letters2americatag:letters2america.com,2010-03-24://12024-03-04T16:41:18ZMovable Type Pro 4.38Letter 2 America for March 4, 2024tag:letters2america.com,2024://1.9842024-03-04T16:40:35Z2024-03-04T16:41:18ZDear America,This morning the Supreme Court of the United States decided in favor of Donald Trump and against the decision of the Supreme Court of the State of Colorado, ruling that Donald Trump cannot be denied the opportunity to appear...Michael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge This morning the Supreme Court of the United States decided in favor of Donald Trump and against the decision of the Supreme Court of the State of Colorado, ruling that Donald Trump cannot be denied the opportunity to appear on the primary ballot of the Republican Party in that state seeking the party nomination for President of the United States. I have felt considerable apprehension over the case as it pended before the highest court in the land ever since Trump's lawyers appealed the state decision, and now that the SCOTUS decision has been issued--and I would add that it was unanimous, liberals and conservatives in agreement--my apprehension has been converted to fear. It is not a predetermination of the case against Trump over the January 6th insurrection, but it certainly bodes ill in that regard in that section 3 of the 14th amendment to our constitution prohibits an insurrectionist from holding not just federal office, but state office as well, and thus, this decision raises a question: If Trump decided to run for governor of Colorado, could that state bar him from doing so, or from holding that office if he won? It seems to me that the plain language of The Constitution clearly was intended to preclude either advent, but does this decision constitute a precedent precluding a state from exercising a power that seems clearly to have been provided by the constitution? And if so, are there other powers provided by The Constitution that are also in jeopardy of rescission under some as-yet-unforeseen circumstance?
Until now, I never would have had any such concern. While we have had conservative and liberal courts in the past, the political complexion of the court never seemed a threat to our liberties before. But now, with a six to three imbalance in the conservative direction on The Court, and with a liberal minority so myopic as not to see the implicated moral hazard that today's Colorado decision precipitates, the potential for reversion to the days of monarchy, or the advent of authoritarianism seems that much greater...the doom of American democracy that much greater a threat...with the prospect of electoral victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election looming in the air. And what that portends is an electorate willing to silence American humanism and curtail the right of the people to practice it in favor of a peremptory ethos that prescribes the kind of evangelical fervor and sanctimony that might well lead to the re-emersion of witch trials and McCarthyism. We are on a slippery slope thanks to not just the conservative wing of The Court, but the liberal wing on which many of us have counted for sanity on fundamental matters of law and rights as well. I fear there's trouble, my fellow American friends, right here in America's capital city.
There is, however, a way in which we can inoculate our beloved country to prevent its backslide into totalitarianism. We can vote. Many advents make this so, though this one bodes danger more than any other I can think of other than January 6th itself. If a constitutional provision as plain on its face as section 3 cannot be counted on to keep evil from our doorstep, we must all take refuge in the only fortification available: the ballot box. Even the Supreme Court can't take that away from us as long as we occupy it...at least as long as we occupy it to good effect. So now it is up to us to prevail upon fickle Democrats, reasonable Republicans and members of the uncommitted plurality to exercise a veto on the decay in the institutions that are charged with protecting our liberties. We cannot lower ourselves to a Trumpian form of insurrection, but we must take whatever measures are allowed by law. That means engaging in the political process at the ground level, at least in states and venues in which Trumpism prevails, and every American knows whether that misfortune persists where he or she is registered. I cannot say what options are available toward that end, and surely they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but they all harbor under the rubric "activism." We must all be open to activism now. Our lives, both figuratively and literally, given what the Trump mania has produced in human depravity and gangster mentality, are in jeopardy and only we can fend off the miscreant and his minions. Only we! That's us, America.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for February 6, 2024tag:letters2america.com,2024://1.9832024-02-06T20:21:55Z2024-02-06T20:32:14ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge The superficiality with which those who presume to inform us about our politics always surprises me. The most fundamental considerations for competent prognostication seem to fly by unnoticed. A jury in New York despised Donald Trump so much that they awarded an obscure writer over $83 million for defamation and slander. That was an augury. He won just over 50% of the vote in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. They were also auguries. And the pundits who propound the common opinion about this 2024 political season saw them as such, but they leapt upon them as omens for the triumph of evil rather than the prevailing of good.
There are approximately 210 million registered voters in this country. 39 million, or about 18.5% of them, are Republicans. There are approximately 49 million, or about 23%, Democrats in the mix. Thus, Trump's 50% + of the Republican vote comprises half of 18.5% of the 210 million total, or about 19 million votes if that percentage holds true for the rest of the general election. I assume that no Democrat will vote for Trump, so the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, can be confident of about 46 million votes in his favor. Then there are the balance of Republicans and all of the independents to consider. Let's assume that each candidate gets 50% of them, a total of 145 million voters, and give Trump 72.5 million of them while the Democrat gets the same percentage and number. The result, if everyone registered votes is that Trump loses by 27 million votes. Not only is that a logical conclusion; It is the same result that occurred last time the two met, but even worse for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
But let's assume that Trump gets all of the 39 million Republican votes and Biden gets all 49 million of the Democrats. What should we assume about the independent 122 million voters. It seems safe to me to assume that Trump will get no more than the same proportion of them as he got of his own party: about 50%. That's 62.5 million votes for him for a total of 101.5. The other 108.5 should go to Biden based on the same kind of calculus applied to the Democrats and our incumbent president, Joe Biden. The result? Biden wins by 7 million votes. Sound familiar? It seems to indicate that even if Trump wins all of the Republican votes that he hasn't been able to get so far, he still loses by the same kind of margin as he lost by in 2020. And if Trump wins fewer Republicans and Biden does the same with Democrats by approximately same proportions, the result doesn't change. In fact, the only way Trump can win is if Biden loses more Democrats than Trump does Republicans and/or Trump takes a majority of the independents. Given that so far he can barely manage a majority of the party of which he used to be able to claim 70%, that seems highly unlikely.
The bottom line is this. The likelihood of Trump winning with the minority he can reasonably expect distributed in such a way as to let the electoral college give the presidency to the loser of the election the way it did in 2016 seems pretty near 0%. In short, Trump's claim that he is dominating his party by winning just over 50% of it is nothing but fantastical thinking, which as we all know he is good at...in his self-serving, narcissistic way.
My point is that logic dictates that Biden will be reelected and Trump will be vanquished if the political world hasn't changed since 2020...and it hasn't. So I for one am going to stop believing the doom that the experts are predicting and assume that the past is precedent. There. I'm going to sleep much better tonight now that I've gotten that off my chest. (Insert in this space a huge sigh of relief.)
Your friend,
Mike
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tag:letters2america.com,2024://1.9822024-01-29T14:52:02Z2024-01-29T14:53:28ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cgeLetter 2 America for January 25, 2024tag:letters2america.com,2024://1.9812024-01-25T21:59:44Z2024-01-25T22:00:15ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge I have to admit this prejudice; since the advent of Trumpism, I have always thought of Republicans as lacking in one way or another. For a long time I thought they were just dumb. But over time it has become apparent to me through personal contact with some of them that such is not the case. That is, some are, but some aren't. I have also thought of them as addled or confused, but again, personal experience with them has shown them to be cognizantly purposeful for the most part, though again, some are just driven by the beliefs they inherited or the pressures of the society they keep. I have found many of them to be intelligent, and some even morally so...some. But things keep happening that make me wonder what is wrong with them. Here's an example.
Of course, I can't know that it was a Trumper who did this, but as I drove into a parking spot at the supermarket an hour or so ago, I turned into a parking space and had to stop short because someone had left a cart square in the middle of the space, just next to the curb at the head of the space so I couldn't see it as I turned in. I had to get out with my car half way into the aisle, get the cart and take it just across the aisle to the cart-collection facility--that's how close the idiot who left the cart where it would prevent someone else from using what he had chosen to use for his own convenience was to being able to do the right thing--and then almost autonomicly and ineluctably draw the conclusion as to what kind of person had done it. The first thing that came to mind was a Republican, and second was a "Trumper." That may have been unfair, and even peremptory with regard to Republicans in general, but I have no doubt that it was a Trumper, and thus no doubt it was a Republican too. They seem to think they are the definition of "American virtue," which seems to be synonymous with "entitled" and "special" to them.
Don't get me wrong. They are entitled under the American system to have their political preferences and predilections...just as entitled as you and I are. And they can vote for whomever they like, even if their choice is a blathering, pathologically narcissistic, aspiring autocrat who freely admits that his first day in office would be the day of Trump the dictator...even if their choice is someone who said to a crowd chanting "four more years" at one of his rallies, "ya' wanna drive 'em crazy, ask for twelve!" The moron can't even add, but that observation doesn't contemplate the thought that maybe he meant twelve, as in, for as long as it takes for me to make my occupancy of the White House permanent by getting the 22nd amendment repealed by the Republican poltroons who don't dare cross me, and this all fits nicely with what we just witnessed in the Republican primaries. Everybody but Trump and Haley dropped out, and all of them but Chris Christie, who has said over and over again that Trump is a danger to democracy and is unfit to be president, endorsed Trump...even the ones who had hinted that they too saw trump as dangerous and unfit. DeSantis also said that Trump was a danger and unfit, though he said it was because Trump was to old to be president, but unfit is unfit. Yet, when he suspended his campaign, DeSantis endorsed Trump despite his age and the questions about his fitness that it raises. And the other poltroons who dropped out may never have said even that much about Trump's qualifications, but that is because of what they all have in common: they want to be vice-president. They are aspiring cronies and sycophants one and all, and I hope Trump does nominate one of them as his running mate. Maybe then some voters who somehow remain on the fence until then will climb down and vote against Trump and for Biden, even if they don't want to vote for Biden but realize that the risk of Trump getting in is too great to take because there will be a despicable, two-bit epigone waiting in the wings to take his place as the Republican leader if and when Trump ever leaves office.
I admit that all of this is derived from my speculation, right or wrong, that a Trumper left his shopping cart in a parking space because he thought he was entitled to do so because of his beliefs, but you have to agree that whether I was right or not, my conclusion was rational and well reasoned. And on that basis, I hope the shopping cart villain gets what he deserves, just like his idol, Donald Trump. As I have said often, on election day the American people get what they deserve. I sure hope the majority of us don't deserve Donald Trump.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for January 4, 2024tag:letters2america.com,2024://1.9802024-01-04T16:16:14Z2024-01-04T16:16:48ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge It is remarkable how obtuse American news media are at times. Their lack of perspicacity seems almost intentional by virtue of what they miss and what they mischaracterize. Nikky Haley, when asked what the American Civil War was about initially left out slavery as a cause, though as an afterthought she amended her omission by saying that, of course the civil war was about slavery though the war's precipitating inspiration was a determination of what the role of government would be in our lives. As far as I know, no one asked her in follow-up what government intrusion into the lives of those in The Confederacy then she had in mind: what government actions had so motivated the people of what was then half of our country to take up arms against the federation that was then the United States of America. And that, the media proclaimed, was a misstep on Haley's part, which only demonstrated that obtuseness to which I referred in the first place.
Nikky Haley is an ambitious politician, and she goes where the votes are. In this case, she is running for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, and she is doing so against Donald Trump who, put most politely, is a mountebank selling snake oil out of the trunk of his limo. And what is that snake oil? At least in part, it is exactly what Haley said was the cause of our civil war: resistance to the decline of white supremacy as a controlling ethos in our country. Nikky Haley was not making a mistake, whether she knew it or not, and she is sly enough that she may well have calculated her remark and its aftermath. Donald Trump ascended to the presidency by pandering to those who believe that, among other things, people make too much of slavery because in the end, it really didn't do much harm to anyone that mattered. That is what CRT, or critical race theory is about. It is institutionalization of the premise that the civil war and slavery are passé and we should get over them. There is no aftermath to be considered, much less studied, the Trumpers contend. That's where the contention that the civil war was about the civil rights of southern gentry and not about the freedom of all men who are, in their sub rosa creed, not created equal arose. Nikky Haley just climbed aboard the band wagon of the 70% of Republicans who support Donald Trump. She became Trump's co-panderer by saying what she did, thus putting herself into the same class of candidates that Trump now controls. She showed her moral flexibility...that she is as Trumpy as Trump, and that isn't a mistake for an aspirant to public office who is as morally flexible as Haley is. It was a power play.
I don't know whether Haley is smart enough to intentionally be that devious and hypocritical, but I wouldn't be surprised if she is. She is of Indian descent, and that means non-white to many of Trump's constituency, which in turn means she is less than suitable in their collective estimation to be their leader. By declaring herself in league with them, she at least overcomes some of what might be held against her in a contest with Trump, and that is what the Republican race is turning into. No one else in contention for the nomination is making any inroads into Trump's fealty from the vast majority of the party. DeSantis's standing in the race seems to have stopped sliding, but he isn't gaining any ground either. In fact, vis-à-vis Trump, no one is. But Haley has purloined some of the support that the others had, including some of DeSantis's. She has put herself in a virtual tie with the Florida governor for number two, which often means the vice-presidency, which in turn means a place in line to inherit the presidency itself. Is Haley that shrewd, and I don't mean that as a complement. Only she knows for sure, but I think that she is, at least half way, and I am sure she is that ambitious. I think that her denial of slavery as the cause of the civil war was just stating her heart-felt belief, which was in effect stating the MAGA trope is her credo, which in turn was just a pitch for the MAGA militia to take a good look at her. To Haley, what she said wasn't a mistake as it turns out. It was just a cynical play for the support of some people who's cynicism is just as compelling for them as Haley's is for her.
I say that Haley has now declared herself ready for the Trump big league. She has shown in more ways than one that she is as Trumpy as Trump himself, regardless of how she equivocates sometimes on the issue of Trump's moral deficiency. She just wanted everyone to know that she was one of them, and now it seems that it will redound to her benefit, no matter what the obtuse press has to say.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for November 14, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9792023-11-14T20:00:21Z2023-11-14T20:01:17ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge As the world fecklessly involves itself in political allegiances over the Hamas-Israel war, I find myself daunted by the worst scenario prospects possible. I remember hearing the outset of World War I described as the nations of Europe "backing into" it. Treaties carelessly entered into dragged nation after nation into the fray until what started with the Sarajevo assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand became a universal conflict necessitated by alliances that crossed one another in intent and letter. The same seems to be happening relative to the Palestinians and the Jews. It seems that the western world has learned nothing in the hundred years since we did the same thing that I fear may result again: a ubiquitous conflagration into which we all volunteered to lurch.
Every night on the news we hear about conflict of one sort or another between supporters of the Palestinians and supporters of Israel perpetrated by mostly young people who don't seem to have really put any comprehensive thought into their allegiances or even the issues that purportedly made those allegiances necessary, much less whether any of that is even their business. Mind you, I am not inured to the suffering of innocent children being inflicted by the war in Gaza. And I see the images of women and men tramping through the desert communities of the Gaza strip looking for little more than shelter from the storm and strife. Likewise, I am aware that the Israeli victims of Hamas's impromptu raid into Israel had relatives and loved ones who are bereaved and grieving. And of course there are the hostages, the dead and the wounded themselves with whom we all must sympathize. But in the final analysis, what is being inflicted upon the peoples of the region by the bestiality and callousness of Hamas and the Israeli reactionaries of Israel's Likud Party is beyond our efforts to interdict them and our attempted ministrations to the aggrieved as a civilized society. But at the helm of each side is a constellation of arch villains including Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud and Ismael Haniyeh in Qatar and Yayha Sinwar in Gaza, both leaders within Hamas. The sheer, villainous callousness with which they all hide behind the innocents within their camps is an abomination, as is the willingness of their constituents to follow them. The pain and suffering in the Middle East is a self-inflicted wound. If there is a God, he is surely watching and saying to himself, those people can go to hell; that's what they deserved. As to those of us who are looking in from outside, we are powerless to prevent bigots, tyrants and chauvinists from their internecine conflict, which is millennia old and clung to proudly by them, and all this over a patch of desert.
Decades ago, Israel had a prime minister with a history characterized by many as terrorism named Manachem Begin. In 1973 he co-founded Likud, which has ascended in power since then, and has come to stand for the proposition that Israel, after seizing it during the 1967 war, should never give back what we now know as the "West Bank" of the Jordan River. The area was known in biblical times as Samaria and Judea, and those territories were referenced in the Bible as the home of the Jews beginning in about 700 B.C.E. That biblical reference was Begin's basis for the proposition that Israel had valid suzerainty over the land. But since those early biblical references, the area has fallen under the suzerainty of several other political entities: the Roman empire, the Assyrian empire, the Byzantine empire, the Babylonian empire and various and sundry other relatively ephemeral powers. The point is that if Begin's hypothesis of Israeli entitlement were valid, we would all have to board ships back to countries of ancestral origin because the Algonquin, Iroquois, Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo, and countless other tribes were here first. Begin's profoundly specious claim is the only ground of purported legitimacy on which the Israeli claim to the West Bank reposes. And as such, it is the only justification for the Israeli settlements and the consequent bloodshed and tyranny of Israel over the previously autochthonous Palestinians that exists...and it is nothing but a self-serving irrational rationalization. As to the Palestinians, they are just the most recent in a long line of occupiers of that portion of the land that used to be known as "The Levant." As I have said before, there is no moral high ground in the Holy Land.
So the next time you or one of yours wants to wax pious over the conflict that rages today, remember that these conflagrations have been raging for over 2,000 years, and the occupants of the region still haven't learned their lesson. My opinion, for what it's worth, is stay out of it. Nothing you can do or say is going to change anything...for the better, that is.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for October 30, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9782023-10-30T17:52:07Z2023-10-30T17:53:07ZDear America,Over the course of millennia, mutual immolation has been the rule in the history of the middle east rather than the exception: civil wars in Yemen and Syria, the Iran-Iraq war, Hezbollah brutality in Lebanon and as perpetrated against...Michael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge Over the course of millennia, mutual immolation has been the rule in the history of the middle east rather than the exception: civil wars in Yemen and Syria, the Iran-Iraq war, Hezbollah brutality in Lebanon and as perpetrated against Israel across their mutual border as well as the Israeli responses, Syrian attacks in the Golan Heights, Sunni's against Shiites over who killed Mohamed's son-in-law, Ali, and later over whether Islam should be led by Mohamed's dynasty or by the established clergy--Shia vs. Sunni respectively--and on and on back through the annals of the Levant and the middle east for four thousand years. Even the Romans were not immune from the sanguinary ethos of the region as manifested in the siege of Masada and the first Jewish-Roman war of the first century CE. So today's conflict in Gaza and Israel is no surprise, especially considering the conflicts that have raged there since 1967. In consequence of that 1967 war Israel occupied Gaza and allowed several thousand Israeli's to build and live in settlements there and in "Samaria," which is in the West Bank. Then in 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the dismantling of those settlements and the evacuation of the 8,000 or so Jews who had occupied them for the sake of making Israel's borders more defensible, and the buildings they had occupied were destroyed rather than leaving them for use by the Palestinian residents of Gaza. I mention that destruction because it is symbolic in my mind...scorched earth. The Israeli's could have left the buildings standing, and thus usable by the Palestinians who remained in the area for the purpose of offering an olive branch to them, but they didn't. I am not saying that doing so would have prevented the various periods of intifada and outright war that have intervened between then and now, but it could have softened the enmity between Palestinians and Israeli's. It would have been worth "a shot" if you'll excuse the expression and it would have saved the Israeli's the cost of demolition in the bargain, but that shot wasn't taken. Instead, millions of gunshots have been exchanged, and thousands have died.
Today we have the atrocity perpetrated by Hamas, entailing the outright slaughter of 1400 Israeli men, women and children, the vast majority of them completely unarmed, and the Israeli response in which more than 8,000 Palestinians have been killed mostly by bombs in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians justify their slaughter of innocents with, among other things, today's Israeli settlements in the West Bank territory occupied mostly by Palestinians and formerly belonging to Jordan, and on those grounds they claim the moral high ground. Similarly, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a speech he gave over the past few days that the Israeli's occupy the "moral high ground" in consequence of Hamas's outright murders. Concomitantly, the supporters of both sides reiterate the moral high ground claims around the world from the opinion pages of the New York Times to the streets of Turkey, thus entrenching themselves in bellicose rhetoric and, at least in their own minds, justifying continuing hostilities. But I say this two sided colloquy is at best self-servingly misguided, but at worst nothing but rationalization of the bad intentions harbored by each side. The fact is that there is no moral high ground in the middle east, and historically, it seems that there never has been. The pugnacity inherent in the raging debate proves it. The occupants of the middle east are incapable of civility and mutual consideration, even if it is to facilitate peace, and thus self-preservation.
I recently had a conversation with my son about the conflict that rages on in Gaza and Israel, and he expressed an opinion cleaving to the rhetoric of one side; I won't bother to tell you which side as it really doesn't matter given all the history I have just cited. My response, and I must admit that I am ashamed for the callousness of it, was that the rest of the world should build an immense wall around the middle east like the one the Chinese built along their northern frontier to ward off the attacks of their enemies. But the wall the world should build today would not be to insulate us from our adversaries. It would be to isolate us all from the consequences of the insidious internecine politics of the region. It should be built for the purpose of allowing the rest of the world to obviate involvement in the most futile and spuriously justified series of conflicts that have ever been perpetrated in all the world. As I said, I am ashamed for thinking it and now for saying it for others to read. But I'm afraid I am not inclined to retract a single word.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for October 18, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9772023-10-18T17:34:36Z2023-10-18T17:35:06ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge President Biden's enjoinders to others about intervening in the hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel seem gratuitous to me. In fact, they seem more like dares to intervene than exhortations to keep away. We're finally out of Afghanistan, and barely present in Iraq, and here is our president mixing in the affairs of another ally that to many are of dubious rectitude to begin with. I have no problem with The President ordering an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean out of apprehension of potential necessity, but he could have done it and said nothing to anyone but Israel and accomplished the desired security goal. It would be different if the moral lines being drawn relative to the conflict were crystal clear, but they are not, and the domestic news coverage as well as the public reaction around the world definitely indicate that the world is of two minds on that point. I would have preferred that Biden predicate his public reaction to the conflict taking that ambivalence into account in the privacy of his own thoughts rather than potentially inviting adventurism among Israel's and our adversaries by exhorting them not to intervene. But that die is cast, and the question now is how to proceed with ensuring the perdurability of the Jewish state without inviting a threat to it, but doing even that with the dubiety of Israel's continuing local imperialism in mind.
I think we should acknowledge that the international community and the laws of international conduct do not comport with Israel's conduct in what used to be called the Levant. Its continuing suzerainty over the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip with settlement of the West Bank and control of the area's utilities, tax revenues and such, along with the isolation and effective dominion over the Gaza Strip render Israel ripe for adamant criticism universally. The current reactionary political control of Israeli politics by Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party, wrapped in the putative biblical sanctimony inspired by Menachem Begin's wishful claim that "Samaria and Judea" belonged to Israel by dint of historical events millennia ago, stamp the effective imprimatur of Israeli expansionism on the forehead of every citizen of Israel, or at least the Jews among them. Likud's perspective is the equivalent of a claim that Manhattan belongs by right to the Lenape Tribe because they occupied the area before the Dutch East India Company bought it from them. Both areas have changed hands by dint of history, the Levant several times, and the practical reality is that both claims are nothing but casuistry in light of the realities, and President Biden should make that reality the predicate for everything he discusses with Netanyahu when he sees him over the next day or two. Warning the world not to intervene is folly.
Were I in a position to do so, I would propose to Netanyahu what President emeritus Obama did: that Israel and the world recognize a Palestinian state comprising "The West Bank" and Gaza with a corridor through the Sinai desert linking the two areas. That corridor could be territory of Palestine or if that is disagreeable, an internationally monitored strip of neutral territory sufficient to accommodate transportation of people and goods by rail, car and truck. But I would warn the Palestinian authorities in advance. With sovereignty comes responsibility. So if organizations like Hamas and Hezbolah commit acts of war, Palestinian should expect just deserts. And to encourage Israel to accept these terms of creation of a Palestinian state, it should be advised likewise.
The purpose of such a two state solution would be to give everyone notice of what the future of the area entails: peace with consequences for disturbing such. There would be no exogenous imperatives involved, leaving both sides to their own devices unless a neutral body...the UN in a peace keeping capacity perhaps...were empowered by its member nations to do otherwise.
The advantages to such an arrangement may not be obvious, but they exist, just as does the law we all follow and the prior constraint it imposes. Contrary to some popular opinion, the law is ordered and rational. It's implications in general are clear, and thus provide a prediction of the future for any who fail to abide by it. That orders society, and it would order the Middle East as well. In the event of such a resolution of the chaos in Israel and the rest of the Levant I would say, this is what you wished for. Now be careful because you've to it.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for October 9, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9762023-10-09T18:27:37Z2023-10-09T18:28:11ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge While I was reading the opinion section in the New York Times yesterday, an unidentifiable frustration came over me. As on every other Sunday, Times regulars commented on MAGA Republicans and Donald Trump, but it always seemed that they can't get to the point of refuting their argument that Trump won the 2020 presidential election. I have had that experience with Trumpers that I know. No matter what one says, their response is that the fraud Trump claimed to have defeated him must be there if for no other reason than that he won, he got the most votes, but those winning votes were just obscured by this alleged fraud. That's the end of their argument: it's so because it must be so. And week after week I look and listen for someone to confront one of them with the flawed nature of their argument, but no one ever does, so I am bringing that flaw into plain view. It is called teleology.
Teleaology is arguing from the conclusion backward. There actually is a word for what they are doing: teleology. The way it works is that you posit the putative fact that Trump won as indisputable, and then you look for the proof of that proposition. But when you find no proof, that isn't a refutation because you started from the proposition that what you believe is categorically true. Put another way, Trumpers think themselves vindicated by the fact that no one has proven that there was not some massive fraud that neither they nor anyone else can find. The only thing that has been proved is that the fraud claims made by Trump, Giuliani and the other Trump minions were false, which by MAGAlogical extension just means that neither they nor anyone else looked in the right places. The Trump fraud myth is an axiom for them, a given, and thus it needs no proof, but it is my contention that every time one meets someone who believes the Trump lie, one should explain to them what teleology is. It is nigh unto impossible to prove a negative, for example, that there are no real flying elephants. You can adduce the fact that neither you nor anyone else has ever seen one, but the fact that one has never been seen doesn't convince the true believer, who will argue that there may be one hiding somewhere; the fact that you haven't seen it doesn't prove that it isn't there. Or the true believer might say with levity intended to reduce the impact of genuine logic on his magical thinking, what about Dumbo, to which you might rightly respond in cognate levity that you are talking about real elephants, but that would be to no avail too. The true believer believes none-the-less, thinking that a paradigmatic Dumbo is out there, and it's real, and knowing that it's out there is tantamount to proof that it is. Knowing that there was fraud in 2020...being certain of it...is proof enough for a MAGA type.
Of course, the true-believer's reaction often is anger and petulance, but the fact of the teleology of their beliefs has been explained to them and it cannot be undone. Initially it will seem a futile effort if you make the endeavor to so explain, but I can almost guarantee that they will be unable to erase from their thoughts that the belief they are cleaving to has no basis in logic or fact. That doubt will be there lurking in the back of their MAGA little minds, and in some cases...maybe very few, but some...you will have made some progress in debunking the myth for them, and once that happens, the Trumper may well be disabused in general of the merit of Trump's fusillade of bogus claims.
The key to diverting a MAGA Republican from the delusion that despite his gesticulating and raving, he is dispossessed of any verity with which he may ever have been endowed, say in early childhood. All that is left of Trump's soul today is the snake oil that he sells, and that is what it is: snake oil.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for October 7, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9752023-10-07T16:45:22Z2023-10-07T16:48:03ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge I'm afraid that the Democratic Party made a bad mistake by failing to thwart the ouster of Kevin McCarthy from the house speakership. It's not that he is good for anyone, including the country, but consider the reactionaries who are in line to replace him. Yes, McCarthy is cut from the same cloth as predecessors like John Boehner. He'll say anything that favors Republican politics and/or undermines that of the Democrats. It doesn't need to be true for it to fall from his mouth, just as was the case with Boehner. I remember Boehner talking about how there were 50 job creation bills pending in The Senate after passing out of The House, so I looked them up. There were perhaps 5 that had anything to do with economic policy. The rest were bills dreamed up by Republicans to impress constituents or vilify Democrats, and none of them were of any significance, not just for job creation but for anything. In fact as to most of them, I couldn't even find a remote connection to jobs and the economy, but those fifty bills were a stock component of every statement he made for weeks. Paul Ryan embroidered the facts too, but his excuse wasn't sheer dishonesty or partisanship. He was just full of Reagan Kool-aid and he couldn't see beyond the blindly plutocratic propaganda. And then there's McCarthy, who's too blinded by party affiliation to see the forest for the trees. Like Boehner, he'll say anything to advance the Republican agenda without even considering whether that agenda has merit. None of those three was good for us, America, but the harm they could do was constrained somewhat by civility and probably the fear of being involuntarily committed. But Jordan and Scalise? They are both dangerously committed to the reactionary cause...and Trump.
During the Democratic impeachment inquiry, Jordan was on the committee, and I believe he was the senior Republican. He latched on to some line about Trump, which I unfortunately don't remember even though it almost lifted me out of my chair each time I heard it, and he would repeat it whenever he saw the need to make a point of any kind, and he would say it with such unctuous sanctimony that even he couldn't help smirking. And now as he runs the impeachment committee against Joe Biden he has raised sanctimony to a dark-art form. He is fond of positing as truths questions that he wants to ask and calumnies that his fellow Republicans want to convince Americans to believe. I have come to the point at which I almost don't mind dishonesty because you can respond with truth. But the intellectual dishonesty of people like Jordan defies response. Jordan and the other Republicans don't even ask the witnesses before them questions. They just rant on with what they think are reasons to be suspicious while adducing no evidence to support their innuendos, and Jordan facilitates their efforts as if he is on a sacred quest. He's one successor prospect. Then there's Scalise.
He's the representative who got shot at baseball practice while preparing for the annual congressional inter-party game. He was seriously wounded and became something of a hero to all just for surviving. Now he is the number two Republican in The House, and he is as intellectually dishonest as Jordan, and as shameless as well. Scalise will cast any aspersion against his Party's political adversaries as he can make up on the bases of some perceived misstep by the Democrats and attribute it to villainy. He invokes a putative dichotomy between good...that is Republicans...and evil, and you know who he thinks the evil is. And all the while he praises Donald Trump without even a hint of self-awareness that he is being a hypocrite. He is as devious as Jordan is, but more dangerous because he actually seems to believe the tripe he spews.
So as between McCarthy and his two likeliest successors, there is a clear distinction with regard to the jeopardy that our democracy is about to be put in. The difference is between real malefactors in Jordan and Scalise and merely an oafish and transparent political operative, which is what McCarthy was, and will always be. The Democrats will not be able to turn their backs on either Jordan or Scalise because they are both armed. I would have preferred haplessly misguided myself.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for October 4, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9742023-10-04T14:57:27Z2023-10-04T14:57:55ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge The Kevin McCarthy fiasco is a demonstration of the dysfunction of the Republican ethos in two respects. First, when McCarthy was nominated for Speaker of the House, there was record setting resistance to his election to the office. I have had my say about McCarthy's ineptitude, partisan dogmatism and preemptive loyalty to party over loyalty to the nation, so I won't reiterate those opinions further, but I feel compelled to point out that skepticism regarding his competence was obviously rampant in the first place during the process of the Republican Party's nomination, and they nominated...then elected...him anyway. They did so after he promised to be the captive party hack of the "Freedom Caucus"--and I must say that the odiously self-serving and peremptory choice of that designation by a group of less than twenty rabid reactionary partisans would be laughable if it weren't so despicable--which doesn't comprise even a significant constituency within the Republican caucus as a whole, much less the nation. That fringe component of the Republican Party has members like Mat Gaetz and Jim Jordan, two of the most devious and disingenuous human beings on earth, Louie Gohmert, half a moron if that, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who has both integrity and intelligence, but unfortunately her integrity disappeared when she was in business and her intelligence is out looking for it. This group of reactionaries believes in freedom, but only for those sharing their beliefs in areas like religion, sexual identity, nationalism in the form of compulsory flag waving and the like. For all those whose behavior and beliefs don't comport with their definition of righteousness, they have nothing but contempt and opprobrium. Their definition of Freedom is such that it does not extend to anyone but them; freedom to believe other than they do merits condemnation and "canceling." That is the cadre that is now in control of the Republican Party as evinced by their success in ousting McCarthy on the first try.
Second, now that I have invoked values as an indicator of dysfunction, the Republican Party continues to seek to dictate to us, America, what we may and may not think, and they want to change "may" to "can" by law. They stand for book banning (and I wouldn't be surprised if banning turned to burning by the next election), blocking gender conversion even for those who demonstrably need it in order to avail themselves of the founders' promise of the right to "the pursuit of happiness" for all, what they call parental rights, which is a euphemism for letting right wing fanatics prevail on school boards to revise history so as to vindicate slavery as something that slave owners did to improve the lives of slaves with skills that they could use after they were freed, the proscription of sexual preference for those who are not strictly heterosexual, denying poor people governmental assistance when the can't fend for themselves and so on, all of which they characterize, again peremptorily, as "Christian values," and they have no tolerance for values of any other kind. And that constellation of dysfunctional ethics and contempt for all those who differ from them--the second form of dysfunction to which I referred at the outset--is dangerous, as in a threat of totalitarianism.
The didacticism and sanctimony of the Freedom Caucus, the Republican Party and conservatism in general is a menace. It is not so because their values differ from mine. They can believe what they want and live by those values in this country as long as it remains truly free, not in the sense of the arrogation of the term for themselves by the Freedom Caucus but in the sense of our founders' commitment to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And I have no problem with that. But I do object to them concerting their efforts to circumscribe the freedoms of others to make them comport with theirs, and to teach our children that it should be so when they are in school. I object when they as parents try to dictate to other parents how they should raise their children and what medical care they can provide for them. I object when they fly OUR flag and claim that it stands for their beliefs.
In the sixties, some young people took to sewing that flag to the seats of their pants. Ordinarily I would declare aversion to doing so, but in that instance it was the only way that some of them could express their intolerance of intolerance. I don't know if that strategy would work today, though it along with parallel tactics and strategies worked to change the nation then. But something has to be done to prevent a disastrous and subtle slide into "Big Brother" authoritarianism. You can vote, America. Remember the threat when you go to the polls.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for September 22, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9732023-09-22T17:40:43Z2023-09-22T17:41:16ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge Donald Trump's two favorite words to describe his adversaries and their deeds are "d" words: disgusting and disgrace. Unfortunately for all of us, those words apply to our current House of Representatives majority party. Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy is so afraid of losing the speakership, which he coveted and pursued even though he was obviously unqualified and to which he was almost unelectable, that he has now put his self-interest and vanity ahead of the welfare of the nation. A reactionary cadre of Republicans...a small one at that...is using the Byzantine rules of the body to prevent even a vote on a "CR," or Continuing Resolution, so as to avert a government shutdown when current funding runs out...today! He could circumvent their effort, at least as to calling the vote needed, but they threatened to put him through another vote on his speakership if he does that. And since what's important to McCarthy is, well, McCarthy and his ego, he won't take the risk. That's disgusting. It became obvious how unfit McCarthy was when he attempted to get the speakership the first time in 2015. He stated on national television that among his qualifications was participating in depriving Hillary Clinton of the Democratic presidential nomination (he failed to do so in the end) with his committee's investigation of the attack on the Benghazi U.S. Consulate. Even members of his own party cringed at what a patent misunderstanding of politics was evinced by his contretemps, even though what he said was an admission of the truth. It dried up all those Republican Benghazi crocodile tears instantly with a single imprudent political breast-pocket handkerchief. McCarthy is a disgrace.
As to disgusting, that adjective is reserved for the entire Republican Party. The plaint of that Republican coven of political warlocks is that the budget needs to be balanced so as to reduce the national debt, but that can't happen as long as the budget runs at a deficit. The deficit is the amount by which spending exceeds income, so if there is one, the debt not only doesn't decrease, it increases. So, as anyone can see, there are two ways to approach rectifying the deficit: one is to reduce spending, but the other is to increase income. But the latter never gets mentioned by the Republicans. Neither does the income-tax reduction that favored the rich preponderantly, Donald Trump particularly. Trump is expected to reap a yearly tax reduction of about $15 million personally. How much did you save? And as more than half of all members of congress are now millionaires, they all benefited disproportionately when their tax windfalls are compared to their constituents'. And in light of the estimates of the non-partisan CBO (Congressional Budget Office) that the Trump tax cuts will by themselves result in an increase in the national debt of over $3.4 trillion over the ten years of its existence, it seems obvious that repeal of that law would be a big first step in reducing the national debt. And Joe Biden and the Democrats have proposed not a total repeal of the Trump tax cuts, but repeal of the provisions that favor all the tax payers in the top 10%, that is everyone making over approximately $200,00. I assume that is not you. I know it isn't me.
But they, that is the conservatives in the Republican Party, are in favor of reducing Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid benefits to make a dent in the deficit. And for that matter, they want to reduce the benefits in all social programs, you know, the ones that help the poorest of us stay fed and housed. So the solution for Republicans isn't helping us down here at all, and in fact, it will likely hurt us if they get their way. And a lot of them go to church every Sunday, or temple every Saturday, and tell God that they are doing good as they cut fellow worshippers off as they try to get out of the parking lot. It's the hypocrisy of it all that offends me, and it seems to me that the Republicans have more than their share of it in their policies.
I suppose that the bottom line isn't the tax cut and who it favors. Nor is it the reductions in entitlement benefits that Republicans favor. The bottom line is us, America. We continue to elect these people, but as long as we do, nothing will change.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for September 12, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9722023-09-12T18:53:47Z2023-09-12T18:54:23ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge Very little is being said about the current labor issues in the news. But both the entertainment industry and the auto manufacturing industry are manifesting in their attitudes toward their workforces the attitude that is effectively putting American capitalism on trial. Don't misunderstand me; I am a capitalist philosophically, but there are limits as to my fealty to the system, and corporate management in these two industries are laying those issues bare. What I mean is that in both striking scenarios, the issue of how much corporate management impunity there should be in divvying up the wealth created by our nation's labor forces in their respective businesses and industries.
To crystallize my point, Robert Iger is the current CEO of Disney, which is no longer just the animated film producer it was when I used to watch the Mickey Mouse Club on television as a child, but is now a gigantic media conglomerate. Iger is in his second stint as top panjandrum at Disney, which he became again after the abysmal failure of his successor, chosen and hired by the very same board of directors that had hired him upon Iger's initial retirement in 2020. That successor, Bob Chapek, took a supportive position toward the "don't say gay" legislation launched by that governmental voice of enlightenment, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and thus ensured that his own limited tenure at Disney would end abruptly. In his wake came Iger again, who was virtually begged to resume his tenure as leading light at Disney. Chapek received a "golden parachute" that would dwarf the life savings of anyone below the management level at Disney in an amount in excess of $20 million, and he got it for doing a lousy, some might say repellant, job. Iger's compensation approximates $34 million, about $10 million more than Chapek got each year for failing. And to Iger's credit, he was at the helm during Disney's rise to entertainment giant and its quintupling in corporate size, but that doesn't necessarily justify his obscene compensation relative to the remuneration received by the writers and actors who produce what Iger sells. It certainly doesn't lend legitimacy to the comment he made about the strikers demands.
When Iger was interviewed on the evening news one day recently, he said that the striking members of the screen actors' and screen writers' union members had to realize that their demands--they are asking for a living wage in a business that is significantly less reliable as a career year to year than the jobs of the vast majority of us--were "unrealistic." That was the considered opinion of a man making a salary that is as unrealistic as salaries get. Mind you, Forbes magazine estimated his wealth at just shy of $700 million, and even with a pocket that deep, he could muster the audacity to criticize people for only wanting to know with some reliability that they will be able to pay their mortgages next month. And apparently Iger isn't alone in corporate management. The auto workers' union has reported that the management of the American automobile manufacturing "Big Three" have given themselves raises totaling 42% over the past three years, the duration of the contract now being renegotiated. The union is saying that if management was entitled to 42%, the people who actually built the cars they sold deserve a similar boost in the next three year contract...this after getting only an aggregate of 10% under the old contract in a period in which inflation ran at an annual rate of 9% for a while. The management has upped its offer from another 10% over three years to 15%, and has promised reductions in workforce attendant to the advent of electric automobiles in the bargain. The union characterizes that offer as "insulting."
So there are two examples of the avarice of corporate management in light of the relative penury of the people who actually do the work from which they prosper. I'm not suggesting that there aren't parallel inequities in the realms of socialism and communism, but we should understand that the United States is competing for the subscription of the masses in a world in which authoritarianism and alternate economic systems surround us and seem to be gaining the credence of perhaps billions of people. In other words, the ground swell in the United States of support for the unions in these two examples is a microcosm of what the world at large could look like in a couple of decades if something isn't done to curb executive greed and ensure that the workers get their fair share. It is seldom pointed out that in the 1950's, the average CEO made ten times what the average worker on the assembly line made. Today it is a ratio more like 300 to 400 times. And the wealth disparity between the top .1% and the bottom 50% has grown astronomically. At some point, those who get their hands dirty are going to say enough is enough, or in the case of management, way too much. It isn't just the prosperity of two industries that is at stake, it is our way of life.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for September 5, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9712023-09-05T19:58:25Z2023-09-05T19:59:42ZMichael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge Now that most of the Trump dust has settled, at least until early March when his first trial will begin in Washington, D.C., it may be time to discuss other more fundamental things, like the 2024 election and whether there is a way to obviate running the risk of him being elected president again. I keep harkening back to a Trump rally in 2020 at which the crowd started chanting the trite old phrase, "four more years..." Trump took to the microphone and said with his bare face hanging out, plain enough for everyone, including the press to hear, "If you really want to make them crazy, ask for twelve." At the time it seemed nothing but bombastic, especially considering the source. He should have two middle initials: S for Snake-oil-salesman and B for Bloviator-in-chief. But in light of the aftermath of the election, it seems more like a profane promise. All Americans should resign themselves to the fact--and yes, I think it is a fact not an opinion--that should Trump win in 2024, we will never get rid of him. He will seek--and given the poltroons whom the Republicans keep electing to congressional office no one in power will have the guts to resist his effort,--to change the constitution back to its pre-Roosevelt, pre-22nd Amendment state, under which Roosevelt was allowed to seek and win a fourth term. And should he succeed, when he sees his own biological end coming, he will manipulate his blind sycophants into elevating his son, Donald, Jr.--a miscreant if I ever saw one--to succeed him and initiate a Trump dynasty, and with that he will shuffle off this mortal coil with a sadistic smile on his face. I know this all sounds parodical, but think about it. What part of that scenario seems unrealistic?
However, we do have recourse from two sources, both of which I have mentioned in the past, but both of which I think must be raised as a possible last hope again. The first is a provision in section 3 of the 14th amendment of the constitution. That provision bars anyone who took an oath to defend the constitution when taking the office of president, or any other government office for that matter, from holding public office again if he has given aid or comfort to the enemies of our government. And the same proposition exists in the statutes of the United States: Chapter 115, Title 38, section 2383, which proscribes inciting or "set[ting] on foot" rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof. The companion statute has been in the news a great deal recently: Chapter 115, Title 38, section 2384 proscribes seditious conspiracy. The leadership of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been pared back to nothing pursuant to that statute, which makes conspiring to effect the overthrow of the government of the United States a federal crime, and that's what they tried to do on January 6, 2021. Those guys are going to a new home for more than a decade, and we should be thankful. Should Trump rise again, they would be right by his side as he rose, probably as cabinet members once he seized office. The problem with section 2383 and section 3 of the 14th amendment is that someone has to implement them.
For section 2383, that would have to be Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who brought the charges against Trump in Florida for Trump's unlawful attempt to keep classified documents that he should have relinquished control of when he left office, and certainly when they were subpoenaed by the appropriate federal authorities, and Smith again in Washington, D.C. for his conduct at the time of the January 6th insurrection. But Smith chose to forego citation of section 2383 for some reason, which brings me to what I think should occur next. Another special prosecutor, one with guts, should be appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to consider whether section 2383 was violated before or during the events of January 6th, and if so, whether anyone should be prosecuted for doing so. In the matter of violation of section 3, that's a different matter. Section 3 includes a provision for waiving the sanctions it prescribes, specifically prohibition from holding political office in this country, by virtue of a 2/3 vote of each house. By implication then, the section 3 sanction could be imposed by such 2/3 vote of the two houses, and there's the rub...Republicans again.
Not to put too fine a point on it, even though Trump's reelection should be precluded by law, by default our best hope of keeping Trump out of office may be him losing the 2024 election. He's a shoe-in for the Republican nomination, but I think Biden can beat him in the election for the same reason that led him to do so in 2020: there are enough sane and prudent people in the country to counteract what I see as the dementia of Republicans everywhere. As to a prosecutor rising to the occasion, if Smith didn't do it and Garland doesn't have the fortitude to get someone else in to assume the prosecutorial mantle, that seems unlikely. And no tidal wave is going to sweep through the capital building and flush all the Republicans out into the Atlantic ocean, so the constitutional remedy seems too farfetched to even discuss, even though its intent is plain to see. So we have two hopes: first that Garland or Smith rises to the occasion, which as I have postulated seems unlikely, or second, that Joe Biden will. It isn't hopeless, but it has to give us all pause.
Your friend,
Mike
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Letter 2 America for August 11, 2023tag:letters2america.com,2023://1.9702023-08-11T22:05:00Z2023-08-11T22:05:32ZDear America,Today, a federal judge admonished Donald Trump and his legal team to refrain from disclosing the details of the materials they are about to receive from Jack Smith, the federal special counsel leading the prosecution of Trump in two...Michael Wolfhttp://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge Today, a federal judge admonished Donald Trump and his legal team to refrain from disclosing the details of the materials they are about to receive from Jack Smith, the federal special counsel leading the prosecution of Trump in two cases, one involving attempting to overturn the election of 2020 on January 6, 2021 as well as before and after that date. A week or two ago, another federal judge held a hearing about a plea deal previously agreed to by Hunter Biden, the president's son, his attorneys and the federal prosecutor for the state of Delaware, David Weiss. At that hearing, the judge asked the prosecutor, Weiss, if the plea arrangement ended Biden's criminal liability, and Weiss said no. So she asked Biden if that was his understanding, to which he responded, no. In fact, Biden's attorneys appeared not to have read the fine print because they also said that they thought that the deal ended Biden's liability, and when the prosecutor said it didn't, Biden said that he wouldn't accept the terms of the plea deal. The judge then gave both sides a couple of weeks to smooth out their differences, but the prosecutor, now a special counsel as of a couple of days ago, apparently wouldn't forego the opportunity to continue to investigate, and perhaps prosecute Biden, and Biden and his attorney said that in that case, they would go to trial. There is no plea deal.
The reason I bring all this up is that today I watched CNN on this subject, and then I watched Fox News, and what I saw just reified my distrust of Republicans and conservatives in general. Bear in mind that I saw the world news coverage of the first Biden plea hearing, and it was recounted just as I have reiterated it above, which is how it was recapitulated on CNN. Contrary to the mischaracterizations of Republicans, the judge didn't refuse to accept the deal because it was favorable to Biden, she rejected it because it misled Biden into thinking he had a final resolution of his legal problems when all the while, prosecutor Weiss, apparently leaving Biden to his misapprehensions about the plea, intended to continue pursuing Biden's activities and possible crimes. She had rejected the plea because it was offered to Biden under false pretenses by a Trump nominee to the Department of Justice office he holds to this day. So the Republican puling about Biden getting special treatment out of "Biden's DOJ" has been nothing like the truth. In fact, it was just the opposite. The Republican claim that Biden had received special treatment was a palpable lie. Biden got just what prosecutors try to give everyone they pursue: a good screwing to the wall on general principle. And now that Weiss has the power to pursue Biden anywhere, the Republicans are repudiating him not because he's too devious, but because they don't think he's devious enough. The claim they had been pursuing that Weiss was compromised because there is a Democrat in the White House and the DOJ is part of the executive branch is shot full of holes, so they have switched to claiming that the guy who tried to trick Biden into a guilty plea that left him vulnerable to further charges didn't try hard enough before to bamboozle Biden into prison.
On CNN, Jake Tapper interviewed a couple of legal authorities, including someone from the American Heritage Foundation--hardly a bastion of liberal thought--and a couple of others, and they all accepted the truth of how the Biden plea failure had gone...the same account that the world and I heard on the national news the day it happened. But on Fox the story was completely different. They showed a clip of Lindsey Graham claiming that the whole plea deal was a Biden plot, and a panel of four people with a moderator, for the most part, ranted on about how the prosecutor had been caught playing for the home team in opposition to what was right and just in their eyes. To Fox's credit one of the four was actually rational and saw the facts as they actually are, and another related the case in a fashion that was just inside the truth, albeit barely, but the two other commentators seem to have been on a different planet when all of this happened. I can only characterize their comments as partisan, reactionary rants. That is why I have no respect for conservative Republicans. They cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Candor is not their metier.
I assume that some of you who read these letters are Republicans, and it is not my intention to alienate you. If we met, we might even become friends. But as for Republicans in general, I just don't trust them. After all, Donald Trump is their poster boy.