Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable. Farce is also characterized by physical humor, the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense, and broadly stylized performances. Wikipedia

                                                               Farce

So, this is what it all boils down to. The Republican power structure in Washington has been drafted, perhaps unwittingly, to play a roll in a national farce.

Their Democratic counterparts, too, have been drafted to play in the national performance, but - since they are the minority - we can consider them bit players, waiting for a few brief moments in the spotlight.

Now, in an earlier performance, the rolls were reversed. There was even a really clever plot twist that actually changed the lead characters in mid-play. “What play?” you ask.

Well, we can call it anything you like. I have given it a working title “The Seating of the Supreme Court Justice, or How the Bench Turned Into a Hot Seat.”

Now, you can pick lots of dates for first performance. For me, it was Feb. 5, 1937, the day when President Franklin Roosevelt announced a plan to put up to 15 judges on the Supreme Court. He said it would make the court more efficient, but It didn’t happen. (I’ll include some details in a footnote - they are really interesting).

There have been other instances where nominating a Supreme Court Justice has led to high drama - Merritt Garland, Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas are recent actors in those dramas - but high court drama goes back nearly to the founding of our country.

That’s because the court is a real hotbed of controversy.

You hear a lot of talk on talk radio lately about one famous case, Marbury v. Madison, but not many people say what it really was. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in 1803 - and it was a some ruling - that the Supreme Court could overturn a bill passed by Congress if it ruled that bill was unconstitutional. Wow.

                                                           Act  One

But back to our drama turned farce. Act One starts with a Democratic president looking to nominate a candidate for an open Supreme Court seat who could win approval from the members of his own party and from the Republican majority in Congress. Alas, it was not to be.

His search came up with a well-respected candidate, a man named Garland, who was so unpopular with Republicans that they refused to meet with him. No vote on confirmation either. It was, they said, payback for the attacks that derailed the efforts to put conservative jurist Robert Bork on the court more than 20 years before.

You need a long memory for that. Perhaps the first act could end (we are straying into opera here, but many operas are farces at heart) with the ghost of Bork reading his warning to the Senate after he was rejected: “Federal judges are not appointed to decide cases according to the latest opinion polls,” he said, adding that if judicial candidates “are treated as political candidates, the effect will be to erode public confidence and endanger the independence of the judiciary.”

If you get the music right, his mike could be slowly turned down, while the voice of another candidate comes up: “I like beer. I like beer. Beer is good. What kind of beer do you drink, Senator.”

The curtain comes down with a chorus of men and women - the Greek chorus of our farce - performing an oratorio: “Temperament, temperament...judi, judi, judi-ci-al tem-per-ment.

                                                               Act Two

The scene opens in a small, poorly-lit room. A tightly-focused spotlight is on a figure behind a desk, counting. He looks a little like Ebinezer Scrooge, but it is Mitch McConnell - leader of the Republicans in the Senate - counting votes for his candidate. And he can’t reach the number he wants.

“Forty-seven, Forty-eight, so far that’s great,” he sings. “Forty-eight, forty-nine, that’s really mighty fine. Wait, fifty may not come. And never fifty-one. I am undone. We’ve got to change the score, we’ve got nothing to deplore. Let’s just plow ahead and run, our schedule can’t be undone.”

Naturally, the Democrats in the Senate fall for a little trick. Farce, after all, is farce. He whispers in their ears (it’s a long scene, but we can condense it) that it’s time to take revenge. No room to be subtle in this, just hack and scream about anything, so that he can deny, deny, deny that they came up with a really poor candidate. “It’s beautiful,” he sings. “The more they’re right, the more I win. That he’s not on the bench will be a shame, bit I fixed it so they all get the blame.”

The second act closes when an orange-haired king walks on stage - well, a president dressed as a king - and loudly denounces as thieves and low-lives, losers and frauds all those Democrats who are attacking his candidate and trying to halt the nomination process. McConnell smiles. His plan has worked.

                                                              Act Three 

A lone Senator sits at his office desk, writing. It is more brightly lit. He works on his speech, while an orange glow on the wall behind him grows brighter and brighter. He doesn’t notice. “I’ve worked hard to be fair. My position has been here, then there. Now you think I may not care....but I do.”

“For all the women who have been, abused by nasty men, I feel sorry, now and then, but let’s be fair. Kavanaugh just wasn’t there. I Believe it. He’s a preppy, that is true. And I’ll stick with him like glue. For his values are so true. I believe it.”

The glow behind him changes, focusing down into a bright orange smile.

“Oh, the Democrats they’ll try. To make our good judge go bye-bye. Well I’ll be nice to them, and lie. They’ll believe it. Anyone who tries to stop, his appointment - I’ll call a cop. And denounce them as pig slop. I believe it. I believe it. I believe it.

The stage lights go out, the set is changed, and we are back in the Senate chamber where a vote has been taken to move Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full senate. Then McConnell announces  - with fanfare - that the full committee will vote to submit his name to the full Senate for consideration. There is joy, there is rejoicing. The Democrats are dejected.

And then Jeff Flake stands up, and in a deep voice, announces that the FBI investigation the Democrats had wanted will take place after all. Just a little week, he says. The Republicans start chanting “no, no,” and the Democrats start chanting “ho, ho”.  There is anger as the two sides chant at each other, and then a figure in front, who had been cloaked and quiet, stands up. It is Donald Trump.

“Stop your tears of woe. It’s only just to know. What happened long ago. I decree it. You say this is the worst, but listen to me first. A storm’s about to burst, and I won’t have it.

“Vote him in, or vote him out. I will make an angry shout, and tweet to people who are true that what you do is right to do. But the other side, I hear, has a vote that’s coming near. If you lose, it’s a disgrace, so we have to feed the base.”

“This poor judge is in the way, his career is sure in play, so to you I say good day.

Best of luck, to you, I pray. Let the FBI show us the way.

One last thing, because I’m tired, of this yelling and this mire. If the Judge you do not hire, just one word to you - you’re fired.”

Footnote  - When President Roosevelt decided to pack the Supreme Court, he was angry because  the court had struck down several key provisions of his New Deal aimed at bringing the nation back from the recession. He also wanted all judges to retire at 70 with full pay.

But before the President’s bill came up for a vote, two judges on the court switched sides, and the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act were upheld. His plan to pack the court lost overwhelmingly in Congress, but FDR had other things going for him, and by 1942 all but two of the Supreme Court justices were his appointees.

  

Outrageous TIps (A Guide To Get Through The Insanity)

A funny thing happened to me a few days ago. Maybe it happened to you, too.

I forgot what I was outraged about.

Oh, the rage was there. And the target was there. But, what - precisely - I was  mad about kind of vanished, leaving me with this big, red, angry feeling and no place in particular to put it.

Now, we liberals can always blame Trump, his willful ignorance and his penchant for picking on anyone who is weak or powerless and making them even weaker and less able to protect themselves.

Conservatives, on the other hand, cast their outrage - which may be just as fierce - on the Deep State or the Lying Media or, when there is no one and nothing else left, to attack Hillary once again.

So, where does that leave us? (And don’t tell me things would be a lot better if just one party controlled all the levers of federal government. That’s supposed to be what we have now)

It leaves me with the opportunity to offer some tips to politicians and reporters. They can look at what is going on in government today and weigh just what is taking place in Congress. They just might work as well - or better - for plain old people, the ones we look to for incredible wisdom at the polls every other year or so.

Here goes.

1 - Don’t tell jokes, at least don’t try to ad lib something funny. Oh, you can tell the one about the Rabbi, the Priest and the Minister walking into a bar by mistake and...well I’m sure you’ve heard it before. No, I mean don’t tell jokes about Abraham Lincoln molesting a Supreme Court Judge, or try to make light of things like attempted rape. It really, really doesn’t work.

1 (a) - A corollary. Don’t pretend that something you said was “only a joke,” instead of an uncontrollable outburst of bigotry or stupidity. Almost everyone can see through it.

1 (b) - A second corollary. If you have anything to do with the general public, don’t tell jokes at the expense of the people who work for you. Unless, of course, those people are equally free to make jokes about you in front of your face. Otherwise, leave humor to the professionals. Except, maybe, for Rosanne Barr, who shouldn’t be telling political jokes under any circumstances.

2 - Don’t worry about your base. You know, your core supporters. They will never leave you. You can see it now with the Republicans for Trump, but it was kind of obvious with a lot of Democrats not too long ago. Anything  you do is all right with them, and you will probably never lose their support.

(Extra points for readers who can tell the difference between a Trump supporter who sees nothing wrong with his behavior and a Bill Clinton supporter who saw nothing wrong with his behavior)

 3 - Try to reach out and listen to people who disagree with you. The odds are they won’t be able to explain why they disagree, but you might find someone who knows what they are talking about and who just might make you change your mind.

4 - Learn the difference between winning and losing. You can tell who won a football game by looking at the score, but you could lose the whole season if your quarterback and your best receiver are lost for the season pushing for that final three points. It was a lesson first recorded by Pyrrhus of Epirus, a Greek general who defeated the Romans in 279 B.C., and is being re-learned by Republicans who are currently burning down the government in Washington to get their way.

5 - Stay within your budget. Any budget. Just stick with it for a couple of years.

6 - There is life after government. Someday, all that is will have passed. It sounds almost biblical, but we have things called terms in office. Eventually, people will decide not to run again, will not be able to run again, or will lose an election. Then they will discover something that seems to have eluded them while in office. It is called consequences. 

6 (a) - For the Christian fundamentalists who have been supporting Donald Trump so loudly, just think of the story of Daniel. You know, the part about King Belthazar’s feast, the big feast for thousands of his lords. The feast where he commanded the vessels from the original Temple in Jerusalem be brought in so they could drink from them.

Remember the story? A hand appeared on the wall and wrote in a finger of fire. That could be the upcoming election. No one could read the message - MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. But Daniel could. God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end...you have been weighed and found wanting.”

Nothing like a biblical phrase to give them comfort. Or, you could just say I was only joking.

So, Why Hasn't The Earth Moved?

A lot has been happening in Washington this past week. That is, of course, something that I could have written almost any time in the past year.

Oh, the scandals are juicier, the higher-ups being named in indictments and plea bargains are higher and the level of casual cruelty and indifference is getting worse. But, that’s only a matter of degree.

The polls tell us that the President has lost two or three or - gasp - maybe even four percentage points from his hard core supporters. But, four percentage points does not a revolution make. Nor does it, by itself, win even a small election for a local mayor, let alone for the control of Congress.

So, why hasn’t the earth moved? Well, it shouldn’t be surprising. Let me give you my opinion. (I am being careful here. I don’t want to seem pretentious enough to know what is actually going on in Congress. Heck, most of the members of Congress don’t know what is going on, and that’s true for both parties).

Here’s my take on why almost everybody - liberal and conservative commentators alike - are missing the point. I think they have an unconscious assumption that those changing voters (and the undecided ones) are like engineers or scientists, carefully weighing events down to the last gram and balancing out the good points and bad points of each party, each candidate and the money (Emotional, not real. Think of it as political Bitcoins) they have already invested in their positions.

Remember, these are people who deny climate change because they believe it, or who think that if they got rid of government completely the world would be a better place. And, they could always hire a neighbor for a few dollars to fill the potholes in any road they use to get to work.

I reject that image. Instead, I see the current pool of voters like a group of people in an OTB parlor or at a race track, carefully reading the tip sheets and calculating whether or not to double down on their bets.

Think that’s stupid, or simplistic or insulting? Well, just three things to say to you. 

One - These are people who either haven’t made up their minds - if you trust the polls - or who have been going on blind faith so long it’s hard for them to change.

Two - Hillary. Remember all the things that organized Democrats did to make sure she defeated Bernie Sanders in the primary. And didn’t care how they did it, or how many Democratic supporters they turned off. Or how her whiz kids ran a campaign of not even spending money in states they thought weren’t worth campaigning in.

Three - The Donald. Insult people. Fire people. Hurt people. Lie to people. Bully people. Make a third of the country happy, and the others will be too cowed to stand up for what is right. And, keep talking so fast that they won’t recognize you can’t deal with hurricanes or getting roads repaired of keeping health insurance affordable. Or a lot of other things. Why do you think all those Republicans in Congress decided not to run for re-election? Because they were winning?

So, imagine for a minute that you are one of the undecideds, or one of the people who believed all of the promises that Donald Trump made, and never accomplished. Or made and did exactly the opposite. Or who thought in generalities like “we need a strong leader” or “we need a businessman.”

And somehow, you feel that things are going wrong, horribly wrong. And he blames the Democrats, or weak people in his administration. Or Bill and Hillary and the deep state. And, you went along for a while.

Now you have made a major political investment in The Donald. You bet your $2 on the race, and you doubled down and bet $5 or $10. Now you have a real investment in the race, and the Republican leaders in Congress are saying things like “the Democrats cheated” and “it will all be better when we elect a few Republicans more to the House and Senate.”

And as you drive down your street, you see political signs for Republican candidates, and you might notice there are fewer houses with them, but the ones that put them out are putting out two or three. Guess they have money for the campaign. Guess they must have rich supporters. And, the rich know what they are doing, otherwise they wouldn’t be rich.

So, do you go against everything you have been hearing and you have been saying for the past 18 months or so? Or do you just say “one more time,” and go out and vote the party line again.

Hey, life is still pretty good. What do you have to lose?

Just don’t think too hard about all those Republicans in Congress who decided not to run again, and who have been pretty quiet so far. Think of Paul Ryan and what he has been saying. Wait. What has he been saying?

Maybe they know what they have to lose.

Here's Why I'm Angry. Again.

Once again, I am really, really angry at our President and all the people who blindly go along with him, ignoring the havoc he is causing and the pain he is inflicting.

All I can do is one thing, and that is to vote. And, I will vote, not for him - he’s not running in November, of course, and won’t worry about the consequences of his actions until a new Congress comes into office - but against any Republican who is running for any office on the ballot (yes, judges included) who does not speak out against the horrors of the past two years.

I have lots of good reasons for feeling this way. Personal and not-so-personal.

The first was that I recently watched my four year old grandson overnight. Now, he is a nice boy, polite and usually really happy to play in our house, run around and play with the dogs and cats, and eat whatever he wants, then go to bed after I read him a little more of Lord Of The Rings.

But, not this time. This time he missed his mother and father, and he cried. Tears came down his face. He sobbed, and finally fell asleep. Yes, he called his mommy, and she reassured him they would be back in the morning. And, they were. And he was happy again.

Not like the three and four year olds who are being held by our government and will likely never see them again. They are some of the hundreds of children who - while we could take them away quickly enough - don’t seem to have any way of returning them.

And, no matter how much we talk about it, those children will keep crying every day. Until they grow up. Now, some of them are likely to have a really bleak future - go find some expert who will tell you that being locked away during your formative years is a good thing for your child. For those defending Donald Trump’s administration, have your grandson or granddaughter declared a Person In Need of Supervision and have them  locked away for a few years. Hey, it would be just like summer camp, and doubtless will improve their character.

Then, when they are eight or nine, they can get out and go to school. Bet they will be reading at, or maybe even above, grade level.

Why else? Well, my daughter’s health insurance is going up again. Remember the promise that the Affordable Care Act would be replaced with better insurance that would cost less? Well, add another $100 a week or so to the cost. Wait, that’s $5,000 or so going out of my pocket, not coming in.  Even a dolt knows the difference between spending money and making money. Unless, you know, they are wearing a MAGA hat.

They, I guess, won’t learn the difference until next year, when Social Security befits get cut. You know, to pay for the big tax cut the Republicans gave America. At least, the ones whose retirement pay went up about $200,000.

Now we are facing a trillion dollar federal deficit this year, about the same amount as the tax break we gave to the whole country. But, not evenly. Households earning $1 million or more got a tax cut of $69,000, or about 3.3 percent. Families making between $50,000 and $75,000 got a tax cut of $870, or about 1.6 percent.

Want another reason? Potholes. The roads in my neighborhood are getting full of potholes, and there isn’t enough money to repair them. After all, as our state aid started drying up because federal revenue was being cut, the money the state gave to the counties started drying up. And the money the counties passed on to the towns started drying up, too.

Other reasons? Schools. Growing hatred of races and religions and nationalities. Fear. School shootings. And Trump’s seemingly endless rallies, all of them broadcast as if they were something new. Good grief, we are treated several times a week with the same applause lines, the same jokes, and even (it seems) the same women carrying the nicely printed “Women for Trump” signs. I guess the one black guy with the “Blacks for Trump” T-shirt stopped coming, or maybe they wouldn’t let him in.

Now, as one of our fearless Republican Senators said recently, none of this is new. We already knew it all. And, yes, we did.

That’s another reason to be angry.

He's Right Again

Every once in a while, I have to admit that Donald Trump is right. Now he does it in a way that makes me think about the things he says, and our reaction to them - both as individuals and as a society.

But, before we get into deep water, let’s just look at what he said. To paraphrase, he told a cheering crowd “I’m more popular than Lincoln.” He admitted that he didn’t know if they took public opinion polls in Lincoln’s time, but said he would simply assume they did. Otherwise, how could he be more popular?

Now, no one who was working for a newspaper when Lincoln was elected president - not even the ace reporters at the failing New York TImes - yes, it was around in those days - picked up a phone and began calling people to ask what they thought of him. Mostly because the telephone hadn’t been invented yet.

There is also no mention that Samuel Clemens, whose articles were being printed in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise - a newspaper in Nevada - at the same time ever wrote about it either.

                                     Let's Not Forget The Obvious

Trump was right about being more popular than Lincoln. At least during his first year in office. So was almost every other president. Remember all those people living in Virginia and North Carolina and Georgia and Tennessee and Florida and the rest of the 11 states which decided to leave the United States and form their own country? No, Lincoln wasn’t  very popular with them.

In fact, after four years in office, he was opposed for re-election by one of his generals -a very popular one, in fact - who campaigned on a pledge to end the war, which a lot of people were saying was only started to - let’s polish up the language used at the time - to free the slaves.

Now the issues around slavery are complex - anything built into the Constitution when our nation was born and which lasted almost a century before the Civil War has to be complex. But, those issues were also simple. Slavery was wrong. Ugly. Cruel. Damaging to us as a nation unto this very day.

But, we are talking about popularity. And, after four years, it looked very much like retired Gen. George B. McClellan, the Democrat, would defeat Lincoln, who was running on the National Union Party line.* Call him a Republican, although a lot of Republicans at the time didn’t.

Lincoln won big, getting a 212 to 21 margin in the electoral college (a much bigger margin than Trump’s) and won the popular vote, 2.3 million to 1.8 million (better than Hillary, and her margin was better than Trump’s). Part of the reason Lincoln did so well was that no vote from a state at war with the Union counted. Jefferson Davis never complained the vote was rigged.

Now, all of this goes to the question of what, exactly, does it mean to be popular. Or unpopular. Donald Trump is certainly very popular with his base - the core Republicans who support him - with approval ratings hovering around 90 per-cent. The best ever!

But he’s done it because the Republican Party has been shrinking before our eyes. Our nation used to be about a third Republican, a third Democratic and a third independent. Not any more. We have gerrymandered election districts so well that the popular vote becomes almost meaningless - just compare Pennsylvania’s popular vote with the number of Republicans who won seats in the House of Representatives there - and political affiliation seems to be going the way of the Dodo for people under 40.

So Trump is more popular with fewer people, and he is supported by a lot of people in Congress who have already decided not to run for re-election. What do you think that means?

Well, for Trump it means a victory. He won! Of course, Winston Churchill won World War II against a bigger, more powerful opponent than Hillary Clinton or even Bob Mueller. He  stood up to Adolph Hitler and won. And, what did he get after winning that long and painful war? He got voted out of office.

                             The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

About the same time - well a couple of decades later - we had a president named Lindon Johnson, who had his flaws and who took over as president at one of the most painful times in the life of our nation - the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Our nation was being torn apart by racial strife, and by the war in Vietnam.

As the racial protests grew across the nation, Kennedy made passing a new civil rights bill a key plank in his election platform. Nothing to that time seemed to work. The Supreme Court had ruled a decade earlier (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. But, not much had changed in the south.

When Johnson became president, he pressed for and signed that new civil rights bill, warning his fellow politicians that their party, the Democratic Party, would lose their hold on the southern states for a generation. Well, he was mostly right. The Democratic solid south became the Republican solid south, but it lasted a lot longer than one generation.

Want an example? Richard Nixon did really well in the south. He might have even been more popular with the Republican Party in his time than Donald Trump says he is. I just haven’t looked it up. It seems like a waste of time.

 Footnote - don’t you just love them?

• Politics is often crazy. In 1864, Lincoln ran as a Republican, sort of. The Republican party at the time was split between the War Republicans and the regular Republicans. The War Republicans joined with some Democrats in creating the National Union party, the slate which Lincoln ran on, while most of the Democrats went with McClellan. 

Footnote to the footnote -

 Those Democrats, in fact, were part of the Copperheads political movement, and they adopted a Democratic Party Platform calling for peace with the Confederacy. McClellan rejected it, but a lot of people didn’t believe him. Most of the Union soldiers were sent home on leave to vote - not all at once, of course - and it is widely accepted that they gave the victory margin to LIncoln.  After the war, most people no longer saw a need for a National Unity Party, and it went back to being Republican. The question of national unity - what it means and whether that is a good or bad thing - remains with us to this day.