Review

Last month I participated in my second political protest since my college days in 1970 – 55 years ago – when I joined about 300 other demonstrators for the "No Kings" rally on the Square by the Old Courthouse.

I was holding a hand-crafted cardboard sign that said "Hands Off Our Democracy" when a fellow came up to me and asked me point blank, with more than a little reproach in his voice, "Do you think we're a republic or are we a democracy?"

The question caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting to attend a Q and A event. But without giving it much thought, I responded with a smile, "A little bit of both, I think." It's what I was taught in civics class back in high school, when civics was an actual subject and public schools were not considered a platform for leftist propaganda.

"You're wrong," he replied. "We are not a democracy. We're a republic," and then he stormed off to stand behind me, where he promptly gave a smart military salute to the American flag waving proudly on the tall pole in the Square.

I swear to God he did. 

Several thoughts raced through my head at once. I'm pretty sure his earnest salute to the flag was a protest to my (our) protest and that possibly he thought he was the only patriot in the crowd that day. I told myself, "Wait a minute. I'm exercising my First Amendment right to free speech here. I'm as much a patriot as you think you are. It's because I love this country that I protest against a president who sends brown-skinned people to detention camps in an overt act of racial prejudice and without due process, who places the Marines in American streets to intimidate protesters, who fosters an enforcement agency (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE) whose members wear masks and no identification, and who does all of this without the consent of Congress and through executive decisions that are probably illegal and can be challenged in court.

I want this country that I love to be better than this. 

In retrospect, I should have stepped next to this fellow and saluted the flag with him. All my best thoughts come after the fact.

I bring this up because I recently heard a conversation on TV where this Trump supporter tried to explain why this country is a republic and not a democracy. OK, I get it now. That's where I've heard this argument before. It's a MAGA talking point. If you take democracy out of the equation, you can justify to yourself that a president is all powerful. A monarch. A king. This is exactly what the Founding Fathers tried to avoid and why presidents were given limited powers in the Constitution.

Originally, a president was commander-in-chief of the armed forces; he could negotiate treaties (with Senate approval); he could appoint ambassadors and other officials (with Senate approval); he could grant reprieves and pardons, and he had the power to veto legislation. There's nothing there about suspending due process or building inhumane detention camps in the Florida swamp.

So what kind of government are we supposed to be? 

I see us as a constitutional federal democratic republic.

It is constitutional because we follow the  U.S. Constitution; it's federal because power is divided between national and state governments; it's a democracy because its citizens (We The People) have a voice through free and fair elections, and it's a republic because we elect a representative government.

There's not a lot I remember from high school. I do remember slow dances with Peggy, running cross country in the fall, chess club on Fridays. And all those civics and history classes. 

That was the good stuff worth remembering. 

 

 

 

 

1776

Every Fourth of July, I treat myself to a viewing of the Broadway musical 1776. I taped the show off TCM about seven or eight years ago and tucked it away in my video library, so I always have access to it. I can watch it any time I want to.

But mostly, I like to watch it on the Fourth.

As you might expect by the title, it's a Broadway rendition of the birth of our country. And while many aspects of the film (and the musical) are either composites or half-truths to move the narrative along (for example, Martha Jefferson never came to Philadelphia to be with her horny husband), it's still an inspiring film – especially given that the Second Continental Congress was held in secrecy and the nascent nation was in the midst of a shooting revolution.

If nothing else, the movie reflects the sense of purpose the Founding Fathers had in breaking away from England and the tyranny of King George III and thus drafting the Declaration of Independence. The half-truths and composites are not only entertaining, but they feel real. At least they do to me.

Anyway, the signing of the Declaration ultimately led to the creation of the U.S. Constitution in 1788 – just seven years after the end of the Revolutionary War. I tend to tie those two incredible documents together. The Revolution was fought to separate the colonies from a monarchy and the Constitution was designed and created by We the People to prevent the rise of another King George III.

The Founding Fathers were aware of this problem as they grappled with the danger of a strong president who could become a tyrant. That's why they created a bicameral Congress with three branches of government that is empowered with checks and balances to reign in a rogue president. 

It works when everybody does their jobs. 

Fast forward 237 years...

Somehow, some way, the Supreme Court has granted a felonious president with 34 criminal indictments complete immunity for the length and duration of his term. Where is the logic in that? Where is the logic of removing 50 years of settled law to prevent a woman from having control of her own body? How do detention camps exist in America after what we saw in World War II?

On this Fourth of July, felon president Trump signed the Big Beautiful Bill (who comes up with these stupid names anyway? Alligator Alcatraz. Really? It sounds like we're getting our government from out of a comic book) that will add $3.3 trillion to the nation debt over 10 years. It will cut $930 billion from Medicaid, thus endangering the existence of possibly 300 or more rural hospitals and perhaps 25 percent of the country's nursing homes. A total of $170 billion will be cut from Medicare. Another 12 million people could lose their health care. How about a $285 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? All of this in order to pay for a tax break for billionaires in what is amounting to be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. How does this help the American people? All it does is make us hungrier, poorer and sicker. Many of us will die before our time because of this immoral bill, but, hey, we all die anyway, right Sen. Joni Ernst?

Meanwhile, $10 billion is earmarked for missions to Mars (what?) and another $150 billion to immigration enforcement (those masked men from ICE who don't bother with piddly stuff like due process). You know all those criminals they're supposed to be deporting? Turns out less than 10 percent have committed violent crimes, and that is from ICE's own data. Another 65 percent have committed no crimes at all except, apparently, for the color of their skin. And to meet a quota.

I have a feeling this type of paranoid, fear-mongering government isn't what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they penned We the People. I might be wrong, but I assumed their concept of government was a bit loftier. Perhaps more idealistic. Certainly kinder.

I guess I might have to wait for the musical 2025 to find out. 

 

 

 

Whirlwind

Last night the U.S. Senate, powered by Republicans, approved moving convicted felon president Donald Trump's Big Beautiful (tax and spending) Bill forward toward becoming a reality by a narrow 51-49 vote.

If you're paying attention, you know this is the bill that will take cuts out of key social programs, most notably Medicaid, which stands to lose hundreds of billions of dollars. If the bill eventually passes as written, peoples' very lives could be in jeopardy. Especially – and ironically – those in red-state fly-over country.

The bill provides the lifeblood for many services, but it's particularly the sustenance for rural hospitals. If passed, expect many rural hospitals to eventually go out of business. People will suffer.

Even Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that some of the bill's provisions did not comply with Senate budget rules. Angry and irresponsible Republicans ignored her anyway. I guess this is what happens when a convicted felon sets the example.

In reality, the bill is designed to pay for Trump's pledged tax cuts for the incredibly wealthy. It will also add upwards of $5 trillion to the national debt.

And I thought Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility. If this bill passes, expect more hardships for all of us – unless you're in the top one percent. It's wealth disparity personified.

•   •   •

I woke up one day and discovered that the United States has a secret police force. It's called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Apparently, it has the power to seize, kidnap and arrest American citizens off the street and deport them – without the constitutional right of due process – to foreign nations for detention.

ICE officers wear masks, which is something I thought criminals did. Oh, OK. Right. They beat on people who fit a certain racial profile. Almost exclusively it involves people with dark skin. It doesn't even matter if targeted people were born in this country because the 14th amendment (1868) – the birthright amendment which proudly distinguishes this nation from all others – is under fire.

Even recent rulings by the Supreme Court seem to be ignoring the Constitution, granting Trump even more power to arrest and deport people considered to be criminals. 

I think what is happening here is a reaction to the browning of America, which is a demographic reality some folks are trying to reverse. People with white skin are in power and apparently they'll do anything to circumvent the Constitution to stay in power. And to keep the country white.

It's an abomination. It's unAmerican.  It's unconstitutional. This is what happens when an arrogant convicted felon is in charge.

•   •   •

Trump has declared that the bombing strike he ordered against Iranian nuclear facilities last week "obliterated" Iran's capacity to make a nuclear bomb.

But early assessment from his own military analysts seem to suggest otherwise. "Leaked" reports (probably from people in Trump's own administration) indicate that Iran's program may have been set back perhaps three to six months. That's far from obliteration.

There's even doubt that nuclear fuel needed to build these bombs was even in these facilities. Even Tulsi Gabbard, the Trump-appointed director of National Intelligence, said it was unlikely Iran was building a nuclear bomb. Trump, the bone-spurred military genius that he is, disagreed with her and his own intelligence agencies, and Gabbard hasn't been seen since.

If the early damage assessments we've been given are any indication, the 30,000-pound bunker bombs (designed to penetrate upwards of 200 to 300 feet underground) did not have the intended effect of obliterating the Iranian program. It's likely those B-2s bombed an empty mountain. Nobody is certain exactly where that weapons-grade fissionable material is right now.

The absurdity here is that Trump is desperately trying to bomb his way to a Nobel Peace Prize. You know, because President Obama has one.

The most reliable way to destroy a military target is to put boots on the ground.

This got me to thinking of the historical past.

During World War II, the Nazis had reinforced concrete pens along the French, German and Baltic states coastlines to house and protect their U-boat submarine fleets. Repeated bombing missions could not destroy those pens, and some still exist today. None were obliterated.

Concrete pillboxes still dot the Normandy beaches. Castles still abound in the French and English countrysides. Sometimes it pays to learn from the past. 

 

 

Hacked off

I instantly went into panic mode.

I'd clicked onto a text message. The next thing I knew, the screen on my laptop filled border to border with a message that my MacBook Pro had been infected, and instructed me to not hit the "off" button.

Oh, yeah. And here's the 1-800 number to Apple Security.

I know. I know. Whatever you do, don't call that number. There is no such thing as Apple Security. Little bells were going off in my head, clearly warning me not to call that number. In fact, I should have hit the "off" button.

But I called the number.

I mean, jeez, this was my $1,500 computer. I wanted it back.

So I'm on the phone with a fellow who speaks English with a Middle Eastern accent (another red flag, I guess). I'm on the phone with him for 90 minutes or so, following his instructions. He gets control of my cursor and I see it flipping around my screen as my mouse sits silently on its pad.

I'm sweating, feeling really uncomfortable about this. But he promises me we're almost done and I'll have my laptop back soon.

He transfers me to another person, who also speaks with a Middle Eastern accent. We're in my banking accounts. And then I get transferred again, to yet another Middle Eastern accent. It finally dawns on me that I'm being scammed. It's probably some troll farm halfway around the world, since everybody is speaking with the same accent. I hang up in the middle of the phone call and go directly to my bank, where I tell them what I did. I keep mumbling "idiot" to myself the whole time.

We start closing accounts immediately. We call my wife at work and tell her what happened. She's understanding, but I suspect I'll be divorced by the end of the day because she never bargained to be married to an idiot. She asks our banker if any money has been moved and we discover that $1 has been routed from one account into another. A test.

Kim gets home, and there's no shouting. No blaming. No accusations. I figured I'd deserve everything she could throw at me, but all she did was try to calm me down. We take the laptop and drive to Best Buy in Winston-Salem, where we let the Geek Squad take over. 

They look at the screen, where the hackers' "Any Desk" program was running. "Ah, the infamous 'Any Desk,'" said the associate. "We have the tools to repair this." Apparently, they've seen this hack before.

I have to tell you, those guys were great. They told me the computer would be ready in six days, but two days later, I got a text from them telling me my device was ready for pickup.

In the meantime, Kim and I were doing everything we could to protect ourselves. We've changed a lot of passwords. We've changed accounts. The computer has been scrubbed. We froze our credit cards. It's been an exhausting and stress-filled hassle to finally get here, but here we are. Finally.

I've been telling my friends what happened and several suggested that I write this blog to serve as something like a public service announcement. I mean, I have a college education and I still did this. It could happen to anybody. The bank told me that. The Geeks told me that. My friends have told me that.

So if anything happens to you while you're on the computer, just TURN IT OFF!

And DON'T CALL THE NUMBER!

Take it from me. 

When Johnny Comes Marching Home

So now we're at war.

I thought president and convicted felon (and don't forget adjudicated rapist) Donald Trump was going to keep us out of any future wars. He's a peacemaker. Wasn't that one of his campaign promises? What, you mean he lied to us? How is that possible?

Sometime yesterday afternoon, Trump ordered an airstrike against the nuclear facilities at three separate locations in the sovereign (albeit terrorist sponsoring) nation of Iran. If I understand this correctly, several 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs were dropped on the underground uranium enrichment plant at Fordo, while 30 Tomahawk missiles launched by the Navy found targets in two other sites.

I don't know how surgical these strikes were. I'm assuming some people have died. It's hard to imagine a 30,000-pound bomb as being surgical.

While the strike may satisfy the insatiable cravings of MAGA (comments like "It's about time," "He's the best president we've ever had," and "I've been waiting for this since 1981" have shown up in social media), there is a sense of constitutional illegality to this.

Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution says the president cannot unilaterally declare war. That privilege is the sole responsibility of Congress, which is supposed to serve as a check and balance to presidential overreach. The Founding Fathers foresaw this when they divided the powers between the legislative and executive branches to prevent a rogue president from having unchecked power over military actions. Los Angeleans might know something about that what with Marines and National Guardsmen in their streets in the wake of a civil disturbance that local law enforcement has under control.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 also limits a president's ability to commit troops to military action without Congressional approval. It requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops. It also requires the president to withdraw troops within 60 days unless Congress authorizes deployments.

I'm sure a felon president who insists on wearing MAGA baseball caps at cabinet meetings like some obtuse cartoon character would do this. Not. 

As the sun breaks through the morning twilight today, we can only wonder what Iran's response will be. American foreign military bases are clearly now in jeopardy of Iranian retaliation. Heck, I think Americans in our own country are in jeopardy. I wonder if that includes immigrants?

Trump apparently ignored American intelligence sources (putting the words "Trump" and "intelligence" in the same sentence seems like an oxymoron. Or maybe just moronic) insisting that Iran was not close to building a nuclear weapon at all. "I don't believe it," said Trump, disparaging American intelligence collection yet again. That makes yesterday's attack by the U.S. very opportunistic, especially in the wake of Israel's military actions against Iran in the days before. 

Some reports state that Iran already moved its fissionable material to other locations prior to the bombing. 

Trump promised (Oh, no. Not another promise) us a two-week pause while making a decision whether or not to attack Iran, but he waited less than two days instead. It has the feel that Trump had already made up his mind to bomb Iran in the moment. Like a child opening his Christmas presents early, he couldn't wait. Instead, he's fulfilling Israel Prime Minister Bebe Netanyahu's wildest wet dream, because no other country in the world has bunker bombs.

And, hey. Have any of our allies commented on Trump's actions, or shown any support at all (other than Israel?) Not that I've heard as I write this. If a response from our Allies does come, it certainly won't be considered immediate.

Instead, we're left wondering what the Iranian response will be. You know Iran will not let this go. Could we find pain on American soil? Cyber attacks? Biological attacks. Do you not think Iran has sympathetic proxies and sleeper cells around the world? Is air travel less safe? Expect the cost of gas to soar. Maybe the stock market takes a dive. Did Trump consider any of this in his eagerness to blow up Iran?

In his desperate bid to win a Nobel Peace Prize (you know, because President Obama got one), Trump said he would keep us out of war. 

All we know is that we're in an undeclared war waiting for the next foot to fall.

And people die in wars. 

 

 

Brian Wilson

A friend of mine surprised me several years ago when he told me that he didn't particularly care for The Beach Boys music.

That didn't compute for me.

The reason, he said, was that their music was mostly about surfing and the southern California lifestyle, things he couldn't really relate to in North Carolina.

Brian Wilson

 To each his own, I guess.

The Beach Boys reached me in a different way. I loved their layered harmonies, catapulted by the shared DNA of the Wilson brothers: Brian, Dennis and Carl. Throw in cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine, and suddenly you might find yourself in the harmonic realm of the Everly Brothers.

I didn't particularly care what they sang about – cars, girls, high school – it just sounded good. Heck, the music was so enticing that I actually wanted to go to southern California just to see what all the excitement was about.

As I grew older, I learned that Brian Wilson was the core genius of the California Sound the group produced, although each of the members made their own significant contributions. And as books and movies appeared, I was astonished to learn that Brian was the product of an abusive and controlling father. It was this abuse, said Wilson, that contributed to the mental illness that prevented him from touring with the group after 1964.

I didn't clearly realize it at the time, but The Beach Boys were running through the music charts concurrently with The Beatles in something of a friendly, unofficial competition.

In one of the stories that I like to read about, Wilson was stunned by the mastery The Beatles produced with Rubber Soul, a mostly acoustic pop music game-changer that came out in 1965 with many of the tunes inspired by work of Bob Dylan.

Wilson, in response, countered with a masterpiece in 1966, Pet Sounds, featuring such tunes as "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Caroline No", "Sloop John B" (a remake of an old Bahamian folk song going back to 1916. Pete Seeger and the Weavers covered in in the 1950s) and "God Only Knows".

Wow.

When Paul McCartney of The Beatles heard Pet Sounds, he reportedly cried after repeated listenings. And so was born Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as a response in 1967, yet another pop music game changer.

For those of us who lived it, we were awash in spectacular music.

Wilson's genius was not only in his songwriting and arranging, but also in his studio work. "Good Vibrations", written by Love, features an odd sounding electro-theremin, and Wilson's modular recording style, which splices together takes from different sessions, which was unusual at the time.

Wilson passed away Tuesday at the age of 82. There is a void out there now, I think. The passing of the hallmarks of my youth reminds me of my own approaching mortality. God only knows. 

 

 

Go Crimson

I don't understand Trump's vendetta against Harvard University.

Or higher education in general.

But Harvard. There's something about the sound of "Harvard" that suggests (or perhaps screams) intelligence. Or innovation. Or research. Or even America itself.

It's the oldest university in the United States, founded 389 years ago by Puritan clergyman John Harvard in 1636. That's 152 years before the Constitution of the United States was ratified. Holy smokes.

And almost from its very beginning, Harvard has been a magnet for the intelligencia. It's where smart people go to become even smarter, with the ultimate idealistic aim of making the planet a better place to live. Eight former presidents have attended Harvard, including John Adams, his son John Quincy Adams and Civil War hero Rutherford B. Hayes. There's also Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Notice that Donald Trump is not one of them.

Trump's rationale for attacking Harvard – he wants to limit or block the admission of foreign students to satisfy his xenophobic tendencies, and at the same time accuse the university of antisemitism  for student disruption on campuses based on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Trump also cites alleged civil rights violations, diversity, equity and inclusion policies and university agendas as reasons to freeze assets. 

So the threats come, including withholding grant monies not only to Harvard, but to Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Penn and Northwestern, to name a few.

So Trump, in all of his wisdom, has cut $450 million in federal grants to Harvard. In all, he's withheld over $11 billion in cuts.

Much of that money goes into research grants – like cancer research, especially at Harvard. I think this is an incredibly stupid move by the Trump administration as we move closer and closer to being a more unhealthy country. I mean, let's take the fluoride out of our drinking water. Let's discourage measles vaccinations. Hell, let's discourage Covid vaccinations while we're at it.

We are in the middle of Trump's retribution  presidency, the one where he pays back all the people and institutions he thinks wronged him during his first term. How does making us a dumber, sicker, crueler people make America great again? How does a 34-times convicted felon get to wield such power against a private university?

I think Harvard can survive the Trump era. It has a $50 billion endowment (which is not bottomless) and, so far, the support of the law community.

We need Harvard to survive, even if you might think it's elitist and liberal. It's still the beating heart of American education.