Correspondence: Particulars

By Moristotle

Whichever constitutionally sanctioned body finally undertakes to remove Trump from office, whoever argues that he is insane might use these particulars as a prompt: “Way Too Many Trumps” [Gail Collins, NY Times, May 4]. Excerpt:

Correspondence: Resisting Trumpery

Edited by Moristotle

Thanks for occasionally sharing a live “Resistance Report” from Robert Reich, which have been very informative and inspirational during these depressing times.
    The reports seem to be a permanent archive on Professor Reich’s “Resistance Report” Facebook page, for anyone who would like to check them out.

Correspondence: More Trumpery

Part of the “Evolution of Civilizations”
mural in the dome of the main reading room
at the Library of Congress

Edited by Moristotle

Good points by the outstanding NY Times conservative commentator David Brooks: “A Return to National Greatness” [February 3].
    We the People will have to “return to greatness” despite the Trumpestuous interference we are confronting. Excerpt:

About those dead cats

It's cold and dreary in Mebane. There's even a possibility of snow (our always-reliable and hardly-ever-wrong weather forecasters tell us). What better sort of day for reading Gail Collins, who is even more reliable and right than our weather forecasters? I recommend her op-ed piece, "The Lost Weekend," in today's New York Times. Excerpts:

The Senate is going to be in session all weekend, debating the big health care bill and arguing about which direction the cost-curve is heading. This is a positive development on two counts. It keeps senators off the streets while providing much-needed employment in the chart-making sector of our economy.
    ...
    Is that perfectly clear? Good. Now we will return to our regularly scheduled conversation. Did you see that hot reality show “Hoarders” on A&E the other night? What about that lady who hoarded her dead cats? If “Hoarders” gets superpopular, do you think lots of people will start putting dead cats in their living room just so they can get on TV and be famous? Maybe somebody will try to bring dead cats to a state dinner at the White House! Does the Secret Service have a plan to avert this?
    Sorry. I’ll behave. Back to the health care bill.
    ...
    In fact, G.O.P. senators appear to have amendments aimed at wiping out virtually all the cost-cutting the Democrats have put in the bill, including productivity adjustments and incentives for innovation in health care delivery.
    If they can’t kill the bill completely, Republicans who are not from Maine seem intent on raising its price tag....
    There is no sane explanation for all this other than crass political calculation....
    Now, about those dead cats.

Enjoy today's weather.
    Or, as my friend Fred says:

McCain's not crazy. He's just performing stunts that he thinks will help him get re-elected. Unfortunately, there are no end of people (they're called politicians) who are quite willing to screw up the country as long as they can continue to enjoy the spotlight and perks of public office.

Thanksgiving what-if

All day yesterday, even as I was enjoying our company for Thanksgiving, enjoying the bright afternoon (after a foggy morning), enjoying the turkey, the candied sweet potatoes, the Brussels sprouts and carrots, the fruit salad, the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, the Vouvray, and the whipped-cream-topped pumpkin pie [I didn't take the photo shown here, by the way; we didn't have any green beans and tomatoes], I was bothered by something just not quite right about Thanksgiving.
    What could it be? It's a good holiday, a day off from work (for many people, though by no means all). Most families that are able to, get a few of their members or some other relatives or some friends together for an unusually plentiful table and the pleasure of convivial feasting.
    It's a solid tradition in America; perhaps no ritual is more "American." The fact that Thanksgiving is a ritual was emphasized to me in the afternoon. We went walking after dinner, my wife and I, our two guests (a friend and her little boy), and our poodle Siegfried, and I asked a woman also out walking (by herself) whether she'd had dinner yet.
    "Oh, no," she said, "we had Thanksgiving on Sunday."
    She and her lot had already done the ritual, which didn't even have to be performed on the official National Day of Thanksgiving.
    And, of course, there's the ritual of a Presidential Pardon for that lone turkey, who doesn't know to be glad not to know that millions of his brethren weren't so lucky.
    By the way, according to Gail Collins, in her op-ed piece, "A Tale of Two Turkeys," yesterday in The New York Times, the turkey pardon "only goes back to George (the Good One) Bush and 1989." That particular ritual isn't so solid that President Obama couldn't have just skipped it and restored a bit of gravitas to the Office. Pity that he didn't.

Over night, as I lay sleepless at times from a stomach suffering from the unwonted plenty (or possibly just the wine), I think I figured out what bothers me about Thanksgiving. And a comment from my wife at breakfast this morning captured it synecdochially.
    She tapped a picture on the front page of one of our local newspapers. "Look at this," she said, "those poor people having Thanksgiving dinner off tiny paper plates."
    The caption says:

...eat Thanksgiving lunch Thursday at First Baptist Church in Mebane. More than 200 people visited First Baptist for the annual holiday meal.

    According to an article in The Washington Post on November 17,

a new federal report...shows that nearly 50 million people—including almost one child in four—struggled last year to get enough to eat.

What if We the People (the powers that—through our elected representatives—be in this country) were to abolish Thanksgiving and establish a program for ending unnecessary hunger in the United States?
    Surely We (and our elected representatives) are resourceful enough to come up with a program that wouldn't be too liberal, or too conservative, or too Christian, or too Jewish, or too Muslim, or too secular for a majority to buy into.
    Under such a program, everyday would be a day of thanksgiving. We'd no longer limit ourselves to just the one, official national day for those hungry millions not to go hungry because a local church provides some turkey and stuffing on a small paper plate.
    What if?

Ominous truculence

A striking feature of the presidential address to the Congress last night was the truculent faces of a good many of the Republicans in the chamber. Gail Collins seems to have thought so too:

It’s always possible that the Republicans will realize that their virulent opposition is not doing the country any good, and at least be obstructionist in a more cheerful way. Although Wednesday night, when the TV cameras caught the House minority leader, John Boehner, he looked as though he had just swallowed a cough drop. [writing in today's New York Times column, "So Much for Civility"]

She also identifies who that was who called out that the President was lying:

Joe Wilson, a member of Congress from South Carolina...loudly called the president a liar.
    This was when Obama said illegal immigrants would not be covered by health care reform. It seemed like a pretty tame remark for so much disrespect, given all the recent uproar over the president’s alleged ability to brainwash elementary school students.
    You might have expected Wilson to hold his tongue and wait to see if Obama would yell “Marxism is a good thing!” and send the commerce committee racing off to give workers control over the means of production.

It would seem that Mr. Obama won't be getting the kind of civil response from "the other side of the aisle" that his gracious, respectful speech assumed might be possible from serious adults about to stop bickering and be constructive.

At least Mr. Wilson is reported to have apologized (see "Obama Accepts Wilson’s Apology" on the New York Times blog, "The Caucus"):

The outburst was a political gift to the White House, underscoring Mr. Obama’s point that the health care debate has been plagued by incivility. Mr. Obama could not seem to resist returning to that point on Thursday, just as soon as he gave Mr. Wilson a pass.
    "I do think that, as I said last night, we have to get to a point where we can have a conversation about big important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name calling," the president said. Americans, he said, "are turned off when they see people using wild accusations, false claims, name calling sharply ideological approaches to solving problems. They want pragmatism."
    As for Mr. Wilson, he said in an interview on CNN that he was told by the Republican leadership to apologize, and that he was "very grateful" the president had accepted.