Before I begin: Bernie Sanders is a good man. And he's obviously been a good, if quirky, Senator for Vermont.
But he can't be president because he won't relinquish any ground on his signature position: Medicare for All. The American people are too incremental for that. There are too many of us, feeling too many things at once. It's herding cats, and the cats are grumpy.
Medicare for All is scary, even though it's not a bad idea. The cost of it, spread out over the years, really isn't that bad. But that doesn't matter. Americans are too wary of those who "have everything figured out," even though that may be exactly what's needed.
The times don't demand that kind of a person. Especially now, when we have a president who simply won't obey any established norm of good behavior, who wants everything his way. Amidst that, Bernie Sanders stands astride, kind of in a land of his own.
Policy isn't the point in this election. Some kind of ethics are. We are in such a firestorm of awfulness that we're crying out for just plain normal, just someone who will react and act the way a normal person would. That feels like a lot to ask for, largely because of the cult that has formed around 45. It will die slowly, and hard, but in the meantime, we have an opportunity to just take a breather.
Medicare for All gets in the way of that. It's like the kid who, after winning his flight in a golf tournament, wants to take on the adult champ. Wait a minute, the dad says. Be happy with what you have. You're going to get burned. You may be good, but you're reaching too far. Bernie thinks replacing 45 is getting in the way of his master plan. More of us think the opposite.
Besides, we already have Obamacare, as challenged in the courts and legislatively as it has been. Amazingly--or not so amazingly, in a tribute to the lawyers and legislators who devised it--it has withstood test after test. The sensible thing to do is to go back there and fix the problems--the enormous deductibles, perhaps the allowance of coverage by parents up to age 26, which, though I get it, always struck me as excessive. The white, lower-middle-class has complained about it from the start, and it might be a way to get some of them--enough, say, to eject 45--into the fold.
Joe Biden's in the perfect place to promote that, having been a major player in the Obama Administration. We knew it wasn't perfect, but we thought it was better to get a start on it, he could (and, it says here, should) say. Now we can improve on it.
Tinkering with the machinery that's already been established has struck Americans as being the best thing to do. It's not radical, it approaches the other side with an offer of consensus, and it doesn't bully people, as 45 insists on doing. Depending upon the results of the election, it might just work.
I've written here more than once that Joe Biden isn't the best candidate the Democrats can conjure, and despite the fact that he seems to have emerged from the catfight for the nomination, I haven't changed that view. But he's the guy we've got, and we need to get behind him.
If there was a 'time' for Bernie, it was last time, but the white liberals (including me) thought Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in and a pile-on after getting the first black guy into the White House; you know, as long as he got in, let's get a woman in there, too. Nobody cried loudly enough when the Clintonites manipulated the primary vote, and nobody noticed until it was too late her arrogance and the effect her "deplorables" comment had on hardening support for the irresponsible carnival barker we now have there (which it sure did). She strode around in white instead of getting into jeans and denims and getting with the folks, and got the rug pulled out beneath her. The Russians played their role, but her missteps can't be discounted.
In another time, Bernie Sanders might have pulled off the incredible upset. But it's too late now; the tide has turned and he can't reverse it. He found his ceiling and couldn't get beyond that. He needs to address the young ones that, understandably, got behind him with passionate idealism. We don't want you to lose your spirit, he could say (appearing with Biden), but you've got to keep the big picture in mind. We're here, first and foremost, to correct a terrible mistake. You can see what it is and where we've gone because of it. The future is yours; that was never in doubt. But the point right now is to get back on the rails and be great again. Be sure to vote in November. It's your country that's at stake.
Something like that. It could be his greatest legacy. He has no choice if he really wants to defeat 45. And that's absolutely necessary.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck (counting the days to the peak of this pestilence; Apr. 27, it says elsewhere), I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Monday, March 30, 2020
Go Past Him. Ignore Him. The Only Way to Maintain Sanity.
It's clear what 45 wants. He wants dependency.
It's the key to his control, to his power: Dependency. He wants people to rely on him so he can humiliate them in case they don't agree with him and say so. It's how he controls his Cabinet and the people around him; they're afraid, for some reason, of being fired.
He wouldn't say the things he says about governors if it weren't so. And for now, they're trapped.
They have to rely on the federal government for whatever paltry amounts of resources it has--and it's already been proven that they aren't adequate to meet this terrible curse of a virus. That 45 has actually suggested that resources be held from the Michigan governor, Gretchen Widmer, just because she's anxious about stuff that she's already supposed to have is just an example of 45's awfulness.
Bidding for resources is competitive, which is obviously the wrong way to deal with this. The economy of some producers is being made to be a greater concern than the saving of lives. That this ridiculous aspect of this epidemic is made real is evident by 45's refusal to invoke the Defense Production Act on a large scale. He could do it in a moment. He's waiting for Republican-controlled states to need him, instead of helping all Americans right now.
When that happens--and it will; all signs point to it--he will invent some kind of an excuse or muzzle any question from the press as to why he waited so long. It will be absurd. It won't matter, of course, because the damage will already have been done. If the deaths of many people can't be directly connected to the lack of resources, the blame will be spread wherever he can, but certainly not to himself. He's already said it: "I take no responbility."
The only way to get around this now-you-see-it attitude is to organize by oneself. The governors should consider doing that. They should consider a temporary consortium of non-competitiveness, and bid down the price gougers.
It can happen, and on a bipartisan basis. The cooperation is growing. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker have, together, written an article in the New York Times on the crisis, demanding more resources from the federal government. They're not likely to get it; they've been hung out to dry. They didn't carry for 45 in 2016. (Think that isn't an issue?)
They can, and should, pivot on such neglect and create their own cooperative. Lives are at stake. Economic concepts are silly to consider at this juncture.
Mississippi's governor, Tate Reeves, and Alabama's governor, Kay Ivey, both Republicans in states that overwhelmingly voted for 45 in 2016, can talk big (Oh, is this a time for big talk, huh?) about not wanting to become China or California (I wonder whether Ivey equated the two; foreign as their lands appear to be), but when the onslaught of the virus hits their states--as it will--they're not going to talk big; they're going to need help on the same level as that of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who's getting the lion's share of the attention because the virus is centered there, but only until it moves on. While it's possible that 45 is saving the bulk of his attention to traditionally Republican states, pretty soon, it's going to become obvious that the inadequacy of resources is going to be a shared problem.
I expect Ohio's governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican, to consider this carefully. His state carried easily for 45 in 2016, but it's being overrun by the virus as you read this. He needs help. He's not getting nearly enough.
Either.
But his buying power can be increased sharply by combining with Michigan. So can Wisconsin's. (Note that the gerrymandered Republican legislative leaders have advised Democratic Governor Tony Evers not to seek federal help just yet; what, so their revered leader in Washington need not look quite so bad?) So can Iowa's, which has a Republican governor. So can Minnesota's, which has a Democratic governor. So can Nebraska's, which has a Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, who's on record (with CNN) saying that this isn't a hoax. See? We're pretty far across the nation now.
I think of the prime phrase from the movie "War Games," in which a computer holds the key to saving the world: The only way to win [at nuclear war] is not to play. The governors must conclude first, that partisanship is secondary; second, that they're simply not going to get what the federal government should be doing for them; and third, that together, they can overtake this utter irresponsibility together. Whatever frees them from needing to cooperate with 45 will be the way through.
This may not be nuclear war, but it's survival at its highest level nonetheless. And 45 has no real caring about anybody else's survival but his own, politically. Anyone who needs to pay the greatest price for that, will. They're just in the way.
On CNN just before, Dr. Anthony Fauci, seemingly the only conduit to 45 (for now) to make much sense (I think he was the prime source of thwarting 45's proposed 'quarantine' of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, as ridiculous as that would have been), was quoted as saying as somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans will die from the virus after it has had its way. Nancy Pelosi has already said that 45's dithering, for whatever reason, has been "deadly," and she's correct. Nowhere near the lives that have been lost need to have been lost to this point. And they pile up by the hour.
It's probably risky, to be sure, to try such a thing depending upon the state; the mechanics and politics of such moves are probably complicated. But they can be simplified, too, by the necessity of the moment. I just read something on Facebook, put there by my friend Kathryn Valido, that's worth mentioning, a quote from FDR: "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear."
We are nearing that point for all 50 states. 45 is trying to get away with inadequacy. He might do so politically for the moment, but he can't medically. It's impossible, and he won't take the responsibility of caring for the country's population. Someone has to. That someone is the governors of the states.
First, ignore his request to get them on the phone. That's the vehicle of his control. Ignore him. He isn't respecting them; why should they return anything like it? Then get each other on the phone and float out such a proposal. He'll find out soon enough, and ignore him again. We're busy. We have a population to save if you won't do what you can to do so.
Oh, he'll threaten to cut states off, like he just did to Michigan. So what? Get a consortium going, and you won't need it. That's the idea.
Is this radical? Depends on how you look at it. But the virus will come at us in waves, and something like this must be considered to deal with it. Otherwise, we're completely at its mercy.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
It's the key to his control, to his power: Dependency. He wants people to rely on him so he can humiliate them in case they don't agree with him and say so. It's how he controls his Cabinet and the people around him; they're afraid, for some reason, of being fired.
He wouldn't say the things he says about governors if it weren't so. And for now, they're trapped.
They have to rely on the federal government for whatever paltry amounts of resources it has--and it's already been proven that they aren't adequate to meet this terrible curse of a virus. That 45 has actually suggested that resources be held from the Michigan governor, Gretchen Widmer, just because she's anxious about stuff that she's already supposed to have is just an example of 45's awfulness.
Bidding for resources is competitive, which is obviously the wrong way to deal with this. The economy of some producers is being made to be a greater concern than the saving of lives. That this ridiculous aspect of this epidemic is made real is evident by 45's refusal to invoke the Defense Production Act on a large scale. He could do it in a moment. He's waiting for Republican-controlled states to need him, instead of helping all Americans right now.
When that happens--and it will; all signs point to it--he will invent some kind of an excuse or muzzle any question from the press as to why he waited so long. It will be absurd. It won't matter, of course, because the damage will already have been done. If the deaths of many people can't be directly connected to the lack of resources, the blame will be spread wherever he can, but certainly not to himself. He's already said it: "I take no responbility."
The only way to get around this now-you-see-it attitude is to organize by oneself. The governors should consider doing that. They should consider a temporary consortium of non-competitiveness, and bid down the price gougers.
It can happen, and on a bipartisan basis. The cooperation is growing. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker have, together, written an article in the New York Times on the crisis, demanding more resources from the federal government. They're not likely to get it; they've been hung out to dry. They didn't carry for 45 in 2016. (Think that isn't an issue?)
They can, and should, pivot on such neglect and create their own cooperative. Lives are at stake. Economic concepts are silly to consider at this juncture.
Mississippi's governor, Tate Reeves, and Alabama's governor, Kay Ivey, both Republicans in states that overwhelmingly voted for 45 in 2016, can talk big (Oh, is this a time for big talk, huh?) about not wanting to become China or California (I wonder whether Ivey equated the two; foreign as their lands appear to be), but when the onslaught of the virus hits their states--as it will--they're not going to talk big; they're going to need help on the same level as that of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who's getting the lion's share of the attention because the virus is centered there, but only until it moves on. While it's possible that 45 is saving the bulk of his attention to traditionally Republican states, pretty soon, it's going to become obvious that the inadequacy of resources is going to be a shared problem.
I expect Ohio's governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican, to consider this carefully. His state carried easily for 45 in 2016, but it's being overrun by the virus as you read this. He needs help. He's not getting nearly enough.
Either.
But his buying power can be increased sharply by combining with Michigan. So can Wisconsin's. (Note that the gerrymandered Republican legislative leaders have advised Democratic Governor Tony Evers not to seek federal help just yet; what, so their revered leader in Washington need not look quite so bad?) So can Iowa's, which has a Republican governor. So can Minnesota's, which has a Democratic governor. So can Nebraska's, which has a Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, who's on record (with CNN) saying that this isn't a hoax. See? We're pretty far across the nation now.
I think of the prime phrase from the movie "War Games," in which a computer holds the key to saving the world: The only way to win [at nuclear war] is not to play. The governors must conclude first, that partisanship is secondary; second, that they're simply not going to get what the federal government should be doing for them; and third, that together, they can overtake this utter irresponsibility together. Whatever frees them from needing to cooperate with 45 will be the way through.
This may not be nuclear war, but it's survival at its highest level nonetheless. And 45 has no real caring about anybody else's survival but his own, politically. Anyone who needs to pay the greatest price for that, will. They're just in the way.
On CNN just before, Dr. Anthony Fauci, seemingly the only conduit to 45 (for now) to make much sense (I think he was the prime source of thwarting 45's proposed 'quarantine' of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, as ridiculous as that would have been), was quoted as saying as somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans will die from the virus after it has had its way. Nancy Pelosi has already said that 45's dithering, for whatever reason, has been "deadly," and she's correct. Nowhere near the lives that have been lost need to have been lost to this point. And they pile up by the hour.
It's probably risky, to be sure, to try such a thing depending upon the state; the mechanics and politics of such moves are probably complicated. But they can be simplified, too, by the necessity of the moment. I just read something on Facebook, put there by my friend Kathryn Valido, that's worth mentioning, a quote from FDR: "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear."
We are nearing that point for all 50 states. 45 is trying to get away with inadequacy. He might do so politically for the moment, but he can't medically. It's impossible, and he won't take the responsibility of caring for the country's population. Someone has to. That someone is the governors of the states.
First, ignore his request to get them on the phone. That's the vehicle of his control. Ignore him. He isn't respecting them; why should they return anything like it? Then get each other on the phone and float out such a proposal. He'll find out soon enough, and ignore him again. We're busy. We have a population to save if you won't do what you can to do so.
Oh, he'll threaten to cut states off, like he just did to Michigan. So what? Get a consortium going, and you won't need it. That's the idea.
Is this radical? Depends on how you look at it. But the virus will come at us in waves, and something like this must be considered to deal with it. Otherwise, we're completely at its mercy.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Saturday, March 28, 2020
My Friends Are Surrounded by Idiots
I have friends in Arkansas. They're surrounded by idiots.
Arkansas is one of those states situated so it has several states bordering it. Each of them, except one (so far), has done something incredibly stupid with respect to the coronavirus. Remember that Arkansas is in the middle of the Bible Belt. That should alert you sufficiently. We'll come back to Arkansas in a moment; that state certainly isn't immune to stupidity.
In the meantime: Take Mississippi, for instance. Please take it. Attach it to another country. I don't want to be identified with it.
Its governor, ever wise and ever brave, is not going to shelter its citizens in place. "We're not going to be China," he said, as if being China would be an admission that it had done something well, like shut itself down so its citizens could be safe--which it's done. As if Chinese citizens were so different from the people of Mississippi. As if its government could transmit itself into ours.
No, governor, you won't be China. You're going to be a hell of a lot worse than China, because your citizens will be allowed to pretend that the coronavirus isn't anywhere near your state. But it has to be, because of.....
Louisiana, which has just had its Mardi Gras, which means thousands upon thousands of partiers have gathered together, then gone home to spread the virus absolutely everywhere. Its governor said that the federal government didn't give it any kind of a heads-up that the virus was on its way.
I have news, governor: This federal government isn't going to do anything it feels it doesn't have to do to let anybody know about anything until after it happens. Its trustability had been established at or near zero long before this, though, on any number of topics. Weren't you paying attention?
Paying attention like Texas, whose lieutenant governor has suggested that grandparents were ready to sacrifice themselves by dying for their grandchildren, if need be, so they don't have to go without their just, uh, desserts. My reaction to that is in another, recently written blog. I invite you to partake.
Up the ladder we go to Oklahoma, whose governor took his kids out to show that the coronavirus wasn't a big deal. I want to see him in church on Easter Sunday, like our incredibly brave president suggests we do (wait and see whether he goes). And without masks, besides, so he can take full responsibility (The governor, that is; the president has said he doesn't take any at all. Remember him saying so?) for getting himself and his kids sick. I wonder what the guy's poor wife is thinking, unless she's that stupid, too. She married him. You never know.
In Missouri, which has gone rogue on sound thinking for about ten years now, that governor refuses to issue a shelter-in-place order, too. Another tough guy, warding off the virus just because he thinks it isn't a big deal. What, it's gonna hit the Mississippi River and stop? It already hasn't. Will it respond to a scolding? Does it know it's being naughty?
That leaves Tennessee, where in Cleveland, a pastor named Perry Stone said that the virus was a "reckoning" brought on by the nation's rejection of God and its acceptance of abortion and gay marriage. He thinks the Holy Spirit spoke to him. All that sinnin', you know?
That doesn't explain all the other countries--148 at last count--that have this virus running wild within them, too. Or maybe the Holy Spirit has allowed him to talk crazy about just the U.S. I'll get back to you if he comes clean on the others.
Not that Arkansas doesn't have silly defiance within it, too. In Greers Ferry, about 75 miles north of Little Rock, a congregation met very recently and 34 people got sick. That's the (holy) spirit. Has the guy in Cleveland, Tennessee, been there? Did the virus reach only those who are liberals? Did everybody pray real, real hard? Is that why only 34 of them got sick? Could there have been more?
The virus hasn't really reached those states yet. It'll get there. Then we'll see if the brave governors want to wander out into the illness, what with the lack of respirators that will become painfully evident. I'm guessing not; tough talk doesn't transcend self-preservation. To think that this is the limits of the virus is as absurd as the stances they're taking. But they still have time--time to think of something else to blame. Watch for it.
In the meantime, I have only this for my friends in Arkansas: Duck. Wash your hands often. Get some masks if you can. Stay home, and for heaven's sake, don't travel to any state that surrounds you.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Arkansas is one of those states situated so it has several states bordering it. Each of them, except one (so far), has done something incredibly stupid with respect to the coronavirus. Remember that Arkansas is in the middle of the Bible Belt. That should alert you sufficiently. We'll come back to Arkansas in a moment; that state certainly isn't immune to stupidity.
In the meantime: Take Mississippi, for instance. Please take it. Attach it to another country. I don't want to be identified with it.
Its governor, ever wise and ever brave, is not going to shelter its citizens in place. "We're not going to be China," he said, as if being China would be an admission that it had done something well, like shut itself down so its citizens could be safe--which it's done. As if Chinese citizens were so different from the people of Mississippi. As if its government could transmit itself into ours.
No, governor, you won't be China. You're going to be a hell of a lot worse than China, because your citizens will be allowed to pretend that the coronavirus isn't anywhere near your state. But it has to be, because of.....
Louisiana, which has just had its Mardi Gras, which means thousands upon thousands of partiers have gathered together, then gone home to spread the virus absolutely everywhere. Its governor said that the federal government didn't give it any kind of a heads-up that the virus was on its way.
I have news, governor: This federal government isn't going to do anything it feels it doesn't have to do to let anybody know about anything until after it happens. Its trustability had been established at or near zero long before this, though, on any number of topics. Weren't you paying attention?
Paying attention like Texas, whose lieutenant governor has suggested that grandparents were ready to sacrifice themselves by dying for their grandchildren, if need be, so they don't have to go without their just, uh, desserts. My reaction to that is in another, recently written blog. I invite you to partake.
Up the ladder we go to Oklahoma, whose governor took his kids out to show that the coronavirus wasn't a big deal. I want to see him in church on Easter Sunday, like our incredibly brave president suggests we do (wait and see whether he goes). And without masks, besides, so he can take full responsibility (The governor, that is; the president has said he doesn't take any at all. Remember him saying so?) for getting himself and his kids sick. I wonder what the guy's poor wife is thinking, unless she's that stupid, too. She married him. You never know.
In Missouri, which has gone rogue on sound thinking for about ten years now, that governor refuses to issue a shelter-in-place order, too. Another tough guy, warding off the virus just because he thinks it isn't a big deal. What, it's gonna hit the Mississippi River and stop? It already hasn't. Will it respond to a scolding? Does it know it's being naughty?
That leaves Tennessee, where in Cleveland, a pastor named Perry Stone said that the virus was a "reckoning" brought on by the nation's rejection of God and its acceptance of abortion and gay marriage. He thinks the Holy Spirit spoke to him. All that sinnin', you know?
That doesn't explain all the other countries--148 at last count--that have this virus running wild within them, too. Or maybe the Holy Spirit has allowed him to talk crazy about just the U.S. I'll get back to you if he comes clean on the others.
Not that Arkansas doesn't have silly defiance within it, too. In Greers Ferry, about 75 miles north of Little Rock, a congregation met very recently and 34 people got sick. That's the (holy) spirit. Has the guy in Cleveland, Tennessee, been there? Did the virus reach only those who are liberals? Did everybody pray real, real hard? Is that why only 34 of them got sick? Could there have been more?
The virus hasn't really reached those states yet. It'll get there. Then we'll see if the brave governors want to wander out into the illness, what with the lack of respirators that will become painfully evident. I'm guessing not; tough talk doesn't transcend self-preservation. To think that this is the limits of the virus is as absurd as the stances they're taking. But they still have time--time to think of something else to blame. Watch for it.
In the meantime, I have only this for my friends in Arkansas: Duck. Wash your hands often. Get some masks if you can. Stay home, and for heaven's sake, don't travel to any state that surrounds you.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Note to Dan Patrick: STFU, Or Go First
Those of you who have grandchildren: Would you take a bullet for them? Would you step out in front of a Mack truck?
I have little doubt that you would. So let's get that straight right off the bat.
The question is why. Of course you would do it because you've lived a full and (relatively) happy life; that you have lived long enough to see your children get married (regardless of the status of that marriage now) and have kids; and you know that your prodigy will be continued.
If it was a matter of you dying rather than them, and you knew it instinctively, you'd do it in your last heartbeat. It's very basic. It's love. It's dignity. It's pride.
What if it was a matter of wondering whether your grandchildren would end up poorer than you, and you absolutely knew it? That's what Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said the other day. He said you'd walk into a room filled with coronavirus victims, take several good, deep breaths, and lay down for a few days until you died a terrible death from asphyxiation, all to save your prodigy from discomfort.
You see, I guess there's no chance of them ever recovering from the economic disaster that 45 wants to foist upon most of us unless there's a few less of us among whom to spread whatever aid is coming from Congress. I guess they're about as helpless as our parents were in recovering from the Depression of the 1930s.
Wait, you say: We did recover from that. Okay, it took a national effort to reconstruct industry, but World War II provided us with that. Otherwise, it would have taken a lot longer. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't have happened. It doesn't mean that the thing you're only too happy to discuss under normal circumstances, hard work and ingenuity, wouldn't have brought us through.
Good old American know-how and work ethic? I guess that's inadequate. I guess Dan Patrick has concluded that tomorrow really isn't the kind of day we'd look forward to. He's taking the easy way out: Suggesting that grandparents are sufficiently done with their lives, and it's time to die now.
Did that enter the conversation in the 1930s? My study of history didn't suggest that, although there was a time when weeding out the inadequate was in vogue. But the Nazis did that. We fought a war, and a number of us are buried in Europe, to prove that every person has a right to life and liberty, to live as long as they wished in freedom. There are a few left who did that. My dad is one of them.
So Johnny and Susie won't be seeing Nana and Gamps anymore because they've committed suicide--but it's for them, so it's okay. The situation, you see, is unusual. There's this virus amongst us, and we know that some of us won't get past it. So Mr. Tough Guy says it's time to cash in the chips if you have grandkids, that your lives won't last that much longer anyhow, that there's little effect you can have on anybody. I mean, it's a tradeoff, right?
Okay, Mr. Tough Guy: You go first. You give up your life. Go ahead. We'll see, then, if it has the economic effect you said it would. We'll get back to you on the other side--whatever that is, wherever that is.
Oh, wait, you say. We'd have to have a whole bunch of oldsters tanking to have that kind of effect? The mantle of leadership still hasn't changed, dude. You're still the lieutenant governor of one of our largest states. What better example would it be for you to get a whole bunch of us in a room and spray it with coronavirus (I'm sure it could be arranged; there's enough of it out there), and party until we fell? That is, if you joined us? Or would it be a very selective Sodom and Gomorrah, with you obviously in charge of the selection?
Now that you've run your mouth, we'll see if you can back it up. Otherwise, shut the fuck up. I know you won't, since I was once a citizen of your state and while I was there, you didn't say one damn thing that made any sense, anyhow. What you've just said was an example of the virulent nonsense you've been piled upon Texans for several years.
There's another way of accomplishing what you say you want: To pretend that the virus isn't that big of a deal. That's what 45, in his tunnel-visioned, profit-making stupidity, wants when he says that he'd love it if the economy just got back to being normal at Easter time--and if the churches were filled for Easter services.
He wants to use the risen Christ as a metaphor. But he won't, or at least, he'll look pretty stupid if he does (not that that's ever stopped him). The disease will be rushing over all of us just about then. He'll have to fire his medical advisors because they're not going to tell him what he wants to hear--as if the virus will be stopped or diminished just because he wants it to be.
Liberty University is calling its students back to classes. I guess we'll see if all this was a hoax, a politically-manipulated effort to take 45 out of office. Or if he'll just do it himself by getting dullards killed because they followed the pied piper off the cliff, as he watched and then (you can bet) blaming someone else instead of his own disgusting example.
These are sick people. They don't need a virus to prove it. And, God help us, they're in charge.
Be well. For heaven's sake, be careful. With luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
I have little doubt that you would. So let's get that straight right off the bat.
The question is why. Of course you would do it because you've lived a full and (relatively) happy life; that you have lived long enough to see your children get married (regardless of the status of that marriage now) and have kids; and you know that your prodigy will be continued.
If it was a matter of you dying rather than them, and you knew it instinctively, you'd do it in your last heartbeat. It's very basic. It's love. It's dignity. It's pride.
What if it was a matter of wondering whether your grandchildren would end up poorer than you, and you absolutely knew it? That's what Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said the other day. He said you'd walk into a room filled with coronavirus victims, take several good, deep breaths, and lay down for a few days until you died a terrible death from asphyxiation, all to save your prodigy from discomfort.
You see, I guess there's no chance of them ever recovering from the economic disaster that 45 wants to foist upon most of us unless there's a few less of us among whom to spread whatever aid is coming from Congress. I guess they're about as helpless as our parents were in recovering from the Depression of the 1930s.
Wait, you say: We did recover from that. Okay, it took a national effort to reconstruct industry, but World War II provided us with that. Otherwise, it would have taken a lot longer. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't have happened. It doesn't mean that the thing you're only too happy to discuss under normal circumstances, hard work and ingenuity, wouldn't have brought us through.
Good old American know-how and work ethic? I guess that's inadequate. I guess Dan Patrick has concluded that tomorrow really isn't the kind of day we'd look forward to. He's taking the easy way out: Suggesting that grandparents are sufficiently done with their lives, and it's time to die now.
Did that enter the conversation in the 1930s? My study of history didn't suggest that, although there was a time when weeding out the inadequate was in vogue. But the Nazis did that. We fought a war, and a number of us are buried in Europe, to prove that every person has a right to life and liberty, to live as long as they wished in freedom. There are a few left who did that. My dad is one of them.
So Johnny and Susie won't be seeing Nana and Gamps anymore because they've committed suicide--but it's for them, so it's okay. The situation, you see, is unusual. There's this virus amongst us, and we know that some of us won't get past it. So Mr. Tough Guy says it's time to cash in the chips if you have grandkids, that your lives won't last that much longer anyhow, that there's little effect you can have on anybody. I mean, it's a tradeoff, right?
Okay, Mr. Tough Guy: You go first. You give up your life. Go ahead. We'll see, then, if it has the economic effect you said it would. We'll get back to you on the other side--whatever that is, wherever that is.
Oh, wait, you say. We'd have to have a whole bunch of oldsters tanking to have that kind of effect? The mantle of leadership still hasn't changed, dude. You're still the lieutenant governor of one of our largest states. What better example would it be for you to get a whole bunch of us in a room and spray it with coronavirus (I'm sure it could be arranged; there's enough of it out there), and party until we fell? That is, if you joined us? Or would it be a very selective Sodom and Gomorrah, with you obviously in charge of the selection?
Now that you've run your mouth, we'll see if you can back it up. Otherwise, shut the fuck up. I know you won't, since I was once a citizen of your state and while I was there, you didn't say one damn thing that made any sense, anyhow. What you've just said was an example of the virulent nonsense you've been piled upon Texans for several years.
There's another way of accomplishing what you say you want: To pretend that the virus isn't that big of a deal. That's what 45, in his tunnel-visioned, profit-making stupidity, wants when he says that he'd love it if the economy just got back to being normal at Easter time--and if the churches were filled for Easter services.
He wants to use the risen Christ as a metaphor. But he won't, or at least, he'll look pretty stupid if he does (not that that's ever stopped him). The disease will be rushing over all of us just about then. He'll have to fire his medical advisors because they're not going to tell him what he wants to hear--as if the virus will be stopped or diminished just because he wants it to be.
Liberty University is calling its students back to classes. I guess we'll see if all this was a hoax, a politically-manipulated effort to take 45 out of office. Or if he'll just do it himself by getting dullards killed because they followed the pied piper off the cliff, as he watched and then (you can bet) blaming someone else instead of his own disgusting example.
These are sick people. They don't need a virus to prove it. And, God help us, they're in charge.
Be well. For heaven's sake, be careful. With luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
I Have A Reason To Stay Alive. It's Right in Front of Me.
I could just fold the tent right here, you know. On the surface, there's no reason why not.
I don't have kids. I'm retired, so I'm not working for anyone. I could get in my car, drive to a place where Republicans will always be in control, just hang out for a while, and get the disease. They don't seem to be worried about it. They seem to be in control, without a concern. It will, somehow, avoid them.
I might as well get it over with. The stats are not in my favor. I have a heart condition; my triple by-pass qualifies as one, though I feel okay right now. I could get sick and die within, oh, maybe two weeks. I'm 68 years old, so I qualify for the riskiest.
But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stay alive, damn it, if I possibly can (and even though I'm observing social distancing, I'm not sure of that). I just figured it out. Sometimes, what's right in front of you doesn't appear to be significant until you think about it a while. And sometimes, something happens that tells you that someone's catching on.
About ten minutes to six last night, I turned on the TV to see our terrible president try to snow everyone again. He was given the line "war president" by someone reporting for Fox News, so that's an easy piece of garbage to throw into his completely bogus self-description. If he really were a war president, he'd be acting much, much differently, much like FDR or Lincoln in expanding his powers to make sure everyone's on the same page. But he isn't, saying that the states should handle this, which is exactly the wrong way to deal with it. He will learn this, too, in the next two or three weeks, when this virus completely overruns us (by Easter, we will be a completely different country). But in the meantime, just being a large person and talking real tough will substitute for having the skills necessary to deal with this crisis.
When he figures it out, it will be too late. We will be in the thick of it, right up to our necks, with no one to help us quick enough. The hospitals will be packed tight. The state governments will be backed up with orders for equipment. People will be getting sick and dying, and doctors will have to make the terrible decision about who they can keep living, if they themselves aren't stricken.
If I'm wrong about this, I'll apologize right here. But we are behind the help curve now, and all the predictors are showing that we will not catch up until thousands die. 45 had a chance to get out ahead of this, but his obsession with making money overtook his obsession about life itself.
In the meantime, someone's starting to catch on. Someone's starting to think that it really doesn't matter much what 45 thinks, because first, he exaggerates; second, he lies; and third, he's exactly the opposite of what we need here--a leader who has a grasp of the situation, which he doesn't.
How do I think this? Because NBC was the only one of the three networks to cover the press conference in its entirety yesterday. CBS did not allow it to get in the way of its regularly scheduled broadcast of "60 Minutes" (note that it always allows itself to delay the broadcast because NFL games go past 6 p.m. CST). And ABC, at least the Milwaukee affiliate, didn't broadcast it at all.
I checked, twice. I came back to all of them after 6 p.m. CST.
And when I turned on NBC, I heard just two things: First, that 45 was complaining that nobody thanked him for giving up his salary, as if that matters to anyone right now; and second, that he "gave up billions of dollars" when he became president (a clear lie, what with his utter brushing away of the emoluments clause of the Constitution). He tried to get people to feel sorry for the rich, who have to give up their riches to run for office.
I stopped listening after that. It's still all about him. He can't help himself. That about 38 percent of the population still seems to care about him and think of him as a leader is pathetic. He will have to lie a lot, and in new ways, to keep hold of that base. The use of religion will be next. Count on it. So will attacks on certain governors, on Obama, maybe even on Hillary Clinton, even though he eliminated the pandemic response team tied to the National Security Council, to cut costs, and tried to say that it was subsumed within the government somewhere else, which is a lie. It's all so predicable, and none of it's believable.
Thousands will die, so he mocked Mitt Romney for self-quarantining in case he could have gotten the virus from the arrogant Rand Paul. That's the spirit. Make sure you trash anyone who's done anything against you.
Sure, you can trash the "liberal media" for its bias. You can think of this as some kind of plot against 45, as if the virus was somehow planted to make him look bad. Or you can conclude, as the networks seem to be doing, that he's mouthing continued nonsense because he doesn't know what else to say and saying something seems to be what is called for now, instead of saying nothing until the facts are determined.
I heard that trash, and I made up my mind right then and there that I would stay alive if I possibly could to usher in a new president, whenever that was possible. This one should have absolutely nothing to do with this. He should be kept as far away as possible. He is probably the most inadequate person alive who should be in the most important position alive to deal with this.
I don't want to die with him in charge. What a terrible way to end it. I really don't deserve this, and I know plenty of people who don't, either. The 38 percent don't realize that they don't, but there's little I can do about that. All I can do is keep writing this, read some books, and minimize my contacts until this awful disease eases its grip.
But that's what I'm gonna do. By God, I won't die with this monster, this incompetent fool, this nasty person who's taking advantage of his position to insult whomever he wants, free to speak for my country, my great country, the one that people around the world once relied on as a moral beacon, the one I taught thousands of kids about. I want to live, and live in a different country than the one he's created and desperately wants to continue.
It won't be easy. It's already been a little depressing. I come close to crying when I think that I have friends in Sturgeon Bay who would like to hear this, but I can't drive up there and read it until further notice. But I'm going to remind myself of what I'm doing and why. At those moments, it'll be a little easier.
Be well. Be careful. With a little luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
I don't have kids. I'm retired, so I'm not working for anyone. I could get in my car, drive to a place where Republicans will always be in control, just hang out for a while, and get the disease. They don't seem to be worried about it. They seem to be in control, without a concern. It will, somehow, avoid them.
I might as well get it over with. The stats are not in my favor. I have a heart condition; my triple by-pass qualifies as one, though I feel okay right now. I could get sick and die within, oh, maybe two weeks. I'm 68 years old, so I qualify for the riskiest.
But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stay alive, damn it, if I possibly can (and even though I'm observing social distancing, I'm not sure of that). I just figured it out. Sometimes, what's right in front of you doesn't appear to be significant until you think about it a while. And sometimes, something happens that tells you that someone's catching on.
About ten minutes to six last night, I turned on the TV to see our terrible president try to snow everyone again. He was given the line "war president" by someone reporting for Fox News, so that's an easy piece of garbage to throw into his completely bogus self-description. If he really were a war president, he'd be acting much, much differently, much like FDR or Lincoln in expanding his powers to make sure everyone's on the same page. But he isn't, saying that the states should handle this, which is exactly the wrong way to deal with it. He will learn this, too, in the next two or three weeks, when this virus completely overruns us (by Easter, we will be a completely different country). But in the meantime, just being a large person and talking real tough will substitute for having the skills necessary to deal with this crisis.
When he figures it out, it will be too late. We will be in the thick of it, right up to our necks, with no one to help us quick enough. The hospitals will be packed tight. The state governments will be backed up with orders for equipment. People will be getting sick and dying, and doctors will have to make the terrible decision about who they can keep living, if they themselves aren't stricken.
If I'm wrong about this, I'll apologize right here. But we are behind the help curve now, and all the predictors are showing that we will not catch up until thousands die. 45 had a chance to get out ahead of this, but his obsession with making money overtook his obsession about life itself.
In the meantime, someone's starting to catch on. Someone's starting to think that it really doesn't matter much what 45 thinks, because first, he exaggerates; second, he lies; and third, he's exactly the opposite of what we need here--a leader who has a grasp of the situation, which he doesn't.
How do I think this? Because NBC was the only one of the three networks to cover the press conference in its entirety yesterday. CBS did not allow it to get in the way of its regularly scheduled broadcast of "60 Minutes" (note that it always allows itself to delay the broadcast because NFL games go past 6 p.m. CST). And ABC, at least the Milwaukee affiliate, didn't broadcast it at all.
I checked, twice. I came back to all of them after 6 p.m. CST.
And when I turned on NBC, I heard just two things: First, that 45 was complaining that nobody thanked him for giving up his salary, as if that matters to anyone right now; and second, that he "gave up billions of dollars" when he became president (a clear lie, what with his utter brushing away of the emoluments clause of the Constitution). He tried to get people to feel sorry for the rich, who have to give up their riches to run for office.
I stopped listening after that. It's still all about him. He can't help himself. That about 38 percent of the population still seems to care about him and think of him as a leader is pathetic. He will have to lie a lot, and in new ways, to keep hold of that base. The use of religion will be next. Count on it. So will attacks on certain governors, on Obama, maybe even on Hillary Clinton, even though he eliminated the pandemic response team tied to the National Security Council, to cut costs, and tried to say that it was subsumed within the government somewhere else, which is a lie. It's all so predicable, and none of it's believable.
Thousands will die, so he mocked Mitt Romney for self-quarantining in case he could have gotten the virus from the arrogant Rand Paul. That's the spirit. Make sure you trash anyone who's done anything against you.
Sure, you can trash the "liberal media" for its bias. You can think of this as some kind of plot against 45, as if the virus was somehow planted to make him look bad. Or you can conclude, as the networks seem to be doing, that he's mouthing continued nonsense because he doesn't know what else to say and saying something seems to be what is called for now, instead of saying nothing until the facts are determined.
I heard that trash, and I made up my mind right then and there that I would stay alive if I possibly could to usher in a new president, whenever that was possible. This one should have absolutely nothing to do with this. He should be kept as far away as possible. He is probably the most inadequate person alive who should be in the most important position alive to deal with this.
I don't want to die with him in charge. What a terrible way to end it. I really don't deserve this, and I know plenty of people who don't, either. The 38 percent don't realize that they don't, but there's little I can do about that. All I can do is keep writing this, read some books, and minimize my contacts until this awful disease eases its grip.
But that's what I'm gonna do. By God, I won't die with this monster, this incompetent fool, this nasty person who's taking advantage of his position to insult whomever he wants, free to speak for my country, my great country, the one that people around the world once relied on as a moral beacon, the one I taught thousands of kids about. I want to live, and live in a different country than the one he's created and desperately wants to continue.
It won't be easy. It's already been a little depressing. I come close to crying when I think that I have friends in Sturgeon Bay who would like to hear this, but I can't drive up there and read it until further notice. But I'm going to remind myself of what I'm doing and why. At those moments, it'll be a little easier.
Be well. Be careful. With a little luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Monday, March 23, 2020
What We Know So Far, and What We Need To Do
The coronavirus attack is at least a month and a half old now, at least in this country. It's a good time to assess what we know so far:
- The 45 Administration didn't want to face up to the problem. It knew, back in January, that this attack was coming and was unstoppable. It did next to nothing.
- The 45 Administration doesn't know how to deal with this. It is stalling for time until something's done by someone else.
- If not for Dr. Fauci, this entire effort would be lost. It may still be. He's doing his best to keep people calm, but he doesn't have the trigger that has to be pulled on the distribution of resources,
- Vice-President Pence doesn't know what to do, either. He sounds better because he's been at the podium as a governor and member of Congress. This is beyond him, too.
- The administration has leaned so hard on the state governments because it doesn't know what to do, even though it was warned ahead of time.
- 45 is manning the podium because he's a control freak, even though it's clear that he doesn't know what to do. Whatever is being done is not being ordered by him. If it were so, he would be telling us exactly that. Six weeks now, and he hasn't ordered anybody to do anything, besides declare New York State to be a disaster area, which we already knew.
- Speaking of that: The only real leadership that's being done is by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He has at least tried to size up the situation and summarize it in terms of resources needed. That's what we need here: A realistic estimate of the size of what we have in front of us and what's needed to ward it off as much as we can. We aren't getting that from the national administration, because every day that goes by, it becomes more inadequate, not less.
- 45 is manning the podium so that when there is an answer to this problem, he will appear to be the one who solved it--even though it's now clear that he can't.
- Remember that 45 has said, "I don't take any responsibility." He said that, and it is up to us to be sure that it comes back to get him. When things are quite obviously out of control, remember who he blames. It will be false. It will be a lie.
- Rely on Axios to give you the best updates. They are saying that tens of thousands, if not a million, will die from coronavirus. The number of dead it reports Saturday are 244. That is a pinprick. Yes: You need to stay inside. Yes: You need to be extremely careful. Ignore all attempts to minimize this.
- We are not remotely close to being overrun by this virus. By Easter, it will happen. Then it will be important to tune into these conferences, because it will be obvious then that this administration is beyond help and must be replaced immediately. It will make excuses for itself. They, too, will be inadequate. But it will be important, especially then, that you do not panic.
- If you want to know exactly what we need, go to the website Medium and click on "The Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance," by Tomas Pueyo (h/t to my friend, Dennis Boom, for lighting me up to that). That will tell you. We need to be tough about this for three months. Then we can adjust better. BUT NOT UNTIL THEN.
- Sophisticated, leading questions like the one Peter Alexander asked 45 are still quite beyond him. If you are not a member of Fox News, he is incapable of seeing anything but the likelihood of a threat implied by any question that doesn't, according to him, make him look terrific.
- The latest press conference had little additional to say beyond what's already been reported. Generalizations are all 45 can come up with because this situation is still beyond him.
- The recession/depression that this will cause will be beyond anything anyone under 75 has seen. Some businesses will simply be unable to recover because people's tastes will change. When we are finished with this, the country will not look nearly the same. We have ridden a tremendous bubble of 75 years, but it has broken.
- There is no national leadership here. Absolutely none. Leadership would have marshaled resources and been far beyond what this band of incompetents have done so far. Leadership would not have lied about getting resources where they were needed. Leadership would not have lied about hospital ships getting to their destinations quickly.
- We will need to be good to each other in the stores. As this epidemic gets closer and the results become clearer and scarier, people will be tempted to hoard all the more. We cannot let our tempers get in the way. We must support each other while we get what we need for ourselves.
- Exhortations like the ones that 45 and Secretary of Housing and Human Services Ben Carson made at the press conference today--we are all in this together, for example, no matter what party you belong to--are good and nice and needed, but not without specific directives, not without a path. Without that, they mean next to nothing. They do not inspire.
- Yes, we will get through this--those of us who are left. But how many thousands more need to die because this administration is still playing catch-up eight weeks after it was warned?
We are about to enter a time that will test all of us. We must do our best to take care of each other. The federal government may, or may not, catch up. It's the lack of knowledge that will doom us if we let it. The best advice is what has already been given informally: Assume you have the disease so you don't give it to someone. If we all think that, we'll have the best chance of surviving. Good luck to all. Do what makes sense. And keep your hands clean.
Be well. Be careful. With luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Friday, March 20, 2020
Oh, Please Tell Us Why
I had to do it. The situation demanded it.
I called the keeper of my 403(b) yesterday. I had to find out how much money I've lost so far. The economy is tanking, as you might expect, since most stores are now closed due to the coronavirus epidemic.
He said about 13 percent or so, since February 25. I've checked around: Others have lost similar amounts.
Now, let me say: 13 percent of what I had wasn't all that much. It wasn't six figures. In fact, nowhere near it.
And so I had to ask: Is it time to bail it out, take the tax hit, and bite the bullet? At least there would be some money there, and its value probably wouldn't diminish all that much, what with the Fed dropping its prime rate to 1.25%. That's like, well, nearly nothing.
He said no, which I think is what they've been trained to say. The market will recover, they say. It just won't be tomorrow, or next week, or next month. But it will come back, he said.
Yeah, okay, but that 13 percent or so has been lost before the main rush of coronavirus has hit us, It is yet to arrive, but it's just around the corner. Governors in six states are still not worried enough to close businesses or schools. But that will show up pretty soon.
Most of us who have anything invested are going to take a pretty big hit. Most of us.
A few U.S. Senators won't. They were briefed at the end of January, and were told that the virus was coming. They took their investments and traded them, while their values hadn't yet dropped.
The phrase for that is insider trading. You aren't supposed to do that. You aren't supposed to take information that is guarded and prioritized and not publicly shared, and act as if you just decided to sell a whole bunch of securities 'just because.'
That is theft in another phrase. If their transactions hadn't already been started--they can't always be done all at once--they cheated the rest of us. That is a crime.
Raw Story says four U.S. Senators did exactly that: Richard Burr (R-NC), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The story didn't specify exactly how much money the four of them saved, but with Burr and Loeffler, we know that they saved several hundred thousand dollars.
Four of them isn't a whole bunch, but it's enough to raise eyebrows. One of them is too much. And for people like me, who have already lost 13 percent of what I had, this looks pretty lousy.
Because I left that money alone for eleven years, believing that I could gain from it. My gamble--and that's what it is, after all--was starting to pay off. It was starting to look like that original financial investment, done by contract through my school district, was paying off, I could reasonably look ahead to the time when the money would be doubled, and I could use it for, well, stuff I'd always looked forward to.
But you see, I hadn't had the information that these U.S. Senators had. And though my financial advisor might be right about getting it back, I'm no longer as young as I was when the investment was first made. Allowing for survival--and with heart disease, I'd better watch my step--I will be over 70 when I get that money back.
Maybe Jim Inhofe thought about that, too. He's 75. Dianne Feinstein will be 77 in June. But that doesn't mean they can utilize information the rest of us don't have.
So of course, we have to float this question: What the hell were they thinking? That they could get away with it?
Well, we have just had a president get away with bribery. There was no quid pro quo stated, but that doesn't matter and we know it doesn't. His party voted in near-lockstep to acquit him. The evidence didn't matter. The information didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
If that happens to the person who's supposed to be the prime example of what's good and right and true in our country, why the hell wouldn't someone else try to get away with actual theft? If they were thinking that if the president can get away with his nonsense, so can they, well. then, who's to stop them? If we didn't care enough to stop that crime, what's a couple thousand bucks to you and me?
Oh, I want to hear them walk this back. Because you know they will try. They'll justify it somehow. They'll raise enough doubts to fudge over what they did--or try to.
Inhofe, by the way, is up for re-election this year. Oklahoma hasn't had a Democratic Senator since 1994. It has most recently elected a Democratic member of the House, so there's hope there.
For the rest of them, well--I can't hope they get sick with the virus. That would be cruel.
I hope they go to jail. That would be fitting.
The only way they can get out of this clean is to sell the securities in question and donate the proceeds to something reasonably charitable. Sell it all. Then there are no profits worth investigating.
Or, resign. But if the president didn't, crook that he is, why should they? This is what happens when corruption infests the system; it can't be isolated. You can't just say, well, that's the exception. Someone else will try it.
Otherwise, this should be good. I want to hear why they suddenly ditched their securities. I want to hear them discuss how it was just a matter of circumstance.
Please, tell us why. Tell us why you suddenly made a profit the rest of us couldn't. Tell us why you couldn't absorb losing 13%, at least, of what you've earned over time.
Because the market's coming back, right? It always does. That's what they say. You could have waited. Couldn't you?
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
I called the keeper of my 403(b) yesterday. I had to find out how much money I've lost so far. The economy is tanking, as you might expect, since most stores are now closed due to the coronavirus epidemic.
He said about 13 percent or so, since February 25. I've checked around: Others have lost similar amounts.
Now, let me say: 13 percent of what I had wasn't all that much. It wasn't six figures. In fact, nowhere near it.
And so I had to ask: Is it time to bail it out, take the tax hit, and bite the bullet? At least there would be some money there, and its value probably wouldn't diminish all that much, what with the Fed dropping its prime rate to 1.25%. That's like, well, nearly nothing.
He said no, which I think is what they've been trained to say. The market will recover, they say. It just won't be tomorrow, or next week, or next month. But it will come back, he said.
Yeah, okay, but that 13 percent or so has been lost before the main rush of coronavirus has hit us, It is yet to arrive, but it's just around the corner. Governors in six states are still not worried enough to close businesses or schools. But that will show up pretty soon.
Most of us who have anything invested are going to take a pretty big hit. Most of us.
A few U.S. Senators won't. They were briefed at the end of January, and were told that the virus was coming. They took their investments and traded them, while their values hadn't yet dropped.
The phrase for that is insider trading. You aren't supposed to do that. You aren't supposed to take information that is guarded and prioritized and not publicly shared, and act as if you just decided to sell a whole bunch of securities 'just because.'
That is theft in another phrase. If their transactions hadn't already been started--they can't always be done all at once--they cheated the rest of us. That is a crime.
Raw Story says four U.S. Senators did exactly that: Richard Burr (R-NC), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The story didn't specify exactly how much money the four of them saved, but with Burr and Loeffler, we know that they saved several hundred thousand dollars.
Four of them isn't a whole bunch, but it's enough to raise eyebrows. One of them is too much. And for people like me, who have already lost 13 percent of what I had, this looks pretty lousy.
Because I left that money alone for eleven years, believing that I could gain from it. My gamble--and that's what it is, after all--was starting to pay off. It was starting to look like that original financial investment, done by contract through my school district, was paying off, I could reasonably look ahead to the time when the money would be doubled, and I could use it for, well, stuff I'd always looked forward to.
But you see, I hadn't had the information that these U.S. Senators had. And though my financial advisor might be right about getting it back, I'm no longer as young as I was when the investment was first made. Allowing for survival--and with heart disease, I'd better watch my step--I will be over 70 when I get that money back.
Maybe Jim Inhofe thought about that, too. He's 75. Dianne Feinstein will be 77 in June. But that doesn't mean they can utilize information the rest of us don't have.
So of course, we have to float this question: What the hell were they thinking? That they could get away with it?
Well, we have just had a president get away with bribery. There was no quid pro quo stated, but that doesn't matter and we know it doesn't. His party voted in near-lockstep to acquit him. The evidence didn't matter. The information didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
If that happens to the person who's supposed to be the prime example of what's good and right and true in our country, why the hell wouldn't someone else try to get away with actual theft? If they were thinking that if the president can get away with his nonsense, so can they, well. then, who's to stop them? If we didn't care enough to stop that crime, what's a couple thousand bucks to you and me?
Oh, I want to hear them walk this back. Because you know they will try. They'll justify it somehow. They'll raise enough doubts to fudge over what they did--or try to.
Inhofe, by the way, is up for re-election this year. Oklahoma hasn't had a Democratic Senator since 1994. It has most recently elected a Democratic member of the House, so there's hope there.
For the rest of them, well--I can't hope they get sick with the virus. That would be cruel.
I hope they go to jail. That would be fitting.
The only way they can get out of this clean is to sell the securities in question and donate the proceeds to something reasonably charitable. Sell it all. Then there are no profits worth investigating.
Or, resign. But if the president didn't, crook that he is, why should they? This is what happens when corruption infests the system; it can't be isolated. You can't just say, well, that's the exception. Someone else will try it.
Otherwise, this should be good. I want to hear why they suddenly ditched their securities. I want to hear them discuss how it was just a matter of circumstance.
Please, tell us why. Tell us why you suddenly made a profit the rest of us couldn't. Tell us why you couldn't absorb losing 13%, at least, of what you've earned over time.
Because the market's coming back, right? It always does. That's what they say. You could have waited. Couldn't you?
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Sunday, March 15, 2020
The Immediate Future--Bleak, and Empty
I saw the immediate future, though in a place one might not have expected.
Sunday morning last, March 8: 8th Street, Geneva, Nebraska, the main drag. You'll have to look carefully to find it, though it's the seat of Fillmore County. I was there doing a little research, and responding to a kind of invitation to attend a pancake breakfast in nearby Grafton.
If you're new to this blog, the fact that it's Grafton already had my attention. I'm writing a book on all the Graftons I can find. I had already found this one, It was my second time through.
I didn't know there were any places to stay in Geneva, a bit southeast of Grafton, maybe 15 minutes away. But someone at Jill's Sweet Shop and Catering, located mid-block along the west side, told me about the Hotel Geneva, a little nook at the far end of the street. She even ginned up the proprietor to expect my phone call, which I happened to deliver after I finished my formal, library-based research just five minute before she was to leave.
The rooms were jammed with all the accoutrements you could ask for--frig, stove, easy chair, table, and TV (though mine had a sound that faded in and out, which I discovered far after anything could have been done about it)--and was plenty comfortable enough.
I stayed Friday and Saturday evenings, with no one around. The proprietor took off after checking me in and told me to call her if there was anything she could do for me. It didn't sound irresponsible; it was just the way things were done around there.
8th Street had a couple of banks, Jill's Catering, and a Mexican restaurant as part of the business end of the town, all along the west side of the street. The street itself was made of cobblestone, which made one go slower as you moved through it. The east side was dominated by the grounds of the county seat, though the VFW Post was a bit north of it.
But it was the lack of commerce that was a bit spooky. There was a grocery store at the far end of the west side of the street, but after 11 a.m. on Saturday, that and the VFW Post seemed to be all that were open--all that anyone had time for. They had prime rib at the VFW Saturday night, and I bought one: Not bad. But there weren't ten people in there.
Maybe some had gone drinking at the bar located to the south, across the street. Maybe some went to the Mexican place. But there weren't many out there.
Where were everyone? The coronavirus hadn't hit this part of Nebraska yet. The weather was nice, really nice: close to 70 degrees. But in this own of 2200 residents (as of 2010, granted, but the trends were downward countywide), people weren't out and about on a Saturday night.
So, too, it was even emptier Sunday morning. The wind blew hard. Dust came up and slammed against the empty storefronts. It was 9:30 a.m. Nobody around.
And I thought: Why would anybody want to live here, with nobody around and nothing to do?
I ran up against the immediate future. All streets will be like this, and soon. And anyone roaming 'just to have fun' will be a fool.
We're about two weeks out now. The numbers will begin to be noticeable. You'll have to do some real planning to limit your time outdoors, if in fact you want to minimize your exposure.
At least one member of my family thinks this is an overreaction. I think he's wrong. We have to take a hard look at each other now. The federal government wants people not to be critical. Too bad. The situation is critical. We are about to be subsumed by it.
And for Geneva, Nebraska? Well, there's a clinic nearby. They're lucky. At least 120 rural hospitals have been shut down in the last decade, said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel back in January.
Be well. Be careful (and I really, really mean it this time). I'll see you down the road (hopefully, if I don't get sick).
Mister Mark
Sunday morning last, March 8: 8th Street, Geneva, Nebraska, the main drag. You'll have to look carefully to find it, though it's the seat of Fillmore County. I was there doing a little research, and responding to a kind of invitation to attend a pancake breakfast in nearby Grafton.
If you're new to this blog, the fact that it's Grafton already had my attention. I'm writing a book on all the Graftons I can find. I had already found this one, It was my second time through.
I didn't know there were any places to stay in Geneva, a bit southeast of Grafton, maybe 15 minutes away. But someone at Jill's Sweet Shop and Catering, located mid-block along the west side, told me about the Hotel Geneva, a little nook at the far end of the street. She even ginned up the proprietor to expect my phone call, which I happened to deliver after I finished my formal, library-based research just five minute before she was to leave.
The rooms were jammed with all the accoutrements you could ask for--frig, stove, easy chair, table, and TV (though mine had a sound that faded in and out, which I discovered far after anything could have been done about it)--and was plenty comfortable enough.
I stayed Friday and Saturday evenings, with no one around. The proprietor took off after checking me in and told me to call her if there was anything she could do for me. It didn't sound irresponsible; it was just the way things were done around there.
8th Street had a couple of banks, Jill's Catering, and a Mexican restaurant as part of the business end of the town, all along the west side of the street. The street itself was made of cobblestone, which made one go slower as you moved through it. The east side was dominated by the grounds of the county seat, though the VFW Post was a bit north of it.
But it was the lack of commerce that was a bit spooky. There was a grocery store at the far end of the west side of the street, but after 11 a.m. on Saturday, that and the VFW Post seemed to be all that were open--all that anyone had time for. They had prime rib at the VFW Saturday night, and I bought one: Not bad. But there weren't ten people in there.
Maybe some had gone drinking at the bar located to the south, across the street. Maybe some went to the Mexican place. But there weren't many out there.
Where were everyone? The coronavirus hadn't hit this part of Nebraska yet. The weather was nice, really nice: close to 70 degrees. But in this own of 2200 residents (as of 2010, granted, but the trends were downward countywide), people weren't out and about on a Saturday night.
So, too, it was even emptier Sunday morning. The wind blew hard. Dust came up and slammed against the empty storefronts. It was 9:30 a.m. Nobody around.
And I thought: Why would anybody want to live here, with nobody around and nothing to do?
I ran up against the immediate future. All streets will be like this, and soon. And anyone roaming 'just to have fun' will be a fool.
We're about two weeks out now. The numbers will begin to be noticeable. You'll have to do some real planning to limit your time outdoors, if in fact you want to minimize your exposure.
At least one member of my family thinks this is an overreaction. I think he's wrong. We have to take a hard look at each other now. The federal government wants people not to be critical. Too bad. The situation is critical. We are about to be subsumed by it.
And for Geneva, Nebraska? Well, there's a clinic nearby. They're lucky. At least 120 rural hospitals have been shut down in the last decade, said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel back in January.
Be well. Be careful (and I really, really mean it this time). I'll see you down the road (hopefully, if I don't get sick).
Mister Mark
Friday, March 13, 2020
Despite the Sickness, A Reason To Vote April 7: Get A Walker Stooge Out of There
Yes, we have to take the coronavirus seriously. Yes, we also have to take the state Supreme Court race seriously.
Get a mask. Get some Purell. Go and vote for Jill Karofsky.
The total numbers in the primary: state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly, stooge of the Republicans, 352,876. Everybody else, 352,262.
614 votes. Split pretty much right down the middle. A surge one way or another carries it.
Not exactly a stirring consensus for Daniel Kelly, huh? Especially after four years since the most recent former governor of Wisconsin, Mr. F. Gow, appointed this obviously political hack to the highest court in the state.
His appointment would seem to make crude sense, given his background. He's a graduate of the Regent School of Law, a Christian, private university, founded by that great legal philosopher, Pat Robertson. Kelly was the head of the law review that he helped found himself, which makes it easier to be the leader of anything.
He defended the 2010 gerrymandering, representing the Republicans. His judicial philosophy makes it sound like he has a unique talent--just read the words of the law and apply them as read: No interpretation, just read it and be very simple about it. Actually, that sounds like anybody off the street with a reading skill above 8th grade could be on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
His Wikipedia site also says that he believes that slavery and affirmative action are, under the law, morally the same, since "neither can exist without the foundational principle that it is acceptable to force someone into an unwanted economic relationship." Which, technically, is true. if you want to equalize slavery and affirmative action. But that makes slavery a largely "economic relationship," which is very definitely isn't. You can dislike the way affirmative action is applied so as to completely discount its relevance, but to make it equivalent to slavery is, well, more than a bit of a stretch.
It means, too, that if you didn't like slavery, you won't like affirmative action, either. That's kind of like saying that the effects of ice fishing and surfing are pretty much the same, seeing as how both have to do with movement over water. Well, yes, in one sense and a very big no in the way that actually makes sense.
Where in the world did he get that poppycock? Who knows? But someone like this doesn't belong on the state Supreme Court. Period.
Jill Karofsky does. She was educated at the private, but still normal, Duke University, and got her law degree at UW-Madison. She's a former trial court judge, which she says makes her better suited to serve on the state Supreme Court since she saw what effect its rulings had on normal people (and I would agree). She was an Assistant Attorney General. She is an adjunct professor at the UW-Madison law school. Daniel Kelly was never any of these.
He was a political appointee of our last, awful governor. The present conservative leadership of the state Supreme Court is trying to protect Kelly by claiming that he is somehow immune to attacks of political influence--this after two of its current, conservative members refused to recuse themselves in a case in which associations which contributed to their electoral victories were involved (and won).
Sorry, won't wash. Let's wash this a little bit cleaner on April 7. Early voting begins Monday. Lisa Neubauer just missed last time, when a sudden surge of 45ian money suddenly arrived in the form of non-sensical but effective ads that allowed her opponent, Brian Hagedorn, to overcome a nearly insurmountable deficit; let's put Jill Karofsky in there instead.
Again, I refer you to the above numbers; it's likely to be close. Don't stay home. Keep yourselves germless but get out there and vote. It won't turn the court around all at once, but it'll be an important step. At the very least, we'll have a stooge of the last governor out of there.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Get a mask. Get some Purell. Go and vote for Jill Karofsky.
The total numbers in the primary: state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly, stooge of the Republicans, 352,876. Everybody else, 352,262.
614 votes. Split pretty much right down the middle. A surge one way or another carries it.
Not exactly a stirring consensus for Daniel Kelly, huh? Especially after four years since the most recent former governor of Wisconsin, Mr. F. Gow, appointed this obviously political hack to the highest court in the state.
His appointment would seem to make crude sense, given his background. He's a graduate of the Regent School of Law, a Christian, private university, founded by that great legal philosopher, Pat Robertson. Kelly was the head of the law review that he helped found himself, which makes it easier to be the leader of anything.
He defended the 2010 gerrymandering, representing the Republicans. His judicial philosophy makes it sound like he has a unique talent--just read the words of the law and apply them as read: No interpretation, just read it and be very simple about it. Actually, that sounds like anybody off the street with a reading skill above 8th grade could be on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
His Wikipedia site also says that he believes that slavery and affirmative action are, under the law, morally the same, since "neither can exist without the foundational principle that it is acceptable to force someone into an unwanted economic relationship." Which, technically, is true. if you want to equalize slavery and affirmative action. But that makes slavery a largely "economic relationship," which is very definitely isn't. You can dislike the way affirmative action is applied so as to completely discount its relevance, but to make it equivalent to slavery is, well, more than a bit of a stretch.
It means, too, that if you didn't like slavery, you won't like affirmative action, either. That's kind of like saying that the effects of ice fishing and surfing are pretty much the same, seeing as how both have to do with movement over water. Well, yes, in one sense and a very big no in the way that actually makes sense.
Where in the world did he get that poppycock? Who knows? But someone like this doesn't belong on the state Supreme Court. Period.
Jill Karofsky does. She was educated at the private, but still normal, Duke University, and got her law degree at UW-Madison. She's a former trial court judge, which she says makes her better suited to serve on the state Supreme Court since she saw what effect its rulings had on normal people (and I would agree). She was an Assistant Attorney General. She is an adjunct professor at the UW-Madison law school. Daniel Kelly was never any of these.
He was a political appointee of our last, awful governor. The present conservative leadership of the state Supreme Court is trying to protect Kelly by claiming that he is somehow immune to attacks of political influence--this after two of its current, conservative members refused to recuse themselves in a case in which associations which contributed to their electoral victories were involved (and won).
Sorry, won't wash. Let's wash this a little bit cleaner on April 7. Early voting begins Monday. Lisa Neubauer just missed last time, when a sudden surge of 45ian money suddenly arrived in the form of non-sensical but effective ads that allowed her opponent, Brian Hagedorn, to overcome a nearly insurmountable deficit; let's put Jill Karofsky in there instead.
Again, I refer you to the above numbers; it's likely to be close. Don't stay home. Keep yourselves germless but get out there and vote. It won't turn the court around all at once, but it'll be an important step. At the very least, we'll have a stooge of the last governor out of there.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
It'll Be A Republican, or Serendipity. Here's Why.
Elizabeth Warren's exit from the presidential race has brought with it big chucks of angst. She's so intelligent. She had a plan for everything. She stood up to men. She had it all.
It doesn't matter. She's not gonna get the presidency. The reasons have (almost) nothing to do with her.
They have to do with how at least 40 percent of the electorate views leadership, and can bring along with it another seven or eight percent to make a coalition that accomplishes what it set out to do: elect a president. They have to do with things she can't control and doesn't want to control.
Take a good look at her. She has glasses on. She's a law professor. She speaks clearly, no nonsense. All those are good attributes for being president.
Except for one thing: She's a she. We have had a professor as president before. His name was Woodrow Wilson. He spoke with no nonsense. Wrote a book, too: His own words, not like Kennedy (who, understandably, was recovering from a plane crash), just like she did. He wore glasses.
Same deal. But women couldn't even vote for president when he ran. Now they can, and a whole bunch of them don't want to put a woman in the White House. They still think that's only a man's job.
Yeah, I know: And Nancy Pelosi is third in line. But that, to them, is third. And she shouldn't even be there in the first place: too liberal.
That's the problem. Democrats are considered too mushy for big jobs, too weak. What bothered Republicans about Obama, among other things, was that he was too equivocal, too willing to find the center of everything, not willing to say, 'Damn it, this is what we going to do. This is where we're going.'
Like Reagan. Or Bush-43. Or 45. But you see, Reagan had some notion of statecraft. He didn't do everything headlong. He held back a little. But he did implore Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall,' and down it came, three years later. Not bad. (Except Gorbachev had little to do with it)
Bush-43 felt he had to try to find Osama bin Laden after he blew up the World Trade Center. He had to take out those rascally terrorists. They just had to be there in Afghanistan. We're still chasing them, 19 years later. But didn't he look tough?
That's the thing. That's why this election will even be close. There's something inside of us that demands toughness, or at least the appearance of it. It has to get pretty bad out there to think of a leader as having something else than that quality.
That's why the Democrats have a tough time getting someone in the White House, as incompetent the last two Republican presidents have been: Because they don't sound tough or mean, or not mean enough. At least, the ongoing mentality believes it, the mentality that hardly fits any decent scenario anymore, but persists nonetheless. Whatever Democrat wins the presidency has to sound as if he'd be nasty to take on if the going got tough. Never mind the stakes and never mind the capability of the USA, which has been well-established for some time now; the candidate has to sound tough, as if he'd almost be waiting to get at an adversary.
A woman must pass this muster. There's no Democratic woman who sounds like it now--at least, no Democratic woman who has had the opportunity to sound that tough. She has to sound like Maggie Thatcher urging her troops on in the Falkland Islands. No way of knowing that scenario until it happens.
Which is why the first woman president will probably be a Republican. It'll be a woman who's the best Republican politician, making the same tough-guy comments than a man would. The best Democratic women don't make such comments, which belies their competencies. Never mind that they're way, way out ahead of the Republican women right now--women who have been largely muzzled by Republican men. That has little to do with it.
The timing must be right. Remember, a whole bunch of Republican men got shunted aside by 45 last time. A couple of women got in there, but were barely noticed. That's why, barring an utter surprise, it'll take another three or four presidential campaigns to realize.
Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris: Each clearly better than the fool we have in the White House, but each of whom really never had a chance. That's too bad. It's an indication that the longest-running democracy going is showing signs of decay, instead of signs of moving forward. This should have happened by now. But we knew that, didn't we?
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
It doesn't matter. She's not gonna get the presidency. The reasons have (almost) nothing to do with her.
They have to do with how at least 40 percent of the electorate views leadership, and can bring along with it another seven or eight percent to make a coalition that accomplishes what it set out to do: elect a president. They have to do with things she can't control and doesn't want to control.
Take a good look at her. She has glasses on. She's a law professor. She speaks clearly, no nonsense. All those are good attributes for being president.
Except for one thing: She's a she. We have had a professor as president before. His name was Woodrow Wilson. He spoke with no nonsense. Wrote a book, too: His own words, not like Kennedy (who, understandably, was recovering from a plane crash), just like she did. He wore glasses.
Same deal. But women couldn't even vote for president when he ran. Now they can, and a whole bunch of them don't want to put a woman in the White House. They still think that's only a man's job.
Yeah, I know: And Nancy Pelosi is third in line. But that, to them, is third. And she shouldn't even be there in the first place: too liberal.
That's the problem. Democrats are considered too mushy for big jobs, too weak. What bothered Republicans about Obama, among other things, was that he was too equivocal, too willing to find the center of everything, not willing to say, 'Damn it, this is what we going to do. This is where we're going.'
Like Reagan. Or Bush-43. Or 45. But you see, Reagan had some notion of statecraft. He didn't do everything headlong. He held back a little. But he did implore Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall,' and down it came, three years later. Not bad. (Except Gorbachev had little to do with it)
Bush-43 felt he had to try to find Osama bin Laden after he blew up the World Trade Center. He had to take out those rascally terrorists. They just had to be there in Afghanistan. We're still chasing them, 19 years later. But didn't he look tough?
That's the thing. That's why this election will even be close. There's something inside of us that demands toughness, or at least the appearance of it. It has to get pretty bad out there to think of a leader as having something else than that quality.
That's why the Democrats have a tough time getting someone in the White House, as incompetent the last two Republican presidents have been: Because they don't sound tough or mean, or not mean enough. At least, the ongoing mentality believes it, the mentality that hardly fits any decent scenario anymore, but persists nonetheless. Whatever Democrat wins the presidency has to sound as if he'd be nasty to take on if the going got tough. Never mind the stakes and never mind the capability of the USA, which has been well-established for some time now; the candidate has to sound tough, as if he'd almost be waiting to get at an adversary.
A woman must pass this muster. There's no Democratic woman who sounds like it now--at least, no Democratic woman who has had the opportunity to sound that tough. She has to sound like Maggie Thatcher urging her troops on in the Falkland Islands. No way of knowing that scenario until it happens.
Which is why the first woman president will probably be a Republican. It'll be a woman who's the best Republican politician, making the same tough-guy comments than a man would. The best Democratic women don't make such comments, which belies their competencies. Never mind that they're way, way out ahead of the Republican women right now--women who have been largely muzzled by Republican men. That has little to do with it.
The timing must be right. Remember, a whole bunch of Republican men got shunted aside by 45 last time. A couple of women got in there, but were barely noticed. That's why, barring an utter surprise, it'll take another three or four presidential campaigns to realize.
Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris: Each clearly better than the fool we have in the White House, but each of whom really never had a chance. That's too bad. It's an indication that the longest-running democracy going is showing signs of decay, instead of signs of moving forward. This should have happened by now. But we knew that, didn't we?
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Milwaukee Strong? Let's Think of Another Word
I know what the word's for: A good cause. But there must be another one.
In the wake of last week's shootings, the phraseology "Milwaukee Strong" is popping up all over the community. This has become the norm after a tragedy takes place.
But is it the most appropriate word to use? I wonder.
Does "strong" signify what we should now be? "Strong" relates to 'tough'. Should we be "tough" right now? Or should we be something else?
Shouldn't we be mindful? Shouldn't we be just happy to be alive?
Because those who were shot and lost their lives would certainly be happy, happy to be around to say whether they were happy or not. I know, I know: They wouldn't have taken that into consideration, most likely, because nobody could have imagined such violence to have taken place. So existential thoughts would not have been uppermost on their minds.
But the word "strong" isn't necessarily what those of us left need. It's something else.
It's compassionate, first of all. Compassionate for those who lost loved ones.
It's reflective, too. Reflective of how quickly life can end for each one of us.
It's reflective of how someone with a gun can end the lives of people he barely knew, if at all, without reflecting himself about how their loved ones would react. There are a lot of unhappy people out there, some of them with guns. They won't turn their guns in any time soon.
Determination is a strong word. Shall we use that one?
But there's where a conversation can break out. I can say, quite definitively, that we should be determined to stop this nonsense. Everyone can nod their heads at that.
It's where I begin with the stoppage that'll bring some people up short. I think all handguns should be licensed. I think they should never be used outside of one's property, not even with target practice. If you have to stop someone from entering your premises, they'll be close enough for you to hit them when you have to fire shots. In fact, the issue will probably be whether you'll have time to get the handgun to use on that person. The only issue, then, will be whether you'll have the wherewithal to use it--and there's no way to know that until it happens.
Does "strong" fit that description? Is that the same kind of "strong" that "Milwaukee Strong" connotes?
I doubt it. I'm sitting in a coffee shop as I write this. There's nothing to stop someone from entering with a gun and shooting up the whole place. He/she could easily shoot a dozen people, since there's only one way out. I don't think "strong" is the right way to deal with that.
And if we were "strong", what good would it do? Would being "strong" stop that person?
No. We have to find another word. "Determined" might be it, but I'd be open to another one. In any event, it has to be something that means we have to find a way that this never happens again.
If that means "strong", then okay. But "strong" is wearing out, too. It's wearing out because this kind of event is continuing to happen, and we just throw "strong" at it because we don't know what else to do.
And that's the saddest part of all.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
In the wake of last week's shootings, the phraseology "Milwaukee Strong" is popping up all over the community. This has become the norm after a tragedy takes place.
But is it the most appropriate word to use? I wonder.
Does "strong" signify what we should now be? "Strong" relates to 'tough'. Should we be "tough" right now? Or should we be something else?
Shouldn't we be mindful? Shouldn't we be just happy to be alive?
Because those who were shot and lost their lives would certainly be happy, happy to be around to say whether they were happy or not. I know, I know: They wouldn't have taken that into consideration, most likely, because nobody could have imagined such violence to have taken place. So existential thoughts would not have been uppermost on their minds.
But the word "strong" isn't necessarily what those of us left need. It's something else.
It's compassionate, first of all. Compassionate for those who lost loved ones.
It's reflective, too. Reflective of how quickly life can end for each one of us.
It's reflective of how someone with a gun can end the lives of people he barely knew, if at all, without reflecting himself about how their loved ones would react. There are a lot of unhappy people out there, some of them with guns. They won't turn their guns in any time soon.
Determination is a strong word. Shall we use that one?
But there's where a conversation can break out. I can say, quite definitively, that we should be determined to stop this nonsense. Everyone can nod their heads at that.
It's where I begin with the stoppage that'll bring some people up short. I think all handguns should be licensed. I think they should never be used outside of one's property, not even with target practice. If you have to stop someone from entering your premises, they'll be close enough for you to hit them when you have to fire shots. In fact, the issue will probably be whether you'll have time to get the handgun to use on that person. The only issue, then, will be whether you'll have the wherewithal to use it--and there's no way to know that until it happens.
Does "strong" fit that description? Is that the same kind of "strong" that "Milwaukee Strong" connotes?
I doubt it. I'm sitting in a coffee shop as I write this. There's nothing to stop someone from entering with a gun and shooting up the whole place. He/she could easily shoot a dozen people, since there's only one way out. I don't think "strong" is the right way to deal with that.
And if we were "strong", what good would it do? Would being "strong" stop that person?
No. We have to find another word. "Determined" might be it, but I'd be open to another one. In any event, it has to be something that means we have to find a way that this never happens again.
If that means "strong", then okay. But "strong" is wearing out, too. It's wearing out because this kind of event is continuing to happen, and we just throw "strong" at it because we don't know what else to do.
And that's the saddest part of all.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Originalism: Another Republican Effort at Gaslighting--This Time on the Supreme Court
Think about the things that are accepted quite widely as Republican and therefore "More American":
- NASCAR
- Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA"
- Displaying the flag in places not normally done
- Clint Eastwood films
I'm sure there are more. All these claims are nonsense. I'm just guessing here, but all who have ever attended NASCAR races (though I'd rather spend my time at different sports venues, thanks so much) haven't been Republicans. It's not only Republicans who have sung along with Lee Greenwood. The movie houses playing "Flags of Our Fathers" were not closed to Democrats (and if they had been, I guess I was allowed to sneak in). I can fly the flag from my front porch, 24/7/365, and be a Democrat, just as proud of my country, its history, and its meaning.
I can do all these things and not have to explain my presence as being the least bit odd or even hypocritical. I can also research the meaning of a particular law or legal issue, go back to the origins of the Constitution to read about it, and be a Democrat. But Republicans, or conservatives (they're much the same), have claimed that bailiwick now, too.
The concept is called "originalism," or "textualism": The idea that all legally-binding decisions should be based on what was expressed about it on paper back then. Now that conservatives, even the more radical ones, have assaulted our legal system and co-opted it, talk about it is all the rage. It is as if nobody else has given serious consideration to looking up what the Founding Fathers wrote about what they were doing, when they were doing it. It's as if conservatives got there first, claiming it as their own territory and thus being smarter than liberals or progressives in the most haughty sense possible: Yeah, we know what the real guys said, not modern stuff that's, you know, fly-by-night. We have what's constant and forever. We have what's permanent, rock-solid, undeniable.
This alone is the height of arrogance. These records are open to all and always have been. And lots and lots of people have looked up this stuff, and come to different conclusions.
A group called the Federalist Society leads the way in considering originalism or its close cousin, textualism, in justifying conservative, sometimes ultra-conservative, interpretations of the Constitution. It's a claim that's based on smoke and mirrors, on laziness of the opposition in doing its own homework, and its attempt to establish prestige for itself by cloaking such claims in the additionally very vague concepts of "tradition" and other notions of stuffiness, surrounded by bowties.
In the Sunday New York Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon rips the disguise off this pretense. She exposes originalism for the double-talk that it is: Just a way to end conversations about what laws should be passed and what they should mean, as long as those adherents have the last and dominant word (and they love, love, love domination and expressions of power). It is an ambushing of rhetoric in the name of preserving the one thing they've always wanted: Power. It is gaslighting at its highest level, bringing what should be the ultimate venue for discussion down to a level of car salesmen. Instead of raising the meaning of law, it accompanies a president who is perfectly comfortable in believing he's above it. In their claims of dominant and superior meaning, originalist legal scholars make the same claims.
Why is this nonsense? Because, first and foremost, there is no consensus about what the Constitutional Convention concluded other than settling the idea that we should remain one country with a certain governmental structure. All else was, and still is, arguable.
How do we know? Because every single state which sent delegates, including Rhode Island which did not, eventually ratified it the same way that every single state which later joined the union had to do, too. They, too, accepted the compromises (oh, that word again) that the Convention needed to get to a conclusion which did not end in national suicide. Nothing else was "settled" in the sense that the delegates understood that what they were doing had decided matters for all time.
That's why:
- The three most important states at the time--Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia--all had contentious ratification debates, resulting in close votes to ratify the document;
- The country quickly divided into two major political parties, each of which derived its first positions from the ongoing debates that the Federalists and Anti-Federalists had at the Convention and subsequently afterwards;
- The very idea that an amendment process was written into the original document means that the Convention had no idea whether it was making ironclad, non-discussable legal meanings for a country that they could foresee would be growing and changing very soon afterwards; and, probably and most importantly,
- Anybody going back into the writings of that time, as Bazelon explained, can see that the originalist defenses that their positions were supported by the documentation of the general writings by observers of that era are flatly and decisively (depending on the issue being discussed) wrong.
The latter idea already has significant scholarly analysis. Jack Rakove, and constitutional theorist from Stanford, made sure to note the latter idea above in his book Original Meanings, which is quoted by Bazelon in her article. To wit: How can be base today's legal decisions on what was written in the era of 1787, when in fact nothing had been actually decided about it except to reach reasonable compromises and proceed?
Bazelon uses the much-debated gun control issue to make her point. The ongoing determination of the meaning of the Second Amendment has been claimed by originalists as having been derived from self-defense, not the existence of a local militia; they get it from the simple supposition that it was self-defense in a country endlessly establishing new frontiers and new, relatively lawless territories that motivated legal defenses of individual gun ownership. Surely, they say, this had to cause those creating the Bill of Rights to include it in a separate amendment to the Constitution.
Bazelon and Rakove dismiss that argument. They say that the writings of that era, the thing that the originalists are demonstrably relying upon to base their claims and decisions, show those conclusions to be not only filled with discussions to the contrary but overwhelmingly so--again, the data denying the convenient bromides that assertive people don't want to look at--but also that very little about self-defense was discussed back then.
So: With that established, how can originalists stand by their claims? They can't, of course. All they can do is keep ruling as they rule because they are now in the majority. That includes the Supreme Court, which broke with decades of precedent and ruled against handgun controls in the District of Columbia in 2013. They did it because all those more interested in wielding power care little about law and precedent. They did it because they could, because they had power and only because of that.
Back in that day, that included Antonin Scalia, who instructed those protesting the judicial coup d'erat (as John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous economist, called it back then) that awarded the disputed 2000 presidency to Bush-43 and not Al Gore, to "get over it." (Did you notice that those are the precise words that Mick Mulvaney told the press to do when discussing the now-proven quid pro quo of which 45 was accused in the impeachment proceedings? Funny thing about catchy phrases, huh?) Scalia, an ardent hunter (indeed, he was on a hunting trip when he succumbed to a heart attack), who hunted with Vice-President Dick Cheney--no stranger to wielding power with a broad brush--wanted to establish the individual right to gun ownership in decisive terms. He used originalism, poorly and inaccurately though with his typical smugness, in its justification.
He was wrong, but he was in power. Get over it, I guess.
I wonder if get over it will be yet another phraseology that conservatives will lean upon to end conversations about what they don't want to debate any longer. Beyond the irritating aspect of that obnoxious tendency, liberals need to respond by asserting their own phrases like, The data suggest otherwise. Get over it.
How about: Fly your flag over that, Jack. Or: God bless my USA, too. It won't settle all arguments, but it will put liberals on equal footing, at least, with people who continue to deny truth and its proof and try to own it by claiming higher patriotic ground. Those small conversations have their place in establishing the momentum of whose narrative gains significant attention.
Time to call all this what it is: Gaslighting and diversion, something Republicans in all places are becoming very good at. Once unleashed, it has a way of moving itself into more noticeable places.
It's time to start calling out originalism as an illusion of legend and lazy intellectual commentary. It's time this concoction of conservative incredulity is challenged and thwarted. It's time we considered the Constitution--perhaps reconsidered it, because that's how we'd been doing it for decades before this insidious concept oozed its way into our legal analysis--as a far more living document, that must by its very nature adjust to changing times and circumstances. Instead of diminishing its meaning, we will allow it to gain meaning in our laws and in our lives.
A little bit of that would go a long way right now. But then, so would a victorious national election.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Sunday, March 1, 2020
Dear Tom: Thanks for Trying. Don't Be A Stranger.
Tom Steyer is gone from the presidential sweepstakes, and it's too tempting to look upon it as another way of saying that having endless money, alone, won't get you the political stature you crave.
But it never seemed to be that way with him. He was too humble by half, as opposed to nearly everybody else who seeks high position. He couldn't even criticize fellow candidates and pivot to add some self-aggrandizing phraseology himself; he always stopped short of it. He missed one of the primary attributes of a big-time candidate: A well-applied, but not excessive, amount of ego, 45 notwithstanding to his minions.
It was as if, instead of buying the presidency, he was putting in his riches for a worthy cause. It never had that 'stolen' feeling about it. Yes, he was rich. Yes, that gave him opportunities. But no, he wouldn't--seemed like he couldn't--use that as a podium to say anything he wanted to say. He was a classic liberal who jumped into the fray because he saw, as well as others, the existential threat to our democracy that 45 represents and unfortunately leads.
Steyer had the good will but not the mechanics nor the savvy. If it's early-on for someone like him, the latter can't be gained except by wading into the river and either fighting the current or drifting with it. He tried both. Neither worked as well as he thought it would.
Even so, he made contributions. He was the first to call 45 "a fraud and a failure," which is, of course, absolutely true. Except he added it at the conclusion of one of his campaign ads, with a scrunched-up face that reminded me of a neighborhood scold. I don't know who was advising him, if anyone, but to start such ads with that phrase and then proceed, within 30 seconds or a minute, to demonstrate it, would have been so much more effective. Someone missed that connection.
His raising of awareness of the dangers of climate change will be one of the best memories of his candidacy. He could still promote this through his support of the eventual nominee through an attempt to gain influence. That nominee should pay attention.
He absolutely poured himself into the South Carolina primary, a Joe Biden stronghold, believing that getting on the ground with the folks would be superior strategy to soliciting support from the operative pols. Again, whatever political advice he was receiving failed him. Biden got the needed endorsement from House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, with whom Biden worked in consecutive Congresses from both his seat in the Senate and Vice-President. When things look challenging, pols often rely on what they know. Sincerity alone, from someone like Steyer, is admirable but inadequate to fill the vessel of a candidate's qualifications.
He's right: There's no path to the White House from here. There never was for someone without the kinds of political experiences that nearly all others have steeled themselves to have lived through and survived (Mayor Pete being the notable exception; he falls in-between Steyer and the rest).
Steyer is a good man and a businessman with soul. He's shown us that the combination of the two are possible. But the nice-guyness of his basic approach, instead of the darkness that 45 projects, served to hold him back from the confrontations and the ultimate win-lose situations that all politicians must ultimately face to either come away with positive glows or lose and then need to rebuild confidence and support in comebacks. Everyone in that realm has been through it.
He seemed like the bowl of Goldilocks porridge that was always too cold and too bland; not to be automatically rejected like the hot one and certainly approachable, but neither to be willfully ingested, either, like the one that was just right. Maybe he can manage that someday.
That he has gambled and lost at the country's highest level of political competition may sour him from re-entering a fray at a different level, or sharpen his instincts when he returns. Here's hoping it's the latter. This writer, for one, has appreciated Steyer's clear, honest if slightly naive approaches to the fundamental challenges we now have; they provided a modicum of clarity through all the noise and nonsense and a reminder of what's really at stake. For that, he gets a tip of the hat for trying.
The Spanish have two ways of saying good-bye: adios (with the implication of forever) and hasta la vista (see you later). Let's hope it's the latter, with the concomitant wish: Don't be a stranger.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
But it never seemed to be that way with him. He was too humble by half, as opposed to nearly everybody else who seeks high position. He couldn't even criticize fellow candidates and pivot to add some self-aggrandizing phraseology himself; he always stopped short of it. He missed one of the primary attributes of a big-time candidate: A well-applied, but not excessive, amount of ego, 45 notwithstanding to his minions.
It was as if, instead of buying the presidency, he was putting in his riches for a worthy cause. It never had that 'stolen' feeling about it. Yes, he was rich. Yes, that gave him opportunities. But no, he wouldn't--seemed like he couldn't--use that as a podium to say anything he wanted to say. He was a classic liberal who jumped into the fray because he saw, as well as others, the existential threat to our democracy that 45 represents and unfortunately leads.
Steyer had the good will but not the mechanics nor the savvy. If it's early-on for someone like him, the latter can't be gained except by wading into the river and either fighting the current or drifting with it. He tried both. Neither worked as well as he thought it would.
Even so, he made contributions. He was the first to call 45 "a fraud and a failure," which is, of course, absolutely true. Except he added it at the conclusion of one of his campaign ads, with a scrunched-up face that reminded me of a neighborhood scold. I don't know who was advising him, if anyone, but to start such ads with that phrase and then proceed, within 30 seconds or a minute, to demonstrate it, would have been so much more effective. Someone missed that connection.
His raising of awareness of the dangers of climate change will be one of the best memories of his candidacy. He could still promote this through his support of the eventual nominee through an attempt to gain influence. That nominee should pay attention.
He absolutely poured himself into the South Carolina primary, a Joe Biden stronghold, believing that getting on the ground with the folks would be superior strategy to soliciting support from the operative pols. Again, whatever political advice he was receiving failed him. Biden got the needed endorsement from House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, with whom Biden worked in consecutive Congresses from both his seat in the Senate and Vice-President. When things look challenging, pols often rely on what they know. Sincerity alone, from someone like Steyer, is admirable but inadequate to fill the vessel of a candidate's qualifications.
He's right: There's no path to the White House from here. There never was for someone without the kinds of political experiences that nearly all others have steeled themselves to have lived through and survived (Mayor Pete being the notable exception; he falls in-between Steyer and the rest).
Steyer is a good man and a businessman with soul. He's shown us that the combination of the two are possible. But the nice-guyness of his basic approach, instead of the darkness that 45 projects, served to hold him back from the confrontations and the ultimate win-lose situations that all politicians must ultimately face to either come away with positive glows or lose and then need to rebuild confidence and support in comebacks. Everyone in that realm has been through it.
He seemed like the bowl of Goldilocks porridge that was always too cold and too bland; not to be automatically rejected like the hot one and certainly approachable, but neither to be willfully ingested, either, like the one that was just right. Maybe he can manage that someday.
That he has gambled and lost at the country's highest level of political competition may sour him from re-entering a fray at a different level, or sharpen his instincts when he returns. Here's hoping it's the latter. This writer, for one, has appreciated Steyer's clear, honest if slightly naive approaches to the fundamental challenges we now have; they provided a modicum of clarity through all the noise and nonsense and a reminder of what's really at stake. For that, he gets a tip of the hat for trying.
The Spanish have two ways of saying good-bye: adios (with the implication of forever) and hasta la vista (see you later). Let's hope it's the latter, with the concomitant wish: Don't be a stranger.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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