THE WALL, THE WIZARD AND THE RAINBOW

THE WALL, THE WIZARD AND THE RAINBOW

"Over the Rainbow" is probably my favorite song.

I have recordings of it by a half dozen artists.  

There's Willie Nelson's earthy version, his rasp turning romance into metaphorical reality.  

There's Israel Kamkawiwo'Ole's phantasmagorical version, original verses jumbled over the backdrop of a tropical ukulele in a way that prevents the message from becoming old.

There's Ariana Grande's raw version, closing for the victims of Manchester's concert bombing, where her tears and tone combined to produce hope.

And then, of course, there's the original version by Judy Garland, sung in the 1939 film,  The Wizard of Oz.

In the movie, the song is one of the bookends of  the film.  It is sung at the beginning, more or less as an introduction to the dreamy adventures that will unfold as a little girl and her dog, with their trio of scarecrow, cowardly lion and heartless tin man, travel the yellow brick road in search of brains, brawn and love on a wizard's promise that they will have all three if only they destroy the wicked witch.

The other bookend is at the end -- the scene where Toto pulls back the curtain  to expose  the faux wizard spewing fear and bloviation, aided and abetted by assorted mechanical extras, as he reneges on his promise, at which point Dorothy and her friends are forced to discover that what they wanted they had all along.  

It was in themselves.

They just hadn't been looking in the right place.

Today in  America, Donald Trump wants a wall. It was the signature and central promise of his presidential campaign.  In rally after rally, he brought angry crowds to their feet with its promise.  Paid for by Mexico. Nothing little or impermanent. Big and long, stretching from Tijuana to Texas. 

And impenetrable.

A bit like Trump himself.

On the merits, this was and remains an utterly harebrained idea.  

There isn't a southern border crisis.  The number of illegals crossing the southern border is in fact at an all time low.  The vast majority of undocumented aliens now in the country came here by air and have over-stayed their visas.  

A wall from  Tijuana to Texas will not stop that.  

Nor do the experts in charge of border security  want a wall, which they consider a waste.  Instead they want more border agents and greater broad band at points of entry, where the majority of those who show up want asylum, where their showing up is entirely legal, and where there is now a backlog brought on by Trump's refusal to allow them into the country pending their asylum hearings.  

Trump argues that asylum seekers come here and then fail to show up at their hearings.  This is false (more than 90% show up). He also claims that those coming across the border are criminals and terrorists, which is also false (in fact, immigrants as a whole are more law-abiding than natural born citizens, and no terrorist has come across the southern border; the 9/11 terrorists came here by plane and from the north).  The American drug problem is of course fueled in part by foreign suppliers.  But they come in by air, sea, tunnel and (at points of entry) truck, none of which the wall will prevent.  Which is why the experts want more agents and broad band at those points of entry, and more funding for the Coast Guard to interdict sea based smuggling.

They also want air conditioned trailers for the drug sniffing dogs.

Who apparently are baking in the southwestern heat.

None of this has changed Trump's view in the slightest.  

Instead, he has now closed down the federal government, extorting Congress to appropriate more than $5 billion to start building his wall.  More than 800,000 federal workers are furloughed or working without pay, many of whom are now showing up at food banks for free meals.  The Democrats are willing to negotiate on border issues but not at the point of a virtual gun; they want the government opened without pre-conditions.  A number of Republicans want this as well.

But Trump doesn't.

The petulant childishness of it all has started to have an effect on Trump's approval ratings, which weren't any good to begin with.  Gallup has him at 37% approval and Five Thirty-Eight's running average has him below 40% for the first time in a long time.

Nevertheless, and through it all, some significant portion of Americans approve of Trump and the wall.  In fact, his base is immovable on the subject.

Why?

That question has, of late,  brought me back to Oz.

Border control is about security and Trump's base, for all its anger and bravado, is insecure.  For some of them, the insecurity takes the form of a grossly unequal share of an economic pie that expanded enormously over the past forty years and a labor market that treats them like expendable parts.  For others, the insecurity is emotional, born of a perception that coastal elites and the college class look down on them and their values, whether those values take the form of opposition to marriage equality and abortion or a love affair with Donald Trump and his wall.

Values are critical.

Were the wall central to any of them, the argument for it would be, if not persuasive, at least defensible.

But Trump's wall is tied to no American value whatsoever.

Or, as Dorothy would put it, "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

The wall won't relieve or in any way even mitigate inequality or project strength.  It won't lower the number of illegals coming into the country.  In fact,  by diverting scarce resources to this whitest elephant of a project, it will probably result in more undocumented or illegal aliens in our midst.

America is not defined by its borders.  It is defined by its foundational ideas and values -- freedom, equal opportunity, the rule of law and equality before the law.  None of the causes of today's economic or cultural insecurity can be solved by closing the government.  We can solve them, however, or at least begin to, by adhering to those values.  Freedom and equal opportunity can provide the back drop and energy for policies that redistribute some of the enormous productivity gains of the last forty years to those who were left out.  And the rule of law and equality before the law can confront the corruption that has made that possible and preserve the liberty that respects differences of opinion, religion and taste.  As one former president remarked not so long ago, "There is nothing wrong with America than cannot be cured with what is right with America."

Trump's base needs to stop paying attention to the man behind the curtain.  

As Dorothy and her friends discovered, he is "a bad wizard."

We can't wish away problems or solve them with closed doors.

But we can embrace America's foundational values.

It's not as easy as clicking one's heels.

But, in the 242 years this American experiment has thrived, it's the only way we've ever gotten . . .

Over the rainbow.

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

I have been thinking about Christmas this week.

Actually, I have been thinking about Christmas Eve, which is today. And which, it seems to me, captures more of the essence of Christmas than even the day itself.

Christmas is about anticipation. About what will happen, not what has occurred. It's about the future, whether that future is mere hours in the offing or a millenia away. And it unites, in perhaps a way that no other holiday can or does, the pedestrian with the profound. In fact, it makes the pedestrian profound.

Kids will go crazy tonight. Most won't be able to sleep. Those not afraid of some cosmic retribution will sneak a peak out the window or down the stairs in search of Santa Claus. Others will become inveterate Holmes-es (Sherlock, that is), carefully processing every errant sound from a squeaky baseboard to determine if he has come down the chimney, with care or otherwise, along with a satchel of goodies. A few years ago, a friend told me his son had come into his bedroom in the middle of the night, swearing to his father that "Rudolph was in the driveway."

Two thousand years ago, it was all about anticipation too. We have encrusted that day with layers of theological speculation, so much so that we are now almost in need of theo-archaeologists to carefully remove the layers without destroying the initial insight. It was, after all, about the future, about hope -- cosmic and otherwise. Lots of us call it salvation, and tonight or tomorrow, when many of us cross the church threshold (some for our biennial visit, others for the second time this week), we will hear the ancient story of the incarnate One and be told it was the day we were saved.

Which has, of late, got me to wondering.

What for?

And the best answer I can come up with is . . .

Tomorrow.

And so that's what Christmas is about for me. Tomorrow. All the endless tomorrows. With their hopes and dreams and disappointments. Their risings and fallings. And tears and laughter. Even on the day I die, when tomorrow will be unpredictably exciting. In fact, especially then.

A friend recommended a book earlier this year by a theologian named John Haught. In it, Haught talked about the need to square Christian theology with the fact of evolution. One point he made is that theology should never compete with science, that the truths of the latter are not to be denied by the former, and vice versa. So the earth and all its inhabitants weren't created in six days, the universe (or multi-verse, we really do not know) is billions of years old, the human story represents hardly a nanosecond in this evolutionary time line, and the possibility of intelligent life in spheres beyond our third rock from the sun is hardly remote. The one thing certain is that, whoever and whatever we and our world are, it will not be the same tomorrow.

In fact, in the deep time of our evolutionary tomorrow, it's gonna be very different.

Which brings me back to Christmas. Or more precisely Christmas Eve. The one day when we think about nothing but tomorrow. And really look forward to it.

I am ready this year. All the presents are wrapped. The house is clean (I vacuum). Charles Darwin and Jesus Christ have become bosom buddies in my mind, the former telling me that nothing is forever as the world and its inhabitants constantly morph into newer forms, the latter teaching me that this in itself is a good thing and that somewhere over this evolutionary rainbow there is still a tomorrow that embraces us all.

And I have a shovel ready.

In case Rudolph leaves something in the driveway besides a missing sleigh bell.

Merry Christmas.

(This post was first published on Christmas Eve 2008.  A lot has changed since then. But not my view of Christmas.)

THANKSGIVING 2018 -- REMEMBERING LINCOLN

THANKSGIVING 2018 -- REMEMBERING LINCOLN

In October 1863, Abraham Lincoln thought Americans had much to be thankful for. 

"In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and provoke their aggression," he explained, "peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict".  In spite of that conflict, he noted, "Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the field of peaceful industry to the national defence . . . have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship . . . [A]nd the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom."

These contrasting realities  -- between war and peace, deprivation and plenty, freedom and slavery -- flummoxed Lincoln.  "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things," he admitted.  In fact, they rarely co-exist.  Large scale depravity overwhelms decency.  Death ends life.  Slavery suffocates freedom.

But they hadn't in mid-19th century America.

Even in the midst of a war that had produced greater carnage than any other.

This created a problem for Lincoln.  Though a deist, he was not particularly religious.  As an adult, he was not a member of any particular church, and as a politician he was at best circumspect in his confessions of faith -- unwilling to alienate Christian revivalists who reined supreme in the mid-west of his time but equally unwilling to embrace their excesses. He was also a child of the enlightenment and believed in reason and human agency.

Reason and agency, however, could not explain the country he observed in 1863.

And so, like many who cannot find a why in the sheer irrationality of what is, he was reduced to . . .

Prayer.

The ploughs, the shuttles, the ships, the neutrality of foreign adveraries and the sheer survival of the republican project that together made a "large increase of freedom" possible,  were, he offered  "the gracious gifts of the Most High God".  And they required that we "set apart and observe the last Thursday next . . . as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."  

The proclamation did not end there.  Along with thanks, Lincoln also demanded a national  prayer for forgiveness.  "I recommend," said the President, "that while offering up the ascriptions justly due Him for such singular deliverances and blessings," Americans "do . . . humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience."  That "perverseness" had created innumerable "widows, orphans, mourners [and] sufferers".

In the months and years that followed, Lincoln poured content into that first Thanksgiving prayer.  A little more than a month later, at Gettysburg, the "large increase of freedom" he perceived as dimly possible on Thanksgiving became the "unfinished work" of  "a new birth of freedom" incumbent upon "us, the living". And a year and a half later, in the Second Inaugural, he sought to "bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan".

For awhile this year, I was not sure we'd have much to be thankful for come tomorrow's fourth Thursday in November.  

And then I remembered Lincoln and the first Thanksgiving.

Trump is still President.  And he is still Trump.  His lies continue, as does his neo-fascist assault on courts, competitors, the free press and anyone who opposes him.  It is now reported that, last Spring, he was set to order the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey.  Last week, he pulled the press credentials of CNN's Jim Acosta, who he hates, and appointed an Acting Attorney General whose only obvious credential is consistent condemnation of the Mueller investigation.  This week, he is again shilling for Saudi Arabia, buying -- or at least not rejecting -- the kingdom's false claim that its heir in waiting had nothing to do with the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  And today, he is lamenting, as the product of an "Obama judge",  a federal district court ruling in San Francisco that requires asylum proceedings for any aliens who enter the country, whether or not they come in at a port of entry. 

But none of this has been accepted or taken lying down.

The White House counsel told Trump he'd be impeached if he ordered Justice to go after Clinton or Comey.  The courts ordered him to restore Acosta's credentials, and are now hearing motions as to the constitutionality of the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as Acting Attorney General.  No one is accepting Trump's defense of Saudi Arabia and prominent Senators are now set to investigate the President's gross servility, an obsequiousness that only faintly disguises the hatred he has for the free press.  Trump's asylum order has been enjoined, and Chief Justice John Roberts just upbraided him.  "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges", said Roberts. "What we have," he added, is an "independent judiciary [for which] we should all be thankful".

In a little more than a month, we'll have a House of Representatives controlled by the Democrats.  This is the product of a blue wave that overcame the most gerrymandered set of district lines the country has ever seen, a gerrymandering specifically designed to preserve Republican control of the House.  

It failed.  

To date, Congress has been transparently inept in holding  Trump accountable and investigating his and his Administration's lies, authoritarianism, conflicts, emoluments and incompetence -- the in utero fascism that scares us all.  

That ends on January 1.

Sometimes, as Yeats lamented, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/ . . . The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." 

This is not one of those times.

So . . .

Happy Thanksgiving.

Or, as Lincoln might say . . .

Thank God.

We'll apologize for Trump later.

NEXT WEEK WE'LL KNOW

NEXT WEEK WE'LL KNOW

So, the President of the United States basically announces a target list of opponents he views as despicable and a deranged man decides to send pipe bombs to fourteen people on the list.  Later in the week, an anti-semite walks into a Pittsburgh synagogue with an AR-15, kills eleven congregants, and then avows his anti-semitism in the ambulance on the way to the hospital to be treated for his wounds.

Immediately, the administration and its various and sundry lapdogs go into overdrive, vigorously disputing any notion that the President is responsible in any way for either tragedy.  

Their claims ran the gamut from the idiotic -- Kellyanne Conway blaming general "anti-religiosity" for quite particularized anti-semitism -- to the merely banal -- the chorus of conservative and GOP enablers trotting out a false "both-sidism", ostensibly on the grounds that last year's shooting at the GOP baseball practice was by a supporter of Bernie Sanders, even though Sen. Sanders has never advocated any form of violence against his opponents but Trump emphatically, and on more than one occasion, clearly has.

Do they really think Americans are that stupid?

The answer is . . .

Yes, they do!

It is difficult if not impossible these days to logically defend the GOP playbook in all its particularized horror.  It supported a tax cut and a strong lurch to the judicial right that Americans did not want and the repeal of a health care plan that they did want.  Everything else has been babel, principally from Trump himself but often as not from his enablers and seconds either in Congress or on his staff.  

Before last week's domestic terrorism -- that is what sending pipe bombs to politicians you abhor is -- Trump waltzed around the Saudi government's killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, first wondering whether it happened, then repeating Saudi denials, then basically admitting billion dollar arm sales were more important than a Saudi hit on a journalist, and then announcing that the Saudis were engaged in the "worst cover up ever."  At the end of the day, his tone deaf stream of consciousness came across more as a lament for the ineptness of a corrupt regime.  The fact that a dissident journalist was targeted and killed was beside the point, which is what you'd expect from someone who has labelled the press an "enemy of the people."

Amidst the horror of pipe bombs and Pittsburgh, America's would-be President has also been campaigning for Republican candidates in the mid-terms, which are next week.  Here, of course, it is difficult to say that Trump is campaigning for Republican candidates.  That is the ostensible purpose of his rallies, but they are never really about the candidate on the ballot and always devolve into the President's favorite subject . . . 

Which is himself.

The essence of that "self" is to do anything to win.  Truth, facts, leadership, America's standing in the world, all are beside the point.  In the 1930's, FDR told Americans mired in a depression that the only thing they had to fear "was fear itself".  In Trump's world, the only way he can win is to generate fear itself.  So, a rag-tag (and always shrinking) group of impoverished and threatened Central Americans slowly making their way north is now a George Soros-funded "caravan" with some "Middle Easterners" so set on invading the US that it must be met by the army at the border and an executive order ending birthright citizenship at the White House.

Never mind that the army -- which is legally barred from doing anything under the Posse Comitatus Act  -- will be pointless, and the order -- barred by the express terms of the 14th Amendment -- unconstitutional.

Never mind also that George Soros has had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

Or that, by the time it arrives, the "caravan" will likely have diminished to nothing more than a long line.

Trump doesn't care.  

His purpose is not to educate or argue of even engage at any intellectual level.  It's just to instill fear.  The same kind of fear FDR derided in the '30s -- "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror".  FDR thought that type of fear would "paralyze needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."  Trump, however, is counting on it to do exactly that.  

Retreat is his game plan.  

It's the by-product of the fact-free, rage-fueled and neo-fascist partisanship he has raised to new, unseen heights, a partisanship whose ineluctable ends include retreats to pipe bombs and Pittsburgh.  It's also a partisanship where either nothing gets done, or what gets done is unwanted, and politicians -- taking the President's lead -- then lie about it.  

The mid-terms were supposed to be about health care because everyone wants those with pre-existing conditions protected; it's the one provision in Obamacare that no one opposes.  Of course, to get there, the pool of insured had to be increased dramatically (hence, the mandate) so that the insurance companies could cover those with such conditions without making premiums unaffordable.  Though the GOP has ended the mandate and sued to end the ban on pre-existing conditions, this has not stopped any GOP candidate from claiming that he or she is in fact for preserving the ban.

If the President can do it (lie, that is), so can they.

They think the lies won't matter and that some of those lies, in particular those about the caravan and birthright citizenship, will actually increase GOP turnout and allow them to retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

As I said, they really do think we are stupid.

They only question left is the obvious one . . .

Are we?

Next week we'll know.

TODAY'S GOP -- TWELVE WAYS OF LOOKING AT HYPOCRISY

TODAY'S GOP -- TWELVE WAYS OF LOOKING AT HYPOCRISY

If you are male, blue suited and testifying before a panel of like-minded men in the Senate, your anger is appropriate.

But if you are female, dungareed or tank-topped and protesting in the halls of Congress or on the steps of the Capitol, your anger amounts to mob rule.

If you are McConnell, ignoring the Constitution by icing a President's nomination to the Supreme Court during his last year in office, you are strategic.

But if you are Feinstein, holding a letter from a victim of sexual assault because she does not want it made public, and then only  disclosing the letter once it has become public through no fault of your own, you have perpetrated "the most unethical sham . . . in politics."

If you are Graham, sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's ok for the FBI to ignore scores of witnesses who might have corroborated the claims of two victims of sexual assault.

But if you are Graham, sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a complete investigation of the leak of one victim's letter to an opposing Senator is needed to preserve the integrity of the Senate.

If you are a male Republican Senator sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's appropriate to silence yourself while the  victim of sexual assault is in the room, ostensibly out of respect and sympathy for the victim,  and allow a female prosecutor to question the victim.

But if you are that same male Republican Senator sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's appropriate to reclaim the podium as soon as the victim has departed, pretend her accused assailant is the real victim, and believe him but not her.

If you are Trump, Jr., it's now a scary time for men who can be accused decades later of sexual assault.

But if you are the millions of women who have been assaulted, the fact that you said nothing at the time  because you would have been told you "asked for it", or attacked as delusional, means it really didn't happen.

If you are a Republican member of Congress, voting for tax cuts that enrich the already-wealthy and balloon the deficit, you are a creating economic growth and jobs.

But if you are  Democrat, voting to provide health care to those who do not have it or for a stimulus to recover from a a near Depression, you are mindlessly enlarging the deficit and providing a windfall to "takers" at the expense of "makers".

If you are Canada, saving American diplomats from the Ayatollah in 1979 by hiding them in your embassy and helping the CIA secret them out of the country, you are our ally.

But if you are Canada, obeying international agreements on trade and tariffs in 2018, you are a threat to our "national security" sufficient to enable the President to unilaterally impose tariffs on your aluminum and steel.

If you are the European Union, preserving the peace for over seventy years on a continent that had previously been the site of two world wars and the fascist-sponsored Holocaust, you are the solution to an historic problem.

But if you are the European Union, some (but not all) of whom do not spend 2% of their GDP on defense, you are a deadbeat taking advantage of  NATO and ripping off America's taxpayers.

If you are Russia, you declared cyber-war on America in 2016, hacked the Democratic Party's computers, tried to hack voter registration files in a number of states,  and created thousands of fake accounts on social media to help elect Donald Trump President.

But if you are Mueller, the investigation into that Russian interference is a "witch hunt" and a "hoax."

If you are Anonymous, secretly "thwarting" the President's "misguided impulses" and "preserving our democratic institutions until after he is out of office," you are a  patriot.

But if you are the New York Times, disclosing those "impulses" so that voters can vote the President and his enablers "out of office," and thus preserve our democratic institutions the old-fashioned way, you are "fake news."

If you are Trump, climbing to the top of America's greasy economic pole on the back of tax evasion and corporate bankruptcies, insulting any and all who get in your way, and pathologically lying, you are an authentic, self-made man.

But if you are Hillary, using (as did her predecessors) a private email server, you belong in jail.

If you are John McCain, you are turning over in your grave.

But if you are Lindsey Graham . . .

You don't care.

LISTEN TO THE KIDS

LISTEN TO THE KIDS

At 9:11 last night, I talked to an expert witness on the veracity of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's testimony yesterday.

The expert was my 27 year old daughter, Courtney.

For the entire day, she was live streaming the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on charges by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh, President Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, sexually assaulted her thirty-six years ago.

Every so often, a text message alert on my phone sounded . . .

And my daughter sounded off. 

At 2:27, it was "How are some of these crack pots Senators?"  A moment later, the"greatest deliberative body" "sound[ed] like idiots" to her.  Later on, she noticed that a bunch of "grandpa[s]" were making "serious decisions about people my age."  "No offense," she added, just to assure me she had nothing against grandfathers. By 5:15, as Brett Kavanaugh was in full battle-mode,  blaming even the Clintons for his current troubles, an all caps text showed up --  "THIS IS CRAZY," she said.  The hearing was a "train wreck."

Then she had dinner . . . 

Thought about what had been said  from the stand by the Judge . . .

And shared thoughts with one of her best friends, Angela.

At 9:11, my phone rang.

Kavanaugh, she said,  reminded her and her friends of all the entitled and over-inebriated frat boys they met in high school and college.  Their partying was non-stop and their behavior often unhinged.  Alcohol fueled a "hook up" culture where saying "No" wasn't always taken as no, and even worse, a culture where it sometimes became impossible even to utter the word.   The notion that Brett never forgot what happened during a night of hard partying, or that Kavanaugh himself wasn't such a creature, were in her mind preposterous. Too many of his friends and associates from the time were telling a different story, all of them couldn't be wrong, and nothing about this dark side was at all surprising.

To my daughter, it was reality.

I asked her if the fact that the assault had taken place in high school should create some sort of defense. 

No, she said.

Why?

Because Christine Blasey was assaulted.  She wasn't "hooking up"or fooling around.  And when she yelled, her assailant covered her mouth.

Kavanaugh went all-Trump in his defense. 

Instead of answering questions, he attacked his inquisitors.  When Sen. Klobuchar -- with some experience as a daughter of an alcoholic -- asked Kavanaugh if he had ever blacked out from drinking, he retorted "Have you?"  When Sen. Whitehouse asked about yearbook references implying that a drunken Brett had, as they say, ridden the porcelain bus, the Judge said he "liked beer" and asked what Whitehouse "liked to drink." 

As Sen. Feinstein was explaining the need for an independent FBI investigation, he repeatedly interrupted her, claiming the hearing itself -- with a mere two witnesses, and no subpoena to bring in Mark Judge, the other guy Dr. Ford put in the room with  Kavanaugh on the night of the assault  -- was some sort of appropriate substitute.  In a stunning exchange with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, he sat in dumbfounded silence for seconds after Durbin asked if Kavanaugh -- an appellate judge and former special prosecutor who has routinely worked with the FBI -- would support such an investigation.

As with all liars, it's not the big stuff, the main lie, that trips them up.

Other than Trump, who lies about the big and the small and most of what is in between, "smart" liars have the big stuff down.

Instead, it's the small stuff that gets them.

About mid-way through his questioning, Sen. Whitehouse asked Kavanaugh about references in his high school yearbook  to "boofing" and a "Devil's triangle."  The first, said Kavanaugh, was teenage talk about "flatulence."  "I'm game" to talk about that, a cocky Kavanaugh retorted, basically inviting Whitehouse to play the fool who would keep someone off the Supreme Court for joking about farting in high school.

The second, he claimed, referred to a "drinking game." 

The sub-text here was unmistakable.  We've reached a new low when Supreme Court nominees can be questioned about innocent high jinks stupidly memorialized in their high school year books.  Indeed, Sen. Hatch practically had a coronary as he lamented a standard of review that ostensibly turns an "immature high schooler" who said "stupid things" in a yearbook into a "sexual predator."

Courtney got off the phone a 9:45.

Just before, she let her ancient father know that a "Devil's triangle" is not a drinking game. It's a "two boy on girl threesome."  

In other words,what Kavanaugh and Judge were attempting to do to Christine Blasey.

At 10:10, another text from my daughter.  This one said ""FYI, boofing means putting alcohol up your butt." 

Yuk!

Kavanaugh is a liar.

How do I know?

He lies about the small stuff.

The stuff he thinks Sheldon Whitehouse is too old to understand or too embarrassed to contest.

The stuff I now know he lied about only because I . . .

Listened to my  kid.

THE BIGGEST THREAT

THE BIGGEST THREAT

Maybe the biggest threat to democracy in America is not Donald Trump.

In the space of the last month, the country has seen his former lawyer plead guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud and orchestrating illegal donations to his 2016 campaign at his behest in order to cover up his affairs with a porn star and a Playmate. His erstwhile campaign manager has been found guilty of tax evasion arising out of work for Ukraine's former leader, and Putin ally, Viktor Yanukovitch.  His White House turns out to have been deemed "crazytown" -- and he,  an "idiot" --  by his own chief of staff. And, according to "Anonymous", there is -- and has been since day one -- some undefined group in the White House and executive branch preserving "our democratic institutions while thwarting [the President's] more misguided impulses until he is out of office."

The common thread here is Donald Trump's narcissism, dishonesty and paranoia.

But there's another, perhaps more important, common thread.

For, in each of the above examples, someone -- other than Trump --  is either getting ahead . . .

Or burying their head.

Start with Cohen and Manafort, the lawyer and operative, respectively.

Cohen became rich taking bullets for Donald Trump.  When approached by attorneys for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, he could have done nothing.  Their tales would presumably have then seen the light of day and either would have been sufficient to kill Trump's presidential campaign or ignored by a loyal cadre that had already priced in and devalued Trump's degradations.  Instead of doing nothing, however, Cohen channeled six figure pay-offs for silence, with Trump's knowledge and assistance and in violation of federal law.  His probable expectation was that Trump would never be elected anyway (even Trump thought so) and the payments would never become public. Meanwhile, his image as Trump's protector would be burnished, and with it, his opulent life style.

Manafort became rich shilling for crypto-fascists.  That is what Yanukovitch, his political acolytes and his supporters in Russia (including a number of oligarchs) were and are.  When the Euromaidan Revolution ousted him in 2014, Manaforte's balance sheet took a beating.  For not only had he shilled for them, he was also in debt to them . . .

To the tune  of  $17 million to the oligarchs.

Over the years, this creates a lot of turmoil, especially when the gravy train goes dry.

So Manafort had to cope

To do so he (i) evaded taxes, (ii) committed bank fraud on loan applications to generate cash, and (iii) volunteered his services for free as Donald Trump's campaign manager.

This third tack was not motivated by generosity. 

Instead, Manafort thought he could later monetize the campaign job by advising Yanukovitch's Eurasian protector and Trump's "new best friend", Vladimir Putin.  No doubt Manafort also did not expect Trump to win or his finances to attract the attention of the Justice Department. 

Cohen and Manafort were trying to get ahead.

John Kelly and Anonymous, however, are burying theirs.

To begin, the notion that an American President actually requires a secret cabal of "adults in the room" in order simply to save the republic from its Commander in Chief is . . .

Scary.

This is not the 19th century.  Or even the early 20th. It's true that we have had bad presidents before, even very bad ones.  But they never had nukes or twitter and they could not cause a holocaust in minutes.  James Buchanan argued himself into paralysis and watched as the nation undid itself into a Civil War.  James Polk sent the Army to Texas to start a war with Mexico.  Warren Harding's brief administration was so riddled with incompetence and corruption that two went to jail, one committed suicide, and another -- his Attorney General -- resigned in disgrace.  And with Woodrow Wilson, the lights were on but no one was home following his stroke, and his wife became -- more or less -- the acting President.

These events, however, occurred over months, in some cases even years.  There was time to prepare and adapt.

And time to get our minds around some of the disasters that ensued.

Now is different. 

The country can afford an idiot president.  It can afford a lazy one.  It can even afford a self-absorbed Fox News addict who treats every day as a reality-TV episode where he has to win and Fox assures him he has.

What it cannot afford, however, is a lazy, narcissistic idiot who acts on his neuroses.

Which is what we now have.

Kelly and Anonymous tell us they are the "adults in the room".  They ostensibly are shielding the country from Trump's worst instincts.  They steal paper off his desk (Gary Cohn, erstwhile chief economic adviser, avoiding rupture of our trade agreement with South Korea),  or refuse to follow orders (General Mattis at the Defense Department, refusing to assassinate Assad), or slow walk demanded changes (Mattis again, this time delaying any ban on transgender troops), or do end-arounds that establish policy before the President can undermine or kill it (which is what National Security Adviser John Bolton accomplished by getting the recent NATO communique written and agreed to before Trump even showed up for the meeting).

The argument for remaining anonymous (or, in Kelly's case, now denying he said what Bob Woodward says he said) is that these people need to be on the inside, working their subterfuge in the interests of preserving the republic before our nutcase-in-chief kicks them out and installs a team of only true believers and complete enablers.  In other words, they're not just protecting us from Trump.  They're protecting us from . . .

Steve Bannon . . .

Or Corey Lewandowski . . .

Or Stephen Miller.

So far so good.

But what disaster awaits if they fail?

We came close to finding out earlier this year.  According to Woodward, Trump planned to tweet that the US was going to pull its dependents out of South Korea.  The Pentagon went into overdrive. It had reliable information, again according to Woodward,  that North Korea would have read that tweet as an announcement that war was imminent and would have taken preemptive action. Fortunately for us, the Pentagon was able to stop the tweet.

But what if the tweet had been sent from Trump's bedroom, the "devil's workshop" according to former chief of staff Reince Priebus, or at 5 am  or on a Sunday evening, Trump's "witching hours", as Priebus also has proclaimed?  

Would anyone have been there to stop it?

The problem here is not that Trump is a megalomaniac or dim, though he appears to be both.

The problem is that he is impetuous . . .

With not an ounce of self-doubt.

And Anonymous and the other "adults in the room" cannot save us from that.

In the Bush II Administration, the war on terror was governed by Dick Cheney's "One Percent Doctrine".  Under it, a 1% chance of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack against us was to be met with a full on response.  The theory was that the infinitesimal likelihood of the occurrence was overcome by the catastrophic nature of the consequences were the remote event actually to occur. 

Maybe we're now in a "One Percent Presidency".

Because, while Buchanan never had nukes . . .

Trump does.

And, even more importantly, so do our adveraries.

What should be done?

Here's my view.

The adults should resign.  

En masse.  

Following that, Republicans in Congress -- the Speaker, the Senate Majority Leader, and all the committee chairs -- should go to Trump with a list of acceptable replacements, some of whom could even be the resigned adults themselves, and one big ultimatum -- if Trump does not agree to the replacements and to stop tweeting, they will impeach him.  If enough of the anonymous adults also happen to be in the Cabinet, the GOP could even threaten Trump with a call for his ouster under the 25th Amendment.

Will this be done?

Not a chance.

Why?

Because Anonymous and his or her confreres are not just protecting the country.  

They are protecting themselves. 

These so-called "adults in the room" are all GOP appointees and operatives. They presumably want jobs, and therefore a preserved Republican Party, long after Trump is gone. And as for GOP members of Congress, they long ago put their courage in a blind trust in exchange for tax cuts, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.  Public denials from the press podium and spin aside, everyone knows the danger inherent in this President and this Presidency.  It's the one opinion now held in Washington, D.C. on a completely bi-partisan basis.

The "adults" know it too.

And they want to be forgiven -- indeed, praised as our saviors -- once the age of Trump passes.

Let's pray we get there.

If we don't, the biggest threat to democracy will not have been Donald Trump.

It will have been . . .

Careerism.