This Is Only the Beginning

As of Jan. 20, 2017, when the new guy was sworn in, the right of assembly, the right to protest, no longer exists in the nation’s capital.  It has become a felony offense.

In North Dakota, demonstrators who block a road can be run down — legally — by motorists.

International agencies that help poor women end unwanted pregnancies, often the result of wartime rape, will no longer get foreign aid funds from the USA.

Federal agencies cannot hire new employees; existing employees will not get pay rises they have earned.

Without even consulting Congress (not that those idiots would object), the new guy has disavowed a treaty legitimately negotiated by his predecessor. (The TPP is a lousy treaty, as we who have examined it well know, but still, there used to be a thing called due process.) Also, the heads of state in Canada and Mexico have been told that the North American Treaty Alliance with the United States, under which they have been operating for more than a decade, will soon be deconstructed as well.

And his first “business day” in office is not even half over.

This is just the beginning.

Medicaid — the program that enables most of our poorest people to get some form of medicine and treatment when they’re sick — is being turned upside down.  States will get either “block grants” or “per capita subsidies” to enable them to care for their sick poor folks.  Even Republican governors are saying this will be a travesty.

Medicare and the Affordable Care Act are in the crosshairs.  Nonpartisan number-crunchers with appropriate expertise say the forthcoming actions will cost the country a trillion  dollars, leave millions of people without medical care.  Aside:  Polls show that a majority of voting age Americans don’t like Obamacare, but virtually the same majority likes the Affordable Care Act!  These are the people whose votes put us where we are.

The Dakota Access Pipeline soon will be forced upon the indigenous people, poisoning their water.

We are in decline.  Already the First Amendment has begun to melt away, with the felony charges against those who demonstrated on inauguration day.  Remember what happened after the terrorist attacks of 9/11?  The day before, we were a free people.  The day after we lived under the onus of something called the USA Patriot Act.  This legal abomination was rushed into law by a shocked and numbed Congress, and will be the foundation of the new police state that is already in the works.

Wise men have warned us that if we ignore history we are doomed to repeat it.  What kind of history might that be?  Noam Chomsky, scholar, writer and public conscience, remembers:

The Weimar Republic was the peak of western civilization in the sciences and the arts, also regarded as a model of democracy. Through the 1920s, the traditional liberal and conservative parties entered into inexorable decline, well before the process was intensified by the Great Depression. The coalition that elected General Hindenburg in 1925 was not very different from the mass base that swept Hitler into office eight years later, compelling the aristocratic Hindenburg to select as chancellor the "little corporal" he despised. As late as 1928, the Nazis had less than 3 percent of the vote. 

Two years later, the most respectable Berlin press was lamenting the sight of the many millions in this "highly civilized country" who had "given their vote to the commonest, hollowest and crudest charlatanism." The public was becoming disgusted with the incessant wrangling of Weimar politics, the service of the traditional parties to powerful interests and their failure to deal with popular grievances. They were drawn to forces dedicated to upholding the greatness of the nation and defending it against invented threats in a revitalized, armed and unified state, marching to a glorious future, led by the charismatic figure who was carrying out "the will of eternal Providence, the Creator of the universe," as he orated to the mesmerized masses. By May 1933, the Nazis had largely destroyed not only the traditional ruling parties, but even the huge working-class parties, the Social Democrats and Communists, along with their very powerful associations. The Nazis declared May Day 1933 to be a workers holiday, something the left parties had never been able to achieve. Many working people took part in the enormous patriotic demonstrations, with more than a million people at the heart of Red Berlin, joining farmers, artisans, shopkeepers, paramilitary forces, Christian organizations, athletic and riflery clubs, and the rest of the coalition that was taking shape as the center collapsed. By the onset of the war, perhaps 90 percent of Germans were marching with the brown shirts.

I am just old enough to remember those chilling and ominous days of Germany's descent from decency to Nazi barbarism, to borrow the words of the distinguished scholar of German history Fritz Stern. He tells us that he has the future of the United States in mind when he reviews "a historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason."

Chomsky, when recalling these things, remarked that today, the world is too complex for this history to repeat.

Or is it?

America. The Day After

They filled the downtown square here in this little New Mexico city, and they spilled over into the nearby streets and a big parking lot.

The people.

It was windy as only the southwest can be windy and there was a cold edge to the wind.

“Thank you for coming,” said the first speaker.  “Thank you for braving the weather.”

“Dump Trump!” cried a voice in the crowd.  It became a chant.  “Dump Trump.  Dump Trump.”

The people.

It was, officially, a women’s march of protest against the misogyny and lewdness of the the billionaire’s campaign and against his cabinet of repulsive rich people opposed to the very ideas their agencies were supposed to advance and protect.  Here in the southwest, and in many of the pictures from around the world, there seemed to be as many men as women.

A fireman carried a placard supporting Planned Parenthood.  A guy with a thick black beard applauded when an elderly woman passed him carrying a sign, “Pussy Grabs Back.”  Everywhere there were pink hats with little cats’ ears knitted into them.  

The town’s top environmental scientist said, “I've been attending events like this for 28 years in this town, and this is the biggest and best one yet.”

The people.

The People in the city squre

Word circulated that the rally in Denver was so big they had to cancel the march because people had packed the entire route.  In Los Angeles they clogged the streets despite a severe rainstorm.  In Washington the women’s protest drew larger crowds than the previous day’s inauguration ceremony. “Nothing can quite replace your first love, or your first march,” Gloria Steinem told them. In New York they turned fifth Avenue into “a river of people.” A sign said: "Make America Think Again." Huge turnouts were reported in cities around the world where women organized demonstrations against the new leader of the United States.

The people.

The Rally in Sacramento

Singers.  A chorus of men and women from the Social Justice Center sang protest songs, winding up with a rousing “We Shall Overcome” in a new arrangement written especially for the occasion.  The city’s self-described “first openly transgender male” called on us to protect the gains the LGBT movement made during the Obama administration.  “We will not give up,” he shouted and the crowd roared its approval.

The people.

A native American leader called for solidarity with Standing Rock and the movements for tribal rights.  “Stop the DAPL” signs waved.  A tall old guy asked if he could hug a woman waving a “We Are All Immigrants” sign.  An environmental activist warned that “extinction is not an episode.  Extinction is forever.”

The people.

A Latina’s placard urged Peace and Resistance.  No Wall! her companion shouted.  “Love Trumps Hate” signs were everywhere.  A young hispanic man read his poem, “Who Am I.”  He is every man, every woman, every child, crying out for justice. “Small Hands Cannot Hold Us Back,” a placard said.

The people.

Our friend Steve, the folk singer and gifted lyricist, performed with his partner, Kathy.  Guitar, mouth harp, tambourine — the age old weapons of the civil rights movement, the peace movement, of Occupy and Black Lives Matter.  He sang:

Standing Rock, our conscience stands with you

protectors all united for a cause we know is true

The people applauded.

He sang:

I will not waver in my path

I will not fear the tyrant’s wrath

I will not close my heart to love

Abandon hope or slay the dove

I will not close my heart to love

Renounce the world we’re dreaming of

And the people cheered.

And Now There Is No Road

In 2004 when he was seeking a second term, Dubyuh came to our town for a speech and local party big-shots took him to dinner at one of our better restaurants.  I had kind of liked the place but for years afterward I refused to eat there, because it hadn’t been properly fumigated.

Today I’m thinking the same way about the White House.  What if, four years from now, the other side has come up with a decent candidate, someone truly fit for the office, and that someone wins the election and has to move into a place that has been occupied for four years by this new guy?  Could the place ever be properly fumigated after having been occupied that long?  Will the country have to tear down the historic executive mansion and build a new one in order to have a fit residence for a president fit for the office?

Indeed, will this country ever again have a president fit for the office once occupied by Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR. . .? 

Will there even be a country such as we once knew, a democratic republic of, by and for the people?

An acquaintance who voted for him explained, somewhat sheepishly I thought, “maybe he’ll do something, anything, just one thing.”

He did two things, actually, in his very first hour in office.  Two anti-people things.  First he made health care less accessible, less affordable, for thousands.  Then he made home ownership impossible for thousands more. 

First steps only.  Soon millions will be without health care.  Millions swill be without homes.  Driving poor people out of their homes is the specialty of one of his cabinet nominees.  Another Big Lie: those nominees, he said, have the highest collective IQ in history.  Pure fiction, made up on the spur of the momen, like so much of what he utters, tweets or even thinks. The man even lies to himself.

I say again:  there is no man so dangerous as a stupid man who thinks he is intelligent.

There was blood on the streets of the nation’s capital the day he took office. Rubber bullets, shock bombs, more than 200 protesters arrested.  More protests are scheduled today, his second in office.  Five states governed by his followers have already passed laws in effect repealing the First Amendment to the United States constitution.  In one of them, motorists have been given license to run over protesters who attempt to block a road.

Raised fists . . . military parades . . . police cruelty . . . bullying . . . insults . . . sneering authoritarianism . . . white supremacy . . . contempt for the poor , , , lies, deceit, exaggeration . . . false patriotism . . . misogyny . . .  American carnage . . . 

Once we were exhorted to heed our better angels.  Now we are called upon to tilt at windmills.  Once we were told the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Now we are told we must slay imaginary daemons,  disguised as people of color or followers of a different god. Once we were called upon to act as a people “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”

“America First!  America First!” he cried, echoing the rallying cry of anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizers in the United States before World War II.

Far to the west in this land, a hiker wrote yesterday of watching “a promising sunrise at one of my favorite places on public land. My soul needs the beauty this morning. My prayer is that it will still be public land for my grandchildren.“

But in Washington yesterday, “At last we have a LEADER!” someone tweeted.

Hitler, too, was a “leader.” 

But what of us, the followers, the people?  He says we are newly empowered even as he enfeebles us, but this is his way.  He says one thing, then does another.  Like many dictators in the past, he rules by whim, by impulse, by an overarching need for self-aggrandisement.  And so what of us?

"There is no ship for you," C.V.Cavafy wrote nearly a century ago. "There is no road. As you have ruined your life here in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.”

No Grizzlies. No Tigers. Just Greatness.

Whenever I begin training a new puppy, one of the first things I teach him is to keep tigers away from our house.  The tactic is very successful, really beautiful, very successful, because no tiger has ever invaded our house.

Thus I know from personal experience that Betsy DeVos will be a great Secretary of Education, really really beautiful, just great, because her idea of putting guns in all our schools will prevent any children from being attacked by grizzly bears while they’re in the classroom.

I’ll be sleeping a lot better at night knowing that the White House is occupied by a man who is so great he can grab ‘em by the pussy and they won’t do a thing -- no, not tigers, silly, or grizzlies -- he can grab women that way and they’ll just be pleased to receive so much attention from such a truly great, really beautiful man.  You know he’s great because he’s so rich, and he's a star, and the people he’s putting in charge of our government are really rich, too, maybe not as rich as he is, but really really beautiful because they’re very very rich and if you know how to get rich of course you know how to run a country.  

Some of them inherited wealth, as he did, but everybody has to start somewhere, right?, and he, after all, went from the relative poverty of being a mere multimillionaire to being so rich that he could borrow money from half the oligarchs in Russia.  Debt is good,  Plain and simple.  Debt is a very very good thing and nobody in the world knows how to use debt better than the Man Who Grabs ‘Em by the Pussy.  How many people can say they’ve shrugged off seven bankruptcies and still are able to live in a mansion atop a building on Fifth Avenue?  Not one.

Another very important thing to understand, which now nobody in government seems to understand, is bidding.  Starting tomorrow, people who sell things to the government are going to have to submit bids.  No more getting away with murder.  You have to submit bids.  They are especially helpful when you don’t intend to pay them anyway.  That’s how you build towers on Fifth Avenue and casinos in New Jersey. Make ‘em submit bids and then don’t pay ‘em. Beautiful.

Another way to make money, bigly, really really bigly, is to get rid of stuff you don’t need.  Stuff like health care.   The Affordable Care Act is a disaster.  Really really awful.  Our new government is getting rid of it.  What will sick people do?  One of these days the Man Who Grabs ‘Em by the Pussy and his pals in Congress will agree on something to replace the ACA.  Something really really good, really beautiful.  Trust them.

Take the Environmental Protection Agency.  Who needs it?  A bunch of so-called scientists, making work for themselves, inventing a Chinese hoax called “climate change.”  Of course the climate changes.  Don’t need so-called scientists to tell us that .  Our new government is working on something really really good, really beautiful, to replace all those worthless scientists.  They’re looking at a really really good deal on some prayer flags from Tibet.  Beautiful flags.  Very nice.  Colorful.  Very very beautiful.

The Man Who Grabs ‘Em by the Pussy and his henchmen — terrific people, all of them, really rich —have got great plans to dismantle a bunch of other agencies, too, outfits we don’t need.  Like, who needs to regulate bankers?  Bankers are good, because they sell debt.  You want to build a resort and a great, really great golf course, maybe with a few gold-plated bathtubs in the VIP suites, you go to the bankers and, Bingo!, a Brinks truck drives up with bagsful of cash.  Really great, really really beautiful.  

I’m feeling really great, really really beautiful as all of this is about to take place,  and more, bigly more, and I can’t wait to see what else they’re going to tear apart, right off the bat, starting tomorrow.

Meanwhile, when Secretary DeVos has finished solving the grizzly bear problem and is ready to turn her attention to the tiger problem in our schools, I’ve got just the dog for her.  I’ll submit a bid to provide tiger protection, but I know I won’t get paid anyway.  That’s America for you.  It’s great again.

A Tall Tale in Tennis

Let us now praise a famous (and very tall) Croat.

Ivo Karlovic  hit  a record 75 aces in a first-round tennis match yesterday at the Australian Open.  He had 38 in the fifth set, which he won, 22-20.  He broke the old record by 24.

Karlovic is 6’10” or 6’11” depending on who measured him and when.  Andy Roddick, who once held the world’s record for the fastest serve in a professional match, called Ivo’s serve “the biggest weapon in tennis.”  Ivo now holds the record for the fastest serve in an ATP match, 156 mph.  He also holds the all-time record for most career aces, well over 10,500, and probably will become the first player ever to record 11,000 of them. Ivo also holds the record for the world’s fastest SECOND serve — 144 mph!  He once served a record 45 aces in a three-set match (20 is considered a lot).

Next month, Ivo Karlovic will be 38 years old.  Last year he became the oldest player in four decades to win an ATP tournament.  He is the oldest man in three decades to be ranked among the top 20 players in the world. He is the oldest player ever to reach the third round of play in the French Open.  He is one of the few players in history to win titles on all three surfaces — grass, clay and hard courts — in a single year.

Ivo has become the grand old man of tennis despite a succession of injuries and surgeries and a bout of viral meningitis that went undiagnosed until he fell into a coma.  When he awakened he couldn’t remember his own name or what year it was — but three months later he made the finals of an ATP tournament, which he lost despite hitting 22 aces.

A few months ago, he was drawn to play a teen-ager in the first round of a tournament.  When a reporter mentioned the difference in ages, Ivo said, “Yes, I am old enough to be his Daddy.” (Pause). “Maybe I am!”

Actually, Ivo, who was married in 2005, has a five-year-old daughter, Jada.  Karlovic recently tweeted: “My daughter said, ‘Daddy, you have a big nose, like an elephant.’  I told her, ‘Go to bed.  No story tonight!’”

Karlovic frequently is in the running in the annual voting for the ATP tour “fan favorite” player.  His amiable banter in press interviews, and his tweets on twitter, may be one reason why.  During a recent tournament he tweeted that he had been watching Stan Wawrinka’s match on TV, but “commentators talking so much bull that I had to mute them.” Once when he was about to play another big server in a tournament, he quipped to his opponent, “We could save a lot of time by just playing tie-breakers right away.”  After he lost a match 6-7, 7-6, 6-7, 4-6 to Pete Sampras, he said the match was “a crapshoot.  Maybe we should just roll dice.”  

He has beaten both Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic when they held the world’s No. 1 ranking. A reporter once asked him if he thought he could beat Federer without the benefit of the tie-break rule.  “Yup,” he said. “In a street fight.”  

“Who do you like in this tournament?” a reporter asked before a Grand Slam event. “Federer, Nadal, Djokovic or Murray?”  Without a pause, Ivo said, “I prefer girls.”  When asked about the mechanics of the world’s greatest serve, he said, “Throw the ball up and smack it.”

Years ago the conventional wisdom held that tennis wasn’t a sport for tall guys, but that myth has been shattered over and over again.  Marin Cilic, a Croat who won the U.S. Open, is 6’5”, and Goran Ivanisevic, a Croat who won Wimbledon, is 6’4”.  Ivanisevic held the all-time career record for aces until Karlovic broke it. The American John Isner, who won the longest match ever played in professional tennis, is 6’9”. Many of the most promising young players today are over 6’4”. Reilly Opelka, a 19-year-old American who lost a five-setter to the 11th seed in Australia yesterday, is 6/11”.

Tall guys will do great things on the tennis court in years to come. When they do, Ivo Karlovic will be in the wings with something funny to say.  Count on it.

What the Hell Is Going On Here?

This is the United States of Bizarrica.  The mind reels at the crescendo of craziness that assails our senses, and the most hated president-elect ever to approach the Oval Office has not yet even assumed the cloak of command.  Are they correct who assure us that truth is no more, this is the age of post-truth?  Or is truth merely in hiding, like the former British spy who is at the heart of just part of the swirl of intrigue?

Who is allied with whom?  Are the intelligence agencies allied in a Dark State conspiracy to deny the self-anointed world’s greatest businessman his tainted presidency?  If so, why did part of it (the FBI) try to destroy the candidacy of his opponent? Or if Comey didn’t do that, why are all the Democrats of the House so pissed?  Speaking of urine, what about all those memos compiled by the former MI6 agent, who now fears for his life, because after all, the Russian spook apparatus has already managed to kill not one, but two, Russian dissidents on British soil?.

Is there anyone with clean hands?  Clapper has been caught in bald-faced lies to the Congress and the American people.  Comey is at least a double-, maybe a triple-dealer.  Trump spews lies the way Old Faithful spews steam.  Clinton told Wall Street oligarchs that she speaks public truth and private truth, which are not one and the same.  Everyone knows nobody in Congress tells the truth.  The mainstream media can’t be trusted; most of them no longer acknowledge that “media” is a plural noun and requires an appropriate verb.  “Media is” indeed! "Media are," you idiots!

What is the poor, confused citizen of Bizarrica to make of all this? Besides making haste, that is, to some more sane country, which most of us couldn’t do even if we wanted to.

We can try to sort it out. The boastful grabber of pussy held what he called  a news conference, but was actually a piece of theater for the former star performer of a highly-rated TV show. He stood beside a table stacked with file folders stuffed with paper.  He had no deals, no loans, no ties to Russia, he said.  David Cay Johnston, the journalist who knows this guy better than anyone, pointed out that he said “Russia,” not “Russians,” thus distinguishing between the Russian government (Russia) and the wealthy people who actually run Russia (Russians), which is because when his businesses went bankrupt for the seventh time and the traditional banks cut off his line of credit, he got hundreds of millions of dollars in loans through Russian oligarchs.  Curious, one of the journalists who attended the news conference TV show peeked inside several of the folders on the table.  They contained blank sheets of paper.

The president-to-be’s lawyer had said the folders were full of all the documents Trump had to sign to convey power over his business empire to his sons, thus fulfilling his obligations under the conflict-of-interest laws, which he said didn’t apply to him but he was doing it anyway just to show what a really, really good guy he is.  (The lawyer' works for an international business law firm whose Moscow office was named 2016 Russian Law Firm  of the Year by a European law journal.) Even if the folders had contained real documents, said the man tasked to run the government’s non-partisan office of ethics compliance, the cockamamie arrangement the lawyer outlined wouldn’t comply with any version of ethics known to man.  Whereupon a powerful House Republican said, whoa, ethics monitor, you are out of bounds and better get over here into one of our secret torture chambers and eat yor words or you won’t even have an office of ethics compliance because we’ll take away your funding and maybe even toss you in jail and throw away the key.  This is the guy who on the very first day of the new Congress voted to do away with the office that monitors members of congress for ethics compliance, which shows what he thinks of “ethics.”

Meanwhile, before he went into hiding for fear of his life and the safety of his family, the former British spy, a Russian expert, told a U.S. journalist that he had been hired to sniff around Trump’s connections to Russia at the behest of someone representing someone seeking the Republican presidential nomination, which Donald won, whereupon someone representing Clinton said, keep on sniffing, we will now pay for it, but this former MI6 agent (who, the consensus has it, is very good at this spy stuff) soon decided that what he was finding was so important that it had to be given to people who knew how to handle such sensitive info, namely the intelligence agencies of the UK and the US.  He arranged with intermediaries to deliver his stuff to the government spooks.  But nothing came of it.  Even as the presidential election, with its own separate carnivals of crazy, careered toward election day, all the FBI seemed focused on was Clinton’s damned e-mails.  Frustrated, the MI6 guy, whose name is Steele, arranged for another intermediary to give his memos to Sen. John McCain, who once ran for president his own self, and McCain took the stuff to the FBI, in high dudgeon because here was an adversarial foreign power meddling in a free and fair election, the very heart of our democracy, and something needed to be done about that.  Now there were so many people running around Washington with copies of this stuff that it was like the old joke about the secret agent who was about to make a coded contact with another secret agent named Schmidt.  He went to the secret location where Schmidt was supposed to be, knocked on the door, and uttered the secret code phrase to the sleepy guy in pajamas who opened the door.  “Oh,” said the guy, “you don’t want me, you want Schmidt the spy.  He lives upstairs.”  

In any event, Steele, the real ex-spy, finally talked to a journalist, who wrote in a veiled way about the stuff, and one thing led to another, and then all the excrement hit the proverbial fan.  “Lies,” said the boastful grabber of pussy; “fiction,” said Russia.

There are some sideshows.  A former civil rights leader, now an esteemed member of Congress, without naming him, declared that the guy about to be sworn in as chief of state “is not a legitimate president.”  This elicited delight in some quarters, umbrage in another.  The world’s greatest businessman, soon to be president, told the former civil rights leader to mind his own district, which is a disaster, and leave real matters of governance to white guys who know how to do it.

I suppose I’ve missed some of the Big Picture, but a reeling mind can sort out only so much, especially when it inhabits an aging body for whom Social Security is an important part of income, and who depends for continued health upon Medicare  . . . ya see what I’m saying?

Oh, What Might Have Been -- But Wasn't

From the day he first stepped onto the national stage in 2004 until last night, when he began his journey back to being just another citizen, Barack Hussein Obama has been a great giver of speeches.

His farewell address in Chicago was so powerful that once again I found myself wanting to believe, wanting to wash my mind of the memories of presidential kill lists and assassinations by drone; of a Guantanamo that was never closed; of a battle for single-payer health care that was never fought; of truth-tellers imprisoned and even tortured; of dark secrets shielded from public view; of spineless attempts to compromise with uncompromising extremists in Congress; of violations of other nations’ supremacy over their own lands; of wars, wars, endless wars waged by a man who shamelessly accepted a Nobel Peace Prize; of promises unkept; of unprecedented potential unfulfilled.

Early in his presidency, I dared to compare Obama’s way with words to the writing and speaking skills of Abraham Lincoln, whose words held a nation together through a great civil war and then freed the slaves so that, one day, after many more years of tears and tribulation, a black man might ascend to the presidency.  

Lincoln, expressing his great admiration for Henry Clay, extolled Clay’s “deeply earnest and impassioned tone and manner, which can proceed only from great sincerity and a thorough conviction in the speaker of the justice and importance of his cause.” 

Barack Obama had that tone, that manner. But his “conviction to the justice and importance of his cause” faded in the light of his actions or, too often, his failure to act.  

While he admitted that the United States in fact tortured “some folks,” he refused to prosecute those who ordered, condoned or performed the torturing, suggesting that some of them might even be “patriots” and their critics “sanctimonious.”

He placed two women on the Supreme Court and they have been excellent justices, but faced with the unconstitutional obstructionism of Senate Republicans on his third nominee, he failed to exercise his powers of a recess appointment of Merrick Garland.

Holding the “most powerful office in the world” he seemed powerless against the NRA despite Sandy Hook, Aurora, Orlando.  

He urged cutting back the world’s nuclear arsenal, and yet the United States is the world’s most productive producer and seller of conventional weapons.

He led us out of a great recession but refused to try the criminals who caused it.

He brokered the Paris accords on climate change but dragged his feet on the Dakota pipeline that threatens to poison the drinking water of the Standing Rock tribe and others.

I do not denigrate the things Barack Obama did accomplish as President.  Imperfect as it is, his Affordable Care Act did improve our terrible health care system.  He did solve the so-called “Iran nuclear problem” through diplomacy rather than bloodshed.  Marriage equality.  Job creation.  Osama bin Laden.  Cuba.  He ticked them off last night with justifiable pride.

And he did so with the now-familiar eloquence that had me wanting a Great Revisionist to recast his presidency as the bright soaring success I once believed it would be.  

“Yes we can,” he concluded.  “Yes we did.”

No you didn’t.  

Hoist With Their Health-Care Petard

The intelligent folks on the left — no, we did not simply vanish after Nov. 8 — know they cannot do a thing to prevent the congressional Republicans from having their way with the Affordable Care Act.  Let us hope, then, that the slavering hyenas succeed in doing their absolute worst.

Here’s why:

Obamacare, while it’s considerably better than what we had, is still a mish-mash of bad compromises and worse constructs that leaves health care in the United States far behind other countries in terms of cost, efficiency and reach.  Dr. Kidglove gave away the farm at the outset when he took single-payer off the table before anyone even sat down to talk.  Then he sold out to the big pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry, giving up the very controls on these greedy profiteers that were needed to establish a cost-effective system.  He did this to buy enough votes to get something — anything — passed in a Congress that is short on ethics and high on hot air.

Now that they control every aspect of government, the Republicans plan to utterly destroy the ACA in four steps: (1) Take the filibuster weapon out of the hands of Senate Democrats. (2) Use a process called reconciliation to speed passage of a bill that gits every worthwhile provision of the existing law. (3) Destroy the shreds that remain of Obamacare through executive action by the man who won the electoral college but not the election.  (4) Find and pass a replacement form of health care.

With the most important step left till last, the inevitable result will be chaos and disaster for millions of Americans.  Elderly and chronically ill Americans in rural states who voted in the certainty that the “good businessman” would never let them go without health care will awaken one day — quite soon, because of the fast-track reconciliation process — to find that instead of sort-of OK health care, they have none at all.

Meanwhile, as even a big profiteering health insurance company has discovered through its  research, none of the possible replacements the Republicans have posited will work.  Either they will increase the deficit, or fail to cover as many people as Obamacare covers, or otherwise wreak havoc on the people.  

As more and more millions of Americans realize that they can no longer afford to be sick or need surgery, the political tide that gave the Republicans control of government will turn against them.  Lies about health care have become a powerful force in American politics.  The new truth will be far more powerful — powerful enough to give the Democrats control of congress in  the me mid-term elections.  

Progressives in both houses should be working now to fashion the strongest possible single-payer health care bill, one that draws on the best of the Canadian system and the best of Medicare (which the Republicans intend to squeeze dry by cutting benefits, thus antagonizing a huge cohort that otherwise would have been unaffected by the assault on the ACA). Like the hideously mis-named USA Patriot Act, the single-payer bill should be honed, polished and printed, ready to rush into the hands of a new Congress as soon as it is sworn in in December of 2018. A catchy title would help, before the Republicans can come up with a derisive one.

The new bill should be clear and simple, unlike the easily-misinterpreted language of the ACA,  and loaded with hot-button phrases that will appeal to the simple folk of Appalachia, the rust belt and other pockets of the deceived who voted against their own interests in the presidential election. It should define “working America’s right to decent health care,”  quick and easy medicine for sick babies when they need it with no red tape, government guarantees on the best prices for new and needed medication.

The congressional Democrats, and the party at large, will have to come to its senses and return to its roots as the party of working America in order to take advantage of this opportunity.  Is that even possible?  Perhaps Will Rogers gave us the answer many years ago,

“I am a member of no organized political party,” he said.  “I’m a Democrat.”

Smart. Government by Tweet

How apt!  How absolutely perfect!  How swell!!

Now that the Republicans control every branch of government, their very first act is . . . . 

. . . to destroy the Office of Congressional Ethics. (*)

Enough of this ethics shit!  Who needs it?  It’s just another way of saying “political correctness” and we all know the voters gave us a mandate to do away with it, right?

They have a president-to-be who won the electoral college but not the election.  They have a crew of billionaires getting ready to run agencies they have sought for years to destroy, the way the House destroyed ethics last night.

The fate of the nation is in the hands of destroyers.

Besides ethics, their targets include:

Education.  The billionaire named to run the Department of Education is dedicated to the destruction of public schools and forcing kids into things called charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded brainwash centers.  As the secretary-designate herself has said, these will be schools that teach God’s will.  Get ready for a generation of kids that thinks deductive reasoning is a tax strategy and square root is a genetically modified plant, but that will graduate from high school sing-songing, “Jesus loves me, this I know, ‘cause the Bible tells me so.”

Health Care.  C'mon, if you got health you don't need care, right?  Obamacare -- which is named for a black person, after all -- is outta here.  Why should we  pay for services for them who are too damned lazy to work for things like we do, right? For the rest of us, what will replace what we've got now?  The Pussy-Grabber will take care of that, rust him.  He is very smart.

The Environment.  Those silly rules that try to keep the air safe to breathe, the water safe to drink, the food safe to eat and the earth a suitable habitat for human and other forms of life . . . well, they are a nuisance for businessmen, of which of course the Pussy-Grabber is the most supreme one ever to hatch a deal. They guy who loved to sue the Environmental Protection Agency now gets to dismantle it.

Women’s Rights.  Back to barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, Baby, and get your pussy grabbed on the way.  Unless, of course, you have a billion dollars or so in your bank account, in which case you can have a government agency to run.  Abortion?  Don’t even think about.  Equal pay for equal work?  Are you out of your mind?  Roe v. Wade?  It’s like ethics.  Who needs it?

Consumer Protection. Isn’t that something invented by that Pocahontas bitch in the Senate?  You gotta be kidding!  What’s good for Wall Street is good for America, which is about to become great again, if you just get the damned government out of the way, which of course the greatest businessman ever to swindle a contractor will take care of pronto beginning on Jan. 20.

Diplomacy. Whaddafuck is “diplomacy” except another kind of “political correctness?”  How many times do we gotta tell you, the voters gave us a mandate  to end that “correctness” shit.  We will deal with the world by tweet. Goddam Chinks give us any lip, the P-G will tweet their yellow asses into oblivion, is what he’ll by gawd do. Somebody try to mess with Pal Bibi and we’ll nuke the bastards.  Got that?

Laws. We got a bunch of bad ones, which are just another way of saying “ethics” or “political correctness.”  Bigly bad. The P-G will repeal them.  From then on, the P-G will simply tweet new laws whenever he thinks they are necessary, most of which will apply to the stupid 99 per cent but not to his cronies, who are very smart.

Intelligence.  Since the P-G is already very smart, probably the smartest person on earth, he cannot waste time being briefed by “intelligence” agencies.  Who needs ‘em? They’re fired!  

National Parks, Monuments, Forests and public lands.  Way it is now, just about anyone can go in there with their silly tents and backpacks and fishin’ ’poles, which of course gets in the way of mining machinery, drilling rigs and big trucks.  Laws will be tweeted to give all so-called public lands over to the more responsible stewardship of corporations, especially corporations who cut favorable deals with you-know-who.

Welcome (with a nod to Paul Krugman) to Trumpistan!

(*)  A folly they promptly backed away from when the P-G had a twitfit.

Pussy-Grabber Needs Kissinger

Jim Naughton of the New York Times was in the White House interviewing President Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, for a Sunday magazine article.

Ziegler, a former Disneyland barker, was boasting about the new, high-tech video communications system that had recently been installed.  “You want a comment from someone in the administration, I can get it in an instant,” Ziegler said.  “Say you want a comment from Kissinger,” (then the biggest star in the cast), “I just press this button . . . .” The TV screen lit up and an image appeared of a pin-striped knee. “Hello Henry, Ron Ziegler here.  I hope we’re not bothering you but. . .”

A familiar, Teutonic-accented voice growled, “You ARE, Ron.” Click! The screen went dark.

Henry Kissinger exuded power.  No wonder the soon-to-be President likes him.  They share not just a love of power but also an eye for attractive women and an affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Even though he’s 93, Kissinger is said to be designated for a role in the new administration as a foreign policy advisor and intermediary with Putin’s Russia.

Whereas the Pussy-Grabber is utterly ignorant of the complexities of modern foreign policy and diplomatic procedure, Kissinger was one of its slickest operators.  For good or bad, he influenced the international tides.  He commanded respect.

He orchestrated acts of criminality, including assassination.  Salvador Allende, as the democratically-elected president of Chile, offended Washington by acting in the interests of his people rather than the country’s oligarchs and their  pals in corporate America.  Kissinger ordered the CIA to take him out.  In September of 1973 a CIA-instigated military coup ousted Allende, who wound up dead.  Shot himself with an assault rifle, the junta said. Or maybe Santa Claus did it. In any event, the junta put General Augusto Pinochet in charge of the country, and the new dictator rounded up thousands of Allende supporters to be tortured and murdered.  

This sort of thing, of course, has been commonplace in American foreign policy, but Kissinger was arguably better at it than most American officials. Covered his tracks better.

Kissinger had inside knowledge of the quid pro quo that was secretly negotiated with Boris Yeltsin in 1993 when the Russian leader agreed to let Poland join NATO.  One popular version holds that the U.S.agreed to put Russia itself in line for NATO membership.  Another version says there was simply a firm verbal commitment that NATO would never expand further east, towards Russia’s border. Kissinger personally shot down the possibility of putting Russia into NATO when the Clinton administration was considering it in 1994. But he almost certainly would have approved a vow of no further eastward expansion of NATO. Subtly at first, then blatantly, the administrations of  Bush II and Obama violated that vow.

Against that backdrop, Kissinger in a recent interview publicly exonerated Russia from blame for the present-day crisis over Ukraine. He did not directly acknowledge that the United States had, as it did in Chile, orchestrated the coup d’etat that forced Ukraine’s democratically-elected president out of office. But Kissinger nonetheless dismissed western outrage at Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea. Given that peninsula’s longtime historic ties to Russia, he said, “the annexation of Crimea was not a move toward global conquest. It was not Hitler moving into Czechoslovakia” (as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others  had contended).

Kissinger said that until the U.S. ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, Putin had no interest in fomenting trouble in Ukraine. He told his interviewer: “Putin spent tens of billions of dollars on the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The theme of the Olympics was that Russia is a progressive state tied to the West through its culture and, therefore, it presumably wants to be part of it. So it doesn’t make any sense that a week after the close of the Olympics, Putin would take Crimea and start a war over Ukraine.”

Then Kissinger offered a hint of the sort of advice he would give to the incoming president:”If a conflict is avoidable, on a basis reflecting morality and security, one should try to avoid it. We have to remember that Russia is an important part of the international system, and therefore useful in solving all sorts of other crises, for example in the agreement on nuclear proliferation with Iran or over Syria. This has to have preference over a tactical escalation in a specific case.”

In putting together an administration lacking in wisdom or morality, including a Secretary of State nominee whose only knowledge of world affairs is where the oil is and where there’s money to be made, the Pussy-Grabber would be wise to seek the counsel of Henry Kissinger on matters of global diplomacy.

On Russia, at least, the man in pinstripes knows which buttons to push and when to push them. Just ask Ron Ziegler.

Time to Be a Real President

The end game of the Obama presidency, like the 95 months that preceded it, is a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Kudos for the new national monuments, which add new layers of protection for unique and sacred public lands in Utah and Nevada.

Special applause for finally standing up to the criminal Netanyahu regime of Israel by refusing to veto the U.N. security council resolution condemning the illegal and inhumane settlements in Palestine. 

It will be difficult if not impossible for the Pussy Grabber to reverse these actions.

But such commendable actions have to be weighed against his legacy of death-by-drone lists that include American citizens, and unprecedented numbers of penal actions against whistle-blowers and journalists who expose dirty secrets.  These establish precedents for the next president to wield as weapons of dictatorship.

And then there’s the “Russian hacking” fiasco.  His extraordinary action of expelling 35 Russian diplomats and imposing new so-called “sanctions” against Russian individuals or organizations would suggest that he has iron-clad proof of the allegations of “malicious cyber activity and harassment.”

If such proof exists, the national interest demands that he make it public now, before he leaves office.  The evidence offered up to now has been flimsy, none moreso than the report that was offered as justification for the latest action.

The issuing agency, the Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged as much with the following disclaimer:

“This report is provided ‘as is’ for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.”

Huh?  C’mon man!

Even if there is real proof of the Russian hacking, and even if Obama makes it public, as he should, the rest of the world will snigger at American hypocrisy for taking such umbrage.  It has been United States policy for decades to do exactly what it now accuses Russia of doing.  Let us count the countries in which the U.S. has interfered with democratic elections:

Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, Portugal, Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Ukraine, Russia (Yeltsin’s 1995-96 campaign), Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Yemen, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Congo. Haiti, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua,  Venezuela, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina.

Vladimir Putin has thumbed his nose at the Obama administration’s hysteria by rejecting his foreign minister’s recommendation to respond in kind to the expulsion of Russian diplomats, saying grandly that the children of U.S.diplomats are cordially invited to the state celebration of the New Year’s holiday in Russia.

It is time, President Obama, to come clean.  If you have proof of your allegations, let the people of the United States and of the world see it.

Meanwhile, there are other important tasks you can perform before leaving office, tasks that would embellish your motley legacy. 

One is to issue legal protections, by executive order, of all federal employees from witch hunts such as those the Pussy Grabber’s transition team have attempted against climate scientists and proponents of gay and transgender rights.

And most important, Mr. President, make this the signature act of your final days in office: Make Merrick Garland a Supreme Court justice.  Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives the President power to fill any vacancy during the recess of the Senate. Justice William Brennan began his Supreme Court tenure with a recess appointment in 1956. The Constitution requires the Senate to receive judicial appointments and either reject or consent to them.  In a monumental act of criminal nonfeasance, the Republican Senate has done nothing.  So you are legally entitled on Jan. 2 to fill the Supreme Court vacancy by executive action.  Do it.  By law such an appointment would last at least until December of 2017, the end of the first session of the 115th Congress.  We must have a full court of nine justices to deal with the many unprecedented issues that will surely arise after the Pussy-Grabber takes office.

Happy New Year.

In the Shadow of the Bears Ears

Dear Grandkids and Great-Grandkids:

When you crest Cedar Mesa via the Moki Dugway. the only way to go is straight ahead, toward the Bears Ears.  They’re the top o’ the world in this part of southern Utah.

Some day you will come this way.  There’s a good chance it will still be worth the trip when you come.  This is so because yesterday, President Obama designated a new national monument, named for the Bears Ears, which stand roughly at the center of the million-acre monument.

All the usual bad guys — the pols, the land-raping miners and drillers, the off-road vandals, the gun-toting anti-feds — fought the thing tooth and nail.  The new regime will try to undo this but I’m guessing they’ll fail.

I hope so, because you and the generations that follow have a right to explore its wonders, if you choose  (and I hope you will), or just to know it’s there, part of the nearest thing we’ve got to real wilderness.  The coalition of Native Americans, environmental activists and natural scientists who urged Obama to create the monument cited its unequaled scenic beauty; its ancient ruins, petroglyphs and artifacts; its historical significance; and its sacred sites in the religions of the tribes. All of this, of course, is magnificent beyond words, But there is more . . .

The road west from Bluff Takes you up and over Comb Ridge (See recent post, “The Auctioning of Paradise”) and then down into Valley of the Gods.  You enter, and you never want to leave.  Once while photographing the hen and rooster rock formations we saw a deer approaching, unafraid.  Saxon, who usually chased such creatures, perhaps as smitten by the magic of the place as we were, invited it to play.  It stared curiously, as if considering the idea, but then wandered away.

You exit Valley of the Gods onto Utah 261 and turn north toward the sheer cliff face of Cedar Mesa.  You travel — slowly and carefully — from the valley floor to the top of the Mesa via the Dugway, an unpaved series of tight switchbacks originally built for hauling ore from a mine on the mesa to a refinery near Mexican Hat. Atop the mesa, you can choose any of a dozen jeep tracks and dirt roads into a wonderland of pinon forest, wildlife, cliff-dweller ruins and ancient artifacts.  Or you can stay on the main road to Natural Bridges National Monument.  The jeep track to the Bears Ears veers right off the road to Natural Bridges. The first time we went there the campground was full so we went to the overflow camping area at the intersection of Highways 261 and 95. There we had our first taste of Navajo fry bread courtesy of friendly camping neighbors.

To the east, a dirt road runs between 95 and 163, parallel to Comb Ridge. It takes you into Butler Wash where we camped in a copse of cottonwoods and used a brand-new GPS to find our very own Anasazi outbuilding, a granary built into the cliffside. Previous explorers had made a flat rock into an altar for the display of potsherds, arrowheads and other items protected by the same Antiquities Act that allowed the President to create the new Bears Ears monument.  Years later, when my metal replacement hip had healed, we came back here to test it on a slickrock hike, and heal our souls, as well,  at the foot of Comb Ridge.

North of here, in the high country overlooking Canyonlands National Park, is Sandy’s last campsite. Sandy, a spaniel, was old and ailing when we camped on a ledge beneath Antelope Rock, overlooking a wild and beautiful canyon ablaze with fall wildflowers.  In this part of the new monument is Windwhistle Campground, where on a crisp morning we first heard the haunting sounds of an expert Navajo flute player, a direct heir to Kokopelli.  Here we first learned to walk like Spiderman up sheer slopes of slickrock.  Here we made our famous breakfast slumgullion for half a dozen fellow hikers.  Or, come to think, was that the campsite in the  Abajos?  That was the day when Saxon “helped” a team of cowboys round up their cattle to take them to lower elevations before winter set in.

We’ve trod these canyons and forests, these mountains and mesas, these byways and trails, first with Sandy, then with Saxon, now with Brandi, each, in his own time, the perfect trail and camping companion.  All of these places, all of these memories, are part of the new national monument, under a new umbrella of protection from those who would profit by abusing it, by stealing from it.

A new regime is determined to take it away from you.  Don’t let them.  Come, drive the Moki, walk the mesa top, camp in the shadow of the Bears Ears. hear the flute in the whistle of the wind, ponder the message of the rock art, look for the deer in the shadow of the rock spires . . . This is your legacy, if you can keep it.

Sincerely,

The Grandgeezer