Category: Uncategorized

Code Red

Donald Trump dreams of being America’s first dictator.  He dreams of leading a military dictatorship.  This article by Thomas Friedman wisely identified Trump as a man who dreams of ruling the United States for the rest of his life.  Although the article is a year and a half old consider Trump’s recent actions as proof of where he wants to take the United States.

Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now

Thomas L. Friedman FEB. 18, 2018

 

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a president who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a president vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyber defense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

The Right to an abortion

The gap in abortion rights is growing across the country.

Why should legislatures make laws restricting abortion?  Because they can. It is elected representatives imposing their religious beliefs on the rest of us.  Thank God I live in California.

The map below depicts where abortion is currently most protected and restricted as measured by the Guttmacher Institute, a group working for abortion rights.

In this map More protections to the left (purple) and More restrictions to the right (orange tan).  Alabama is about to join the most restrictions group.

Mishigas and other Yiddish words that are now a part of the Spoken English language

FERSHTAY?: Do you understand?  Most of the time I didn’t.

My parents were fluent in Yiddish.  They would talk to each other in that language but never to my sister and me.  The consequence is that I learned a few words but not enough to hold a conversation.  With the passing of time I have come to realize that many of those words are now part of American English.

Most recently it was brought to my attention when a Businessweek article about a Japanese business man was referred to as a Maven in his area of expertise on advising his clients on investments. Maven is a Yiddish word for expert.  How many of you knew that?

I used the word Mishigas to describe Washington today.  It means craziness in Yiddish.

What other Yiddish words are now part of the American English vocabulary?

Chutzpah – Extreme nerve or arrogance; confidence with a negative connotation. “Donald Trump’s campaign is all chutzpah.” Or Donald Trump has lots of Chutzpah.

Spritz or Shpritz – comes from Yiddish meaning a spray

Klutz – Directly translates to “block of wood”; commonly used in English to describe a particularly clumsy person.

Schlep – To carry something heavy, or to make a long and tedious journey. “I schlepped all the way to class, only to find out that it was cancelled.”

Kvetch – To complain or whine. “We know that you have a lot of work to do, but quit kvetching about it.”

Schmooze – If you schmooze you  Chat, make small talk, converse about nothing in particular.

Mensch – A person of integrity and honor.

Nosh – To eat or nibble, as in “I’d like something to nosh on before dinner.”

Spiel – a sale pitch or an otherwise (un)persuasive speech. Alternatively spelled shpiel, this comes from the German word spiel, meaning “play”.

Oy Vey – exclamation of dismay, exasperation, or surprise. “Oy, Jessica is such a pretty and smart girl. Why can’t she find a husband already?”

Putz – A jerk, or a self-made fool, but this word literally means penis.

Shmatte – A rag or old garment.

Tookis (tuchis) – Butt, behind, sometimes shortened to tush or tushy.

Care to add to this list?

Money laundering to get your children into the most honored universities

 

What will it take to get my kids into UCLA, USC, Stanford, or another Ivy League university?  Do I have to bribe someone?

Can money buy anything you want even if it means you cheat?  Apparently for many wealthy people the answer is Yes!

Money laundering is the generic term used to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and control of the proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to have derived from a legitimate source. The processes by which criminally derived property may be laundered are extensive.

The parents, who were charged last month with conspiracy to commit fraud, were charged on Tuesday in a superseding indictment with conspiring to launder bribes and other payments through a charity run by Rick Singer, the mastermind of the scam, as well as by transferring money into the United States to promote the fraud, prosecutors said.

If Lori Loughlin and 15 other parents don’t plead guilty they could face some real prison time.  Did these people understand that their actions were at a minimum fraudulent? What did they think bribes given to a non-existent charity was if not an act of money laundering?

I would love to sit on the jury to hear their defense. That is not going to happen. It appears the case will be tried in Boston.

This is Chutzpah! This is Hypocrisy!

If you don’t know the meaning of the word you will have to Google it.

From Dana Milbank’s column March 26, 2019 in the Washington Post. He attended the AIPC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference in Washington, D.C.

On Monday, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) literally read from Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” on the House floor and borrowed Hitler’s “big lie” allegation against Jews to use on Democrats. “Unconscionable,” said the Anti-Defamation League. But Republicans, and Netanyahu, said nothing.

Tuesday was the 40th anniversary of the signing of the historic Camp David Accords. But the Israeli leader didn’t mention this, either, instead delivering division to a group that has embraced his (and Trump’s) nationalist policies.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest branch of American Judaism, noticed that the AIPAC crowd had “beyond a doubt” become mostly pro-Trump conservatives, not the cross section of Israel supporters that AIPAC once drew. The rhetoric fit the room. “To suggest anti-Semitism is part of the Democratic Party and liberal part of the spectrum and not also part of Republican leaders’ discourse .

The thing that has kept Israel safe over the decades is rock-solid bipartisan support.

Consider the hypocrisy:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) issued (then deleted) a tweet targeting three wealthy Jews: “We cannot allow [George] Soros, [Tom] Steyer and [Michael R.] Bloomberg to BUY this election! But at AIPAC, McCarthy denounced anti-Semitic language on the “floors of Congress” — an apparent reference to Omar — and said he’d be “lying” to say Democrats are as opposed to anti-Semitism as Republicans.

Vice President Pence once declared that “I know of no synagogues in my district” (there were two) and, after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, attended a memorial with a Jews-for-Jesus Christian rabbi. But at AIPAC, he said Democrats have “been co-opted by people who promote rank anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

President Trump, of course, said there “were very fine people” among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, told Jews they wouldn’t support him “because I don’t want your money,” tweeted an image of a Star of David atop a pile of cash, used anti-Semitic tropes in an ad with photos of prominent Jews, and often denounces “globalists” such as Soros — among many other offenses. But he calls the Democrats “anti-Jewish.”

And here at AIPAC, his appointees attacked Democrats. “We will not do this for the Benjamins,” David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, said, informing the crowd that Trump “deserves” an extended ovation.