most notably the omnipresent George Soros as well as President Joe Biden’s wealthiest backers) today. And while it is likely true that “outside agitators” - as they used to be known - play an important role in the campus protests of two different eras, it seems to me that today’s crop have swallowed far more bilge and blather than their grandparents.  Case in point: the demand that America’s colleges and universities punish the “Jews and Zionists” by divesting their endowments of any and all Israel-related holdings.  Here, the students are doing the bidding of the “BDS Movement” (Boycott, Divestment and Sanction) which “works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.”  To listen to the students, one would imagine that Columbia, Harvard, Chicago, Duke, Stanford and Berkeley (among many others) have extensive holdings in Israeli companies - most notably those that manufacture weapons of war.  Truth to tell, this assumption is, as Grannie Annie would have it, “full of canal water.”  According to a densely researched, fully-vetted piece in last Friday’s Washington Post, University endowments show few signs of direct Israel, defense holdings.  From the little I know about the subject, the lion’s share of any holdings in Israeli businesses are likely to be in the area of pharmaceutical/medical high-tech.  I wonder how many protestors’ parents and grandparents are alive because of medicines and/or medical devices that were created in Israel . . . ?

There is one ”Déjà Vu All Over Again” that is already causing me sleepless nights: the upcoming Democratic National Convention. As mentioned, as in 1968, it will once again be held in Chicago. Some will remember the opening lyrics from CSNY’s “Chicago”

Though your brother's bound and gagged
And they've chained him to a chair
Won't you please come to Chicago
Just to sing

In a land that's known as freedom
How can such a thing be fair
Won't you please come to Chicago
For the help that we can bring

We can change the world
Re-arrange the world
It's dying ... to get better

Yes, as ever, CSNY provided a tuneful harmony for a historic event . . . which ultimately became an utter debacle.   Outside the International Amphitheatre, thousands of students, deeply aggrieved and in angry mourning for the deaths of Dr. Martin Luthor King, Jr. and Senator  Robert F. Kennedy, took to the streets, only to be met by Mayor Richard Daily’s armed police force (we called them “Storm Troopers”).  Inside the Hall, Democratic regulars waved placards proclaiming fealty for both Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Mayor Daily.  What got the lion’s share of the media coverage wasn’t the goings-on inside the building; it was the urban warfare that Walter Cronkite (CBS), David Brinkley (NBC), and Frank Reynolds (ABC) gave near round-the-clock coverage to.  It turned enough Americans against the Democrats that Republican nominee Richard Nixon (who had lost a presidential race to JFK in 1962) beat  Humphrey 43.4%-42.7%.  Had it not  been for 3rd party candidate George Wallace (who captured nearly 10 million popular and 46 electoral votes), Nixon’s “law and order” would have swept him to a landslide victory.  Nixon, of  course, would then go on to oversee a ramping up of the war in Vietnam, the bombing of Cambodia and eventually the most corrupt and unlawful administration in all American history.  Both he and his Vice President (Spiro Agnew) would resign their respective offices in order to avoid being imprisoned.  Arguably, the students who descended upon Chicago played a large role in that election.

The Déjà Vu All Over Again is, of course, what role our modern-day protestors might have on the outcome of the 2024 election.  If they come to Chicago loaded for bear, shouting, screaming and enacting scenes of urban theatre in front of  not a mere 3, but a thousand-and-one social media outlets, some proclaiming RFK, Jr. to be their champion, we could well see Donald Trump’s “law and order” campaign be swept into office by the thinnest of margins . . . ultimately leading to an administration so corrupt, so anarchic and autocratic as to make what  happened during the Nixon years  seem like a lawful paradise. And if, G-d forbid, this occurs, it will once again be the victory of the craven and corrupt over America’s youth.

I began this piece with Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young in their role as the musical chroniclers of generational angst.  I end with CSNY (with an assist from the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia on pedal steel  guitar) in their role as prophets of hope and understanding: 

                                                                                       Teach, your children well

You, who are on the road
Must have a code you try to live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a goodbye

Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
Feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by

Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you

And you, of tender years
Can't know the fears your elders grew by
Help them with your youth
They seek the truth before they can die

Teach your parents well
Their children's hell will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by

Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you

Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you

Ooh, and know they love you
And know they love you, yeah
And know they love you.

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#985: As Goes Florida, So Goes . . . ?

Mark Twain, that most revered and authentic of all American writers, had the ability to cloak profundity in the garment of wit, better than anyone who ever took pen to paper. And, like all true geniuses, he made it look oh so easy and utterly natural . . . like Ted Williams swinging a bat or Lord Olivier playing King Lear.  Twain’s great gift was used to entertain, to make us laugh and above all, to make the reader pause and think.   Yes, some of his chapters and paragraphs are, by today’s political standards, decidedly “un-PC.”  But this should by no means keep anyone from drinking deeply from the well of his artistry.  The man really, truly, understood the human condition with all of its wens and warts. 

My five all-time favorite Twain aphorisms are:

• The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

• Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love Truly. Laugh uncontrollably. Never regret anything that makes you smile.

• A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn no other way.

• The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.  And, to my way of thinking, the best of the bunch:

• Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

  I can hear you asking “What in the world do the best of Mark Twain’s epigrams have to do with the title of this week’s blog As Goes Florida, So Goes . . .”  As Grandpa Doc would say, “Vell . . . I’ll tell ‘ya.”  (In truth, Doc didn’t have an accent; he occasionally would adopt one to make a point or begin a story).  The story here is that I was doing my research for this week’s blog, which  was meant to discuss some of the wackier, inane new laws passed by our overwhelmingly MAGA-supporting legislature and signed by Governor “Rhonda Santis.” In the midst of reading some of several of the most noxious bills, I found myself wanting to know if all this crappola was keeping people from moving to the Sunshine State.  This query quickly expanded to the question of which states were gaining and which were losing, the greatest numbers of people over the past two years.  Coming upon an article on the topic published in MarketWatch.com (a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp, along with The Wall Street Journal and Barron's), I learned that the top 3 states losing people were:

  • California (A net migration of -407, 633)

  • New York ( −283,792) and

  • New Mexico ( -177,710), while the 3 biggest gainers were:

  • Florida ( +205,163) 

  • Texas ( +144,032) and 

  • North Carolina ( +99,406).

The rest of the states reporting net positive migration are, in order, Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Nevada and Idaho.  With the possible exceptions of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, the rest of the positive-migration states are solidly, irredeemably, hardcore MAGA in their politics and legislatures. (I for one refuse to call it ‘the MAGA wing’  of the Republican Party for I, unlike many, cannot find a solitary remnant of what used  to be nicknamed the GOP . . . they are all MAGA).  And, from where I sit, this bodes poorly for the future of politics in these United States.  For MAGA-controlled legislatures, serving under MAGA-supporting governors, who appoint MAGA-istic Federalist Society judges, can jointly enact just about any measure they please coming out of the autocratic playbook coauthored by the  likes of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Susie Wiles, and Stephen Miller.  

Think I’m going a bit too far?  Well, consider just a few of the things happening here in Florida, the state I have been hanging out in since July 6, 1982:

• We have a state Surgeon General/Secretary of Health, Joseph Lapado, M.D., PhD., who is anti COVID and MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines - among other things - and has totally politicized medicine here in the Sunshine State.  As someone who has been gainfully employed on two of the best Institutional Review Boards in America for nearly 30 years, and have reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of clinical trials in the fields of infectious diseases, oncology and epidemiology, I am simply amazed (and scared witless) at the man’s ability to place partisan politics way, way ahead of provable science and medicine.  Whatever happened to “First, do no harm?”

• Here in Florida, as of July, 2023, we have a gun law which allows  Florida residents to carry concealed weapons without benefit of a license - let alone taking a single safety course - with impunity.  This is perfectly in keeping with the MAGA reading of the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment; they firmly believe than any limitation on guns is unconstitutional.

• Just this past week, the 63rd anniversary of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, (a failed invasion of Cuba supported by the CIA) Gov. DeSantis signed a bill (SB 1264) requiring the teaching of “the dangers and evils of communism” in Florida public schools from grades 1-12.  Coming on the heels of so many Republicans in both the House and Senate voting against sending aid to the Ukraine - which is fighting against the Communist expansion of Putin’s Russia - one wonders if DeSantis and his Florida colleagues are living back in the 1950s, when fighting Communism and individuals they deemed to be Communists - AKA “liberals” or “progressives” - was the sine qua non of “true" Americanism. 

• Less than 2 weeks ago, DeSantis signed a bill into law allowing “volunteer chaplains” to counsel students in traditional public and charter schools,  despite warnings from a pastors group, the ACLU and the Satanic Temple that it would violate the First Amendment.  In signing the bill, the governor said: “There are some students [who] need some soul prep, and that can make all the difference in the world. And so these chaplains … come in and provide services.” DeSantis said the law, set to go effect in July, would stand up to court challenges because the program was voluntary and parents would have to provide consent for their children to meet with the chaplains. “No one’s being forced to do anything, but to exclude religious groups from campus, that is discrimination,” he said. “You’re basically saying that God has no place. That’s wrong. That’s not what our Founding Fathers intended.”  And this guy is a graduate of Yale and earned a law degree at Harvard!  His “understanding” of the Founders and the Constitution’s 1st Amendment guarantees is steeped not in knowledge, but in partisan politics.  (n.b.: The new law uses the title ‘chaplain’ but requires none of the specialized training that health care facilities, the military, and most prisons require of chaplains.)

• Florida ranks second (behind Texas) in the greatest number of banned books. In the most recent ranking by World Population Review, the Sunshine State instituted bans on 565 books in 21 of the state’s school districts.  Governor DeSantis is one of the main people leading the charge against called “critical race theory” (CRT). Many of the books that he and his acolytes have targeted have to do with issues related to race. It is important to note that critical race theory is not taught outside of upper-level college and law school classes.

• Florida ranks just behind Michigan in the states with the highest annual premiums for auto insurance; it is the 4th highest in the cost of homeowner’s insurance (if you can find it), and 4th most expensive for annual healthcare coverage.  

• And to add injury to insult, in less than 48 hours, Florida’s new 6-week abortion ban will go into effect. This past April 1, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the state Constitution's privacy protections do not extend to abortion, overturning decades of legal precedent and effectively triggering the more restrictive law.  On November 5, 2024, Florida voters will vote on a citizen-initiated Constitutional Amendment (#4) which will legalize abortion.  Its text states, in part: “The initiative would provide a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability (estimated to be around 24 weeks) or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider.” The fact that proactive citizens managed to collect more than 1 million signatures  to place this measure on the November ballot is the good news.  The not-so-good news? It will take a supermajority for it to pass, and there is already a measure on the November ballot that would increase the supermajority voter approval requirement for constitutional amendments from 60% to 66.67%. 

So,  keeping all the above in mind, why do so many people pick up and move to Florida?  For the sunshine?  Because it has no state income tax?  Because the governor has his own militia? You tell me.  If this is the future of even half of America, we are in dire straits.  It used to be said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek that "As goes New Hampshire, so goes the rest of the nation.”  What the surreality that is currently Florida portends for the rest of the nation is anyone’s guess.

Let us give the final word to Mark Twain (from his Autobiography, Vol. 1): “Look at the tyranny of party -- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty -- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes -- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction.”

Coyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#794:Superbowl LVIII: Commercials and Pigskins, Conspiracies and Politics

Ah, Superbowl Sunday! Chiefs vs Niners. Las Vegas Nevada’s Allegiant Stadium. Quarterbacks Brock Purdy (the very last pick of the 2022 NFL Draft) and Chief’s Patrick Mahomes (the 10th pick of the 2017 NFL Draft). Chief’s Tight End Travis Kelce and Niner Running Back Christian McCaffrey. The Taylor Swift/Kelce conspiracy. Singer/Dancer/Roller Skater Usher leading the halftime show. Country icon Reba McEntire singing the National Anthem and actor Daniel Durant signing the national anthem in an American Sign Language performance. Commercials, commercials, commercials.  And oh yes, 60 minutes of gigantic multi-millionaires over an oval pigskin  . . . 

If the above causes you to think that I am not a football fan . . . guess again.  Although I may not be thoroughly in to the NFL as I am MBL (Major League Baseball), professional football (minus the all that irresistible force/immoveable object stuff and the future chronic traumatic encephalopathy it will likely cause) is still pretty exciting to watch.  And heck, what California kid could resist rooting for the NIners - historically, the first professional sports team in the state?  (For the record, the first sports team in state history was the Los Angeles Angels, opened up shop way back in 1892 and played in the four-team California League.)

Even if you’re not a football fan, there are all those commercials. Already, a listing of what will likely be the most talked-about ads. First and foremost, a 30-second spot will cost the advertiser  $7 million. And this is minus all the production costs, which can run into the tens of millions. Some of the ads we should be on the lookout for are:

• Kris Jenner for Oreo

• Jenna Ortega for Doritos

• David and Victoria Beckham with the Friends cast for UberEats

• Ice Spice for Starry

• Chris Pratt for Pringles

• Arnold Schwarzenegger for State Farm

• Tom Brady for BetMGM

• Lionel Messi for Michelob Ultra

• Kate McKinnon (“Weird Barbie”) for Hellman’s Mayo and

• The Scorseses for Squarespace.

One concern that hasn’t a huge deal about running not one, but two spots is FCAS - the “Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism.” During the pre-game show, FCAS will air the following 60 second spot:

The main ad features FCAS founder (and New England Patriots’ owner) Robert Kraft speaking  with Clarence B. Jones, attorney, and the former personal counsel, advisor, draft speech writer and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Jones is a scholar in residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute at Stanford University.  (Jones, who turned 93 just about a month ago, is also the step father of American Actor Richard Schiff, best-known for playing Toby Ziegler on The West Wing.) This spot shows the precise moment when Mr. Kraft shared with Dr. Jones news that there was going to be a commercial aired during the Super Bowl on anti-Semitism:

As you can see, Dr. Jones’ response is quite emotional. Please also notice that, like Mr. Kraft, is wearing an iconic blue square “Stop Anti-Semitism” lapel pin, which is the symbol of FCAS. This ad comes at the perfect time; the one day in the year when more people watch television than any other. This means that along with ads for Oreos, UberEats and Doritos, men, women and children of all stripes will spend even a few seconds contemplating the sin known as anti-Semitism. It is needed now, more than ever.

Having watched a sneak preview of FCAS’s ads more than a half-dozen times, I am reminded of one of history’s greatest and most necessary of aphorisms . . . courtesy of a truly wise man named Hillel. For in the Jewish compendium called Pirke Avot (“The Ethics of the Sages”) Hillel states”

אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי:

“eem ayn ahnee li, me li?  ukh’sh’ahnee l’ahtz-mi, mah ahnee?  v’eem lo ahkh-shav, ay-mah-tie?

Namely: “If I am not for myself, who shall be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Imagine that: a Super Bowl containing an eternal message to ponder . . .

Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#968: Don't Know Much About History

Political campaigns - especially on the presidential level - are exercises in exhaustion; tense, highly-scripted affairs in which a single slip up, questionable facial expression or obvious misstatement can exact more damage than a 4th-quarter 15-yard penalty or a three-base throwing error in the bottom of the 9th with no outs. Those possessing robust political memories will easily recall that in the 1960 televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon, Richard Nixon’s sweaty upper-lip and generally wan appearance likely lost him the election; ever the showbiz professional, JFK had spent several days soaking up  rays in Hyannis Port and wearing professionally-applied stage makeup prior to the televised debate. By comparison, Nixon looked like a man running a fever.

Then there was 1976, when incumbent POTUS Gerald R. Ford lost his race against Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter when he, Ford, flatly stated “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” (Of course the Soviets did, in fact, occupy much of the region at the time.) Or the 2004 Dean Scream, in which former Vermont Governor Howard Dean emitted a high-volume, high-pitched scream of ebullience (complete with matching body language) while speaking before a group in Iowa.  That scream not only tossed his presidential aspirations on to the trash heap, but essentially brought his national political career to a crashing end.

               The “Dean Scream” (2004)

Indeed, running for political office is not an activity for sissies.  In theory - if not in actual practice - the requisite ingredients for success are knowledge and education; a modicum of grace, charisma; the ability to connect with least part of the electorate; indefatigable drive; the ability to think on one’s feet; and at least the appearance of compassion, humility and charm.  And oh yes, it occasionally helps to have both a platform and a message.  In today’s hyper cyber political world, the platform is, generally speaking, more important to Democrats than Republicans, and visa-versa when it comes to the message.  Unless, of course, one’s platform is an ad nauseum expression of who you or what you are against, while obnoxiously pinning meaningless labels – “Dangerous atheistic Leftists,” “Marxists,” “Socialists,” “Nazis,” or “Wannabe Dictators.” on the other. 

Up until a few days ago, it seemed as if former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley might be the only credible alternative to Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.  Not that she really stood a snowball’s chance in Hades of becoming the party’s nominee; just that she seemed like a a breath of fresh air when compared to the “Man of a Thousand Nasty Nicknames.”  Throughout the sans Trump Republican debates, she came off as poised, easily able to defend herself, reasonably knowledgeable about the issues, charismatic, and not  prone to stepping on her own tongue.  Of course she made it clear that she was a card-carrying conservative, but one with far more compassion and far less craziness than the “leader of the pack.”  Then came last week’s dumber-than-dirt gaff during a town hall forum in New Hampshire, when one of the members of the audience asked her what she believed caused the Civil War:

For those without access to the above YouTube capture, she began her answer with a seemingly humorous quip “Well, don’t come with an easy question.” Then, pausing and pacing the stage, she talked about the role of government, replying that it involved “basically how the government was going to run” and “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do”. She continued with a by-the-book state’s rights opinion: “I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And we will always stand by the fact that I think the government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people, “It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.” At this point, the questioner said to Governor Haley: “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.” This prompted a retort from Haley. “What do you want me to say about slavery?” she asked. 

The next day (Thursday 12/28) amid wide reporting of her response and in apparent damage limitation mode, Haley said in a radio interview: “Of course the civil war was about slavery.”

According to the Washington Post, Haley told The Pulse of NH radio show: “I want to nip it in the bud. Yes, we know the Civil War was about slavery. But more than that, what’s the lesson in all this? That freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people. That’s the blessing of America. That was a stain on America when we had slavery. But what we want is never relive it. Never let anyone take those freedoms away again.”

 My immediate response to Haley’s comments on “the role of government . . . and the rights of the people” was “Hey Nikki, you want government out of the lives of individuals . . . unless they are women wishing to control their own bodies, members of the LGBT+ community, impoverished individuals or families, anyone in need of assistance, or just generally poor.” This line of reasoning - or lack thereof - intends to say that being gay, poor, a woman who has been raped and a host of other things is a matter of free will. Sorry Nikki, that’s simply not the case.

                   Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

The only major Republican to slam Haley’s response to the question of whether slavery had anything to do with the Civil War was, not surprisingly, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who began 2023 as a rising star in the Republican firmament, and ended it running a distant third. DeSantis was quick to criticize Haley at a campaign stop in Iowa campaign stop Thursday morning, telling reporters that she, Haley, is "not a candidate that's ready for prime time. . . .The minute that she faces any kind of scrutiny, she tends to cave." DeSantis said. He then continued with: "I think that that's what you saw yesterday. Not that difficult to identify and acknowledge the role slavery played in the Civil War, and yet that seemed to be something that was really difficult."

The Florida governor, has been instrumental in radically altering how the Civil War, the eventual abolition of slavery and much American history is to be taught in the Sunshine State. Among his more unreconstructed lesson plans for Florida’s students is teaching that “in many instances, slaves developed skills which, in some instances[sic], could be applied for their personal benefit." Just the other day members of his overwhelmingly conservative legislature begun pushing legislation that will fine and punish local leaders for removing memorials to the Confederacy.

 What’s going on here? Do Nikki Haley, who grew up and was educated in South Carolina (the first state to secede from the Union), and Governor DeSantis, (who earned a degree in history from Yale in 2001), really know so little about American history (among other things)? If that is so, we have every right to assume their favorite song is Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World, which begins with the words:

Don't know much about History
Don't know much Biology
Don't know much about a Science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be 

 If so, than the “You” that Cooke’s lyrics are aimed would have to be the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.  

Outside of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Representatives Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, about-to-become former Representative Ken Buck and about-to-become former Senator Mitt Romney, most of Donald Trump’s Cabinet and the founder, donors and members of the Lincoln Project, (who has already endorsed President Biden), few prominent, office-holding Republicans have spoken out - let alone found fault with - the putative head of their party.  And it’s not because Trump is, unbeknownst to the rest of us, a top-notch leader with a sound mind and a solid record of accomplishment . . . outside of passing the largest tax-cut for the hyper-wealthy American history.  No, for behind closed doors, the men and women who remain publicly silent, likely know precisely what kind of toxic political excrescence he really is.  By their silence they are putting an overwhelming amount of cowardice on display; seemingly preferring a "leader” who bills himself as "your retribution,” over a man like Joe Biden who, although far from perfect, at least has a fifty—year political track record of being on the side of the angels. 

What do all these poltroons of political mediocrity expect in exchange for their silence?  Getting reelected and then sitting on their fat derrieres doing virtually nothing for the nation for another two or four years?  Filling up their saddlebags for the day when they return to the private sector?  They are the shame of the nation, who collectively seek to prove that Sinclair Lewis was wrong: “It Can Happen Here.”  (Then too, perhaps the illusion to the Nobel Prize-winning Lewis is lost on them; they don’t know much about literature either.)    

                                                                           Don't know much about geography
                                                                           Don't know much trigonometry                         
                                                                           Don't know much about algebra
                                                                           Don't know what a slide rule is for

                                                                           But I do know one and one is two
                                                                        And if this one could be with you
                                                                   What a wonderful world this would be 
                                                                             (Written by: Herb Alpert, Lou Adler, Sam Cooke)

It’s a great song . . . when sung by Sam Cooke, but a horrifying reality when hummed by Trump’s legionnaires. 

 Copyright2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#967: A Few Questions for Yeshua bar Yosef haNotzri (Jesus the Son of Joseph the Nazarite)

         Jesus of Nazareth - as he possibly looked 

First and foremost, Reb. Yeshua, please permit me to wish you a חג מולד שמח (chag molahd samayach) - Hebrew for “Merry Christmas.” I know that for some, it’s got to seem a bit we outré, perhaps even an act of chutzpah, for a rabbi to be addressing himself to Jesus, the son of Joseph, on December 25th. But that’s the way things go. Believe me, this blog is neither an attempt at effrontery, nor a diatribe against the religion (נַצְרוּת - natzrut - Hebrew for "Christianity) which bears your name.  And while we’re at it, please do pardon me for occasionally translating a Hebrew word or expression into English.  I am fully aware that as a lifelong Jew, your father, Yosef, would have taught you to pray in the Holy Tongue. But from what I’ve learned over the years, you like most Jews today, didn’t speak it: your lay tongue was either Aramaic or Koine Greek.  

Today, Christians all over the world celebrate your birthday, despite the fact that the precise date of your conception, let alone birth, are at best, mere guesswork.  Having annotated the Constantinople manuscript of seder olam rabbah (“The Great Order of the World” by the 2nd century tanna R. Yose ben Halafta) for my rabbinic thesis back in the late 1970s, I remember the great difficulties besieging ancient scholars on trying to figure out how old the world was, and to fix an historically accurate date for your birth.  The best they could settle on was not based on the Gregorian (i.e. January-December) calendar, aaand for a simple reason: that calendar did not go into popular usage until 1582 C.E. following the papal bull Inter gravissimas (Latin for “In the Gravest Concern”) issued by Pope Gregory XIII. In your time and place, you and your neighbors would have been using the Jewish calendar and as such, the date of your birth would have been, likely, the 5th or 6th of the month Cheshvan in the year 3756. 

The luach (the Jewish calendar) is a complicated hodge-podge wherein the years go according to the sun (solar) and the months by the moon (lunar). When held up against the utter consistency of Pope Gregory’s calendar, your birthday falls on a different day (and sometimes, different month) each year. In 2023, the 5th/6th of Cheshvan occurs on either December 20 or 21; next year it will be either the 6th or 7th of November.  Moreover, nowhere in the Christian Bible (which Christians refer to as the “New” Testament) is there a single reference or mention about observing Christmas on December 25; this would not come about for several centuries.    

During a long life of study and reflection, I have managed to make my way through the Christian Bible from cover to cover - sometimes in Aramaic, sometimes in Latin or Greek, and always in both English and Hebrew.  In this way I could discover and compare for myself the similarities of theme, narrative structure and worldview with the Hebrew Bible (in Hebrew, the תנ"ך [Tamakh], in English, the “Old” Testament).  It has also permitted me to see the vast differences between the 2 holy texts.

Among the greatest - and most obvious - similarities are the two tomes’ stress on moral action: on feeding the hungry and freeing the captive, of not doing unto others that which we would never want done to ourselves (that’s the decidedly Jewish take) and doing justice, loving mercy and living our lives with humility. It never ceases to amaze - and deeply trouble - me how so many self-identified “Christian Nationalists,” people who firmly believe that the Holocaust never happened (but nonetheless should once again be carried out), seek to do it in your name.  Or that those who push for the dismemberment of programs that feed the starving, heal the sick or provide shelter to the homeless, are justifying their civic cruelty and Dickensian hardheartedness in your name - by referring to themselves as “G-d fearing Christians.”  I guess they have never read or contemplated your words: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” 

Among the greatest - and again, most obvious - differences between the two testaments are how the two texts deal with the universality of the differing religious traditions.  in Judaism, there is next to nothing said about going out and converting other people to the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Oh yes, we do have a complete set of laws and guidelines for bringing people into the fold . . . for those who of their own free will seek to convert.  Our feeling has long been that Judaism is the best religion there is .  . . for Jews.  On the contrary - and as I have come to understand it - going out and bringing new converts into the fold vis-à-vis many approaches to Christianity is akin to a mitzvah - a religious commandment.  As Jews, we have studiously avoided spending our time growing our religion.

Another great difference between Judaism and Christianity is that, in the main, we are far more devoted to the deed, rather than the creed. We don’t follow G-d’s commandments for the sake of gaining eternal life; we follow them because it is the right thing to do.

For as long as I can remember, I have wondered how it is that many Christians - of many different approaches, sects and stripes - could carry out horrific acts of hatred, murder, mayhem and torture in yourname; you, Yeshu bar Yosef haNotzri, who lived virtually every minute of your life as a Jew. “Don’t they know?” I can still hear in my 6- or 8-year-old voice “that Jesus was a Jew?’” It always troubled me that every painting or representation of Jesus I ever saw (which is actually against strict Jewish law) portrayed you as a blond, blue-eyed Aryan . . . looking ever so much like Max Von Sydow, Jeffrey Hunter, Victor Garber (who is both Jewish and gay) and Willem Dafoe. 

Today, I wonder how many people would opt not to sit next to a person on an airplane if he looked like the picture at the beginning of this essay.  (That computer-generated photo is An image of Jesus created by Richard Neave, a former forensic artist from the University of Manchester, using forensic investigation methods and archaeological evidence.)

Leet’s face it: the historic Yeshu bar Yosef looked a lot darker than, say, Joaquin Phoenix, who hails from a Hungarian-Jewish family and played You in 2018’s Mary Madelene.  Racism and anti-Semitism are rife in our age, and much of it is being done in your name.  And herein lies my question.

Dear Yeshu: what in the how do you cope with a diabolical neo-Nazi like the 25-year old Nick Fuentes, who vows to dish out the “death penalty” for Jewish people if Donald Trump is re-elected.    This is the same Nick Fuentes who not so long ago dined at Mar-a-Lago with “Ye” (rapper Kanye West) and received plaudits from the putative Republican nominee for presidency in 2024. My question here is how are we supposed to convince those who really, truly believe they are your most fervent followers that seeking to destroy the Jewish people means that they wish to destroy you?  How can you or your modern-day disciples come to understand that they are spending so many of their waking hours organizing and urging against the very principles of love, tolerance and acceptance upon which you preached. You never asked anyone to deify you, but to merely follow your teachings. Indeed, how can we help you to safeguard your people from destruction?

Fortunately, there is a group called Evangelicals for Democracy, which works tirelessly to communicate the fact that: “As evangelicals, we believe that protecting democracy is being obedient to Jesus’ commandment to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Therefore, we believe that every person in our society has an equal voice and representation in their governance. We also believe that access to democracy is undercut by “Christian nationalism,” which confuses the Gospel with the American state and promotes identity politics.” They are doing their best to spread this noxious concept of identity politics and push the likes of Nick Fuentes, Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Green and their trolls off the highway of American politics.

 Dear Yeshu bar Yosef: We neither have to accept everything you said nor everything you believed in order to join hands with you in a quest to rid our nation and our times against the scourge of hatred. For when all is said and done, we are family . . .

Wishing you and yours a Happy, Merry Everything!

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

#965: Oh What a Week . . .

Without question, the past 168 hours have contained more news stories and headlines of historical importance, drama, tragedy and trepidation than any in recent memory. Some of these stories and headlines concern people, places and events that will be prominently noted in history books so long as people read and write history. Other stories and events will ultimately become nothing more than mere historic asterisks like 3’7” Eddie Gaedel, the smallest player to appear in a Major League Baseball game. (Gaedel, who had signed a one-day contract with the St. Louis Browns, walked on 4 pitches tossed by Detroit Tiger southpaw Bob Cain, and then was pulled for pinch runner Jim Delsing. The only people who remember Gaedel and that August 19, 1951 stunt some 72 after his single at-bat, are undoubtedly the geekiest of baseball aficionados.)

This past week (168 hours) has seen the passing of Dr. Henry Kissinger, America’s first Jewish Secretary of State at age 100. Unlike Gaedel, Dr. Kissinger will be long remembered. (Actually, America’s first Jewish Secretary of State was Judah P. Benjamin, known to many historians as “The Brains of the Confederacy.” The one-time planter, slave-owner, America’s highest-paid attorney and United States senator from Louisiana, Benjamin variously served as Jefferson Davis’ Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State; at war’s end, he wound up his professional life moving to England, where he read British law and rose to become Queen’s Counsel. He is buried at the famed Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, not far from the graves of Jim Morrison, Marcel Marceau and Edith Piaf.)

Without question, Dr. Kissinger was a titan. Over a span of nearly 60 years, he served, advised and counseled 9 different presidents and even more Secretaries of State. Considering the vast differences of these men and women (Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton) in terms of intelligence, experience, worldliness and weltanschauung (world-view), this is a rather remarkable record. On the plus side, Kissinger, perhaps even more than Richard Nixon, was responsible for bringing China and America closer together; back then it was called “Ping Pong Diplomacy. Unquestionably, his biggest, most grievous negative would be the secret bombing of then-neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War. During that war, Kissinger and then-President Nixon ordered clandestine bombing raids on Cambodia, in an effort to flush out Viet Cong forces in the eastern part of the country.

It should never be forgotten that the US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Cambodia from 1965-1973. (For context, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during the whole of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki.). Until the end of his life, Kissinger maintained that the bombing was aimed at the Vietnamese army inside Cambodia, not at the country itself. The number of people killed by those bombs is not known, but estimates range from 50,000 to upwards of 150,000.

We shall not - G-d willing - see his kind again for a long, long time.

This week also sees the passing of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court. A rancher’s daughter from Arizona, she earned a law degree at Stanford, tried to get a job after the passing the California Bar, only to be told that perhaps she should lower her sights and look for work as a legal secretary.  Eventually, she became an icon for future generations of women in the law. A legal conservative - though not as we think of them today, she served during a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket.

Although William H. Rehnquist, her Stanford Law School classmate, served as chief justice during much of her tenure, the Supreme Court during that crucial period was often called the “O’Connor court,” and Justice O’Connor was referred to, quite accurately, as “the most powerful woman in America.” Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.

That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no mere coincidence, given the close attention she paid to current events and the public mood.  Among her most important decisions were:

• In Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA (2004) she said the Environmental Protection Agency could step in and take action to reduce air pollution under the Clean Air Act when a state conservation agency fails to act.

• In Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran (2002) O’Connor upheld state laws giving people the right to a second doctor’s opinion if their HMOs tried to deny them treatment.

• In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) she broke with Chief Justice Rehnquist and other opponents of a woman’s right to choose as part of a 5-4 majority in affirming Roe v. Wade.

• In Hunt v. Cromartie (2001) Justice O’Connor affirmed the right of state legislators to take race into account to secure minority voting rights in redistricting.

Returning to the land of the living, this past week had bit of a unique first: a televised prime-time “debate” between a sitting governor and presidential candidate and another governor who may become a presidential candidate in another 4 years. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and California’s Gavin Newsom spent their ninety minutes on a well-designed stage taking shots at one another about banning books, who has the greatest tax burden (Florida has no income tax), the price of homeowners insurance (Florida’s is the highest in the nation) and who gets along best with Disney. DeSantis’ major advantage was having Fox News’ Entertainer Sean Hannity throwing him softball question whenever Newsome backed the smaller man into a corner.  One positive thing to say about the two: man, do they have great heads of hair!

At one point, as both men were talking over each other and the volume got louder, Newsom played his best Joe Cool imitation, threw his hands open, turned to DeSantis and said with a smile, "Hey, Ron, relax." The one thing DeSantis may have learned from the evening’s 90-minute tussle is that it’s next to impossible to get under the skin of a man who has nothing to lose. As soon as the 90 minutes were up, a panel of Fox hosts spent hours declaring him the obvious and overwhelming winner, while the major cable outlets decided not to report on it until the next day. When they did, a clear majority yawningly gave Newsom a collective thumbs-up.

Donald Trump spent last week further outlining what he has in the works for the next 4 years should he be elected. Besides making personal loyalty to him the key qualification for getting a position in the federal government (hasn’t he ever heard of the Civil Service?) and reversing the “weaponization” of both the DOJ and DOD, the FPOTUS doubled down on his calls to replace the Affordable Care Act, (“Obamacare”) if he’s elected president again. “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” Trump said in a pair of late-night posts on social media.

It seems that he has gotten his hand on an old speech . . . or has forgotten that back when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate they failed to do precisely what he is once again promising to do. Interestingly, only a handful of prominent Republicans have voiced anything even approaching approval of the plan. The reason? The ACA now scores highly with most Americans. As Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., reminded his colleagues just the other day, reopening the ACA fight in 2025 would require Republicans to craft a replacement plan ahead of time, which they have never done.

Over on Capitol Hill, President Biden’s son Hunter played a masterful game of political chess with the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, which has been misspending tons of time and taxpayer money in their attempt to impeach President Biden.  Hunter’s attorneys “castled” Committee Chair James Comer by telling the Kentucky Republican that their client, whom the committee recently subpoenaed (along with Hunter’s former business associate Rob Walker, and the president’s brother James Biden) would be glad to appear . . . but only if the hearings are held in public.  Needless to say, Comer, his committee colleagues and a clear majority of the Republican caucus are dead set against the demand.  Why?  Because the public would quickly learn that when it comes to real, honest to G-d charges against the Bidens, in the immortal words of Gertrude Stein, "There’s no there there.”  In a letter to Comer, Hunter Biden’s attorney,  Abbe Lowell. wrote: “We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public.”  Comer et al realize that Hunter and Abbe Lowell have got ‘em in checkmate.  They just cannot abide by it.  Of course, this does not mean that they will discontinue the current game of political chess; they’ll likely switch to political checkers.  Counselor Lowell, by the way, will be remembered a lot longer than Chairman Comer . . . and for good reason.

We conclude with the one former member of Congress who in future years, like little Eddie Gaedel (number “1/8”) will likely only be remembered by political geeks: the expelled fabulist, George Anthony Devolder Santos. By a vote of 311 (206 Dems., 105 Reps.) to 114 (2 Dems., 112 Reps.), Santos became just the sixth member of Congress to be shown the door . . . and likely the third of this group to wind up being incarcerated. In many regards, Santos is the Platonic Absolute of a MAGAite: venal, hypocritical, mendacious to the  max, larcenous, a moral albino (you figure it out) and possessing all 9 signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  I mean, lying is one thing in politics.  But lying for the sake of Botox, Ferragamo and Hèrmes?

As Vanessa Williams noted in a New York Times essay:

In the end, it may have been the luxury goods that brought down George Santos.

Not the lies about going to Baruch College and being a volleyball star or working for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Not the claims of being Jewish and having grandparents who were killed in the Holocaust and a mother who died of cancer as result of 9/11. (Not true, it turned out.) Not the fibs about having founded an animal charity or owning substantial real estate assets. None of the falsehoods that have been exposed since Mr. Santos’s election last year. After all, he did survive two previous votes by his peers to expel him from Congress, one back in May, one earlier in November.

 I for one am not sure what ultimately brought him  down . . . or made enough of his fellow Republicans (though not a majority of them) to finally show him the door.  Perhaps it was the looming not-too-distant presence of the 2024 elections; an unvoiced  fear of having to answer questions about his presence in their caucus . . . along with questions about their caucus’ all-but-invisible agenda.  Under normal circumstances (if they still exist), a disgraced former member of Congress with a penchant for publicity could look forward to eventually making a fortune on Fox, starting his own podcast or radio talk-show, or having a ghost write him a tell-all book while  spending his hefty advance on G-d knows what.  This probably won’t happen, because soon, he, like his beloved leader, is  going to be spending his every waking hour (and what cash he can put his hands on) proclaiming his innocence in federal court. 

Who knows: perhaps future generations will remember George Anthony Devolder Santos for having been Donald J. Trump’s cellmate in prison . . . 

Oh what a week! 

Copyright2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#962: ס'איז שװער צו זײַן אַ ייִד ("It's Hard to Be a Jew")

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Although it is rather simple to translate the title of this essay from Yiddish to English, its meaning can likely only be understood on an emotional level by what we Jews refer to as “MOT,” - i.e. “A member of the tribe.” Translated into French (C'est dur d'être juif), Spanish Es difícil ser judío) or even German (Es ist schwer, Jude zu sein), the expression loses the cultural angst, the shrug-of-the-shoulders fatalism that pervades the original. In English, French, Spanish, German or any other language, the expression is only “understood” as a mere translation of words . . . a matter for the cerebellum. In Yiddish, it is best translated by what we MOTs called די קישקע - “the guts.”

                               Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra

Historically, Jewish literature is filled with the kind of fatalism that is best comprehended in the guts, rather than the frontal lobes, which make expressive language possible. Jewish fatalism is perhaps best expressed by that most distinguished of rabbinic commentators and poets, Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1167) who wrote: “If I started out selling candles/the sun would never go down.  If I started selling funeral shrouds/people would stop dying. If I went into the arms trade/ universal peace would break out.” 

Got it?

Although rabbis, scholars and writers of every stripe have long attempted to explain Jewish fatalism and the ongoing historic nature of anti-Semitism,  no one has truly succeeded; it is just a fact of life.  And now, as the modern State of Israel and Hamas, a terrorist group fueled by its ghoulish 7th century theocracy go-toe-to-toe with one another in war, those who know little - if anything - about history and clash between theocracy and Democracy have chosen to take sides with “the Palestinians” (who historically, don’t really exist) over the Israelis (who, for most of history were the ones referred to as "Palestinians”).  The Gaza Strip is ruled not by a government, but by a terrorist group called Hamas, which is an acronym for Harakat – Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya – or "Islamic Resistance Movement.  In Arabic, hamas (حماسة) also means “zeal,” “fervor” or “ardor,” which just about says it all. 

The religious “zeal” of the Islamic Resistance Movement has as much to do with the murderous October 7 attack on Israel, as does the more than half-century occupation of Gaza by the Israelis.  Truth to tell missiles have been raining down on Jewish Gaza-border towns and kibbutzim  on a regular basis for years and years.  It’s just that the October 7th attack/invasion was on such a massive scale and that the Netanyahu government was caught with its pants down . . . largely concerning itself with political issues affecting the P.M.’s ability to keep his right flank satisfied and himself out of the courtroom where he faces charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate scandals involving powerful media moguls and wealthy associates.

By the end of the day (October 7, 2023), Israel declared war on Hamas, thus beginning its massive assault on Gaza. Today, nearly 37 days into the war, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 10,000 people; of these, the majority are civilians. Food, water and fuel have been embargoed; surgeons in Gaza City are performing operations and delivering newborns by flashlight, because there simply is no electricity. And all across the world, people are condemning Israel for its “heartless excesses” and demanding an immediate cease-fire. The chances of this happening are slim at best; Hamas would immediately get back to restoring its weaponry and fortifying its many subterranean encampments. Israeli military leaders have no interest in a case-fire; not due to a love for killing Palestinian civilians or insensitivity towards saving and repatriating the hundreds of civilians kidnapped by Hamas.

In Hebrew, one would say that the Israelis - and Jews worldwide - are caught בין הפטיש והסדן - literally, “between the hammer and the anvil” . . . more commonly, “between a rock and a hard place.” On the one hand, almost all will admit that Israel, a sovereign state with a democratically-elected government, has every right to defend itself against heavily-armed terrorists whose rai·son d'ê·tre is the annihilation and utter dismemberment of Israel and the Jewish people from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. On the other, Israel’s response to Hamas’ deadly - and ongoing - invasion is both deeply repellant and repugnant. But what can the Israelis do? To a growing number of anti-Semites, and-Zionists, the answer is simple: “Just die! Leave the Palestinians alone. Stop your intended act of genocide!”

On the other side of the aisle, there are ultra-conservatives coming out of the cracks urging that “all Palestinians should be killed,” or urged the banning of all pro-Palestinian groups on college campuses for offering “material support” to terrorists. The rise in supporting Palestinians and attacking Israelis and Jews in general is being both seen and heard in both Europe and South America. Indeed, ס'איז שװער צו זײַן אַ ייִד “It’s hard to be a Jew.” Recently, both the Trump-supporting Fox entertainer Sean Hannity and the left-leaning U.K. talk show host Piers Morgan have interviewed Mosab Hassan Yousef, the disowned son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef.

In both interviews, Yousef., who was long ago dubbed the“Green Prince” (also the title of a 2014 documentary based on his autobiography) for his efforts to help the Shin Bet (the Israeli security agency) thwart terror attacks during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. In both interviews, Yousef (a “marked man” who now lives in San Diego), predicted that once Israel removes Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip as it has vowed to do following the October 7 terror onslaught, Palestinian residents would celebrate and thank Israel for ending their oppression and “lust for power.” Contrasting 21st century Israel and Hamas “which possesses a 7th century mentality,” Yousef went on to describe the two sides in saying: “. . . the gap is very huge. Hamas represents chaos. This is where they thrive. Israel represents order; democracy – Hence those are the two opposite extremes that have been clashing,"

Like many Jews, it truly hurts, bothers and worries me that Israel has taken such savage reprisals against the people of Gaza.  Yes, I support Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens by going after and eliminating the murderers of Hamas.  And yet, I feel like that parent who chastises the child by saying “But we expect more of you.”

So what is to be done and how can we get across to the growing masses of those who support the “poor oppressed Palestinians” against the “genocidal Israelis?”

One possible answer is to teach history; to open the minds, hearts and souls of those who protest in the streets with a handful of crucial facts to ponder.  The other day, my friend Herb Stoller forwarded me the following video from an unknown Yemini under the title of “Hypocrisy for ‘Pro-Palestinians.”  It just about says it all:

All I can get is that those who whole-heartedly support the Palestinians against the military might of the Israelis, ponder what this young man has to teach . . . and learn a bit of history. It just might save the world from the planet’s most catastrophic collision.

Not only is it “hard to be a Jew”; it is doubly difficult to be an intelligent human being.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#955: L’shana Tovah Ivanka . . . May We Ask a Favor Of You?

On behalf of my wife and family, as well as our chavurah (our “synagogue without walls”), please accept our best wishes for you, your husband Jared and children Arabella Rose, Joseph Fredrick and Theodore James a shana tovah u’mtukah - A Happy and Sweet New Year.  So where did you celebrate Rosh Hashana? With Rabbi Lookstein at Kehilat Jeshrun on the Upper East Side, or in your newish mansion in Miami Dade on Rock Creek Island (affectionately known to locals as “Billionaire Bunker”) I’ve occasionally wondered how far a walk it is from your place to the closest orthodox shul. Actually, it’s none of my business. I’m not casting any aspersions: if you walk on Shabbos and Yontuf, mazal tov; if not, that’s your decision.  I have long been in step with the concept of חזקת לאדם כשר (chezkaht l’adam kashair) roughly translated as, “if one says he/she is a ‘kosher Jew,’ who am I to question?”  In any event, our good wishes that you be both written and sealed in G-d’s Book of Life” goes without question.

I’ve longed wondered what your father thought when you announced you were going through an Orthodox conversion in order to marry Jared. I mean, despite the fact that your dad has long been associated with - and employed - Jewish people like Roy Cohn, Alan Weisselberg and Michael Cohen, and then more recently , the likes of Steven Miller and Steve Mnuchin, his background and upbringing weren’t precisely what one  would call “pro-Semitic” or “Jew-friendly.”  From what I understand about your grandpa Fred (and this according to your Aunt Mary), he was a thorough-going anti-Semite. ‘Tis a pity; but by now you know that despite what our detractors try to sell, we’re really a pretty kind and moral bunch, whose love of justice, mercy and humility are part of the very fabric of our religious and cultural being.

You well know that for Jews, this is a very, very important time of year; a period of reflection, atonement and spiritual growth.  What we do, what we say and indeed, what we confess to, are meant to make better, more honest and more caring people of us all.  These “Ten Days of Repentance”, as they are called, are difficult ones; they are far, far more difficult than the “resolutions” people make on December 31st and then forego by January 2nd.  One of the concepts you no doubt learned at the feet of Rabbi Lookstein during the year-and-a-half you studied with him for  conversion was that of תיקן עולם (tikun olam -literally “repairing the world”), which commands us to do everything in our power to bring truth, understanding and love to the world, and well as erasing untruths, bigotry and baseless hatred,  

At this point, we  come to the “favor” mentioned  in the title of this post.  As you well know, it is customary at this time of the year for people in the political arena - both those holding and those running for office - to release greetings to the Jewish people. 99% of these messages are cheerful, inclusive, positive, and politically non-partisan.  Your father, as again you well know, broke virtually ever rule of good taste and comity by choosing to attack and defame an overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community on Rosh Hashana. This past Sunday, as many of us were getting ready to lead or attend services for the second day of the Jewish New Year, he decided to put in his two cents by posting on Truth Social: “Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”

Sad to say Mrs. Kushner, that although your father’s Rosh Hashana post was both maddening and totally inappropriate, it really was not out of keeping with the anti-Jewishness that lurks in the recesses of his troubled soul. I mean, this is the man – along with his deputies (most of whom no longer work with/for him) who:

• Tweeted Hillary Clinton’s face next to a Star of David and the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever” 

• Closed his 2016 campaign with an ad that included the images of three Jewish people—George Soros, Janet Yellen, and Lloyd Blankfein—while warning that a secretive “global power structure” was to blame for economic policies that have “robbed our working class“ and “stripped our country of its wealth”

• Waited to specifically condemn the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally during which marchers carried Nazi signs and chanted things like “Jews will not replace us”

• Called Jews who didn’t vote for him dumb and/or traitors

• Declared in a tweet that Jewish voters “don’t even know what they’re doing or saying anymore”

• Suggested that Jews only care about money

• Baselessly suggested that Soros, a favorite bogeyman among white nationalists and neo-Nazis, was funding a migrant caravan

• Hosted a White House Hanukkah party that featured an evangelical pastor who once said Jews were going to hell

• Told a room full of Jewish people that Jews are “brutal killers” and “not nice people at all”

• Suggested Jews control the media

• Said that Jews are “only in it for themselves,” following phone calls with Jewish lawmakers

• Reportedly wanted his military leaders to operate like “the German generals in World War II”

• Reportedly told his chief of staff that Adolf Hitler “did a lot of good things” and shouldn’t be judged by that one genocide

• Kept a book of Hitler’s speeches next to his bed

His Rosh Hashana post touted the one thing he ever did for Israel: relocating the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  And for that one act (which had been mandated by the Jerusalem Embassy Act  in 1995) he claimed that he was “the best friend Israel ever had in the White House.” (Please don’t tell Presidents Truman or Clinton that). This is far from the truth and shows that your father believes that the only thing Jewish voters remember or care about is this single act. The fact that an overwhelming majority of  American Jews still vote for Democrats like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, as well as Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Chuck Schumer et al, shows how little your father understands about the American Jewish community.  It also shows that when all is said and done, he cares not a fig for anyone who questions or finds fault with him. Truth to tell, there is no truth for him to tell.

As you well know, Ivanka, your father has no consistent political philosophy. Rather, he adopts and adapts whatever will be best for his political career. Once a strong supporter of (and contributor to) Planned Parenthood, today he is as vehemently pro-life as any White Christian Nationalist. His positions on a wide array of political issues change with the political winds.  He judges things only to the extent that they will benefit him personally, and not, G-d forbid, to how they will affect the betterment of the country, the world or the planet.  His plans for the future - assuming the worst - is that all three branches of the federal government will be whittled down until those who remain in the federal bureaucracy will share but a single trait: blind loyalty to Trumpian nihilism and anarchy. 

So what is the favor we so humbly ask of you? Only that you speak truth to power and make it known that your father represents a clear and present danger to the vast majority of American Jews as well as anyone and everyone who firmly believes in the concept of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  At this critical point in time, few if any Republicans of stature have the guts or courage it takes to denounce DJT for the mean-spirited, plastic-political, autocrat-loving bundle of personal wounds who dares to present himself as the cure for all the challenges we face.  

Yael saving the people from Sisera - C. 1620 by Artemisia Gentileschi

And so, Yael bat Avraham avinu (if I may be so bold as to call you by your Hebrew name), perhaps the time has come for you to screw up your courage and sense of moral outrage - just like your Biblical namesake Yael, the wife of Chever (יָעֵל אֵשֶׁת-חֶבֶר) as found in the book of Judges (verses 4:11-22) - and become both a savior and a heroine.  No, not by driving a tent stake through the  forehead of Sisera, the murderous Canaanite general, but rather by standing up for the people who lovingly gave  you welcome into our ancient fold.  You must speak out against anti-Semitism and bigotry; you must fight against the powers that would seek to endanger your children’s future.  Should you speak, you will find thousands of your sisters standing alongside you . . . sort of a collective Yael and Deborah, the “Thelma and Louise” of the Hebrew Bible.  You are in a unique position to do a ton of good for the Chosen People, of whom you are part and parcel . . . I trust.

Wishing you and yours גמר חתימה טובה (g’mar kha-te-mah tova) that you be sealed in the Book of Life in this the New Year 5784. 

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#951 Article XIV, Section 3: The Constitutional Equivalent of the Manhattan Project?

81 years ago this month (Aug. 13, 1942 to be precise) The United States - along with the United Kingdom and Canada - commenced on what would become known as the “Manhattan Project.” For those who don’t know much about mid-20th century history (or have not as yet seen the movie “Oppenheimer,” starring the Irish actor Cillian Murphey as the fabled yet troubled nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer), the “Manhattan Project” was the top-secret program to make the first atomic bombs during World War II. The project, which employed more than 130,000 people over a period of nearly 5 years, had profound impacts on world history.  It was a truly monumental effort created, crafted and accomplished in the darkest of all earthly shadows.  Without it, it is likely that the Allies would never have defeated the Axis in 1945; only G-d knows what the world would look like today, in 2023.

To a haunting extent, we are once again faced with an evil that threatens our very future: Donald Trump and the threat he and his MAGA cultists pose to the very future of democracy. In both political and psychological terms he himself is a freak of nature.

Despite having been twice impeached; currently facing 4 separate state and federal indictments totaling 91 different charges; having been found guilty of defamation of character against a woman who accused him of rape; having been caught spreading more than 30,000 lies and mistruths during his four years in the White House; getting his followers to pay his legal fees . . . etc., etc., etc., his supporters trust him more than their families or religious leaders. This essay is not the place to get into a discussion of either the nature of cult leaders and their rabid followers or the psychology behind conspiracies . . . though both deserve a thorough airing.

It seems pretty obvious that behind closed doors, a vast percentage of Republican office-holders despise Trump (who my friend Alan refers to as “The Orange Blob”) and wish he and his MAGA maniacs would just fade away. They know and understand (again, “behind closed doors”) that he represents clear and present danger to America. Sadly, most all of them - save former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie - lack the backbone to speak the truth in public. What they pray for is some sort of “magic bullet” that will do Trump in without their having to lift a finger or utter a discouraging word . . . and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Back in 1942, when the future of democracy was in dire straits, the “magic bullet” was underwritten by the FDR Administration, who turned to the sages of science . . . people like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe and Ernest O. Lawrence to create that weapon. (Do note that with the exception of Dr. Lawrence, the rest of these distinguished physicists who headed up the Manhattan Project were all Jewish immigrants.) Today, the magic bullet so many seek to put Donald Trump out of democracy’s pending degradation, may well come in the form of Article XIV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, which states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

     Prof. Laurence Tribe and Judge J. Michael Luttig

A couple of days ago, Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard Law and J. Michael Luttig, the longtime (1991-2006) Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, co-authored a remarkable article in the Atlantic entitled “The Constitution Prohibits Trump from Ever Being President Again."  The two august Constitutional scholars - Tribe a progressive and Luttig a conservative who has often been compared to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, began their article thusly: As students of the United States Constitution for many decades—one of us as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, the other as a professor of constitutional law, and both as constitutional advocates, scholars, and practitioners—we long ago came to the conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment, the amendment ratified in 1868 that represents our nation’s second founding and a new birth of freedom, contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the republic by a treasonous president.

“The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause. …

Tribe and Luttig are by no means the first to discuss - let alone conclude - that Article XIV, Section 3 can and should disqualify Donald J. Trump from ever again serving as POTUS.  Indeed, this legal/political thread has been a hotly debated issue among academics and political geeks since January 7, 2021.  The swirl of approval surrounding the use of XIV:3 to remove the “disability of Donald Trump" has been growing ever since. Many of the most vocal are conservative members of the Federalist Society.

Writing in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, members of the conservative Federalist Society, agree: “In our view, on the basis of the public record, former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from again being President (or holding any other covered office) because of his role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and the events leading to the January 6 attack.”   

This is not to say that there is total agreement ridding the nation of Trump via Constitutional mandate; some are uncertain that it can work.  Since when was there unanimous agreement on anything concerning “the Orange Blob?” And yet, this could be, as they say in Yiddish פֿון הימל קומט אַ מתּנה - “a gift from Heaven.” For Democrats, most Independents and all those Republicans who really, truly don’t want Trump to win the nomination - thus bringing a plague of frogs, lice, vermin and utter defeat at the polls raining on their political parade - this provides the perfect out: keeping quiet and letting the Constitution answer their “behind locked doors” prayers.

As journalist Bill Press, my long ago boss in Governor Jerry Brown’s “Office of Planning and Research” noted just the other day: The language (of article XIV, Section 3) is so clear, not even today’s conservative Supreme Court could read the Constitution any other way. Trump is not only unfit to be president, but he is also constitutionally prohibited from holding that office. Period.    For leaders of the Republican Party, the next step is clear. Follow the 14th Amendment. It’s time to stop entertaining Donald Trump and find another candidate.”

  One gigantic difference between the Manhattan Project and Article XIV, Section 3 of the Constitution is that the former was done under cover of darkness, while the latter is (hopefully) going to be concluded in the bright light of day.

Here’s looking to a better, more democratic tomorrow . . .

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#944: Jefferson Monroe Levy, the 4th of July, and US

The Fourth of July 2023 isn’t even close to what it was - or even meant to be - back when Erica (my “slightly older sister”) and I were kids. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, what we nowadays simply call either “The Fourth” or “Fourth of July Weekend” (even if it comes around on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) meant going to the Van Nuys/Sherman Oaks War Memorial Park (where we learned to swim and dive as well as attend day camp in the summer) take a blanket, sandwiches and a thermos-full of lemonade - and watch the best-staged, most artistic fireworks display anywhere in the West. How did we know it was “the best in the West?” Simple: when you live within a couple of miles of the best “special effects” departments on earth, it’s bound to be great . . . and incredibly loud. Having the world’s tallest palm trees as a backdrop . . . well, it just couldn’t be any better.  And to top everything off, there would be the singing of the Star Spangled Banner by some star of the silver screen, usually backed by an orchestra from MGM, Paramount, Fox or even (G-d forbid!) RKO.  

Those were the days!  It was both patriotic (remember, there were veterans of WWI, WWII and the Korean  “police action” scattered throughout the crowd) and filled with pride for the country that our Founders had created.  Oh sure, we knew we weren’t perfect and not everyone was as acceptable as others (these were still the pre-Civil Rights Act days and Hollywood was not yet free of the horrendous “Black List”); but in the main, we still celebrated the dreams and ideals of our Founders.  We were still, for the most part “WE THE PEOPLE.”

Even as a kid of 8 or 9, I reveled in the thought that we, the Stone family, descended from the Schimbergs and Greenbergs of Maryland and Virginia, and the Kagans and Hymans of Minnesota and Illinois, were all part of the U.S., which we always pronounced as the single word: “us.”  We were among the few whose grandparents and great-grandparents neither spoke Yiddish nor had ever never set foot in New York.  And yet, we certainly never felt ourselves to be more of “US” than those who were of the first generation . . . either in America itself or Hollywood in general.

In the generations of our grandparents, great-grandparents and even more, the Fourth of July was far, far different than what Erica and I remember. While I have read about fireworks being a staple of 19th-century Fourth of July celebrations (signifying the “bombs bursting in air” at the battle of Ft. McHenry - a legacy of the War of 1812), it was the public reading of Jefferson’s magnificent “Declaration of Independence” which took center stage. These celebrations weren’t nearly as jingoistic (propagandistic) as those celebrations of a later age; rather they centered and brought to mind the words, thoughts and dreams of that most literate of all our Founders, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. And even after Jefferson died (ironically on the 4th of July, 1826, the very same day as his colleague/political nemesis John Adams), his words - among the greatest in all human history - were kept in the ears and memories of a grateful public . . . US:

                       Jefferson’s handwritten draft

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government . . .

Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924)

After serving two terms as POTUS (1801-1809), Jefferson returned to his estate at Monticello (Latin for Little Mountain), where he continued to live for the remainder of his life. For more than a quarter century, it was his habit to invite all the people from “down the hill” to attend his 4th of July celebration during which he read the Declaration of Independence from the very bookstand on which he drafted the original document. At the time of his death on the 4th of July, 1826, his estate was in severe disrepair; in 1831, the house and grounds were sold by Jefferson’s heirs (his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph and her son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph) to one James Turner Barclay, a Charlottesville pharmacist. Three years later (1834), Uriah P. Levy (1792-1862), the first Jewish Commodore of the United States Navy, bought the 218-acre estate from Barclay for $2,700 (equivalent to $79,100 in today's dollars). Commodore Levy then undertook to have the long-neglected home repaired, restored, and preserved. He also bought hundreds of additional acres that had been part of the plantation, to add to what was left. Levy, it should be mentioned, was part of one of the oldest and most prominent Jewish families in America.

Uriah P. Levy used Monticello as a vacation home.  Toward the end of his life, the Commodore also restored the Charlottesville Town Hall, built in 1852, as a theater, and renamed it the Levy Opera House. This bold Greek Revival 800-seat structure is still in use today.

From 1837 to 1839, Uriah’s widowed mother, Rachel Levy, lived there fulltime until her death; she is buried along Mulberry Row, the main plantation street adjacent to the mansion (making her the only Jewish person buried on the grounds of Jefferson’s estate).

17 years after the Commodore’s death, Levy’s nephew, the patriotically-named Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924), who was a successful three-term New York congressman, businessman, and lawyer, purchased Monticello at public auction for $10,500 (a little less than $312,200.00 in 2023 dollars. He owned, cared for and completely restored the mansion and its grounds until it was purchased by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation forty-four years later  (1923). During the years he owned Monticello, Jefferson Monroe Levy poured nearly half-a-million dollars (over $15,000.000 in todays money) into the restoration of Monticello. Despite only using it as an occasional retreat, Jefferson Monroe Levy revived Thomas Jefferson’s 4th of July custom; on that date, the former Congressman would be there, among all the townies from nearby Charlottesville,  to attend his reading of the Declaration of Independence . . .  from the very same stand-up writing table-cum-podium upon which Thomas Jefferson had originally composed it.

There is far, far more to the Fourth of July than fireworks, hotdogs and beer, or sales at the local mall hyped and hawked by the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al.  (BTW, July 4, 1776 is not the date upon which the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence.  In matter of historic fact, independence was formally declared on July 2, 1776, a date that John Adams believed would be “the most memorable epocha [sic] in the history of America.” On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the final text of the Declaration, but it wasn't signed until August 2 of that year.) 

To me, the Fourth of July should serve as something akin to a “refresher course” in the miracle that is America; its founding principles and ideals, its historic promise, highs, lows and the many challenges and stumbling blocks which have always stood in the path of our Democratic Republic. For many of US, the promise of America is best and most succinctly expressed by the 3 Latin words which make up our national motto: e pluribus unum . . . i.e. “Out of many, one.”

America is unique among the nations of the world when it comes to combining pluribus - people of virtually all ancestries, origins, tongues, religions, histories native myths to make something brand new . . . unum - one people. This has long been our ideality - even when not precisely our reality. Throughout our relatively brief history (247 years and counting), we have accomplished great things as a Democratic Republic. We have also fought with one another, treated “others” as our enemies, sought to bar entry to those we feared or did not understand. We have been through generations when rights were greatly expanded and enjoyed, and times - like now - when rights have been contracted.

No one ever said that being part of US was going to be easy . . . or inexorable; indeed, it has always been a challenge. This was best summarized by Dr. Benjamin Franklin in 1787. According to James McHenry (1753-1816) a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who throughout that convention, kept one of the best and most compendious journals of all the compatriots in Philadelphia. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin ‘Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy? “A republic” replied the Doctor . . . if you can keep it.” (McHenry’s journal, by the way, is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.)

And so it is: We are US; a most unique breed. Not necessarily the best . . . just the most unique.

May we continue attempting to live up to - and expanding upon - the very best of the ideals our Founders bequeathed to US.

May this Fourth of July be happy, healthy and most importantly, energizing.

E PLURIBUS UNUM

Copyright©2023, Kurt Franklin  Stone

#938: Four Questions #🟦 (Copy)

It’s hard for the approximately fifteen to twenty percent of us - like readers of this blog - who are deeply involved in following “the chess game of politics” to believe - let alone grok - that an astounding 80%-85% of the American public follow it anywhere between “casually and not at all.” The New York Times’ editorial board refers to this as the “attention divide.” According to an astute - though deeply disturbing - editorial published back in October of 2022: “Most Americans view politics as two camps bickering endlessly and fruitlessly over unimportant issues.” If this is true - and I for one have no reason to gainsay their finding - is it any wonder that people like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are being taken seriously as presidential contenders; that more and more state legislatures have passed laws permitting the banning of books in public schools; that at least 14 supermajority Republican state legislatures have passed laws banning drag shows; and that despite more than 60% of those polled supporting a woman’s right to choose, more than 2 dozen state legislatures have already enacted laws banning the medical procedure?.

The precipice at which the American political process - and indeed, Democracy itself - currently lurches, has as much to do with the mega-billions now flooding the undertaking as the quality of its practitioners (at least on one side of the aisle), and the dumbing-down of its content. It’s not that the issues are too complex for the average citizen to follow; it’s more that the average citizen doesn’t feel they have any skin in the game. They don’t know what or whom to believe, and haven’t the slightest idea of what questions to ask of those soliciting their vote. For the 80%-85% who, in the words of the Times’ editorial, follow politics “casually, if not at all,” they can’t tell you why they support candidate X over candidate Y, except for the fact that the former is not the latter. If anyone contemplating suggesting that these folks are, in reality, supporting people who really don’t care a whit about their plight or needs, expect a concussion; this is the typical result of banging one’s head against a brick wall.

I for one long for the day when citizen voters can state positive reasons for supporting candidate X over candidate Y . . . instead of hearing “Well, at least he/she isn’t the other guy/gal.” Perhaps part of the problem is that neither citizens nor members of the professional press ever ask the right questions in such a way as to elicit a response . . . or make the pol at the mike come off as a first-class know-nothing.

Here are 4 questions that should be asked of every candidate at every press gathering or conference:

1. “According to almost every every recent poll - including - Fox News - a clear majority of the American public favors enacting a ban on assault weapons. While 45 percent of those surveyed said they would encourage more citizens to carry guns to defend against attackers, 61 percent said they favored banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. Where do you stand on this issue, and how would you vote on any form of sensible laws concerning lethal weapons in the hands of citizens? And by the way, how much money did you receive from the National Rifle Association in the last election cycle?”

2. “A recent survey found that nearly 60% of registered voters prefer political candidates who will take action on climate change — including more than a quarter of Republicans. Do you see this as a major issue affecting the future of the planet? And if not, why not? How much money did you receive from the oil and gas industry in the last election cycle?

3. Many political analysts have suggested that the Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the 2022 midterm elections — which were held about five months after the Supreme Court’s decision which overturned Roe V Wade— stemmed partly from public dissatisfaction with the justices’ ruling. And there’s evidence that Democratic voters in particular were energized to vote because of the change in abortion policy. In recent polling nearly three quarters of adults (74%) and 79% of reproductive age women say that obtaining an abortion should be a personal choice rather than regulated by law. Where do you stand on the issue of a woman’s right to choose? Will you vote to fine and/or imprison women who receive abortions and/or their physicians who perform them? At what age will you vote to cut off abortions?

4. A recent USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word “woke” as a positive attribute, not a negative one. And yet, Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on "woke.” According to this poll, a 56%-39%, majority, say 'woke' means being aware of social injustice, not being overly politically correct. Republican politicians and voters alike have differing definitions of wokeism — and some struggle to define it at all. The rallying cry has recently been used to denounce everything from climate change policies and socially responsible investing to transgender rights, critical race theory, which books must be removed from library shelves in public schools, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Please explain your definition of “woke,” and justify how legislating so many aspects of people’s lives, education, relationships and individual choices is consistent with the classical Republican agenda of smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

At this point in time, it is more than evident that the gap between Democrats and Republicans is of Grand Canyon proportions. How so? Well, agree or disagree with them, Democrats have a pretty obvious ethical and legislative vision upon which to run. They have pretty clear-cut strategy based on both a a set of ethical principles - such as the moral trinity of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and the furtherance of Democratic values - and concrete political goals such as saving planet Earth for future generations, keeping assault weapons out of the hands of everyone save members of the military, supporting our allies and changing tax laws so that the wealthiest individuals and corporations pay what used to be called “their fair share.” These are all things which can be given expression without having to resort to fear and name-calling. Ask the four questions - or five or six or more - and then demand answers.

On the other side of the political gap, it seems there are no answers to the basic questions - just rhetoric and buzz-terms such as “Socialist,” “Communist,” “Woke,” “anti-religion,” and a laundry list of villains like “George Soros,” “Adam Schiff,” “LGBTQIA+” and pejorative nicknames (“Brandon,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Pocahontas.”(  Of course, to those of us who love the history of political nicknames, these show little wit and even less tact. Take for example a couple of the best: “Martin Van Ruin” (after America’s 8th president, Martin Van Buren . . . given that nickname after presiding over the “Panic of 1837”); “Rutherfraud” (America’s 19th chief executive, Rutherford B. Hayes who, despite losing the popular vote in the election of 1876 to Samuel Tilden, still managed to win the Electoral College); and “Slick Willie” (obviously Bill Clinton).

I urge all lovers of Democracy and fearers of Führers - whether journalists or just plain citizens - to dig in and ask the four questions at every press conference, town-hall meeting and Passover seder, and not give up until you hear some answers.  And if the questions are avoided or turned into attacks on the other side, remember to ask the best, most obvious follow-up question of all: “Why won’t you answer the question he/she just asked you?”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone    #🟦

#936: Ten Trillion Here, Twenty Trillion There #🟦

Fairbanks & Chaplin: 1918 Wall Street Bond Rally

Mark Twain, that most notable and quotable of all American authors once wrote “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Because, so far as I know, he wasn’t referring to any contemporary situation in particular, his aphorism is thus both brilliant and timeless; it speaks to human nature in general.

In reflecting on how little time remains until the United States - for the first times in its history - defaults on its debt obligations . . . which, as of this past January, stood at $31.38 trillion and rising . . . Twain’s remark seems all the more tailor-made.

Trying to access blame – to determine precisely which side shoulders the greater burden in the nation’s titanic debt obligations – brings to mind yet another writer of renown:  the occasionally controversial cartoonist Walt Kelly. Kelly (1913-1973) put into the mouth of Okefenokee Swamp-dwelling oposum Pogo, his greatest creation, the immortal words “We have met the enemy and he is us!” (n.b. This is an abridgement of what Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry announced at the Battle of Lake Erie, when his small naval force had defeated the British in 1813: "We have met the enemy and he is ours.")

In other words, Democrats and Republicans alike share a mutual blame for America’s massive debt; it’s just that the former are more “tax-and-spend,” the latter “cut-taxes-and-spend.”  With America's Debt Ceiling about to be breached (it’s already been reached) by June 1, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy are about to sit down and see if anything can be done. POTUS wants a “clean bill,” wherein Congress passes an increase in the ceiling without any attached budgetary strings. Period. 

By contrast, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's "Limit, Save, Grow Act" of 2023, as recently passed by the House, would require broad-based spending cuts totaling $4.5 trillion over the next decade. President Biden had said in no uncertain terms that he will refuse to sign the act into law; he spoke truth-to-power when he referred to it as "dead on arrival" in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Speaker McCarthy wants to tie any rise to a series of draconian spending cuts which would most likely affect the poorest among us: veterans, children relying on food-stamps, students being crushed by debts, Medicaid Recipients, etc.  Moreover this act mandates dramatic cuts in monies already allocated for such things as climate change programs and the addition of 78,000 new IRS agents . . . whose purpose is to make sure that millionaires and billionaires are paying their fair share.  

Can you say “stalemate?”

The United States started running up debt long before July 4, 1776.  Someone had to help pay for General Washington’s troops and the creation of the Continental Congress. The Revolutionary War was, to a great degree, financed through the selling of “Continentals bills of exchange,” arranged for by one Hayim Salomon, a Polish-born Jewish businessman living in Philadelphia. Salomon (1740-85) risked his growing fortune to travel to Europe and broker these bills of exchange at rock bottom prices. For his services, Salomon - who also made interest-free loans to many of the Founding Fathers and himself died a pauper at age 46 - charged a measly one-quarter-of-one-percent. (BTW: In 1941, Howard Fast wrote an impressive historical novel about Salomon, called Hayim Salomon: Liberty’s Son. If you are interested, there are still copies available . . . )

From 1776 to the turn of the 20th century, the Treasury Department had to go to get Congress’ approval whenever it needed to engage in deficit spending. Then, in the early 20th century, the debt limit was instituted so that the U.S. Treasury would not need to ask Congress for permission each time it had to issue debt to pay bills. During World War I, Congress passed the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 to give the Treasury more flexibility to issue debt and manage federal finances. All over the country, people gathered to buy tens of millions of dollars worth of war bonds to help finance the Great War. The most famous such gathering was on Wall Street, where movie stars Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Marie Dressler, along with then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, reached out to an estimated 20,000 people crowded into Wall Street, doing their best to get them to buy, buy, buy, lend, lend, lend. Within two hours, the assemblage bought more than $3,000,000 worth of bonds. (The actuality at the top of this article is a photo of that historic event.) Similar rallies would occur all around the country.

The first debt limit was instituted by Congress in 1939. Congress consolidated limits on specific forms of debt (e.g., separate caps on bonds and shorter-term debt) into one aggregate debt limit. The first federal debt limit was set at $45 billion and gave the Treasury Department wide discretion over what borrowing instruments to use, so long as total debt did not exceed that level. From then until now, Congress has raised the debt ceiling with every passing war (whether Congressionally mandated or not) and crisis. During the 4 years of the Trump administration, the president and Congress increased America’s debt limit by nearly 25%, due in part to an unprecedented tax cut which he sold to both Congress and the American public by claiming that it would pay for itself by greatly increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by up to 6% per annum. He was wrong.

Indeed, raising the debt ceiling used to be most commonplace, least dramatic event of a congressional session. Why even during the Trump years, Congress increased the nation’ ability to borrow on 3 separate occasions. In matter of fact, when asked about threatening spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, he told reporters “I cant think of anyone using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge.” (Someone should have asked a follow-up question, like “Mr. President, can you explain to us precisely what the ‘debt ceiling’ is? Come to think of it, of all 46 presidents in American history, he likely knows more about debt than any of his colleagues . . . real estate empires are, after all, colossi of debt.)

Speaker McCarthy’s insistence that the House will never accept a “clean” bill unless the White House accepts massive spending cuts is, in the words of President Biden, “D.O.A.” . . . “Dead On Arrival.” The MAGA branch of the House appears to believe that they can actually sell the American public on this toxic witches’ brew. How is that possible? Don’t they know that raising the debt limit has virtually nothing - NOTHING - to do with future spending? That cutting spending from the next budget will have no effect - NONE, NADA, GORNISHT - on what we have already committed ourselves to spending? Or, even worse, don’t they really care? Are they more interested in winning the next election - even if it means seeing the American economy go up in smoke, thus triggering the loss of millions of jobs, trillions of dollars of losses in people’s retirement savings, a major stock market crash and ensuing global depression? Are they looking to finish that which January 6, 2021 began . . . the overthrowing of the government? Nothing provides greater fodder for revolution than economic uncertainty and collapse. But do remember, all fodder is, when one puts it under a microscope, nothing more than manure.

               $1,000,000,000,000,000.00!

To be certain, there are a couple of bizarre, dystopian suggestions on the horizon. Some economists (none I trust) have stated it's time for a break-the-glass option: a trillion-dollar coin. The coin — which wouldn't need to be bigger than an average coin, and can be made quickly — as part of a potential debt-ceiling loophole. The Treasury Department can mint platinum coins of any denomination. That's led to a school of thought that says Secretary Yellen should simply mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin and deposit it to pay off the debts until a more permanent solution can be found. Even conservative economists have found the notion to be “beyond silly.” The first problem, of course, is that it would have to get past Treasury Secretary Yellin; the second that the courts would, in all likelihood, shoot it down. But this is precisely the kind of simple-mindedness that MAGA Republicans believe they can sell their base on . . . even if they themselves know it is twaddle.

Then, there is a theory being discussed behind closed doors at the White House ,that the government would be required by the 14th Amendment to continue issuing new debt to pay bondholders, Social Security recipients, government employees and others, even if Congress fails to lift the limit before the so-called X-date. This theory rests on the 14th Amendment clause stating that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Some legal scholars contend that this language overrides the statutory borrowing limit, which currently caps federal debt at $31.4 trillion and requires congressional approval to raise or lift. Top economic and legal officials at the White House, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department have made that theory a subject of intense and unresolved debate in recent months, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

It is unclear whether President Biden would support such a move, which would have serious ramifications for the economy and almost undoubtedly elicit legal challenges from Republicans. Continuing to issue debt in that situation would avoid an immediate disruption in consumer demand by maintaining government payments, but borrowing costs are likely to soar, at least temporarily.

Oh how I wish I had paid better attention to Dr. Daniel Suits’ class in “The Politics of Economics” 50+ years ago! All I know at this point in time is that playing “Debt Chicken” is an incredibly dangerous, economically lethal, game.

As of today, all I can hear is Ella Fitzgerald singing “Something’s Gotta Give.” Where oh where are the adults? There’s far, far more to politics than winning another term . . . or the White House, or taking back the Senate. Whatever happened to doing the right thing for the nation?

To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen (after whom a senate office building is named): “A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone #🟦

#935 Let's Heed Florence Kahn's Advice (Satire) #🟦

           Rep. Florence Prag Kahn (1866-1948)

Of the more than nearly 225 Jewish men and women who have served in the United States Congress, one of my favorites, without question, is Florence Prag Kahn, who represented what would eventually become Sala Burton’s, Barbara Boxer’s and Nancy Pelosi’s District in San Francisco. In interviewing the three for my mammoth biographic works The Congressional Minyan (2000) and The Jews of Capitol Hill (2010) they all remembered with great fondness the many hours they had spent with their young children (and now grandchildren) at the Julius Kahn Playground and Clubhouse which was named after Florence’s late husband Julius, himself a member of Congress for 24 years. Located at Jackson and Spruce, the “JK” is the nation’s largest urban park.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 9, 1866, her parents, who had immigrated from Poland in the early 1860s, were actually friends with the Mormon leader Brigham Young.

Florence Prag Kahn lived a life of firsts:

• The first Jew born in Utah

• The first woman to graduate from Berkeley (class of 1887)

• The first woman to manage a congressional campaign (for her husband Julius, in 1899)

• The first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives

• The first woman to serve on both the House Military Affairs and Appropriations Committees.

Additionally, she was largely responsible for the funding of both the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay Bridges, and was so instrumental in the early funding of the FBI that its director, J. Edgar Hoover, always referred to her as “The mother of the FBI.”

Politically adroit, fearless and frumpy, Rep. Kahn also had a dry sense of humor and was known to possess the quickest wit on The Hill. Once, when asked how she was able to pass far more significant legislation than most of her male colleagues, she famously responded: Don’t you know? It’s my sex appeal, honey!” When assigned to the committee on Indian Affairs, she flatly turned it down, telling then-Speaker Nicholas Longworth III (the husband of T.R.’s daughter “Princess Alice” Roosevelt) “The only Indians in my district are made of wood and sit outside cigar stores . . . and I can’t do a damn thing for them! Put me on Military Affairs!” Then there was the time that New York Representative Fiorello LaGuardia accused her of being “. . . nothing but a standpatter, following the reactionary Senator Moses of New Hampshire.” Mrs. Kahn is reported to have wriggled loose from her chair, jammed her nondescript hat over her nose, and bellowed: “Why shouldn’t I choose Moses as my leader? Haven’t my people been following him for ages?” The House erupted into gales of laughter, LaGuardia - himself the son of a Jewish mother - included.

My favorite Florence Prag Kahn quip - and the genesis for this satiric posting - comes from the time when the House’s most ultraconservative - and least liked - member acidly asked her, “Would you support a birth control law?” Without taking time to draw a breath, she answered, “Yes I will . . . if you will personally make it retroactive!” I remember doing my initial research on Mrs. Kahn back in the early 1990s. I was occupying a tiny cubby on the top floor of Harvard’s Widener Library. When I came across this line I cracked up and almost fell out of my chair . . . so much so that there quickly erupted the sound of a couple of dozen people “shushing” me. Believe me, it was hard to stop laughing . . .

Frequently, Mrs. Kahn used her rapier-like wit as a cover for her revulsion or distaste; call it the verbal version of Bonaparte’s “iron fist in a velvet glove” . . . firmness being couched not with outward gentleness, but with wit. Alas, such is rarely the case within the halls and walls of Congress. Today, instead of wit and double-entendre zingers, we hear catcalls and shouts of “YOU LIE!” as well as inanities such as “a stepmother really isn’t a mother at all,” or “Women who support abortion rights are too ugly to need them. Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

       Stewart and Travers in “It’s a Wonderful Life”

The various members of Congress (mostly notably those who are members of the so-called “Freedom Caucus”) and nasty “influencers” who make these sort of comments - comments which drip with animus and ignorance - are perfect examples of the sorts of people to whom Florence Kahn was referring - those who would have made far greater contributions to society by never having been born in the first place. Think of the Frank Capra/James Stewart classic It’s a Wonderful Life . . . but in reverse. In the 1946 film (the best film never to have won an Oscar), Stewart’s character George Bailey sees his life fall apart so quickly that he contemplates suicide.  He reasons that his family - indeed, the entire world - would be better off with him dead. But the prayers of his loved ones result in his guardian angel named Clarence Odbody (played to perfection by Henry Travers) coming to Earth to help him, with the promise of earning his wings. He shows him what things would have been like if he had never been born.  And of course, being a Frank Capra film, everything comes up roses, sweet tea, and scones.

Now let’s reverse that by implementing Rep. Kahn’s sarcastic quip, and granting retroactivity to the births of those who are daily making the world more dangerous, less civil and stupidly intolerant by march, march, marching to the beat of deafening dictatorial drums. These are the merchants of mayhem, whose chief wares are fear, fanaticism provincialism and bigotry . . . four things the world can definitely do without.

Oh if only they had never been born!

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone                                                                                             #🟦