GOP's war on women

Just when you thought Republicans couldn't reach any deeper in their quest to control the rights of women through anti-abortion laws, up pops Arizona.

Last Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court (seven justices appointed by a Republican governor) approved a long dormant pre-Civil War law (1864) that bans abortions with few exceptions.

It seemed bad enough when the conservative United States Supreme Court sent the country back nearly 50 years by reversing Roe v. Wade a year ago, which legalized abortions in 1973. Now we have a state supreme court sending us back even further – 160 years to be exact.

The law predates Arizona's statehood (1912) by nearly 50 years, which means Arizona was simply a territory back then. Also, the law makes no provisions for rape or incest, allowing abortions only if the mother's life is in danger.

The state court also hinted that doctors who perform abortions can be prosecuted under the 1864 law. If that happens, resurrecting the 1964 law throws out a lower court decision that said doctors couldn't be prosecuted for performing abortions in the first 15 weeks. Doctors might now serve terms between two to five years if convicted.

The 1864 law, designed by men, also occurred before women were given the right to vote under the 19th amendment in 1920. You can see where this is going.

If immoral and incompetent decisions like this continue, the next thing you know, women will be required to remain barefoot and pregnant because that's a way for men to keep control over them.

Why is this thing even given new life after lying dormant for so long? The implications are enormous. How many obstetricians do you expect will remain in Arizona if there's a threat of a jail term hanging over their heads for virtually any treatment of a pregnant woman? How many industries will reject Arizona as a state with its head in the 19th century? How many women will die for the lack of proper health care?

All of this is pending, of course. The court gave the parties involved two weeks to file objections, so there's that. 

But for now, we're living in a world created by the rapist/ex-president/presidential candidate Donald Trump (You did this), who just so happens will be in court this week in Manhattan to begin a criminal trial, allegedly for paying two women (one of them a porn star) six-figure sums to keep quiet about their affairs with him prior to the 2016 election.

In technical terms, Trump is being charged with falsifying New York business records.

It was under Trump that Roe v. Wade was overturned by a court where he appointed three Supreme Court injustices for a 6-3 conservative majority and which ultimately set in motion the fevered time machine that is now engaged in reversing women's right to choose. 

Ironically, and sadly, a reversal for all of us...

Bombs away

I suspect there was a time when the Sunday between the Final Four on Saturday and the NCAA Championship game on Monday was pretty much considered dead time.

At least it was in my house.

But I'm guessing elsewhere, too.

I was a men's basketball snob. As a sports writer for The Dispatch, I covered men's basketball in the Atlantic Coast Conference for years, and then watched the men almost exclusively on television when I wasn't watching the ACC. 

In my defense, I don't think my snobbishness wasn't all my fault. I mean, when did ESPN start covering women's basketball on a regular basis? I rest my case.

Iowa's Caitlin Clark in practice.

Anyway, one March a few decades ago, looking for something to watch on that dead Sunday afternoon, I tuned into the women's NCAA final. I'm pretty sure it was Tennessee against somebody, and the scales fell from my eyes.

Pat Summitt was an intelligent coach. These women could run plays. They could knock each other over in the paint. And most impressively, they could hit consistently from the perimeter. Maybe even better than the men.

I figure it was pretty much Summitt and her Volunteers that brought women's basketball into national prominence. She posted a career record of 1,098-208 (.841) and won eight national titles.

At about the same time, the University of Connecticut was flexing its muscles under coach Geno Auriemma, further enhancing the women's game. Auriemma, still an active coach at age 70, has a career record of 1,213-162 record (.882) and 11 national titles. 

All of which brings me to today's championship game between Iowa and South Carolina. Interest in women's college basketball has never been higher than it is now, and a large part of that is due to Iowa's Caitlin Clark, who's swishing bombs from the logos on the court. Clark recently became the overall career Division I scoring leader – men or women – and she comes into today's game with 3,921 points. Whoa.

More than 14 million viewers watched Iowa defeat UConn 71-69 on Friday and I'm guessing that number could be even higher today. 

I have a feeling that South Carolina, undefeated this year under coach Dawn Staley (37-0), might have the better overall team. That's why I think the Gamecocks will win the title. But Clark will put on a show, and that's why the game might be the most watched women's game ever.

I'll be watching, too.

Get yer red-hot Bibles

As if we didn't know already, the rapist/huckster presidential candidate Donald Trump has created an even deeper bottom than he's ever drilled to before.

A few days ago, Trump offered us his version of the King James Bible, complete with an addendum of the United States Constitution, all for the low, low price of $59.99. Trump calls it his "God Bless the USA" Bible. And just in time for Holy Week.

Hurry. Come get yer red-hot Bibles before they're gone. Let's make America pray again. 

You don't have to look far to see that this is just another scheme – like his recent unveiling of Trump gold lame sneakers – to raise money to help pay his mounting legal fees. 

How incredibly offensive. On several counts.

His intended audience is clearly the evangelical Christian nationalists who, by blindly following the cult of Trump, have shown themselves to be a cult of hypocrites themselves. These people once followed the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now they are following the dictates of the Antichrist. There's no other way to describe this inappropriate indignity. Selling Bibles for personal gain.

Wouldn't a true Christian – and especially a professed billionaire – donate the sales of the teachings of Jesus Christ to benefit the poor, the destitute, the hungry?

One of the first things that struck me about Trump's latest loathsome endeavor was how he shamelessly combined government with religion: the Bible and the US Constitution in one leather-bound package. It's kind of a weak but obvious ploy to declare that only Christians can be patriots.

You, too, can be a God-fearing patriot for only $59.99 (Translation: help pay for my legal fees and vote for me).

And yet, in the 235-year history of this constitutional republic, there always has been a clear separation of church and state. It was intentional – the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing. There are 4,543 words in the constitution, and not a single one of them is the word "God."

The Founders were ever conscious of the persecution the pilgrims endured in their break from the Church of England, the state church.

It was not going to happen here.

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries," wrote James Madison, the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution.

In the First Amendment we find two provisions about church and state: the Establishment Clause and the Exercise Clause.

The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from "establishing" a religion. The Free Exercise Clause protects a person's right to practice religion as they please.

The country was to be a democracy, not a theocracy.

Thomas Jefferson was the first to coin the phrase "separation of church and state" in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, a religious minority that feared religious persecution. In his letter, Jefferson, then the president, cited that the free exercise and establishment clauses, in unison, built "a wall of separation between church and state."

And so it has been since 1789.

But now we have a former president who is also a current presidential candidate hawking bibles overtly  and intentionally combining church and state. It's dangerous. It's divisive. It's anti-constitutional. Because of Trump, who shows no moral values whatsoever, much less Christian values (think porn star Stormy Daniels. Think Trump rape victim E.J. Carroll. Think 4,000 migrant children torn from their families; six years later, hundreds are still to be reunited), we now live in an era of rising antisemitism and attempted Muslim bans. Are these groups – and others – finding religious freedom in this country, or are they finding persecution instead? Are we becoming what we were never intended to be? In Trump's narrow vision, it would appear so.

The irony is that Trump is hawking his Bible (which he cynically claims is his favorite book while grinning his Elmer Gantry grin) with the U.S. Constitution included, when it's clear he has read neither.

The First Amendment not only guarantees us free speech, but freedom of religion as well. And hopefully, freedom from Trump.

And it's Holy Week.

GOP cultism

Back in late 1954, social psychologist Leon Festinger asked – and was permitted – to observe a cultist group in Chicago known as the Seekers.

The Seekers were led by a person named Dorothy Martin who claims she had received messages from aliens (Just to be clear, not the undocumented persons we now call aliens and who are not to be confused with supposed creatures from another planetary system) whom she called the Guardians. The Guardians, from the planet Clarion, told her that our world would end by a flood on Dec. 21, 1954, and that her followers would be rescued a few days earlier by a flying saucer that the Guardians would provide.

 Festinger had a question: What happens to true believers when their convictions are confronted by reality?

You can probably see where I'm going with this. The cult of Trumpism clearly has infected and divided American politics, almost to the point where reasonable people fear for the survival of our Madisonian democracy. As we prepare for the general election in November, where the rapist Donald Trump is seeking a second term as President of the United States, his base and his cult continue to thrive on lies, misdirection and corruption.

I recently saw an example of this on a YouTube video where Trump supporters insist they will vote for Trump even though many concede that he is a rapist, a grifter, and a liar who accomplished next to nothing in his first term in office.

What kind of irresponsible voter is that, when you know the candidate is unqualified but still insist you will vote for him anyway? You become a cultist with a vote.

Back to the Seekers, who I think could be compared to today's modern MAGA movement (which to me sounds a whole lot like a bowel issue).

The Seekers gathered at Martin's house waiting for the appointed hour of their rescue. When the clock ticked down to midnight, and the flying saucer did not appear, Festinger says the group sat perfectly still for hours without saying a word.

Finally, early in the morning, Martin told the group she had gotten another Clarion call from the Guardians. Because the group was so faithful in their beliefs, she said, God had called off the destruction of the world.

Festinger put his study in a book titled When Prophecy Fails. In it, he found: "The more you invest in a set of beliefs ... the more resistant you will be to the evidence that suggests that you are mistaken. You don't give up. You double down."

Sound familiar?

I think it could be illuminating if Festinger's study in 1954 found purchase in today's GOP climate of political cultism.

•   •   •

As I write this blog on Sunday morning, Trump is just hours away from failing to meet the $454 million dollar bond deadline in his fraud case or else risk having his assets seized.

He claims he doesn't have the money available, although occasionally he also claims that he does. Liar.

Trump has skated away from trouble before (he's still not in jail, after all) and I think there's still an remote chance the money he needs might come in the final hour from an outside source, like Russia, China or Jared (Kushner, his son-in-law, who somehow came away from Saudi Arabia with $2 billion for real estate investments. The fact that Kushner has yet to do so speaks volumes).

Or maybe Trump will be rescued by a flying saucer from Clarion.

Masters of the Air

I had been waiting patiently – perhaps nearly a decade – for the production of Masters of the Air to finally make the television screen. 

It finally happened eight weeks ago when AppleTV+ aired all nine hour-long episodes, based on the 2006 book of the same name by Donald Miller, a professor of history at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. The final installment came this past week, depicting the end of air war in Europe.

Masters was the third prong of the Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks produced World War II trilogy. The first was the exceptional Band of Brothers, which came out in 2001 and detailed the exploits of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne. The miniseries was television at its best.

 Taking advantage of BoB's success, The Pacific was released in 2010. The 10-part series was also successful, although arguably not on the same level as Band of Brothers.

Then came Masters of the Air.

On the whole, I enjoyed the series, although I have a few nits to pick.

The United States Army Air Force had two primary heavy bomber types in World War II: the B-17 and the B-24. Thousands upon thousands of B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators were built during the war, but only a handful remain today and even fewer are airworthy. Consequently, the miniseries depends heavily on computer graphic imaging – CGI – to depict the massive 1,000-plane bomber formations that darkened the skies over Europe and the horrific missions flying through anti-aircraft fire (flak) and German fighter planes.

There seems to be a bit of overproduction when movies use CGI, almost to the point of overkill. The skies are vast and wide open, able to accommodate all manner of aircraft at once. The skies in Masters appear to be unrealistically crowded. I don't know. Maybe they were. I wasn't there. I base my assumption on actual combat footage that I've seen and there appears to be plenty of spacing between aircraft.

But if the object here is to show the absolute brutality of the bomber campaign and the toll it takes on human beings, I guess CGI is the way to go. That's where the miniseries succeeded, I think. The unimaginable horror.

The series also pulls away from too much aerial combat and occasionally drifts away to prisoner of war camps, rest and relaxation centers, and even a romantic dalliance shared by navigator Harry Crosby (who wrote his own book about his experience titled "A Wing and a Prayer"). It seemed a distraction.

What I was hoping to see were more tidbits from Miller's book. Like, for example:

1) Technical Sergeant Arizona T. Harris, who was a top turret gunner on the B-17 Sons of Fury. Harris died on Jan. 3, 1943 when his plane was shot down and ditched in the Bay of Biscay. One eyewitness account reads: "...two guns were still blazing, Harris' twin .50s. As sheets of white water rolled over the wings and the plane began to drop  out of sight, the top turret guns were still spitting flame as fast as the feeding arms would pull the shells into the guns. Arizona Harris was trying to protect the pilot and co-pilot, who were in the water and under fire from (German) FW-190s. Harris must have felt the winter water fill his turret and climb to where it cut off his breath, yet he kept firing until the sea swallowed the hot muzzles of his guns."

Unbelievable.

2) Maynard "Snuffy" Smith received the Congressional Medal of Honor when he was filling in for another man as the ball turret gunner. Smith had never flown in the turret before this mission, which was his first. On the way back from a bomb run over St. Nazaire, his plane was hit by flak and then attacked by FW-190s. Then a fire broke out near the rear of the ship, with ammunition exploding. Then another fire broke out in the radio room in front of him.

Now out of the turret, Smith got a fire extinguisher and doused the flames in the radio room. As he was doing this, he saw his wounded tail gunner crawling toward him. Smith broke out a morphine vial and applied it to the crewman despite the cold wind, fire and the crewman's heavy clothing.

Smith turned back to the fire and when the extinguisher was empty, he urinated on the fire and then tried to smother it with his hands and feet until his boots began to smolder. All this while under fighter attack.  Smith then manned a waist gun to shoot back at the German.

All this was witnessed by the crew of an accompanying bomber.

Smith, usually a total screw-up on base, almost missed his own award ceremony because he was doing KP duty for coming in late after a pass.

Why wasn't this in Masters?

3) Incredibly, on the same mission as Harris, ball turret gunner Alan Magee was blown out of his B-17, Snap, Crackle Pop, without a parachute at 22,000 feet. He fell four miles before crashing into a glass roof of the St. Nazaire railroad station. He survived but suffered lung and kidney damage, several broken bones and nearly severed his right arm. He ended up as a prisoner of war.

There are other stories to tell. My friend, Lee Jessup, interviewed his father, Dalma, who was a tail gunner on a B-17 and flew an incredible 40 missions for the 15th Air Force. His plane was down by an FW-190 and Dalma had to bail out, the first time he ever used a parachute. Lee said his father never flew again after that experience.

And Lexington's Bill Mitchell, now deceased, flew 30 missions in a B-24 as a group lead bombardier, including a perilous mission over Kassel. Mitchell invited me to his house shortly after I had written a newspaper story about my flight in a B-24 that had come to Lexington. Mitchell showed me a box that he opened that was full of jagged metal pieces. "That's shrapnel from flak," he told me. Then he pulled out another box. 

It was his Distinguished Flying Cross.

I kind of wish the Masters of the Air miniseries included stories like these.

The next Herschel Walker

Congratulations, North Carolina Republicans. You've just nominated the newest iteration of Herschel Walker in a bid to become our state's next governor.

That happened Tuesday during the state's Super Tuesday primary elections.

Mark Robinson

 Walker, you might remember, was Georgia's effort to put a MAGA Senator in Congress. But Walker turned out to be pretty much a political functional illiterate who ultimately lost his bid to Democrat Raphael Warnock in a race that was closer than it should have been.

Now, we here in North Carolina have been presented with Mark Robinson, the current lieutenant governor who is not only an election denier, but a Holocaust denier, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Muslim, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, civil rights/voting rights mocker and conspiracy theorist who thinks both 9-11 and Jan. 6 were government plots and humanity really didn't put men on the moon.

He's got enough baggage here to start his own TJ Maxx franchise.

His list of offensive remarks for most people is longer than my arm, (just Google "Mark Robinson" to find out for yourself). There are several of his remarks I want to comment on.

The first is the Holocaust, which in 2018 he wrote "this foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash."

And this coming from a guy who studied to be a history teacher.

Another is his view of the LGBTQ+ community, whose people he calls "that filth." After calls for his resignation as lieutenant governor, he said that he wasn't ashamed of his remarks.

Shortly thereafter, Robinson, said straight people are superior to queer folks. Sounds a little Hitlerish there, don't you think?

Also, there's a video clip  where he pines for a time when women didn't have the vote. I have to back up here a bit. That clip is only a snippet and taken out of context. Robinson was actually presented with a question by conservative commentator Candace Owens during a Republican Women of Pitt County event in 2020.

Owns asked Robinson "Which Americas would you want to go back to? One where women couldn't vote or one where Black people were swinging from trees?"

Robinson, a Black man, took the bait and said he'd rather live in an America where women couldn't vote.

The better answer would have been to ask what the hell type of question was that to ask in 2020? And then not to answer it at all. Next question.

The fact that he did give an answer – which will now serve effectively against him in the upcoming campaign – calls into question his ability to make rational decisions for this state.

Robinson will be going against Democrat Josh Stein for the state's governorship in November, and on the surface, at least, Robinson looks to be unelectable. But, as events have shown, even extremists seem to be electable these days.

Be careful. Be informed.

 

 

My friend Bernie

It was the standing joke between us that sometime in the near future, Bernie finally would write a lengthy letter telling me all that's happened in his life since we first met as childhood friends.

This promise happened year after year, Christmas after Christmas.

We did, in fact, exchange Christmas cards every year, complete with little notes inside updating key moments in our lives: surgeries, cruises, teams we liked, whiskeys we sipped, books we read, movies we saw. Stuff like that.

Bernie and I toast our friendship.

 We first met more than 65 years ago in a little town – a borough, actually – named Fountain Hill, PA, which was snuggled comfortably in the hillocks between Allentown and Bethlehem. Interestingly enough, I don't remember the particulars of our first meeting. But I'll bet it was in the borough playground, which was just across the street from where we lived on Stanley Avenue. I was probably 6 years old, Bernie was 5.

In those days, the playground was the beating heart of the Fountain Hill community and I'm guessing we might have met on the swings or the sliding boards of what most of us Hillers now fondly remember as this incredibly magical place to live. I swear it was a kind of Heaven on Earth that somehow helped mold us into the people we are today. Most Hillers still swear to that.

Anyway, no matter how Bernie and I first met, the friendship stuck. It stuck through measles and chicken pox. It stuck when Bernie got hit by a car while crossing the street to get to the playground (he escaped serious injury and was back on the playground within days). It stuck even though we went to two different schools – he went to St. Ursula's and I went to Stevens.

Bernie Gillen

 We'd flip baseball cards on the front porch of our house. We'd play in the little runoff creek that bordered the playground across the street from us, building beaver-type dams and catching crayfish. We'd play army in the woods nearby and run the bases on the Little League field next to the playground. We were inseparable.

But it didn't last. Dad changed jobs, we moved to Portsmouth, NH, and consequently, Bernie and I lost touch. Kids don't usually write letters to each other. They usually don't pick up the phone and call. Instead of each other's shadow, we were now each other's ghost.

 This separation lasted for years, and even though our family returned to Bethlehem so that Dad could attend Moravian Theological Seminary, Bernie and I never reconnected. Ghosts.

But then this happened: Because Dad had been assigned a church in nearby Coopersburg, I'd gone to Southern Lehigh for high school. Twenty-five years later, I decided to go to our 25th class reunion and so Kim and I drove the 500 miles up to Pennsylvania from North Carolina. We were milling around the banquet hall when, out of the blue, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and this pleasant looking fellow said, "Bruce, do you remember me?" 

I didn't. I had no clue. There was no name tag.

"I'm Bernie Gillen."

I took a quick look into his face as the memories flashed by and I could see it was him. We embraced. I nearly cried.

But how could this be? Bernie did not go to Southern Lehigh. He went to Bethlehem Catholic. How could this be?

Do you believe in serendipity? Do you believe in synchronicity? Do you believe in magic?

It turns out Bernie had married a girl in my class, Betsy Heimbach, and that's why he was here. And maybe, for this moment, that's why I was here, too. What were the odds?

We talked, we reminisced, we exchanged numbers and addresses and promised this time to stay in touch.

And we did, mostly through Christmas cards.

Bernie's Christmas cards were an adventure. His handwriting was atrocious and his little notes inside those cards were written in what amounted to be an undecipherable code. It could have been Latin, for all I knew. Didn't matter. I usually got the gist. A key word here and there always helped.

This kept up until my 50th class reunion approached five years ago. I asked him if he and Betsy were going, but he thought probably not. Then Kim suggested that we meet on our own while we were in Pennsylvania. And better yet, why not meet at the playground?

And so we did. We shared more memories, he treated us to a Philly cheesesteak lunch. And, at the alcohol-free playground, I broke out the champagne that I brought and we toasted our friendship, which was then in its 63rd year.

A few more Christmases came and went, complete with notes but never the lengthy letter. Typical.

The card we got this past Christmas had his shortest unreadable note ever.

"Why don't you just pick up the phone and call him?" scolded Kim in all her wisdom. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said. "Maybe later."

On Thursday, Kim called me from work. She'd been on the "You Know You're From Fountain Hill" site on Facebook, where the RIP's were piling up under Bernie's class picture from 1966. My throat clenched.

A little later, a friend of Bernie's from the Fountain Hill days, Bob Spirk, called me at Betsy's request to confirm that Bernie had passed. Bernie was 71 and had died of heart failure.

Our friendship ultimately spanned 68 years. I think about that. The corporeal friendship is over now, but the spiritual friendship will last into perpetuity.

Quieti tam amicus meus.

Rest well, my friend.

 

 

Liz and Jon

Back in December, my friend Mark Loper texted me asking whether or not I'd be interested in going to a speaker forum to be held at Wake Forest University's Wait Chapel. He had two tickets available, but Karla, his wife, was unable to attend.

So he thought of me.

The two scheduled speakers on the program were Liz Cheney and Jon Meacham.

Holy cow, I thought. This is great.

"I'm very interested," I texted Mark. "Thanks."

 And so, Thursday night, we sat in our assigned seats in the balcony of sold-out Wait Chapel for the third Face to Face forum of the season.

Cheney, of course, served as Wyoming's at-large U.S. representative from 2017 to 2023. She was the House chair for the Republican Conference, making her the third-ranking person in the Republican House leadership.

She also lived through the January 6 insurrection (which makes her an eyewitness to history) and has since served as a vocal and dedicated thorn in the side of Donald Trump.

More pointedly, she served as Vice Chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

Meacham is a presidential historian and a Pulitzer Price winning author of several No. 1 New York Times bestsellers and who sits in the Rogers Chair of American Presidency at Vanderbilt University. He often appears as a thoughtful, witty and knowledgeable commentator on MSNBC, especially on matters of politics or religion ("I am probably one of the last six Episcopalians left in the United States," he joked last night).

Meacham more or less served as the interviewer, asking Cheney numerous probing questions and follow-ups about her experience on Jan. 6. Some of the questions were direct and some were philosophical, which required Cheney to pause and think hard before answering.

What most of us in the audience probably came away with, if we couldn't have guessed already, is that Cheney is guided by a deep and abiding passion for the U.S. Constitution. Sensing that American democracy is under fire by Trump and his authoritarian minions as it hasn't seen since the Civil War, she warned of the dangers of a potential autocracy that lie ahead. Although she hesitated and would not commit when asked if she would vote for Joe Biden for president in November, she said she would never vote for Trump.

As the program neared its conclusion, Meacham acknowledged Cheney's courage in the face of Trumpian retribution, thanking her for standing by her principles and not for temporal power. That brought the 2,200-member audience (probably the largest gathering of left-of-center voters in the state at that particular moment) to its feet in an ovation that clearly touched Cheney.

Mark and I left the forum feeling satisfied by what we heard. It had been a while – decades actually – since I set foot on a college campus for an intellectual moment of stimulating thought that did not include Civil War study.

It felt good.

Wow, what a week

Sometime around rapist Donald Trump's first term in office as president of the United States, a friend of mine said that one of the reasons he voted for him was because Trump was clearly such a successful businessman, which was a particular quality this country really needed.

I tried to point out in my rebuttal that Mafia Don had had several bankruptcies by then and how was bankruptcy a skill set we needed in the presidency?

I thought of all this when, on Friday, New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the odorous rapist to pay a fine of  $355 million for fraud, specifically for fraudulently misrepresenting financial figures to get cheaper loans.

A pre-judgment interest covering the dates he received benefits from his fraud adds another $100 million to the overall fine.

That's a lot of dough.

All of this comes on the heels of Mafia Don being required to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her. It's not easy to lose a defamation case. Mafia Don managed to pull it off twice against her. It's Carroll, incidentally, whom a judge ruled was violated sexually by the rapist Trump.

Anyway, add it up. That's around a half billion dollars in fines. What a businessman.

I suspect the rapist will find a way to skate around this. He almost always does. He plans to appeal Engoron's ruling, of course. But his miraculous Houdini-like escape will come when a foreign entity – Saudi Arabia, perhaps, or Putin's Russia's – surreptitiously puts the money in the rapist's account to pay the fine, leaving Mafia Don solvent still.

It's how you undermine democracy.

•   •   •

We also learned on Friday that Russian dissident and Putin opponent Alexei Navalny was found dead in the colony in which he was imprisoned as a result of "sudden death syndrome." Yep. Sudden death syndrome. That's the official cause of death coming from Russian authorities.

There's a lot of sudden death syndrome in Russia these days, what with political poisonings and dissidents falling out of windows from Moscow high rises.

In a world of conspiracy theories, let me offer this: I think Putin found this to be an opportune time to murder Navalny, especially with the Republicans in Congress doing all they can to halt further financial and military aid to Ukraine, the sovereign nation in which Russia invaded and is involved in a brutal war. Thanks to the rapist's Republicans, it's a perceived show of American weakness for Putin. Now was the time to strike and rid himself of the annoying Navalny.

Hey, it's a small world, and it's getting smaller. Everything is connected and it's easy to draw a line from Putin to Navalny's death to the war in Ukraine to obstructionist and recalcitrant Republicans.

 It's how you undermine democracy.

•   •   •

In something of an invisible story, we learned on Thursday that a former FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov (geez, more Russians) has been indicted by the Justice Department for lying to Special Counsel David Weiss, who is investigating the so-called Hunter Biden/Burisma scandal.

Smirnov allegedly lied to Weiss about Hunter Biden, thus putting the Republicans'  ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden into question.

The GOP was counting heavily on Smirnov's testimony to help impeach Joe Biden, but now all of that seems to be in question. What a clown show.

Republicans are so beside themselves that they are now calling for an investigation of the FBI.

When nothing goes right, investigate the agency that protects you. It's not the first time Republicans have called for this when something explodes in their faces.

That's how you undermine democracy.

 

Swifties, er, Chiefs 31, 49ers 21

I really don't have a dog in today's Super Bowl fight, but my level of interest in what otherwise might be a "meh" game for me accelerated proportionally when singer Taylor Swift entered the picture.

That's because Swift – whose boyfriend, Travis Kelce, is a standout tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs – is sending any number of extreme right wingnuts into tailspins and nose dives. Their claim is that the Super Bowl is rigged, and it's been rigged in an effort to allow Swift-Kelce to conduct their psy-op where if the Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers, the pair will use the post-game celebration to endorse President Joe Biden in his re-election bid over Mafia Don (see here).

Mostly, I just want to see if this actually happens. That is really my primary interest in the game. I love conspiracy theories. Hells bells, I'm still trying to figure out if Paul is really dead or not.

Two weeks ago, the Chiefs defeated the Baltimore Ravens 17-10 to win the American Football Conference title, thus sending them into the Super Bowl. Suspicious enough, since Baltimore was a preseason favorite to win the Super Bowl this season, much less the AFC title.

Then, last Sunday, Swift claimed her fourth Album of the Year award at the Grammys (no artist has ever won four), thus reinforcing the conspiracy. Swift-Kelce are winning everything, and not only that, they're vaccinated liberals.

So there. The outcome of today's game is a foregone conclusion. Therefore, so is the election in November. Place your bets. Never mind that this year's Super Bowl is being played in Las Vegas (which should germinate a whole bunch of other conspiracy theories in its own right).

I do anticipate an interesting game, despite all the sideshows. Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, at the age of 28, is the youngest QB to play in four Super Bowls before age 30. Not even Tom Brady has done that.

If nothing else, Mahomes brings a ton of Super Bowl experience to the game. What will be interesting to see is if the Chiefs' receivers catch the ball. Dropped passes was an issue for them earlier this season. Not so much now.

If the Chiefs win (and they will, because the NFL has rigged all this), Mahomes is a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame.

San Francisco QB Brock Purdy has the ability to shred the Chiefs defense if he's not pressured , but that remains to be seen. The pressure on Purdy will be part of the chess game between the lines.

Kelce, for his part, is one of the best tight ends in the NFL. But, for that matte, so is San Francisco's George Kittle. But Kittle doesn't have Taylor Swift on his side. But he has his own social influencer, wife Claire.

The 49ers have an amazing running back in Christian McCaffery, a former Panther who could be a game-changer all by himself. I don't know how he does it. He finds holes in the line. He catches passes. He blocks. He plays the game as if he's receiving instructions from God. So Divine Intervention could be a factor.

The coaching matchups are interesting, too. Kansas City's Andy Reid is near Bill Belichick status, which means don't ever underestimate Reid.

San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan, like Reid, is also a proven winner, but there's some bad luck he needs to shake. He's been in two Super Bowls – once as an assistant coach – and has lost both. It could all change today.

Having said all this, I'm picking the Chiefs, 31-21.

I really don't give a flip who wins, but it will be interesting to see what happens if the Chiefs do win. In this case, the post game might be more interesting than the game itself.

 

Taylor Swift and the NFL

Really? 

This ongoing negative reaction to Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Travis Kelce enjoying each other's company is the best real-time entertainment I've had in months.

She's a singer, for Pete's sake, and he's an NFL football player for the Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs. So what?

But I think I know why this is happening. 

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift in a private moment.

The first instance of blowback came early, I believe, and it came mostly from NFL fans about 13 or 14 games ago when it first became publicly clear that the power couple were dating. If Swift was in the stadium's VIP suite to watch Kelce play, any of the networks covering the game would cut to the glass booth to show us a few seconds of Swift jumping up and down like a high school cheerleader, especially whenever Kelce scored a touchdown. It's the kind of intrusion that television does best.

The thing is, this happened game after game where Swift showed up to support Kelce. It was, perhaps, getting a little tiresome. Predictable even. So what?

The New York Times did an analysis recently that showed Swift, on average, appeared for 25 seconds in each of those three-and-a-half hour broadcasts. OMG. Saturation.

Swift is an international singing star of gigantic proportions. If she wins the Grammy tonight for Album of the Year ("Midnights"), it'll be her fourth trophy in that category. Nobody, and I mean nobody – not Elvis, not The Beatles, not anybody – has ever won four times. She already has 12 Grammys overall, as well as 40 American Music Awards (the latter the most ever by an artist).

And yet, I read where one exhausted NFL/music fan wrote "she is what's wrong with music today."

Ummm, OK. Sure. 

I'm trying to figure out what it is that is so wrong. Swift is clearly a role model for young women, as her packed concerts can attest, giving many young girls a sense of empowerment and direction (she recently encouraged 35,000 of her fans to register to vote). As far as I know, she is not a drug user. I've never seen, heard or read where's she's gotten drunk. Although I am not a person who would purchase her music (I'm still lost in the 1960s), her lyrics are clear to the ear and her melodies, while sometimes repetitive to me, are still catchy.

At 34, she is also a shrewd business woman. She re-recorded her first six albums to reclaim ownership of those songs when she lost the copyright to those masters. Now she has copyright ownership over the new master recordings.

And she's a billionaire.

Is that what's wrong with music today?

The story took a crazy turn after the Chiefs defeated the Baltimore Ravens 17-10 in the American Football Conference title game last Sunday, sending them to the Super Bowl next week against the San Francisco 49ers.

MAGA world, doing what it does best when nothing else works for them, instantly cried "rigged" and "conspiracy" because now Swift will show up at the Super Bowl, the Chiefs will beat the 49ers,  and then Swift and Kelce together will announce their endorsement of Joe Biden over Mafia Don for president during the postgame celebration. It's clear as day.

Kelce's good with this because he's a spokesman for Pfizer and taking the Covid vaccine.

I can't see the NFL orchestrating any bit of this, but I'd bet my last bean dip chip that it's enjoying the free publicity of a megastar in its VIP suites, possibly creating even more football fans to its product.

Maybe even enough to replace the football fans who promised to give up watching the NFL after Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee during the National Anthem years ago.

These boycotts never work out well.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I think I might be pulling for the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, even though I'm still mad at them for beating the Eagles last year. And I hope Swift brings home another boatload of Grammys tonight, just because.

Really.

The historical view

In spite of his entitlement, his upbringing, his privilege (white or otherwise), Mafia Don has to cough up millions of dollars more ($83.3 million, to be exact) as punishment after losing his second defamation case against writer E. Jean Carroll.

It's his second loss in a defamation claim to Carroll, because he immediately defamed her after being made to pay $5 million when he lost his first defamation case against her. That was the sexual abuse and defamation case where U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan said, by any standard, Trump raped Carroll.

I'm wondering if it's just a matter of time before Trump, in an uncontrollable fit of rage, defames Carroll for a third time. I hope so. The $88.3 million total in damages so far represents nearly a quarter of the cash Trump says he has on hand. I hope so. Keep talking, Don.

What's remarkable about all of this is that Trump, a former president of the United States, is running for that office once again. The fact that he is within a hair's breadth of winning the Republican nomination is phenomenal to me: A judge has said that Trump is a rapist. Trump went through an unprecedented two impeachment hearings as president, and he is currently fighting 91 – count 'em, folks, 91 – criminal charges spread over four indictments. Some of those charges are for stealing top secret documents. Some of those charges are for election tampering. Some of those charges are for instigating an insurrection.

Losing just one of those charges could result in jail time. No wonder Trump is claiming that a president should have universal immunity, even for "crossing the line."

And yet, he is the darling of his Republican MAGAt base as well as a morally-corrupt Republican Party that keeps running to the rescue of a rapist.

As I sometimes do, I wonder how history will look back on all of this. Say, maybe 50 years from now.

If our democratic republic survives the Republican threat to take over our Constitutional government by fascist tactics this election cycle, I suppose scholars and historians will look back on this time as a curious anomaly where we narrowly avoided disaster.

I wonder if they'll wonder how a cult figure could generate such an intense and devoted following, completely devoid of facts and, well, even common sense. I guess it's easy to point to social media as a source of transmission for "alternate facts," but even Hitler generated a cult without the Internet, so it does go deeper than that.

It goes to the soul. It goes to the soul of the candidate, and it goes to the soul of in informed electorate to divine the truth from what they hear.

It goes to the heart of what is right.

I hope so.

Good-bye, SI

A few months ago I wrote about possibly not renewing my 55-year-old subscription to Sports Illustrated. I'd just gotten my third renewal notice and the time for making a decision whether to renew or not was drawing nigh.

Then, on Thursday, I received my fourth and final notice. Or so it said, with "Final Notice" written in big block letters across the envelope and in smaller letters telling me what a deal I could have for being such a loyal subscriber.

Some of my favorite issues of Sports Illustrated.

 I'd pretty much made up my mind that I was not going to renew when the very next day, Friday, a story crossed my computer's news feed that Sports Illustrated's publisher, The Arena Group, was laying off some of the magazine's staff after SI failed to make a $3.75 million payment to its license holder, Authentic.

"Whaaaaat?" I asked myself.

The first thing I thought of was that this had to be some  kind of joke. I mean, Sports Illustrated had been one of the country's most respected platforms for sports journalism – no, for journalism, period – for decades. The writing was crisp, original and incisive. The photography was world class and involved. There was nothing else like it. I awaited each weekly issue for the mail to arrive with great anticipation and often carried around copies as if they were the Bible (which, in a way, they were).

The reason I thought this might be a joke is because Sports Illustrated played one of the most notorious April Fool's Day hoaxes ever on its readers – and others – when celebrated writer George Plimpton wrote a story about a baseball phenom named Sidd Finch, a Mets pitching prospect who could throw a baseball 168 miles per hour without warming up and while wearing only one shoe (that should have been a clue right there).

I halfway believed the story because, you know, it was in Sports Illustrated. I halfway couldn't believe it because it was so unbelievable. Peter Ueberroth, the MLB commissioner at the time, even contacted the Mets to find out more about this guy.

When it became clear this whole thing was an April Fool's hoax (April 1, 1985, was the cover date), I briefly wondered if the solemn, unspoken contract between journalist and reader for providing the truth above all else had been broken.

Then I got my swimsuit issue and all was forgiven.

But the recent news that Sports Illustrated was furloughing its staff was unnerving, even though the magazine was losing its relevance for me. Like much of print journalism, it was foundering in murky waters created by the Internet, social media and AI. Weekly issues became biweekly, and then, monthly.

Some of my conservative friends, who thought the mag was too liberal to begin with what with transgender swimsuit cover models, shook their heads and said, "See what happens when you go woke?"

I don't subscribe to woke paranoia, but I can no longer subscribe to a magazine that is trying to find its niche with a younger crowd that Tik Toks its way through the sidelines.

It's still unclear if this is the actual end for SI. There's a chance it could hang around for another three months or so before a solution is found, but that remains to be seen.

Steve Huffman, a friend of mine and a former sports writer himself, recently wrote in a Facebook post that "if SI existed as it once existed, people would continue to support it. I know I'd continue to subscribe."

Hear, hear.

Snow field

Shhhh.

But word is out that there's a chance for a local snow sighting, perhaps sometime late Monday night or possibly early Tuesday morning.

You know. While you're still in bed.

But the very suggestion of snow is getting some people excited. Sid Proctor, the acknowledged amateur guru of weather prediction from Welcome (he's amazingly accurate) has written in his latest Facebook post on Saturday that "Our first chance of a snow event is in the forecast late Monday into Tuesday." He then goes on to talk about polar vortexes and low pressure systems that involve North Carolina. He provides convincing weather maps and graphs. It could happen, I guess.

(Keep in mind that we didn't get so much as a flake of dandruff last winter, much less snow.Yay, I say. No snow is one reason why I moved south from snowbound Pennsylvania.)

Anyway, some people around here have taken hope of finally seeing some snow after going a whole year without it.

And they're doing anything they can to encourage it.

 One of my neighbors religiously puts a white Crayola crayon on a window sill when snow is in the forecast. I say "religiously" because I don't know if there's prayer involved, but there might be.

"Oh, God. Let there be snow."

I think she's done this for years.

I'd never heard of this snow ritual before. I thought it might be a Southern thing, but my southern-born wife, a native of Lexington, said she never heard of doing this, either.

So I Googled "white crayon for snow" just to see if there was such a thing, or if it was something only my neighbor knew about. And practiced. Religiously.

And, lo, not only was there an explanation for the white crayon ("...if you put white crayons on your window sills then you could possibly see a picture of snow outside your window the following morning."), there was a whole list of tricks to encourage Mother Nature to shake her flakes.

More of those in a moment.

It's not clear to me whether one white crayon on one window sill is enough to bring on a snowfall, or if you have to put a white crayon in every window of your house. My friend lives in a large house with hundreds (seemingly) of windows. She might not be doing enough.

There are other avenues to follow:

Wear your pajamas inside out. This one makes absolutely no sense to me, but apparently it's regarded as one of the most accurate of snow superstitions. But I, for one, refuse to wear my boxers inside out...

Sleep with a spoon under your pillow. Okay. This one doesn't make much sense to me, either. Plus, the spoon has to be frozen. That's a no-go right there.

The spoon thing might be used in conjunction with Place a spoon (or white crayon) in the freezer. You don't have to sleep with it. Just leave it in the freezer.

Those last two suggestions give me a whole new dimension to spooning that I can't now get out of my head. And I used to like spooning...

Flush ice cubes down the toilet. Not sure what the root source is behind that one, either. A similar plan is to throw ice cubes on your porch, but I see some liability issues there.

Brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. This makes no sense. What if you're amphibious (ambidextrous)? No chance of working.

Sleep backwards. At first glance, I didn't know what they were going for here. But apparently if you sleep with your head at the foot of your bed, you get snow the next day. Presumably you do this wearing inside-out pajamas. Or boxers.

Snow dance: This one might have some substance. Native Americans, specifically the Southern Ute Tribe in Colorado, are said to do this. So does Snoopy in A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Run around the dining room table five times: We got yelled at as kids when we ran through the house, so I see no hope for this one. I sure am not doing this as an adult. Vertigo.

Shake a snow globe: Of all the non-scientific related-to-weather rituals there are, this one makes the most sense to me. Seems obvious.

I don't know. Maybe you have to do all of these things at the same time.

I have this fear I might go up to Weathervane Winery in the next few weeks and see white crayons in all of Sid Proctor's windows. Yikes.

As a child of the North, I loved snow when I was a kid. We built snowmen and snow forts and had ginormus snowball fights all day long. Plus, it got us out of school. Even to this day, I like to watch a silent snowfall, as long as it melts when it hits the ground.

But the moment I had my own car, my view of snow changed drastically. Driving in the snow in your $30,000 vehicle amongst all those other crazy drivers who know nothing about driving in the snow – even in Yankeeland – is harrowing.

I can't remember if we had rituals to prevent snow. Like heating spoons and putting them under your pillow. Or green Crayola crayons on the window sill.

I think I'll just take Sid Proctor's word for it. He is, after all, da (snow) man.

 

Deciding for democracy

Saturday marked a seminal moment in U.S. history.

It was the third anniversary of the second coup attempt on the nation's government. It is now known simply as January 6. When you say Jan. 6, everybody knows what you mean. It's like when you say 9-11, or Dec. 7. You just know.

The first attempted coup came 163 years ago. That one was called, simply, the Civil War. Nearly a million Americans (civilian and military) died in a span of four years in an effort to resolve whether we were really the United States, or otherwise a loose collection of states more or less independent of each other. Or, more to the point, whether we'd be a democracy, where each person is a free agent, or a slavocracy, where not all men are created equal. (Yes, Nikki Haley, slavery was the cause of the Civil War. The South said so itself. Just read their ordinances of secession here. The word "slavery" is littered across their documents).

Now, a century and a half later, democracy finds itself on the precipice again. This year, 2024, is a general election year. The choice of candidates is binary: the Founders' democracy, as embraced by President Joe Biden, or autocracy, as promised by former president Donald Trump.

Biden gave an uplifting speech in Valley Forge this week, standing on ground where George Washington once trod, illuminating the success, so far, of the American experiment in democracy. 

By comparison, Trump as asked for the suspension of the Constitution. He paraphrases Adolf Hitler. His platform is retribution against his political enemies because the Republican Party, as such, is a party of grievance that has other no serious agenda to present to the people. He rapes women, he separates nursing children from their mothers, he wants to imprison women who try to take responsibility for their own health care, he celebrates his failed coup attempt with a Big Lie, he accepts bribes from other nations. Why is he even a viable choice for president to so many Americans?

If you disagree with Biden's policies, or you think he is just too old to run (he's only three years older than Trump), or any other perceived flaw in the man, that's fine.

But for the first time that I can remember, this election will not be so much a choice of personality or individual character. It will be, rather, a choice of ideology. It will be a choice between democracy or autocracy, plain and simple.

It's your choice.