Category: Current Events

Let us now praise maligned, neglected American prophets, one of whom sat in the Oval Office not long ago and saw what we are seeing now and for which we should have been better prepared. No,no,no, not HIM. I speak of George W. Bush.

In the summer of 2005, the then-President was on vacation in Crawford, Texas and was reading an advanced copy of a new book about the 1918 pandemic.( My accounts don’t mention the name of the book, damn it. I’ll find it!) Bush was overwhelmed by what he was reading and appropriately fearful that what brought the planet to its knees early in the last century could happen again, quite easily.  He instructed members of his government to come up with a plan, prefatory to a “national strategy.” And staff members did, indeed, work on a plan for the next three years, according to reports.

“If we wait for a pandemic to appear,” Bush said in a speech, “it will be too late to prepare. And one day many lives could be needlessly lost because we  failed to act today.”

So — what happened? To that plan?

Meanwhile, in a recent press conference, President Trump was asked if he had any interest in reaching out to former Presidents for help in dealing with the pandemic.  His response? “I don’t think I’m going to to learn much.”

Pause, think about that answer. Just think about it.

If Trump loses in November and, as a consequence, unleashes on us the rolling leftward failed strategies of the Obama years on all fronts,  it will be because of the arrogant, stupid, ignorant things he’s said and the  transparently ludicrously egotistical attitudes he’s adopted. I state the obvious.

Fact is, he’s right about many things (just ask him). But …..well, just stick with ignorant. Add a need for common sense.  And the national interest. Of course you reach out. Period.

Meanwhile, again — what happened to that Bush-suggested “national strategy”? I, for one, would like to hear from the former President on that. We’re suddenly hearing a lot from Obama. Please, G.W., balance out the ledger here.

Round and round it goes, the insistent tub-thumping chorus masses of folks now and then have been dancing to for decades– the claims of rising wealth inequality in the U.S.. Well, I find much that is said on this score persuasive, since I’m often feeling unequal in wealth, though also knowing I have no one to blame, really, but moi. This might be different — indeed, I suspect it is — for millions in a different, less malleable social and, therefore, economic situation. The Democratic Party’s sharp dance to the left has undeniably been fueled by this obsession. Hence, we have proposals for Medicare for All and various supposedly playing-field-leveling wealth taxes.

It’s a complex question. I admit that…

But prominent economist Thomas Piketty has, I’m told, been among those defining wealth as the value of all assets held by households minus their debt.  He and others  leave out future Social Security payments, which, according to what I’ve read, account for 58 per cent of wealth for the bottom 90 percent of wealth distribution. I live in that broad bottom, among the 90 per cent.  I’m not doing great, but, having paid into the SS system over a lifetime, I’m afloat — and, of course, am free, thank God, to improve my lot and move farther away from the bottom. My prospects for doing that, as with everyone else, waxes and wanes. So it goes.

And now I read that a new paper — new to me, at least, and other sources I consult — from the University of Pennsylvania finds that when Social Security wealth is accounted for, inequality has remained constant over the past three decades.

So, could the sharps and flats of the music score for this whole “inequality dance” amount to a mere accounting error?

I personally think the drum majors for the inequality parade — excuse the mixing metaphors here — are marching to the tune the Marx and Engels band struck up a Century ago. No, no, no, I’m not saying the Democrats are Marxist. But they damn well have begun to look and sound like Socialists. I’ll not try to draw out the distinction here. It would seem tiresome, pedantic and, given my knowledge, might be inaccurate. If you’re reading this and feeling either pro OR con, kindly weigh in with your own distinctions.

I’d simply say that socialism is Marxism lite. It is, ultimately, an ideology whose tenets exist independent of mere numbers. It asserts a view of human nature and economics supportive of the notion that we can all be radically made equal in our aspirations and abilities — and bank accounts. It has always and everywhere produced  dubious and, ironically, unequal results or, as in the case of China or the old USSR and the flash over murderous insanity of Pol Pot and Cambodia,  a river of blood, not to mention gross — INequality.

But I’m sure the dance will go on. And on and on…especially this election year.

Hate to pile on. Hate all the hate. But, let’s see — beyond hate, there were some seeming facts to be sorted out in this pandemic crisis after it came ashore in the U.S.

To wit:

The CDC messed  up  its initial testing kit, then the FDA likely put obstacles in the way of a deployment regimen. The President, sensitive to the slightest criticism, failed to own the problem. The “news” networks, salivating over this morsel of Trumpian non-acknowledgement ( the phrase “I don’t take responsiblity” will echo down the long re-election corridor to November) eat it up. Perhaps no politician would totally own it and would try to defer blame, but less obviously than DT. He will never let himself be on the defensive, and that’s probably somewhere in the celestial book of political rules of engagement — or disengagement. He should clean up the mess by seeing who messed up. That will look, as usual, like he’s deferring blame or executing the surfs, but, truly, somebody messed up and I doubt it was him. God knows, he has no problem with firing people. I gather that’s what he did every week on The Apprentice.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s former staffer Tara Reade is claiming Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993. Her first complaint came a year ago, described only as “inappropriate touching.” Well, will the media that ran Judge Kavanaugh and his family to ground react similarly to this allegation?  What do you think? Reade’s isn’t the first such suggestion that Biden has had wandering hands and words back when this hollow, chuckling fool had strands of real hair and maybe felt he deserved a little more female attention than he was getting. Pity this poor Galahad, finally in striking distance of his Grail and some woman comes along to remind him he’s just a rank groper.

Bad news for all my former colleagues in the news media. A recent Gallup Poll asked Americans whether they approve of how the U.S. leaders and institutions are handling the coronavirus pandemic. Donald Trump, who the press corp has roughed up regularly during the crisis, had a 60 per cent approval rating. I am drawing from secondary sources here, so, at this writing, I don’t know how Vice President Mike Pence, the CDC and Congress rated — but, according to what sources I do have accessed, they all scored higher than — the news media. More people disapproved than approved of its coverage, 55 per cent to 44 percent.

Now — I don’t like the way Trump interacts with reporters who ask questions he doesn’t like or his blanket denunciation of reporters. However, some of those questions — and he sniffs them out easily — are subtly or overtly of the “gotcha” variety.  And Trump’s base and, apparently, many others, feel he should be getting far more credit for his efforts, and far less criticism. But, this is a Democracy, thank God. I know Trump’s current dust-up with governors is being perceived as the case of a man who doesn’t understand the Constitution. I know and very much like Harvard professor Larry Tribe. But I recall, going all the way back to Reagan, that Larry will be reliably on the liberal side of Constitutional interpretation. Not sure where I fall down on the issues of the governors. I haven’t heard Larry on the matter. The folks at MSNBC like to go to him. I’m sure he’s out there, likely fulminating. God bless America!

And, speaking of that — that’s the problem, you might say, with a Democracy in which many people don’t trust what should be their reliable source of unbiased information — the Fourth Estate. Especially in a crisis such as this. The media is preoccupied, it seems, with partisan, divisive squabbles.  Trump hates them and they often waste their time hating him back.

But I’ll say this. Whenever Mike Pence steps to the microphone, I’m finally hearing that Consoler-in-Chief I welcomed during the Obama, Bush or Clinton-era crises. Trump is not good at that. Mike is. He reminds us, we’re all in this together.

A Las Vegas firm has compiled some unusual proposition wagers during this time of pandemic-related stress and tedium when bookmakers and gamblers, like the rest of us,  are in need of deep and consistent diversion and maybe a way to keep making money.  A proposition wager pertains to the occurrence or non-occurrence of certain events in a sporting event, irrespective of who wins or how many points are scored. For instance, the number of strikeouts a pitcher will throw or how many touchdowns will be scored by a non-offensive player.

In this case, the odds-makers are calling for bets on how often President Donald Trump speaks certain words and phrases during his nightly coronavirus briefing.  (I mean no criticism of the President’s pandemic policies –not here, not now, anyway — when, as a college English major and former high school orator, I point out that our Commander-in- chief employs a fourth-grade vocabulary when speaking in public. Of course, I’m not the only one to notice this. Frankly, I don’t know how this Yale graduate ever passed the verbal SATs. But one might say, he’s a man of few words — endlessly repeated.

According, that Vegas firm has determined that “we’re doing a great job” has an over/under of 2.5; “best” is 5.5; “more tests than any other country” is 9.5 and the omnibus “fantastic, incredible, amazing, tremendous” gets a whopping 24.5.

Okay, they’re plainly having a little sport, quite literally, with the Chief Executive and, as we know, ridicule hardly musses the golden coif of DT, who gives ridicule in equal measure as he receives it. And,  heck, as he insistently brags, the ratings for those  afternoon virus briefings has spiked. For most people, it’s for whatever new information can be gleaned from them — in between all those repeated words and phrases. But now we know that gamblers may be hanging on every word — or phrase.

My former colleague Chris Luke, who is Chinese-American, has taken me to task for that part of a Facebook post in which I seem to link China and, by extension, all Asian peoples to  the Covid-19 pandemic, presumably finding most offensive the reference to  ” a filthy street market in Wuhan” and bats being  butchered for food. She says Asian people, including apparently her relatives, are being “racially profiled” as a consequence of  the pervasive linking of the outbreak specifically to China, either to a marketplace, or a lab, or wherever in that country. Continue reading “COVID 19 ADDENDUM”

No one writing anywhere on the web can fail to say a dozen or so words about where we find ourselves, in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. This is to note it — and note that, when I can get my small head around it, I’ll want to say more, if only to myself — and to whatever lonely soul chances upon this lonely blog. Continue reading “THE INFECTED MOMENT”

That — Jersey Street – is what became of Yawkey Way after the posthumous mugging of the late, once-beloved Tom Yawkey over questions of his racial attitudes. I won’t open that big can of snakes again — but, yes, as winter grips Beantown and that short, shadowy byway astride Fenway Park awaits the crowds of opening  day and the Sox begin their ritual preps in Fort Myers – I’d have to say, as a Boston native and unalterable fan of all Boston teams, that the loss of Mookie Betts is, well, too, too bad. Who can deny it? But that’s pro sports now. We root for laundry, as Jerry Seinfeld so aptly said. Continue reading “NO JOY ON JERSEY STREET”